Notable too is this back page photograph of the Four Horsefeatherers of the post-Herbal Apocalypse. That's Wally Smith, Rod the Ranter, Dickie Ames and Rod the Aussie. Pretty scary, huh.
But fear not, little flock, here's the word from Team Charlotte:
We are definitely living in the “last days”! Christ will undoubtedly return within the lifetimes of the young people growing up today—and many older people may also live to witness this awesome event. (Rod Meredith, p.7)
Well, I bet no-one here has heard that before!
33 comments:
"We are definitely (NO QUESTION ABOUT IT) living in the “last days”! (AGAIN, JUST AS THE APOSTLE PAUL SAID OVER 2000 YEARS AGO NOW AND HUNDREDS OF CHURCHES SINCE) Christ will undoubtedly (AS IN WITHOUT A DOUBT, FOR SURE, NO CHANCE WE ARE WRONG.)return within the lifetimes of the young people growing up today(IN THE SAME WAY HE DID WEEK AFTER WEEK IN THE 70'S WHEN WE WERE THE KIDS—and many older people may (WELL PERHAPS BUT I THROW THIS IN SO THE OLDER MEMEBERS DON'T GIVE UP) also live to witness this awesome event." (Rod Meredith, p.7)
Paul went on to blame the doubters as we all know. "IN the last days, scoffers will come saying...." Actually doubting, due to lack of evidence was upped to scoffing, which is more putting the problem of not seeing it happen on the members, not the Apostles. It's rather like Paul noting that people did not understand the Eucharist and so many were sick and some died. It never crossed his mind that these things are normal and unconnected to understanding or misunderstanding anything. Of course, when Paul saw death coming, he praised his great faith , never apologized for holding out false hope and went on to be ...dead.
Well, we just need to know the "code" words here to make sense of all this.
Behold, I come quickly . . .
In this case, "quickly" means eons. See, a 1,000 years is like a day with God. And a day is like a 1,000 years. This means that time does not really exist in the dimension the Bible was written in.
So, all bets are off when you see statements like "Christ will return soon [and definitely conform to our time table], maybe even in the life time of these young people."
Uhuh. Sure he will. Like maybe in the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may find . . . that Jesus has STILL not returned. Which sort of blows the 6,000 plan all to hell. I wonder what the religionists who are around then will be saying?
OK, I already know. They'll be quoting that scripture about "scoffing" and all that. "He really is coming back, you sinners! You'll see! You'll see!"
In the year 3535 . . .
Hey, I kinda like the way they sang..."In the year 9595...!" Had a nice urgent ring to it..:)
Also, we have to consider that the Triune and Omnicient God leaving 2 out of 3 of itself out of knowing exactly when this will occur, being it is known only to the father part and not the son or HS evidently. How does the one keep that kinda info from other if they are all the same? Oh me oh my. Once two parts figure out the third part of the one same thing is holding out on them, it's all down hill from there on trust issues.
It's a mystery.
We are definitely living in the “last days”! Christ will undoubtedly return within the lifetimes of the young people growing up today—and many older people may also live to witness this awesome event. (Rod Meredith, p.7)
1975 in prophecy.
Beware of false prophets.
Roderick Meredith was given to say this in The Plain Truth in the Sixties, along with the droughts, famines and death, disease, destruction, devastation "in the next ten years" which never happened. Just who believes this stuff any more? Ah, the echoes of William Miller. Can you hear them?
Let's go with a prophecy we can all live with [except for Roderick Meredith]: In the lifetimes of the young people growing up today -- and many older people may also live to witness this awesome event: The death of Roderick Meredith.
A more sure prophecy.
And remember, you found it here first!
Once two parts figure out the third part of the one same thing is holding out on them, it's all down hill from there on trust issues.
You mean like what Roderick Meredith did to Global?
I'd like to know what the human condition is that makes certain people, as adults, believe and follow the obviously insane.
We've been 10-15 years away for 2000 years.
It's just over the next hill Charlie. Just around the corner. We're closer than we have ever been. "Click.. We're in the gunla...Doh...we ran out of bullets."
I hope nice Jesus comes back. Not Cheney or Bush Jesus.
When Paul, the late coming apostle, comes on the scene, there seems to be only Peter, James and John left. What happened to the other nine apostles? Where are their writings?
I guess they weren't important enough to write a word about either because Paul doesn't mention them.
Other than what the scholars call the 7 authentic letters of Paul, we have no witnesses, everything else is written after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.
That's what made it so easy for Jesus to predict this event in Mark 13, Matt. 24 and Luke 21, they were written after 70 AD by second generation "christians".
Only one passage in all of the NT says that the return may not be as soon as they had first preached and that is in 2 Peter, an epistle written in the second century by some unknown author.
Other than that one passage, it is clear that the NT writers thought that "the end of all things is at hand" and there is no way to make "at hand" mean 2,000 or more years.
