Author: James

The Worldwide church of God attempted to annihilate peoples personality, individuality, will, and character. The stranded souls that hitched their wagon to this organization unknowingly supported a power-hungry pharisaic and fastuous authoritative cult leader and his son, Garner Ted Armstrong. For all the alarums and excursions, the fact remains that without knowing it, we nurtured these two ungrateful incubi's. For that I can only ask for forgiveness. After my WCG experience, I went to college to educate myself so I would have a greater understanding of the world about me and to understand why I ever fell for HWA's scam religion. This lead me to the conclusion that the appropriate action to take, in my judgment, is to provide people with opportunities to learn, develop, and exercise their potential as human beings, by freeing them from men who exploit and abuse them. This website and others are my vehicle to do just that.
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Fire When Ready – RCG Waters Down the Sabbath!

We’ve all seen our share of imaginative proof-texting: part of a verse quoted, a passage taken out of context, a meaning dependent on a particular translation… So, it would be no surprise to see a verse pushed forward into a different context. As HWA used to claim, the Bible is a puzzle. The problem is that too many pieces fit together the wrong way, and someone threw away the box with the completed picture on it.

In the anonymous RCG article, How to Make the Sabbath a Delight, there are a few points that may be challenged, but I’d like to look at just one. Specifically, its interpretation of Ex. 35:3, “Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings (NIV)”. This verse follows a command not to work on the Sabbath; following this verse is a request for an offering of materials to build the Tabernacle. After that, everyone goes off to search their stuff for things to donate.

Referring to the zeal shown by Israel in offering materials, the writer of the article tells us it becomes clear that the verse quoted refers to “industrial fires”. So on the Sabbath, in your house, you can light a candle, light up the barbecue, but don’t fire up your backyard Bessemer convertor. (That may have been a big problem for Sabbath-keepers in China in the 1950s during the Great Leap Forward Backward.)

Since the verse doesn’t mention cooking, the article states that cooking on the Sabbath is okay (but the preparation work should have been done on Friday). In my WCG days, I remember old-timers saying how there used to be sermons on food preparation so that no cooking would necessary on the Sabbath.

If only it was so obvious for observant Jews. The first recorded stoning for Sabbath violation (Num. 15) was for gathering wood (Moffatt “wood for fuel”) and Jewish commentators presume it was intended for kindling a fire. For the traditional two candles lit before the Sabbath, I recall reading that they must be lit at least 18 minutes before sunset. There are discussions in the Talmud on such issues as raking fires that were still burning after sunset, and warming up food that was cooked before the Sabbath. Modern Orthodox Jews have disagreed over such matters as turning on an electric light: is flipping the switch “work” and is lighting the bulb the same as kindling a fire? And can one reheat food in a microwave oven? I guess they didn’t work it out that the verse referred to industrial fires.

It would have been simpler if the article just said not to light a match or lighter – a Biblical reason not to smoke on the Sabbath! As much as I have come to dislike the expression “watering down”, I would say that is what the writer is doing to the Sabbath! Maybe that is why the article is anonymous… As HWA would say, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

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Holding fast…

A few times I’ve heard and read GTA making fun of Ramadan, the lunar month during which observant Muslims fast during the day. The humor he used to diminish their daylight abstinence was his imagining a nighttime feeding frenzy following the fast.

Ramadan 2013 starts on July 9, during the Hebrew month of Av. Unlike he Hebrew lunar calendar, the Muslim lunar calendar continually cycles 12 lunar months, and is not tied to the agricultural seasons.

While doing some research through the Talmud, I found that most Biblical fasts, according to Jewish sages, are daytime-only. Not all were the full “even until even” as the fast on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). In fact, Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av (the 9th of Av, a fast to mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples) were considered the only “sunset until nightfall (of the following day)” fasts; other fast days were considered to be “before dawn until nightfall”. So along with the fast days during Ramadan, Biblical “ordinary” fast days are also only during daylight hours.

In one sermon, GTA was on a roll about Pharisaic legalism. Commenting on the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector who fasted twice each week, GTA remarked that it probably meant skipping a couple of meals and eating at sunset, “like Ramadan.”  Although the remark related to a parable, Pharisees normally did fast twice each week, on Mondays and Thursdays. The Didache (“Teaching of the Apostles”, ca 100 CE) instructed Christians to be different and fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. These “ordinary” fasts would have been daytime only.

Another small point: I seem to remember reading in a WCG publication many years ago that “a fast day can’t occur on a feast day” so the Day of Atonement can’t fall on the weekly Sabbath, as it is considered a feast day. However, Jewish sources say the Day of Atonement was the only fast permitted to be on the Sabbath. Other fixed fast days (such as Tisha B’Av) had to be moved to another day of the week. Personal fasting on the Sabbath, festivals, and Rosh Chodesh (the beginning of a lunar month) was also prohibited. There were, however, rare exceptions when fasting on Sabbath was allowed, if the need was urgent. As we know, COGs occasionally have urgent exceptions – The Work facing crises, attacks by Satan, …

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July 4th. State of America.

 

Britain’s American colonies broke with the mother country in 1776 and were recognized as the new nation of the United States of America following the Treaty of Paris in 1783. During the 19th and 20th centuries, 37 new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the North American continent and acquired a number of overseas possessions. The two most traumatic experiences in the nation’s history were the Civil War (1861-65), in which a northern Union of states defeated a secessionist Confederacy of 11 southern slave states, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, an economic downturn during which about a quarter of the labor force lost its jobs. Buoyed by victories in World Wars I and II and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remains the world’s most powerful nation state. Since the end of World War II, the economy has achieved relatively steady growth, low unemployment and inflation, and rapid advances in technology. Until now.

