General Discussion on Weinland, Pt 2
False Prophet Ronald Weinland has his multi-part sermons. And this blog now has its multi-part discussion posts, this being the second part.
Part 1 of this series was a lively discussion. It gave us a chance to use and review the meanings of several words and terms such as:
- regret
- repent
- sycophant
- Hermeneutics
- confirmation bias
- “Great. Now I have guilt!!“ (for someone whose childhood literature/culture was of the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” genre)
- Weinland’s views on Internet activity
- stay silently (lurk)
I think this discussion series has given us a chance to interact and maybe learn a little bit about each other. We’re all still human even though we have diametrically opposite viewpoints on certain issues. Hopefully the debate will be vigorous yet respectful and also informative.
Comment away!!
I must say: now that I’ve been several times a teenager, I wish I was as wise now as the first time I was one.
Sadly, my comment about “confirmation bias” has been overlooked.
Oh, and if we’re gonna bring up quotes from Disney movies, there’s always one that comes to mind when reading some comments here:
From The Little Mermaid: “Teenag-uhs…..dey tink dey know ev’ry thing!”
Kirrily, I understood your post perfectly. You do express yourself well just with many words, and I do the same thing. I’m the type that when I am told to write a 200-250 word essay, I ask how many more words it can be. I’m also the type that finishes writing an essay and thinks among the lines of “I need to find a way to get rid of X amount of words. E: 40 words left, 23 words too many.
J, I will look in to confirmation bias. I have a feeling I know what it means but I will look it up. I have much to research, particularly what people here have given me. I’m also trying to spend less time on the computer as I spend too much time on it. Wish me luck.
w/o,
it is very annoying to receive advise from someone that has no life experience to back up there advise.
I’m sure you are the type of person that would try to tell an alcholic how to quit dringking…but unfortunately, if you’ve never drank, you would not have any understanding what an alcholic goes through when he just tries to stop drinking. That is why groups like AA exist successfully. It is made up of people that have quit telling eachother their experience.
I’ll give you an example of how I handled a situation:
Someone I know came to me and was telling me about his wife having alzheimers. I gave the man much sympathy and told him “I can’t even imagine what your going through and will not pretend I do. I know it must be very hard.” My only advise to the man was to seek out a support group for people dealing with this terrible disease. Which, he said he already does … and he told me it is helping.
I hope w/o, that you understand my point!
Kirrily and the rest: Apology accepted. I do not hold any animosity for anything that you or anyone else has said and I wish God’s very best for each of you. I probably won’t be commenting again but I won’t make it a promise to myself or anyone else. : ) As Dill Weed says, time will reveal the truth to all and it won’t be long now. Take care and have a great summer or winter, depending on where you live. : )
Kirrily,
Your comments to WO were very well spoken. Youe didn’t say “you don’t know!” but rather said “Please also, do not underestimate.” I liked that!
WO,
Please do take what Kirrily said to heart. Now, not having gone through it, there is no way you can fully understand, any more than you could fully understand what it is to be pregnant and give birth. Some things we can know intellectually, but we can’t really KNOW. Ya know? I was hoping to help you relate a little better to the people Ron is hurting. It is an ugly phrase that puts me off, but it’s so accurate – “mind rape”. That’s what he’s doing to people. You may not have devoted your life to, given up your livelihood for, or ruined your family because of a false prophet and Christ-peddler, but many people have. They’ve tossed family heirlooms into the garbage. They’ve sold lands. They’ve lost jobs and risked all. They’ve endured ruthless mocking and insults (like a carnival side-show freak or something). They’ve grown to believe they are better than 99% of all mankind who has ever lived. They’ve sacrificed and scraped and gone hungry. All these terrible things and much more!
Only to find out the man they had absolute trust in was a con artist.
“What a mind job!”
Can you relate to that?
I can. I know many others who are dealing with the ramifications of that right now. Most of us here have at one time or the other. I’ll tell you one thing, it hurts. And this isn’t a hurt that just goes away. Sometimes is goes on and on and on for decades. Some things will never go away. Scarred for life.
There are issues with trust. I can barely trust another human being. How do you trust after this? After the one you thought was an Apostle of God, who opened your eyes to so many “truths”, for whom you would do nearly anything, turns out to be a fraud!
There are issues of embarrassment. What a complete and utter humiliation!! I would rather a thousand times stand naked in front of class than go through this. I thought I was a chosen one, granted special understanding of things hidden for 1,900 years, waiting to bypass the Tribulation and take my place in the first resurrection. I was going to be a GOD! And now what am I? A fool. I fought for decades with my mother and she with me because we couldn’t see eye to eye on religion (stupid on both sides, yes). I wasted decades. What relationship is more precious than the one you have with your mother, and I treated her like garbage. I didn’t have that. Then I had to apologize to her because I was wrong. How do you think that feels?
