The title intimates a fairly standard worship hymn. As with all things Worldwide, reality is a different truth altogether.
Hear, O my people and I’ll speak, O Israel by name;
Against you I will testify, for God your God I am.
The fowls are all to me well known that moutains high do yield;
I also claim as all my own the wild beasts of the field.
Pay all your vows to God most high; Give thanks and offer praise.
And when the day of trouble comes, I’ll hear and answer you.
Think you that I would eat of flesh or ask for sacrifice?
But rather unto Me your God give thanks and offer praise.
But to the wicked man God says, Why mention my commands?
Why take my compact on your lips and cast my words behind?
Mark this, you who forget your God, and my instructions hate;
Therefore shall none deliver you, for this is my reproof.
The first verse reaffirms to the WCG membership that they have been “called” out of the world, as a member of a “spiritual Israel”. The verse goes on to tell the congregation that, should they falter, their god will testify against them. The remainder of the verse reinforces the omnipotent Orwellian archetypal god we truly did live in fear of disappointing.
The second verse instructs the member on how to pray. The “day of trouble” refers to the Great Tribulation, the beginning of the events in the book of Revelations, which would signal our need to “flee to the Place of Safety”.
The last two lines of the second verse manage to be anti-Semitic, and anti-Catholic simultaneously. Worldwiders were taught that roman catholics believed they were eating flesh, when they ate the communion wafers, and drinking blood, when they consumed the communion wine.
Thus, followers of the church of the great whore of Babylon were clearly cannibals and vampires, in Armstrong’s estimation. This teaching was then followed up with the edict that the Judaic tradition only got half the story right, since they disregarded the New Testament as being part of the law they should follow.
WCG members felt secure in the knowledge, however mistaken that knowledge was, that they had the one true path to god, by observing the Old Testament laws, while still believing in the teachings of the New Testament.
Thus, the christ figure was the Old Testament god’s only begotten son, that the Genesis god had created, through the holy spirit, to become fully human, to live, preach, and die, for the sins of God’s people to be forgiven.
The sinner in question was required to acknowledge the veracity and necessity of living by the Old Testament laws, and vow never to sin again, once they had been called to the truth. Their initial sins, enacted through ignorance, were forgiven by the crucifixion. Any sin committed after their acknowledgement of the truth was therefore unpardonable.
Given the fact that what constituted “sin” changed year to year, month to month, week by week, and sometimes even by the hour, it is no wonder that many Worldwiders simply gave up doing everything they possibly could, in order to hedge their bets for the final reckoning.
A whole treatise could also be devoted to Worldwide’s view on the holy spirit, what it was, and how it worked. Suffice it to say that the WCG view of the holy spirit pleased neither the Christians, nor the Judaic traditionalists.
The holy spirit doctrine was instead lifted whole cloth from the Holiness Quaker tradition Herbert Armstrong grew up in; that of an impersonal force, the “Inner Light within”.
Unlike the venerable and equitable Quaker tradition however, the WCG’s holy spirit was only available to, and present within, immersion-baptized adult members of the Worldwide Church of God.
Children of baptized members were informed repeatedly, through their bible study lessons, that the holy spirit could work with them, but never through them, until they were baptized (and one presumes tithe-paying) members themselves.
This is a very general overview of the dreaded binitarianism, for which the Fundamentalists were preparing to literally burn the WCG at the stake, before Worldwide changed its policies to escape persecution, by the Evangelical Right, in the mid-1990s.
The church believed that it struck an adequate balance, between being Judaic and Christian, through the observance of their Passover service. It was stated to be a re-creation of the Last Supper, with the added bonus that members washed each other’s feet, to show humility, and servant-ship, to their church and each other, and how they would be servant rulers, in the returned kingdom of god.
This was followed with a rite that mimicked a typical communion ceremony. The wafers and wine were most emphatically not flesh and blood however, as that would have been an abomination before the Old Testament god.
Interesting to note, the present incarnation of the WCG still practices this ceremony, but no longer around the same time of year as the equivalent Judaic holy day. They have rebilled it “the Last Supper ceremony”, and allegedly re-enact it at several undefined points throughout the year.
There is little to no public information available about this particular present-day WCG ceremony, so it may indeed be a Passover holdover, from the old Judaic belief system. The church is not remiss in being secretive in this regard, for fear of irking the wrath of their very fundamentalist bedfellows, who would no doubt view this ceremony with great suspicion and distaste.
The second and third lines of the final verse again rebuke both Judaic traditionalists, with the compact on their lips, but casting god’s word behind, and the fundamentalists, who ignored the Old Testament law-keeping. It reinforced yet again that we were members of god’s one true church, and that our cries would be heard, when the Great Tribulation was upon us.
Tags: anti-catholicism, anti-Semitism, binitarianism, british-israelism, cult control, fear-mongering, great tribulation, judaic god, legalism
