Wednesday, December 18, 2013

David Hulme and the Hulmerless Church of God Terminating Ministers and Losing Members





Another Church of God is having ministerial problems resulting in terminations resignations.  It seems that David Hulme's little personalty cult is having a rough time right now.  Ministers are leaving and taking members with them. 

Since Hulme's little group was never large, it is going to hit the pocket book of grandiose Dave really hard.  He has always thought of himself as something better than the rest of the world.  The Church of God has never had an minister as puffed up with intellectual snobbery as it has had with Dave. Maybe it's time that facade comes crashing down and he has to live like the lowly members he has sucked dry over the decades.

Malm had this up the other day:


Prominent ministers have been fired (resigned is their word for it) and brethren have left, resulting in declining income; while many more are deeply dissatisfied with David Hulme.  
 
David is an evangelical masquerading as one of the called out, and David Hulme has always been only about David Hulme, even when I knew him in WCG in the 80′s.  In the nineties David’s reckless spending on personal projects drove UCG to the edge of bankruptcy.

Hulme has had many issues over the years with ministers leaving hsi group, and rightly so.  Here are the points one minister bought up when he left:

Some indication of the unhappiness of John Meakin and ex-COGIC members can be garnered from studying David Hulme's church and personal websites.

 There is no attempt to preach the gospel to the world (Mark 16:15), even within the church's quarterly Vision magazine, which is the public's only acces to the church's teachings. In the Fall 2011 issue, a reader writes: "I have seen a recurrent theme presented and most recently stated .... that the church today as we know it bears very little resemblance to the church Jesus established. I have read this same basic statement many times .... I have yet to read any solid definition of how the church today should look and act according to Vision's writers."
 
Contact with members of other church groups is actively discouraged. Only church members and other financial supporters can gain access to the church web site.
David Hulme promotes himself, and not the church,  posting his personal profile on various websites dedicated to business professionals, such as the  Linkedin network, where "you can find potential clients ... be found for business opportunities ... search for great jobs ..."

Perhaps it was via these web pages that he was able to obtain work at the Media Relations Summit 2008, where he gave a lecture in Increasing Traffic to Your Corporate Website. In the Autumn/Winter of 2008-9 he lectured in Middle East Politics at the University of Southern California.

David Hulme's profile on Linkedin (shown below in red type) lists his recent work experience as :

1977 — 1979
Circulation Manager (Africa) of Quest Magazine
(Writing & Editing Industry)

David Hulme added this entry in 2010. Although Quest was owned by the Worldwide Church of God, TIME magazine described it as: "nonetheless thoroughly secular. [Herbert] Armstrong gave editorial control to Robert Shnayerson, 55, a former TIME senior editor and Harper's editor in chief, who dedicated the magazine to what he called 'the pursuit of excellence' in fields as diverse as mountain climbing and genetic research."
1986 — 1995
Vice-President of Ambassador Foundation
(Non-Profit Organization, Management industry)
Supervision of Ambassador Auditorium's performing arts program

This foundation was also a secular part of the Worldwide Church of God.

David Hulme's highest profile role was as a presenter of the church's religious TV program, The World Tomorrow, but he seems not to want to admit having worked for this church.

Joseph Tkach,  leader of the Worldwide Church of God after the death of Herbert Armstrong in 1986, soon began to transform its fundamental doctrines. David Hulme was a leading advocate for the doctrinal changes,  as the Director of Public Relations. However, growing opposition to these changes by the majority of members, and their desire for a new church that would retain the former doctrines, prompted him at the last minute to attend the conference that would form the United Church of God in 1995.

1995 — 1998
President of the United Church of God.

Again, he prefers not to have a church association in his personal profile.

David Hulme is highly intelligent and possesses superb presentational skills, but knowing his previous role in Worldwide, why did the majority of ministers vote for David Hulme to be President?

In 1998 he was removed as President by United's Council of Elders for excessive and unauthorized spending, which had plunged United into serious debt.

He then left United, drawing away many members to his new church, the Church of God—an International Community, where he would have the full control that he felt he ought to have had as President of United.
 
