Friday Musings...

You can't unring a bell. You can't unsee what you do see or see what you don't see.  And our pious convictions with marginal information doesn't help either.  

Recently I wandered through the topics being offered for a large ministerial conference of my former peers. While typically the first topic of concern was, as expected, "The Offering as Worship, the other topics were not all that informative on the topic of the actual Bible. When a ministry is made up of mere Bible readers, you're not going to any seminar on "A Scripture can never mean what it never meant."

There was one workshop where one might ask questions on theology to the one man provided to answer them for you, but I suspect the questions were rather light and foofy unless the group wanted to probe the depths of the nature of the Trinity or just what plan B may have been for God with Adam and Eve, mostly Eve, mucking up the works. Other than that, I am fairly sure a good hard question about the Bible where the answer might threaten the accepted answer was limits.

One certainly would not wish to become labeled as "he who asks too many hard questions." That would endanger your career. I can't tell you how many times I have asked pastors of all faiths questions that only pastors seem to think up for each other and was told  "I know...I know...but if I bring that up I could lose my job."

I would be reminded of the Wizard of ID being questioned by a commoner and being told, "well with ideas like that, you're really going to go up in this Kingdom." The next scene you see the commoner standing at the bottom step of the gallows with he hangman saying, "Up you go there buddy."

Long story, but I have managed to outgrow my church and I was the pastor. Not the one of my youth, which was Presbyterian, but the one I moved on to in my youth thinking it was more real and then gave almost three decades of my life to it. In time, nuther long story, they reinvented the wheel and insisted I return to my rather Presbyterian roots taking me full circle. I realized my love affair with organized religion and true churches was over. With messy transitions and difficult emotional experiences, I moved on. 

The tribe does not have much use for stray dogs. They either domesticate them for their convenience or they eat them.

In my personal journey through a very sincere belief that I was correct in my Biblical perspectives as a pastor, I have gone from believing in the "God breathed" inerrancy of the Book, to an eyes wide open understanding that the Bible is neither all that Holy, "the greatest Book ever written and full of errors, bad science, implausible accounts and many contradictions. I find my self marveling at the hours spent by sincere pastors straining to understand how the sins of Adam and Eve impact our lives today and place us all under the cloud of Original Sin and the need for blood atonement to make it all good again. The simple answer for me is now that the evolution of humans is good science and that the idea that any literal first humans called Adam and Eve is ludicrous. I"m almost ashamed of myself for taking so long to figure this out with the love of science I have always had but strained for decades to place it all in the context of Bible literalism, which can't really be done well.

Since, to me and as a result of my own study, there was no literal Adam and Eve (and no, the creation of humans is not a mere 6000 years ago either), there was no literal sin for which everyone forever more after has to be cleansed from by the blood of a dying God/Man. The fact that there has been a score or more dying God/men in history, all of whom were born on December 25th, were tempted to fail, rose to the occasion, were betrayed, pierced and lay in the grave for three days and three nights only to be born again is pretty darn common. While some may love to "Tell the old old story of unseen things above...", they are not aware of just how old the story is.  Solstices and Equinoxes quite the framework for much of the story. 

The higher and more critical thinkers and doers of  theology, history and archaeology, understand with no reservations the first 11 chapters of Genesis are borrowed mythologies given a Hebrew spin. It's how it's done.  Israeli archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein of The Bible Unearthed fame will plainly tell you the Pentateuch was written by Priests in the Babylonian Captivity of the 5 century BCE to give themselves a great pedigree. He'll also convincing tell you there was no Moses, Abraham or Solomon and he suspects no David.  In his field at least, there is no evidence for this and he often ends by saying, "We exaggerate."  Imagine the Church of God without these characters or the Exodus as real history?  I can't. 

But where does one fit when the tribe has no use for you and stepping outside the box is going to have it's consequences? I'm amazed, yet should not be, of the phenomenal loss of "friends" one experiences when bells ring and lights go on. It's the price one pays for being unable to stay stuck in something you learn along the way is not as one has been told. Few go with you. some talk about you and all ignore you forever more. The labeling and name calling is phenomenal.

My first title after moving on was "High Priest of Marduk"  (James Patrick Holding of Tekton. Nasty little when he corresponds)  It was down hill from there.  "Spawn of Satan", "Apostate Former Minister" and "Twice dead" among others.  The Bible has enough labels for the lost to keep thinking twice about leaving and  firmly gyrating in your seats with glee over the sermon no matter. 

The best I can come up with is that you become more of your authentic self...something organized religion is loathe to have you do in the first place. Churches and Priesthoods generally want followers, compliers and sheep. Ministers may seem to pride themselves in allowing for questions, but they are easy questions to answer because when all is said and done, one can claim that "God says it, I believe it. That does it for me" and put the ball back in the court of the reprobate questioner.

If all else fails, the one who questions can be told "there is a way that seems right to a man, but the way thereof ends in death," or "God sees not as a man sees," or "The wisdom of God is foolishness with man," and thus all his questions can be dismissed. Of course, these putdowns don't answer the original questions, but they send the message that one is not even smart enough to ask the right ones. The cure for being "one who questions" may be everything from prayer and fasting to get the attitude straightened out to "how 'bout we sit out of church a few weeks and think about our relationship to Jesus." Either way, "he who questions loses." The Church and God always win in such cases.

So after after you outgrow your church, organized religion or the literalism of one's childhood Sunday School lessons, what is the purpose of one's life? Since Churches tell us that salvation through the blood of a dying God/man is the purpose of life, but now one has no confidence in that, what's the point? While I now can stay home from church and save a whopping ten percent, I'd still like to find meaning in life beyond being a food tube that eventually dies.

