Years back, I had the responsibility to do some work to prepare the Weyerhaeuser Mill in Valliant, Oklahoma for the Year 2000. I wasn’t certain what to expect. What I found was most unexpected.
The then Weyerhaeuser Mill was the largest mill of its kind in the world. In scale, you might think of a gear the size of one inside a old style Swiss watch or even a gear in a car. In the mill, a gear was typically a minimum of 6 feet across (about two meters for you in the rest of the world). Everything there was huge!
Paper mills work using wood pulp “digested” and pressed into kraft paper using 430 degrees of heat. The “digesting” part causes sulphur, turpentine and chlorine to be airborne and quite pervasive. The smell of the place was not unlike a hospital surrounded by a forest in hell. It got into everything. The way to survive it was to go to the mill to do the work, return to the motel room and take a shower. Taking a shower in the morning before leaving for the plant was useless. Before the shower, I would put my clothes I wore that day into a black plastic garbage bag and put that bag inside another black plastic garbage bag.
One of my colleagues had travelled by jet back to corporate headquarters. He had papers from the office at the mill in his brief case. All he did was open the briefcase. Immediately, the smell was all over the jet cabin and many people on board became sick.
I thought I would be smart: When I arrived home, I got the washer started and dumped my clothes on the bed, thinking to put them in the machine presently. Immediately, everyone in the house wanted to know if the sewer had backed up. I should have dumped the clothes directly from the garbage bags into the washer, but it was far too late. It took two hours to air out the house — with the plastic garbage bags outside in the garbage.
The mill controller told me that a very clean living Mormon family man had worked at the mill for 20 years and retired. He moved away and shortly died of cancer. The controller told me that he was convinced that the chlorine, sulphur and turpentine had killed him. It was difficult to see it any other way.
The remarkable thing was that after almost exactly six months, people who worked continuously at the mill stopped smelling the chlorine, sulphur and turpentine. Anyone who suddenly told their coworkers that they couldn’t smell it anymore had their coworkers go, yup, he’s been here six months.
In 2009, I went to the first day of the days of unleavened bread with the UCG in Tacoma. It had been over three years, and I was only there for my wife’s sake. I no sooner walked through the door than the minister came by and told everyone in hearing range that I was stubborn. He later told my wife to force me to return to United. Her reaction was that she couldn’t make me do anything. Besides, who was the minister to make such outrageously presumptuous demands? I remembered very well the circumstances with my last contact with the minister: He lied to me, broke his promises, falsely accused me and lied to others about me [I can ruin my own reputation just fine on my own without help from a UCG minister, thanks loads]. Besides being vain to the point of considering taking group photographs of himself, he engineered some of the most illegal, immoral and unethical acts I have seen outside corporate America.
In order to make the whole stalking case go away, he offered the UCG couple a bribe. What do you want the most,he asked? “Oh, I’d really like to go to the Feast in Alaska,” was the reply. So instead of doing the I Corinthians 5 thing and putting the immoral stalker out of the church for a time until he, well, stopped stalking church members, the minister offered a bribe to keep the whole thing out of court. He issued a check out of third tithe, taking it from whatever hapless widows and orphans there might be, and gave it to the stalked. Before the ink dried, they deposited it and got tickets to Alaska… and filed suit in court. It was a win-win for them. United, not so much. You must admit it was a clever ploy, though. I think the minister more than met his match.
So when I walked into the UCG services in 2009, the arrogance of the minister hit me every bit as hard as the stench of the Weyerhaeuser mill. It stinks, it really does. I realized then that I had been in the stench since 1964 when I first attended with the Radio Church of God. I was 17 and naive. My sense of discrimination was simply not present. I could not sense the arrogance. I thought these people were gods — a simpleton from the hinterland of a farming community subjected to the sophisticated city folk. I was, in that environment, under those circumstances, extremely poor and cut off from my own folks, subject to the tender mercies of those godlets in sheep’s clothing, persuaded to commit the best and the rest of my life to Herbert Armstrong with no hope of being or achieving anything in this life. Hooray, I was on the bottom. The lowest of the low. I had no status whatsoever. I lived as best I could on less than minimum wage. Often, I fasted because I actually had nothing to eat. I paid my full tithe on my gross income before anything else and “Second Tithe” as well. At the best of times, I had $3.25 to last me a fortnight until the next paycheck. Needless to say, I lost a lot of weight and was quite gaunt. It wasn’t really that healthy, but I thought I was happy, giving my life to God and all.
It was only later — much later — that I realized that I was giving my life to a parasite who never even knew who I was: Just another face in the crowd of 6,000 people for the two hours he stood at the podium at the Feast of Tabernacles. I was dirt poor and he was wealthy beyond the hopes of avarice. Because I grew up in a Catholic Parochial school, I thought Herbert Armstrong had a vow of poverty and chastity, just like the Catholic Sisters. After all, he said he didn’t really own anything.
It was later that I began to see the arrogance of Herbert Armstrong. I got to perceive the arrogance of Roderick Meredith. I’ve gotten experience first hand with the arrogance of Joseph Tkach, Senior.
It stinks. It all stinks. It stinks to high heaven.
Well, you know. After being out of the stench of Armstrongism for a few years, you don’t appreciate what you are missing, until the day you walk back into it. Then it hits you. It is overpowering. But then, I didn’t and don’t have to put up with it. I don’t attend United any longer. I don’t attend any Armstrongist church. Oh, a visit now and then for reasons other than spiritual health, because they don’t offer much in the way of anything spiritual. They don’t recognize the fact that they are empty. If you attend services with the Armstrongists, it is highly likely you will hear about their support programs, or, Scripturally, be regaled with the minutia and unnecessary details of the weights and measures of utinsels in the Arc of the Covenant.
They are utterly devoid of spirituality, let alone humanity, because they are used to they way they are treated: With dignity, honor and deference. They don’t seem to realize that I’ve very much outgrown them and have no need for them any longer. They never had that much to offer in the first place and they have nothing to offer now.
I also have the benefit of the experience of the non Armstrongist Sabbath keeping churches of God. You’d be surprised how like the Armstrongist churches of God are at first glance. There’s not much difference in the doctrines, but there is a very great difference in the way people are treated. The minister is an unpaid volunteer who has a day job. I can actually talk to and relate to the minister. He’s just a regular bloke without the “halo glow” about him. There’s equality among the people. The standards are quite different. After awhile, you recover from the stench of the Armstrongists and wonder what you ever saw in them. They no longer seem bigger than life. The Armstrongists merely seem terribly pathetic.
