The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God

Again, I’m not picking on Corky, but pointing out that he actually does elevate the whole discussion to a level wothy of dialogue. And his points are excellent. Good, well reasoned responses to get folks to reach for that higher level of understanding.

Of course he and I don’t agree, but that’s what intelligent discussion is all about. It’s about growth, learning, dialogue and sharing.
The points Corky makes that really intrigues me is in regard to government and law. For example, he points out that the Sadducees urged the people to submit to Roman law, not to revolt, but to have patience, that the “zealots” were the ones that usually caused trouble.

In fact, the Sadducees were not well thought of by the general population of Israel. They were considered the Quislings of the Roman government, puppets who ruled simply by the permission of the Roman Empire.

Even worse were the publicans, or tax collectors, who were generally lumped together with “sinners” in the New testament. Jesus associated with “publicans and sinners”.

In fact, Jesus told his followers in Matthew 18 that, if a person didn’t want to settle matters within the peaceful and non-vengeful treatment of the church or community, that person was to be shunned as a “gentile or tax collector”. Not much of a statement in support of Sadducee government.

Pharisees, on the other hand, in spite of their general legislative popularity, were condemned as “Hypocrites!”. Jesus said to call no man rabbi, and rabbis were Pharisees. Even though they sat in Moses’ seat, they were not to be called “rabbi’ or “master”. In fact, Jesus accused them of “taking away the key of knowledge” from the people. Pharisees said that certain among them, with proper training and discipline, could understand and define the law of God. Jesus said they were pretentious, that the “key of knowledge” was as much the property of the people as of the Pharisees, and Paul completely insulted them by saying that the natural mind cannot be subject to God’s laws, period.

The Sadducees were eliminated finally by the Pharisees, who waged “jihad” against the Roman Empire, only to see themselves scattered to the winds yet again. As Corky pointed out, the zealots gained absolutely nothing.

Why? because they believed something that simply wasn’t true. They were NOT God’s appointed representatives to establish God’s kingdom on earth. It was impossible for any human to claim that right.

And, neither are the “Christians” of today given that right, when you get down to it. If no natural mind can be subject to God, then it logically follows that no “natural” kingdom of God on earth can be established by human will. Can’t be done!

There is no “true church of God’ organized by any human, nor can there be. To assume there is, one would have to assume that his/her natural mind is the exception to the rule of Romans 8:7.

“I know Paul says that the natural mind cannot be subject to God’s law, but my mind is the exception, and I can decide otherwise”. Yeah, right. That’s pretty much the same attitude attributed to “Lucifer” in the Old Testament. “I will ascend into heaven, I will establish my will…” It’s also pretty much what the Pharisees stated, with the very best of intentions. They believed that their minds, with proper training and discipline, actually could be subject to God’s law, and they would represent God faithfully to the people. Jesus called them hypocrites, and Paul said it couldn’t be done. And so did Kurt Godel about 1900 years later.

Corky’s conclusions are correct except for one important point: the bible already pointed these things out.

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Corky, you bring out good statements and scriptures worth examination.

First, Romans 10. First, we see that Paul is addressing himself specifically to Israel, as he does also in Romans 11. “They have zeal of God, but not according to knowledge”.

That in itself is an interesting statement. They had the law, they had knowledge of what was expected of them, and they obviously had dedication, but not, apparently, knowledge. Jesus allegedly made a similar statement in Matthew 11:13.

In verse 6-8, this same scripture is also used by Jews to show that the “word of God” is among them, and that they have the right to follow the precepts of that government. In fact, there is an ancient legend among Talmudist Jews that at one point, they were undecided on what was the truth of a particular matter, so they put it to a vote. The majority ruled, based on a lack of clear scriptural guidance, the majority ruled. God, however, came down and told them that in this case, the minority was actually correct. But the Talmudist said that God was “out of order” and quoted from Deuteronomy 30:11-13. They had the law, they were charged with the obedience and upkeep of that law, and it was not for God to constantly interfere with his own creation.

According to the legend, God said “my children have defeated me”, and returned to his own place.

This, in essence is the same scripture which Paul uses, yet applies it to the life of Jesus, of which the Jews claimed no knowledge.
Verse 19: “Did not Israel know?” They certainly knew the law. It was right there before them, yet history shows that they continually added to the law and created a class of “masters” called Rabbis, who taught according to the oral traditions given to Moses.

Was the message there? Paul says yes it was, but Israel apparently didn’t get it.

Corky, you argue there was a choice, yet following into Romans 11, we see that there was no choice. Israel didn’t believe in anything having to do with Jesus. By choice?

Romans 11:7: “Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded”.

Election? Those who were born as Isaac was, those born of the promise, foreknown, predestined, called, and chosen, as I examined earlier. Free choice? Apparently not to Israel.

And yet we see this in Romans 11:26: “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob”.

And of course we have Romans 11:32 “For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all”.

So we see as a continuation of Romans 10 nothing about Jews going to hell, nor anything about them being able to freely “choose Christ”.

