Comments on Ambassador Watch: CGI keeps us guessing

Back to "His ordination was revoked by the COG 7th...

2007-11-25T05:35:00.000+13:00

Back to "His ordination was revoked by the COG 7th day "for conduct unbecoming" in 1936". Wherever did Stingerski come up with this inanity? It was 1938 and the Salem conference of the COG7 were ridding themselves of festival supporters. They revoked Herbert's credentials (which, by the way, they had granted him in the first place without any request by him) and those of Clarence Dodd, another feast supporter. (This is the same Dodd who co-authored the book variously published as "The History of the True Religion" and "A History of the True Church" which Herman Hoeh modified under the tittle of "A True History of the True Church". This man's work has evolved into the Assemblies of Yahweh whose website is www.paleotimes.org.)

the big scandal around Charles Stanley was, IMHO, ...

2007-11-24T05:11:00.000+13:00

the big scandal around Charles Stanley was, IMHO, how the baptists didn't allow divorced pastors until Charles got one, then suddenly, it was ok to be divorced.

However, the logic and precision of this penetrati...

2007-11-23T05:47:00.000+13:00

However, the logic and precision of this penetrating observation puzzles my simple mind.

And we wouldn't expect anything more of Tom's cult world.

Sure, Newtonian physics works in the "real" world, unless or until examination occurs at the quantum levels.

The trick here is "the same conditions" -- often the exact precise conditions are not going to be the same.

However, in the case of Herbert Armstrong who was always wrong in his lifetime about his false prophecies, there was a scientific consistency.

But to an undiscriminating non scientist like Tom is too dense to understand, having set himself in the futile attempt to prove the world revolves around him.

Tom plays games with terms, just as a good psychopath would.

Robert said...An interesting perspective that you ...

2007-11-22T18:19:00.000+13:00

Robert said...

An interesting perspective that you are removing the legalism of the Torah which commands you to keep those days.

Actually no different from today's Messianic movement, really, the days are observed not as requirements but as tokens of love to show the Jews that gentiles actually care about God and the Jews.

Amazing.

Dropping the legalism of the Jews for the even more onerous legalism of Saul of Tarsus.

Most churches claim God wants your money.

I'm glad he's taking tokens now.

I've got a few left over tokens from Chucky Cheese.

The world will all be a better place when all the Jews become perfected as good little evangelicals - or else - according to Anne Coulter. "She's a man baby!" I would think that attitude would really really piss Jews off.

Like God can't deal with people within their cultural context?

For the record the Netzarim group in Israel is the...

2007-11-22T11:59:00.000+13:00

For the record the Netzarim group in Israel is the only (Nazarene Jewish) group that is officially recognised by some Orthodox Jews.

Joining the Netzarim will allow people the right to settle in Israel though you will be living as an Orthodox Jew (with a belief in Ribbi Yeshua).

The organisation was formed by a former baptist minister in the 1980s. To quote them: "The only Way for non-Jews to follow Ribi Yәhoshua as he taught: according to his 1st-century Torah teachings in the legitimate (Pharisee = modern Orthodox) sect of the Jewish community and praying in a Pharisee = modern Orthodox Beit-ha-Kәnësët."

The modern day Ebionite movement is not offically recognised by anyone within Judaism (to my horror they don't practice vegetarianism --and I am sure the ebionites were vegetarian weren't they?).

Jared Olar as far as I can tell you should be stud...

2007-11-22T11:38:00.000+13:00

Jared Olar as far as I can tell you should be studying into these modern versions of these groups as it may help you in your search to rediscover the hebrews roots of the faith as promoted by Grace and Knowledge (graceandknowledge.faithweb.com).

I couldn't help but notice a Jared Olar writing articles for Grace and Knowledge so I am assuming it is you that write for Doug Ward.

My only criticism of the site is why on earth have you got Catholic festival dates listed alongside Jewish ones?

Notice WHO ARE WE:

"we believe that with legalism and error removed, the great value and meaning of the Sabbath and annual Hebrew festivals shine through more clearly than ever. Without apology, we will joyfully celebrate here the special culture and wholesome traditions of the WCG."

An interesting perspective that you are removing the legalism of the Torah which commands you to keep those days. Actually no different from today's Messianic movement, really, the days are observed not as requirements but as tokens of love to show the Jews that gentiles actually care about God and the Jews.

Bamboo, Charles Stanley's whopping big scandel was...

2007-11-22T10:27:00.000+13:00

Bamboo,

Charles Stanley's whopping big scandel was a divorce. Unless you know of something else that wasn't on public record.

Anonymous said... Sex Scandal Hits Atlanta Mega...

2007-11-22T09:18:00.000+13:00

Anonymous said...