The arrogance of the Armstrongists hit you when you come through the door. You can smell the stench when you read their magazine. You get the stench from their website. You can see the stench from the telecasts and podcasts. And heaven fore-fend, you can really get the stench at the Feast of Tabernacles when they declare the Word of the Lord and how the Statutes, Laws and Judgments of God are going to be applied in the Millennium and in the Second Resurrection: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, as the judges determine. You can get the stench of nuttiness from their arrogance from their sermons — they are right and you are wrong and THEY ARE IN CHARGE! THEY HAVE THE POWER!
Not anymore.
In case you were wondering about that Weyerhaeuser Mill in Valliant, Oklahoma? Weyerhaeuser sold its entire Containerboard Packaging Business in 2008, replete with over two dozen plants and several mills, including the one in Valiant, to International Paper Company. International Paper was under-capitalized and nearly immediately closed one of the three lines at the mill and laid off 60 people — a hard hit in an already depressed part of the country. I presume that the stench continues, just at a diminished capacity, for a mill that opened in 1982 and decreased the adult illiteracy rate from 55% in that area to 45%. I’m thinking that illiteracy will go even higher than original. It’s sad that the buffet 14 miles from the mill, featuring deep fat fried catfish will have fewer customers. By the way, if you ever go there, or anywhere in Valiant, be sure to bring cash, because no one accepts credit cards, not even Visa. But the King’s Motel still accepts paying guests by the hour.
So I hope you learn something from this: There is a stench to the arrogance of the Armstrongists. But beware: Stay with them for six months and you won’t notice it any more. But it could kill you.
Next time: Lies
The stench really is profound and all-penetrating. When you entered in 1964, I’d already been embroiled for about twelve years, graduated from Ambassador, and was struggling to support myself and my family on the wages the deigned to pay anyone who wasn’t an exalted minister. It took me ten more years of self-denial and privation to finally begin to get my eyes opened.
I’ve developed a deep-seated digust and aversion to all things religious. Marx was right when he said religion was the opium of the masses. Drugies will sacrifice anything and commit any crime for their high, and we did the same. It came close to ruining us forever.
Well, Douglas, you really nailed it. I’m sure all of us can find experiences in our post-Armstrong lives to relate to the stench of Armstrongism, but yours at Weyerhauser was particularly salient! We have a similar phenomenon in the graphic arts industry involving ketone based inks.
It took me years before I could believe in God again, let alone attend any type of Christian church services. In fact, for over thirty years, any time I was invited to a Christian wedding, or a funeral, I went soley because my love for the people involved outshadowed my disgust for organized religion.
Over the past three years, I have found incredibly deep new understanding, courtesy of the Christians we once disdained and labelled as “Christians falsely so-called”, and true spiritual nourishment, all in an environment devoid of the famous WCG arrogance. Still, because of the WCG embedded time bombs, it’s sometimes been a scary ride!
I wish that many who are still cultically ensnared could learn to think backwards. They take the sabbath, and use it to block out or invalidate all other Christians, any understandings which differ from Armstrongism, and as an excuse to dodge the opportunities for selfless acts of compassion which might be extended to fellow humans who don’t happen to keep the sabbath. It would be a far better “true church” test to look at who is currently preaching the gospel around the world, who is discipling and training others to do this, and what types of ministers are actually humbly sacrificing and practicing the type of delayed gratification originally authored by Jesus Christ. To all ACOGgers who might be tuned in here: You can have your sabbath, and pride yourselves on being the one and only group. But, your little group has been divided, confused, and spewed from the mouth of God into all of these little splinters, so that your so-called gospel message is simply not being heard. Meanwhile, the Jesus movement, or revival, which started in the early ’70s, has grown, and is surgically and precisely targetting all of the regions of the world where the gospel has not been preached, and doing the job you once thought you were commissioned to do! Only, they are preaching the real gospel, and doing a better job of practicing the values Jesus taught in the sermon on the mount!
Certainly not all of the WCG ministers were arrogant, narcissistic, hypocritical, or uncaring. Sometimes, it seemed that only the ones who got ahead were. As a Christian, if confronted today by one of the arrogant ones, the only alternative I would have, and still be able to maintain my Christian integrity would be to walk away. If I stayed too long and actually took the brunt of their “counsel”, I’m afraid I’d end up using a term invented originally by the Puritans to be displayed under the stock and pillory when punishing those caught in unlawful carnal knowledge!
BB
Byker Bob,
There was a time as a teenager that I really really really wanted to go to Ambassador College. They rejected me three times.
I have reflected upon the Mercies of God the Father and I often wonder what would have actually happened if I had gone and discovered the wickedness and evil there.
Given my past history and my views today, I doubt that I would have been devastated. I believe that I would have been angry and seeking vengeance.
I suspect — but none of us could ever know what might have been — that the history of the Radio Church of God and Worldwide Church of God would have been transformed. Being a premier technologist of the first order, and considering that my brothers made their own guns and bullets from scratch with raw materials (gun barrels are a bitch!), including making their own gunpowder from saltpeter, sulphur and carbon made from tree boughs roasted in a pipe in a Franklin Stove, and given that my brothers, father and I went to the city dump to use rats for target practice, and that I was a pretty good shot, it is clear that when I lost my naivete and innocence in the presence of the religious wicked, those leaders at the top may have very well lost their lives. This is not to say I would have used standard firearms, except as vehicles to fire carbon dioxide bullets to insure no evidence left behind. I made my own hydrogen at home as a hobby as a teen. My dad taught me a lot about the dynamite and blasting caps he used in his work as County Road Crew Foreman. I also had a hobby in electronics, so I was aware of low frequency speakers using sound in the range below human hearing to make people sick and kill them. I had access to the cyanide compounds, so I could make beautiful colored liquids. There are hundreds of ways to produce results and I was innovative to say the least.
So I thank God for preventing me from going to Ambassador College.
Whether or not I would be alive today if I did go to AC, can only be answered with the vaguries of state law concerning the death penalty and the appeal process. Then again, one never knows whether a jury would convict if they heard all the facts. They may have just decided that justice was done and leave it at that.
Like the Maccabean Brothers, I don’t just sit around and wait for someone to take action some day, particularly if it seems to be a “righteous crusade”.
So those who were involved in keeping me out of Ambassador College should be aware that they probably saved lives, and, perhaps, their own. Unfortunatley, the principles are already mostly dead or on their way with one foot in the grave.
Today? I wouldn’t think of killing anyone. It’s so much better to let them live on and suffer for their misdeeds, don’t you think? And given how Karma works, it’s just as well, since we don’t have to lift a finger: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay”.
Or so it would seem.