My Babies

Pure Iron from the first stars,14 billion years ago, that "had the courtesy to explode and spew their guts into the universe" (Neil DeGrasse Tyson" )to the left.  Stoney meteorites from asteroid and small planet collisions from the outer mantle. 

Perhaps that's why just sitting with one of my 4.5 Billion Year Old meteorites, left over debris from the formation of the solar system, is almost a spiritual experience. I also don't have to believe it faith or marginal information.  These  make the " 6000 year plan of God" a mere .00000013 % or reality. 

One of the many meme's of organized religion is that human beings are evil, nasty and worms in God's sight. Their hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked to the point of total mistrust. We are sin personified in nasty flesh and worthy of nothing but death, at best. Let's get right to the truth of the matter.

You and I are just fine. Labels are not your problem. They are the problem of the he who labels. We are who we are and it's your goal in life to get to know yourself and who YOU are. We are all unique parts of the same one thing. It's not our goal or to our advantage to believe that we are to become someone else or follow the life, perspectives or worldview of someone else. That ruse has restrained and constrained human-becomings for way too long on the planet. The "you're not good enough," meme is a set up for allowing others to control you with fear, guilt and shame to their advantage every time.

Gerald Flurry, Dave Pack, Bob Thiel, UCG, LCG and all LMNOP Churches of God are not the be all and end all of truth giving.  Opinions, views, speculations and pious conviction perhaps, but to date, mostly proven inaccurate if not incredibly wrong about themselves epitomized by the poster child of badly mistaken theology and scientific inquiry,  David C Pack. 

The goal in life is to get to know your own unique self. It's a troublesome process as there are more than enough others who feel you need to get to know THEM and be like THEM who are less defective and wormlike than yourself. Don't fall for it. Nursing homes are full of people who would give anything to have another shot at being themselves. But that goes back in another way to not being able to unring a bell.

Philadelphia Church of God "men" still struggling to be Real Men as their women head off to the gym "...to develop manly abs and biceps"

The official theme song for those Macho Men in PCG and LCG

Reading the latest article by Ron Fraser on the Philadelphia Church of God website is almost like he ripped it out of Rod Meredith's hands.  Why is it that various Church of God's today struggle with their men being "real" men?  Reading Fraser article makes it seem like the Church of God only had "real" men prior to the mid 1960's.

We are witness today to a great confusion which has set in with respect to the meaning of marriage and family and the definitions of traditional gender roles in society at large.

The result is that few truly know what it means to be a real man or to be a real woman as God designed and intended us to be. The fallout has drastically affected the ability of men in society to lead. To lead effectively in any institution, be it marriage, family, a corporate situation, a military role or any responsible function in society at large.

Indeed, the reality is that we are today living out the legacy of this mass confusion of God-given roles in fulfillment of the prophecy contained in Isaiah 3:2-3.

Note that God prophesies that it will be the traditional male roles that will disappear in our day.

In these end times, there is only one man who had the real possibility to restore true masculinity to the world.  No, it is not Gerald Flurry or even wimpy Bob Thiel, it was none other than the apostle and prophet, Herbert W Armstrong!   How quickly we all forget!

But we, in the Church, are called into God’s Family to recapture true values—to be educated in all things restored to the Church through a latter day, 20th century Elijah (Matthew 17:10-11), revived through a latter day prophet and apostle in this 21st century.

Fraser said the feminization of humankind began in the Garden of Eden when Eve began being a liberal.  He uses Gertrude Himmelfarb as his source for this information.  Himmelfarb is part of the neoconservative movement here in the United States.  She is also deeply involved in researching and writing about Victorian sexual mores.  These are the morals that Armstrongism is fondly attached to since Herbert Armstrong's Missing Dimension in Sex is based on Victorian sex books.

It really started in Anglo-Saxon society with what Gertrude Himmelfarb calls in her masterful treatise “The De-moralization of Society” the “new” men and “women” of the 1880s and 1890s.

As in the Garden of Eden with the first attempt at “liberalizing” woman, the move to change God-given gender roles started with a certain kind of woman which Himmelfarb describes as wanting “more by way of liberation than bicycling, smoking, or reading risqué books—who sought nothing less than sexual liberation.”

Since those early women’s lib proponents of the latter 19th and early 20th century, the feminist lobby has steadily pushed and prodded its way into the traditional male realms of yesteryear, invading and in some cases even coming to dominate them.

Fraser and many in the COG's never grasped the concept that men and women are equal.  PCG longs for the days women were subservient to the lord and masters of yesteryear.

Fraser is particularly galled by women in "this age of women."

This is the age of women—whom God made, deliberately, the physically weaker sex—competing with men, and to their shame, at times beating them even in traditional male physical activities.

Yes, it must really frost the butt's of PCG ministers when there are women in their congregations who have a better grasp of scriptural meanings that the feminized men in the pulpits or that are directing stages shows about Old Testament prophets.

Fraser then reveals the reason women go to the gym.

Common sense should tell us that the normal physical structure of the male body as God designed it casts him naturally in the role of physical protector of the woman, who is naturally created without the muscle mass that is distributed over a male frame. So what does the perversity of feminism do to counter this natural phenomenon?

It encourages women to go off to the gym in an effort to develop manly abs and biceps.

Seriously, can there even be a dumber comment than this?

Oh, and those gym going "muscle women" have "muscled" themselves into corporations where they become CEO's!  Oh, the humanity!

