Church Review: UCKG - The Ark, the oil, and she who thought she'd seen it all (extended edition).

Ready? Yes.
Prepared for what transpired? Absolutely not.

There is a point in every church service where the pastor can take a beat, ask themselves what they are doing, and try to steer the car back in the direction of something that wouldn't get them burnt as heretics. Doesn't have to be a smooth road, but as Christians, the cross should always be our guiding star.

Today?

Today I discovered what Hillsong would look like on a crystal methamphetamine binge.

A Marilyn Manson concert is more theologically on point, and less heretical than what took place at the Whitlam center this morning.

It started off with a woman on a projected video talking about living with depression for thirty years and then being cured after going to the church. One trip to church and she was cured. Then the first hard no of the morning "antidepressants don't work, stop taking them and join the church".

The pastor comes out and talks a little bit on how addiction, mental illness, and marriage breakdown are signs that people have lost their faith in God and that he was here to save them by healing people for free. God gave this suited up pick up artist seminar drop-out the power to perform miracles and he called them all forward.

"GOD DOESN'T GIVE YOU ILLNESS OR DISEASE TO TEST YOUR FAITH"

I had to stop myself from standing up and yelling "have you even fucking read Job? God's a bit of a dick in that particular book!". I had flashbacks to my first School of Discipleship where there was a heated discussion about God and natural disasters.

In fact... He didn't even do the dirty work himself... He gave permission to the adversary to unleash all manner of hell on that poor bastard and his family. But I digress.

Then came the the talk about how Jesus wants us all to be financially prosperous and all we have to do is have faith.

Umm, hate to burst your bubble, my guy... But Jesus was a socialist and basically advocated for the redistribution of wealth to the oppressed. Unless there's a part of the gospel I'm missing where he drove around in a Mercedes? The gospel according to Ayn?

It was just asking to be opened...

Next came the healings. People were suddenly cured of all their ills and jumped on the spot. People with knee injuries? Fixed. People who couldn't talk for six years? Chatty as a mother at a school pick up run. This guy had the touch.

When it came time for the ark to come out, he prefaced it with a statement about it being a replica. The true ark hasn't been found, so they recreated it from the specifications in the Bible (Raiders of the Lost Ark), and he made a very pointed comment at *someone* regarding discussion on their Facebook page in regards to the authenticity of this artifact that we were about to be graced with.

But on we went. There was a military style procession after a video detailing that victories were won when the ark was sent into battle with an army. Imagery of soldiers drawing swords, and shields at the ready.

Wait, what God are we worshiping here again?

Then it started. If the service had been strange up to this point... Then we were about to take a tumble down the rabbit hole after snorting lines of pure crystal meth. The pastor and someone in the procession knelt before the ark and proceeded to howl almost incoherently about calling god (little g, because big G had likely left this place out of embarrassment early on in this shit show) down to heal everyone.

What? Still not weird enough, you say? Then the altar lights the fuck up and everyone's hands are in the air. Then the exhortation to give up your medications continued louder. "Go to your doctor's next week and ask them to run tests! They'll find nothing! You can't have children? In 2019 you will have a baby!". It's September. Nine months to have a baby. The ark has some fucking work to do.

This is where we had to call it quits.

Ark AND the rapture?

On our way out of dodge however, we were faced with another curious spectacle; a pair of sandals left abandoned by their owner. On its own it would have been innocuous, but after experiencing what had transpired over the last 45-ish minutes, I couldn't help but think the rapture had taken place (again) and I had not been fortunate enough to be one of the chosen to be whisked up to Heaven before the unfolding time of tribulations gets into full swing.

If memory serves we've had more than three dates pass for the rapture and is something someone in advertising should have been aware of. If I had been aware that the rapture was happening during / toward the end of the service, I would have made the effort to stay or gone the extra mile and sent a bag of rice to a houseful of orphans in Uganda. I'm kind of tired of being looked over for this kind of promotion.

What do we do after an experience like this? Go to the nearest Roman Catholic church, duck in through the doors while the Vietnamese service is running, bless yourself with holy water, and go to the blue mountains to decompress after that invocation to Satan.

UCKG rating on the Kool Aid scale out of 5?

5

5 jugs

Cups just won't do.

This was Jim Jones with a light show.