Van Robison Asks "Are Splinter Group Heads---Your Mama?"

WCG splinter group heads treat adult church members as if they are the BIG MAMA.   You will get your behind spanked if you do not follow orders from big mama.   The organized church system is really a very childish system, where adult human beings are treated as if they are mere children and they must obey their big mama.   All churches are in that same category, because the head honcho pretends to be big mama and you better watch out.

Spooks might get you if you step out of line and pick up a few sticks on the Sabbath, hand out some Halloween candy to very innocent little children, or forget to tithe your 10%, plus generous offerings (suggested offering is at least another 10% or more).

Your "mama" carries a big switch and will threaten you with a curse if you fail to comply to all the silly rules, customs and traditions of the self-appointed head of your group.   Of course what "big mama" never tells the adult children is that her purse is wide open and she expects $cash, by the bucket loads.   Pay up or go to hell.   Obey or be cursed.   Live by the false rules of big mama or lose your salvation.   Live in fear for the rest of your life or you will be chained to the devil for all eternity.

Silly, silly, silly and that is the stuff of ALL cult church groups of the WCG and all others outside of the WCG splinter groups.   The world is an ocean of false religions and fake churches, who pretend to speak for Jesus Christ, all the while their real motive is $money, $money, $money.

I always say that if you take all the $money away and there is NO $money in the church world, the pastors would ALL disappear into the woodwork and never be seen from or heard of again.   That is proof that in fact $money is the REAL PURPOSE for pastors and churches.


Van Robison

Hellbound? Lake of Fire Bound?

Michael Camp, author of Confessions of a Bible Thumper, has an entry on his Deep Thought Pub blog about an upcoming movie that has been made about the concept of hell.  For COGers that would be the "Lake of Fire."  The COG has loved to throw that phrase at anyone who disagrees with it, it's doctrines or it's ministers.  Disagree with HWA and you are damned to the lake of fire for being in rebellion.  Buy a hamburger on Saturday and you will fry in the lake.  Keep Christmas or Easter and you will be assured to go there.

In Armstrongism the threat of damnation has always been a weapon.  It holds great power over members who are live in constant fear of being separated from their God for even the slightest mistake.  Parents have used this against their children when they do something really stupid.  Flurry uses it against his present members if they dare have contact with lapsed family members who have left the Church.  On and on it goes.

The concept of hell has always been used as weapon.  The difference now, in the 21st century that it is also a marketing tool used to sell books, bibles and other things promoted to help save one's life.

Camp writes:

Miller and co-producers David Rempel and Brad Jersak just didn't lay out a case for rethinking hell but forced viewers to face the conventional dogma of eternal damnation head on. We heard straight from the mouths of conservative pastors and evangelists (from the whole spectrum--right-wing wackos from the infamous Phelps church to hip but hyper-conservative Mark Driscoll to moderate-sounding theologian Kevin DeYoung), without interuption, where the notion of hell leads. They let the doctrine speak for itself, in other words. That's when the emotional disconnect between everlasting punishment for one half to 99.99 percent of the human race (depending on who was defending it) and an unconditionally loving God hit viewers like a ton of bricks, kiln-fired to 2000-degrees Farenheit. Huh?, was the unspoken response, just as Rob Bell had asked.

But Miller and company don't leave you there. Just when you were thinking, there must be a better way, through theologians, scholars, and studied authors,* they piled on the preponderance of evidence that hell is a modern misinterpretation of religious narratives anchored in an ancient history we know little about. Gehenna, erroneously translated as "hell" in the New Testament, is a metaphor for judgment in this life, God's justice is restorative, not retributive, the term "everlasting" is mistranslated, and much of the early church embraced the idea of universal reconciliation. The overall impression the film leaves is inspiring and redemptive. Cries of heresy by convervatives are misplaced as should be a sense of superiority by Universalists. So much of this stuff is a mystery. The question boils down to, what kind of God do we think we serve?

Run, don't walk, to see this film. It's an important commentary on our religious divide. It fairly lays out a continuum of positions. It opens up a vision for the nonviolent paradigm Jesus espoused.