Thursday, December 5, 2019

Don Ward: Are UCG Members Called to Prophesy?



Don Ward is back with one of his year-end encyclicals to his faithful followers in the United Church of God.  It has been a rough year for many UCG members as they are constantly being berated for not doing enough. There is that "gospel" that UCG assumes they are getting out to the world, though you would be hard-pressed to find anyone on the street who has ever heard of them.
God has not called you to just sit on the sidelines and watch the world go by. He expects you to be in the arena fighting the good fight of faith with all your might.
I am curious to know exactly when UCG has fought the "good fight".  Its leadership has been on the dole since they apostatized from the Worldwide Church of God in a fit of rebellion as they went from one paycheck to another paycheck.

Ward continues on with this about the "calling" UCG members are the recipients of.  One of the things UCG members must do is be baptized in order to be received into a relationship with Jesus Christ.  He then lists 5 things that church members are called into. You can quickly so who gets the short end of the stick with last billing, as usual.
Perhaps our greatest spiritual blessing is our calling. In order to enter into the covenant of sacrifice with God and Christ we must hear the word and respond to it (Romans 10:10-17). That is, we must repent, exercise faith in the sacrifice of Christ, be baptized and receive the laying on of hands. Do we grasp, understand and appreciate the significance of our calling? We have been called to: (1) the great battle of the ages; (2) the hope of the ages; (3) the work of God; (4) the Church of God; and (5) the body of Christ, the family and Kingdom of God. Do we remotely grasp, understand and appreciate the significance and importance of our calling?
Ward seems to imply that baptism is a requirement for salvation.  It is actually quite simple,
there is no external act that anyone needs to do for salvation.  Faith is the only criteria needed.  Romans 4 and Acts 15.

Ward then goes on to talk about a battle that's been going on for some time now, apparently. What he fails to realize is that battle has already been fought and won, but since Jesus gets continually short shifted, the law is necessary to trump him.

How can UCG members be focused upon the "hope of the ages" when the stone commandments are constantly being used to beat down members.  How can they find that "hope" when "he" is hardly ever discussed?
God has called you to bear fruit. Every person has been given some gift. Never underestimate the gifts that God has given you—to do so would be to take your calling lightly. God has not called you to just sit on the sidelines and watch the world go by. He expects you to be in the arena fighting the good fight of faith with all your might.
That "good fight" translates into tithe money. He should just admit it.
Never discount just your presence at Sabbath services. Through fellowship we draw strength and encouragement from each other.
Getting UCG members interested in attending services regularly has been a task for UCG. Given that UCG services are filled with elderly men preaching the same sermons they have preached since they preached them in the Worldwide Church of God, keeping members interested has been a hard task. Even the blue sock puppet Jelly has not been successful.

UCG members should not wait for the ministry to do anything, it is up to them, particularly the ability to prophesy.
God gives talents to every person (1 Corinthians 12:4-11). God expects us to use our gifts and talents to bear fruit: “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another” (Romans 12:6-10).
Seriously, can you imagine what would happen when some UCG members might stand up and say they had the sure word of prophecy? They would be drummed out of the church as fast as Rod Meredith kicked Bob Thiel out for making such a preposterous claim. How could some ignorant lay member have a word of prophecy when the top dogs can't get their act together and even pretend to make prophecies?

Better yet, when has Don Ward ever had the faith to prophesy?


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Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Peter M. Leschak: Getting back to fundamentalism


Peter Leschak is a graduate of Ambassador College Big Sandy is a long-time firefighter and respected author of numerous books on firefighting with many of them including snippets of his life in Armsgrongism.

Getting back to fundamentalism

Peter Leschak   


“Twenty-nine years ago, as the Voyager 1 probe neared the edge of our solar system bound for interstellar space, NASA directed it to photograph the Earth from 4 billion miles away. The picture is known as “the pale blue dot.” Our planet was barely detectable, about a single pixel in an image that astronomer Carl Sagan described as “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

From the lush surface of our world, its vulnerability is not apparent. By outer space standards, even the South Pole is extravagantly hospitable, but the “pale blue dot” expressed how infinitesimal we are in the cosmos. That Voyager scarcely picked out the earth from relatively nearby offers insight into how toilsome it is to find planets orbiting other stars. Despite the technological advances of the 20th century, the first “exoplanet” was not discovered until 1992.

It was a significant scientific achievement, but no surprise. As an astronomy enthusiast in the 1960s, I gazed at the stars and assumed our galaxy must be teeming with planets. Our sun had nine, and surely it couldn’t be the only one among the staggering multibillions of stars. That wasn’t a scientific deduction, but also no great conceptual leap for a child of the Space Age who had proof that the stars were other suns.

How wildly different for Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) the Renaissance philosopher and monk, who without observational evidence deduced that the stars were suns and they must have planets. He also said they were inhabited. One of his books, “On the Infinite Universe and Worlds,” contained the sentence, “There is in the universe neither center nor circumference,” thus anticipating by over three centuries the work of luminaries such as Albert Einstein. For that and other heresies, he was burned at the stake by the Inquisition.

