Post-WCG Life and Theology ARCHIVES

One thing I cannot stand in Christian MEGA-Churches today is how cool and businesslike they are.I attended a large mega church for about a year and a half. The Mega-Church had a Sunday morning attendance of over 2,500 people. And I made the following observations:

1. Approaching the Senior Pastor is next to impossible.

2. The Senior Pastor usually cannot be bothered and is cool and impersonable.

3. There are so many types of ministers you need a guide to know which one to go to for what.

4. Tithing is preached about more often in a mega church then one would expect, even for a mega church.

5. There are practically innumerable committees, sub committees, and other things.

6. They have no problems selling merchandise on their Sabbath.

7. Java and Latte and Capuccino in the lobby for sale is common in mega Churches.

8. Red tape, red tape, red tape on starting or doing anything service oriented.Is it just me, or when a church becomes a mega church, isn't it just a large business with religious overtones?

If you are member of the XCG splinters and if you think you are going under persecution because a few bloggers and theologians think your religion is a very cruel one and should begone from the face of the earth, well GET A GRIP!!! Christian believers in Iraq have paid with their own blood. Thanks to WCG Alumni's Hannah she picked an article from WorldNet Daily Report:

I have been always trying to find Amy Grant's '90's remake of '70's group 10CC, "The Things We do For Love". Again, I am soo grateful for Youtube.com that I found that wonderful version of that song again!

Yes, this is a milestone on my 2 year blog and thought it would be nice to have some good ole fashioned Christian Contemporaray Music by none other than The Master, Amy Grant. She too, faced a lot of legalism and unnecessary controversy in the evangelical community. They criticized her sharply for her marriage troubles and her subsequent marriage to fellow musician Vince Gill and in the video below "Wise Up" some even criticized her outfit which include a "leopard jacket and tight stirrup pants" (when will this misogynist and stupid hatred of the female body in some fanatical ultra conservative factions in Christianity begone and die?!). More importantly, she does have a large place in Christian Contemporary Music and secular popular music history, which she can take great pride in. Enjoy these videos, courtesy of Youtube.com, "Wise Up" an '80's video and her 1993 crossover hit, "Baby,Baby".

I had the opportunity to meet Jon Buck in the late '90's at one of which was probably my last Feast of Tabernacles of WCG. I will say with my meeting with him, he's quite a character and that is a good thing. He was supportive of the changes in the WCG without the evangelical schmaltz that Joe Jr. and friends sought to aggressivel impose on the WCG membership. C'mon, Jon is a Brit and Brit's have no time for sentimentality (especially the American kind) or being "over the top." I do hope there will be an opportunity to talk with Jon Buck again at some pont (hey, if you are reading this blog, feel free to comment here anytime!). He currently pastors a WCG church in Barrie, Ontario. I have replied to Douglas Becker in the comments section of the post on Bishop Carlton Pearson's view on universalism that the evangelical WCG still preaches a righteous provision on the unevangelized dead. Jon Buck explains this in the Sepember/October 2005 edition of The Northern Light (a Canadian based WCG publication) in the Pastor's Corner section titled Exclusive or Inclusive? What Are We? Mind you, there are those Protestants especially of Calvinist persuasion wished WCG that they would accept a more restrictivist view (in addition with the belief of the Western Church's view of hell, eternal torment in The Lake of Fire). Because of the new evangelical WCG's refusal to do so, those of Calvinist persuasion still believe that the WCG is a still a cult. Where do I stand? Those who have known what I have said that I believe that theological the WCG is orthodox in it's theology but cultic in it's orthopraxy (the practice of those beliefs) . The root cause I believe, is the hierarchial government that is still instituted (but this is another subject for another time). I see nothing cultic in believing in the divine perseverence of God. A 19th century Scottish fiction writer and Congregationalist preacher George MacDonald believed in it to and had no use for the restrictivist view of Calvin (which the theory of predestination actually reduced him to tears). Well here is the link to Jon Buck's article at http://www.wcg.ca/northernlight/2005_sep_oct/pastors_corner.htm . I hope many will enjoy it or be inspired by it!

I remember seeing Carlton Pearson (and many other preachers) when I used to have UHF on my old black and white TV to tune in on Trinity Broadcasting Network on channel 49 (now on channel 26) on Buffalo, New York's WNYB in the early to mid 1990's. As my theological perspectives have changed over the years, so has Bishop Pearson's. While I have embraced much of the theological orthodoxy of essential Christian faith, Bishop Pearson has accepted a more heterodox view. Some will argue that he has accepted a heretical view or is a heretic, plain and simple. It is over the touchy issue of hell. It is a very emotional and argumentive issue over many Christian theologians whether they believe in the conditionalist or traditionalist view of hell. Bishop Pearson believes in a form of universalism, that nobody goes to hell. Instead we go through hell (with the trials and suffering on earth) as opposed of being consigned to hell. Bishop Pearson also says, ""The bitter torment of the idea of an angry, visceral, distant, stoic, harsh, unrelenting, unforgiving, intolerant God is hell. It's pagan, it's superstitious, and if you trace its history, it goes way back to where men feared the gods because something happened in life that caused frustration that they couldn't explain." Bishop Pearson has a paid a price for his newfound teachings. Besides the heretic label, he lost his associate ministers who resigned and a congregation that dwindled from 6000 to 300!

