Crackpot Prophet Says You Are A Laodicean If You Do Not Believe His Dreams Are From His God...WUT?

 

It's been a few days since we had our favorite self-appointed prophet to the Church of God featured here. Our day would not be complete without some wackadoodle comment from the Great Bwana to Africa and 299 Caucasians.

It still frosts his self-righteous butt that 99.99% of the Churches of God ignore the Great Bwana and refuse to heed his message, as convoluted as it is.

As the leader of the greatest Church of God in human history and the most highly educated man to ever lead a church, those that do not listen to him are labeled as the dreaded Laodiceans. Nothing frightens a wayward Church of God member more than being labeled a Laodicean and know in the back of the mind that the licking flames of the lake of fire are not too far behind.

According to the self-appointed prophet, these are the signs of wayward Laodiceans who have refused to follow him:

What are some things that many Laodiceans decide? 

 

God has not been using dreams to communicate in the 21st century, despite the view of the old Worldwide Church of God that God would use dreams in the future and the Apostle Peter saying they would be given by God in the last days. 

How dare we not recognize his nightmares as direct communication from God! Bad Laodiceans! Bad!!!  

God is not using any prophets in the 21st century yet, despite the Apostle Peter saying God would use them in the last days. 

According to the great Bwana, biblically illiterate church members who do not believe there should be prophets in the church are part of the problem today. 

Being comfortable with their current situation is more important than being willing to support the main Philadelphian remnant because of limited local congregations.

The Geat Bwana also is really perturbed that NO ONE and I repeat NO ONE in the COG movement supports him with their money.  COG members are not drawn to him because he has no local congregations in 99.99% of the United States and elsewhere. No one wants to sit in someone's living room and listen to two hours of the Great Bwana preach a boring sermon as he bounces in the chair and waves his arms.  

It is not necessary to learn to instruct many in this age, despite the prophecies in Daniel 11:33. 

 

It is okay to believe various prophetic errors.

All other COG leaders and prophets are wrong, except the Great Bwana to Africa. Laodicean COG members are being led astray by these false prophets. If they only would follow the Great Bwana, things would be ok and they would know the correct time to flee to the godforsaken deserts of Jordan. 

The 100% Failure Rate Of Prophecy In The Churches of God

In light of the recent post here about Gerald Weston's whitewashing of Herbert Armstrong, Rod Meredith, and the Church of God's abysmal track record on prophecy, I thought this would be a great separate thread.

Weston's explanation of HWA's 1975 in Prophecy booklet might be more believable if HWA hadn't already had a track record by then of making predictions and setting dates, which can be traced all the way back to early editions of the Plain Truth in the 1930s. For instance, the June 1934 edition of the Plain Truth had a chart in it where HWA labeled 1936 as the "end of the age." When that didn't happen, he simply kicked the can down the road a bit and made other predictions, and set other dates, much like Pack, Flurry, and others do today. For example, in the February 1938 Plain Truth, he declared Mussolini the "Beast" of Revelation, and in January of 1939 he further promoted this idea, saying that "MUSSOLINI UNDOUBTEDLY IS THE "BEAST" and "MUSSOLINI WILL FIGHT CHRIST!"

Weston also ignores the fact that HWA also promoted and taught the idea of 19 year time cycles, and made his own claims based on those time cycles. For example, in Chapter 24 of his Autobiography, he has this to say, 

"God set the earth, sun, and moon in their orbits to mark off divisions of time on the 

earth. One revolution of the earth is a day. One revolution of the moon around the earth is a lunar month (according to God’s sacred calendar). One revolution of the earth around the sun is a solar year. But the earth, the sun, and the moon come into almost exact conjunction only once in 19 years. Thus 19 years mark off one complete time-cycle!" 

He went on to use this statement to promote the idea that God timed his entry into the ministry based on the number of time cycles that had occurred since Pentecost of 31AD. 

It is both a double standard and rank hypocrisy to criticize the "speculations" of others, making the statement that "some never learn" while glossing over and excusing the same behavior in the very leaders you hold up as bastions of "truth" such as HWA and Meredith. 

It would be totally refreshing if just one of these guys was able to admit that HWA engaged in this behavior and was WRONG, as did Rod Meredith and others, and that we need to learn from the false claims and sins of our predecessors so we don't fall prey to repeating their mistakes. 

It is contradictory to claim out of one side of your mouth, as HWA did, that you were not called to "be a prophet" while also writing articles and booklets predicting specific events to be fulfilled by specific people, using titles such as "1975 in Prophecy" and also claiming that you are the fulfillment of an end time "voice crying out in the wilderness" as prophesied in Malachi 3:1. 

