what are the bastards in COGWA doing these daysOh dear, is that a "root of bitterness" I detect? It's doubtful the answer was found here, but if pressed my response would be, "up to no good, I'll be bound."
No, but seriously, has anyone heard as much as a peep from these fine ministerial gentlemen since they stormed off in a huff from UCG, bent on making the world a better, gentler place to grow their already super-sized egos?
And has anyone bothered to take the lads up on their offer to: "Come discover what makes us different from mainstream churches and religion." (The answer to that question is already known, and it ain't pretty.)
More to the point, does anyone care anyway?
No one really cares.
ReplyDeleteIt should be noted that the front page of their website has formatting problems in IE 8 with showing overlapping fields, tabs not aligned and text overruns outside the main area. This does not mean they are thinking outside the box, it only means they don't check for formatting in all the browsers.
It turns out that UCG is going them one better in May with brand new formatting: The site is going to be so much more high end that the CoGWA site will pale by comparison. (Is it just me, or does CoGWA seem to be a Church of God in Washington?) In the realm of church wars, United is going to win big with this one.
And the Feast of Tabernacles. If anyone is interested the CoGWA is now accepting RFPs (Request For Proposals) for Feast sites. This means that nothing is nailed down yet.
2011 is going to be interesting for all the Feast keeping CoGs: As gasoline goes up to $4.00 and beyond -- possibly to $5.00 -- per gallon and jet travel become so much more expensive, getting to the Feast of Tabernacles is going to be really costly. (And how will Armstrongists be able to afford to replace their SUVs with electric cars, when they pay three tithes?) What used to be a modest, almost trivial cost as a small part of expenses for "second tithe" (which really doesn't exist), is now a major expense, in some cases exceeding lodging. And they say getting there is half the fun. The other half will be getting home. Good luck with that. Keeping it local is such a good idea (and what will it be like in 2012?).
It seems clear that the entire environment of the Armstrongist Churches of God is seriously degrading: More and smaller. The glory days do seem to be gone forever.
In the meantime, the Evangelical Churches are taking an interest in the Feasts as a part of learning to understand Jesus Christ better. How ironic it would be if the Armstrongists had to cut back on the Festivals with their profligate spending, only to find that the Christian churches start keeping the Feasts until Armstrongism completely disappears as an irrelevant curiosity of antiquity, having failed miserably in both their supposed missions?
In any event, it is clear that the Armstrongist community is rapidly aggressively impressively daily growing... smaller. We don't care today. Tomorrow we will forget as the CoGWA and the rest disappear without a whimper.
Shoot, Douglas, if their legalism jumped the "proper" synapse, they'd realize that come fall they should be building sukkoths over in Jerusalem.
ReplyDeleteAs for the tactful and charitable dude who inquired as to their health, I could easily make a few telephone calls to find out what they are up to, but would only have to suffer through lengthy apologetics for my time and trouble. The short answer is that they are up to Armstrongism.
BB
Byker Bob, I appreciate your offer to phone them up, but no one would really want to put a nice guy like you through hours of elevator music while you are on hold, only to be transferred to yet another busy line, finally to be transferred back to the original line.
ReplyDeleteIf nothing else, Armstrongism has perfected the Church Corporate with emphasis on the Corporate and Church, not so much.