Thursday, October 25, 2018

Ephesians 3, Armstrongism Revised Version

For the Sake of Making a Point, I present to you what is NOT the Word of God, the fully edited Armstrongism Revised Version (written by me, it doesn't exist!) of Ephesians 3, to illustrate the point of how much the Church changed even one chapter of one book of the New Testament, to support their belief system.


For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles establishing the Church
Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace Law that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ magnification of the Law, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel Obedience of the Law and the Sabbath and Holy Days the Gentiles are heirs together with British Isrealites are Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together The only true heirs in the promise in Christ Jesus.
I became a servant of this gospel the Magnification of the Law by the gift of God’s grace obedience to the Law given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles Church the boundless riches of Christ, need for obedience to the Government of God and His Law, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery the Government of God, the Kingdom, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things, and will still be hidden to virtually the whole world. 10 His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, Herbert Armstrong and his church 11 according to his eternal purpose that he  will accomplished  accomplish in Christ Jesus our Lord. The Master Plan of redemption.12 In him and through faith in him By obedience to the Law and our submission to the Government of God as members of the Church we may approach God with freedom and confidence. 13 I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

A Prayer for the Ephesians

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ you may may dwell in your hearts qualify  through faith obedience to the Law. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love the Law, 18 may have power under God's Government, together with all the Lord’s holy people members of the Church, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, important it is that you qualify and are obedient, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge obedience to God's Government —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, how much we support Herbert Armstrong, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus the Work throughout all generations this end time, for ever and ever! Until World War III! Amen.

5 comments:

  1. This article really triggered me because that is EXACTLY what armstrong did with the scriptures - changed the meanings to fit what HE wanted them to say. I once had a bible in the 70's that was totally marked up, full of underlines with marginal notes, colorful highlighting, etc. When I came to understand the true gospel, I threw it away. Now I wish I had not have done that. The bible doesn't need to be marked up. Just read it for what it says.

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  2. I have my marked up Bible with its "inspired" margin. Also have one that an AC woman sold during the Tkach iteration of AC.
    I never went in for color coding and kept my notes relevant, but mainly minimal.
    There are some areas they skipped over because they did not fit their version of the facts.

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  3. I'd like to see scans of your marked-up Bible. I think it would be very interesting to look at.

    The skipping over? Classic Armstrongism cherry-picking. I can't tell you how many times they "skipped over" whole verses and paragraphs and chapters in sermons. This kind of thing happened often.

    "Let's read verses 3 through 7. Then go down to 16 through 21." When 8 through 15 was the actual context.

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  4. remember how they used to accuse ministers in other churches for missing the context?
    Plus not letting the Bible explain the Bible.

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  5. Absolutely.

    Actually, they accused the other churches of pretty much everything under the sun, totally neglecting the fact that they were doing the exact same thing under slightly variant conditions!

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