"John the Baptist was a voice crying out in the physical wilderness of the Jordan River area, preparing for the human physical Jesus' first coming to a material temple at Jerusalem, to a physical Judah. But that was a type, or forerunner of a voice "lifted up" (greatly amplified by modern printing, radio and TV), crying out in the midst of today's spiritual wilderness of religious confusion, announcing the imminency of Christ's SECOND coming as the spiritually GLORIFIED Christ, to His spiritual temple (the Church resurrected to spirit immortality)." Plain Truth Magazine, January 1980

If you claim you aren't a "prophet" that doesn't excuse you if you then go on to make false predictions, or engage in the same behavior that defines a false prophet.  

Concerned Sister

 In a second comment, there was this:

The date setting, and the abundant evidence of its ongoing denial, backpedaling, and rewrite is exactly why God would have to use a completely new and different group as His end time witness. Armstrongism has burned itself as a credible witness, and current members are just kidding themselves if they think otherwise. The credibility of other Christian groups has also fallen apart.

If you're just pulling into town from the feast, looking forward to a sabbath in your home town, and thinking to yourself "See? We have the truth about God's test commandment, the sabbath, so God will reveal His plans to us!", then you better wonder about the effectiveness of the sabbath as a signifier of God's True Church, because Armstrongism has a 100% failure rate in end time prophecy, dating way back to the WW-II era when HWA was preaching that the war would culminate in Armageddon, Hitler and Mussolini were the Beast, and Pope Pius was the AntiChrist. And, this was before Israel was even reborn as a nation, which was very necessary for the prophecies in Revelation to come to pass. For years, he denied that Hitler's body was Hitler, and preached that he was alive in South America, and would arise to complete the job. Sounds soooo much like a recent president, doesn't he? False leaders are always detached from reality!

And So It Begins: Church of God International, Another Petri Dish Feast Site

From Church of God International:

Subject: Fwd: Sabbath Services Cancelled

Hello Everyone,

Hope all are safely home from the FOT and doing well. However, due to an abundance of caution, we have decided to cancel Sabbath services tomorrow. Some of those who attended the FOT at Hot Springs have tested positive for Covid and many others have been in close contact and others are not feeling well and are otherwise potentially symptomatic.

We plan to resume our normal schedule with a great service, including a pot-luck and Sabbath School next Sabbath (10-9-21).

Please spread the word to anyone you think might not receive this email.

Thanks and see everyone next Sabbath!

Larry & Kitty

Gerald Weston: Making Excuses For The 1975 In Prophecy Booklet Lie

 

From Gerald Weston:

He later wrote a booklet titled 1975 in Prophecy. It was never intended to set that year as the date of Christ’s return, but instead was highlighting a significant milestone in the future as many others have done; for example, George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949, and William and Paul Paddock’s Famine 1975! America’s Decision: Who Will Survive?, written in 1967. Today we might highlight a future year such as 2050, not intending to imply that 2050 is a specific year during which we expect something earth-shattering to happen. But in the course of time, 1975 in Prophecy took on a life of its own. Some Ambassador College faculty began calculating, using 19-year time cycles, that the work of the Church could end in 1972 with the three-and-a-half-year period mentioned in Revelation taking us to 1975. 

How easily he glosses over the fact that Rod Meredith was the champion of the 1975 lie. 

It was taught to us in the Dayton area as FACT and we even had a sermon once where the minister outlined on a rolling blackboard on the stage and drew a chart right down to the month that we would flee. My mother faithfully copied this crap down and put it inside the kitchen cupboard where she crossed off the days till we were supposed to flee to Petra. This came straight from Pasadena. The fact that Weston denies that anyone thought this was a fact is a blatant falsehood.

I do not know when Mr. Armstrong began to consider that 1975 could be the year, but I do know firsthand that, as late as 1969, on the occasion of one of the Senior Dinners that he hosted in his home, he thought it possible for things to wrap up by then. At the same time, however, he strongly warned the Church not to set dates. And Dr. Meredith was already saying as early as 1968 that “the end of the Work in 1972” and “the return of Christ in 1975” were dates that would come and go without those expected events. 

 

When it was clear that 1972 was not the end of the Work, people looked for other dates and some concluded that the error was in subtracting the seven years of Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity from the 2,520 years from the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. This recalculation brought us to the year 1979 for the end of the Work, with Christ returning in 1982. That was nearly 40 years ago—obviously, speculators were wrong again.

There has never been a Church of God prophet that was part of the Armstrongite dispensation that has ever told the truth. Not one single one and that includes Bob Thiel, Rod Meredith, Ron Weinland, Dave Pack, and Gerald Flurry. 