I was just happy to be free when I left, and then to discover it wasn’t just religion from which I was free, but all human authority. Of course the human authority systems don’t see it that way, so I keep studying law and doing battle.
In my experience, it’s not just the WCG, or even religion in general. Wherever I go, I feel almost as if there is a conspiracy to break me, to make me accept the world as others see it.
The thing is, wherever I went after I left the church, I resolved to keep my mouth shut, just follow orders, and stay away from people. Simply impossible.
In the marines, I just did my job, kept my mouth shut, and when they refused me a promotion because I was very large and didn’t look like a marine, I said “fine”, and kept on. When they did offer me a promotion, I said “Don’t want it. I’m almost ready to get out”.
You’d think I slapped them in the face. I learned hte meaning of harassment, constantly, daylight til dark, just because I refused a stupid promotion.
I deliberately sought jobs that were out of the way, even delivered the Charlotte Observer on early morning routes, and the damn police hassled me to ask me why I was out so early.
I finally met a woman when I was about 32. We were involved in community theater, and I watched her four yeatrs before I made a move. She was gentle, a peacemaker, really nice and loving. As we got more involved, I told her all about myself, my beliefs, everything I was all about, and said if she wasn’t interested that was fine. She said “It’s wonderful! You’re wonderful! Everything is wonderful!”
Boy was she a liar. From the time we got engaged she started trying to change everything, right down to the way I breathe. I put up with that for exacty one year.
When I met Sharon, neither of us were looking for a mate. I was tired of being told what I should believe, and she had her experience with the sociopath. So our mutual friends, knowing more about us and our similarities than we were willing to admit, pretty much did our courting for us. They invited us to their family gatherings. The only way we would hold hands was if they formed a circle and everybody held hands.
We both tried very hard not to get involved and ended up getting involved in spite of ourselves.
She keeps asking me why I have to challenge every single authority figure, and I say “Because they’re wrong!”
Simply because I recognize no authority figure and can prove the assholes wrong, I’m called antisocial, sociopath, criminally inclined, and all the others.
Ayn Rand called it right. The world will not accept a free man(or woman). They will keep after until you break or die. Like I told the marines. “You’ll have to kill me, ’cause you ain’t gona beat me”.
It is often fruitful to ask the question, “Who died and left you to be God”?
You got a problem with it?
I’ll be happy to give you my home address and you can try your cyanide pills.
Ralph, YOU were in charge at Ambassador College?!?
I would hardly think so, but if you were, I’d be impressed.
Otherwise, forget giving me your home address and cyanide, because I was only saying that I might have had a really strong reaction to the scoundrels in authority at AC. The opportunity, sadly, is past — was past beginning in 1965. That was the year I went to a real college — an accredited one — one which is now a University and from which I now have an University degree. It has gotten me a good job which I would not have had an opportunity to ever qualify for if I had attended AC. This also in the face that Ambassador College hasn’t existed for a decade or two.
Some say that living well is the best revenge. While I’m not entirely convinced, it works for me.
Yes, Douglas, living well is the best revenge. I have to admit that I, too, had momentary thoughts of revenge back there in the mid-seventies, but I rose above it and went out to make a life for myself. It hasn’t been a perfect life, and I’m certainly not rich, but I’m contented and overall very happy with how my life has turned out. All those self-righteous Aholes would have predicted nothing but curses for me. My ex-wife confidently told me I would lose everything.
Well, I live in a part of the country I compare to Hawaii, which I think is the premier part of the world — Hilo is my favorite city on earth — only been there once. I have enough and enjoy nearly perfect health for my age — I can still kick carpet at 75. I have the most wonderful wife a man could ask for. Maybe I will end up destitute before the end. Many do. But, overall, I can’t complain.
Those who badmouthed me and put me down can kiss my rear end. I just wish it hadn’t taken me so long to wise up.
I get a lot of that “Who made you God?” stuff, just because I try like hell to avoid people in face to face contact. I’ve come to the conclusion that people are assholes, and I’ve become so accustomed to being the lone wolf that I merely guard my turf.
As to college experience, the one I went to asked you to simply absorb data and spit it back at them at regularly scheduled times. Something most any sufficiently programmed computer can do.
HWA was not merely an absurd person who somehow managed to operate outside the system. He was the system, or merely a seamless part of that system. All such systems are intended to incorporate the individual into that same seamless whole.
A young girl got some kind of essay award here locally, writing about freedom and the necessity to sacrifice. She quoted from Sarah Palin and George Bush(Good God!), about how freedom comes from God and sacrifice is needed on the part of all Americans in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
You tell me the difference between that crap and the sacrifice HWA used to constantly demand for “the work”.
I responded to the local paper that Al-Qaida and the Taliban thought they were freedom fighters serving their God. Maybe their God should fight our God and we could catch it on pay-per-view. Any God that won’t fight his own war is a coward. I also pointed out that this was the result of a bankrupt educational system.
I never mentioned the girl, never in any way drew attention to her, but pointed out the true source of this crap was the educational system.
I got 25 responses, which would represent a small percentage of the total view.
When I met them head on and challenged them point by point, they finally confessed they agreed with me, but I shouldn’t have attacked the little girl. A teen-ager had somehow become a “little girl” and “child”.
My response was simple enough. If I’m involved with terrorists and they use a child as a shield so we won’t shoot back, that’s pure evil. So what’s the difference between the schools brainwashing a child and then putting them right there out front with garbage so we won’t “shoot back”?
In war, if I’d shot the terrorist without harming his hostage, it would have caused psychological damage, but she’d be free to live her life. Same principle with a brainwashing terrorist government. Shoot over the child’s head. It may hurt her feelings, but at least she’ll have future choices to make.
I got no response to that one.
“My ex-wife confidently told me I would lose everything.”
See now, Al, she was right: You lost her.
Best thing really.
Thing is she tried to get back with me later when my second wife died after her lofty plans of marrying a guy I always thought was a closet gay fell through. She was sure we could make a go of it again, but I knew way better and brushed her off. I knew what I wanted, and it certainly wasn’t true believer her. I’m not a dog returning to its own vomit. I soon found my soul mate and we are very happy.
Breaking news:
The Barefoot Bandit has been caught in the Bahamas and is now in jail where all psychopaths and sociopaths should be.
The irony is, as often happens, some morons hold him as a folk hero and have set up web pages in his honor. I guess the admiration is that he’s been doing what they wished they could do.
Sad thing is, he will pay his debt to society with a book where he will make millions.
We have local thieves who are hitting gas stations and other small businesses. The police don’t seem to have any evidence who they are. This is a very depressed area economically. Always has been. I suspect the thieves are getting protection from people in their immediate community.