IN THE YEAR 2525 - ZAGER AND EVANS
The song opens with the words "In the year 2525, If man is still alive, If woman can survive, They may find...".
Subsequent verses pick up the story at 1010-year intervals from 2525 to 6565. Disturbing predictions are given for each selected year. In the year 3535, for example, all of a person's actions, words and thoughts will be preprogrammed into a daily pill. Then the pattern as well as the music changes and verses for the years 7510, 8510 and 9595 follow.
The song has no chorus. Amid ominous-sounding orchestral music, the final dated chronological verse reads In the year 9595, I'm kinda wonderin' if Man is gonna be alive. He's taken everything this old Earth can give, and he ain't put back nothing, whoa-whoa... Thus making specific an underlying environmental message of the song.
The summary verse concludes: Now it's been 10,000 years, Man has cried a billion tears, For what, he never knew. Now man's reign is through. But through eternal night, The twinkling of starlight. So very far away, Maybe it's only yesterday.), before the song effectively "starts over" with the first verse again and then fades out. Thus leaving open the possibility that "we went through this before," and life is now at the start of another cycle.
The overriding theme, of a world doomed by its passive acquiescence to and overdependence on its own overdone technologies, struck a resonant chord in millions of people around the world in the 1960s.
The song is based on a nightmarish vision of the future as man's technological inventions gradually dehumanize him.
The song includes a sly colloquial reference to the Rapture (In the year 7510, if God's a' coming, He ought to make it by then.) which echoed the zeitgeist of the Jesus Movement. The song also references examples of technologies that were not fully developed but were known to the public in 1969, such as robots, as well as future technology that would come into existence long after being prophesied in the song, the science of test tube babies and genetic selection by parents of their future children. Such a concept had been explored in a few science fiction novels but had not yet been mentioned in the mainstream media until "In The Year 2525" was released in 1969.
Lussenheide
This perpetual apocalyptic theorizing, the end always being just around the corner, really works against the best interests of Christianity. It makes a mockery of it, in fact. The WCG and all the sphincter groups have constantly stated that this is the real gospel message, not that Jesus saves and can provide an abundant life for his followers today, but that He's returning soon, in our time, and bringing with Him the worst calamities in the entire history of the earth as prerequisite activities. Better pay your tithes, Mousecateers!
It is the religious equivalent of some salesman telling you that there are only two items left, when in fact he's got a whole warehouse full! All they are doing is to create an artificial sense of urgency for their product.
If Jesus said only the Father knew, do these religious fools think they're better than Jesus? What a bunch of idolatry, and truly these people are their own idols!
BB
You might look at some of the current "Tomorrow's World" because it has some real gems in it, if your tastes run to the ironic.
Note in "Is It Decision Time", Roderick Meredith, in his editorial says, "Now, as the crescendo of end-time prophecies grows ever louder"... substitute "shrill" for "louder" then note his scrawled signature at the bottom. I might be an amateur in handwriting analysis, but I know enough that there's something wrong with his.
Then under "Prophecy Comes Alive" there is very ironic article, "Blind Leaders of the Blind" -- one is assured that it does not refer to Roderick Meredith and his problems with diabetes, although, you know.... Note "The Moral Morass" which is something Living has fallen into from nearly the beginning. And "Prophetic Blindness"! At oil at nearly $100 a gallon today, uh, where did they miss that one. Islam bigger threat than the EEC? Not to worry. Just check out, "It's the Economy, Stupid!".
Then there is the supremely ironic: "Tomorrow's Youth: Not as Many as there Used to Be". This means that the youngsters have left the LCG for good, or until Europe gets really scary -- more scary than the Arabs in the Middle East, that is. It's little wonder: The ones growing up in the church have recurring nightmares in which they get thrown into the lake of fire.
First rate: a bit of a paraphrase about our beloved churches:
"I personally feel that the collapse of our beloved" [churches] "will be closer than most of us realize!
Why does this have to happen?
It will happen unless we—as a people—experience a heartfelt repentance before the God of the Bible, the real God who is now beginning to intervene in human
affairs!
Will this genuine repentance actually take place?"
Hasn't so far.
Don't get your hopes up.
Just love being ignored. Like Proverbs says, laugh at the fools when their own foolishness comes upon them. It isn't as if they haven't been warned. As if the murders in church weren't enough.
It's too bad someone did not nip it in the bud with the Apostle Paul being so wrong about time is short. Perhaps people of the past should have woken up when Jesus is said to have said in Revelation, "to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass."
Lets face it, Bible shortly is longer than human longness.
"Just who believes this stuff any more?"
They all do. And why not? Why fault them for it? After all, they believe in imaginary beings.
Speaking of X-mas, I think in another thread Bill asked why on earth someone who didn't believe in God would keep Christmas. My answer:
Because Christmas trees are pretty and I dig pagan holidays.
