For those not aware of Messianic Jewish singer Marty Geotz, Wikipedia has some information about him right here. I had the pleasure of listening to him live in Toronto back in early 2002. I am sure you will love his voice and his music. Here’s is just a sample.
The core belief system of Armstrongists is so similar its amazing they keep fracturing like they do.
Part of that belief system is the idea there is some “pure” version of religion out there, while they give lip service to the Biblical definition given in James 1:27, they never use that definition in deciding who and how to organize themselves.
Their “pure religion” or “true religion” definition is some memory of the Armstrong golden years when money flowed liked the rivers in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Some think they have to recreate an old style media empire – even while conventional TV networks and magazines continue to lose viewers.
The poorer of the splinters have had no choice but to use the low cost Internet to spread their message, but they have a hard time getting face time like HWA did when there was only 3 networks and a few cable channels people watched…on the Internet there’s thousands of voices and faces and nobody is putting one voice ahead of another strictly with buying media time.
Its about content, and their content sucks. Join us or you die in the Great Tribulation. They are marketing the message of death. If you have a healthy life and mind, its not an attractive message. And these days the mainstream media has gotten so good at fear farming that they almost make Armstrong look like a piker.
The Armstrong message is about living for the future. It requires you not to live in the present. But the present is the only thing that is real, the past is gone, and the future is but a statistical probability.
—A poster on Gavin’s blog making the brilliant case that the cult of Armstrongism is a religion of death and ignores the here and now in light of the latest mini-soap opera in the United Church of God.
Actually this coming Sunday December 20th, marks one year ago of the death of Seventh Day Adventist scholar, Samuele Bacchiocchi at age 70. As with any event like his death, it just seemed liked yesterday. On this blog on the night of his death, I informed that he was ill with liver cancer, only to be informed by XHWA the next day after that it ended in the way least expected by all of us. Most of us are familiar with his work, From Sabbath to Sunday. Of recent years, he did a two part book series on the biblical Holy Days of Leviticus, of which I have one of the series of books. According to a Torah Observant Messianic Jewish blog, yesterday was the Hebrew anniversary (yahrzeit) of Dr.Bacchiocchi’s passing. The blog called Messianic613 Weblog give their brief insight and praises for a man whose influence even extended to the Messianic Jewish community. You have to respect a person’s effort (even if you disagree with some of their works) to make that broad universal appeal. May his spirit in heaven rejoice and be glad.
Well there are some in the XCG blogsphere making their diatribes against the movie New Moon (second movie in the Twighlight series), saying the tired old tirades such as “it promotes the occult” to “it sells a false chastity between relationships”. For me, I look forward to seeing a 50 year movie career for Taylor Lautner and I think Ashley Michelle Greene is hot (and would love to give her a blessing from above) but that’s neither here nor there. I am going to light a candle as opposed of cursing the darkness (whether real or imagined). I am going to talk about a movie that has given the movie New Moon a run for it’s money at the box office. Former U.S. presidential canidate and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on his radio show (The Huckabee Report) liked this movie and praised it for it’s positive portrayal of American Southerners and religion in general. The movie I am talking about is called The Blind Side which stars Sandra Bullock who plays a woman of influence who takes in a homeless, undereducated and traumatized boy who triumphs over his difficulties and ends up in playing football in the NFL. Yes, it is based on a true story on NFL football player Michael Oher’s life. If you really want to know what love in action is all about, how Christianity in it’s purest form is to be practiced, this movie is definately for you. This kind of love in action far supercedes any minute details of observance of a particular day or whether an innocent American pastime such as Thanksgiving Day is acceptable to God or not or anyother doctrinal pettiness that takes the focus on loving our neighbour. For those not familiar, here is the trailer if you haven’t seen it. Be inspired.
Ennoblement of character comes through triumph over suffering, rather than its endurance.
–Rabbi Shmuely Boteach, who is currently writing a book on values that deals with suffering.
Here is Christian contemporary artist, Fernando Ortega’s rendition of This Is My Father’s World. Enjoy.