Where do I stand in the midst of this? I can sympathize with Bishop Pearson's sentiments but I cannot agree with his conclusions. I believe his conclusions do not in anyway solve the problem of fighting evil. What happens with people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh---or Charles Manson---how about the fanatical con-men of certain XCG splinters ---or the child molester, the pedophile, the sexual promiscous stripper who uses and manipulates men sexually and financially, the greedy and narcissistic corporate executive---or the abusive boss at work---all get a free pass to heaven? Their lives on earth was of no consequence? What they did on earth was okay? God said in the book of Nahum that he will in no way acquit the wicked. Will God just change their natures to good? If that is the case, God was joking about free-will and prefers robots. To me, that god is just as immoral as the "harsh, angry and vindictive" god. Therefore, a hell must exist to restrain or eliminate evil on a permanent basis. I believe that hell is the choice of man, I have stridently opposed the Augustinian-Calvinistic view that there are those who are predestined to hell and I have took the scripture from II Peter 3:9 that, "God is not willing anyone to perish but for all come to repentence" very seriously and at take it at face value. At the same time Hebrews 10:26 warns of unimaginable eternal consequences for those who want to live a life of sin and want to be an a "spirit of independence" from God after receiving the knowledge of the truth. Therefore, there must be a hell as a demonstration of God's ulimate love for the righteous and his ultimate fight against the wicked. As C.S. Lewis described that in the final judgement, the righteous say, "Your will be done!" and God says to the wicked, "Your will be done!"

Where do I and Bishop Pearson have common ground? We both do struggle with the restrictivist view that the unevangelized dead count as automatically "unbelievers" and "the wicked" and will automatically go to hell, whether or not they heard the gospel or not. Bishop Pearson had relatives who were "unevangelized" and it cannot not be argued that this can make him (and other people) struggle with the idea of how this can be a "loving God?" Many people have known that I have always believed that Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to salvation, I have at the same time believed that it is possible that God (the Father, the Son and the Spirit) CAN make a righteous provision for the unevangelized dead who did not hear nor understand the gospel through no fault of their own but this is where the similiarities end. I cannot believe that everyone goes to heaven. If one has a problem with the conditionalist view of hell (annhilationism) and the Western view of hell (literal eternal torment by fire taught by Protestants and Catholics), I hope that Bishop Pearson may spend some time on what the Eastern Orthodox believe in heaven and hell and I think this is probably the most humane treatment on the topic for those that believe that the spirit in man is conscious after death. I provided the link here before and I will do it again: http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html . It is my hope that Bishop Pearson does re-read his Bible again (as I had to do many times and I will be doing it many times over for years and maybe perhaps some decades to come) and can reconcile the love of God and his judgement against evil as a single unit. His current theology as it stands will present some very serious problems and dire consequences that he probably never intend to create but nevertheless have been created by faulty theology.

J, of Shadows of WCG and of recent, Gavin Rumney has introduced this person's new blog. I think it's just as appropriate for me to introduce Stand Gardner's Ambassador Reports and you can look at it here at http://ambassdorreports.blogspot.com/ . I will even put his blogsite in my links section. I wish Stan's blog will also be around for several years to come keeping people like Joe Jr. and others to account!

I have recently explained to people who are Canadians outside the province of Ontario and many Americans whose borders DO NOT touch the province of Ontario about TVO Ontario which is the roughly the equivalent to the U.S. public educational service PBS. I have explained about TVO's flagship current affairs show called The Agenda hosted by Steve Paikin. I have been remarkably impressed with the show and the most of the episodes that followed. Here is a repeat of earlier this year's week theme of episodes called, "5 days of Faith". You can click here to see each video which is approximately an hour in length which is in total with all five episodes is approximately 5 hours of viewing. Enjoy!

Thanks again to PasedenaGuy 10 of WCG Alumni message board, he discovered a bloggist discussing her sad childhood in the historic Worldwide Church of God. The blog site is called Her Scarlet Letters and here is the blog post at:http://herscarletletters.blogspot.com/2007/07/e-is-for-elephant.html . For those who understand what this lady went through, just read it and weep!

Pasedena Guy10 of WCG Alumni briefly explains:

Many of our ministers and leading brethren have sensed a spiritual "malaise" coming over quite a number of our brethren. Since nothing shocking seems to be happening on the surface—though much is happening just underneath the surface in world affairs!—some are letting down spiritually! Fervent prayer and real Bible study are lacking. And no doubt partly because of this, some brethren are losing their spiritual focus and are beginning to feel that God is "far off," that nothing much is happening in world affairs and that it is not really important that we are all truly committed to being part of the Work which Christ is using us to do.They don't realize that we are being used in a unique manner to truly "warn" our peoples of the Great Tribulation and also to genuinely "feed" God's people with the "whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). Many "little groups"—here and there—have part of the Truth and are doing a "little" part of the Work. But where is Christ primarily working and where are His eyes focused today on the Church. He is using to prepare for the coming Kingdom of God? Most of you understand. But some of our people are confused and weak, and some are also discouraged that several of our brethren are becoming seriously ill with various forms of cancer, heart disease, etc.So our Headquarters team unanimously agreed that we should call a Church-wide fast for the Sabbath of August the 4th!

PasedenaGuy 10 brilliantly responds: