Dennis muses on small minded theology

The "6000 Year Plan of God"

Logic or Theo-Logic?

"The Bible clearly reveals a 6,000-year period during which human beings follow their own ideas apart from the Creator. This will be followed by Jesus Christ's thousand-year reign on earth, during which He and the resurrected saints will literally teach the entire world God's true ways. Notice: "Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years" (Revelation 20:6)....

Which may not be the same as real facts

...The Jews of Jesus' day understood well the concept of each day of the week representing a thousand years in the Plan of God. Peter explained this principle: "But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8). So, the seven-day week represents God's 7,000-year plan, with six days of the week representing the time of our present human society, followed by the thousand years of Christ's reign as King of kings (Revelation 11:15)."

Roderick C Meredith-When will the end come?  Tomorrow's World Magazine

Whether the Bible "clearly" spells out anything is a matter of opinion and theological debate.  Apostle Dave Pack assures us that "God's word is crystal clear" on his muddled  and muddied prophecy of Haggai in which he sees himself spoken of by the scriptures and just knows that God intends to unifiy all the splinters under one leader, which of course would be himself.  The idea that it is the Bible that is clear and it is the humans who are blind to the clearness or not called to see the clearness at this time is ridiculous reasoning.   It is not uncommon to find Church of God Gurus coming up with codes and mysteries, puzzles to be solved and hidden meanings that only one man, the guy in charge of all truth can explain.  It's a con more than a truth but some folk seem to like it.

2Peter:3:15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; 16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction 

Even here we see the Greek author of 2 Peter (Not written by the actual Peter and much later in the game) get tired of all the arguing and admitting that Paul is not the easiest guy to understand theologically. That's because he was 'all things to all men" so at times you can never figure out what the man stands for.  Rather than admit the man's clarity is not so clear and he might be off track on some things big time, this author typically blames the people and reasons that they don't understand because they are unlearned and unstable souls and headed for destruction.  Typical blame placing and name calling when the problem is really not the listener.   The Apostle Paul had is own issues with "clear as mud."

Personally as a minister I always thought the explanation as to why Jesus spoke in parables was somewhat lame to my way of thinking.  These mysterious sayings to keep folk from understanding were not all that hard to understand. 

"And He said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand"  

Luke 8:10

(I wanted to put a "Jesus teaching Parables" picture here but I can't find one for free.  Jesus pictures are not for free evidently! LOL)

Unless I am missing something, the parables of Jesus were very simplistic and rather easy to understand. Seeds on various kinds of soil, lost coins, pearls of great price and so on are not all that hard to figure out and see what Jesus of the Gospels was getting at.  

But whether it is clear or not, what RCM means here is that if we just go by the Bible, we can discern a 6000 year , (can we really?) oral/written traditions made up along the way by Bronze Age men who packaged it in what we now call the Bible.  It does not meant they understood anything about the real age of the universe, our solar system or how life actually came to be on the planet.  The first mistake would be the start point and taking the Adam and Eve mythology, taken from Sumerian creation stories and given a Hebrew twist as literally true.  They are not and until the ministry and laity in all fundamentalist churches can come to grips with this reality, it will be endless name calling.  

"The Mesopotamian myths, then, agree with Genesis: (1) _all_ the gods REST _after_ creating man, and (2) _all_ the gods rest on a seventh day _after_ man's creation (but this seventh day of rest is _after_ a flood instead of _before_ a flood) and (3) Yahweh sets aside a seventh day for man (Israel) to rest on and on a seventh day the gods caused man to "rest" (his "rest from toil" is that which accompanies man's death by the seventh day of the Shuruppak Flood). These, for me, are the "new twists" the Hebrews have applied to the earlier Mesopotamian myths! 

Hebrews apparently objected to the Mesopotamian storyline and denied that Yahweh-Elohim had created man to endure back-breaking toil in his Garden of Eden to give God a break from self-toil in growing his own food (Yet Yahweh is fed food twice a day like a Mesopotamian god beginning with the Exodus at Mount Sinai and this feeding of God is to continue for all of eternity -even after the Messiah comes- as Ezekiel envisions a future Messiah at Jerusalem with the help of Levitical priests preparing God's daily food via burnt offerings and sacrifices cf. Ez. 44:7,15; 45:13-25; 46:1-9). Via a series of brilliantly orchestrated inversions and reversals or "new twists" to old Mesopotamian motifs and concepts the nomadic Hebrew shepherds apparently recast the Mesopotamian city-dwellers' myths which had man being the ruthlessly exploited innocent victim of the gods, instead it is God who is the victim of a rebellious, unappreciative, evil-hearted mankind. Why did they do this? The city-dwellers despised and feared the nomads characterizing them as uncouth and a threat to civilization as cut-throats, thieves, bandits and raiders of cities out for plunder. In defense of their way of life the nomadic herdsmen apparently took the city-dwellers myths and recast them _via a series of inversions_ in such a way as to portray themselves (Abraham and Abel being shepherds) as blessed by God and the city-dwellers (Cain and his descendants) as the accursed by God. The nomads had the "correct" understanding of man's origins and his relationship with his Creator, the smug city-dwellers had it all wrong."

