Windstorm In Southern CA

There have been no posts for the last couple of days because of the hurricane force winds we had here. The San Gabrie Valley was hardest hit. Pasadena has over 40 homes and apartment buildings that are red tagged. Power has been off in many areas since 8:00 Wednesday night. Power in some areas is supposed to come on Thursday night around midnight. For others, this area included it may be Saturday before power is restored. One crackpot Armstrongist wrote me and said that this area no longer had God's protection because the WCG sold the property out from under God who no longer had a home here. I am sure it will not be long till Flurry or Meredith start talking about how this is prophecy in action. I am suffering from COG withdrawl!

Dennis Says: Sorry Guys...The Template is Female

Sorry Guys...The Template is Female

The following facts are not ones in which your husband, your fundamentalist pastor, nor your literalist Church will rejoice in. In fact, they may ask you to quietly leave if you are going to believe this rather than the inspired, inerrant and historically accurate "word of God."

"The primordial plan for both female and male fetuses in mammals is initially feminine.

Contrary to some creation myths, in mammals, maleness arises from femaleness, not the other way round.  Masculinisation results from organisational effects of fetal testosterone (and its derivatives), which in humans occurs during the second trimester of pregnancy.

To be masculinised means that certain areas of the brain grow larger, while others remain smaller. These differences to some extend explain sexual behaviours and preferences even in humans"

Dr. Alexander Thiele University of Newcastle upon Tyne Lecture 7: Social emotions -'the sexual brain'.  In reality it seems that FEMALE is the default position as human beings develope in the womb. Maleness comes after with the proper wash of hormones applied at just the right time and in just the right amounts. The implications for literalists are staggering and for women, liberating!

In some cultures, young men are taught to pray "Blessed Art Thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has not made me a woman." Mohammed is said to have stated, "When Eve was created, Satan rejoiced." Much if all of the original creation mythology's sole purpose is to depose any notion of "goddess" worship, which was an absolute fascination that women had the power to give birth and bring forth life etc, and replace it with a male patriarchy.

The Genesis story is not so much how life came to be or that we all came from two humans, named Adam and Eve, as it is to send the message that women, who are the fault of everything, are to have babies painfully now and say "yes Lord" to their husbands. From the totally mythological tale of the fall of man by the disobedience of woman, much misery and ridiculously false roles have been demanded of them by men and in particular the Christian church.

"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. FOR (the reason being) Adam was first formed and then Eve and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression." I Tim. 2:11-14

So according to Paul, the literal truth of Eve's sin produces the literal idea that women are more easily deceived than men and prone to sin, and thus should be silent in church. Or as St. John Chrysostom, a fifth century church father noted, "The woman taught once and ruined everything. On this account...let her not teach." It seems wrong ideas of how things really came to be have very big consequences over a very long time!

Paul goes on to say..."The head of every man is Christ; and the head of every woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God....for as much as he is in the image and glory of God, BUT ( as in , don't get the same idea about women) the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is NOT of the woman, but the woman IS OF the man." I Cor. 11:3,7,9.

It's also why the self luminating sun was considered male, while the moon, which merely reflects sunlight, was considered female.

Very simply put, Paul said that men are over women, Christ alone is over men and God alone is over Christ. So it's God > Christ > Man > Woman > pets and small animals. It is notable that it is here that Paul makes it plain, based on the creation of woman out of man mythology, that Men don't come from women at all and that women owe their physical existence to men too. I guess Paul and Dr. Alexander Thiele never actually met to discuss just how do males form in the womb. Like it or not guys, we come from out mom's literally and from the default fetal template of the female in time after we get our hormones in the womb. So men actually do come twice from females. Doh...someone tell the Church!

St Clement, father of the Roman Church denied women the right to even exercise as men. He felt rather it was more in keeping with scripture that they be confined to spinning, weaving and cooking. Of course he could barely bring himself to add "and se..se...sex, unless it was out of the need to bring children into the fold.

St. Augustine, not the most balanced Church Father of the lot proclaimed that man only was made in God's image and not woman. But that's what Paul said too. He went on to note that men were quite complete without a woman, but that women could only be complete with a man. Man alone was self contained and complete alone. Once again, time has shown how untrue this all is, but the concept is still used by many churches and pastors to keep women in "their place" and fulfilling their "role".

Other theologians and Church Father's went on to note that men were the spiritual aspect of God, while women were merely a symbol of the flesh and thus she is the temptress and weakener of men who fail to see what the Church points out.

In the 16th Century, Clifford Alderman notes in a his book, A Caldron of Witches, that an early Church report noted that "Woman is more carnal than man: there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed with a BENT RIB. She is imperfect and always deceives." Now there is some hot scientific reasoning for you! Of course no one notes that if women are deceptive because of being made out of a bent rib, what is a man that he was made out of red dirt? Maybe that's why men are so dirty minded..:)

Modern Christianity is still designed and used to annihilate the spirit of women. It's is still here to keep patriarchy in place and to defeat the matriarchy of former times. Women were mystical in those cultures as opposed to utilitarian in that of a patriarchy or man led society and religion. I believe I would much rather to have lived in a society where women were held high for their spirituality and creative abilities. As it is, we live in the age, not of Aquarius but of testosterone, where men rule badly, kill often and take the spoils from those who cannot oppose them. I like Rodney King's "Can't we all just get along" far more than those who bluster "Bring em on." But alas, tis not that way in our real world at this point.

You have to love this observation by the great philosopher Rousseau.

