All Foods Are Clean - Debunking Samuel Bacchiocchi

When I first came to Pasadena, the college bookstore was selling Samuel Bacchiocchi's, Sabbath to Sunday book.  Certain ministers in Pasadena were enthralled by the book, a book by a man who was part of a crazy cult that placed Ellen G White into the same position that COG members had placed HWA - God's only true messenger of the end times and one step below God.  The WCG also loved this book because Bacchiocchi had been granted permission to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University at the Vatican where he claimed to have "proven" that the Sabbath had been changed by the Catholics.  This sent certain leaders of the Worldwide Church of God into ecstasy to have "proof" those evil Catholics had changed the Sabbath and therefore HWA was right, never mind the fact that the SDA's are just as theologically bankrupt as the WCG was.

Later as the WCG started its devolution into debunking the requirement for keeping Sabbath on a specific day of the week, those still tied into HWA's  teachings latched back on to Bacchiocchi's books and actively sought him out to put a dent in the WCG changes.  Books and articles flew around Pasadena trying to stop people from accepting the changes.  He also came out at the time with a book telling women in the SDA church they should not be wearing jewelry, wedding rings or dressing fashionably.  Certain legalists in the WCG jumped on that bandwagon too.

Many critics over the years have debunked Bacchiocchi's writings, and now a new book has taken Bacchiocchi's SDA tainted research on the Sabbath to task and the issue of food laws for New Covenant Christians.

This is an excellent work on the age-old issue of Sabbath observance by Christians. The writer, a young scholar in the making, ably challenges the Seventh-day Adventist church’s position on and arguments for weekly Sabbath observance as a requirement for Christians today. Through careful exegesis of primary scriptural texts bearing on the Sabbath question, as well as explicit considerations and applications of the principles of biblical hermeneutics, the writer presents a thorough and convincing case against mandatory observance of the weekly Sabbath, establishing that for Christians, Old Testament feast days and festivals (which included the weekly Sabbath), as shadows pointing to Christ, met their consummation in Jesus Christ, and consequently have no claims on Christians who are children of the New Covenant presented in the New Testament. 

While the work extensively interrogates long held scholarly arguments in support of weekly Sabbath observance, and explores in detail the peculiar family of doctrinal teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist church on the Sabbath, both the scholar and the lay individual will find the work refreshing, insightful, and provocative. The work is heavily referenced and the writer evinces a comprehensive grasp of the material on both sides of the argument. Every Sabbath keeper (and every Adventist in particular) should read this book and critically assess its evidential worth. Of course, any Christian who so chooses, may without condemnation, observe the weekly Sabbath; but in doing this, the individual should know that he/she has no special mission from God to evangelize other Christians to keep the Sabbath. Importantly all Sabbath keepers must realize that keeping the weekly Sabbath does not make them especial in God’s eyes, nor does it secure for them God’s unmerited grace, through which He has reconciled us unto Himself. The interested student should eventually come to appreciate that the believer’s true rest does not consist in the ceremonial observance of special days, but is instead found in the glorious Person of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who Himself gives us life more abundantly. 

In respect of the issue of dietary proscriptions for the Christian, the writer sets forth a very strong case for liberty in dietary choices based on the clear teachings of New Testament Scripture. Thus for the Christian, there is no food which is essentially unclean, and those believers who embrace vegetarianism, do so against any injunction expressed in Sacred Scripture. It is therefore potentially spiritually dangerous for any church or Christian leader to marry diet to the experience and final realization of salvation, as Ellen G. White, SDA prophetess, has done in her doctrinal and prophetic pronouncements.”—Andre R. Hill (Ed. D, M.S., M.C.C.Psy., PGD Psy., M.Th. (Prospective), BA.).

Dave Pack: 2017 "Might" Be The End Of The 6,000 Year Time Line

All of you Laodicean back-sliders out here had better party hearty this year because this might be your last gasp of freedom according to Dave Pack.  This may very well be the year the crapola hits the fan.

Dave writes:

But the generally accepted year of creation…You’ve heard me say this; the Church has believed it for scores of years…was 3981 B.C.…3981 B.C. I remember back in the’ 70s,’ 80s,’ 90s and then the 2000s…Wow, you know that if there’s no year “zero,” that means 6,000 years lands in 2020. And a few years ago I mentioned that a time or three, but what is interesting is that you’d have to back off of that general year, if it’s accurate, over three-and-a-half years and that would throw you sometime in 2017.

And it was years ago that I last thought about that, and I was just sitting last Sunday thinking, you know what? I ought to at least mention that since an awful lot of things are lining up. Is it possible…Since we’re into normalcy and we have a list of things that don’t have to happen that we thought did, is it possible that that kind of cycled back through my mind at the same time? Now I’ll throw one other related point. I don’t know exactly if 3981 is right. Neither does anybody else, because it always turns a little bit on the date of Solomon’s Temple. However, something I’ve thought about more than once and you ought to think about it…there’s some reason God told us how long the ancients lived prior to the Flood.

We don’t know exactly how long Christ lived. We know He was about 33 and a-half years. We don’t know a single apostle or a single prophet…when they were born or died. There are theories and ideas. But the Bible tells us those years, and I just wonder, why? Why are the ages of the lives of those early men more important to know than others, unless it was to assist in a kind of a linear time construct that, in part, led Mr. Armstrong to believe that God’s first 6,000 years—first six days—of a 7,000-year plan had a starting date that 3981 B.C.—no year “zero”—that takes you to 2020. And so I’ll just throw that out there. 