But is it a church? Not according to his personal profile.
1998 — Present
President of Vision Media
(Privately held, Marketing and Advertising Industry)

 He changed this entry in 2010 from Writing & Editing — now he's in Marketing and Advertising?

Although the large outlay necessary to publish the lavish quarterly journal Vision is provided by the tithes and offerings of members and other financial supporters of COGIC, David Hulme considers Vision to be his magazine -his
personal website link in the Linkedin profile page will take you to the Vision magazine website.
1990 — 2003
Education: MA, Ph.D International Relations
Specialized in Middle East and Foreign Policy

The web site www.vision.org proclaims as its purpose: "Vision examines the historical and philosophical origins of current social issues and explores ways to restore peace of mind to our daily lives."

Vision Foundation International was launched in 2010, ostensibly with the mission to assist communities in developing countries to find practical solutions "to improve their physical, mental and spiritual resources, by supporting sustainable humanitarian and educational programs."

However, Vision Foundation International states that donations will be used for:
providing support for Vision Media Publishing, which publishes the international quarterly journal Vision—Insights and New Horizons; providing support to Vision Media Productions, an independent TV production company, to produce documentaries on historical, social and environmental issues; providing funding for documentaries which examine the historical and philosophical origins of current issues; supporting and producing conferences which examine complex issues from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint by bringing together scholars and experts from various fields of study.
From: David Hulme's "VISION"

Dennis muses...

"I am NOTHING without you..."

What would the Churches of God be without the Book of Revelation?



When I was a Pastor in WCG, I asked a Presbyterian Minister what he thought about the Book of Revelation.  He calmly said, "The man had good drugs."

Practically everyone on the planet knows something about the Book of Revelation.  It's blood dripped, vials, trumpets, demons, death and destruction filled pages are a part and parcel of much of our culture.  Every dis-aster ("bad star")  in our world that is of "Biblical proportions" can end up as the final Armageddon event.
"Har-Megiddo" or "valley of Megiddo" is where all the nations of the earth will gather to fight the final battle before Jesus returns.  I worked for a month at "Har-Megiddo" digging through it's history with a shovel and I can tell you, there is no room for all the nations of the earth to meet in that valley.  While beautiful and the gateway between Europe and Asia to Africa, the phrase spoken to me by an Israeli when he showed me the real Mt. Zion , "We Israelis exaggerate," comes to mind.  A few miles to the north in the Caves of Carmel, evidently Neanderthals liked the place as well, 200,000 years ago and  30 feet below Elijah's keister while cowering in the same caves afraid of Jezebel's wrath for his killing off her 450 prophets. Men don't fear other angry religious men, but they do fear an angry pagan woman.

The Churches of God would not survive or have much of a message were it not for the Book of Revelation and its Grandfather, the Book of Daniel.  Revelation is the grease that promotes the fear needed to grow their kind of religious organization.  Nothing generates income faster than "Soon" and "3-5, no more than 10 15 tops."   It is being used today, perhaps, even as a script, by some powers that be to wage war and achieve devious ends by any means possible it seems at times. Humans and sociopaths play such games in high places.  They know the memes that motivate.

The author of Revelation fed off Daniel for inspiration using many of the same characters and for many of the same reasons.  Revelation is full of astrology and astro-theology and the Greek writer was brilliant or demented depending on one's point of view.  Demented types can be brilliant I suppose. If you wish to find a woman clothed with the sun, the moon at her feet and 12 stars in her crown, you can find it on Stellarium in the summer of 69 AD by just looking up. I spare you.  The astrotheological nature of the Bible and many of it's stories and characters drives some readers to livid distraction.

 Daniel was written, not in the 500's BCE but in the 160s BCE to encourage the Jews during the Maccabean Revolt to hang in there until God took the Romans out.  In the same way, Revelation was written to encourage Jewish Christians stuck in the same disaster 200 years later with the same Romans running Jerusalem

Mr Vespasian the Beast              

   
     Mr. Paul the Front Runner for False Prophet in Revelation                       

Revelation may have been written shortly before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD or shortly after.  Internal evidence concerning the nasty types who were and are and shall be fits the times very well.  In my current view and in that of others, Vespasian was the Beast power hated by the Jewish Christians and the Apostle Paul was the False Prophet that got bounced out of Ephesus for claiming to be an Apostle but was not.  The Jesus of Revelation congratulated the Ephesians for kicking him out.  It may have been this embarrassment that Paul was referring to when he noted that "all Asia had forsaken him."  All Asia is a lot but it never seems to dawn on Paul that it might not be them who were the problem but himself. He asked God to forgive them. Whoever the author of Revelation was, and most do not credit any John of Jesus fame with being the author, did not like the Apostle Paul as a Jewish Christian.  Peter, James and John didn't like the man nor he them according to Paul's view of himself in Galatians, so this should come as no surprise. The Book of James is a direct rebuttal of Paul's book of Roman's but if you spend years in denial over the opposite views each author gives, you can come up with them all speaking the same thing, just differently.



Ellaine Pagels, one the world's leading biblical scholars, has written an excellent book on  "Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation."


Pagels writes about the four big myths surrounding the Book of Revelation that most swallow hook, line and sinker in many, too many, religious organizations.

Here are what she says are four big myths about Revelation::
1. It’s about the end of the world
Anyone who has read the popular “Left Behind” novels or listened to pastors preaching about the “rapture” might see Revelation as a blow-by-blow preview of how the world will end.
Pagels, however, says the writer of Revelation was actually describing the way his own world ended.

She says the writer of Revelation may have been called John – the book is sometimes called “Book of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine” but he was not the disciple who accompanied Jesus. He was a devout Jew and mystic exiled on the island of Patmos, off the coast of  present-day Greece.
“He would have been a very simple man in his clothes and dress,” Pagels says. “He may have gone from church to church preaching his message. He seems more like a traveling preacher or a prophet.”
The author of Revelation had experienced a catastrophe. He wrote his book not long after 60,000 Roman soldiers had stormed Jerusalem in 70 A.D., burned down its great temple and left the city in ruins after putting down an armed Jewish revolt.
For some of the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem was incomprehensible. They had expected Jesus to return “with power” and conquer Rome before inaugurating a new age. But Rome had conquered Jesus’ homeland instead.
The author of Revelation was trying to encourage the followers of Jesus at a time when their world seemed doomed. Think of the Winston Churchill radio broadcasts delivered to the British during the darkest days of World War II.
Revelation was an anti-Roman tract and a piece of war propaganda wrapped in one. The message: God would return and destroy the Romans who had destroyed Jerusalem.
“His primary target is Rome,” Pagels says of the book’s author. “He really is deeply angry and grieved at the Jewish war and what happened to his people.”
2. The numerals 666 stand for the devil
The 1976 horror film “The Omen” scared a lot of folks. It may have scared some theologians, too, who began encountering people whose view of Revelation comes from a Hollywood movie.
The Omen” depicted the birth and rise of the “anti-Christ,” the cunning son of Satanwho would be known by “the mark of the beast,” 666, on his body.
Here’s the passage from Revelation that “The Omen” alluded to: “This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.”
Good movies, though, don’t always make good theology. Most people think 666 stands for an anti-Christ-like figure that will deceive humanity and trigger a final battle between good and evil. Some people think he’s already here.
Pagels, however, says the writer of Revelation didn’t really intend 666 as the devil’s digits. He was describing another incarnation of evil: The Roman emperor, Nero.
Mr. 666
The arrogant and demented Nero was particularly despised by the earliest followers of Jesus, including the writer of Revelation. Nero was said to have burned followers of Jesus alive to illuminate his garden.
But the author of Revelation couldn’t safely name Nero, so he used the Jewish numerology system to spell out Nero’s imperial name, Pagels says.
Pagels says that John may have had in mind other meanings for the mark of the beast: the imperial stamp Romans used on official documents, tattoos authorizing people to engage in Roman business, or the images of Roman emperors on stamps and coins.
Since Revelation’s author writes in “the language of dreams and nightmares,” Pagels says it’s easy for outsiders to misconstrue the book’s original meaning.
Still, they take heart from Revelation’s larger message, she writes:
“…Countless people for thousands of years have been able to see their own conflicts, fears, and hopes reflected in his prophecies. And because he speaks from his convictions about divine justice, many readers have found reassurance in his conviction that there is meaning in history – even when he does not say exactly what that meaning is – and that there is hope.”
3. The writer of Revelation was a Christian
The author of Revelation hated Rome, but he also scorned another group – a group of people we would call Christians today, Pagels says.
There’s a common perception that there was a golden age of Christianity, when most Christians agreed on an uncontaminated version of the faith. Yet there was never one agreed-upon Christianity. There were always clashing visions.
Revelation reflects some of those early clashes in the church, Pagels says.
That idea isn’t new territory for Pagels. She won the National Book Award for “The Gnostic Gospels,” a 1979 book that examined a cache of newly discovered “secret” gospels of Jesus. The book, along with other work from Pagels, argues that there were other accounts of Jesus’ life that were suppressed by early church leaders because it didn’t fit with their agenda.