My neck of the woods has always been pretty independent. We started running moonshine years ago and developed “chop shops” where cars would be stripped down and re-assembled for the next run. After that, we became known as “Little Detroit” for the abundance of used car lots that sprang up as a result of our expert mechanics.
Eric Rudolf hid out a few miles away toward Asheville, NC, where I’m certain he had community support.
But if you look at the truth of our founding fathers, you will see that they were composed of smugglers(Hancock was quite successful) terrorists(Sam Adams wasnt above it when necessary).
The libertarian law professor Butler Shaffer says that he makes an imaginary presidential campaign for his students. One candidate is a drunk, a criminal, has extensive family problems etc, and the other is against smoking, for the use of responsible gun control, a candidate we tended to admire and emulate in past years.
The students always elect the second candidate based on his platform. Turs out the second candidate ran on the same platform as Adolf Hitler, while the first was a composite of our founding fathers.
Shaffer says that at some point a student will ask “How could Hitler have gotten away with such evil?”
Butler answers “Don’t you know? You voted for him!”.
The movie is on the drawing board.
A lot of people noticed the “stench” back in the day (1972-1975, that is) but most ignored it. If they had said, “we were wrong”, things might have been different. But no, it suddenly became our fault, because we weren’t ready, that HWA’s presumptuous prophecy didn’t come to pass.
By 1975, they were even denying that any such prediction had ever been made, we had all misunderstood that they were just speaking metaphorically about 1975 being the year of the return of Jesus.
At the so-called feast of tabernacles in 1975, they said, “we don’t set dates”, and then went on to say that Jesus’ return was near, within 5 years, 10 at the most. They knew this because HWA was God’s end time apostle and Jesus most definitely would return in his lifetime.
Actually, as it turned out, it was 11 years to the deadline (no pun intended) of the lifetime of the “apostle”, so I reckon they guessed that one pretty close – except for the parousia, of course.
A point of fact is that people noticed the stench about 1900 years ago and even demanded to know, “where is the promise of his coming?”. Of course those people were dismissed by calling them ignorant and “led away with the error of the wicked”.
Hasn’t that always been the way? You catch the “apostles” in their errors and all of a sudden it is you who is ignorant and in error. It is you who wants to return to the wicked, wicked world and are full of desires to sin – and other such nonsense . . . It is a pretty foul stench and it is pretty much worldwide.
Right, Corky. This crap has been going on for two thousand years, and if the race survives, may go on another two thousand, or longer. And, hasn’t that six thousand year mark been passed a long time ago as far as religionists wacky timetables go? We should be right smack dab in the middle of “the millennium” by now. Just like the Nazis are in the middle of their millennium. What a load of you know what.
It’s been going on longer than 2000 years. It’s buit into our natures. We need a leader. The bad part is that in the last few generations, our educational systems are collectivist, our economic systems are collectivist, and our religions are all extensions of that same collectivism.
The question is, is it because of the bible? Not at all. Even assuming that Genesis is a myth, simply look at the first thing people began to do when they developed civilizations capable of organizing outside strict environmental constraints. They said “Let’s organize and build a tower and see what God is doing”.
It is said that slime mold tend to organize in order to avoid predators and seek collective security. The behaviorist B. F. Skinner wrote that if you took two amoeba in close proximity and slightly shocked one, it would attack its neighbor. That’s pretty basic.
So, somebody comes along and points that out, that people try to organize to find security in themselves, and then we read of someone called YHVH scattering them by means of language confusion, that’s pretty indicative of a fact of civilization.
What did we do with HWA? We found this special truth that set us apart and let HWA tell us to build a tower(house for God). We worked, we slaved, we sacrificed, we endured, and then what? Scattered. Why? because it is impossible to organize and centralize by the force of God’s laws. reason? The natural mind is enmity against God and cannnot be subject to those laws.
Every group of slime mold that organizes and predicts special knowledge and awareness of God’s return fails. Why? because the bible itself said they couldn’t do it.
So, we screwed up, followed some man who took us in, and it’s the bible’s fault. Give me a break!
Systems organize and teach those moral standards that enforce centralization. Even if they preach revolution, they still end up preaching centralization. Look at the US government.
It’s all part of the same corrupt process.
So this dude named Jesus came along and says don’t follow any man who says “here is Christ”. Paul comes along and says there simply exists no decision procedure to claim any special relationship to God, and says God already knows who his children are anyway, but we know better. We’re following the right guy…wait a minute! he screwed me! The bible’s full of shit!
If you want to believe something because you believe it, fine, but don’t keep parroting this crap that its the bible’s fault because we got screwed.
We got screwed because we wanted to follow a human leader. We got screwed because we were suckers to our own vanity and wanted to be special.
We were told quite plainly for 2000 years, you can’t join God’s church. Can’t be done. Impossible.
The facts are simple. If you had knowledge of truth within yourself, you wouldn’t have needed a leader to tell you what to believe in the first place. That in itself confirms Romans 8:7. If you didn’t have capability of such knowledge, what standard of recognition would you claim that HWA had such knowledge? Because he made sense? If someone makes sense to a mind that’s incapable of being subject to God’s laws, then obviously any type of oprganization you choose is going to be in opposition to God’s laws.
You were told it couldn’t be done, you were told not to do it, and now it’s the bible’s fault. Funny stuff.
Ralph, good points. Can’t find any fault in your reasoning. We got what we were looking for. Everybody has been looking for it since the human race began. We find it — damn it. There are a plethora of individuals and organizations ready and willing to give us what we want.
However, the Bible is no more true or inspired than any other religious book and a lot of other wise books. A profound truth will be found there once in a while. Poor Richard’s Alamanac was just as true and authoritative and was right a whole lot more of the time.
I personally think the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are the most to be respected books in the whole lot, but much of them can be traced word for word to prior Egyptian sources. Wisdom and truth is wherever you find it. The Bible does include some profound truths such as you point out.
There is the sticky point. If the bible is the source of authority, it would have to prove that authority. But if it did teach such prescriptive authority, it would also have to teach some process by which we can obey it without confusion or splintering of ideas.
If the Koran tells me that it is useless to organize in the name of God because it can’t be done, then the Koran has told the truth. If MAD magazine or a Spiderman comic book tells me that, it has also told the truth. That would make it an “authority” only to the extent that it told me the truth.
The same would apply for any government. The problem is, we have many governments and many religions precisely because none of them can ever tell us the complete truth. The only possible solution, then, is to look at each and every statement as it applies to us and live as we can grasp its truth.
