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NEWS SUMMARY, May 21, 1979
Page 5
That's the way love is. "We don't take tithes because that's not love."
They don't want to pay tithes--hence it's not love.
And they ask: "Is that what Christ would do?" Of course, what would
Christ do in their minds? Whatever they want to do. If they want to do
it this way, that's what Christ would do. Hence, if you don't do that too,
you're not of Christ and you're not showing "love."
As Mr. Armstrong says, the fundamental fallacy in chat is they didn't look
back into the Bible to find out what Christ did. There are certain ways
that dissidents misconstrue Scripture. But to me there's one scripture
that they cannot misconstrue, and that's the act of Christ when He was in
the temple. He used force and He used power to ov8rturn the money changers'
tables and everything else--to run the men out, an,i to run the cattle out.
Now you can't just say, "Well, that's not love."
I tell you, there are people in the Church today that really would have
condemned Christ. And how about Paul? I've got a beautiful book. It's
called A Harmony of Paul's Travels. And when you ccr�ider the persecution
that Paul was under--I wonder how many people today would have followed
him? You know, he was accused (if you take all those scriptures) of sedi
tion and every type of wrong--probably thievery and everything else--and
locked up in prison and chained! Of course, many people didn't follow him
because of that. Right? He said "So-and-so left, so-and-so left, etc."
So what this comes down to in my mind is that this is true persecution
that we're under today... I think it's good to bring home to God's people
that we have a pure and simple test of faith!
Mr. LaRavia: The Basic Issue Before God's Church Today
You know, this has been an experience to end all experiences,in one sense.
And yet I know we've got a lot of experiences ahead of us. Some of them
are going to be tough; some of them are going to be delightful.
But I think through all of this--and it's been a nightmare of gigantic
proportions in many respects--it all comes down to one basic issue as far
as we're concerned, as far as the Church is concerned: Is GOD in charge
and has He appointed Mr. Armstrong to lead this church?
When you get rid of all of the issues that you can talk about, and all of
the things that tend to confuse; when you get right down to it, its that
basic issue. And I think that every church member and every minister has
to come to the point where they have decided (something we all should have
decided a long time ago) that God is in charge, that God called us, that
God has appointed Mr. Armstrong, and caused all doctrines to flow through
and come from him. I don't know of any other way that God can accomplish
that purpose because He doesn't go around revealing to each one of us,
"Well, this is my doctrine on tithing," or, "This is my doctrine on the
keeping of the Sabbath," "This is my doctrine..." He doesn't do it that
way. God has never worked that way.
But God has worked through Mr. Armstrong in a powerful way. And He does
reveal doctrines through Mr. Armstrong -':lnd always has. But again, this
has been a very basic issue and some have ques·tioned whether Mr. Armstrong
has a right to make the pronouncement about the sit-in.
Well, there's another startling thing that he has mentioned to me several
times lately. He says, "God revealed certain things to me." Now God