http://www.bibleorigins.net/sabbathorigins.html

The "is the story of Adam and Eve literally true?" question is not a difficult one to answer with a little bit of modern critical thinking and study.  I do understand neither of these traits are common to literalists. These stories and myths, which is mostly what the first 11, at minimum,  have meaning but they do not have the meaning literalists have assigned to them.  I recently reminded a pastor giving a sermon and making bold and unscientific statements to be careful.  He needed to realize that while he was speaking Bronze Age myths as literally true, some bored teen is using his Iphone to search it out and before he gets finished will conclude the pastor is a sincere idiot. He just got offended at me.  He'll learn the hard way I suppose. 

Of course, I am not going to prove there is no 6000 year old plan to anyone nor do I need to.  I simply want to point out we don't live in the 1930's or 60's or 70's anymore.  Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear realize we have learned more about the origin, makeup and time scale of our universe and planet in the last 30 years than in the last 3000.  Our parents were taught our galaxy was the universe until Edward Hubble noticed other fuzzy patches from Mt. Wilson Observatory over Pasadena and the rest is history.  There are BILLIONS of Galaxies and I will venture to say that "soon" humans will have to realize we may just be one bubble of a universe in a bath billions of bubbles.  Very cool!  It also makes the God of the 6000 year plan seem rather wimpy and confined to a just about nothing earth bossing amoeba around.  I'd like to live long enough for some confirmation of life elsewhere in our solar system past or present.  Like the few Europeans who tried to explain to the majority that one would not fall off the edge of the earth if they went west across the Atlantic and would possibly find "others", I think this will be proved correct also in time.  Marco Polo was jailed by the church for a time after his round the world travels because he had found "others" and it would erode the authority of the Church over everyone in Europe is that got too widely known.  It did eventually get widely known.  Truth is like that.

The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, composited from Hubble Space Telescope data accumulated over a period from September 24, 2003, through to January 16, 2004. Looking back approximately 13 billion years (between 400 and 800 million years after theBig Bang) it will be used to search for galaxies that existed at that time. The HUDF image was taken in a section of the sky with a low density of bright stars in the near-field, allowing much better viewing of dimmer, more distant objects. The image contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies. In August and September 2009, the Hubble's Deep Field was expanded using the infrared channel of the recently attached Wide Field Camera 3(WFC3). When combined with existing HUDF data, astronomers were able to identify a new list of potentially very distant galaxies.^[1][2]

Located southwest of Orion in the southern-hemisphere constellation Fornax, the image is a little more than 3arcminutes across.^[3] This is just one-tenth of the diameter of the full Moon as viewed from Earth, smaller than a 1 mm by 1 mm square of paper held at 1 meter away, and equal to roughly one thirteen-millionth of the total area of the sky. The image is oriented so that the upper left corner points toward north (−46.4°) on the celestial sphere.

Someday a much bigger minded Church is going to have to cope with the truths, not of science falsely so called, but of science done well.  Genesis 1-3 has meaning and the Priest who wrote it had message for Hebrew men and women.  It was just not meant to explain literal origins.  Nothing happens in a literary vacuum.  The stories of others are always copied and amended to tell the story others wish to tell about themselves.  Big stories give cultic people a huge pedigree which is the goal.  

"Ok, i admit it. I messed around with the Sapien Babe. She had awesome browridges.  Am I so bad?"

All life on this planet has evolved over the last 4 billion years and most a lot more "recently" than that.  How that occurred is not fully understood but is far better understood than ever.  Humans arrived around 160-200,000 years ago.  There were many intriguing cousins and ancestors for a few million years before that.  All Europeans are now known to have 2-5% Neanderthal genes in their makeup.  I think that 's cool.   Arguing is endless and will always divide humans into the camps that understand it and don't understand it and those that want to understand it and those that do no wish to go there because it is a threat to their mistaken but comfortable views of how it all is.  