So now we look at John 3;15-19. What was Israel all about? LAW. Law brings “wrath” as Paul wrote. So if people believed in Jesus and his life, they were free from “condemnation”, from judgement and the authority imposed by men. That is the entire essence of freedom from law by simply accepting that we are “born of God”.

let’s forget about the religious mumbo jumbo and mystery BS. As we see from John 1:12-13, if you are “born of God”, then you are not born of the will of men. No man can judge or condemn n you, as you are Innocent of all charges. or as Paul said in Romans 8:33: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth“.

The biblical margin I have refers that back to Isaiah 50:8, which says that in any accusation, the accused has the right to face his accuser, and God is on the side of the ACCUSED, not the accuser. In other words, by accepting your “birth of God” by the acceptance of Jesus, you can claim you are not subject to the judgement of men.

That creates a very practical application in terms of law. If you believe in Jesus, then you believe that Jesus came “not to condemn, but that the world through him might be saved”.

So, in terms of law, what is gained by this belief? Freedom from “mea culpa“, the enforced confession of guilt, the right against self incrimination, the right to claim your freedom before men. The right to live free.

“But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought of God”.

If you go before the laws of men, therefore, you can claim to have been free of the imposed obligations of law. You are not condemned. This is the example Paul gave in quoting from the OT, “cursed is he that hangeth on a tree”.

So, what is it exactly that you’re choosing? To live freely before men, to declare that you are innocent until proven guilty, and that no government of man can determine your guilt by its own accusation. That is the essence of OT law and its protections, not just for Israel, but for all, the ‘stranger within thy gates”.

As Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas pointed out, mea culpa belongs between man and his God. It is a confession that cannot be extracted from free men by the state. That, you see, is truth.

The deception and confusion of Christianity is the idea that we can choose strict and legalistic methods to condemn our neighbor, to judge him according to collective efforts, but that is not given, either by Jesus or Paul who taught us not to practice an “eye for an eye”. The judgement of “wrath” is reserved ONLY for the state, and the state, as we see, is controlled by Satan(Matthew 4, Luke 4).

Jesus actually challenged the collective birthright promise to Israel when he told Nicodemus “ye must be born again(from above)”.

By that choice, you may “see the kingdom of God”. And
who, exactly, are those people? As we see in John 3:8, no one has a way of identifying them, which means, there is no legal authority of man to claim jurisdiction over those “born again”. If you are “born of God”, you are not born of “the will of men(John 1:13)”, which means that your choices and your life exists OUTSIDE the collective jurisdiction of the “will of men”.

Does the U.S. Constitution recognize this? of course it does. Simply look at the First Amendment. To “believe on Jesus” is simply to believe that you are NOT under condemnation of God, and if not under condemnation of God, certainly no government of man can condemn you unless you actually harm another, and that person must accuse you, not the government.

That is the basis and foundation of common law. As I remember, you stress John 3;19: Obviously, if any man is Innocent and has harmed no other, then that man, under BOTH Old and New Testament, has the right to face his accuser with the full vindication of God(Isaiah 54:17). That means anybody and everybody who chooses this freedom and this lifestyle.

So, Corky, you mention Titus 1:13: “This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.”

What faith? A human concept of religion that is by its very nature limited? A religion that seeks to curse or condemn those who don’t believe as it does? Not at all. A belief that men are free to live within simple guidelines of love, as James writes, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world(James 1:27)”.

HWA said we had to keep certain tenets of the law, and by those tenets, we concluded we were ‘elect’, yet Paul clearly and repeatedly wrote that those ‘elect’ were one and the same as those born of promise to Abraham, as Isaac was(Gal. 4;28), and that it was simply impossible to make such a choice for ourselves(Romans 9:16-22).

Consequently, the only way to “follow Christ” is to claim freedom from the authority structures, ALL authority structures, of men. “Presumption of innocence”.

Titus 2:15: These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. let no man despise thee.”

What things? How about verse 14; “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from ALL iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works”.

God works? How about James 1:27? And yet, we see from Ephesians 2;8-10, that works do not earn us any special ‘elect” place. Nothing earns us “salvation”. It’s a free gift.

So, what “authority” would a “government of God’ have? Presumption of innocence before men, also known from common law and identified by Chief Justice Edward Coke of England as “due process of law”.

How do we know that? because the US Supreme Court, in “Miranda vs Arizona”, footnote 27, acknowledged that this right against self incrimination in our 5th Amendment has its analogue in the bible. In fact, that is the very essence of the New Testament, that all humans are free from the condemnation of men.

Can I speak that with authority? Of course I can. Anyone can. “We hold these truths to be self evident…”

And, Corky, as you pointed out, of course Jesus told us not to follow others who came in the nbame of Christ, since he told us to follow him. But in words attributed to Jesus himself, what happens if we follow him and seek to obey the law? Matthew 10:34-38.

What is the whole essence of Jesus teaching? he came not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Saved from what? Well, sin. And what is sin? lawbreaking. And since he died innocently having broken no law, he became the example of freedom before the law, for every person on this earth.

It’s all about freedom.

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I’m not picking on Corky personally, but on the assumptions and arguments which he makes, based on general assumptions rather than proofs.