Liars all.

Perhaps we can be forgiven such errors, as we are in the company of the Apostle Paul, who wrote, “Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). This certainly applies to some people, perhaps many of us, but Paul wrote to a contemporary audience, while God inspired it for all times. Paul did not set any specific dates as far as we know, yet it may seem in his epistles that he thought they were living very near to the end of the age—certainly not 2,000 years away from it! 

 

It is natural to want to know how long we have left to wait, and it is natural to hope that Christ’s return will be within our own personal lifetime. This natural tendency to speculate must be tempered by mature thinking whereby we learn from the past. It would seem that, given the history of the last 100 years, we should have learned not to attempt specific predictions. Dr. Meredith realized this, refusing to be specific, but when pressed for some indication he would say that he thought it would be seven to 17 years—and he repeated that for a decade or more, as a moving target. 

 

This is not a criticism of Paul, Mr. Armstrong, or Dr. Meredith, but it should be a lesson for all of us. Sadly, some never learn, and they go beyond simple speculation and count on specific dates. When one date fails to bring Christ’s return, they set another—then another, then another. And sometimes they become discouraged and leave the faith. While it is fun to speculate, the problem is that some people begin making important decisions based on their speculations: not furthering their education, not getting their teeth fixed, rushing into a poorly matched marriage, etc.

Oh, how they want to ignore this Bible quote:

Deuteronomy 18:22

If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.

Purge them from the church! Kick them to the gutter where they belong.

The False Prophet
13 “If a prophet or someone who has dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you, 2 and that sign or wonder he has promised you comes about, but he says, ‘Let us follow other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us worship them,’ 3 do not listen to that prophet’s words or to that dreamer. For the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. 4 You must follow the Lord your God and fear Him. You must keep His commands and listen to His voice; you must worship Him and remain faithful[a] to Him. 5 That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he has urged rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the place of slavery, to turn you from the way the Lord your God has commanded you to walk. You must purge the evil from you.

 

 

LCG Members Who Visited Other COG Feast Sites Had Succumbed To A Satanic Trap!

 

As usual in Living Church of Godland, members apparently are incapable of deciding where God has placed his name so that LCG can hold the Feast of Tabernacles. The wonderful and amazing GOVERNMENT of the LCG is the only one who can decide where God has placed his name. Though many times LCG  members have had to wonder what was God drinking that day when he decided on certain Feast sites! 

The fact remains is that humans beings in Charlotte decided where they wanted a Feast site that would have the widest appeal possible for their small group of members. God is not behind that decision-making.

It also seems that with every passing day that LCG members are getting more and more rebellious!  

The year 1961 was the first year the Church opened a Festival site in Squaw Valley, California—the second in North America in addition to the one in Big Sandy, Texas. I was absolutely brand new in God’s Church at the time and it seemed that there had been some controversy over the subject of how God places His name for the Feast, and I remember hearing a full sermon on the subject while on my way to the Feast. God has never left it up to the individual to determine where He “has placed His name.” God works through the government of the Church to make these decisions. 

 

Now this is important, dear brethren: Last year was obviously a difficult and disappointing year when large meetings were not always possible. In Mexico, Mr. Mario Hernandez and Mr. Cristian Orrego arranged 13 small in-home groups and tied them together with services electronically. I had the privilege of giving one of the sermons to all our Spanish-speaking brethren throughout Central and South America, as well as some who were there in person in New Bern, North Carolina. This is how and where God chose to place His name for His Spanish-speaking people last year. This was arranged by the Church under exceptional circumstances, not only to comply with government mandates, but also to guard the health of our members. Sadly, some self-willed individuals may have a problem with this, as they do with other decisions the ministry makes dealing with controversial issues. 

 

We are talking here of obvious exceptions, but we must not make the exception the rule. There does appear to be a trend among a few to think that where they keep the Feast is solely a matter of personal preference. If a Festival site is more than two or three hours away, some may simply think, Let’s keep it at home this year. Every year, we have members of other Church of God groups who want to attend with us because we are closer to where they live, and we know a few of our members think similarly—but is it the mind of God to just do what is convenient? 

 

I’ve talked in this letter about exceptions, but we must not fall into the satanic trap of thinking it is okay to decide on our own where God has placed His name, especially staying at home for mere “convenience” when there is no compelling reason to do so. And the same goes for attending Sabbath services. Let Us Come Together by Gerald Weston

How can anyone blame a COG member for staying home from a Feast site when they have heard the same canned sermon for decades at the Feast. Nothing new is ever spoken about by a truly inspired speaker. Just the same old COG shtick.