Dave Pack: Tell No Lies

Gerald Flurry: The book that the whole world will soon be reading

In 2010, the Philadelphia Church of God published a book about Herbert Armstrong and his prophecies, all of which Flurry claims have come true. 

The very first chapter in the book claims "Decades of accuracy in global forecasting"

"The result was amazing. The sheer number of prophetic statements made by Mr. Armstrong and his editorial team, and their accuracy, will astound you. This booklet is by no means exhaustive. But it does pretty well encapsulate what the Plain Truth was about for more than 50 years."

"He Was Right will make your hair stand on end! But it will also build your faith as you read, study, and master it. You will know that God is bringing to pass exactly what He said He would."

"Revelation 1:1 says, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.” God the Father gave this revelation to show His servants what is going to happen. He gave it to Christ, and Christ gave it to an angel, and that angel gave it to God’s man. In this end time, Mr. Armstrong received that revelation. 

Think about the fact that God the Father revealed this truth! What would happen if we didn’t show the world all that the Father has shown us? Receiving this revelation is an honor and a responsibility!"

This book has now taken its place right up there next to Mystery of the Ages as required reading for PCG members.  This book is so important that they need to memorize it.  Your faith depends upon it.  Um, NO!

"Ninety-five percent of God’s people have turned their back on God. They have said, “We’re not going to show the world this revelation—we want to be part of the world instead!” What is God going to do with those people?  

And what does God think of those precious few who will stand up and show the world what He has shown them? I encourage you to read He Was Right and really get it in your mind and memory. It will build your faith! 

It won’t be long before the whole world is reading that booklet. 

Forget Jesus, but memorize and inculcate another idiotic PCG book. Typical Armstrongism.

You can also read about the many prophecies of Herbert Armstrong, Meredith, Waterhouse, Hoeh and others here.

We Have Less Than One Year Left Till Tribulation Begins

If there is anything on your bucket list that you want to do before the Germans come over and put you in concentration camps, you had better do it now!  According to the official Church of God Chief Pharisee, the end is to come before the end of 2019.  Or maybe 2020.  Or 2021, or 2022, or 2023, or 2024, 0r 2025, or 2026, or....you can get your bags packed so you can head off to Pella with the Chief Pharisee so he can make your 3 1/2 years there a living hell.

Chief Pharisee and official bastardizer of the law, James Malm has this prophecy for 2019:

At this time all events are lining up for the 42 month great tribulation to begin at the end of 2019, or if things go slowly at the end of 2020.  

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to call an election with a polling date in late May.  The logic is that there will soon be a general war and he can use the Independence Day festivities to celebrate the defeat of Israel’s enemies and generate an election result giving him a strong mandate to control the Trump Middle East Peace Process.  

This year the Israeli Independence Day by the modern Rabbinic Calendar is May 9 2019 or by the internationally used Papal Calendar May 14th.  

If Bibi gets his way there will be war in early 2019 followed by elections in late May or June. 

Once the confusion of war has settled and new governments have been set up, the Trump Peace Initiative will be unveiled.  US and International officials have been working very hard consulting parties throughout the entire region to put together a peace deal.  This deal is actually a completed basic peace deal which would be put in place with more advanced issues to be discussed according to a rigid time table.   Whether the miracle worker is set up in the Vatican in late 2019 and the tribulation begins at the end of the year or takes another year will depend on God’s will.  

While acknowledging that things could go slowly and take another year, I have no choice except to do everything possible to prepare the brethren in case this does indeed come in 2019.

Adult Sabbath School: YHVH Plays Second Fiddle

One of HWA's favorite sermons, ok his only one, was about God being a "Uniplural" Elohim.  From this it was but a short hop to "God is a family" and someday we would become God "as God is God" and "There were two trees....."  Wrong....terribly wrong!

El is the original Most High God in the Old Testament, borrowed from the local Canaanite religion and the Elohim (the plural part)  were His Council of the Gods. It is this Council of the Gods that El is talking to when He says, "Let US make man in OUR Image..."  and it is El who gets nervous when Adam and Eve eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and says in Genesis 3:22 

"And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, (El and The Council of the Gods) knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." You see, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil along with the Tree of Life were God Food Trees. They were not for humans consumption. Humans were merely to be the worker bees for the gods in the original Sumerian myth later given a Hebrew twist. . Both the knowledge of good and evil and eternal life were reserved for the gods. However, why then Adam and Eve sinned by eating of the Tree before they knew it was evil to do is beyond most. None of this has anything to do with El talking to the one who would later become Jesus of the New Testament.

