Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Happy Hallow'en to Spanky, Six-Pack and The Two Witlesses

Soon after WCG sold the Pasadena property 
the new owners did a Halloween "House of Horror's" on the campus.  Little did they know that was the actual state of affairs given the legacy of the church by that time...




So in honor of Hallow'en and the continuing loony tunes in charge of three of the sillier splinter cults we decided to carve some pumpkins.


These pumpkins were carved for Six-Pack McFlurry 
in honor of his arrest for public drunkenness 
and for trying to bribe a Peace Officer with twenty Five dollars 
to let him go




I tried to find a scary picture of Six-Pack 
worshiping the Great Pumpkin, 
but this is just as scary...






These are seductively displayed for 
Spanky Merrydeath.  
Get that Spokesmen Club paddle out!  
Spank me daddy!







These pumpkins were carved after listening to 
The Two Witless Witnesses
preaching  yet another three hour sermon on prophecy 
that has 
FAILED!
Mrs. Weinerdude looks on in horror


(aka WeinerDude - Ronnie Weinland and his Second Witness Wife)




God knows the Horror you have brought to thousands of members lives with your failed prophecies, outright lies, sexual obsessions, and just plain WEIRD ideas make all three of you this years perfect Halloween pupmpkins!  :-)

HAPPY 
HALLOW'EN!!!!









Monday, October 25, 2010

United Crisis Ready For Explosion? Is It Really the 'Liberals' or the Uber-Conservatives Causing the Issue?



More information hit the Internet today concerning the current crisis in UCG.  There are posts about the Sabbath Papers, posts about those pesky liberals seeking to destroy the 'faith once delivered', and lot's of details on the Chilean family that precipitated this crisis because their day care center operating on the 'sabbath'.  The big headline though was this one:

UNITED CRISIS NEARS EXPLOSION!


These postings are all screaming about the liberals in UCG and how THEY are causing this crisis.  You have to wonder after reading this stuff as to who is actually causing the   problems.  Is it really the UCG brass or is it the legalistic Pharisees crowing about how much better they are at keeping the law.  There sure  is a LOT of boasting going on in their postings.

I am no fan of UCG or the crooks running it.  I saw most of them in action while in Pasadena. One can hope that maybe some of them finally are getting their heads out of HWA's holy rear-end and actually stepping back to take a look at what they teach.  I really am not going to hold my breathe on that one though. But one can wish.

Instead you quickly see how divisive those who are seeking to hold on to the old ways really are.  They are the legalistic Pharisees that want to take members with them as they try to form a new splinter group off of UCG.  They will soon be the new wounded martyrs.  "We stood up for God's word and look what happened to us!  UCG kicked us out and disfellowshipped us for preaching the truth. blah, blah, blah."



Sabbath Issues

Analysis of Sabbath Papers

United Crisis Near Explosion

When reading the Shining Light Blog more and more it sounds like a bunch of gumpy Pharisees sitting around bitching about those disgusting people Jesus is having dinner with.  They dwell in the letter of the law instead of grace.  They live in a  world of black and white ignoring the fact that Scripture is NOT black and white.


A Pharisee is a sanctimonious, hypocritical, self-righteous heretic who practices and advocates strict observance of external forms and ceremonies of religion or conduct without regard to the spirit. He makes a hypocritical show of religious devotion, piety, and righteousness. He is confident of his own righteousness, and is smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinion and behavior of others. He pretends to have moral, religious beliefs and principles which he does not possess.

In simple terms…A Pharisee falsely thinks he is a god himself as he pretends to do God’s bidding, enforces God’s laws, knows God’s mind, and has the imagined authority of God in his hands His power is gained by lording over the humble, fearful, sinners who dare not even consider walking toward God because of their dirty transgressions and lowly state.

Walking Away From Church - Loosing the 20/30 Somethings

One of the growing trends in church attendance that's emerged over the last several years is the Emerging Church.  People who are tired of the same old way of doing things.  They want a faith that is relevant to the world we live in and not in the time period of their parents from the 1940's-1990's.  Tired, worn out legalistic ways which have not adapted to the changing world we live in.



You see this happening in  Armstrongism too.  So many of the splinter groups claim they are 'holders of the truth once restored', (meaning pre-1986.)  The world today has not heard of HWA nor do they care.  His message is not relevant to the world today.  The myriad of splinter groups are loosing their young members.  They have nothing to offer them. So the groups are aging themselves out of existence.  99% of all the splinter groups are made up of people who were members of the WCG in the 1960's-1980's.  Somewhere I read that the average age of COG members is in the mid 50's age range. In twenty to thirty years the COG will no longer be.  Sure a few die-hards will be holding on - middle aged single men, never married and bitter to the world they live in.

Some excerpts from the article.  Click the link below for the entire article

Los Angeles Times

Walking away from church
Organized religion's increasing identification with conservative politics is a turnoff to more and more young adults. Evangelical Protestantism has been hit hard by this development.

By Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell

October 17, 2010

The most rapidly growing religious category today is composed of those Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. While middle-aged and older Americans continue to embrace organized religion, rapidly increasing numbers of young people are rejecting it.

As recently as 1990, all but 7% of Americans claimed a religious affiliation, a figure that had held constant for decades. Today, 17% of Americans say they have no religion, and these new "nones" are very heavily concentrated among Americans who have come of age since 1990.
Between 25% and 30% of twentysomethings today say they have no religious affiliation — roughly four times higher than in any previous generation.

So, why this sudden jump in youthful disaffection from organized religion? The surprising answer, according to a mounting body of evidence, is politics. Very few of these new "nones" actually call themselves atheists, and many have rather conventional beliefs about God and theology. But they have been alienated from organized religion by its increasingly conservative politics.



This backlash was especially forceful among youth coming of age in the 1990s and just forming their views about religion. Some of that generation, to be sure, held deeply conservative moral and political views, and they felt very comfortable in the ranks of increasingly conservative churchgoers. But a majority of the Millennial generation was liberal on most social issues, and above all, on homosexuality.
The fraction of twentysomethings who said that homosexual relations were "always" or "almost always" wrong plummeted from about 75% in 1990 to about 40% in 2008. (Ironically, in polling, Millennials are actually more uneasy about abortion than their parents.)

Just as this generation moved to the left on most social issues — above all, homosexuality — many prominent religious leaders moved to the right, using the issue of same-sex marriage to mobilize electoral support for conservative Republicans. In the short run, this tactic worked to increase GOP turnout, but the subsequent backlash undermined sympathy for religion among many young moderates and progressives.
Increasingly, young people saw religion as intolerant, hypocritical, judgmental and homophobic. If being religious entailed political conservatism, they concluded, religion was not for them.



Nevertheless, predictions of the demise of religion in America would be premature. More likely is that as growing numbers of young Americans reject religious doctrine that is too political or intolerant for their taste, innovative religious leaders will concoct more palatable offerings. Jesus taught his disciples to be "fishers of men," and the pool of un-churched moderate and progressive young people must be an attractive target for religious anglers.

To be sure, some of these young people will remain secularists. Many of them, however, espouse beliefs that would seem to make them potential converts to a religion that offered some of the attractions of modern evangelicalism without the conservative political overlay.


Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times