Wednesday, September 27, 2017

The COGs' Error Regarding the Feast

(Starting at sunset on Wednesday, October 4, the COGs will begin to observe the yearly highlight for religious observance within the COGs, namely their Feast of Tabernacles. The observance continues until the Last Great Day on October 12. This follows their observance of the Feast of Trumpets on September 21 and the soon approaching Day of Atonement on September 30. The following is a repost of a 2013 post, Herbert W. Armstrong's Error Regarding the Feast, discussing how the Feast of Tabernacles is observed by the COGs.)

Very soon the Feast of Tabernacles will occur and the COGs will observe them by gathering themselves together to the various Feast sites and fellowship with one another and listen to sermons for eight days as the entire COG from all over the world unite together for eight days of fellowship and communion with each other.

But there is a problem with their observance of the Feast of Tabernacles.

Notice Leviticus 23:40-43:
And ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute for ever in your generations: ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month. Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths: That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
And that is exactly what the Jews do today.

Look at how the Jews observe this day. They do it by building booths, called sukkah (sukkot plural) in the Hebrew language, within their houses or somewhere on their property.

Take a look at how the Jews observe the Feast of Tabernacles and the booths they observe it in.









They do not go around gathering themselves up together to assemble to listen for eight days to their Rabbis teaching the religion to them, instead they have fun and socialize with each other while staying at their own places or visiting their friends' places.

Does Leviticus say, Assemble yourselves together in a large warehouse far away from the world and go on vacation for eight days while you listen to my priests explaining the mysteries of the universe to you that you have already been hearing all year?

HWA has willfully misunderstood what this Feast is about. Instead of getting his followers to rejoice and celebrate with each other by meeting together in booths (sukkot) as seen above, in their own places, he exploited the peoples' misunderstanding and ignorance of this feast to get the COG members to assemble themselves together in a hotel, warehouse, campus, or some other such place in order to indoctrinate them into his syncretic religion.

Recently I had the honor of reading Carla Powers' book, Matches in the Gas Tank. She well described how the Feast was a terrible burden as her family had to drop everything from their regular lives and take a compulsory eight day vacation by order of HWA.

The Feast is designed to isolate COG members from society. It makes keeping a job that much harder for the COG members as they try to take eight days off. Kids are forced to take several days off from their education at school. Going to the Feast likely forces COG members to sacrifice by not using their hard earned money to go somewhere else. Instead they must go where the minister orders them to go.

They have no idea that they are not following God, but instead are following a man made tradition invented by one Herbert W. Armstrong.

Instead of observing the Feast as it is actually described in Leviticus and how the Jews observe it, HWA devised his own man made tradition in order to indoctrinate his followers.

The truth is HWA invented this man made custom of assembling together to hold a great feast in which every member is ordered to attend. The COGs think they are following God's law. In fact they are following a tradition invented by HWA.

4 comments:

  1. Yes, I think the old Correspondence Course stated that we have the FOT at a different location so that we have to stay in hotels which substitute as the sukkot. When I lived in a Jewish community, I remember sukkot at various locations, and inside the synagogues.
    Another error was "where I place My Name" which meant the Tabernacle, then the Temple in Jerusalem, was taken to mean Belknap Springs, then Big Sandy, then wherever a WCG feast site was located.

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  2. Yeah Hoss. "Temporary dwellings" was the definition. Can't remember where that came from.

    Nck

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  3. I don't believe that the mixing of elements of the Old Covenant with the New is viable as a basic concept, a way of life, a method of "qualifying" for salvation, or a system of government. It has most certainly not unlocked any accurate "keys" to understanding prophecy, either.

    Armstrongism, and it's founder, are much like the proverbial broken clock, or the science experiment with purely unintended consequences which one can attempt to play back, dissect, and analyze, yet never make any sense. As in the case of playing classic rock records backwards, one can read things by applying heavy doses of imagination, but in reality, it will always remain the glossolalia of religions.

    BB

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  4. BB

    Interesting.

    You do accept that if a certain number of people do believe the impossible that that just might come true or at least sets things into motion toward that direction.

    For instance setting the goal of putting a man on the moon, "making the world safe for democracy", or any strategic business or military plan for that matter.

    To me religion initiated the moment first man realized "what am I doing here in this tree", I (emphasis on I) can walk beyond toward that shining lake that I see from my tree instead of running to the river and climb back. Where does the bison actually come from? Not from that crack in the earth I guess when the moon starts getting bigger. Perhaps I can insure deer will come by alligning these stones with the waxing moon.

    By the way I liked that idea of that freaky man person who does not seem to like women much. He proposed to paint my hand with colors on the rock to send greetings/communications to those that departed and those that will be there when I depart.

    nck

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