In the corporate world, women have “muscled” their way into the boardroom and in many cases have taken over the traditional male role of ceo.

Fraser then goes on to quote Herbert again.

Mr. Armstrong told us why. He said repeatedly that when the male fails to lead, the woman will seek to take over. As already intimated, it’s as old as the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

It’s high time that men recaptured their true, God-designed role—and taught their sons their true role!

Women!  Get back in the kitchen and make Rod Fraser a sandwich!

Fraser then goes on to describe the men in PCG:

To have a dad that is a waddling blob of inertia will probably engender a son in the same image. To have a dad who is fit, athletic and muscle-toned will, no doubt, produce a son in the same image—IF Dad spends the time to help his son develop such a manly frame!

Fraser is also irritated at the speed that knowledge can be obtained today thanks to computers, laptops, smartphones and other devices.  Of course, this is all exacerbated by evil colleges and universities.

Stephen Bertman in his book, Cultural Amnesia, observes of this trend, “the exhilaration of technological speed and its efficacy lead people to value speed more than ever before, diminishing in their eyes the worth of activities that take time, including the time-consuming activity of learning.”

The knowledge of what once demonstrated just what it was that set the real men apart from the boys is thus greatly diminished, for as Bertman muses, “Because computers are mostly adept at serving up the new, they will serve up the present at the expense of the past. … Computers can give us information …. What they cannot give us is a reason to value that past. … What they cannot give us is judgment or goodness.”

Manly men in PCG can only gain knowledge by attending HWA College or reading about Old Testament hero's.

One of the most manly examples in God’s Word is that of King David. Constantly, in psalm after psalm, this mighty, manly warrior-king of Israel asked God to give him judgment and goodness. Those aspects of character are really what marks out the real man and separates him from the mass of humanity as a true leader.

In his book The Missing Dimension in Sex, Mr. Armstrong states, “Humans are endowed with minds. Humans were placed on Earth for the express purpose of developing godlike character—learning to make right decisions, with prayerful guidance from God and His Word, and to exercise the self-direction to rightly act on those decisions.”

Fraser then says that the ultimate purpose for PCG men is to become "god", because apparently, Herbert said so.

In his book The Missing Dimension in Sex, Mr. Armstrong states that God’s “purpose is the reproduction of His own kind—holy, righteous and perfect character in the divine Family of the ever-living God! Humans, physically begotten and born through sex, may be spiritually begotten and divinely born of God—entering the eternally living God Family!”

There can't be any pussy men in the Kingdom!

Apparently, the liberal era of the COG in the 1970's was caused by women:

It is a fact that even in God’s Church, we too often see women dominating their men in marriage and family situations. Down through the ages the ways of society have had an insidious way of working their way into God’s Church. Witness the decade of liberalism which impacted the Church in the 1970s, something from which it never did fully recover—witness, in turn, the speed of the great falling away following Mr. Armstrong’s death (2 Thessalonians 2:3).

And where would we be without having to "inculcate" some idea?

This planet needs as many godly men as God’s Church can produce.

The Church needs them.

It is incumbent on every parent of every lad in the Church to work hard to inculcate the true essence of godly manhood in their male offspring, thus enhancing the prospect of his manifesting that missing dimension in his life when God leads him by His goodness to repentance and real conversion to His way of life on the road to fulfilling his incredible human potential! 

True men in the Philadelphia Church of God?

While not everything in the article is bad, it is typical Armstrongite self-righteous fluff.  Read it here: Become a Man, My Son!

Are the LCG members who post here "fake" insiders and "bitter" liars?

An anonymous reader here did not take too kindly to many of the remarks being made by Living Church of God members and ex-members on conditions in Living Church of God today.

He wrote:

"...I also guarantee that the crap that is written here about Meredith, McNair, Weston, Winnail(s), Ciesielka and others is completely made up by fake "insiders" or so-called LCG members at LCG HQ. All of the "news" and "inside information" being put out here is without any merit and complete garbage. Believe you me, Weston, Winnail, Ames and every other LCG minister routinely snicker and laugh at the ridiculous and outlandish "news" and "information" that is put out here and in other hate blogs. Thanks for the entertainment."

It is always so much fun to read comments like this. The idea that Weston, Winnail, McNair, Li'l Jimmy and others sit around and "snicker and laugh" at things posted here is hilarious.

I know for a fact that LCG monitors this site.  The second anything is posted here the screen maps light up with Charlotte ip addresses.  Who can forget the day Rod Meredith publicly told members to not read this blog! The readership here shot up dramatically that day and continues.

The shenanigans happening in all of the Church of God's are no longer outlandish for anyone to sit here and make up every day.  We have all seen this going on for decades.  Church members have lived this crap for the past 60 some years as ministers have run rampant in the church wrecking peoples lives.  We all sat and watched how Rod Meredith couldn't keep is mouth shut and defamed Leona McNair and got sued.  We watched as he twiddled his thumbs through the lawsuit while he let WCG pay for his defense, and then when the church lost the case and had to pay Leona McNair a large sum of money, he jumped ship into his own personality cult, Global Church of God.  We watched him then rip Global apart and take their money when they realized what an abusive SOB he was.  Then we watched him start Living Church of God where the abuse goes on to this very day.  We have all read here lately how even Herbert Armstrong knew what a mess Meredith was and refused to appoint him to official church eldership.