Is it more remarkable that Bruno conjured such keen insights or that he terrified the Inquisitors? “Remarkable” in the literal sense, “worthy of mention.” After all, Bruno was acutely religious, tending to mysticism; his pronouncement could’ve been magical thinking — a wild lucky guess — no more scientific than my childhood assumption of “it must be” or an imaginative plot device by a sci-fi novelist. Why should people feel threatened? They were, and that is remarkable.

In my adolescence I belonged to a fundamentalist Christian sect, subject to a strict code of behavior regulating every facet of life. Outsiders aware of our rules and doctrines considered them strange and oppressive. Why live under a totalitarian regime that dictated menus, hairstyles, sexual practices and reading lists, not to mention thoughts and ideas? For most insiders, however, including myself, the system was congenial. For a while.

I attended one of the sect’s colleges, a bucolic campus in the East Texas woods, an alternate reality fashioned to reflect what the entire world was supposed to be when our god’s plan waxed triumphant. Yes, we sometimes chafed under the strictures, but what kept us more or less happily in the fold (and happiness was mandatory) was a potent sense of belonging, a heady glow of earned righteousness, and a conviction of personal and collective exceptionalism. Everything was certain and we were the chosen. I had yet to discern, as Judge Learned Hand noted: “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.”

Ironically, or perhaps inevitably, it was in that restricted, rigorously enforced dreamland where many members comprehended the power of ideas: They could indeed threaten. If you value seamless fraternity, undoubted rectitude and special consideration from the divine, then everyone must stay on the same page. Doubt is contagious and toxic, the “new” is shocking, dissenting opinions are destabilizing and it all sums up to heresy. Heresy is to an authoritarian community as a suicide bomber is to a crowded cafĂ©.

Being locked in the bosom of the sect was congenial because it was mentally safe and comfortable — so long as it remained isolated from change. But human society, the biosphere, and the universe itself do not long tolerate isolation and stability. Questions arise. Opinions develop. Attitudes evolve. Perspectives budge. Minds expand. Winds shift. Orbits stutter. Heresy happens, and the establishment implicitly understands that criticism must be expunged. But Bruno at the stake only expunged Bruno, not his ideas.

All attempts to preserve a closed society are eventually doomed. The universe will not abide it, no matter what society espouses. The Inquisition is gone and a bronze statue honoring Bruno stands in the Roman square where he was burned.

I once wrote a respectful but mildly dissenting letter to a member of the college faculty, a doctor of education. It was handwritten in black ink. His reply was in blue ink, and he wrote over my letter on the same page, thus literally blotting out my words with his own. Unfolding the sheet was chilling. The medium was certainly the message: your thoughts, it shouted, are not even worthy of a civil reply; they are contemptible. My letter was mutilated. Could my body be far behind? It’s not too far-fetched to imagine that only the consequences inherent in the secular legal system prevented it. In a small way, I had an inkling of Bruno’s plight.

The doctor’s reply was juvenile, and I was struck by a sentence in professor H.A. Overstreet’s book “The Mature Mind,” which was widely read at the time: “A person remains immature, whatever his age, as long as he thinks of himself as an exception to the human race.”

Ideas, of course, are intangible, but the fear they engender is rooted in the potential for action. If people act in response to an idea, conditions change. Witness the recent tipping point regarding same-sex marriage in the United States. We are resistant to change because during humanity’s tenure on this planet, change has often been deadly: volcanic eruptions, drought, plague, etc., could and did wipe out entire communities. The invention and propitiation of deities was one defense, but if the existence or efficacy of a deity (also intangible) was called into question, the anxiety of ideological conflict ensued. One more damn thing. Who needed it?

I despise the Inquisition, but can understand it was easier to honor Bruno with a statue in 1889 than it was to openly discuss his ideas in 1600. As a society we are now more tolerant, perhaps because we feel more secure. But is that sense of security slipping? If so, will that breed a resurgence of intolerance? Has it done so already?

Four centuries after Bruno’s execution, the roles of science and religion have reversed, at least in the West. The insights of science have steadily undermined religious faith, affording ever fewer knowledge “gaps” in which to fit the supernatural. No one has “all the answers,” but a literal interpretation of the Judeo-Christian Bible now demands an almost herculean capacity for denial. Millions of Americans manage to do it.

One of the forces that ushered President Donald Trump into power was the “evangelical vote.” The slogan “make America great again” is vague enough to encompass anything, but it seems that to many voters it means re-imposing the primacy of religion over science — breaching the wall of separation between church and state. Recall, the framers of the U.S. Constitution were no friends of theocracy; many were not even professing Christians. “If there were no priests,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “there would be no infidels.”