Mr. Claimed to be an Apostle but John and the Ephesians said "No"
The author of Revelation was like an activist crusading for traditional values. In his case, he was a devout Jew who saw Jesus as the messiah. But he didn’t like the message that the apostle Paul and other followers of Jesus were preaching.
This new message insisted that gentiles could become followers of Jesus without adopting the requirements of the Torah. It accepted women leaders, and intermarriage with gentiles, Pagels says.
The new message was a lot like what we call Christianity today.
That was too much for the author of Revelation. At one point, he calls a woman leader in an early church community a “Jezebel.” He calls one of those gentile-accepting churches a “synagogue of Satan.”
John was defending a form of Christianity that would be eclipsed by the Christians he attacked, Pagels says.
“What John of Patmos preached would have looked old-fashioned – and simply wrong to Paul’s converts…,” she writes.
The author of Revelation was a follower of Jesus, but he wasn’t what some people would call a Christian today, Pagels says.
“There’s no indication that he read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or that he read the gospels or Paul’s letters,” she says. “….He doesn’t even say Jesus died for your sins.”
4. There is only one Book of Revelation
There’s no other book in the Bible quite like Revelation, but there are plenty of books like Revelation that didn’t make it into the Bible, Pagels says.
Early church leaders suppressed an “astonishing” range of books that claimed to be revelations from apostles such as Peter and James. Many of these books were read and treasured by Christians throughout the Roman Empire, she says.
There was even another “Secret Revelation of John.” In this one, Jesus wasn’t a divine warrior, but someone who first appeared to the apostle Paul as a blazing light, then as a child, an old man and, some scholars say, a woman.
So why did the revelation from John of Patmos make it into the Bible, but not the others?
Pagels traces that decision largely to Bishop Athanasius, a pugnacious church leader who championed Revelation about 360 years after the death of Jesus.
Athanasius was so fiery that during his 46 years as bishop he was deposed and exiled five times. He was primarily responsible for shaping the New Testament while excluding books he labeled as hearsay, Pagels says.
Many church leaders opposed including Revelation in the New Testament. Athanasius’s predecessor said the book was “unintelligible, irrational and false.”
Athanasius, though, saw Revelation as a useful political tool. He transformed it into an attack ad against Christians who questioned him.
Rome was no longer the enemy; those who questioned church authority were the anti-Christs in Athanasius’s reading of Revelation, Pagels says.
“Athanasius interprets Revelation’s cosmic war as a vivid picture of his own crusade against heretics and reads John’s visions as a sharp warning to Christian dissidents,” she writes. “God is about to divide the saved from the damned – which now means dividing the ‘orthodox’ from ‘heretics.’ ’’
Centuries later, Revelation still divides people. Pagels calls it the strangest and most controversial book in the Bible.
Even after writing a book about it, Pagels has hardly mastered its meaning.
“The book is the hardest one in the Bible to understand,” Pagels says. “I don’t think anyone completely understands it.”
In the Religion of the Occident  by Martin Larson he concludes his chapter on Revelation with:
"Revelation was the swan-song of Militant Jewish Christianity.  When Jerusalem was destroyed, when Rome waxed greater and more powerful, when the False Prophet  (Paul) gained more and more followers, when the book itself was proved totally false within two years, when it became evident that the Jewish Messiah-Christ would not come, the Hebrew Christians lost their virility and their cult faded under the combined assault of orthodox Judaism and of Gentile Christianity."
Prophecies are not written for too far into the future.  They are written just a little into the future and expected to come to pass in the lives of the writers and readers. It's why the Book of Revelation speaks of "soon" and "things which must SHORTLY come to pass."  The Apostle Paul made that same mistake with his assurances that "we who are alive and remain ..." ended in "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course."  In other words, he was wrong and it finally dawned on him. At least it dawned on him and he didn't go into endless excuse making as we see in a Dave Pack who slaughters Biblical intent at every turn and just makes stuff up making scripture mean what it never meant or ever could mean. 
If the Churches of God, whether United or Living, Restored or Brotherly Lovers ever figure this out, they won't have much more left to say.  Poor Bob Thiel will have to pack his Prophetic bags and go back to work.  Dave Pack will have to offer his half built campus up for outsiders to use as a playground.  The Journal won't have any more endless advertisements for folk to come on over and hear this or that twist on the whole end time theme.  
Making Revelation mean what it never meant and a book for OUR times is a huge mistake theologically and literally.  Believing that the Jesus of the Gospels is the same Christ/Jesus of Revelation is also a huge mistake.  But without the Book of Revelation to be twisted and finagled to mean what a Ron Weinland, Dave Pack, Bob Thiel, Gerald Flurry and others need it to mean, we'd not have all the Witnesses, Watchers, Apostles, Joshuas, Prophets or theological nut cases we now have would we?  And without it, they would have little left to preach it seems. They would be nothing...nothing at all. 






