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?

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