Post-WCG Life and Theology ARCHIVES

Okay I lied! I waited 8 days to write something in depth about a narrow minded and silly minded article on David Pack's "masterpiece" articles regarding "Why Christians Don't Celebrate New Year's". Sadly this man does not know (but I think he does not care to know) that the Church of God Seventh Day believed that celebrating New Year's was not as bad as celebrating Christmas. In Pack's mind they are the "Sardis era" and they are a "dead church", so whatever they say has no relevance. I hope anyone who is an ex-ACOGer will meet CG7's current Conference President, Brother Whaid Rose which I did almost six years ago this spring. I will say this in a nutshell, Brother Whaid is truly "The Anti-Armstrong" and most definately "The Anti-Pack". As in my other post where I praise Brother Whaid, I still say to him "Viva la revolucion!" David Pack (or Mr.Pack for me!!!) in his article traces New Year's to those wicked Babylonians and those other heathen Gentiles but forgets that the Jews celebrate the Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashana) as the New Year http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday2.htm, the sping new year on the 1 Nisan was agricultural for the land in ancient Israel. He links debauchery, drunkeness and immorality with New Years and seems to live in this magically dreamland that could never happen on God's Holy Days ---especially the Feast of Tabernacles. Well, my mom had an encounter with an apparently drunken minister (she could smell the alcohal)from his breath) on the street during that time and that minister said an inappropriate comment to say the least. My mom's encounter is by no means an isolated incident. I have read reports of far worse incidents. I have always seen the historic WCG in general as "rigid" and "tight" but I guess they say it always those who were uptight, you gotta look out for! How true, because I seen none of it! The article was just another old hat of parnoid paganphobia which means "if the pagans did it, DAMN IT WE MUST AVOID IT!" Well it seems many legalistic Armstrongites (there are plenty of wackos who are really out in left field and take pride in it!) have no problems wearing wedding bands or putting flowers on dead loved ones but a simple count down to a New Year is pure wickedness. Here is another one, Armstrongites love to childish boast about how pagan the calender is filled with pagan names January after the god of Janus or Monday is the god of the moon but under the Hebrew calendar, there is the month of Tammuz and Tammuz was a pagan god but God seen no problem using that name in his sacred calendar, He just didn't want people worshipping Tammuz. Talk about a simple deal compared to what the Armstrongites would like to bind people with. It seems God can appreciate his creation to be creative and innovative but the Armstrongite desires humankind to be rigid robotic utilitarian automatons. Pity! One can have a God-centered New Year's Eve celebration. I did in 1996-97 at Kipling Baptist Church here in Toronto. I witnessed people getting baptised (which included an enthusiastic young 10 year old kid and we had a Lord' s Supper (which should only be on Nisan 14th and called Passover according to the Armstrongite!) toward 12 a.m. midnight. There was no sexually orgies, no drinking and driving but just good, godly, clean fun but to an Armstrongite, like David Pack, that can not compute. I thank God for designing a middle finger and I, for one, salute David Pack with it for his continual rants and furthering plain ignorant fundamentalist dogma. For everybody else, I wish everyone a Happy New Year and may everyone's hopes, dreams and plans fulfilled.