To the extent the bible agrees with that, it is authoritative. So, if the bible told us there is a specific process we are to follow in order to be special sons of God, it would have to show it beyond any doubt, yet the bible says there is no such process. The law is there, but we can’t keep it. The rules are there, but we can’t obey them. The truth is there, but we can’t know it all.
So, if the bible says there are no such authoritative statements, it must be the authoritative statement, since it corresponds to truth.
And, whether you believe it or not would be irrelevant, since you wouldn’t be able to prove the truth of it anyway.
There is only one truth worthy of belief: that you are free from all authority systems of men.
There is a certain cachet associated with Armstrongism. In the recent issue of the United News, there is a section devoted to recent high school graduates. It is amazing that they are so few in number and that they are all so accomplished. My guess is that one had to “apply” to appear in this section and they the applications were carefully screened to give the best possible picture of the UCG. Does anyone know how this was done?
I think I see here Armstrongite manipulation of media in order to create the image of being superior.
— Neo
I just had a look again at the United News section on recent high school graduates and I believe it serves as a good example of how Armstrongites use information to misrepresent themselves. The title of the article, in bold letters, is “Congratulations High School Gradutes!, Class of 2010”.
We are supposed to believe from the article title that this is the UCGs collection of high school graduates. But it is interesting to note that all of these kids are accomplished and all are college bound. You do not find the kid who graduated in the middle of his class, is not going to college and is going to be a truck driver. Clearly, this section has been carefully constructed to give a certain biased and propagandistic impression. My guess is that if the kid who wanted to be a truck driver submitted his information to the United News editors, his application was rejected. Probably some statement was sent to him about “not enough space.”
It is also interesting that while the Armstrongites are hoping to give themselves a good facade for the outside world, this article is really intended for the consumption of the Armstrongite faithful. And these are people who really need to think about the manipulation of information and the careful management of image by Armstrongite leaders and how that affects them.
But there is an unintentional revelation in all of this. Someone on the United News Staff was asleep at the wheel. The seamy and disloyal side of the UCG was put on display.
These are the careers listed for a substantial fraction of these students:
Pharmacy (2)
Surgical Technician
Unspecified Medical Field
Neuroscience
Nursing (4)
Pre-medicine
Early Childhood Education (2)
Psychiatry
Bio-engineering
Dentistry
Psychology
Biomedical Engineering
Biiomedical Art
All of these fields are unacceptable to good Armstrongites. When I first contacted Pasadena decades ago, I told them I was studying pharmacy. They said I would have to drop out of this major because it was the spiritual equivalent of sorcery and witchcraft. So above we have a number of fields of study related to medicine that would fall into that same category. These are medical fields that diabolically circumvent the healing intervention of God. Psychiatry and Psychology were always regarded as useless fields where men tried to prescribe solutions where only God could. The same is true of Early Childhood Education.
So the UCG defeated its purpose. It wanted to do a self-portrayal that made others think that they were really top-drawer. But they simply revealed their internal loss of fidelity to the principles of Armstrongism.
Herbert would roll over in his grave.
— Neo
It seems the UCG is not staying true to the apostles vision and opinion of pure, undefiled faith in God.
No matter what they say, or what they do, they will always be in conflict and in a state of constant division. That is what happens when you live your life by some book and disallow individuality.
Tat’s really funny when you see grassroot movements nationwide that have less and less use for public schools. The Tea Party and 912 movements are already bringing out information from such writers as John Taylor Gatto on how the public schools system was literally forced on people against their will, borrowed from Prussina military models, and based on the principle of Pavlovian conditioning to get children to stand in line, wait their turn, raise their hand to speak, and learn to completely obey the administravie rules of those over them.
So the UCG is bragtging about how obedient their students are, and the rest of the nation seems bent on proving what a waste of time the public school system is.
BTW, I moved from a city school when I was in the 4th grade to a country school where the kids were regularly taken out of school to help with planting and harvest. As a result we had some students in the 4th grade who were six feet tall, weighed about two hundred poids of muscle developed from hard work, and had chest hair about two inches long, and if you think that’s something, you should have seen the male students there.
When a nation denigrates education in favor of superstition, it is on a downhill slide. I just hope the lunatic fringe desn’t get powerful enough to pull off their agenda.
Educatgion will change drastically over the next few years. It will accommodate those changes in telecommunications. Not sure what you refer to as the lunatic fringe, but the simple fact is, public school systems will disappear in favor of more personalized courses with students moving at a pace of which they’re capable. There may be classes on the old order for those who need special care, but those classes will be the exception, not the rule.
The fact is that for some time now, students have been capable of absorbing information much faster than the teachers can disseminate it, so information has been closed to the degree that if you wish to move freely to understand things for yourself, you have to go through the educational channels.
As I wrote in my own experience, I did everything but attend high school classes, yet when they threw me out at age 15, I simply took an equivalency test and graduated in about 4 hours, after which I went to a community college and made the Dean’s List both years I was there.
The present system is simply ridiculous. All it has ever been for is to teach young people their place, follow orders and become dependable servants to the mechanical, hierarchical system.
The process of telecommunications itself is now threatening that system, and it should.
Ralph says: So this dude named Jesus came along and says don’t follow any man who says “here is Christ”. Paul comes along and says there simply exists no decision procedure to claim any special relationship to God…
No, Paul comes along and says, “here is Christ” and for you to follow Paul (I Cor. 4:16; 11:1), which is the same thing Armstrong said about himself too. Not just Armstrong but every preacher, minister, priest, bishop, pope (or what have you) since that time.
Oh, the multitudes of the representives of Christ – how will the human race ever escape all that nonsense?
Again, Corky, follow how? The very attempt to define it produces exactly the multitudes you describe, which is exactly what jesus said would happen in Matthew 10:34-38.
So, if you follow Christ, yopu cannot help but produce increasing diversity of ideas about Christ, ytou cannot help but produce arguments about which is true, and you never find a solution, which takes us right back to Matthew 24:23.
If you follow the Yellow Brick Road far enough, what do you end up with? Exactly what you, Corky, eded up with, and what Al ended up with, and name the rest of them.
It’s called freedom, and the pursuit of Christ produces exactly that simply by default. People run from it, they try to produce arguments that allow them to stay in their little burroughs of religion, but at some point, try as they might, they have to confront the fact that no human authority can represent Christ, and they’ree back at Matthew 24:23 and Paul’s plain statements of Romans 8 and 9.
Once you reach that point, you realize that all systems of authority can be examined and you can simply wave your weenie at them. Of course they can shoot you, but that’s why the study of the bible always produces exactly the kind of variety and individuality it does. There’s always a new wave of people who wake up and start the “fuck you” process all over again.
