Church of God International Continues To Promote a COG Lie

I had a blurb a while back about the Waldenses and how they were NOT Sabbatarians or a remnant of the 'true church".  You would think that the various COG's would do some actual research before they write their articles.  CGI apparently did not feel the need to do so and relied upon illogical research of past COGers.

CGI's magazine Armor of God had this to say:

Extreme and excessive persecution was used to wipe out every historical trace of the Sabbath-keeping, Feast-keeping Church of God, which stood up for the doctrines left by the Apostles. As the Church of God struggled to survive, moving from place to place, it took on various ‘nicknames’ in different territories.

Names like the Paulicians, Waldenses, Leonists, Vaudas Cathars, and Albigensians were all attached at some time or another throughout the centuries, describing
these people and their movements.

Who does CGI rely upon for this information?  An outdated and poorly research book and a COG members' research:

For example, Orthodox Christians date the Waldenses as originating in the twelfth century and named after a wealthy French merchant Peter Waldo, who was founder of a radical ascetic Christian movement. But much information has come to light proving the Waldenses existed as early as the second century.

The recent work of Andrew N. Dugger and Clarence O. Dodd, titled, A History of the True Church, and Richard C Nickels’ Six Papers on the History of the Church of God, have done much to preserve some of the earlier writings about these groups.

In another bold claim, they said that England was a sabbath keeping nation until Ethebert, King of Kent converted to Catholicism in 597 AD.

“Catholicism was not established in Britain, until the conversion of the Angles in the 6th century by Augustine of Canterbury. According to Butler, Ethelbert, king of Kent, was converted to Catholicism at Pentecost 597AD with some 10,000 subjects baptized at the pagan midwinter Christmas festival of 597. The Christians of Britain were up until that time, predominantly, Sabbath-keepers, who kept the food laws and the Holy Days.”

Being the Anglophile that I am and in the collection of numerous books I have back several hundred years, there is no mention in any of those books that the nation of England was a nation of sabbath keepers! Even my extensive collection of Celtic books never refer to the English or Saxons as "sabbath keepers."  Sure, many of the traditions of the Celts were carried north to England as they travelled across Europe and Asia as the people migrated, but, sabbatarianism is not one of the traits that is ever mentioned.  Of course, there is a reason for this in COG lore.  It is not mentioned because Satan was seeking to destroy the true remnant with intense persecution and those evil Catholics stopped the truth from being published.  Ho hum......

Jesus Is Back!

Here is PROOF!  Flurry was right after all!  Or maybe it was Meredith.  Or was it Pack?  Or maybe it was Weiner Dude Weinland.  There are so many "One and Only's" out here in COGland it is hard to keep track of them all.

Maybe he is really ticked at the COG's and is back to REALLY straighten them out!  Maybe someone can tell him he that he is on the wrong mountain...............

click to embiggen

An eerie figure appears to stand on a cloud high in the mountains, arms outstretched, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Jesus. To complete the picture, the figure is crowned with a perfect halo of light.

Amateur photographer Luc Perrot was stunned when he saw the apparition 2,000ft up on top of the volcanic Cirque of Mafate peak, on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033825/Jesus-shadow-seen-Cirque-Mafate.html#ixzz1X7hVfozk

UCG Doctor Writes Book On "When Does Human Life Begin?"

A UCG Doctor has written a book on when does human life begin. 

When Does Human Life Begin?

A Fresh Look at Scientific, Scriptural, and Historical Evidence
There is a tension that exists between those who believe in scientific  progress through any means and those believe in a foundational morality  as the basis for all of our actions, and scientific advances. Nowhere is this debate more fiercely seen than that in the stem cell and abortion  debates seen today. What is the basis for this conflict and for the  positions each side takes? The nexus of this conflict is one of the most fundamental questions mankind has faced one that reaches the very  level of our own unique human identity When Does Human Life Begin?

In order to understand the question of when life begins we must first  attempt to understand what forms the foundations of our current history. This book is the beginning of an effort to align history with the  perspective of scripture and biology to investigate life’s origins. This book provides a unique perspective into a debate totally entrenched in  dogma and emotion. While is it deservedly so a hot-button topic - few  may stop to consider the reasons for their belief, or of their  opponents. It is hoped that by further understanding the foundation for  our current thinking - that we can come to an understanding that brings  greater clarity to the debate _ and the solution.