There are issues of absolute confusion. Imagine the very ground below your feet cannot be trusted. That’s what it’s like! Questions, questions, questions. Who am I? What really is my purpose? Where do I go now? Who are my friends? What will my family say? What really is my past? What is my future?? What comes next after this life? What really is the nature of God? If I have been lied to like this, what else is a lie?
And for those who come out of it and choose to remain in Christianity, how on earth do you forgive these people who so selfishly abused and spitefully used you? We were nothing but an ego boost and a source of income to those deceivers! Like sheep they fleeced us and slaughtered us all day long. But a Christian must learn to. We are called to this. After all this terrible pain, there is an unspeakable joy that awaits. That joy keeps me going.
Can you really “understand … perfectly”?
Thank God you’re not involved deeply like many of us are/were. I hope you do walk away and suffer none of the ill-effects.
I also pray you thoroughly take to heart what we are doing here. What Mike is so generously giving us an outlet for, and for no reward of his own. Do you understand why so many of us feel compelled to oppose these so-called “apostles” and “prophets”? It’s not just “well, in 2 years he will be shown false and we’ll just move on.” It’s not so easy at all. Do you really see why we hope for the release of their captives?? I pray to God you do.
I should add that I can relate, but everyone is unique. Everyone has their own experience. I can relate, but I can’t understand perfectly.
And I should add that in all actuality I hope you never really understand, too.
This topic is too deep for me. Too heavy and depressing.
So! To lighten the mood, I give you these two Herbert Armstrong quotes which I found on a website called “The Plain Truth About Malachi’s Message and That Prophet” Which, btw, I came across on a link from RedFox’s blog, Living Armstrongism.
“And brethren, I have to say to you, no one is going to succeed me. God has called me to a job, to a commission. Mr. Rader has said time and again publicly that he doesn’t expect anyone to succeed me, that God has never let anyone die until what God has called him to do is completed. I think that when God lets me die, the thing He’s called me for will have been completed, preparing the way for the Second Coming of Christ carrying that Gospel of the Kingdom to the world for a witness to all nations.”
[WWN March 6, 1981, pg. 12 (L.M.)]
But I think God has called me for a job to do. If I have been someone in the power and the spirit of Elijah, remember there is no prophecy that God will have an Elisha following Elijah. There is no one in the Church that has the qualifications, the experience that could carry on the work that God has given me to do. … But the job God has called me to do is a prophesied job.
[WWN March 6, 1981, pg. 12 (L.M.)]
Read the link on that website to see the quotes in context. It adds meaning.
Where I lived before, a man who had a business would put a sign in the window during the summer months.
And the sign read “Hire a teenager, while they still know everything!”
And xHWA, your last few comments here say it about as good as can be said.
In fact, it has moved me to say something that I never intended to say. But I’ll be brief, and to the point.
I should (I say should) have had a house worth about $450,000 right now. And PAID OFF to boot. Instead, I have one worth less then half that, and I’m only four years now into a 30 year mortgage for this house. My quality of life, financially speaking, has been severely downgraded, on a permanent basis.
Why? Because I believed HWA, when he always would say “Were in the gun lap! Time is short! Be generous with your offerings so we can complete the work God has given us!”
I hope I don’t appear to be “playing the violins”, because I’m not. I’m a big boy now, and I can take it.
I’m just saying this to show (to the ones who need to hear it) the kind of damage this cult crap does to people.
I don’t know how my story measures on the scale, I think it’s probably fairly typical of the kind of damage that has been done.
I know there are others, who have faired way worse, those who were more “zealous” than myself.
And I’m just talking financially, I know there are a lot of others (as we all do) with some real horror stories involving emotional and psychological damage.
Young people, like WO, will have realized (hopefully) the kind of person RW is, by the time they start having to earn a living for themselves.
It’s the older adults who are in the PKG-COG that are going to suffer the same kind of damage that many of us did under HWA.
And those are the ones I really feel for.
Enough said.
One more thing (sorry, this has gotten me “started up”).
Was I a fool? Was I stupid? Absolutely yes! But the funny thing about it is; that it’s not an “IQ” type of smarts, or stupidity.
Because my intelligence level (IQ speaking) is quite average, and there are people who are very intelligent, that are still caught up in this stuff, and may be for the rest of their lives, for all we know.
I really don’t know what to say about it, in that regard.
It makes me think of what God said to Jonah regarding Nineveh, “that great city”, who’s people “don’t know their right hand from their left”.