"As the conduct of a woman is subservient to the public opinion, her faith in matters of religion should , for that reason, be subject to authority. Every daughter ought to be of the same religion as her mother, and every wife to be the same religion as her husband; for though such religion should be false, that docility which induces the mother and daughter to submit to the order of nature, takes away, in the sight of God, the criminality of their error...they are not in a capacity to judge for themselves, they ought to abide by the decision of their fathers and husbands as confidently as that of the Church." Or as Paul would say, "if any woman has a question, let her ask her husband..."

So when does the church grow up and face the facts of science, and not base silly and demeaning demands upon women on mythology and error? When does a church finally admit to errors in teachings that hurt people? Never from what I can see. Let's remember, the Church took 350 years to apologize for almost burning Galileo at the stake for informing them that the earth was not the center of the solar system with the sun revolving around it or around the Church for that matter. Yet that's about the right amount of time for Churches to come to their senses and stop demanding of people things based in fallacies. At what point does ignorance stop oppression and pain?

Only a relative few Christian women will have the confidence to step out of the box of fundamentalist Church control. They will suffer at the hands of ministers who quote Paul who frankly was misinformed as to how things really are in biology, endocrinology and genetics. Literal control over a woman by using allegorical or just plain wrong "facts" is wrong. It hurts the spirit and demeans the woman in a world where we better soon wake up to the fact that we all are one and the same.

So sorry guys...without a woman, you would not exist, and without a good sprinkling of hormones at just the right time after your conception, the female default position you started out as would keep you there or perhaps acting in ways that the Bible also goes on to condemn you for, sometimes with death.

Whether your pastor, church, tribe or friends like it, good science, truthfully so called, trumps sincere but ignorant Apostles, Priests, Popes and Kings. Dr. Thiele is correct.
 

"Contrary to some creation myths, in mammals, maleness arises from femaleness, not the other way round."

Dennis C. Diehl
DenniscDiehl@aol.com

Was UCG/COGWA Split Being Planned as Early as Mid 2009?

In some of the comments on Malm's blog there are some telling remarks about the UCG/COGWA debacle.  Neither side comes out looking good.  Both were and still are manipulative power hungry organizations that strategically planned  and manipulated brethren into following each of their causes.  Great will be the day these men all loose their jobs and have to do some real work for once.

Despite what Jim Franks says, the split was carefully planned from at least mid 09 by BOTH sides. And it came as the end result of fifteen years of fighting between the two groups... Denny was right this was about power and control; but by BOTH sides and not just by COGWA as he would want us to believe. This was a mutual divorce and both sides are glad to be separated from the other; although the dividing of the brethren is regretted. 

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People have been fed a lot of self justification in BOTH groups. I was kept up to date through 2010 on the steps taken by the dissenters from my friend John Kilough [Clyde's father] as well as other highly placed persons. [John was disappointed that I did not take COGWA's side and is no longer communicating; altough I still have other sources.] The attempts to reconcile were deliberately set up to make one side look good and the other bad; in other words they made offers that looked good to their supporters, but which they knew contained serious issues entirely unacceptable to the other side. This was done to make the COE seem to be much worse then the dissenters and vise versa. For example to call for a special elders meeting made them look very good, on the other hand, why could they not wait a few months to the regular meeting? It was all a VERY DIRTY political game to win over as many brethren as each side could. There were NO genuine attempts at reconciliation by either side that I am aware of; and I was very well informed through the entire process.

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 The elders on both sides had carefully conditioned their brethren into their take on doctrine leadership etc and it is the case that most of the brethren follow the elder. The brethren split mainly along congregational lines. The split process was a fight over the brethren who could be moved to stay or leave, of course causing some local congregations to split. I was directly told from the top of those organizing the split that they were in no hurry because the CoE was continually “shooting itself in the foot” and making itself look worse and worse causing more and more to join with the dissenters. Of course this was helped along by the disengenous appeals to reconcile, which were really loaded to bring about a coup for the dissenters if the CoE went along with them. This was a VERY NASTY DIRTY fight over the brethren, making merchandise of them for their tithes and support. BOTH sides were very wrong in much that was done. Just like BOTH sides are morally very wrong in Zambia. James

Six-Pack Flurry $7 Million in the Red

Armstrong Delusion has taken the latest Co-Worker letter from Gerald Flurry and dissected it rather well.
It seems old Six Pack is in a snit because members pledged a lot of money to help build the Mini-Me Auditorium in the middle of Oklahoma and now aren't sending in the money.  Their lack of faith has resulted in the PCG owing over $7,000.000 for Six Packs monument to himself.  Six Pack is pissed!

Armstrong Delusion includes this excerpt:

…our building fund donations are $700,000 less than they were last year. I want you to think about that.
Before we built Armstrong Auditorium, we sent a letter to our Church members only, asking for pledges to the building fund. We used those pledges to determine how much we could invest in construction and loan repayment until all the construction costs were repaid in full. We’ve enjoyed using the auditorium for over a year now, but we still have a big balance left on the loan–over $7Million.
Have we kept our pledge to God that we would contribute toward this project until it is paid off?

 I won't get into the maniluptaion that Six Pack is pulling on his members.  It's the blame game all over again.  Faithless members who are not relying on God to provide them the money to send it.  It doesn't matter if you have lost your job or have had an income reduction.  You still are required to send it in!  Your salvation is at stake for your unfaithfulness!

I know this is a difficult time financially, and we do have unemployment problems among our members and supporters. But as Mr. Armstrong always said, God blesses us as our ways please Him. The needs of the work have never been greater. And if our ways are pleasing God, no recession or depression could make a bit of difference.

Read the entire article here:  Dear Brethren and Co-Workers!