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Wednesday 25 May 2016

Visions in the Night

From a special correspondent.
It hath been reported from "impeccable" United sources that evangelists across the board in the US are having visions about Mr Trump and his taking his seat in the Oval Office. These visions are of a negative nature.
Hour-long sermons have a lot to answer for. The guy in the expensive suit mounts the podium/lectern/pulpit knowing that he's got to burble on for sixty minutes when what he's got to impart will, in all honesty, take 15 minutes tops. What to do, what to do...

Padding is required. Fullsome padding.

A couple of weak jokes.
A semi-relevant personal anecdote.
Time allowed for the lucky listeners to fumble up the scriptures in their wide margin bibles.
Time to read the scriptures in full with distractions along the way.

That accounts for another 10 minutes.

No, something more is required. A diversion off into punditry. After all, the minister is God's mouthpiece, so it stands to reason that his views have a degree of clout beyond anything the peons might come up with. What shall we talk about? Oh, I know: "world news and prophecy".

Is there a single COG minister - whether in UCG or an alternate franchise - who hasn't been beating his gums about the upcoming presidential election?

So the Great Man rattles his tonsils at length about what he read online last night in the Washington Times (the Washington Post would be a bit of a stretch for these guys). Or what he heard yesterday on talk radio. What an expert! How is this relevant? Why it's prophecy! Moreover, there's this imaginary commandment to "watch world news".

From there, perhaps it's only a short step to imagining that God is confirming their prejudices in the form of dreams - brought on by indigestion no doubt.

And so it's no surprise when a sermon turns from sound teaching and an emphasis on edification to... Trump.

But was it actually a sermon?

5 comments:

Byker Bob said...

They've been programmed to equate such things with the eternally-postponed Armstrong prophecy mold. What else could they do to bolster the spirits of a people who somehow never get to go home? No high IQ's to do this, no advanced degrees or graduate studies, just repeat the plagiarized message copped by a high school dropout who spent six months in the library, lived an opulent life at the expense of the tithe-payers, and finally died with the most toys! HWA got his reward. Too bad about all of his patient followers. They'll die never having seen what they believed be fulfilled!

BB

Anonymous said...

I find this inexplicable. It was an easy deduction that the Armstrongite clergy would not like Barack Obama what with Armstrongism's history of white supremacy and racism. But I anticipated that they would be hopping around crazy elated about Donald Trump. Trump is wealthy, has a trophy wife, has big hair, is White, dislikes minorities, is conservative and full of bombast that rivals GTA. An Armstrongite dream. What's not to like about Trump if you are an Armstrongite?

Could it be that even though there is a candidate that embodies some of the greatest ideals of Armstrongism, the clergy must nevertheless pronounce doom and gloom to keep the tithes flowing? Maybe they must always cultivate the idea of impending apocalypse or lay members will simply not sacrifice to fund "the gun lap".

Byker Bob said...

Conservative ideals come in scond to validation of the bogus Armstrong prophecy mold, NEO! Stalwarts are running out of patience (and the "ministers" are running out of patients!) The time and date stamp expired in 1975, but now even the second generation Armstrongites are dying off! People are getting desperate. They want their apocalypse, and they want it now.

BB

Byker Bob said...

What would really have been scary would be if Tea Party Ted Cruz had received some sort of mandate via the primaries, and had been swept into office. Trump
Is somewhat of a moderate, and he does have large scale business experience. Trump won't go to extremes in reversing the Obama fiscal policies in such a way as to send the economy into an immediate tailspin. The Tea Party would. Reagan got away with this in reversing Carter economics, but in the early '80s, we could very easily have spun into depression. Those were some pretty hard times.

BB

Redfox712 said...

When Trump first began his primary campaign PCG seemed to view his campaign with favor. But at some point, possibly after January, they turned against him. PCG do not like Trump anymore.

Perhaps they fear that Trump will not need to listen to anything PCG should happen to say. They have no way to control him. Perhaps that is why they do not like him anymore.