HOW ON EARTH DID THIS SCRIPTURE GET LEFT IN THE BIBLE?

"Contrary to these biblical traditions that suggest an assimilation between Yahweh and El, there are other passages that seem to indicate that Yahweh was a separate and independent deity within El’s council. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 is one of those rare biblical passages that seemingly preserves a vestige of an earlier period in proto-Israelite religion where El and Yahweh were still depicted as separate deities: Yahweh was merely one of the gods of El’s council! This tradition undeniably comes from older Canaanite lore.

Deuteronomy 32:8-9

When the Most High (’elyôn) gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated humanity, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of divine beings. For Yahweh’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.  (YHVH was merely one of the Divine Beings at this point and given his people to be the god over, i.e The God of Israel.)

There are two points to take away from this passage. First, the passage presents an apparently older mythic theme that describes when the divine beings, that is each deity in the divine counsel, were assigned and allotted their own nation. Israel was the nation that Yahweh received. Second, Yahweh received his divine portion, Israel, through an action initiated by the god El, here identifiable through his epithet “the Most High.” In other words, the passage depicts two gods: one, the Most High (El), is seen as assigning nations to the divine beings or gods (the Hebrew word is elohim, plural “gods”) in his council; the other, Yahweh, is depicted as receiving from the first god, the Most High, his particular allotment, namely the people of Israel. Similarly, in another older tradition now preserved in Numbers 21:29, the god Chemosh is assigned to the people of Moab.

The Divine Council

Other biblical passages reaffirm this archaic view of Yahweh as a god in El’s council. Psalm 82:1 speaks of the “assembly of El.” Psalm 29:1 enjoins “the sons of El” to worship Yahweh, and Psalm 89:6-7 lists Yahweh among El’s divine council.

Thus there seems to be ample evidence in the biblical record to support the claim that as Yahweh become the supreme national deity of the Israelites, he began to usurp the imagery, epithets, and old cultic centers of the god El. This process of assimilation even morphed the linguistic meaning of the name El, which later came to mean simply “god,” so that Yahweh was then directly identified as ’el—thus Joshua 22:22: “the god of gods is Yahweh” (’el ’elohim yhwh). "  http://contradictionsinthebible.com/are-yahweh-and-el-the-same-god/

With this in mind we can also better understand the rather enigmatic but well known verse in Exodus 20:5 which warns Israel not to make any graven images etc …"Because I the Lord YOUR God, am a jealous God."   Even as a kid I wondered why God was jealous. Jealous of what?  Other gods evidently and the text can better be understood as meaning "You shall not bring any other gods into my presence, for I the Lord YOUR God am a jealous God."  In other words, there were gods aplenty. Just don't bring them into the territory of YHVH. 

Even the God of the Old Testament evolved over time. Original  Polytheism lost out to Monotheism. Eventually YHVH overtook El and became the "one true God."  But in the beginning it was not so.

COG: Future Rulers of Church and State?

Rulers of Church and State? They won't be ruling over a Hamster!

So they think they are going to rule "Church and State". 

These are the words of certain Armstrongism leaders who think they somehow are qualified to be world leaders. Who somehow think they are the heirs of the Kingdom of God under Jesus Christ. They believe they are preparing to be world government administrators and leaders in their "World Tomorrow". They honestly believe Jesus Christ is going to appoint them as the highest rank of rulers and leaders in what they call "The World Tomorrow". 

Yes, they do. I know, because I once thought as they did, and acted as they did. I sat in their shoes, in their worldview. I don't doubt for a second they believe - with their whole minds - that somehow, this is their destiny. That they are earning and qualifying for the corner office and highest positions on the 4th floor of Universal Headquarters of Kingdom, Incorporated. Yes, they believe this. 

They believe that because every seventh day, and every festival time, their gatherings and their method of worship are exactly what God demands and requires of His people. They believe, that because of their ties to their magnificent End Time Apostle who Restored All Things, and their obedience to the Restoration, that if they hold fast to that Faith once Delivered, that they will hold such magnificent offices that they will be right "up there" with Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and in their minds, Herbert, Garner Ted, Rod, Raymond, and all of the other pioneers of Armstrong's short-reigned movement. They think these things because this is what they have accepted as truth, and have committed their lives to. They think these things because to think otherwise would make their entire lives a lie. To think otherwise would be - to them - unconscionable. 