I don’t know that I want to wave my wienie at anybody, but like you, Ralph, I say “fuck you” to a great deal of “authority.” I won’t go into details about the many ways I’ve done so over the years, but it’s truly liverating not to be slavishly and fearfully going along with stupidity all the time. The main power wielded by most “authorities” is the power of intimidation.
One thing I’ve come to hate is homeowners and property owners associations. They always end up being taken over by two-bit Hitlers or Hitleresses who bear a striking resembleance to old Herb and his lackies.
We successfully fought a homeowners association when we owned a condo in Phoenix and have had the pleasure of watching the local property owners association slowly disintegrate after they tried unsucessfully to browbeat us by having a lawyer (they universally try to intimidate by threatening action by “a lawyer”) send us two letters, each costing them $150.
They were on the way down when we moved here, and we’re not the only ones who have, in effect, told them to go have sex with themselves. Membership is voluntary, to the tune of $25 a year, and we suspect they have so few paying members that they can’t legally operate. We know of no elections held in the last three years. They tried a membership drive at local supermarket parking lots last spring, and I think they got quite a few vehement comments. I didn’t bother stopping by, but I sent an email message they won’t soon forget.
Al I’m proud of you. I grew up building houses. My father was the biggest builder in the county after the war, and people waited in line for him to build their houses.
In the early fifties, he did so well that the local banker offered him a hundred thousand dollars just on his signature to start a building business that would buy up acreage and do speculative building.
My father was a Howard Roarke type and refused. He said he would do it by builg quality and not be tempted to cut corners for profit. I grew up thinking I might have been REALLY rich, and he refused, but as i got older, I realized his point.
Other builders did jump into the business from the textile industry, learning the basics and throwing up what my father called “rabbit boxes” for quick sale. They got the banker’s money, and started erecting the cheap houses for quick sale.
Of course buyers began slowly to complain about problems, and the county, after many years created a building code with inspectors, who made a rule that a contractor must have $9,000.00 free and clear of debt in order to be a contractor. This was back when that was quite a lot of money.
Who qualified as contractors? The ones who threw up the rabbit boxes, who had the money and influence of local politicians. One of those had been a partner with my dad, buit himself a fortune by taking the banker’s money, and running for State House, which he won. My dad had long since parted ways with him, because he saw where it was going.
As for homeowners and zoning and such:
“Therefore thou shalt have none that shall cast a cord(surveyor’s line) by lot(vote)in the congregation of the Lord”. Micah 2:5.
Of course the preceding verses are interesting as well:
“Woe to them that devise iniquity….because it is in the power of their hand. And they should covet fields, and take them by violence, and houses, and take them away, so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage”.
And I think of the Supreme Court’s “Kelo” decision with the next verse:
“He hath changed the portion of my people, how hath he removed it from me! Turning away he hath divided our fields”.
My father saw something it took me years to see. Before he died, he told me that he had allowed good men and women to own quality affordable houses. Those houses still stand as testament to him all over the county.
The rabbit boxes built end to end have collapsing roofs, and have become settlements of the less desirable types, but at least the cops know where to look when trouble breaks out.
Thanks for sharing that, Ralph. You have every reason to be proud of your father.
My Dad taught me honor and honesty as well. He was just an old North Dakota rancher, but he was stubborn as the day is long and totally honest and principled. I’ve fallen back on what I absorbed from him many times in my lifetime.
I could have done what many others did when things fell apart back there in the 70s. I could have gotten a mailorder ordination and started preaching and gathering a following around me. I didn’t have the stomach for it. I would have betrayed everything my ancestors stood for. I saw more and more that the whole religious scene was one of deception and bullshit. The goal was power, adulation and wealth. Like your father, I just couldn’t have slept well at night if I had taken that course.
When I leave this plane, not many will take notice, and I’ll soon be totally forgotten. But, those who do remember me will not regard me as a dishonest, lying son-of-a-bitch.
Al, that’s what matters. We live in an economic system built on debt, financed by increasing debt, and looking like it will soon collapse of its own weight. Your father and my father were rare types from another age, maybe not so rare in their own times, but not well known because they simply lived with integrity.
Long before we joined the WCG, my father had done extensi ve building on the church where his grandfather had donated land. When my dad died, we had stopped attending any church at all.
As the graveyard had been provided for desendants of my great grandfather, I had both my parents buried there, just below my grandfather.
The church had a new minister, one of those hellfire and brimstone morons who said if you don’t go to church, you go to hell. I had anticipated his message, so I delivered the eulogy before the preacher got to run his mouth. I told the story of my dad’s life, how he had built every part of that church, and I concluded “You want to see evidence of my father’s character? Just look around. You worship in it every day”.
The preacher was very respectful with his message.
Good for you. Nothing is more satisfying than pulling the fangs of someone like that.
One more thing, Ralph. It took me a while to understand you and where you were coming from. Once I ferreted out what you were all about, I developed a real respect for you. I think we could have a great time over a couple of beers.
We old Anglo rebels are an ornery lot. I’ve long maintained that I’m an American rebel son of an American rebel son of an American rebel son-of-bitch. I think you are too.
Yup, I’m a left handed thinker. We’d probably have a good discussion.
On my mother’s side, I can trace my ancestors to the Revolutionary War.
I also had a great great grandfather who fought at Gettysburg, got wounded and captured, was treated and healed, then escaped to find another rebel outfit to continue the fight.
He came home and helped to organize my hometown and became one of its first Sheriffs.
I looked up his obituary in 1928 in the local paper. It said he was a “good man, who was respected by the darkies, and he believed in white supremacy”.
How times change! Obviously for the better.
My American ancestry goes back to the 1630’s with Thomas Dexter of Lynn, Masschusetts, famous for his outspokenness. My Grandfather’s middle name was McCoy because his mother was a McCoy, very famous for her temper. The McCoy’s were a cantankerous bunch, as history will tell you. I had ancestors on both sides of the Civil War. My paternal grandmother was a Goebbel’s, a second or third cousin of old Joseph.
Just goes to show what I have long maintained that races and nationalities are meaningless. We’re all cousins in the end.
When someone says on the one hand that you can follow but on the other hand they say you cannot follow – that is a contradiction. Twist things as you will, one or the other is wrong.
Corky, “When someone says on the one hand you can follow but on the other hand they say you cannot follow–that is a contradiction. Twist things as you will, one or the other is wrong”.
Here is the essence of your statement: you are talking “about” the statement without actually referring to the contents of the statement itself and the implications of that statement. It’s part of the concept Godel worked with in mathematics.
