Commercial Break: "Umm, excuse me! That Male Singing Artist Has LONG HAIR!

 

 Anonymous, in a previous post of inspirational Christmas music, noted...

"It's a sin for a man to have long hair"

I Corinthians 11:14

“Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?”

Um...no. Actually, quite the opposite

I Corinthians 11:6

"For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head."

Nature's Female Disgrace!

Human Female Disgrace!

 16If anyone is inclined to dispute this, we have no other practice, nor do the churches of God.

"I dispute this..."

...as do I

Well then... 

Actually, scripture does not give the penalty for disputing this concept with the Church. Eternal Damnation? Disfellowship?  Can't be an Apostle. No Deaconship for you?  Then YOU bring watermelons to the Church picnics?  Ok, Whatever! Do what you want? Just sayin'?

And too...

In the Old Testament, Samson (Judges 13:5, Judges 16:17) was a Nazirite who did not cut his hair. Samson was a mighty warrior until Delilah cut his hair. Samuel's mother Hannah made a vow not to cut her son's hair if God answered her prayer for a son (1 Samuel 1:11).

PS Bobashorthair is currently agonizing over this issue and that Jesus was surely not black. 

https://www.cogwriter.com/news/church-history/did-jesus-look-like-the-common-depictions-of-him-was-he-black/

Cleaning up Jesus for the modern world or "according to the scriptures"?  

...and now we return you to our normally scheduled posts

Oh Holy Night

Gerald Weston Calls Fast Due To Rumors Of War, Variants, Immorality, Sex, More Sex And The Gays

 

Ah, the Church of God, never one to leave a subject go to waste without interjecting sex into it. Gerald Weston is all bothered by the different variants sweeping the world, rumors of war in Ukraine and elsewhere, and far too many people committing immorality in the world. Leave it to the gays and conspiracy theories to get the COG all riled up, so much so that regular church members are now calling for the LCG to proclaim a fast.

For a New Covenant Christian, fasting is not something mentioned as a requirement or an expectation of members. There is nothing in the epistles at all about fasting and when it is mentioned it is only in passing.

In the NT as a whole there is little explicit instruction on fasting; it is simply mentioned occasionally (and never in the epistles) as something Christians sometimes did. Jesus himself fasted (involuntarily?) in the wilderness (4:2), but there is no other record of his doing so subsequently, and indeed it was the lack of fasting by him and his associates which was commented on in 9:14, though in his reply Jesus does envisage his disciples fasting at a future date (9:15). In Acts we are told of prayer and fasting on two occasions as an accompaniment to important decisions (Acts 13:2–3; 14:23), but not of any regular pattern of fasting. . . . Not until Didache 8.1 (late first century?) that we find instruction on regular fasting for Christians—twice a week, like the Pharisee in Luke 18:12. (The Gospel of Matthew, 254)

Armstrongism has always looked at fasting as a way to influence its god into doing what they expect it needs to be doing to make the world right for COG members. Very seldom is a fast ever called for the introspection of members' own lives and shortcomings without drawing into the fast some church crisis or issues the church is facing. When those kinds of fasts are called it is because COG leadership is blaming the members for church troubles. 

Dear Brethren, 

 

The last two years have been inconvenient for many and difficult for others. Some of us have lost family and/or friends due to the coronavirus. As I write this, we are seeing another variant sweeping around the world. If South Africa and elsewhere are examples, while extremely contagious, Omicron may not be nearly as dangerous as the recent Delta variant. Time will tell. 

 

In addition, 2022 holds out the specter of major wars. Rumors and actions indicate the potential for conflicts between the Ukraine and Russia, Taiwan and China, and Iran and Israel. Whether shooting wars erupt in any, or all, of these areas remains to be seen, but any one of these could draw other countries into the fray and things could get very messy. 