DRMR,
Sounds spot on to me. Thanks for sharing that.
xHWA, I understand your posts clearly. As for real terrible stories, I have read them on one of the blogs. Stories of some who gave so much that their children had to wear socks for mittens. This was very sad for sure. There were things that were much worse that I had read on the site. I don’t remember where it was but there was story after story. What that amounts to is people giving more than is healthy and required. They weren’t required but they did it. I recognize that some COG groups are very opressive, particularly PCG and RCG. I don’t remember if it was on the Weinland Watch blog, but I remember a post where the RCG said that members should sell their houses and cars along with whatever they can to donate for preaching the Gospel. I remember the post stating something among the lines of wives without husbands in the church demanding that they are intitled to half of the income of the house and donating it along with telling husbands to tell their wives that the man is in charge of all the money and giving it all to the church. That is sick. Incidentally, I checked to see if something was stated and that sermon hadn’t been put on the website where others would here it. The site appears as beautifull and scollarly to those who wouldn’t know better and when I saw it I didn’t believe or search in to it because I knew where the truth was. However, I didn’t think anyone who knew the truth Armstrong restored or at least some of it would be this cruel. I feel for anyone in that group. That glamerous looking website they’ve got is all a show. The reality is something completely different. Trust me, I’ve heard my share of stories on WCG-related stuff. However as xHWA and Kirrily stated in different ways, I can’t know what it feels like and I hope I never will.
Unfortunately faith defies intelect for many. Look at Scientology for instance. Many people believe in it. If I were to write some belief system up, I guarantee that there would be at least some people with fairly decent minds who would believe it. When I say God gave it to me I don’t mean that I just felt I should except it. I actually felt I had some proof. If I had clear proof on something not being true or not enough proof for something that it is true I wouldn’t believe it.
Also, Armstrong’s work was preaching the Gospel Matthew 24:14. That isn’t happening anymore and Cog-pkg’s commision is actually Preparing For The Kingdom Of God.
WO – “Armstrong’s work was preaching the Gospel Matthew 24:14. That isn’t happening anymore and Cog-pkg’s commision is actually Preparing For The Kingdom Of God.”
Sounds good. But, again, that is against what HWA said.
He said his own work was “preparing the way for the Second Coming of Christ carrying that Gospel of the Kingdom to the world for a witness to all nations.” And that work was done with him. He clearly stated “no one is going to succeed me.”
Also, HWA said that God spoke through him, and when his message went around the world the end would come – not before and not after. (The audio sound bite is in that video I mentioned the other day.)
If “not after”, then what does Ron think he’s doing, precisely? I’ll tell you what he’s doing. He’s going against his own Apostle (in many ways).
The end did come after. It began after Armstrong died.I can now see how people could have thought Armstrong to be one of the two witnesses. With Ron, the prophesies have to come to pass. Also as Dill said if the pope were to pass away that shoots Ron’s claims in the head as you can’t be a great false prophet when you are dead.
“Also as Dill said if the pope were to pass away that shoots Ron’s claims in the head as you can’t be a great false prophet when you are dead.”
Oh ye of little faith in Ron.
Ron can weather that one like a champ!
He simply disects the “man” from the “office” and wha-la the next pope is the “Great False Prophet”.
Or Ron simply stops talking about that “prophecy” all togethor and his neophites tell those “others” that question that it was a “prediction” and not a “prophecy”, obviously because it did not come to pass.
Pretty simplistic reactions of being on the wrong side of a “prophecy”.
Or one could simply come clean?
Naw… no time for that, Gods Kingdom awaits and somebody has to be that thier prophet, why not Ron who’s already self proclaimed the title?
Napoleon crowned himself Emporer, Ron crowned himself Witness.
Difference?
Hi WO,
Your comment was refreshing. The reading you have done has broadened your knowledge. And, you are expecting evidence to substantiate claims.
It is true that Ron said (GWF Pg 108) speaking of the 2nd phase of the 5 Thunder, “the PRIMARY EXCEPTION to this (the increasing deaths of religous figures) will be the Pope of the Catholic Church who is prophesied to die directly after the return of Christ.”
In one sermon (I can’t remember where) Ron claimed the Pope (Ratzinger) was possessed by Satan. (Help me out someone this is important.)
Ron has set himself up here for a couple of reasons, BUT he may have a way out, although he would have to revise what he said and that’s a problem because:
He said, GFW Pg 63 “When Christ began opening those Seals, He revealed their meaning to me, His servant.”
Christ told Ron the meaning of the Seals. 1st Seal opened 1994.
Did Christ tell Ron the meaning of all the Seals? No. (Well, how do you know, Dill Weed?)