I have people who have contacted me here who are high up in many of the various COG's. I also have had children/gradn children of leaders of three different COG's who have been in contact with me. Others have been high up in the inner circles of various groups.  They know exactly what they are talking about.  Their remarks can be corroborated by other members and have been.

It has always been the tactic of the church, its leaders and bitter members to label anyone who disagrees with them as bitter and liars. It may have worked decades ago, but with the Internet, present day Church of God members can quickly find out if something is true or not.  It does not take long for things to bleed out into cyberspace. The days of calling people liars, disgruntled and bitter no longer carry any weight.

CONTEXT! It Matters

Line upon line, precept upon precept: "Have we allowed a mistranslated text of scripture to become a catch-phrase of wisdom which was originally intended to be a mocking chide?"

...it is painful to admit that a verse we have used 

as a badge of our "wisdom" and "depth" 

is in fact drunken chiding which triggers the judgment of God

.

One of the favorite scripture bombs that the church and church members loved to throw around in order to silence people was Isaiah 28:10, 13.

...precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little...

The church has always claimed that to understand the Bible it was necessary to glean a little here, a little there, some more over here, and less over there. Line upon line, just like in the ten commandments, wisdom was to be found in a linear fashion, that the word stands upon the foundations of previous verses or teachings.  It was always used as a weapon to denigrate anyone who disagreed with the church or some "understanding" that was supposed to be accepted by all.

So just how did a verse that was filled with mocking "chiding" become a verse used by the COG as a weapon to mock those people thought less biblically enlightened as they were?

Reprinted with permission: Dean & Laura VanDruff: Dialogues and Commentary acts17-11.com

Have we allowed a mistranslated text of scripture to become a catch-phrase of wisdom which was originally intended to be a mocking chide?

Isa 28:10 (KJV) For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.Isa 28:13 (KJV) ...precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little...

The phrase "precept upon precept" from the King James Version of the above two scriptures is often associated with "deep teaching" and biblical larks. Normally you hear about it when the going gets muddleheaded, hard to follow, or just plain confusing; in which case the handy old "precept upon precept" phrase will be trotted out to explain why. Understanding how "precepts" are built upon "precepts" ad-infinitum to absurd complexity is supposed to be a key to understanding, or so we are told.

2Co 11:3 (NKJ) But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

We know from Scripture that God does not cotton much to mental conceit, human sophistry, or the lofty thoughts of men. These, in fact, are specifically warned against as the very scent of deception. But with the popular use of "precept upon precept" to justify such, God's prophetic irony is stark.

Isa 28:19 (NIV) ...The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror.

What does what the King James rendered as "precept upon precept" really mean, then? Well, in Hebrew the phrase in Isaiah 28 verses 10 and 13 is: "sav lasav sav lasav, kav lakav kav lakav" as can be seen in the footnotes of most modern Bibles. The phrase appears to be mere gobbledygook, a mockery of the prophet's words, which we will see in context momentarily. To have translated this gibberish was extremely daffy, but the KJV translators set an unfortunate precedent. 

As an example in English, imagine someone standing up in the audience at a Promise Keepers rally with a megaphone and shouting, "Lah De Dah, Lah De Dah; Blah Be Blah, Blah Be Blah". You would take it this person was not "with the program"; was making fun. Now suppose a naive person was translating this into French for French television, and missed the satirical point: "He's from Los Angeles, He's from Los Angeles... He is bored with insects, He is bored with insects," might be a honest attempt. But--really now! 

Now that a precedent has been set with "sav lasav" in English, most new translations dare not deviate. The NIV follows the KJV lead with "do and do, do and do", and the NAS "order on order, order on order", with footnotes alerting the reader of the problem. Beyond precedent, however, it is painful to admit that a verse we have used as a badge of our "wisdom" and "depth" is in fact drunken chiding which triggers the judgment of God. 

As we will see in context, this is not "wisdom" to be imitated, or a "key" of understanding to apprehend God's word, it is a mockery of the spirit of prophecy. 

Let's dive into the text.

Isa 28:1 (NIV) Woe to that wreath, the pride of Ephraim's drunkards, to the fading flower, his glorious beauty... the pride of those laid low by wine!Isa 28:7-8 (NIV) And these also stagger from wine and reel from beer: Priests and prophets stagger from beer and are befuddled with wine; they reel from beer, they stagger when seeing visions, they stumble when rendering decisions. All the tables are covered with vomit and there is not a spot without filth. 

Isa 28:9-12 (NIV) "Who is it he is trying to teach? To whom is he explaining his message? To children weaned from their milk, to those just taken from the breast? For it is: ["sav lasav sav lasav, kav lakav kav lakav"] "Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there". Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues God will speak to this people, to whom he said, "This is the resting-place, let the weary rest"; and, "This is the place of repose"--but they would not listen.

So far, unless you have been paying close attention, you might have misunderstood that the "kav lakav" message comes from the drunken and stumbling prophets--aimed at those who are too spiritually dull or sodden to even know better. The idea of foreign lips and strange tongues carries with it a pagan and unclean aspect, perhaps even alluding to Balaam. But all this, so far, could be disputed. Some expositors, for example, suggest that this is an old testament harbinger of speaking in tongues; and link "kav kakav" to the glossolalia of 1Cr 14:22 as a means of explaining the "foreign" reference. But this is a bit of a stretch even if we stop where we are; and there is more. 

So that we can not miss the point that this chiding phrase is not God's wisdom, but a travesty of it that brings on God's judgment, the phrase is repeated in a context that cannot be missed and with a result that that is inescapable.