First and foremost, I want to again thank Gavin Rumney for the tip. On the PDF, front and back edition only of The Journal, which compromises the news of the Churches of God, there is a clip that Church of God (Seventh Day) Conference President Whaid Rose is taking a leave of absence from his duties from his position for treatment for a vision impairment. Many of you know that I have met Brother Whaid when he visited my hometown in Toronto in the early half of 2000. I had high praise for the man at the time and at the end of this decade my high praise of him remains. At that time all called him “The Anti-Armstrong”. He seemed to me to be a very approachable man with a very good heart. I have a tape of him giving a sermon at Worldwide Church of God Feast of Tabernacles in 1996 in South Carolina and all is I can say, President Obama try to outdo this! I hope I’ll give you the chance to hear it on this blog someday. It is my hope and prayer that the treatment will be a success and his family will pull along through a very difficult time.
I have always argued that in the historic Worldwide Church of God, it was a misogynist place. It was not a woman friendly place despite those in deep dangerous denial who would argue to the death otherwise. Women had to walk a fine on how they dressed, for example the length of their skirts mattered, lest they tempt men into lust. Other crazy fatwahs by ministers to determine what was modest and becoming to God was fashionable as the flavour of the month. No make up either. Pure vanity and another temptation for men. It just seemed like in parallel with radical Islam, a body of a woman was to be hated. They were excluded in the worship of the service. Apostle Paul’s admonition for women to keep silence in the church was taken to it’s ultra-literalistic extreme. Not only women were barred from giving sermonettes and sermons but even barred from giving a simple opening and closing prayer in the service (thank God I seen the day when that nonsense ended in the ’90s when I finally seen a woman for once give an opening prayer. Thunder did not roll from the sky and life went on). Some will still want to argue that women performed in special music—fine but when “the church” wanted to go back on track in the ’80’s, church leadership made damn sure that a “woman” could not be lead musical conductors. Also women had to put up with the lame comedy from the one who claimed to be God’s sole Apostle on Earth (Herbert Armstrong, of course) when he said that ERA stood for Eve Ruled Adam. For those Generation Yers who don’t remember ERA actually stood for, it was the Equal Rights Admendment in the U.S. when it was a proposal to amend the United States Constitution in respect of gender rights. It was never ratified before the June 1982 deadline, though there are attempts to propose a new version of the ERA today. Thankfully, the Tkach administration in the WCG and this includes father and son (with a little help from their friends) took careful painstaking steps to confront and eliminate this misogyny in the Worldwide Church of God. Whatever you may think of either or both Tkaches (I have made my opinions known about Junior but that’s neither here nor there),their steps for gender equality in an organization that was historically misogynist is commendable. Grace Communion Internation ordained it’s first woman elder. Talk about coming a long way baby! Sadly, in the splinters of Armstrongism more specifically the ultra conservative ones, this has not been the case. To single out one splinter, Gerald Flurry’s Phildelphia Church of God, their treatment of women almost identically replicates the injustice and indignity of women in the historic WCG. On the Exit and Support Network website, one lady tells the sad tale of how it is in the most totalitarian cults out there. The struggle for freedom continues for women in cults like these. I can only pray to God for that day to set them free.
Anyone seen the movie Fiddler on the Roof ? I first seen it at a church social when I was 15 and I loved it! I guess one of the “good” things being in the historic Worldwide Church of God was it’s “philo-Semitism” and for me I always felt some connection to the Jews and have some fascination with Judaism (well I’m a staunch fan of Rabbi Shmuely Boteach as many of you know and in the mid to late 90’s, liked what most of what Dr.Laura had to say. I even bought a couple of her books!). Some have interpreted my admiration as something malignant, to be gravely concerned about and not healthy. Whatever!!! I can only say to them in return, get a freaking grip and need to get a real life to say the least! Now, I got that off of my chest, I got two clips from the movie, “The Sabbath Prayer” and “Sunrise, Sunset”. May these be relaxing as well as inspirational as we head into another weekend.