The Bible may portray a 6000 year "plan' but that minuscule time compared to all of time that has passed while we came to be is the thickness of the coat of tar on top of the worlds tallest building compared to the height of the building.  Reality in scientific exploration should not be the threat to spirituality that it seems to be.  It certainly is a threat to religion which is a horse of a different color as they say.  Yes, "Houston We have a problem" is true in religion when it comes to not taking all stories Biblical literally.  Theologians admit that the idea that "all of us are sinners and subject to eternal death because of Adam's sin..." becomes moot if there were not a literal Adam and Eve as portrayed in Genesis, and there wasn't.  That is the kind of problem you cause yourself when you start with a wrong premise. It's what you get building doctrine on a mistaken idea in the first place.  Catholicism had to do back flips theologically once they decided Mary was literally a virgin when the literal and sinless God Jesus came from her womb. Modern genetics biology leave one only with "it was a miracle" to explain it theologically.  It is a faith issue and faith is not biology or genetics.   There is logic and there is theo-logic.

The 6000 Year Plan is simply too small

(We're gonna need a bigger boat)

s

What's It Like To Grow Up In the Armstrong Family and the COG?

Secular Safe House, has a one hour interview with Deborah Armstrong and her life as part of the Armstrong family and as a church employee.  Sadly, her story confirms the messed up lives that Herbert and his lust for power brought upon his family and relatives.

The Secular Safe House has this up:

Deborah shares about her abusive childhood, troubled relationship with her parents, impressions of her uncle Herbert, and her non-typical experience growing up in the church under the shadow of Armstrong. She also shares about her time attending the church’s Ambassador College, employment as a writer for the church’s The World Tomorrow telecast, and time spent in Russia on behalf of the church’s educational and cultural foundation working in television, which is where her doubts about the church were solidified.

In this interview Deborah shares her opinions — and the views expressed by several in her family — about Herbert and allegations that he committed incest with his daughter, her views on religion and society in general, as well as her recommendations for those who are having doubts about their own faith.

Listen to her story here:  Deborah - Worldwide Church of God

Dennis muses...

When Reality Finally Becomes Our Friend

But first...you gotta lurk

I was a full blown ordained minister in the WCG at the ripe old age of 24 and on my own.  I had been first out of college in Minneapolis under Keith Thomas and then one year later found myself scarfed up by the new Regional Director in Chicago, George Kemnitz who made me his assistant.  I was rather oblivious, being relatively new to both the church and now the ministry of the drama swirling around me in Chicago. As I experienced it and then began to have things sent to me that I neither could believe nor wanted to, it got very nasty.  In short order, during the " '74 Rebellion", I got fired by association with those orchestrating it all from Chicago and the East Coast.  I went back to New  York for a visit to figure out what happened and got my job back.  I was sent then to Findlay and Toledo, Ohio where life as a minister, alone and doing what I thought I had signed on for started in earnest.  

They were the best of times and they, as a minister, were the beginning of the worst of times.  Rumors about this or that, drama of one kind or another and letters sent to members from those in more of the know than I wanted to be and was in denial over were abundant.  It was my first experience, of more to come, with "dissident mail", tapes and not quite knowing which minister was for what or against who.  It made me sick inside.  I was in major denial because I needed the church to be right and I needed to do for those I loved and wanted to be a helpful teacher type what I thought I was both trained and called to do...be a pastor.  

The pastor "over me" for a short time was a gentle person who I suspect only also wanted to pastor and be encouraging.  He was unable to handle the drama and when it blew locally would ask me to "go see and talk to the ____________s and see if you can help them stay in the church. He probably drank to much and it may have cost him his life at a relatively young age.  I have had minster friends who have drank themselves to death out of utter despair over their WCG experience or take their lives deliberately over it.  Suicide is a very long term solution to a short term lesson and reality that can be faced and accepted.

Those were the days, where when talking to folk I cared about but who were much more willing to be in touch with the drama and reality of the times concerning the Armstrongs and WCG, I learned how the corners of my mouth would turn down without my permission when talking and I had to force myself to smile them back into place. It was a funky cheek muscle response to fear and stress. Deep inside, where I grew up with the idea that we neither think those things nor certainly say them, I was angry, puzzled, fearful of what may happen and depressed over my choice of Church which still seemed so right in it's Biblical view to me.  "This IS the Church but what the hell is going on?"  comes to mind.  

Sometimes members would bring me the dissident mail they received to read.  No one was sending me any at the time.  I either pitched it or looked at it in a cursory manner and then threw it away. I could not or would not handle it.  Besides, there are lots of scriptures I can quote about gossip and falling away so I was safe. 