Isa 28:13 (NIV) So then, the word of the Lord to them will become: ["sav lasav sav lasav, kav lakav kav lakav"] Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there--so that they will go and fall backwards, be injured and snared and captured.

Sound like a group you would like to be part of? 

Isaiah now will respond to this sing-songy taunt and ignorance paraded as wisdom.

Isa 28:14-15 (NIV) Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem. You boast, "We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding-place." 

Isa 28:16-20 (NIV) So this is what the Sovereign Lord says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed. I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb-line; hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie, and water will overflow your hiding-place... When the overwhelming scourge sweeps by, you will be beaten down by it. As often as it comes it will carry you away; morning after morning, by day and by night, it will sweep through." The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror. The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you. 

Isa 28:21-22 (NIV) The Lord will rise up as he did at Mount Perazim, he will rouse himself as in the Valley of Gibeon--to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task. Now stop your mocking, or your chains will become heavier; the Lord, the Lord Almighty, has told me of the destruction decreed against the whole land.

Here is another take on the verses written in regard to preachers and their preaching:

Isaiah 28:10-13 and our Preaching Practice

Do these verses provide a good explanation of how God wants His Scriptures to be taught? Not even close. The statement about “precept upon precept, line upon line” is first of all a mocking statement by drunkards about the teaching of Isaiah, and then becomes a mocking statement by God as He turns their words back upon them. God tells them that if they don’t like what Isaiah says, they really won’t like what they hear from the Assyrians.

There is almost nothing in this text about how to preach and teach the Word of God. If there is anything here at all, we might be able to glimpse Isaiah’s teaching method behind the mocking words of the leaders. It seems that Isaiah taught the same thing over and over and over in very simple words and ideas to the drunken leaders of Israel in hopes that through repetition and simplicity, they might understand his words and repent of their ways.  Is Line by Line Preaching Biblical?

SaveSave

Would you lie to protect your particular Church of God?

A comment was made on another thread about Rod McNair's recent take on "lying."

LCG is rich with irony. While Doug Winnail is in Africa, Rod McNair is taking over his weekly comments, and he used this platform this week to share some statistics:

61% of Elders agreed lying is morally wrong
54% of Baby Boomers agreed that lying is morally wrong
50% of Generation Xers agreed that lying is morally wrong
42% of Millennials agreed that lying is morally wrong
But only 34% of Generation Z (born between 1999 and 2015) could agree that lying is morally wrong

Rod presents this as a problem, but those close to him know that he believes in the "Rahab principle" that if you lie for the Church you are not morally culpable. If you are married and Rod convinces your spouse to lie about you, that is lying for the Church and is justified. If you, however, dare to tell the truth about Rod's lies, you are going against the Church and must be eliminated. If you lie to donors about how your tithes are being used, that's morally OK, but if a critic points out the truth that many of LCG's media statistics represent purchased views and do not represent real viewer interest, your truth is considered morally wrong.

Gerald Weston has inherited a big problem. The Emperor is wearing no clothes, and those outside of LCG can see this clearly. It's only the frightened or ambitious LCG members who keep trying to pretend that their home office is something other than a nest of vipers. This is why LCG is not growing. If you are using the Holy Spirit to discern Godly character, you won't want to expose yourself or your loved ones to LCG's moral decrepitude.

We have all seen over the years the lies of Dave Pack and Gerald FLurry go down in flaming glory.  We also witness it today in the lies of Bob Thiel as he attempts to constantly justify the existence of his personality cult. But not only is lying an issue with the leadership of the various COG's, it involves the members too.  On a Facebook page, people have been talking about how their families lied to school administrators, church hall rental people and others.

I remember being told to say all kinds of things to school teachers that were not exactly true when it came the church belief idiosyncrasies.

Most of my experience of this was in childhood, filling out school forms. We had to list our doctor in the event of an emergency, and of course we had none – so sometimes my parents would write in the name of Dr. Clint C. Zimmerman (an evangelist who had earned a living as a chiropractor before entering the ministry), even though they knew they were being asked for a medical doctor, and we had never ever ever consulted Zimmerman professionally (if contacted by school officials, he would have had no idea who we were, though he might have remembered my grandparents).

Even though Clint Zimmerman was no physician, I kind of see my parents' reasoning – he had, indeed, at one time worked in a related field; still, that's one heck of a stretch.

But my first year or two of grade school they actually filled in the name of Dr. Hermann Hoeh as our family doctor – yes, a professor of twisted history who earned his degree from an unaccredited Bible college based on a dissertation unspoiled by facts or logic! No doubt if I'd had an accident on campus he could have mailed a prayer cloth to the school nurse ...

Many times parents in Pasadena would use the campus chiropractor or registered nurses names as "official" doctors for the family.  Not only were these men/women not real doctors, they were questionable chiropractors considering the quacky things they practiced and encouraged their patients to do. All of the engaged in peddling quack homoeopathic medicines, just as Bob Thiel does.

Then, if something did go wrong with a child due to the church stance on doctors and medicine, the church conveniently weaseled its way out of any responsibility whatsoever.  They blamed the parents for not doing what should have thought to be right.  Then when the child died from appendicitis are some other illness, the ministers would uphold the child or family as pillars of faith for not using medical treatment.

Lying to the "gentile" unconverted public was like casting "pearls before swine" in the eyes of the church.  Never share church doctrines or its darker secrets with the "gentiles."  We were warned that if we did that then persecution could come upon the church.

Lying also extended to hall rentals for church services or other evenings.

