Living Armstrongism: PCG's Joel Hilliker Condemns Erotic Film Fifty Shades of Grey

Sunday, March 1, 2015

PCG's Joel Hilliker Condemns Erotic Film Fifty Shades of Grey

Yes. They went there. PCG's Joel Hilliker has released an article condemning Fifty Shades of Grey. ("Seduced by Fifty Shades of Grey", February 18, 2015.)

And so we see once again how a leader of Armstrongism is once again trying to control peoples' sexuality.

Considering how PCG and Armstrongism in general tend to be very negative regarding popular movies and books this condemnation is perfectly predictable.

Printed in large letters to the side of the article are the following words.

Released in time for Valentine’s Day—as if it was the perfect date movie—it raked in more than $94 million in the United States alone over the four-day weekend.

In other words the movie made nearly five times as much money in four days as PCG does in a year ($19.5 million in 2012).

***

There are also comments posted by people who seem to take this article seriously. Here is one of them.

I remember reading harlequin romances… these were just the start of wrongful thinking… being dissatisfied, thinking that this type of fantasy was what one should want.
Fifty Shades of Grey is what those type of novels lead to. Satan works on us a little at a time to twist our thinking.
Thank God that He opens our minds, shows us what wrongful thinking is, how to avoid it and that He will heal our minds if we yield to Him and put forth our best effort.

This comment got twelve likes.

(I emphasize again this is a comment. It is entirely possible this person has nothing to do with PCG besides reading their stuff and being somewhat sympathetic to -- at least some of -- what they say.)

So even those "harlequin romances" are (apparently) the work of Satan according to this reader of PCG's writings.

This is a sad attitude to have. There are better ways to view feelings related to sexuality and the yearning to have a better life.

1 comment:

AnonymousMarch 2, 2015 at 8:27 AM
Critics didn't much like it either but for reasons unrelated to the morally ambiguous Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia -- it was boring. Things were looking Grimm, Bob Grimm, that is, as critic for newsreview.com:

"The Fifty Shades phenomenon has been impossible to avoid, and that virus has now spread to movie screens. While I managed to avoid the book as if it were an ill-tempered grizzly bear infected with Ebola and brandishing a shotgun, the cinema now beckons, so off to the Red Room of Pain I go."

"When people aren’t having sex in this movie, which is quite often as things turn out, they talk in a somber, slow, irritatingly elongated manner. Everybody in this movie is a mopey, sodden sop. I love Seattle, but watching how residents behave and communicate in this movie makes me never want to visit the city again, even if the Mariners make the playoffs."

As near as I can tell, it's a bad movie which made buckets of money. After all that's said and done, that's all that matters in measuring a movie's success.

PCG condemnation proceeds not from moral outrage but from a texted script with no real emotion behind it: They have to be against it because that is their marketing stance.

Speaking of which, it's not too surprising, since grandma is their demographic.

Still... it does seem to have been a terrible movie: Two hours of boredom, but then, it's not a moral question -- certainly not one of the expansiveness of the idolatry of the PCG, caught in the decline of entropy accelerating at the time Flurry announced he was Christ in the flesh as 'that prophet'. Maybe he is. 'That [damned] prophet' -- the false one.
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Fall of Berlin Wall NOT Proof HWA was Right

It is often asserted that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 proved that HWA was right and he really did see the future.

This of course is nonsense. Herbert W. Armstrong said that Christ would return within twenty years in his book Mystery of the Ages. (PCG has since deleted those words so someone in there knows HWA spoke nonsense.) How convenient for them to forget this.

Also Herbert W. Armstrong never said the Soviet Union would collapse. He thought it would survive intact until a few years after Christ's return. It shows how biased some many in the COGs are that they never seem to notice this. This inconvenient truth is just tossed into the memory hole.

It is true that HWA said that some Eastern European states would break away from Moscow's orbit and join the European Empire he said would arise at any moment. But he never talked of the Soviet Union collapsing. He did not teach that. Also he portrayed the rise of the European Empire to be far quicker then what has actually happened. In Mystery of the Ages Christ was supposed to return by 2005 at the most.

So assertions that the fall of the Berlin Wall somehow prove that HWA was right is just complete nonsense spread by people who, for whatever reason, are still in denial that HWA was a false prophet who merely talked out of his own "human reasoning".

Truth about Roderick C. Meredith

What sort of man is he? A man who could say things like this.

"Mr. Armstrong has reminded us again that we are to disfellowship any members who attend GTA's [Garner Ted Armstrong's] campaigns, church services or other meetings. Some of our weaker members apparently do not realize that this man is in direct rebellion against God and His government! We must not allow them, or ourselves, to rationalize about this matter, to try to "help the underdog," or in any other way lend support to one whose gross immorality, whose long standing "play acting" and hypocrisy, and whose direct insubordination to the Government of God has long been and is now a source of confusion and DIVISION among God's people. So, as per Mr. Armstrong's instruction, I charge and exhort every one of you faithful ministers of the living Christ to explain this in no uncertain terms to your members, to warn them about this cause of division and then to disfellowship any who consort with GTA or any of his fellows." (Roderick C. Meredith, Pastor's Report, May 21, 1979, pp. 1-2.)

See here for this statement's context.

David Robinson on Roderick C. Meredith

WCG minister David Robinson had this to say about Roderick C. Meredith in a letter he wrote to him on September 19, 1979.

"During the ten years I have been an employee of the Worldwide Church, you have been poorly spoken of by most of the ministers and employees I have known. I vividly remember the absolute unbounded glee that was openly expressed by a good number of respected men in the church when you were first "shanghaied." [In 1972.] I could begin by naming names, which I am sure would shock you. I was one of the few who stood, where possible, for you. Your tenure as superintendent of ministers, as I believe the office was then called, was looked on as nightmarish. While you held office during the years of growth, most of those whom I know gave you very little credit for that growth. Almost everyone whom I know, whether they be former friends of yours, or continuing foes, recalls insensitive and terrible things you have done. Without exception, at least among my acquaintances, they all credit you with an unbridled lust for power and list you as one who is willing to pay the price of gaining that power, no matter what. I have, through many of the last few years, believed you had principles you would not violate. Many a man of experience in the church assured me of my error. Events have proven me wrong and them right. Mr. Armstrong has himself been widely quoted as saying of you that you were so righteous that you were so "righteous you were unrighteous." " (David Robinson, Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web, Chapter 16, p. 207.)

Of course it is impossible for me to personally verify these assertions but people deserve to know what this knowledgeable man had to say about him.