For example, can we prove, by any physical method known, that there exists a decision procedure such that we can get from “here” to “God” in a proven fashion?

No, there is not, and since there is not, any attempt to try and organize according to “God’s will” results in confusion and enslavement to religious ideas. This is fully consistent with Romans 8:7.

I’ve stated it enough, and with no challengers.

I’ve also put it in other language. If we could create a decision procedure to get to God, that decision procedure would be subject to language, meaning it is also subject to algorithms and programming. Corky has presented the general “christian” argument that Paul says we can make a decision to “please God” by our efforts at being “born again”.

In fact, Paul didn’t say that. If he had, then there would be no confusion within Christianity, since all definitions could be reduced to finite, logical, rational processes, thus eliminating any confusion whatever regarding God. This is plainly shown false by Romans 8:7.

Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert presented a paper on the relationship between the mind and the complexities of the brain, and concluded that the brain itself contained so many levels, and capacity for ‘framing” reality that the mind could not represent the workings of the brain due to its complexity, at that time, anyway.

That is also called the Church-Turing thesis, which states that the brain is nothing more than a computer subject to physical laws, and which may ultimately be mapped, but since the mapping process is subject to Godel’s theorem, it will never contain a consistent complete framework of the brain’s complexity.

That is, we can’t know our own mind, because we can’t understand how it works. or even more simply, the “software” of our mind cannot reach into the “hardware” of our brain and alter its programming.

The reason why that is so is because the “software” of the mind operates BECAUSE the “hardware” of the brain works as it does. The ‘software’ performs because the ‘hardware’ drives it.

Paul makes some interesting statements paralleling this point in Romans 7:14, RSV:

“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.
“I DO NOT UNDERSTAND MY OWN ACTIONS”.

So, we have Paul here saying that the functions of his own physical brain could not be understood by the examination of his mind. Not so different from the conclusions of Minsky and Papert.

Verse 21: “So I find it to be law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
“I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members”.

Paul quite simply said he couldn’t keep the law. he said he had a carnal mind, “sold under sin”.
Corky implied that Paul taught we could make choices to keep the law, while Paul admitted that he, Paul, could not obey it. He couldn’t obey it because the mind is incapable of reaching into the brain and altering its main drives. The “law” of the brain works at odds with the ‘law’ of the mind, and as Paul plainly admitted he couldn’t understand his actions.

Is this a reason that men should be held in condemnation to “sin”? Of course not. If the mind cannot freely choose to perfectly keep the law in a moral fashion, then one could simply be “dead to the law”, free from the penalty.

As I wrote earlier, it is impossible for the mind to define truth. We simply can’t do it. Even assuming, therefore, that we COULD control our brains and never break any laws, we could not ever know in advance if the decisions we make will avoid “evil” results(Church’s theorem).

Paul clearly admitted this, simply by examining his brain by using his conscious mind, and realizing that there was another level over which he simply had no control because he could not understand it.

So, first of all, we can;t ever define truth in one package of decisions(Godel’s theorem), and second, we can’t know the overall results of the decisions we actually DO make(Church’s theorem).

Douglas Hofstadter, in the book Godel, Escher, Bach, describes it this way:”…it is perfectly obvious that a computer can be instructed to print out a sequence of illogical statements–or for variety’s sake, a batch of statements having random truth values. Yet in following such instructions, a computer would not be making any mistakes! On the contrary, it would only be a mistake if the computer printed out something other than the statements it had been instructed to print.. This illustrates how faultless functioning on one level may underlie symbol manipulation on a higher level–and the goals of the higher level may be completely unrelated to the propagation of truth.”

This, said Hofstadter, may be compared to “an incorrect belief held in the software of the mind, supported by the faultlessly functioning brain”.

The brain, by physical, “carnal” standards, functions “faultlessly”, yet will produce flawed concepts of truth, resulting in infinite interpretations of truth. And the mind simply cannot access that function to re-program the brain to drive toward truth, because the mind itself cannot define truth!

“There is no reason to believe that a computer’s faultlessly functioning hardware could not support high level symbolic behavior which would represent such complex states as confusion, forgetting, or appreciation of beauty. It would require that there exist massive sub-systems interacting with each other according to a complex ‘logic’. The overt behavior could appear either rational or irrational; but underneath it would be the performance of reliable, logical hardware”.

So, as Paul simply stated, “I do not understand my actions”.

Corky attempt to have his cake and eat it too. He proclaims that Paul is flawed because Christianity is confused. How? because Paul allegedly stated that we must somehow choose by “freewill” to somehow overcome the complexity of our mind and organize systems according to “God’s truth”. Corky is using the flawed premise of Christianity to demonstrate that the premise of Paul is also flawed, while Paul has directly contradicted the premise of Christianity., and so did Jesus in John 6:44 and Matthew 24

:23.

“No man can come to me unless the Father draw him…” Quite simply, and consistent with the developments of metamathematics, there exists no decision procedure by which we may get from “here” to “God”.

Christianity, therefore, represents confusion precisely because it teaches that we CAN make such decisions. In actual fact, we cannot.

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