Sometimes the church would rent a local school field and/or multi-purpose room for a church social, which involved signing a statement acknowledging alcohol was prohibited (often my dad was the responsible party who reserved the facility and signed those papers – ministers didn't like to go on record and sign official documents). Even at my young age, I can recall two of our ministers in the sixties, ...while instructing the deacons and servers to keep the wine they served with the potluck on the down-low .... never occurred to school officials a church group would intentionally violate the law.

I remember going to "night to be Much Observed" dinners in restaurants that did not serve alcohol or in meeting halls.  We were to keep the booze hidden and poured into paper cups so that the "gentiles" would think it was grape soda.

Herbert Armstrong was well qualified to lie to the members since advertising is mostly one big lie after another.  Just look at the scores of letters he sent out begging the membership for money all the while he would be on spending sprees at Harrod's and Sotheby's.

And who can forget the "let's flee to Petra" lie we all endure in the late 60's and early 70's.  Could there have been a more monstrous lie forced on the membership?  Oh wait, there were other lies just as bad, or worse: HWA was an apostle.  Church members would become God as God is now. That we need to "qualify" for salvation. Hitler was still alive and ready to slaughter Americans...on and on it went.

The church always defensively claimed it never lied to anyone, but "sins of omission" seemed to be OK.  The less you told the gentiles of the world the better.  Half-truths were the doctrine of the day, and sadly still are in the COG's.

Dear Church of God Teens. Since it is too late for your parents....

Learn more of what actually is true in 28 minutes than your pastor's 1 hour and 20 minute sermon or 16 ill informed and mistaken programs  about how everything came to be.   Listen in hilarious delight to Dave Pack misinform you with his Koala Bear tales and back himself into a "But what about the Two Koalas on the Ark?" dilemma.  

C'mon...28 minutes to save you from making lifelong career choices should you decide to attend your local church college or totally skip your education waiting for Jesus to return and flee to some unscriptural disaster you will never recover from. 

No church leader in the history of the Churches of God , as Dave Pack, has so badly failed to tell you the truth about the origin of everything.  

Agape Love in the Living Church of God

Whew! Doug Winnail is back after a long absence, once again holding the feet of LCG in the fire.  Most of his weekly paragraphs are on topics of current issues in the Living Church of God.  This week it is on love or the lack of love in the Living Church of God.  Is that lack of love what is driving the membership rolls of the LCG down?  Is that lack of love the result of the heavy-handedness of Gerald Weston, Rod McNair, and Johnathan McNair and others?  Is the leadership of the Living Church of God filled with "unselfish outgoing concern for others?"

The Most Important Quality: Most of God’s people understand the importance of keeping the commandments, the Sabbath, the Holy Days and the health laws, as well as the importance of government, tithing, faith and watching for the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Yet, sometimes, in our zeal to obey the laws of God, we can overlook something that is even more important—and that is the need to develop and exercise Godly Love. In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, we learn that without Godly Love, all other things will amount to nothing. The biblical word used here for love is agape, which refers to an unselfish outgoing concern for others. In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul states that Godly Love is patient and kind; it does not envy and is not proud or rude. Godly Love does not seek its own way; it is calm and not easily provoked, nor does it jump to conclusions or assign motives or sit in judgment of others. Instead, Godly Love is gracious and forgiving. It is positive and focuses on what is right and true. It never fails or falters. Godly Love is an important fruit of God’s spirit (Galatians 5:22) that we must cultivate if we hope to become like our Father and our Elder Brother Jesus Christ—because God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and we have been created to become like Him (1 John 3:1-3). Let’s make this our goal. Let’s ask God to help us learn to love Him and learn to love others as He does—so we can develop this most important quality—of Godly Love.

Have a profitable Sabbath,

Douglas S. Winnail

LCG: Everything I know about the Bible I learned in 15 minutes!

It is always fun to watch COG leaders spin numbers and surveys to fit the desired outcome they were seeking.  Johnathan McNair is starting off in his new HQ leadership roles by being the best spin doctor since Bob Thiel invented his dreamy improperly named "continuing" Church of God.

LCG recently sent out a survey to members to see how much time they spend in Bible study. The first question was how much time they "wanted" to spend studying the Bible and then how much time they actually did.  Herbert Armstrong will NOT be pleased with the results! God's ironclad golden rule for Bible Study, prayer and mediation is 1 hour each! LCG must be doing something right though.  With claims of 7,000 members, an outstanding amount of 300 responded to the survey.  Good job LCG!

Living Education Update 

A big thank you to those who took a moment to respond to our survey last week! Almost 300 people answered the brief questions about their Bible study time.  

The first question asked about people’s target amount of time to spend in study, while the second asked how much time, on average, they actually did spend.  

Half of those who responded set a goal of studying an hour a day. Of the remainder, about 50 planned to study 30 minutes a day, and about 20 aimed for 15 minutes. Two hours is the goal for approximately 60 members.  

With those goals in mind, the vast majority of those who responded, about 110 people, reported that they actually spend about 30 minutes a day on Bible study. Roughly 70 people spend an hour, and the remainder around 15 minutes, though about 20 of those surveyed said they spend two hours a day in study.  

The results showed that God’s people do want to dig into their Bibles! Whether we have a lot of time in our day or a little, consistent rehearsal of the principles of life found in the Bible will pay off by establishing and maintaining a solid foundation in the way of God.—Jonathan McNair

It is still quite obvious that most LCG members prefer to let their overlords tell them what scripture means instead of actually dissecting it themselves.  After all, most of these men were trained at the once holy Ambassador College, at the feet of Herbert Armstrong, with his 6-month Bible education that happened in a public library.