Contemporary evangelical fundamentalists view separation as an obstacle to their political aims, the bedrock of which is a theocracy, either de facto or de jure. The theocratic movement encourages the denigration of science — for example, the denial of climate disruption as a hoax, the demonization of the principles of evolution. For those who are puzzled by the devotion of Trump’s base, know that many of them believe he is a chosen instrument of God. Evangelical leader Mike Evans is typical when he compares Trump to the “Biblical Cyrus,” a heathen “used as an instrument of God for deliverance … using him in an incredible, amazing way to fulfill his plans and purposes.”

Theocrats regard science as a modern religion, opposed to more traditional faiths and therefore on equal footing before the law. Not so. Scientific claims are falsifiable — can be rigorously tested — doctrinal claims are not. In any free society, the secular and the religious must be legally distinct. If not, brace for the Inquisition. That is a lesson of history the Framers understood. All are free to express their religious ideals, but no one is free to impose them on others via government.

There is a giant instrument being designed — the High Definition Space Telescope — that could very well detect evidence of life on exoplanets. If so, Bruno wouldn’t be surprised to hear it, nor would he likely be shocked to know that religious fundamentalists are still at war with science.”

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Books by Peter M. Leschak


Tuesday, December 3, 2019

The Blurred Lines of Vic Kubik/LifeNets and His Office As President of United Church of God Are Causing Issues With People Today Due To His Fundraising Activities On Facebook




November 1999 we begin our 21st year as a charity.
LifeNets last annual report is posted on line at www.lifenets.org. SOON we will be finishing year 2019 and with that we are entering our 21st year as a charity. Our mission is to help those in need with college scholarships, fresh water, cattle and many other projects. Our mission is to promote self-sufficiency. Please help us celebrate and take advantage of this opportunity to DOUBLE YOUR DONATION at the same time.
Please donate $10, $20 or MORE for TWENTY years as a charity. Help us celebrate our goal of helping others. Beginning 8 AM Eastern standard time and 5 AM Pacific time, WHATEVER you donate on that day, December 3rd will be matched by FACEBOOK.  
CLARIFICATION ON GIVING TUESDAY FACEBOOK MATCHES:
The matching funds from Facebook only apply to donations given on Tuesday, December 3, 2019 after 8 am Eastern Standard Time. .Please donate early as the match will close when Facebook has reached its $7-million-dollar mark.
Thank you for making LifeNets your charity of choice.
Beverly Kubik
President LifeNets

The convoluted messy boundaries of the leader of the United Church of God and his personal charity, LifeNets, are causing a lot of questions on Facebook and elsewhere.

In July of 2016 we had an article about this blurring of the lines between UCG and Kubik's charity, especially when he is the president fo the organization.



Vic Kubik's LifeNets Church of God 
Many in UCG have always felt large discomfort with the blurring of the lines of UCG with LifeNets, the pet "ministry" of Vic Kubik.  Many question the man running two organizations that are suppose to be separate, but are they really?  LifeNets presents itself as a "humanitarian organization" to woo in the public while failing to disclose it is a Church of God related tool to encourage people to come over to the dark side.  Is Kubik and UCG too embarrassed to to say UCG is behind it and that it is a recruitment tool for  its "god", much like HWA started Ambassador Foundation because he was too embarrassed to say he represented the Worldwide Church of God?  While it has undeniably done some good, its motives are questionable.  
The article contained this: 
Those in Australia need to know (as do those in South Africa and most international locations) that their ‘church’ is not really an extension of the UCG in the USA — instead they are what Cincinnati calls the “LifeNets” churches –they are not funded by UCG any longer, have to be self-sufficient, and Kubik travels to them on LifeNets funds, not UCG money. This is why the moment the “airy” sermon is over, Kubik launches into a 45-minute LifeNets presentation to the congregation. Legally he has to do this because he is on LifeNets money which is being audited. The members are not in a Church, they are just laborers in a commercial LifeNets exercise, even thought they don’t know it. Council members who did not want Kubik as president (took the most re-balloting ever ) finally acquiesced over the information that it would save UCG money since Kubik was the only only one who could travel internationally on another budget (namely his private Corporation Sole LifeNets, which has made him the wealthiest Council member, and which he built in competition with the Good Works program, since that one wasn’t going to earn him anything personally).  
And yes, we are all supposed to give up our various ‘cultural backgrounds’ to put on the culture of Christ, but this man Kubik still can’t disconnect himself from a Ukrainian village he has never really lived in, now bending the truth to accommodate a small Pentecostal and trinitarian group there that clearly for over 20 years has shown no interest in joining with UCG. But,like the populism of Brexit and Trump, it’s beginning to all blow up: we have what we call the “parking lot church” in our congregation — it’s about what is said when everyone goes to their cars so the minister can’t hear them, and it’s about 50% of the congregation now that meets this way — outside. The moment someone stands up with some integrity and calls UCG out on all of this, the following is in place and ready to move.