Sex Scandal Hits Atlanta Mega-Church

"DECATUR, Ga. (AP) - The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother's wife and fathered a child by her."

Imagine my shock!
I love the Bible Belt. They just need to keep it buckled up more often if you're gonna go with the program properly.

A chastity belt it is not!

The Bible belt has a design flaw, it keeps dropping pants to the knees. Denial of sexuality just causes it to come out. Better to say "yeah, I am capable of that", and then walk away. These guys pretend they have no such tendencies. And then blame the devil (or the woman).

I remember some local ATL protestant ministers who hired a prostitute to entrap a local Catholic priest while I was living there. The politics of it all reeked. And it was on talk radio day after day.

Then a year later, Charles Stanley had a scandal, and I am sure there's been on a year since.

Women go for rock stars, and in a church the preacher is the rock star.

But you gotta hand it to GTA, only he could tell a woman, "God will forgive you, I'm important to God's plan on earth!" That end-time witness has gone the way of all things. Guess he wasn't that important to God's plan after all.

"So the empirical evidence from the trials is not ...

2007-11-22T09:13:00.000+13:00

"So the empirical evidence from the trials is not proof that the drug will be helpful to every patient."

It is evidence that the drug is helpful in some situations, and like MOST or ALL drugs (naturally or chemically derived)show adverse side effects in certain people due to things like genetic diffferences (high or low levels of a metabolizing enzyme that alters the drug to differences in the expression of cell receptors, ect) or other concurrent health problems, age, weight, physical differences, ect.

Paul

"Therefore, science can never solves the problems ...

2007-11-22T09:07:00.000+13:00

"Therefore, science can never solves the problems that threaten to overwhelm us. If medicine could truly cure diseases, health care authorities would be knocking down hospitals, not building more and more every year. If psychiatry and psychology were helpful to people, our mental institutions and prisons would be empty."

As opposed to what? Divine healing? The Return of Christ? I'll stick with penicillin, thank you very much.

Paul

douglas becker said:>>>Science is mostly, more or ...

2007-11-22T08:56:00.000+13:00

douglas becker said:

>>>Science is mostly, more or less, based on the pragmatism of reproducibility: If you do the same thing under mostly the same conditions, you get the same results.<<<

Wow! I am very impressed with the exactness of the above comment. So let me analyse it to see what we all may learn from Mr. Becker's profound observation.

We note that Mr. Becker confidently asserts: "Science is mostly, more or less, based on the pragmatism of reproducibility:"

However, the logic and precision of this penetrating observation puzzles my simple mind. For instance, is it "mostly," or is it "more or less?" Perhaps the great man will draw upon the sagacity of his great intellect, and deign to explain!

Anyway, for the benefit of those with simple minds like my own, it is an indisputable maxim that empiricism proves nothing. Empiricism may demonstrate that an event often occurs under certain conditions, but it can't prove that it will always happen. For example, drugs trials have shown that they are effective against certain diseases, yet the same drugs might have an adverse effect on another patient. So the empirical evidence from the trials is not proof that the drug will be helpful to every patient.

Therefore, science can never solves the problems that threaten to overwhelm us. If medicine could truly cure diseases, health care authorities would be knocking down hospitals, not building more and more every year. If psychiatry and psychology were helpful to people, our mental institutions and prisons would be empty.

But I wouldn't expect a man of Mr.Becker's erudition to understand these facts. They are much too simple for his towering intellect, which spent most of it time analysing the minutia of HWA's so-called false prophecies and perceived bad behaviour. Wow!

So what have we learned from Mr. Becker's observation? We learn that: "He neither understands what he says, nor whereof he affirms."

"Science is mostly, more or less, based on the pra...

2007-11-22T06:44:00.000+13:00

"Science is mostly, more or less, based on the pragmatism of reproducibility: If you do the same thing under mostly the same conditions, you get the same results. Science moves from postulation, to hypothesis, to law,

.. Each time and every time, pretty much -- except for the anomalies introduced at the quantum level -- the predictions of the Armstrongists fail."

Like MARK's prediction of the fall of Jerusalem - written after the fact !

What the AC motto should have said: 'SCIENCE IS THE FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE'

I couldn't possibly agree more, Douglas! These pe...

2007-11-22T06:34:00.000+13:00

I couldn't possibly agree more, Douglas! These people (HWA/WCG) set themselves up as being better than Jesus, or knowing more than Jesus, who told us that even He didn't know when the end was coming! So, HWA thought he had everything figured out with his nice neat little 7,000 year plan and 19 year time cycles, and he used his theory to create an artificial sense of urgency within his donor base, raking in millions of dollars which he was able to use in his own inimitable profligate manner without any sort of accountability. So, surprise, surprise! Jesus ignored HWA's schedule. In fact, Jesus seems to be treating the ACOGs in the same manner in which He treated the Pharissees, doesn't He?