Saturday, December 14, 2013

E. W. King: My Church Does NOT Support Democracy




E. W. King, the Church of God's greatest living apostle to ever walk this earth is back lecturing the church and the world about what democracy is, voting, and TRUE government. King still stupidly thinks his cult is the REAL Worldwide Church of God.  So when you see that word you need to remember it is describing his cult.


Now what I am about to reveal may shock some who have been involved in the Worldwide Church of God [COGSR]. You may have never been taught this before. Mr. H.W.Armstrong, Pastor General of original WCG, originally did vote. Mr. Armstrong voted for who was to become the next US President. He did pay attention to politics in his early life. What happened? When he saw that America [Manasseh] was turning from a God ordained National Republic to a Democracy he knew something was wrong. He stated in “Mystery of the Ages” that not too long after World War 2 this nation began losing its blessings.-

Why? The United States began to take advantage of the blessings that it was given. One thing that it was given was the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. These documents were given to latter-day Manasseh. Had the USA stuck with the original principles of Manasseh Government the church would have continued to vote for Godly men.-

The Worldwide Church of God rejects any idea of Democracy. The WCG believes that all government should be ruled from the top down, not from the “mob” up. God’s original intention was for a US Republic which was based on moral law as found in the Bible and outlined for social government in the United States Constitution. This way man did not ultimately answer to man but to God ordained law. We were originally a nation built on Law.-

Latter our country started saying that we are a “democracy” and stopped using the word Republic. This was the beginning of latter day Manasseh’s downfall.-

At least the King votes and allows his cult members to vote.  though, it is only for the most Righteous and Pure candidate that conforms to King's liking.