 

Immorality is spiraling downward and our Israelite nations, especially, have lost all sense of biblical morality. Our nations are becoming more like Sodom and Gomorrah and the time before the flood with each passing year. In the Church, we must understand that we are not insulated from the course of this world—as guided by the prince of the power of the air—just because we have been baptized (Ephesians 2:1–2). Acceptance of immorality, rising anger levels, divisions, and getting caught up in wild conspiracy theories do affect some of us—perhaps all of us more than we are willing to admit.
Everything, including morality, has become political, and it is difficult to separate the two. Yes, we ought to be against abortion, the LGBTQ movement, and other woke ideologies, but we must stay out of the politics of it all. Members of the Living Church of God must come out of this chaotic world and remain focused on our mission—to preach the good news of Christ’s coming Kingdom and to warn mankind, especially the Israelite nations, of why our world is in so much trouble and how it will only get worse unless we change direction (Matthew 24:14; Ezekiel 33:1–7).

Rand Millich, one of our Council members, passed along the question from a member who asked when the next Church-wide fast might be called. Those of us here in Charlotte agreed that it would be good to call for one, given the turmoil in our world. Therefore, I am calling for a Church-wide fast for the Sabbath of January 22, 2022. If you are new to the Church, calling for a special day of fasting and prayer is supported by biblical precedents (Esther 4:16; Ezra 8:21; Nehemiah 9:1; Acts 14:23).

Members often ask what the purpose is for a fast when the Church calls for one. The purpose of fasting is to draw near to God by humbling ourselves and confessing our sins (Psalm 35:13; Daniel 9:3–5). It will do us well to pray and meditate on what is happening around us and evaluate how much this world of confusion is affecting us personally. It is a time to step back and focus on the purpose of our calling and cast aside the distractions that so easily beset us. Paul admonishes us to be circumspect, to look around and be wise. Please read all of Ephesians 5:1–21 as it certainly applies to us.

Since this fast is not the set-in-stone date of Atonement, a few congregations or individuals may have to choose an alternate day near January 22. We have a few Tomorrow’s World Presentations already scheduled for that day and it would be appropriate for members in those areas to fast on a different day. There may be other extenuating circumstances for a few, but most of us will fast that day and I will plan to give a special livestreamed sermon that Sabbath. In the meantime, let us meditate on who we are and who we should be and pray for one another, as many are going through difficult trials.

Sincerely, in Christ’s service, Gerald E. Weston

 

God as God is God

 

 

“God as God is God”:

The Armstrongist Concept of Human Destiny

By Neo

We are to be in His same IMAGE - as He is, NOW! We are to be put on HIS SAME PLANE…
-- Herbert W. Armstrong, “Just What Do You Mean ... BORN AGAIN?” pp. 42-43, 1972

God then purposed to reproduce himself, through humans made in his image and likeness…
-- Herbert W. Armstrong, “Mystery of the Ages” p. 94, 1985

 

“God as God is God” is a phrase that I first heard back in the Seventies in the Worldwide Church of God (WCG). I don’t know its origin or history. The only person I ever recall using the phrase was Ron Kelly. I never heard Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA) use it. But it seemed to be a theologically vetted phrase within the WCG and is equivalent to the published statements made by HWA cited above. Nobody ever tried, that I know of, to interdict Kelly’s use of the phrase as if it were heresy. Its meaning is clear. It means having precisely the same attributes that God has – no shortfalls anywhere. And Ron Dart stated on an audio tape that used to be in the Roy Hammer Library on the Big Sandy campus that we might all one day get to create a planet, populate it with humans and then die for them. (I listened to this statement and now cite it from memory so it will not be verbatim.) So it was quite clear what was intended by this phrase. Armstrongist doctrine asserted that the saved had the destiny of becoming God just like the Creator of the Cosmos – no less.

How HWA exegeted this alarming concept can be found in online archives of WCG publications. The purpose of this brief article is to demonstrate that this Armstrongist dogma is illogical and not supported by scripture. It is recognized in the Christian movement that man has a divine destiny. This goes by different names: Divinization, Sanctification or Theosis. But nowhere is it claimed that man will be ‘God as God is God.’ The reasons why are straightforward.

