“I want to make a statement about…me…now, if I became deceived, I will never tell you what I’m going to tell you now…I am telling you if I go off into strange ideas, misconduct, rebellion, you name it, don’t follow me. I want to tell you that now, because if I start doing that I’m gonna try to get you to follow me! I’m gonna come to you and tell you it doesn’t apply, it doesn’t mean me, no, no, no, no, no, no, it’s OK to follow me because ABCD and XY and Z. Do you understand what I’m saying? Listen to me now, when I tell you don’t follow me if I go off into weird ideas, or if I get off into other things that are total absolutely unscriptural conduct, because if I do I’m gonna paint it with a different face and try to get you to follow me. Do you understand what I’m saying brethren? Please remember that, because I promise you that if I become deceived, I’ll forget it, and I’ll want you to forget it…And I hope you’ll remember it well enough to quote it right back to me…But I’ll tell you what, I’m not going anywhere.”
-David C Pack
December 12, 1998
The Clarion Call of Apostle David C. Pack
Video and audio files can be found here and on Rumble
“…the word clearly is unusable. The only logical choice is to let it go.”
Then you would have never been able to write this article. Even if you dropped the word after you wrote your article, then you would have a hard time getting feedback.
“… but it’s inadequate for meaningful discussion.”
It’s not the word “God” that causes problems in the world. It is the people who fight over what its meaning should be. If you were to replace “God” with “Dog”, then eventually humans will argue over what that word means as well. And we are all to blame for this, especially when we tend to argue instead of choosing to understand each other. If we are not willing to understand other, then how can we ever understand God?
“Language is such a rip-off. It’s nothing but the same 26 letters over and over and again over. Just 26 letters to give meaning to everything.” anonymous
Some years ago, a letter to Exit and Support complained that the WCG used the name “Eternal”, whereas he thought it should have been “Lord”. I emailed that “God”, “Lord”, “HaShem” (“The Name” in Hebrew) etc, were all evasive synonyms, used respectfully to avoid profaning an Divine Name.
As some early Painful Truth articles show, the Founding Fathers, unlike the pious Pilgrims and Puritans, used “God” to refer to the generic Creator of Enlightenment Deism. Ambitious men like Washington was a nominal Anglican, as it was easier to get ahead if you followed the State Religion. While Washington was a “closet Deist”, Ben Franklin was open about his beliefs.
One may speculate that in the secular US government, the God of “In God we Trust” and the “God Bless America” is the Deistic Creator.
What is interesting to me is that after hundreds of thousands of years of the presence of man-like creatures, mankind made a quantum leap forward about ten thousand years ago, when he finally learned to record and accumulate his thoughts.
Unfortunately, this recording of thoughts does not work completely to our advantage in accurately reflecting who or what God might be. Most of what we believe we know is in reality anthropomorphic, as would be any attempt to quantify something basically so complex as to defy verbal description, or man’s ability to conceptualize.
Best I’ve seen is the panentheistic “God is everything”.
Miguel de la Rodente:”Unfortunately, this recording of thoughts does not work completely to our advantage in accurately reflecting who or what God might be.”
God is an Astronaut
The author makes the same mistake nearly everyone makes, that the universe has to come from somewhere, otherwise we must accept spontaneous generation.
A new cosmological theory sidesteps all that by proposing that the universe has always existed, Big Bang optional. It’s always been here… forever and forever and forever. This solves a lot of problems and the math works pretty well. We’ll have to see what happens in peer review. It is likely that cosmologists are going to get kinda cranky on this one and not want to accept clear thinking.
Nevertheless, if this view is true, we all have a bigger problem when it comes to God. Suddenly, there is no more God Creator. If God exists, then having Him (or It) around for all eternity is rather inconvenient and unnecessary — God and the universe both existed forever? Unlikely.
Under these conditions, if God exists, then, at best, He (or It) would be a consequence of the universe. What sort of God would that be?
At best, that God could be the progenitor of life — having created DNA. That doesn’t seem that reasonable. OK, how about being a shaper and protector — maybe shepherding matter into what now exists on earth. I suppose we could live with that. A Being of superior technology ‘creating’ an ecosphere on earth (and maybe a lot of other places) and setting up Jupiter to sweep away asteroids and other junk to insure that mass extinction didn’t happen as much as it has. In this case, it might be a collective of God Beings, the bottom line of which involves superior technology.
It always boils down to that, doesn’t it? Superior technology. If a God or gods really exist, it’s all about superior technology about which humanity collectively knows very little. The application of technology would look like miracles and magic to those of ancient times who had little or no knowledge of science (which is about the same thing as saying that they had little or no knowledge of knowledge). Actually, the Greeks did a pretty good job and if the Romans hadn’t dropped the ball, we’d have had blu-ray players with OLED curved screens by 1257 A.D. Who knows where we’d be today.
Anyway, isn’t that what it always boils down to? Religion is primarily based on ignorance and superstition. It should be obvious that the Bible was an effort of the ancients to understand what they could not at the time because they had not developed far enough. It’s a collection of ideas which may or may not be all that useful as a guide to knowing God. Perhaps they did have inspiration around the edges from God or gods and there is some, if limited merit, to what they wrote.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that it’s not much of a guide for today, seeing that many of the books in question were forged and even that in ignorance and superstition. It’s clear that we cannot know the truth about who or what God really is. It is up to us individually to evaluate our experiences and determine for ourselves what ‘God’ really means. If you have experienced miracles and healing, that is something you alone own. It may well be that there are mechanisms in the universe to promote such things that are beyond our ken, even as The Secret proposes. It may work. It might not.
In this discussion, though, it is very clear that the Armstrongists have been left far behind because, no matter what, what they believe is provably a lie. British Israelism is alternative earth history science fiction of the worst sort, leading to failed prophecies and false prophets who cannot and have not have any support from a God whatsoever.
It’s high time that they be honest with themselves and move into the 21st century, leaving their superstitions and lies behind. They need to acknowledge that Herbert Armstrong was a kook and a con man who couldn’t possibly have had any connection to God, if there is One.
But we can be fairly certain that he did have a connection to Satan the Devil whether or not we can define that Evil because he was a thoroughly rotten human being who deserves no honor or respect whatsoever and his henchmen hirelings deserve even less consideration.
Douglas Becker:”The author makes the same mistake nearly everyone makes, that the universe has to come from somewhere, otherwise we must accept spontaneous generation.”
“We are made of stardust.”
“I think, therefore I am.”
Die-hard humanists and hard-line rationalists choose to believe that life was just a fluke. That’s possible. But we still can’t prove to ourselves and without any doubt on how the Universe got started. Even if it has always existed and there was always small tiny peices of life that were scattered all across the Universe, the question still remains “Where do our assumptions come from?”
Douglas Becker:”It is up to us individually to evaluate our experiences and determine for ourselves what ‘God’ really means.”
Exactly. I think it has always been that way no matter how blasphemous it sounds, and none of us has gotten it right either, except for maybe one.
Here is that Carl Sagan article again, “A New Way To Think About Rules To Live By”
Douglas Becker wrote: ”The author makes the same mistake nearly everyone makes, that the universe has to come from somewhere, otherwise we must accept spontaneous generation.”
It is what he the author was taught as a child no doubt. I believe the author is starting to question the premise of Christianity. A good thing. After all, everyone who ever participated in the three Abrahamic religions have caused nothing but turmoil throughout the ages. Some will figure it out, most won’t. They refuse to read.