Paul
As one raised consistently with classic Radio Church of God methods, I never did have nightmares about the Lake of Fire. But, for decades, I did have horrible ones about being unjustly beaten and starved by my parents for miniscule offenses.
Fruits such as that, produced in the lives of thousands of church youth, make it really difficult to see through it all to a loving God.
Hopefully, members/posters like Tom are either ignoring the childrearing doctrines, or have found more intelligent methods than simply blaming the bad results on the rebelliousness of the child.
Actually, it is a strange thing that humans can make a career out of motivating belief by predicting the end of humanity, due to the love a non participatory Deity has for us, by sending a son that only the contradictory book that came along with the program attests to, while all of real human history ignores him.
I guess it's good work if you can get it and keep a straight face.
Corky said:
"Only one passage in all of the NT says that the return may not be as soon as they had first preached and that is in 2 Peter, an epistle written in the second century by some unknown author."
Also look at 2 Pet 1:16 where he says "For we did not follow cleverly constructed myths.." - Implying that by the 2nd century, the murky origins of Christianity was coming under heavy fire from intellectual critics - like Celsus, and later Porphry -(the church responded by having their books burned)(doesn't make me feel too proud to have been associated with such an intellectually dishonest movement).
Well, maybe a personal relationship with Jesus is still possible for all you unbelievers here!
Video top left....
>>>Also look at 2 Pet 1:16 where he says "For we did not follow cleverly constructed myths.." - Implying that by the 2nd century, the murky origins of Christianity was coming under heavy fire from intellectual critics - like Celsus, and later Porphry -(the church responded by having their books burned)(doesn't make me feel too proud to have been associated with such an intellectually dishonest movement).<<<
This is not even good enough to be called a reconstruction of history, but it will pass as drivel.
Dear Gavin,
At least the people you and your minions at large are criticizing are ordained and you are not. They can claim divine authority while you can not. What is the your proof you will not be like them if you were ordained in the ministry? May be you are just jealous.
You can not claim you have authority. And the only fame you can claim is by criticizing.That is very easy Gavin. It is the work of doing good that is hard.
If you are really good, which is what you are projecting about yourself, I challenge you, start your own group. TALK THE TALK AND WALK THE WALK.
May be then I could start my own blog and will dedicate it to solely haranguing you.
It would be an honor Gavin being persecuted by your own belief.
Be fair and post this write up about you.
"They can claim divine authority while you can not."
Oh really? What exactly is divine authority? How does one tell if a person has divine authority? Simply because they say so?
Paul
Ministers can claim authority? Gavin can't claim authority? Gavin needs to start a group? As Paul asked, what is divine authority, and how can one claim it? Just becasue someone makes a verbal claim proves nothing. I haven't seen Gavin "claiming" any authority. I don't understand the notion that Gavin should start a "group". If one wishes to harangue Gavin, this is the place and the opportunity, as the fact that Anonymous' comments were indeed posted.
The idea that ministers have or can claim this great looming authority is rooted in legalistic fundamentalism, a corrupt and corrupting system of belief. The fact is that ministers are intended to be spiritual guides, more mature Christians, who have been in the faith longer and have more depth of understanding.
If Jesus Christ is living His life through the individual Christian, there is no need for a ministerial hierarchy that microsupervises, metes out punishments, and attempts to legislate good character. Ministers who indulge in such activities are demonstrating that they have no faith in Jesus to do His job. The Bible calls them Nicolaiatanes.
In essence, the above describes the root problem historically found in WCG.
BB
Tom said . . .
This is not even good enough to be called a reconstruction of history, but it will pass as drivel.
Also indicative of the second century is the appeal to a collection of Pauline letters from which "statements that are hard to understand" have been misinterpreted by the false teachers, and to further normative writings which include not only the OT but also the developing NT (3:16). In view of the difficulty in understanding "scripture," and its ambiguity, II Pet offers the thesis that "no prophetic scripture allows an individual interpretation" because men have spoken under the power of the Holy Spirit (1:20 f). Since not every Christian has the Spirit, the explanation of Scripture is reserved for the ecclesiastical teaching office. Accordingly we find ourselves without doubt far beyond the time of Peter and into the epoch of early Catholocism.
I think I saw Rod of Aussie at the Cinci airport Marriott Hotel talking to 2 or 3 of the Cinci Cabal over a steak dinner in 2005. I knew they were CGers of some sort based on the overheard conversation, but I didn't recognize Rod of Aussie (the accent was unmistakable)until now. Thanks for the photo.
My daughter and I got bumped from a connecting flight due to bad weather and unexpectedly spent the night at that hotel at Delta expense.
You would have thought they were just another group of loud well fed salesmen in business suits were it not for those give away Armstrong speak phrases of "the work" and "the truth" coming out of their mouths.
