Jesus and LCG Turn To TikTok Leaving Bob Thiel Behind In The Dust!

@emilynicole1983

What is the Mark of the Beast (Part 1) - Tomorrow's World - Living Church of God

♬ original sound - Emily Nicole

If the video stops working, check it out here: emilynicole1983/video 

Poor Bob Thiel. The poor guy just can never get a break from Living Church of God overshadowing all that he does. The world's greatest theologian and animator thought that when he started making animations that the world would come to his doorstep and COG members would repent and turn to the One True Church he was leading. Nothing like that has happened. No one seems to care.

Today, LCG announced that one of their "whiteboards" on TikTok gained 5.4 million views in less than a week! Here is the mother church of Bob Thiel, the one that he claims is not doing anything right now leaving him behind in the dust. Poor little guy! Then to add insult to injury, it is a young woman who did this and she has gained over 219,000 followers, something poor Bob has never been able to do. Imagine that, a woman doing better "work" than he is doing. A female!

We held an informative and exciting online ministerial conference on Wednesday, in which we answered questions coming from our ministers around the world. It is eye-opening to learn about the challenges other regions are facing. We covered subjects such as vaccines, masks, potlucks and refreshments following services, family weekends, Tomorrow’s World Presentations, and more. Dr. Winnail encouraged us to maintain our focus and stick with the mission given us. Mr. Ames updated us on the very encouraging progress of the Work. One point of interest is the viral nature of a new whiteboard posted to Tiktok, which garnered over five million views in less than a week! While I mentioned Mr. Michael DeSimone, who is the voice of these whiteboards, he was quick to remind me that these are a real team effort involving Jacob Hall, Josh Lyons, Ryan Dawson, and Jonathan Riley. Those who work behind the scenes in all our departments are absolutely essential, and without the positive support of all our members around the world we would not be able to accomplish what we do. Then we must never forget that it is Christ who opens the doors and God who gives the increase (Revelation 3:8; 1 Corinthians 3:7). As the Apostle Paul reminded us in 1 Corinthians 12:12–25, all parts of the body are necessary and work together in harmony.—Gerald Weston

Viral Tiktok Video
Last Thursday we added a whiteboard video about the Mark of the Beast to our YouTube channel, and one of our members shared it on Tiktok. Within a day or so of that posting, the video had garnered over one million views, and as of today (October 4), the video has over 5.4 million views! 

 

The person who shared this video now has over 219,000 followers, up from a couple hundred or so a week ago. 

 

This viral video has positively impacted our YouTube channel subscriptions and overall engagement and has even resulted in several requests to attend services. In answer to the question, “Where did you hear about the Living Church of God?,” those people specifically referenced the Tiktok video. 

 

This is exciting news for the Work, and it shows that Christ is the One in control and is the One who will make things happen for us, as there were no plans, intentional efforts, or expectations of ours that prompted this.—Mike DeSimone

We interrupt this program again...Two Hard Frosts Probably Thwarts the Second Coming for This Evening

 

"Prophecy Update

 

Greetings again, brethren!

The picture is actually better than you think going into this evening. Everything still appears to be on track.

If we are still here tomorrow, then God wants a brief message given because of things we have learned. For the record, we had two hard frosts since the last email, and harvest has ended (Jer 8:20).

 

(Jeremiah 8:20 20"The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.")

In any event, it no longer seems possible that we could have much more time!"

In Christ’s service,

David C. Pack

LCG: Are you an effective team player or do you promote yourself while criticizing us?

 

Well, the Friday Night SmackDown is back after a relatively benign few weeks of platitudes after the Feast. Looking at what is posted below sounds perfectly logical on the surface, but when you take into consideration this is a Church of God saying this, and given the track record of the LCG/GCG over the last couple of decades, this is just one more thing that LCG members are doing wrong. They are NOT team players, nor do they respect others and treat them gently. Remember this is a COG saying this which causes one to stop and think about when the church did not criticize members, treated them gently and respectfully, AND was willing to listen to members. Really listen.

Are You a Team Player? Members of successful teams (families, churches, etc.) develop skills to function together to accomplish goals. As Christians, we must develop the same qualities. We need to be focused on the same goal—the Kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33) and doing the Work of God (Mark 16:15). Effective team players avoid offending others (Matthew 18:7), they forgive and overlook slights and insults (Proverbs 17:9), and do not accuse or criticize other members of the team (Matthew 7:1–5). Effective team players are peacemakers (Matthew 5:9); they treat others gently, respectfully, and patiently; and are willing to listen (James 3:17; 4:11). They do not promote themselves at the expense of others (Matthew 20:20–24), and they appreciate that team members have different talents (1 Corinthians 12:4–12). In short, good team players have learned to love their neighbors. Let’s strive to develop these vital qualities.

Have a profitable Sabbath, Douglas S. Winnail

We Interrupt This Program to Bring You This Special Report:

 It's Friday Night Live!