America is now the world’s largest consumer of cocaine, Colombian heroin, Mexican heroin and marijuana. We are the major consumer of ecstasy and Mexican methamphetamine; minor consumer of high-quality Southeast Asian heroin and are illicit producers of cannabis, marijuana, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and methamphetamine; money-laundering center in the world. Ask Ron Weinland about that.

What’s is store for America and the World?

From “Global Trends”a C.I.A publication we read: (all quotes from this publication are in green)
The world of 2030 will be radically
transformed from our world today.
By 2030, no country—whether the
US, China, or any other large country—will
be a hegemonic power. The empowerment
of individuals and diffusion of power among
states and from states to informal networks will
have a dramatic impact, largely reversing the
historic rise of the West since 1750, restoring
Asia’s weight in the global economy, and
ushering in a new era of “democratization”
at the international and domestic level.
The role of the USA:
How the United States’ international role evolves
during the next 15-20 years—a big uncertainty—and
whether the US will be able to work with new partners
to reinvent the international system will be among
the most important variables in the future shape of
the global order. Although the United States’ (and the
West’s) relative decline vis-a-vis the rising states is
inevitable, its future role in the international system
is much harder to project: the degree to which the US
continues to dominate the international system could
vary widely.
The US most likely will remain “first among equals”
among the other great powers in 2030 because of
its preeminence across a range of power dimensions
and legacies of its leadership role. More important
than just its economic weight, the United States’
dominant role in international politics has derived
from its preponderance across the board in both hard
and soft power. Nevertheless, with the rapid rise of
other countries, the “unipolar moment” is over and
Pax Americana—the era of American ascendancy
in international politics that began in 1945—is fast
winding down.
So the days of a dominant United States is arriving at the end game. Predictable on a historic level, as all great powers decline. How this decline will be managed is unknown. Will a revolt in the USA spark a revolution and lead to tyrannical government in a attempt to control the populace and maintain its power? Who knows. The Armstrongist don’t know. They are wrong on everything.
Of course not is all doom and gloom. The boom in gas and oil production is predicted to end the U.S  reliance of foreign oil and produce perhaps millions of good paying jobs.
But if this event does not materialize, we read:
The US impact is much more clear-cut in the negative
case in which the US fails to rebound and is in sharp
economic decline. In that scenario, a large and
dangerous global power vacuum would be created and
in a relatively short space of time. With a weak US, the
potential would increase for the European economy to
unravel. The European Union might remain, but as an
empty shell around a fragmented continent.
What will the ACOG’s do? America’s decline means the Germans ain’t coming with their meat-hooks in hand!

FEW COMPETING VISIONS OF A NEW INTERNATIONAL ORDER—FOR THE MOMENT:

The replacement of the United States by another global power and erection of a new international order seems the least likely outcome in this time period. No other power would be likely to achieve the same panoplyof power in this time frame under any plausible scenario. The emerging powers are eager to take their places at the top table of key multilateral institutions such as UN, IMF, and World Bank, but they do not espouse any competing vision. Although ambivalent and even resentful of the US-led international order,they have benefited from it and are more interested in continuing their economic development and political consolidation than contesting US leadership.In addition, the emerging powers are not a bloc:they don’t have any unitary alternative vision. Their perspectives—even China’s—are more keyed to shaping regional structures. A collapse or sudden retreat of US power would most likely result in an extended period of global anarchy where there would be no stable international system and no leading power to replace the US. When we have discussed decreasing US power abroad, many scholars and analysts have tended to assume even greater levels of chaos and disorder would ensue than many US experts.

Marx Update for the 21st Century:
I’m not sure that the US is yet ripe for revolution. It’s done too well from shale gas. The working class there got lulled by the increased manufacturing possibilities as businesses moved back from Asia when US domestic energy prices dropped. But it could be just a matter of time. Entitlement reform in the 2010s didn’t happen because US growth picked up. US debt has continued to climb: it is only a matter of time before entitlements will be back
on the political agenda. The onset of a global downturn with all the turmoil in Europe and elsewhere is beginning to stir up class tensions. The US thinks it is immune, but we’ll see. Unfortunately, opposition activists in America no longer read Marx.
Further down in the article we read:
We’ve seen growing class divisions elsewhere, pointing to a potential global revolution.
Now that’s a “Shit Hits The Fan” Moment!
Societal breakdowns occur when people lose everything. The rich get richer and the middle class is in decline. When the bottom drops out on the currency and money becomes worthless what to do? When the transporting of food is too expensive and fuel is not available or is extremely expensive, shit hits the fan because of resource scarcity. I wouldn’t want to be in a big city when all hell breaks loose. Rambo I ain’t!
Now days there is a new rule. Its called “bail-ins”. When banks need an infusion of cash, there’s no need for the central bank to step in. Confiscate the depositors money and call them “investors”.  Yes, that’s right, you are now an investor not a depositor! Feel empowered?  Well you shouldn’t! You should know that you may land up here in America being fucked big time!  Remember Cyprus!  And those who follow the new scam to rip you off!
Japan’s Financial Services Agency will enact new rules that will forced failed bank losses on investors, if needed, via a mechanism known as a “bail-in,” according to The Nikkei. Mitsubishi UFJ (MTU), Mizuho Financial (MFG) and Sumitomo Mitsui (SMFG) are among those proposing amendments to allow them to issue the types of preferred shares or subordinated bonds that would be used in such cases, the report noted.
So here on July 4th, a holiday celebrating your freedoms and rights, perhaps you should consider what you status as a free citizen really is. Or do you really care? The master slave relationship (Owner/property relationships) is alive and well.
Are you the slave or the master of your own destiny?
Or maybe I should ask, how many of your freedoms have been lost this year?