"...If you are really good, which is what you are projecting about yourself, I challenge you, start your own group. TALK THE TALK AND WALK THE WALK.
May be then I could start my own blog and will dedicate it to solely haranguing you..."
Hmmm... This post resembles some of the actual writing style of Spanky himself. I'll need to examine it further though.
>>May be then I could start my own blog and will dedicate it to solely haranguing you.
It would be an honor Gavin being persecuted by your own belief.<<
Hey anonymous, take a look around you here. No sooner does Gavin post this thoughts on a subject than he has at least a couple of professing atheists attacking the very basis of his beliefs.
Perhaps you could also point out which COG - if any - has a blog where members can freely post their own thoughts, including criticism, of doctrines and administrative matters?
That bunch is really thin skinned.
Well thanks for the photo! Haven't seen Rod or Dick (what's in a name? all innuendo intended considering what I know of these guys) since the very late 70's so interesting to see how they've aged. Two more weird people I have never known in a lifetime of meeting thousands. They deserve each other and I feel sorry for how truly pathetic they are. I feel sorrier still for their victims. They are very cold, cruel men. Very twisted.
Anonymous said...
Dear Gavin,
At least the people you and your minions at large are criticizing are ordained and you are not.
Who talks like that? Minions? As in the devil's minions? Only a preacher talks like that!
They can claim divine authority while you can not. What is the your proof you will not be like them if you were ordained in the ministry? May be you are just jealous.
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR DE HAR HAR HAR!
DIVINE AUTHORITY! OOOH THAT'S REALLY SCAREY! WHY DON'T YOU CALL DOWN FIRE FROM BAAL TOO WHILE YOUR ARE AT IT!
You can not claim you have authority. And the only fame you can claim is by criticizing.That is very easy Gavin. It is the work of doing good that is hard.
If you are really good, which is what you are projecting about yourself, I challenge you, start your own group. TALK THE TALK AND WALK THE WALK.
May be then I could start my own blog and will dedicate it to solely haranguing you.
It would be an honor Gavin being persecuted by your own belief.
In other words, stop telling the truth about me Gavin or I'll cry!!!! I wonder if I can embed that RCG song, "Scoffer's Delight"?
Two more weird people I have never known in a lifetime of meeting thousands. They deserve each other and I feel sorry for how truly pathetic they are. I feel sorrier still for their victims. They are very cold, cruel men. Very twisted.
What? Hey, no fair! You can't just pass by and say that without giving us an idea of what you mean! Some of us want to know!
Okay, so I know about Rod Meredith's coldness and cruelty. After all, he was the one who gave Mrs. Tkach such a mortifying tongue-lashing that she suffered mental problems for years afterward. (Note to fellow LCG members: the next time RCM tells the story of how Joe Jr. got ugly and screamed in his face while firing him, remember that he probably had held a grudge against RCM for exactly that reason, and for years -- he probably blamed RCM for Joe Sr.'s escapades with Mrs. Escat.)
And of course, RCM was also the fellow who gave the same treatment to Raymond McNair's wife, and then compounded the matter by publicly accusing her of horrible sins in Sabbath services. Leona McNair was made of tougher stuff, however, and her defamation suit cost WCG millions. To my knowledge, RCM never did apologize for that one.
But Rod Meredith has always been high-profile, at least in COG circles. His transgressions are not hard to research. What has Richard Ames done? That's a genuine question, as I know little about his Worldwide activities beyond his public persona as a World Tomorrow presenter.
I've met Ames at LCG services on occasion, and found him and his wife amiable enough. Some in LCG don't like his intellectual approach -- they think he's snobbish. And it's no secret that he licks the appropriate boots -- in every sermon, he makes a point of including a quote by HWA and a quote by RCM. He will paper over any cracks to make LCG look better.
However, your post is the first time I've seen anyone call him cold and cruel. Would you mind explaining yourself in more detail? An anecdote would clarify things, though of course you might not want to name the victims.
Libro
Somewhere, buried deep within those four pitiable gentlemen, are four human spirits yearning to breathe free. Would God that they find themselves before they no longer can, in this short, yet immensely important, profoundly real, human experience.
There, but for the grace of God, go I.
"Somewhere, buried deep within those four pitiable gentlemen, are four human spirits yearning to breathe free."
Horsepuckey. What we have is four men immensely satisfied with themselves. They believe that they alone are the True Servants of the being who created the Universe, in fact, pretty much his right hand men. And they get paid for it. Do not think that they suffer under any yoke like those they lord over. Pity the members. Well, some of them.
Paul
Do you think they really believe their own fake rubber doggie doo doo, Paul? That would kind of be indicative of some sort of sincerity, wouldn't it?
I don't know what might be on their minds, I just know the devastation that their actions have visited on a whole lot of people, some of whom are actually enjoying their spiritual rape.
BB
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