It makes one wonder, having watched it all unravel, how anyone could still believe that God ever did work through this totally FUBAR man and organization.

BB

What was it that made HWA different from the thous...

2007-11-22T02:28:00.000+13:00

What was it that made HWA different from the thousands of other preachers? What was it that made his church different? Exactly what was it that differentiated HWA and his church from the others if not adherence to The Law?

False prophecies based on British Israelism -- that's what made Herbert Armstrong's man-made religion different.

Science is mostly, more or less, based on the pragmatism of reproducibility: If you do the same thing under mostly the same conditions, you get the same results. Science moves from postulation, to hypothesis, to law, by being able to reproduce experiments and take the same results. There are observable results.

So it is with Armstrongism. Each time and every time, pretty much -- except for the anomalies introduced at the quantum level -- the predictions of the Armstrongists fail. We did not flee in 1972. There was no great tribulation between 1972 and 1975. Jesus Christ did not return in 1975 or so. The forests of the Pacific Northwest did not die off so there were no trees between 1964 and 1974. The famines did not occur. And just in case the Armstrongists want to say it just happened a little late, let's just say that the false prophet who said in 1972 in Penticton, "I will lead you into the Kingdom" has died.

Now there are results: Reproducible results which occur over and over again: Divisions, schisms and splits. There are really good scientific reasons for this: Ego. Narcissism makes the spit-off after spit-off boringly predictable. No surprises there. The church of gods are at war with one another, biting and devouring each other, with slanders and libel flowing like Niagara Falls. It takes neither a genius or a Prophet of God to map the future of the church of gods. If they don't dispatch each other, they will die of attrition, or more accurately, scientifically, entropy. Nothing can save them because they don't really have the right kind of faith.

No, the church of gods have faith in premises which have been disproved over and over again. The Great Disappointment of William Miller will be encountered again and again. Armstrongism will fail, as the loving, kind God the Father whose Mercy never fails, stubbornly and persistently staunchly resists allowing a single prediction of any of the Armstrongists to ever come true the way they have posited them. He wants to insure that people don't have an excuse for idolatry to worship a man instead of Him -- and that is reproducible. God's Mercy never fails. Prophecy fails, particularly when it comes from the false prophets like Herbert Armstrong that Jesus himself warned us all against that they are ravening wolves.

So God's Mercy never fails: He keeps hoping that people will be released from the absolute bondage of slavishly following children of the Devil, filled with lies, deceptions and, yes, even murder. There's not just anger, there's a lot of hate, often thinly disguised. It's one thing to be angry because people hurt themselves and quite another to want revenge when egos are punctured -- often by nothing more than neutral facts.

Therefore choose: I set before thee this day, blessing and cursing... choose life. That's not from me. The claim it is from God. It's still good advice: Repent of dead works and pursue pure religion and undefiled. Go ahead. Perform the scientific experiment and see whether or not God's Mercy fails.

And if it does, you're doing something very wrong.

"No, the central faulty doctrine was that, in prep...

2007-11-21T18:28:00.000+13:00

"No, the central faulty doctrine was that, in preparation for the imminent return of Jesus Christ, God had appointed Herbert Armstrong to restore the One True Church and to restore "the Truth" that allegedly had been lost for 1,900 years."

And that was based on....? What was it that made HWA different from the thousands of other preachers? What was it that made his church different? Exactly what was it that differentiated HWA and his church from the others if not adherence to The Law?

Paul

>>>there's precious little truth to be found in th...

2007-11-21T18:13:00.000+13:00

>>>there's precious little truth to be found in the blatherings of a crackpot cultmeister.

Robert, I was talking about Tom.

Please get off your soap box based on a misunderstanding.

"The Gnostic Paul" by Elaine Pagels, "Paul the Myt...

2007-11-21T16:40:00.000+13:00

"The Gnostic Paul" by Elaine Pagels, "Paul the Mythmaker," by Hyam Maccoby, Gregory Jenks on "What did Paul Know About Jesus," and Lillian Freudman's work on Anti-Semitism and the New Testament are quite able to change a yawn into a "hmmm" more easily than you would think.

Not likely. As I said, I got my fill of that kind of conspiracy theory bilge and hack (pseudo)scholarship in the WCG. Indeed, the way Pagels slices and dices and misquotes her sources, she puts your average Armstrongist prooftexter to shame. In my opinion, Pagels and company belong to the school of thought known for the Auto-Anal Extraction Methodology.

why do the heathen rage? ;-)

2007-11-21T16:16:00.000+13:00

why do the heathen rage? ;-)

"The Gnostic Paul" by Elaine Pagels, "Paul the Myt...

2007-11-21T14:55:00.000+13:00

Paul said: Legalism itself was the faulty doctrine...