Ron has said many times that he doesn’t know… until it is ‘given’. He has not been able to be specific and when he has…
But, Ron was specific about the Pope and the 5th Thunder.
We must conclude that Ratzinger was the Pope when Christ opened the 6th Seal. Why? Because, if John Paul was the Pope then – Christ would have told Ron – that Pope (John Paul) would die and the next Pope will be the False Prophet and will die after I return.
Christ would have KNOWN that Pope John Paul would die before He returned and could not be the False Prophet.
Ratzinger be came Pope April 2005 – well before God’s Final Witness was published Nov 2006.
Christ told Ron, and told him specifically so, how Pope Ratzinger would be different from all the other religious leaders who would die in the 2nd phase of the 5th Thunder – THAT RATZINGER would not die until He returned.
Important! THIS WASN’T RON BEING SPECIFIC, IT WAS JESUS. Because Jesus knew who he was talking about and made a specific claim which He had Ron deliver (prophesy).
That is as specific and locked in as you can get.
If Ratzinger dies – Christ lied or was wrong OR Ron prophesied falsely (!)
Which would you believe?
What can we expect from False Prophet Ratzinger? Powerful signs and wonders, the creation of a speaking image of the Anti-Christ and probably the lead role in the issuance of the Mark of the Beast.
All from a 83 year old man.
Is there a possible out for Ron? “Christ was referring to the Pope in general.”
But Christ was specific about the man in that position. How so? In that he, the Pope alive at the opening of the 6th Seal, would not die until He Returned!
If He was refering to John Paul – then Jesus would have been wrong…. Therefore, the Sixth Seal could have ONLY opened during Ratzinger’s Papacy.
There is no way out.
This is now a post on my blog.
Dill Weed
Look’s to me like Pope Ratzinger needs to start gettin busy.
Well Dill if the current pope dies Ron would be proven false. That’s the bottom line. There would be other ways but if he diedtomorrow or next week or any time during the Great Tribulation Ron would be false. I don’t believe this will happen but if it did I would have to except it. I hope people at least see that I reason despite what I believe. You don’t have to except what I believe. I just hope you notice how much I research and think.
Dill, you nailed it with your last post. nothing in it was incorrect.
I acknowledge your inqusitiveness, WO. It takes a certain rigor to examine information and to establish its credibilty. Now, we wait.
I see no way that Ron can change this.
It is likely that this will have further lessons for us all.
Dill Weed
That was a wise statement Dill. You don’t have to have the right or wrong oppinion to know that this will teach everyone something.
P.S. Todd do you truly feel that I have some hidden intent in being nice? I’m not hurt by it or anything like that. It’s just that this is the first time someone stated I had hidden intent in being nice. I would appreciate knowing why you feel this way.
w/o
that is not a question for me to answer. my opinion does not mean anything! that is something you must answer honestly to yourself.
to thine own self be true.
Todd, I never did say that was the case. I wanted to know why you thought it was the case and if so what you thought I was trying to do by being nice.
w/o,
again, my opinion means nothing. you will argue any point i raise and i refuse to argue.
you only need to be honest with yourself about this issue.
“WO: People HAVE put their lives on hold, and sometimes I feel you minimise this because you have not. “ (Kirrily, from previous discussion post.)
Some put their lives on hold for three-quarters of a century.
Also see Gavin’s, and my commentaries, on the film.
WO, your last comments are refreshing. I’m glad you’ve put your foot down concerning the Pope, regarding whether or not to believe Weinland true or false.
“I acknowledge your inqusitiveness, WO. It takes a certain rigor to examine information and to establish its credibilty. Now, we wait.
I see no way that Ron can change this.”
He’s already changed this once. Come on, Weinland, third time’s the charm!
37:25 – 37:40 “And the one he’s [Satan] going to start influencing in a very powerful way. Starting on April the 17th [2008] when the Pope is in Washington DC because that’s when it begins. And that’s when he begins to be influenced highly.” Source.
Here’s what happened on April 17th, 2008.
From the same sermon, April 12, 2008:
“At the 1:48:00 mark Weinland discusses a letter from a newly-baptized member who has lost his family, his friends, his job, and he says “but this is OK” (in the letter). A bunch of us pretty much started screaming at the screen “THIS IS NOT OK!” at that point. Very sad. Yet held up as a shining example by Weinland, as “greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for another”. Weinland goes on to say he is excited for those whose lives have been changed in so drastic a way as represented in the letter from the member that he is quoting. Weinland is, as Shadows of WCG’s “J” pointed out, directly responsible for this poor man’s destroyed family, destroyed friendships, and destroyed employment.”
Still think people are putting their lives on hold of their own volition, WO?
No response. Why am I not surprised?