If we look at foundational statements regardeing God, made by Paul, we see that first, the natural mind is enmity against God and cannot be subject to God. Paul was convinced he had the mind of Christ, and sai we should follow him as he followed Christ.
What does that entail? As you say, 1 Corinthians 4:16 and 11:1. Cpahpter 4:1, Paul declares himself the minister of Christ, a steward of the mystery of God.
Assume that Paul somehow understands a mystery, a secret, an occult proposition that others cannot understand, and we should follow him.
Verse 4: “He that judgeth me is the Lord. (5)Therefore judge nothing before the time until the Lord come”.
Therefore, if you follow Paul, you condemn no man, fully in accordance with Matthew 7:1.
Why? First because the natural mind is enmity against God and cannot be subject to God, trherefore, no person can rule in God’s name. When “the Lord come”, he will “bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and wil make manifest the counsels of the hearts…”
If you follow Paul, therefore, you do not judge men. Goes right back to Jefferson’s statement in the Declaration of Independence, doesn’t it?
Also, since it is a mystery of which the natural mind has no understanding, it would be foolish to organize under any banner or ‘truth of God”.
If Paul has the “mind of Christ”, then that mind would tell us, as Matthew 24;23 does, that there is no need to follow any man saying “here is Christ”.
Same chapter: “God hath set fortth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death, for we are made a spectacle unto the world”.
Paul’ self description in that chapter was not one of power or authority or control.
Now chapter 11:3: “The head of every man is Christ”. So, how to follow Paul? As he fiollows Christ. But iof the head of every man is Christ, then Paul is not the head, but just a follower as you are.
The next question is, could Paul logically claim power over men?
1Corinthians 9:19: “For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more”.
Gain them to what? Obviously freedom from all men. Jesus said that in Matthew 24:23, and Paul said there is no such power to organize in God’s name because the natural mind is enmity against God. So, if you follow Paul, you, as Paul would be, are free from all men.
If you look further at 1 Corinthians 9:24, you do not see an exmaple of men following a leader, but of men COMPETING EQUALLY, to “run in a race”.
Back when I ran a race, I didn;t follow anybody unless they proved by physical fact that they were capable of leading me.
“And every man tht STRIVETH FOR THE MASTERY is temperate in all things”.
Verse 1 of that same chapter: “Am I not an apostle? AM I NOT FREE?”
Verse 12: “If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless, we HAVE NOT USED THIS POWER, but suffer all things, lest we should hider the gospel of Christ.”
If the head of every man is Christ, and you follow Paul as he follows Christ, then you are allowed to “compete” equally, to contend with Paul and decide if he does follow Christ. Why? because you’re free from all men.
If something is secret, you can’t follow it if you cannot know it. If you can know it, it is not secret. If it is not secret, then EVERY PERSON ON EARTH COULD UNDERSTAND IT BY REASON AND LOGIC. Jesus’ statement of Matthew 10:34-38 would be wrong, Romans 8:7 would be wrong, and we could organize the whole world under a combined church and state.
So, if you follow Paul as he follows Christ, you have two ways of choosing:
1.If it is secret kept from all men until Christ comes again, obviously there is no logical way for men to control and organize under it.
2.It is completely wrong, and you therefore have exactly the same option as (1) above.
In either case, you come to the same conclusion, which means that anyone who says otherwise must be a liar.
There’s a lot of “ifs” there, Ralph. Then we must “assume” something we can’t know to even begin:
Assume that Paul somehow understands a mystery, a secret, an occult proposition that others cannot understand, and we should follow him.
Uh, no. I will not “assume” any such thing and neither should anyone else.
Exactly the point, Corky. If Paul understands a mystery, there would be no way to follow him. If it’s a mystery, it isn’t understood. If it isn’t understood, then all we can do is assume we are free from any human system of organization.
If it’s not a mystery, it’s understod, which means if its understood it can be proven. If proven, then it can be used to organize all the world. One world government, one religion, and Matthew 10:34-38 is wrong, Romans 8:7 is wrong.
The only thng you can conclude is exactly what Paul said: you must be free from all men. The logic is inescapable.
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences, Mr. Becker. But strict adherence to Mr. Armstrong’s teachings ain’t that bad. You know why? Because my father is not a drunkard, he has never cheated on my mother, and he doesn’t beat of molest any of this children, and he believes it is his duty as the head of the family to provide for his family. I may not agree with his religious views, but I can tell you that from the point of view of someone who had to live with an “armstrongian”, it isn’t that bad.
ShmellyCat, a sound conclusion. What your father does is your father’s business, and no one can judge him for it.
My experiences witrh Armstrongism weren’t that bad, but the D&R doctrine had profound effects on my parents, which drove my father to open the bible and read it for himself.
It is logical to argue that the purpose of the bible is to create the very individualism that results from trying to keep “God’s laws”.
If your father is satisfied with his efforts, and your family is satisfied, then that’s the bottom line of the matter.
ShmellyCat,
You are one of the lucky ones. Your parents must have had a very good marriage. But what happens when you expose people who have no worth to themselves and they join a religious cult that tells them they are Gods chosen? The answer is lunacy. Religious lunacy that drives people to do some real bad things. Ask those who went to church with Ratzmann or lived through the horrors of a psychotic minister waging war on the congregation.
Armstrong’s doctrines (manifesto) had all of the hallmarks of having been written by an uneducated pedant and took us over the edge of the abyss into collectivism. Yes, Armstrong-ism is still alive, yet it still wallows in the sty of nonrepresentationalism years after the founders demise. The blood-lust continues onward.
Accept the fundamental premise, namely that Armstrong took recourse to demagogism as a tactical modality for waging low-intensity warfare and had been successful in destroying his sheeple for financial gain.
In the end game, there is a cost, a cost too high to calculate, for messing with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people. Just when this will play out I don’t know, but the day is coming that just compensation will be served, and most likely, served cold.
ShmellyCat:
I think that the most damaging effect Armstrongism had on me was what they did in formulating my concept of God. Seeing God as a being who showed His love by being a cruel and arbitrary, legalistic judge caused me to retreat in horror into atheism and agnosticism for over thirty years. For three decades, I remained spiritually homeless, simply because I could not understand God’s grace, a love for us that was so extreme that He sacrificed His only begotten Son so that Christ’s righteousness could be imputed for us, and so that we could have an eternal personal relationship with our creator.
