The Compassionate Philadelphia Church of God. Really?

Of all of the Churches of God out there in 2018 that lacks compassion, mercy and grace, it is the Philadelphia Church of God, led by Gerald Flurry and his band of Gestapo agents. From instructing parents to abandon their developmentally disadvantaged child at the mall so the state can take care of her in order for the parents have more money to send in, to its perverse no contact policy for members and exCOG members.  Countless articles here been posted here on Banned, on the Painful Truth and the Exit and Support site, about the vile practices of Gerald and Stephen Flurry and many of his Gestapo agent leaders.

David Vejil writes:

Are you a compassionate person? Compassion is a character trait we need to develop (1 Peter 3:8).

Our greatest example of compassion is Jesus Christ. Matthew describes Christ’s compassion in four separate accounts.

How, just how can PCG write such a thing when they blatantly ignore everything about Jesus. Their saviour has turned out to be Herbert Armstrong.  HWA gets more air time and print time that Jesus ever has in the last 20+ years of PCG's existence.  The qualities that Vejil writes below about Jesus is something that PCG has never accomplished and NEVER will!

In one of those accounts, Matthew records a time when Christ was followed by a large number of people into the desert. He “went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14). He continued doing so into the night. When the disciples advised Him to send the multitude away, Christ didn’t. Instead, He fed 5,000 through a miracle. Only after they were fed did He leave (verses 15-21).

It is amazing that He could have compassion on all those sick people even though He never once was sick. For humans, it is hard to have compassion on people in situations we have not experienced. Yet Christ has perfect compassion on us, even in the troubles we cause ourselves due to our sins.

PCG compassion for the sick is to bar them from proper medical care and abandoning their disabled child at the mall. 

How can we have that same compassion in our lives and build it in our families? Remarkably, God actually designed us to be motivated to build compassion.

Vejil says that our hearts are wired for compassion.  If that is true, then how are the hearts of the leadership of the PCG wired?

A 2013 University of Wisconsin study demonstrated that our bodies actually reward us for having compassion and acting on it. When we see someone suffering, our brain stimulates hormone glands to release chemicals that slow down our heart rate. These hormones prepare our bodies not to fight or flee, but to approach and soothe. When we act on these chemical changes, the body releases oxytocin, a feel-good hormone that encourages bonding.

Of course, even though our brains are hardwired for compassion, that doesn’t mean it is always natural to act on it. We can ignore these signals, just as we can sear our conscience (1 Timothy 4:2). Like all aspects of character, compassion must be cultivated with God’s power, through experience and practice.

That last sentence, while typical of COG thought, is not true.  I know plenty of agnostic and atheist people who are the most compassionate people you will ever meet. They do more in one week helping others than most of PCG has ever done in its lifetime.

Vejil continues:

This shows that compassionate thoughts lead to compassionate action. “It’s kind of like weight training,” Weng says. “Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion ‘muscle’ and respond to others’ suffering with care and a desire to help.”

God encourages His people to meditate (e.g. Psalm 1:2; 143:5; 1 Timothy 4:15). In the time you spend meditating, devote a portion to thinking about the suffering of others. This will make it easier to remember them in your intercessory prayers and to be more earnest and fervent in those prayers. Intercessory prayers are a powerful tool we can apply to using the compassion we have for others.

Above you see how PCG really shows compassion to others.  They just think about it and wish warm thoughts for others instead of doing anything.  Thinking those warm thoughts build their "compassion" muscles.

Vejil next says that learning compassion starts with training the children to understand it:

It is also important to teach compassion to our children when the opportunity arises. Children will often cause harm to others through misbehavior. As parents, we can use these occasions to build compassion in our children by getting them to understand not only that what they did was wrong, but to think about what they did from the viewpoint of the person they harmed. If you do this consistently when opportunities arise, it will develop your children’s sensitivity to the suffering of others and a desire to remedy that suffering.

Tell that to the child who's parents told by a PCG minister to abandon their child at the mall so they could stop spending so much money on her.  How can children in PCG learn compassion when they are not allowed to visit their grandparents or friends who are no longer PCG members. Tell that to children of families the church has split up. Some standard of compassion that is!

When we have trials, we can cultivate compassion by thinking about those we know who are suffering trials, and then using that to motivate us to encourage one another with cards or encouraging fellowship. This works even if the trials are not similar. Any serious trial will bring us to our knees to God and show how powerless we are. It is that heart-wrenching experience that many of us share. And while it is easy to think only about our own suffering, if we use God’s help to think about others, then we can use our trials to build and unify God’s Family.

These studies show what can be achieved on a human level, but with God’s Spirit, we can elevate our compassion to that of Jesus Christ!

So there you have it.  Think warm fuzzy thoughts of others and you will just be like Jesus.  Forget ever working in a homeless shelter or cleaning vomit and shit off of a drug addict.  Or sitting down to dinner with a prostitute or a person suffering from AIDS.  Nah, just think warm fuzzy thoughts.  Never worry about putting real faith into action and bring a foretaste of the Kingdom you claim to be preaching boldly.

Oh Noes! Two Sabbath's In A Row! What's A Church Member To Do?

Since tomorrow is Pentecost in most Christian churches and in most Church of God's around the world, except for those in blasphemer James Malm's cult who will be keeping it on May 27, it also presents a predicament for Church of God members who find their lives having to deal with two sabbaths in a row.  Two days without TV, or movies, or doing other fun things you might do on a regular Sunday.  For some, including children it is two days of taxing boredom.  First, being bored with sermons on Saturday by men who have recycled their sermons so many times they know them by heart, to now having to sit and listen to the same canned sermons on Pentecost.

