Tuesday 10 May 2016

Another Astonishing Heresy, Part 2, Man has Free Will?

Despite the idiocy of Joe junior, who foolishly called Mr Herbert W Armstrong a charlatan and a false prophet, it is clear to the converted mind that Mr Armstrong was a true servant of God.  But the insanity of Joe junior blinds him to logic.  If Mr Armstrong was a charlatan and a false prophet, then logic leads us to conclude that Joe junior is not a Christian or a minister of Christ.  For God has never called anyone to follow or be ordained by a false prophet.  So we must logically conclude that Joe junior's calling, baptism and ordination, under the dispensation of Mr Armstrong was not of God.  Yet, while slandering God's servant, Joe maintains that his ordination is valid.  If that is not an acute form of irrational insanity, then I must be mad!  And therein lies the judgment of Solomon!

Also, Joe is happy to accept the assets that God's servant left for the benefit of the members of the church, which it is reported he sold for $109 million dollars. Why would a true Christian accept money and property from a charlatan and a false prophet?

However, because Mr Armstrong presided over the Laodicean era of the church, with its emphasis on materialism, it was prophesied that he would lack understanding of many doctrines.  One of the many doctrines he failed to understand is the doctrine of Free Will.  So he quoted Deut.30:19, and extrapolated from that text, that all men have free will.  But the opportunity to chose life and death, blessing and cursing was not given to all nations.  It was exclusively given to the people of Israel.  And even they, without the grace of God, were unable to chose life.

Now if we turn to what the bible actually teaches, instead of the misunderstandings, we learn that after Eve was deceived thus: "Adam was not deceived, but the women being deceived, was in the transgression"(1Tim.2:14): and she in turn deceived her husband, God fulfilled his warning, which was: "for in the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die"(Gen.2:17).  So even though Adam live for 930 years, that very day he spiritually died(Eph.2:1), as he was separated from communication with God, and cast out of the garden of Eden, which was the family home.

So Adam and Eve sin was a corruption of the root, from which humanity sprung, carrying the same diseases of disobedience and rebellion, "For as in Adam all die...(1 Cor.15:22); (Rom.5:17).  From that original sin until the coming of Christ, all humanity, including the children of Israel, were in bondage to sin, and therefore slaves of the devil.  Humanity, therefore, were not free to chose between good and evil.  The choice was between the degree of evil!

However, when God sent the angel Gabriel to Mary to announce the birth of Jesus(Luke1:26-31), and to Joseph to reassure him that his wife was an honorable women, he told him:  "He shall save his people from their sins"(Matt.1:21).  Of course, the Jews thought that the Messiah was coming to save them from the Romans.  But our real enemy is the devil, who make us slaves of sin.

After Jesus' baptism and forty days of fasting being tempted by the devil, he returned to Nazareth, where he had been brought up.  He then went into the synagogue and proclaimed the fulfillment of a prophecy from the book of Isaiah thus: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives...(Luke 4:18).

If man is a "free moral agent," as was proclaimed in WCG, who were the captives to whom Christ was sent to preach deliverance?  And later in Jesus ministry, he preached:  "If you continue in my word, then you are my disciples indeed: And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free"(John 8:31-32).  That text clearly teaches that unless a man is a Christian, that is, a disciple of Jesus, he is not free from the bondage of sin and lies of the devil, to do the will of God.  And the Chosen Vessel exhorted the Galatians churches to: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage"(Gal.5:1).

Sadly, many former members of WCG have departed from the wholesome teachings of Christ, and have been "entangled again with the yoke of bondage."  This is especially truth of the hirelings, who are motivated by money and the delusion of power.


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By the way, in Mr Armstrong's booklet, The Middle East in Prophecy, he described the angel Gabriel as an Arch angel, yet nowhere in the bible is Gabriel called an Arch angel.  The only Arch angel mentioned in the bible is Michael.  Yet, none of the hireling ministers noticed the error to bring it to Mr Armstrong's attention.  Also, in the same booklet, Mr Armstrong stated that the abomination that make desolate, as mentioned in the book of Daniel, was fulfilled by the actions of Antiochus  Epiphanes.  Yet, in Matt. 24:15, Jesus stated that the prophecy had not yet been fulfilled.

(And believe me, these errors, as serious as they are, are minor in comparison to some of the major errors and decisions that led God to spew the church out his mouth.)
  
To be continued, as those who often asked me to go a mile with them demand by attention 

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