1. God is uncreated. He was not created by some yet greater being. God is, therefore, uncaused. Nobody caused him to come into existence. This sets him apart from all of his creatures who are contingent on him. God is a necessary being and all of his creatures are contingent beings. God cannot create a being that is uncaused or uncreated like himself. That is illogical. To believe that God is “reproducing himself” or creating creatures that can exist at “his same plane” is a violation of logic at the a priori level.

2. God has donated existence to all he has created. He alone is self-existent. HWA recognized self-existence as an attribute of God. Were God to cease to exist, all contingent creations would cease to exist. Paul stated, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” This clearly identifies our contingent relationship with the necessary God. This also means that God alone is really eternal. Though this is merely hypothetical, a Christian in the resurrected state would have only conditional immortality because we all have our being within God and are contingent on his existence.

3. But what if we cast inviolable logic aside and hypothesize that God can somehow “reproduce” himself by creating beings that exist at the same ontological “plane” as himself. The outcome would be that God would just be one God among many Gods. Each created God would be God as God is God – co-equal with the original God. There is no known pathway in scripture to this outcome. Instead in the Old Testament, God states, “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. (Isaiah 44:6)’” And in the New Testament we have, “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:6)” This does not sound like a God who intends to immerse himself in a crowd of co-equal peers.

HWA made a category error in formulating his doctrine pertaining to the ultimate human destiny. He did not recognize that God is of a different category than resurrected and glorified human beings. Instead he argued that human beings are of the God “kind” – a term he appropriated from biological statements made in Genesis. There is a God “kind,” if that term has appeal, and it contains one essential being and will never contain any more such beings. It is likely that his unorthodox apotheosis of man seemed plausible to him because of his background interpretation of the anthropomorphisms of the Bible as literal. He posited a god who is very much like a human at the outset.

I do not assert that HWA developed this doctrine with intentional heresy in mind. I believe he just did not give the necessary consideration to the nature of God. I searched a large archive of Plain Truth magazines online and found the term “uncreated” in reference to God used one time and it was in a quotation of a statement made by a Catholic bishop. The issue just did not fall with HWA’s scope of theological inquiry. The outcome is that Armstrongism now clings to an error that Christianity dispositioned centuries ago.

Doug Winnail: Aren't you proud to be part of a privileged elitist group of self-righteous believers?

An LCG source writes: 

 

"So is the harvest plentiful AND few are being called??"

One of the slick ways the Church of God has justified its ineffectual ministries in gaining new members is to make seem like only God sends them new members AND He is very concerned about too many gaining entrance into the one true apostolic end-time church that has all the answers to everyting. The reason the church has so few members never lies in the bland mind-numbing sermonettes and sermons some preach or bad public speakers representing the church in public appearance meetings. Considering so few of them ever preach about Jesus Christ and his ministry and what was accomplished by him, they instead talk about stupid church government ideas and old testament laws that NO ONE has ever been able to keep, and loads of other legalistic mumbo-jumbo that frankly drives people away. When every sermon is a Debbie-downer-style sermon or about sex,  potential members quickly drop away. Not many want to be part of an elitist group of people who thumb their noses to almost everyone and everything, while secretly indulging in it behind their leader's backs.

Be Thankful for the Truth! As much of the world celebrates the year-end holidays that originated in ancient pagan practices, it is a good time to reflect on the unique privilege that God has granted to those He is calling (John 6:44, 65). Jesus said, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). Few today realize how Satan has deceived the world (Revelation 12:9), or that God is only calling a few to understand His Truth and His Plan about the coming Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:26–29). That understanding is a very special gift that is being offered to those God has chosen to work with now (Matthew 13:11–17). Let’s never take that calling lightly. Let’s grow so that we can be more effective instruments in God’s hands—and let’s be thankful for that Truth.

Have a profitable Sabbath, Douglas S. Winnail