Fellowship According to Armstrongism

When people look at fellowship through the following kind of legalistic lens it is no wonder Armstrongism is dying off!  What idiots!  Fellowship is not exclusionary!  It is all encompassing, inclusive, welcoming, expanding, and ever growing.  Armstrongism excludes, disfellowships, ignores, mark's, and beats down those inside and outside the circle. These nut jobs conveniently ignore the fact that Jesus sat and ate with tax collectors, sinners, the outcast, and those on the periphery of acceptability.  Yet, Armstrongism continues to circle the wagons and make the circle smaller and smaller. Pathetic losers!

Most of us who have been in the COGs for a long period of time know that we are commanded to not forsake fellowship with one another. Fellowship is, first and foremost between an individual and God. Secondly, it is between the called out ones. The later, being time spent (but not limited to) iron sharpening iron. Christ and the apostles fellowshipped (taught and trained) others daily, fellowship is not exclusive to the Sabbath or Holy Days. Nor should our fellowship with Christ and the Father be limited to the Sabbath.

Fellowship is an exchange between God and or individuals that brings about repentance, correction, admonishment, understanding, revelations, and teaching which leads to strengthening the body of Christ. When fellowship is watered down to a ‘feel good’ about one’s self and others (the love doctrine) then the body becomes susceptible to disease (false doctrine) and weakens the members. Making the fellowship of little use. If the members of the body of Christ do not have a foundation built upon Him and God the Father, then church services become nothing more than a social club. Something that fills the void of where a relationship with God should be.

When fellowshipping is used by those in the church for an excuse for socializing , it is an attempt to fill the ‘hole in the heart’. Without the proper foundation of a true relationship with God though, filling that hole is like filling a bottomless pit. Void of any true value to the one seeking to fill what God has not imparted to them. Why, because He says, “I know you not.”

The only thing this person got right is the comment:  "I know you not."

"Paradise Recovered" and Ohio's Well Spring Retreat Recovery Center

 Many people have been so scared by abusive religion that they have no idea on where to turn.  There is a facility in Ohio that is geared to helping those recovering from abusive churches, religious systems and other abusive thought systems.  Their work can either be secular in base or pastoral.

Wellspring Retreat Center

Many who come from abusive religious systems are not able to rationalize what has happened to them with what their faith promotes as truth.  When that is ripped away, many fall into a spiritual void. Many still long for something deeper that brings meaning to their lives but do not know what to do.  Others, have had enough and leave faith based systems.  However, they still need to deal with the rejection, the loss of every thing they had been rooted in, the familial ties that broken, and more.

The Wellspring Recovery Center is also sponsoring a screening of "Paradise Recovered".

Paradise Recovered, the film made by a former WCG member has been making the rounds of numerous film festivals.  It has been getting rave reviews.

Synopsis:

Esther Harris, a young woman praised for her virtue and devotion to Warren F. Vanderbilt’s Prophetic Watchman Ministries, has been given the opportunity of a lifetime – to attend Vanderbilt’s Kingdom Bible College. 
When the fundamentalist Christian sect falls on hard times, Esther looks for employment at a local health food store to supplement the group’s income.
At the store, Esther gets a chance to share her faith with her new manager, Gabriel, a devout skeptic and preacher’s kid, and his roommate, Mark, a college drop-out who finds Christian television to be great entertainment.
The friendship with Gabriel and Mark help Esther determine her human worth while helping her reframe her faith in a whole new light.

Shot entirely on location in Southern Indiana and Austin, Texas, Paradise Recovered attempts a modern-day retelling of the parable of the Good Samaritan while addressing hard questions involving faith, tolerance, and spiritual abuse in modern culture. 

Paradise Recovered Trailer from Storme Wood on Vimeo.

SDA Fear Mongering Literalism

Right click on SDA Flormer Member Photo's Facebook  for a larger picture

A fire storm has erupted with many SDA members over a 'mock-up' end time hunt for Sabbath keepers.  In this 'futuristic' melodrama, Sabbath keepers will be hunted down an killed for not taking on the mark of the beast (Sunday worship).

Fear mongering in SDA land is a manipulative way in keeping members fearful of their salvation and afraid to leave the church.  Church members, because they are called out from the world, are despised by Satan who will do anything in his power to destroy the 'truth.', actually look forward to being martyrs.

Oh wait, that's Armstrongite mythology too!

Armstrong did the same thing to his cult members.  We operated under the same beliefs that many of us would be martyrs for our beliefs.  Because we would be martyrs, it was a 'holy thing to do' and therefore none dared lose their salvation by leaving the church. Only cowards would walk away from the glorious 'truth' that had been restored after 1,900 years through Herbert Armstrong.  To this very day we have scores of COG members who sit in their respective churches miserable over what they hear being taught, yet too fearful to leave because in the back of their mind "it just might all be true."



It's OK Not to be Seventh Day Adventist    had this to say (notice that they use the exact same scare tactics Armstrongism does):

At the very least, it is astonishingly dysfunctional that a church leader would dramatically pre-enact a terrifying prophetic massacre of their people. Can you imagine a Jewish prophet of the 20th century getting together a group of Jews and pre-enacting the Holocaust? Not to warn them to get out of Germany, but just to prepare them for the gas chambers? Or an Old Testament prophet re-enacting the slaughter of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Captivity, not as a warning to repent and turn from their wicked ways, but just to prepare them for the tortures and persecution and martyrdom?

You see Adventists don't see this persecution as punishment from God, not as something they can prepare for and avoid. No, their prophetess Ellen White, had a vision and foretold that because they kept the correct Sabbath, because of their obedience to God, that all other Christians will vent Satan's wrath upon the SDA remnant. Adventists will be hunted down and martyred for keeping Sabbath. Every Christian who continues to disobey God by going to church and worshipping God on Sunday (which they believe is the wrong day to worship) is going to receive the Mark of the Beast.

This recent Adventist theatrical pre-enactment tells us, out here in non-SDA land, that despite their persuasive declaration that the church is no longer fearmongering its youth about other Christians and that it has dropped ridiculous and unbiblical last-day prophecies, that some Adventist church leaders are back to the old scare tactics. "Stay safely inside Adventism, all other Christians are some day going to come after you, torture and martyr you." (Well, actually the word safe to them means eternally, spiritually safe because obviously your physical bodies are going to come to great harm for being SDA.....)

Dictionary definition of fear mongering:

Fear mongering  (or scaremongering ) is the use of fear to leverage the opinions and actions of others towards some end. The object of fear is sometimes exaggerated, and the use of fear mongering is often directed in a manner using repetition, in order to continuously reinforce the intended effects of using this tactic in a self-reinforcing manner, like a vicious circle.