I have met a number of families in WCG who seemingly had a very vivid working concept of God prior to their Armstrong experience. That concept prevented them from fully buying into the Pharissaic legalism, and helped them navigate around the destructive doctrinal approaches. I also knew others, where the parents had suffered horrible abuses during their childhoods, came into Armstrongism hoping for healing, but found that the doctrinal approaches actually perpetuated the bad cycles of such things as abuse and alcoholism into the following generations. Whatever happened in families was often due to the raw materials or state of affairs that people came into this cult with. And, yes, I’ll even admit that there were some rare individuals for whom Armstrongism actually improved life.
BB
There’s those “if”s again, Ralph. If a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass. We can’t go by “if” and “assume” and that’s what religion is. An honest person cannot “conclude” anything from religion except that it is all assumption followed by a bunch of ifs and maybe.
Again, precisely the point. However, if one proceeds from the basic Aristotelian conclusions of logic, onre must proceed with “if”, and proceed to “then”.
(if) all men are mortal
(and)Socrates is a man
(then)All men are mortal
Until proven otherwise, the original premise “if” is accepted as true, then arguing to the specific Socrates is mortal must be also true as a general category.
Therefore:
(if) the natural mind is enmity against God
(and)I have a natural mind
(then)My mind is enmity against God
This does not attempt to prove the existence of God, nor can it. It merely proposes that if there is a God(neither provable nor unprovable), then that very fact in itself would sow the natural mind to be incapable of demonstrating anything of value about God which would be useful for human organization.
Again, the logic is inescapable. One can assume that the mind IS subject to God and “His” laws, but then a proof would have to follow that cancels the syllogism above.
Corky, would you argue against that, that the mind IS subject to God? I doubt it. Any assumptions about God one way or another would be unprovable, and therefore of no use in terms of human organizations of law.
Would you presume an “if” that declared otherwise? If so, then you have stumbled on that which has not been proven by the mind of any human.
“An honest person cannot conclude anything from religion except that it is all assumption followed by a bunch of ifs and maybes”.
Precisely, which is why there is no religion that can claim authority. You merely agree with my argument and the statement of both Paul and jesus in Matthew 24:23, and Romans 8 and 9.
That is exactly why Paul said he was free of all men, and why 2 peter 2;19 says that whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved.
Every argument you have presented so far merely confirms Matthew 10:34-38, Matthew 24:23, and Romans 8 and 9.
By yur own statement which I quoted, it then follows logically that “If any man says to you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe it not”.
If you argue that Jesus was telling us to follow him exclusively, then it would logically follow that we are to follow no other except him. But he’s not here, and he said to follow no man who said that he was “here”.
Therefore you are again logically free from all men, and any attrempt to follow such a representative is merely enslavement to a man.
There’s no way you can beat this argument.
Let me edit my syllogism above. That’s what I get for watching the news on TV while writing.
(If) all men are mortal
(and) Soctates is a man
(then)Socrates is mortal.
(If) all men are mortal
(and) Jesus was a man
(then) Jesus was mortal.
(If) all angels are immortal
(and) only God hath immortality
(then) angels are God.
(If) all men are dust
(and) Jesus was a man
(then) Jesus is dust.
Hey, this if fun.
Exactly, Corky. Any “if” must be shown to be consistent with reality. That is the measure of truth, that it is consistent with what we can demonstrate as reality.
1st example:
If angels are immortal
and only God hath immortality
Angels are God
Is this consistent with reality? Do angels exist? Since it isn’t provable from any circumstance we can demonstrate consistently with reality, it is not necessary to believe it. Matthew 24:23 confirmed.
2nd example
If all men are dust
and Jesus was a man
Jesus is dust
Assuming that all men are dust at some point, then Jesus would have to be dust, wouldn’t he?
One can assume aresurrection, but since it isn’t provable, it doesn’t fall into any conection with reality, and therefore not subject to belief. Matthew 24:23 confirmed.
And your first example, which I saved for last, since it most resembles a syllogism:
If all men are mortal
and Jesus was a man
Then Jesus was mortal.
Exactly, and since we can prove nothing other than that, Matthew 24:23 confirmed. Thanks again for proving my point.
Corky, I’ve got you any way you turn. You better go get help.
You’re welcome, Ralph, that was my intention.
Great analogy with the paper mill Doug. I doubt VERY seriously that I will ever again subject myself to another armstrongite group, but I can imagine the stink of going back into one would be about as bad as that paper mill. Its funny, since leaving my last splinter group, I have read and read and read on so many blogs, and on so many websites about the effects of Armstrongism that I would never believed until I had experienced what I did in the last splinter I was in. That was the catalyst to open my eyes and actually start looking into some of these things I’d dismissed for years as “people with bad attitudes” or (and i love this one)”demon problems” How ignorant was I to ever just think like that. If there’s one good thing about all of our experiences in this “religion” it’s that we’ve all more or less gotten to see the effects of greedy men preying upon ignorant/innocent people and now we know what to avoid. It sickens me about as much as the smell sickened the people on that plane. Keep up the writing!
Hey, just thought of something cool! There’s an oldie by the Skynyrd Boys called “That Smell”. It’d be an awesome theme song for this post!
BB
Here is a smell you might not have noticed before. In the speech of Gamaliel in the Acts Luke puts Theudas before Judas of Galilee and says that Judas’s movement was kaput. Two things, maybe three, are wrong about that. 1. Judas was before Theudas. 2. Judas’s movement was not dispersed but grew by leaps and bounds until the Romans slaughtered them in the first Jewish war. 3. The unfortunate incident with Theudas had not even happened at the time of Gamaliel’s speech. The smell? Why did Luke tell this lie and what was he covering up by telling it?
Surely Luke would know about Judas of Galilee and the Zealots and Theudas (from reading Josephus) so, why did he twist what Josephus reported about them? Luke must have done that, because Gamaliel’s speech about leaving the Christians alone was before Theudas’s murder. Or, do apostles go backward in time like God does and know the future from the mouth of a Pharisee?
"So when I walked into the UCG services in 2009, the arrogance of the minister hit me every bit as hard as the stench of the Weyerhaeuser mill."
-Douglas Becker
I went back to one home bible study after the church started changing its doctrine. The minister had his sheep around, and I had been invited. I took over the meeting, challenged him, made him look really slow.
When we took a break, he gave me a look that was pure hatred. I smiled and pursed my lips in a little kiss. He looked confused and looked away.
@ Ralph: That story is HILARIOUS! The minister was probably thinking “oh crap, he know’s I’m into dudes?!” Not really LOL but pretty funny stuff.
Thanks for putting that clip up. I’d never heard that song before, but it does fit perfectly. Guess I’m a bit out of touch when it comes to modern music and groups.