Crackpot Wade Cox: You have less than 7 years to repent or Jesus and the Mohammads of the Middle East will slaughter you.

It is always fascinating to watch the various leaders of the COG's as they mentally break down from delusional beliefs and teachings. For some reason, their god is the nastiest vengeful god one could ever imagine.  It is like they look with glee with the hope to see the people of the world slaughtered by their god during the end times for being such grievous sinners. Only they and their crazy band of followers are the true believers.

Wade Cox says:

So there is no doubt to the people seeking the First Resurrection this is the bottom line.

1. Repent and be baptised

1. Have hands laid on for receipt of the Holy Spirit

1. Keep the weekly Sabbath and daily prayer.

1. Keep the Sabbath of the New Moon and do not trade (Amos 8:5)

1. Keep the Lord’s Supper on the night of 14 Abib according to the Temple Calendar, participating in the bread and wine and footwashing.

1. Keep the Passover on the night beginning 15 Abib and keep the full seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. (Penalty for failure is to be cut off (Ex 12:15, 19) and all the Armstrong systems have failed to do this since 1965 and before then kept it only by accident due to Hillel).

1. Keep the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost on the 50th day which is the First day of the week following the 49th day Sabbath which commences the Feast.

1. Keep Trumpets on 1 Tishri, 

1. Atonement on (10 Tishri),

1. Keep the Feast of Tabernacles from 15 to 21 Tishri with Holy Days on 15 and 22 of the Seventh Month.

1. Tithe as per God’s Laws as a sign of Repentance and return to God.

1. Give three feast offerings a year at Passover, the Feast of Weeks and at Tabernacles.

Do these things and you shall be saved. Keep Hillel and fail to obey God and follow the Hadith and you will die. Teach men to disobey the Laws of God and you will be killed at the return of the Messiah. 

Those alive at the return of the Messiah will repent, or the elect under Messiah, Qasim and the Muhammads of the Middle East will remove all of you.

There is no negotiation. You have less than seven years to repent.  The ministry of the Churches of God have only half that time because they are already under judgment. Prepare for the Passover and turn and be saved.

Wade Cox

Coordinator General

Dictated by God to men?

One of the participants in my class on the Bible brought the following article from a blog to the class the other day.

Why is the Bible So Badly Written?

Millions of Evangelicals and other Christian fundamentalists believe that the Bible was dictated by God to men who acted essentially as human channelers. Each phrase is considered so perfect that it merits careful linguistic analysis to determine His precise meaning.

If that were the case, one would have to conclude that God is a terrible writer. Although some passages in the Bible are lyrical and gripping, many would get kicked back by any competent editor or writing professor— kicked back with a lot of red ink.

Mixed messages, repetition, bad fact checking, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, contradictions, passages where nobody can tell what the heck the writer meant to convey. . . .  This doesn’t sound like a book that was dictated by a deity.

In the COG we were taught, just like the Mormons were taught, that God literally breathed the words into the minds of the scribes.  They essentially channelled the words of god onto paper.  It may make for a good simplistic story to feed people who have never critically studied the Bible, it is it really true or more precisely accurate?

Most stories in the Bible, particularly the early books of the Bible were never written down till long periods later.  The stories were just that, oral stories passed down through leaders, rabbi's, teachers and storytellers.  COG leaders expected you to believe that each time the story was orally told, not one single thing was ever changed in the storyline.  No storyteller ever changed things to fit the people he was talking to.  No storyteller ever blanked out while telling the story and substituted another word or phrase to make the story sound more logical.  Nope, the magical god of the church entered the mind of every prophet, sage, rabbi, and storyteller and caused them to say the exact same words for hundreds and hundreds of years without one single deviation from the original plot line being forgotten.

The article continues with this:

No question, the Bible contains beautiful and timeless bits. But why, overall, does it so fail to meet this mark? One obvious answer, of course, is that neither the Bible—nor any derivative work like the Quran or Book of Mormon—was actually dictated by the Christian god or other celestial messengers. We humans may yearn for advice that is “god-breathed” but in reality, our sacred texts were written by fallible human beings who, try as they might, fell short of perfection in the ways that we all do.

In the church many ministers proclaimed that they knew exactly who wrote every single book in the Bible.  They all said that because one man said so and that man could never be questioned.

Far from being a single unified whole, the Bible is actually a collection of texts or text fragments from many authors. We don’t know the number of writers precisely, and—despite the ancient traditions that assigned authorship to famous people such as Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—we don’t know who most of them were. We do know that the men who inscribed the biblical texts had widely different language skills, cultural and technological surroundings, worldviews and supernatural beliefs—along with varying objectives. 

How many church members knew about two different creation stories or three different 10 Commandment sets?

Bible writers adapted earlier stories and laws to their own cultural and religious context, but they couldn’t always reconcile differences among handed-down texts, and often may not have known that alternative versions existed. Later, variants got bundled together. This is why the Bible contains two different  creation myths, three sets of Ten Commandments, and four contradictory versions of the Easter story.

The Gospel According to Matthew (not actually authored by Matthew) was written for an audience of Jews. The author was a recruiter for the ancient equivalent of Jews for Jesus. That is why, in the Matthew account, the Last Supper is timed as a Passover meal. By contrast, the Gospel According to John was written to persuade pagan Roman prospects, so the author timed the events differently. This is just one of many explicit contradictions between the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

The contradictions in the Gospel stories—and many other parts of the Bible, are not there because the writers were confused. Quite the opposite. Each writer knew his own goals and audience, and adapted hand-me-down stories or texts to fit, sometimes changing the meaning in the process. The folks who are confused are those who treat the book as if theywere the audience, as if each verse was a timeless and perfect message sent to them by God.  Their yearning for a set of clean answers to life’s messy questions has created a mess. 