Yet by this train of thought, they not only ignore the deep, spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ, but they also ignore the entire core and foundation of the entire Gospel they think they proclaim. They ignore the countless failures that they proclaim as present truth. They ignore the harm they cover like a cat covers its dung in the litter box. They reason their way around any evidence that completely refutes their viewpoints. They instead ingest a toxic diet of pride, hubris, power, lust, mammon, arrogance, and abuse and spew it all over well-meaning members with the force and smell of a bad night's drinking binge. They do this unashamedly, and unapologetically. They do this blind and deaf to any reason, to any logic, to any emotion, or to any evidence of truth. They are intoxicated with the delusions of power and the poisons of the drug of brainwashed thinking and cult mentality. They think they act in love, but stab their claws deep into the hearts of the shackled and the chained, thinking they are holding them to ordained Law and divine submission, not seeing the dungeons and depth of depravity they tie their victims to, and as starving vampires, suck the living life and energy out of their victims while energizing themselves with their lives. 

While molesting the Gospel of Jesus Christ with their depravities, and spitting on the face of the Lord with their doctrines of satanic nightmares, they sit in their high lives relishing in their "blessings" and "favor" from the spiritual extortion of their victims. As we have read, many have, under the full duress and victimization of their abusers, entered the depths of depression and anxiety due to being cut off from their loved ones. Many have taken their own lives because there is no longer any reason to love in their own minds. Others sit there as lifeless drones, listening to rehashed garbage over and over and over again. Others sit there and take the berating, uncompassionate, loveless "authority" of their spiritual "overseers", never measuring up and always not doing enough. Most sit under the threat of punishment and disfellowshipment for their mistakes, always fearing their loss of salvation or not "qualifying" enough to make it, and stay restrained by their slave masters because they fear if they leave what little they have will be taken from them. They do this because they have bought into the lies which came from Herbert himself and have been taught over and over again by his hirelings. 

God has said in his word that those who want to be the greatest must become the least. He has said that those who want to rule must become servants. He has said if you want to be rich, give to the poor. He has said that he is looking for those who are the hands and feet of Jesus. God has said to feed the hungry. To clothe the unclothed. To visit the jailed. And to nurse the sick. 

God has condemned the love of money, and the advancement of sordid gain. He has condemned those who take advantage of the widows and the fatherless. Those who take advantage of the poor, or make merchandise of the brethren. He has spoken time and time again, over and over again in the scriptures about the importance of the fruits of the Spirit, and the manifestation of love in His people to God and to man. He has said over and over again the importance of mercy, of grace, of forgiveness, and of truth. He has said that His people would humble themselves, and look not to worldly possessions, but spiritual discernment and God's guiding Spirit. 

But what do we have? What do we have in the Church of God scene? 

We have leaders who build compounds and mansions. Who take their members for everything they have for what? For jet aircraft. For trees. For BMW's, and gemstones. For buildings laden with crystal and Steinways. For the finest desks and offices, suits and ties. For posh surroundings and expensive dinners. For trips, and for the best Feast-cations. Instead of embracing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and his ministry of love - they've traded it all in for mammon and selfish ambition and wickedness. And they seem to be blind, deaf, and mute to it all. 

They think they're going to rule church and state? They are not qualified to rule a hamster or a gerbil, much less any sort of world government! Anyone who has any knowledge of the words of Jesus Christ knows they are making a sham out of the Gospel, and perpetuating an ongoing scam. The only reason why they keep going is that there are people who continue to buy into the lies and the untruths that these false prophets, teachers, and ministers have convinced them to believe. 

These "ministers" - no matter what they say or believe in their delusions - are not qualified, nor will they have any part of the rule of God's people, since they refuse to obey and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, and instead embrace the shadows that pointed to Him. They don't exhibit the love or compassion that marks a servant of Jesus Christ. They live in a make-believe world of empty threats and empty words. I will say it again. The only authority they have is the power of deception to those who submit themselves to such deception. Otherwise, they are just weak men who make a mockery of the Lord they claim to serve and know. 

Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest". And there are thousands of members of the COG's who absolutely require rest for their souls and minds and hearts. A rest that cannot be found in one physical day out of the week no matter how perfectly they observe it  - but only in Jesus Christ's indwelling spirit. That is the promised Rest that's available, if only people would take the hand of their Savior and enter into it, and run from the lies and the shackles and the chains.

submitted by SHT