 I went to visit one person who had not been to church and when I got there, blasted me to kingdom come while screaming at me about Rader and Armstrong through the screen door.  I listened, more in shock, but it appeared as patience and then said, "I agree, I don't know what is going on and you are right to observe things this way." She looked at me and apologized like I was now on her team and came back to church until it all fell apart. It was the first time I openly admitted what others were seeing and reading was probably so.  And then I withdrew into denial again and continued to do what I perceived as my calling, because I still felt that this was the most correct view of the Bible and I guess we can expect drama and deceit.  I saw plenty of it in the NT account of the Church so why not?

As time when on, it just got worse.  The topics changed but the drama continued.  During the Receivership of '79 my denial reached new heights. We had to go to Tucson for the ministerial meetings because HWA had fled there and I simply was not going.  I could not stand this much longer.  A minister said to me ,"aw just go.  It will be fun."  He didn't mean "fun" in the typical way and it wasn't. I sat behind Gerald Waterhouse while he was trying to come up with some God inspired meaning for Tucson but he couldn't.  Or at least he didn't want the genuine one.  The name Tucson is derived from the Indian word, 'Chuk-son,' meaning village of the dark spring at the foot of the mountains.  Sounded right to me!

 Inside I was mess.  Outside I was ok and doing what I still thought I was called by a God to do.  After all, after my handicapped brother was born, Dad promised God if he gave him a "normal" son  (stop laughing you lurker!)  , God could have him for whatever he wanted.  No pressure there huh?  Good thing I proved not to have turned out normal!  That was close!

It was in the ministry I learned to drink.  I endeavor to not do that so much anymore as it just made feelings, fears and regrets worse.  Drinking is a subtle son of a bitch and I grew up around it but credit the church with refining my ability to turn to it at times.   I believe I was the most happy when I took my telescope out into the winter nights and just looked and wondered at it all much as I did as a kid.  I guess I'm still a kid at heart. 

One of my very best friends...

Pastoring in Kentucky and NY were probably the best years of ministry.  Wonderful people (except for the woman who put a deer rifle to my head) and I felt this is what I was called to be and do.  HWA was gone and stupid me thought the Tkaches may prove sane with a good dose of common sense.  Oh well....   Greenville, my last stop in the line,  was a nightmare for the most part.  Rancorous deacons and elders who all had enjoyed the last minister (who is now an Evangelist type in the Living Church of God) keeping them in the know about all the members problems and sins were not happy that I didn't think that was any of their local business and didn't do it, were not my friends.  In the transition between NY and SC I spent a week in a mental health facility  (I'm being kind to myself) for depression.  Now I know the "depression" was simply years of repressed anger that I felt I either had no right to express as a "minister" or the price of doing so would be higher than I was at that time willing to pay.  All the years of drama and trauma had come due.  I learned the hard way what escapism from reality can do for you and to you.  Outside I was still the minister in function only.  Inside I was finished and transitions can be messy and painful.

But in the end...when it is all said and done, reality is our friend.  The years of denial over my feelings about the Church , the Armstrongs, the Tkaches, the changes, the stupidity and recklessness, the misspending, misspeaking and mistakes had come to an end.  The end was forced on me but it was over.  I knew I was done when a local elder type in Greenville gave a far far too long sermon full of bullshit and self serving posturing said, with me sitting there,  "Brethren, you know this church is not being cared for!"  Whoa....Were it not for the fingernails dug into my thigh pushing me back in my seat by my former wife, I was going to stand , interrupt him and present him as the congregations new pastor.....and leave for good.   I wish I had.  Coupled with the previous weeks presentation to me of a faulty watch with a dead battery by Church Administration for 25 years of lurking through it all and a sermon by the visiting minister who told the congregation that topics I had presented to the church in sermons on the birth narratives of Jesus and such were not valid, I cracked inside.    I sent the watch back to the specific man who gave it to me and it was not long after it was over. A 9 pm call from this same person telling me I was terminated and to call personnel for details was received after I got home from a Bible study. I said, "That's it?"  He said call personnel tomorrow and I hung up.  That was the last contact I ever had again from a living breathing administrator in the then Worldwide Church of God. Curtis May, the head of the "Reconciliation Dept" (lol) did tell me he'd pray for me when I asked about retirement.  I asked him if that was the modern form of "be warmed and be filled," but he didn't answer me. 