The Bible is a messy book about messy people living messy lives.  Is it all wrong?  No.   Myths, legends and societal stories all contain truths, whether or not the events actually happened.  Do all of the parables that Jesus told have to have been actual events or were they stories told to tell a truth more plainly for the people he was speaking to at the time?  Can the word of God contain non-factual stories in order to tell a truth?

Ron Weinland Says He Never Went To Prison...He just went on a....

Ron Weinland meets his "camp" mate

...campout!

Ron apparently believes he was on a 3 1/2 year campout!

Even though it is well documented in court proceedings, by the Ron Weinland Blog, this blog and other sites that he is a convicted felon, he apparently believes his followers are dumb enough to he was on a campout.

Excogger says:

February 9, 2018 at 17:21

Ron did NOT go to prison!

In his last published sermon he admits he had been, for a period of three years, on a “campout”.

Yes, Ron was another happy camper on an extended vacation, it would appear.

Give me strength!!!!  From False Prophet Ron Weinland

Why is it that COG members will hear these men lie through their teeth daily, in and day out, and yet they sit there week after week believing the vomit that flows out of their mouths.  Do COG members still feel the need to be "special" and "called out" from the world and need this continued mental reinforcement?  The entire church knows that HWA uttered hundreds of failed prophecies.  They know Rod Meredith, Dean Blackwell, Herman Hoeh, Gerald Flurry, Dave Pack, Gerald Waterhouse, Bob Thiel, James Malm and many, many others did it and still do it.  And still, they sit.

Is Dave Pack Still Unable To Pay Most Of His Ministers

From Exit and Support:

February 12, 2018

This [Restored Church of God Destroyed My Marriage] is a sad story, repeated too often. Personally, I am grateful that my husband in RCG continues to support us. His understanding of "common" is less strict than what I have read on your site.

I know that most of the RCG ministry works without pay, just being compensated for expenses. So, it is not a mystery who gets the money [Pack]. They teach that the End is near, so why bother saving? I also know they believe that they are not looking for Jesus to return, rather they believe that Elijah is coming to "rule the world" for a time.

Also, a top minister in RCG works full time to "correct" Pack's false prophecies on their computers. That way, no one without a hard copy will know how wrong he is! --[name withheld]

It is well known that Dave imagines that "all things in common"include members money, which he believes belongs to his god, and therefore since he is God's only representative on earth today, all of their money belongs to him.

Apparently, Dave is so cheap he has a mostly volunteer ministry.  Other than paying some of their expenses, Dave is keeping all of the money for himself.

In May of 2016, Exit and Support reported that Dave could not afford to pay his ministers:

May 23, 2016

Dave Pack is pressed for money, as he still is not paying lower ministers for their full time work. At most, he is paying half pay. Many ministers are working for no pay. I do know that he has lost a big chunk of members by now claiming to be the "Elijah." Anyone, who takes time to check out HWA, especially if they followed him, just won't buy it. --Impacted by RCG

This should not be considered something new.  The Church of God has a great track record in doing this to its ministers over the decades.  As tens of millions of dollars were poured into the Pasadena campus for buildings, grounds and AICF, the ministery struggled to be paid at times.  HWA and the top echelon of the church never suffered during those financial crisis's, but everyone else sure did.


Also, notice the last paragraph in the top quote.  Dave has spent the last several years posting one sermon after another about his scenario for the end times and the return of his "jesus" for the second and third time.  Those sermons contained one outlandish teaching and prophecy after another.  When the mockery of these teachings reached a crescendo, he abruptly pulled all 130 some sermon transcripts offline.  Now he has to pay someone to come in and clean up his mess.

Herbert Armstrong With The Token African Americans

Here is Herbert, second from left, posing in front of African American children, when he was 21 years old, on a visit to a farm near Greenwood, South Carolina.  The white folk with the token blacks to show the folks at home how superior the whites were to the "darkies."

My Sure Word of Prophecy...

New International Version
After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
I Thessalonians 4:17

I spent my youth well into middle age, sorta, being told and somewhat believing that I would not die but actually luck out and live in the times when I'd merely twinkle into being "God as God is God."
I just suspected I'd rather twinkle in an eye than die in a nursing home or in some other less than twinkly way. Here is a short list of the big names who tried to convince themselves, me and you of that.

(I'd say Gospel Jesus, but you'd just get angry)
Peter
James
John
Paul 
2000 Years of Church Fathers

Herbert W Armstrong
Garner Ted Armstrong
Roderick C. Meredith
...and some other leading evangelists.....

Joseph W Tkach
Hermann Hoeh
Dean Blackwell
Ernest Martin
John Halford
Dibar Apartian

David John Hill 

Stanley R Rader

Gerald Waterhouse

........are dead and lived their entire lives as if they wouldn't die

Therefore and thus sayeth myself in what I would like to be remembered as the "No Brainer, I'm Pretty Sure I'm Right Prophecy"

Dave Pack

Gerald Flurry

Robert Thiel

Gerald Weston

Victor Kubic

Wade Cox

James Malm

Dennis Diehl

YOU

...to follow

Between being convinced we were chosen, special, set apart, protected, watched over and unique, we gave others permission to waste our time and  forgot...

My personal suggestion...