Excerpt from book : Chapter 1

 

J. Lawrence Merritt II, MD•• John Lawrence Merritt III •• John L Merritt, MD

Does Faith Crumble When Errors Are Exposed?

There has been several discussions(arguments?) here about faith and what happens to faith once some of it's underpinnings are stripped away.  Does faith crumble away when things we assumed to be true are only myth, allegory or metaphor?

One should also note that just because it is a myth, metaphor or allegory does not make it meaningless.  Some of our greatest national stories on who we are as a people are centered around myths, metaphors and allegories.

Christianity Today recently had an article on Adam and Eve The Search for the Historical Adam  NPR (National Public Radio) picked up the story and it went viral.  Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve


NPR had this to say: 

Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe this account. It's a central tenet for much of conservative Christianity, from evangelicals to confessional churches such as the Christian Reformed Church.

But now some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all."

 The OOZE (Evolving Spirituality) has an article up on this subject The Debate About Adam and Eve Has Nothing to do With Adam and Eve! 

The NPR article, rightly calling this a Galileo moment, cites professor Karl Giberson: “When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face… The Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it.”

 The article goes on: “Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: ‘That would be against all the genomic evidence that we’ve assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all.’”

Evolution isn’t the issue. Adam and Eve are not the issue. The science on origins is only becoming more solid- although there is an interestingly powerful myth that circulates in Christian subculture that there are tons of credible scientists that dispute the issue. Biblical scholarship isn’t the issue either- very few (any?) well-respected Biblical scholars take Genesis 1 and 2 as history (you can find creationists among biblical scholars at plenty of schools- but they have virtually no contribution to the field and trade credibility for tenure… it’s all about the money). The issue isn’t inerrancy or infallibility. Evolution is so contentious that most of my professors at seminary hesitate to admit to the class that they, along with pretty much everyone in the field of academic theology, believe in evolution (and it creates a firestorm when they occasionally do!). You won’t hear that in the pulpit either- because the study of the text is not the issue either. You also don’t generally hear that Genesis 1 and 2 are two different stories, written several hundred years apart in different parts of the world. You don’t hear that, even if you desperately want to take Genesis 1 and 2 literally, you cannot because of internal contradictions. That’s just a matter of reading the text, and when pointing that out is considered controversial and gets professors nervous about job security, we are reminded that the study of the text isn’t actually the issue.

So what is the issue that gets so many Christians wrapped  up in such a tizzy?  The OOZE article continues:

So what is the issue?

Fazale Rana, vice president of apologetics group Reason to Believe, opines: “From my viewpoint, a historical Adam and Eve is absolutely central to the truth claims of the Christian faith…But if the parts of Scripture that you are claiming to be false, in effect, are responsible for creating the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, then you’ve got a problem,”

Exactly. She gets credit for honesty. What undergirds this controversy is not a disagreement about the text or science; instead, it’s the belief that faith crumbles once you admit that the text has an error, isn’t historically accurate, or else it says correctly exactly what it means to say and you’ve simply misunderstood it all this time.

Philosophers Imre Lakatos and Thomas Kuhn described this phenomenon as epistemological webs and paradigm shifts. Lakatos described all our knowledge as interconnecting in a web, with more important, reinforced ideas consisting an epistemic core. Experiences hit the boundary of this web and force you to decide whether to incorporate new data or reject it. The knowledge within the web need not all cohere- it is only most important that the core ideas cohere well. When the web’s integrity breaks down due to dissonant data points, it becomes more parsimonious to think with a different core set of beliefs. This results in what Kuhn calls a paradigm shift in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The text of scripture is very, very rarely the issue in theological debates. 

The real issue is that we’ve decided to believe something and are desperately grasping for any way we can use the text to backward-engineer justification for our beliefs. This isn’t controversial. It’s just how we are wired…by evolution.

These concepts above are totally foreign to many hardliner evangelicals and to most in the Church of God.  To dare to question, to really examine scripture and tradition in depth is NOT something that is ever done.  To do so is heretical in the the eyes of most.

What does faith mean to you?  Can faith be destroyed by questioning?  Does not believing in a literal Adam and Eve undermine all the rest of the teaching in scriptures?