 

"Dear brethren,

A note to clarify timing is needed. Every indicator now points to Friday night, not Thursday.

In fact, more points could be added to what we know per the Sabbath, not a new moon, which Paul said would be a shadow.

It had not occurred to me or anyone that every point you heard could apply to the very next day, with more besides.

It would take too long to lay out all that has been learned, but this is simply to say the picture carries one more day. We could certainly hope for Thursday, but the chances are possibly zero.

Continue your patience, and God speed the day!

The Member/Co-Worker letter will arrive soon.

In Christ’s service,

David C. Pack"

The Transcendence of God and the Ontological Nose

The Transcendence of God and the Ontological Nose

“He who planted the ear, does he not hear?

He who formed the eye, does he not see?”

Psalm 94:9

“God is spirit”

Words of Jesus, John 4:24

Consider the nose. We are all familiar with its form and function. It is a part of our respiratory system. With it we can smell flowers. But it also serves another less apparent purpose. It is evidence that God does not have a body.

God is an eternal spirit. This is his essence. Not only does he exist but he is the source of all existence, of all being. He is the creator. So everything that is, he made. He has never not existed. He is timeless. Without beginning and without end. Let us assume, for the sake of a thought experiment, that he has always had a nose. Not an acquired or created nose but a nose that is a part of his essential eternal nature. A timeless nose. At some point (this is awkward to state because God created time and is not in time), he had to ask himself “Why do I have this bodily projection with two passages in it? Why does it do the things that it does? I’ve just always had it.” The nose is ontologically co-existent with God. It is a complex piece of equipment. It has contouring and turbinates and little filtering hairs and all manner of built in capabilities. But the cosmos had not been created yet. Atmospheric gases had not been created yet. Proteins to form mucous had not been created yet. Atoms and molecules, for that matter, had not been created yet. Nor flowers to smell. God is Spirit so he had no need for these physical things. So the nose had no purpose. It had just been always there.

So one day god decided to make a man. And he decided to give the man this same bodily projection, this nose, and also give it a purpose. So God created atoms and gases and proteins. He made the man so he would require atmospheric gases to live. And gravity and metabolism and all manner of forces and principles to make the nose functional and purposeful. One might say that the entire creation was made to accommodate this nose. And God said to himself, “Now, this thing has meaning.” God gave the nose purpose and meaning but he always wondered why he had the nose in the first place.

This same scenario can be applied to the idea that God supposedly had a body as a part of his essence. What this scenario does is simply get the cart before the horse. The nose existed before it had any purpose. It categorizes God as created instead of creator. Critics might quickly reply that God had the nose because there was a spirit atmosphere and spirit gases and God breathed these spirit gases to survive. This means that God was contingent on something external to himself to stay alive. This is not a description of a necessary eternal spirit but of a created being. This is a mapping of the human condition onto God. It is a lèse-majesté. The idea that God is not dependent on a nose does not mean that God cannot “smell.” His sensory capabilities are infinite. He created odors and he knows everything about them, including how they would smell to the human nose. He just does not need a human nose to do this.

But what about Psalm 94:9? This is the kind of scripture that led Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA) to believe that God had a body. But it is human talk for humans to understand. What is technical for us in the created realm is allegory for God in the essential eternal realm. God does not have ears for the same reason he does not have a nose. He is not limited by waves propagated through a gaseous atmosphere that would strike a tympanum and activate hammer and anvil and be converted into the sensation of sound. We can be thankful that he is not limited by hearing as we know it because he would not be able to sort out the myriad of prayers directed to him every day. Those prayers would not even be transmitted across the vacuum of space. David used the term “hear” in Psalm 94 because that was what David understood and what would communicate to his readers. It is just an allegory for God’s actual absolute capability to sense and know all things. His ability to know transcends all physics and physiology based human sensory systems – hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, seeing. Another way of saying this is that God is not dependent on his own creation.

I do not believe that Herbert W. Armstrong intended to diminish God by teaching erroneously that God has a body. I think he just took anthropomorphisms at face value and moved on. HWA has left us no carefully reasoned exegesis that deals with the issue of anthropomorphism. He never addressed the topic of why if God had a human-like body, it did not create crippling limitations for him as he sustained the cosmos. And the idea of an anthropomorphic God was never challenged by members of the WCG so as to lead to a review and revision of the topic. The idea just never received the attention that it deserved because of circumstance.

It is blatantly obvious that the human body was designed to function in an earthly environment - an environment that came into existence when God created the cosmos. Why would God possess in his eternal essence a body that is earth adapted before there was an earth? Was his body designed for some environment? Who then designed his body for that environment? And who designed the environment? Was there something external to God that was already in existence – an environment that required a nose? If that is true, then God is not the creator of all things. Someone else greater than God was in the picture. This line of argument is called reductio ad absurdum.

Submitted by Neo