It's Half a Time

False Prophet Ronald Weinland spoke from Toronto yesterday. His sermon went off as scheduled at 3:30 Eastern time since he was not held up at the ideaCity luncheon. It turned out that Ron did not break the sabbath by partying at ideaCity after all.

Ron will be thinking about the cold winters of Winnipeg well into the Millennium. Ron was amazed that everyone could assemble this far into the Great Tribulation. COG-PKG membership must be popping in Florida since Ron ordained a second elder for the sunshine state, making sure the new one was all the way across the state on the Atlantic side.

Ron had a hard time fitting in with all the intellectuals at ideaCity. His talk was delivered on Thursday morning instead of Wednesday morning. The audience was mostly in stunned silence during his presentation, but a few let their mirth escape. One of them is indeed fortunate that Ron does not really have Witness powers -- Ron was so offended that he wanted to strike the offender dead on the spot. Nevertheless, Ron compared himself to his spiritual idol, Herbert Armstrong, as being unique among all the other Armstrongists by being able to address such a large group of non-believers.

Ron, let me repair some misconceptions you have.
(1) The handlers at ideaCity were nice and respectful to you because they were being paid to with hold their laughter until out of your presence. Same for the radio interviewers.
(2) Don't confuse intelligence and reasoning with haughtiness and pride. You're not around intelligence and reasoning much these days, are you? Hanging around your followers quite a bit, huh?

A week ago last Thursday was a prophetic day. It was 180 days into the not-so-Great Tribulation, or "half a time", and the earthshaking events for that milestone were a couple of interviews on local radio stations in Toronto.

After Ron's talk, he went backstage for a post-presentation interview. Meanwhile the next speaker had a different opinion and was speaking heresy about the Bible. Looking over the bios, the following presenter was Tom Harpur, author of "The Pagan Christ". Tom's CV is a bit more impressive than Ron's, whose main talent was being able to swallow British Israelism whole on a mention from his father, no further investigation required. Tom Harpur's heresy was too much for Ron to tolerate, so he left ideaCity. Now Ron, Tom sat through your nonsense -- or maybe he was the one who laughed at your mention of BI. How much longer does he have to live?

The morning of my posting is also prophetic. With the publication of this post, yet another of Weinland's prophecies is false, as it's now six months after the fall season of 2008 and yet the US exists as an independent nation despite what is published on the last page of his book. After Ron changed his timeline a year ago, he assured us that nothing had changed in his book "2008 God's Final Witness", not even an iota. And it's also half a year, an actual 365-day year, not an imaginary 360-day year, or 182 and 1/2 days since Ron cursed me to speedily die from the inside.

Update: In which the False Prophet may have rubbed off on me.

As "Observer" has pointed out in the comments, an agenda is available on the ideaCity website hidden away here. It shows Ron speaking first in that session, followed by Tom Harpur, and 4 speakers later is Rick Miller, a standup comedian who includes in his repertoire a comedic routine that Ron would consider blasphemous. I'll have to listen again to Saturday's sermon later on to see if Ron, as "Observer" points out, mentioned the offending speaker as 4 speakers later. And if, as I recall him saying, he spoke on Thursday instead of on Wednesday as is listed on the agenda.

So I may have been presumptuous, though not in the prophetic sense as Ron. Thanks for pointing out my possible error. And if I've made any other errors, such that as we're not an independent nation over 6 months after the end of the 2008 fall season and that we don't have a new president, or that "nukular" weapons were detonated in US port cities last July, or that Rod Meredith, Dave Pack, and Gerald Flurry really did die before the 7th seal opened (either time), please let me know.

Update 2, maybe I wasn't quite so wrong.

I listened to the sermon again, and clarified a few points. The timestamps given correspond to the version of the sermon with the announcements only available until next Saturday after which they'll redact the announcements.

At 15 minutes, he states that he gave the talk on Thursday as I remembered. According to the website agenda, and his announcment the prior Saturday, Ron was scheduled for Wednesday morning. Perhaps they switched the days for an agenda, because his description otherwise matches the time.

Beginning at 1 hour and 1 minutes into the sermon MP3 file, he begins talking about the presentation. Afterward, he had an interview during which someone spoke about Biblical contradictions and the authors of the 4 gospels. This person exhibited great stupidity. This is consistent with Tom Harpur. Ron did take great exception and wanted to speak out. The next two speakers he said were interesting, which seems reasonable given the bios for John Geiger and Richard McDonald. The fourth speaker following is the one he took the greatest exception to and probably was the one who offended Ron the most, and that person according to the agenda was Rick Miller who has a comedic routine, Bigger Than Jesus.

So I wasn't totally wrong. Still wondering if it happened on Wednesday or Thursday. As Gavin Rumney pointed out, Weinland was a warmup act for Tom Harpur. As far as blasphemy, to turn a phrase "that's in the eye of the beholder". Ron has his definition of blasphemy. My definition of a blasphemer is someone who delivers swill and trash on a weekly basis and takes advantage of the gullibility of others to sell his own delusions damaging their finances, family relationships, and psyches.