Never fear though, God's ONLY end-time prophet and the only TRUE Church of God leader has the solution to all of that boredom:

So, you have two Sabbaths in a row and perhaps you wonder what you and/or your family should do?

Well, in addition to study, prayer, and church services, there are various quizzes and Bible games at the COGwriter website.

One is the Pentecost Quiz, developed by Michael Thiel.

A very popular one is the Who Wants to be a Biblical Millionaire? quiz, also developed by Michael Thiel.

It is an interesting game. It has over 1,000 different questions. Think of it as an entertaining way to assist your doctrinal memory.

Also, since it is the Pentecost season, perhaps you may wish to take Michael’s earlier (less sophisticated technically) Pentecost Quiz.

I believe that the quizzes and animations help reach a wider audience than just the doctrinal and news articles here.

We also have the Study the Bible Course available. 

I can solve that problem.  Read Banned! I can guarantee you will NEVER be bored like you are when listening to jazz hand's Bob!

Regrets...We've Had a Few

I regret 

"Coming into the Truth"

Every now and then, usually  in the middle of the night,  I wish I had never heard of Herbert W. Armstrong, Garner Ted , the Worldwide Church of God and the Wonderful World Tomorrow

We're taught to try to live life without regret. But why? Using her own tattoo as an example, Kathryn Schulz makes a powerful and moving case for embracing our regrets.

...and too

Dear Cartoon Bob: Call me. Sincerely-Lawrence M. Krauss

Reviewed by Ray Jayawardhana

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published February 17, 2012 Updated May 11, 2018

For better and for worse, these are heady times in cosmology. Over the past two decades, astronomers have pinned down the age of the universe quite precisely (13.72 billion years), confirmed its geometry as perfectly flat through exquisite maps of the Big Bang's faint afterglow, and found that its expansion is speeding up rather than slowing down. Three researchers shared the physics Nobel Prize for the latter discovery just last month.

Yet, embarrassingly, cosmologists have also come to realize that everything we see – the myriad celestial bodies that our telescopes reveal – constitutes a tiny sliver of what makes up the cosmic pie. Mysterious "dark matter," undetected except through its gravitational tug on galaxies, count for much more. The rest, a whopping 73 per cent, is in the even more bizarre form of "dark energy," the dominance of which dictates a dismal long-term future for the universe.

In A Universe From Nothing, Lawrence Krauss, celebrated physicist, speaker and author, tackles all that plus a whole lot else. In fewer than 200 pages, he delivers a spirited, fast-paced romp through modern cosmology and its strong underpinnings in astronomical observations and particle physics theory.

Other popular science books have covered many of the same topics, but Krauss's slim volume is bolder in its premise and more ambitious in its scope than most. He makes a persuasive case that the ultimate question of cosmic origin – how something, namely the universe, could arise from nothing – belongs in the realm of science rather than theology or philosophy. What's more, he goes on to argue, our current understanding makes it quite plausible that the universe indeed emerged from quantum nothingness, thus dispensing with any need for divine intervention. There is free lunch after all.

The book traces its own beginnings to a lecture that Krauss delivered in 2009. The video of the lecture has netted nearly a million views online, becoming something of a YouTube hit (though not compared to a clip of a piano playing cat, with 23 million views). So it is not surprising that the book at times has the tone of a lecture: You can almost hear the author's gleeful voice and picture a wry smile. Some sentences run long: I counted one at 107 words. Exclamation marks are sprinkled liberally. There are delightful historical anecdotes and humorous commentary. My favorite story is about the amateur astronomer who persuaded Einstein to publish "the results of a little calculation" on how gravity could act as a lens, the basis of techniques now used by researchers to weigh distant galaxy clusters and to find planets around other stars.

The author does not shy away from tackling complex physical concepts, and often finds clever ways to illustrate them. Even if you don't feel fully conversant with eternal inflation (of the cosmological, not economic, variety) or false vacuum energy by the end, you will almost certainly be rewarded with interesting insights, and a sense of awe, if you persist. Krauss explains how scientists know what they claim to know, for example, laying out the multiple, compelling lines of evidence for a hot Big Bang. He is careful to delineate what is well supported by experiments or observations and what is at the more speculative end of the scientific discussion.

A Universe From Nothing is not always an easy read – unless you are a science buff familiar with some of the lingo and the ideas – but it is surely a very rewarding one to plow through. The many fans of Krauss will devour it, and rejoice. Others, picking up a cosmology book for the first time, perhaps after watching Big Bang Theory or curious about what's new in astronomy, would find it demanding, but also mind-blowing. Those who feel the need to invoke a supernatural cause for the origin of the universe may – should? – find it disturbing.

"Changing by what we mean by things is called learning. It doesn't happen in theology but it does happen in scholarship."

Lawrence Krause-A Universe From Nothing

The Big Bang or Breaking Wind? COG Prophet Has The Answer!

Almost arrested, but not arrested Elijah Amos, Joshua, self-appointed, bitter, Bawana Bob Thiel
is back with another outstanding video cartoon that is GUARANTEED to make all the youngsters out there do a double take and immediately join his African church.

This time around, Bawana Bob is imagining himself as the world's foremost authority on the Big Bang. If you were never a believer in evolution you probably will be after watching this mess. Bawana Bob is living proof that evolution is real.



According to Bawana Bob:

Colleges and universities teach variations of a godless 'Big Bang theory' as science. But is it scientific or simply the musing of scientists? The late Dr. Stephen Hawking stated that there was nothing before the Big Bang. Is it logical that nothing became everything? What should have happened then according to scientists? What happens to radioactive materials like uranium? What does the Bible teach about errors called science? Is God's existence more logical than a godless 'Big Bang'? Which has more actual proof? In this animation, a university student asks a professor questions and provides information that students and those out of school should know.