All of the bumbling buffoons in the various COG's that make endless predictions now have to contend with Dave Pack throwing his hat in the mix.  Almost-arrested Bob Thiel will now have to write an article stating that Dave is wrong and that he (Bob) knows better as to the real time frame.
Dave cannot be right because Ron Weinland claims otherwise, plus he and his dingy wife need to be the two witless witnesses first.  Gerald Flurry can't be right because he has not dug up the Ark of the Covenant yet.  John Rittenbaugh has proven to be wrong for making one failed prediction after another since the late 1980's despite the fact he had a rabid following of believers.  Every idiotic thing Gerald Waterhouse ever uttered has been a failure.

Just who can a Church of God member actually follow and believe in 2017?

"YES Lesson of the Week--When Jesus Just Won't Do

  

Living Church of God Camp For Pre-teens: Loving Moses More Than Jesus

From a reader:

LCG last week held a summer camp for pre-teens who have parents in the cult. What would you guess the children learned about? Jesus and His love for little children? Jesus' great mercy toward repentant sinners? The glorious World Tomorrow in which there will be peace and love and prosperity for all?

Of course not.

The camp theme was the Book of Exodus. Suffer like the Egyptians unless you obey Biblegod. Accept the heavy burden of Old Testament law-keeping, not the light burden of Jesus' yoke. Don't sin like you constantly see your parents and ministers sinning (remember, youngsters are EXCELLENT hypocrisy detectors), or else you will go into the Tribulation or the Lake of Fire. What a dreary camp that must have been.

Poly the Cult Child - Pentecost Spirit Plants

Someone had fun making a parody of UCG's latest epic failure.

The Beast Is Dead! Add Another Failed Prophecy To The Already Long List

Well, another Church of God prophecy bites the dust.

This afternoon's headline:

Helmut Kohl, Chancellor Who Reunited Germany, Dies at 87

By CRAIG R. WHITNEYJUNE 16, 2017

Helmut Kohl, a towering postwar figure who reunified Germany after 45 years of Cold War antagonism, propelled a deeply held vision of Europe’s integration and earned plaudits from Moscow and Washington for his deft handling of the fall of the Berlin Wall, died on Friday at his home in Ludwigshafen, Germany, the Rhine port city where he was born. He was 87.

“We mourn,” his party, the Christian Democratic Union, said on Twitter in announcing his death.   New York Times

Every prophecy that the WCG/Armstrongism uttered about Germany has failed, as usual.  Now, all we have to do is wait on Bob Thiel's bromance buddy, Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to declare himself the leader of the Holy Roman Empire so that he and Angela Merkel can open concentration camps to imprison Americans.  That is the wet dream that some COG "leaders" dream about.

Every prophecy of Herbert Armstrong's has failed.  Almost-arrested Theil's prophecies are failing.  Dave Pack's prophecies are failing.  Gerald Flurry's prophecies are guaranteed to fail.  All it take sis for ONE prophecy to fail and the scriptures call them liars. When will they all just ever shut up?

Bob Thiel Mansplains to Tina Englebart

Almost-arrested Elisha, Elijah, Amos, Habakkuk, Thiel is doing what he does best, mansplaining.  No other man in the history of the Church of God has ever felt the need to tell everyone in the church just how things are supposed to be on every imaginable topic.  Even Dave Pack, the king of mouth diarrhea, at least sticks to his topic of the First Dominion instead of sticking his nose into hundreds of other subjects that most COG members could care less about.

The doubly cursed self-appointed false prophet has taken great exception to Tina Engelbart's series of articles in The Journal concerning women speaking in church.

Tina wrote:

Corinthians 14:34-35. Here are the two verses in the King James Version. “Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience [Gr. hupotasso], as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame [Gr. aischros] for women to speak in church” (Emphasis added). 

First, some observations: The italicized phrase “they are commanded” was an addition by the translators; it is not in the original Greek. Further, hupotasso is more correctly translated “submission” rather than “obedience.” And the word translated as “shame” in verse 35 is the Greek word aischros— the same word translated as “ filthy” elsewhere, as in “ filthy lucre” (1 Timothy 3:8). 

Most churches, and most Churches of God, and Mr. Mokarow say this means women must be silent in the church. UCG specifically said in their paper “The Biblical Role of Women”: “‘ Women should not speak,’ ” that is, preach or teach before the congregation” (emphasis added). It is interesting that women are allowed to sing before the congregation, which is not exactly being silent. … 

There is only one law that specifically forbids women to speak in the assembly — and that is the Oral Law of the Jews, later written down and known as the Talmud. 

What a shame that our churches, in imposing the silence injunction on our women, are actually following the dictates of the Talmud instead of the Apostle Paul!

The doubly-cursed false prophet writes:

Let me make a few points.

First, while Tina Engelbart is entitled to her opinion about what she thinks the Greek means, the reality is that there is no record of Christian women preaching in either the New Testament nor in early Christian writings. While it is possible that the apostate Simon Magus may have had a female preach, and maybe did some other apostates, people who understood koine Greek at the time apparently did not feel that the Apostle Paul was allowing women to preach.

Second, UCG is correct that women should not be preaching. This is confirmed by the following passage that is in the Bible (hence, even allowing for a different translation of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, this is not something only to be derived from the Talmud as Tina Engelbart indicates):

11 Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. 12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. (1 Timothy 2:11-12). 

Third, as far as the Talmud goes, Tina Engelbart needs to consider that the Jews DID allow women to sing and hence the prohibition they had related to women speaking before the assembly did not include singing. That is the same in the Christian church as well.

In the (improperly named) Continuing Church of God we do not believe that women are to preach.  

Perhaps you should Bob.  They could do a far better job than you are doing.