2007-11-21T14:31:00.000+13:00

Paul said: Legalism itself was the faulty doctrine of the WCG,

No, the central faulty doctrine was that, in preparation for the imminent return of Jesus Christ, God had appointed Herbert Armstrong to restore the One True Church and to restore "the Truth" that allegedly had been lost for 1,900 years.

and it was directly responsible for the attitude of the members.

No, it wasn't "legalism," it was Armstrongism.

What was the exclusion based on?

Whether or not you accepted Herbert Armstrong as the divinely-appointed supreme leader of the Philadelphia Era of the One True Church.

Yes, there were a lot of other false teachings orbiting that teaching, but it was belief in the special place of Herbert Armstrong in Salvation History that underlay the old WCG's religious system. Once faith in Herbert Armstrong begins to erode, the entire system starts to crumble, little by little at first, and then finally the whole thing tumbles down in a heap.

There is debate as to whether the apostleship of P...

2007-11-21T14:24:00.000+13:00

There is debate as to whether the apostleship of Paul can be accepted as there are religious groups (eg. Ebionites see www.ebionites.org, Netzarim see www.netzarim.org.il) who do not accept Paul whom believe he is a deceiver. They tear up Paul's writings (much in the same way some do today with HWAs writings).

You talk as if the Ebionites and Nazarenes who existed in the first few centuries of the Christian era survived continuously to the present day. The only so-called Ebionites or Netzarim that might be around today would be new inventions, spurious revivals with as much unbroken historical continuity as the Worldwide Church of God had.

Paul was a deceiver. He hijacked and is the founde...

2007-11-21T14:08:00.000+13:00

Paul was a deceiver. He hijacked and is the founder of Christianity unrelated to any real teachings of Jesus. You can read the authentic letters of Paul and never get a clue he was talking about anything but a cosmic heavenly Christ or that anyone named Jesus had lived a mere decade earlier to his alledged conversion.

Yawn. I got my fill of such unfalsifiable conspiracy-theory Apostasy of the Lost Century drivel in the WCG.

Robert said: My argument against those who attack ...

2007-11-21T14:06:00.000+13:00

Robert said: My argument against those who attack HWA's doctrine is that firstly, his doctrines were NOT unique. You can trace them back to the 1600s where other people actually believed them as well.

So what? Just because some or all of a religious leader's doctrines were around before he latched onto them, that doesn't make those doctrines true.

And secondly where on earth do you expect us to go, what church do you expect me to attend? Should I become a Roman Catholic, Jehovah Witness, Mormon, Baptist, Methodist, Evangelical?

When you find that a religious leader's teachings are false, the first thing you do is stop following those teachings. You can worry about "where do I go next?" after you stop going the wrong direction.

And thirdly, scholars have debated for centuries over these issues and dissenters can be found in England in the 1600s not agreeing with established church doctrine. There were many who disagreed with infant baptism for example.

Dissenters can be found in every time and place, disagreeing with others on matters of doctrine. Just because somebody disagrees with a doctrine, that doesn't make the doctrine false. I'm afraid this will actually require you to sit down and think and study and think -- a simple wave of the hand and a "others in England agreed with me on one or two points of doctrine, and anyway where would I go if not to one of the hundreds of squabbling Armstrongist sects" just won't cut it.

How can a modern 21 century layman (who doesn't have access to originals know more than the dissenters recorded throughout history who had access to documents now lost?)

What makes you think those dissenters had access to documents now lost?

I am afraid it seems that you are the crackpot if you actually think you know the Bible and what truth is, only God knows that!

If it is impossible for the human mind to apprehend truth, then why are you wasting your time posting comments here?

Unless you are a scholar, knows original languages, studied Hebrew and Greek, familiar with the customs of the day, privy to secret documents then your knowledge of the Bible cannot be trusted and to claim that HWA was a crackpot is nothing more than a subjective remark not based on authority or biblical scholarship.

On the contrary, it is possible to know that Herbert Armstrong was a crackpot without expert knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, or access to allegedly secret documents that never existed in the first place. Just check his variable teachings against each other, against scripture, and against common sense, and take note of his numerous false predictions, and pay attention to the witness of the way he lived his life and the way he treated his fellowman. If that's not enough to conclude he was a crackpot, then I guess we must all be content to mope around through life with a vapid look in our eyes and trailing a line a drool down the corner of our mouths, perennially the prey to the latest charlatan who comes along claiming to be God's End-Time Apostle.

Paul was a deceiver. He hijacked and is the founde...

2007-11-21T13:56:00.000+13:00

"My view is different to Armstrongites."So you wou...

2007-11-21T13:49:00.000+13:00

"My view is different to Armstrongites."

So you would agree that observance of the Law isn't necessary for salvation?

Paul