Those in our Church do vote for men and women that support the original Republic. We vote not to bring in perfect government but to show our support for stable government. The so called “conservative Christian” party, the Republicans, are being punished with a very liberal president, Obama. Why? They have become decadent and liberal. This current situation of things makes the Republicans look stupid. Most of the so called Republicans think like Libertarians. They have accepted homosexuality, divorce, certain drugs, unmarried couples living together [which is fornication], etc. Most of the so called “Christian” Republicans accept pagan holidays, pagan doctrines and are lost in the liberal Christian world of “evangelicalism”.- 
----
Though our current President, Mr. Barack H. Obama has been perhaps more ridiculed than those in his position before him, we do not hate him nor do we see him as lesser than ourselves. We disagree with many of his decisions and we pray for him. He is the first black president. To live in this time is indeed to witness extraordinary events. We thank God that this nation has the guts and glory to go beyond the prejudiced barriers of the past.-

As true Christians COGSR is extremely different than all other so called “denominations”. We thank God that we have the right to express our opinions and to share what we believe to be and hold to be the Truth with others. We believe in the preservation of our religion. As the Seventh Era Leader of the true Worldwide Church of God my prayer is that if you have read this document that you will give us a chance to continue to share with you just what we believe in. May you go in peace and may God continue to show His great mercy on the United States of America.-
Little did Herbert Armstrong realize the stupidity that would be leashed upon the world because of his beliefs.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

"It's Just A Piece of Scottish Sandstone"



When Herbert Armstrong delved into the British Israelism books that were prevalent in the late 1800's and early 1900's, he swallowed hook-line and sinker the belief that the Stone of Scone was Jacob's pillar stone that he supposedly rested his head on.  Armstrognism was always great at mocking the myths and legends of the peoples of the world, but it never found room to mock the myths and legends of British Israelism. 

The former Ambassador library in Pasadena was filled with these books that sat on the shelves along side Pyramidology books from the late 1800's by Rutherford, Piazzi-Smith, Davidson and others.

Myths and legends have filled the minds of Armstrong, Hoeh and others over the decades in the church..  Hoeh's Compendium of World History was the most appalling and ridiculous books that the Church ever published.  It was filled with myths and legends.


Silenced has several great articles up about our myths and legends that our doctrines were based upon.

Celtic Discrepancies
Proponents of British Israelism also claim that, obviously, the British and Celts and the tribes that comprise them were of Israelite origin. But it’s important to note that Celts were in Britain two centuries (900 BCE) before the collapse of the Northern Kingdom (720 BCE), and long before the start of the Barbarian Invasions (300 CE): “In the fourth century CE, the Angles and Saxons began raids on Britain, bothering the Romans who were already there. When the Romans finally abandoned Britain the Angles, Saxons and Jutes moved in. They soon became the masters of the island, driving out or enslaving the Celts who were already there. They remained the masters until 1066 when the Normans arrived and subjugated the Angles and Saxons. It is clear, therefore, that the people of Great Britain are not from any one stock of ancestors but are as much a mixture as their language.” (Nettlehorst)

The ancient scholars Bede and Tacitus both agreed that before the time of Christ, German and Teutonic tribes migrated to the British Isles, forcing the early Britons to the western portion of the isles. The earliest of these Germanic settlers were the Angles and Jutes, before the time of Christ, followed by the “Great Saxon Invasion” between 450 and 600 CE, which culminating with the “Danish Conquest” 787-1070 CE.

Of the history of the British peoples, Nettlhorst adds: “The history of England, like the history of Israel, lends no support to the view that the descendants of Abraham invaded the island. Arthur Cross tells us that the Celts, one of the earliest groups that invaded Britain, first arrived 1,000 years before Christ was born and more than 200 years before the Northern Kingdom fell. Not only that, but from the history of the English language itself it is clear that there is no relation between it and Hebrew, or the English people and the Israelites.” (Nettlehorst)

Furthermore, London was not founded by Celts as some proponents of British Israelism often claim, but by the Romans in 43 CE as Londinium.

Proponents also claim the Stone of Scone, or the Scottish coronation stone, Jacob’s Pillar, an ancient Israelite relic. But this also makes no sense: “Despite the claims of British Israelism that the Stone of Scone or Stone of Destiny was Jacob’s pillar, the stone did not originate in Palestine at all, nor is the Stone of Scone the Lia-Fail of Ireland. It is just a piece of sandstone from Scotland.” (Nettlehorst)

A Foundation of Sand, Part I
A Foundation of Sand, Part II
A Foundation of Sand, Part III
A Foundation of Sand, Part IV
A Foundation of Sand, Part V