What's the point?  This is my story of lurking over a 26 year period when I felt I still had to be where I was in the ministry because it was the right church and the right calling for me.  I was compliant and hopeful on the outside and a mess inside hearing and seeing what I simply did not want to admit to.  I now read what I once refused to read.  My college acquaintance, John Trechak, founder of Ambassador Report, which I denied like the plague, was correct.  He was ahead of his time and willing to pay the price and he did.  I know it is the same for you who come here and yet abide the gut feelings you have about your pastor Dave Pack and his views and demands he makes on your church.  I know those of you who lurk here want your Gerald Flurry to be correct, but your stomach still tells you something is very wrong.  You may attend UCG or LCG and feel the same way inside about many things but so want the church to be the church.  That's what I did until reality caught up to me.  It's a process and it's normal no matter how long it takes.  It's also painful and costly. I find most unwilling to go there ....for now.  I look at recent extended family pictures and I am not in them.  They don't care much for me for any number of reasons most related to divorce and my views on religion now.  I have family who can't figure out why I think the way I do.  And I can't figure out how they don't think I suppose. 

Ultimately, reality is our friend and what is can never be replaced with what I wish it was.  What goes around comes around.  Karma is a bitch.  Sitting before the facts as a little child and following them into whatever abyss they lead is a skill and not for the faint of heart or spirit.  Most look over the edge and recoil into denial because it feels safer and does until it doesn't.   That's what I did for a long long time. 

Coming to a site like Banned HWA is the modern form of getting your dissident letters in the mail of years past.  You can read here and get angry and defensive about your church affiliation or you can hear the other side of  what are important issues.  I have picked on Dave Pack a bit not because I don't like him personally, (We'd probably not get along well however) but because I don't like the ideas he has about himself, how he abuses scripture and how he browbeats the way too compliant into doing and believing things that are simply not true, not necessary and not going to end well. I suppose I still feel like some kind of pastor inside to those who will consider the bigger picture of theology and spirituality.  

I'm rambling a bit here.  I never write quite knowing what I am going to say at times.   I am processing some recent events personally and find it's all connected to that fateful day when, at 14, I went to a WCG church service and felt I had found something good.  And there was much good and many wonderful friends now mostly gone and unwilling to be in touch for this or that reason.  

Lurk if you must.  It is a symptom of a knowing that something where you are is not right but you probably don't want to believe it, for now.  Reality clarifies itself over time. You will learn that reality is your friend ultimately.  I hope we here can be of help. That is the goal.  Your feelings, stresses and doubts along with reconciling how you think in your head and how you feel in your stomach is a normal process.  You will find in time that , as I have often said, your stomach is telling you the truth...  Mine was, even when I wasn't listening. 

Bob Thiel Declares: I Am A Physical Leader!

Good ol'Bob, fresh back from Jerusalem, or was that his back yard with a Jerusalem green screen, is letting the world know that he is the ONE TRUE COG leader.  Unlike LCG, UCG, PCG, and others that are run by robots or automatron's, Thiel is the REAL thing!  It's true!  He says so!

As most readers now know, I am the physical leader of a group called the Continuing Church of God.

Bob then goes on to compare himself to Polycarp.  Polycarp was a real leader in the Christian church unlike Bob Thiel who is a self appointed wanna-be upstart that has become the laughing stock of COGland.

A few of the beliefs that Thiel claims he holds as did the early church are these:

• God’s Six Thousand Year Plan for humankind to rule itself was believed by early professors of Christ.

• Sunday was not observed by the apostolic and original post-apostolic Christians.

• The Ten Commandments were observed by the apostolic and true post-apostolic Christians–and in the order that the Church of God claims they are in.

• Tithes and Offerings were given to support the ministry, the churches, the needy, and evangelical travels and proclamation.

• Tradition had some impact on the second century Christians, but was never supposed to supercede the Bible.

• The Trinity was not a word used to describe the Godhead by the apostolic or second century Christians, though a certain threeness was acknowledged.

• Unclean Meats were eaten by the early allegorists, but not by true Christians.

• The Virgin Birth was acknowledged by all true ante-Nicene Christians.

Thiel then says this:

We in the Continuing Church of God are striving to best represent the most faithful remnant of the original Church of God that began on Pentecost in Acts 2 (c. 31 A.D.) and we believe and teach the doctrines of the original apostolic and faithful post-apostolic Church of God, and in particular, the Philadelphia-era of the Church of God.

A bastardized "gospel" message, such as what Thiel proclaims, that is unfaithful, denies Jesus, grace, justification, and mercy is not worthy of being followed.