Is the Church of god the church of God?

Here's another post that I write ages ago but did not publish at the time...

So - I was reading the books of the Pentateuch and trying to get my head around the many rules in the so called Law of Moses. Are all these rules still applicable today or do Christians only have to contend with the moral law (e.g. Ten Commandments) and, if so, what does one do with the 3rd commandment (keeping the Sabbath)? I checked this out in Google (as one does) and ended up even more confused (as one does). I got lots of hits but found that most if not all of them were Very Opinionated.

The presbytery of one "Church of God"

For example, there are Christian movements that assert that members should keep the Jewish Sabbath i.e. from sun-down Friday and through Saturday. One such is the Living Church of God with their impressive web portal for questioning outsiders like myself. They think the whole Law of Moses still stands although I'm not sure on their application of details like You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk which injunction is mentioned three times in the OT repeated presumably for its importance. Some consider any Christian movement worth its salt will have the phrase "Church of God" in its title because that's what the Bible says, although a quick search of the NT showed 80 instances of  "church" of which only 8 were "church of God".

Some say that, since all these things [recorded in the OT] happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come, we should interpret them "spiritually" i.e. to extract some lesson from them rather get embroiled in the literal gory details. In this way the gore can conveniently and tacitly be ignored. Try telling those Israelites of old that their brutal lifestyle was only ever meant as a picture for future generations of some Vast Eternal Plan...

Wikipedia's entry for "Church of God" lists a large number of disparate movements with this phrase in their title, each considering theirs is the bee's knees. Some are offshoots from Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God (renamed Grace Communion International after their founder's death when they repudiated most of his whacky beliefs) including the above Living... Of course Armstrong claimed that his was the only true church of God while all others were counterfeits. This argument appears to be a common denominator in such movements. Indeed, in the Open Brethren church I grew up in, I found it hard to believe that any non-Brethren people could be true Christians. It came as a surprise to me, when I left home for college, to meet folk who were undeniably Christian yet were not Brethren. But, full circle, I later became involved with The Move who also implicitly regarded themselves as the true church. Granted, they did concede that there just might be Christians in other movements that had the revelation but implied this was unlikely.

If a movement or even one of its local congregations is heavily dependent on or elevate a single man or his (or her) unusual Biblical interpretation, or if they are in any way exclusive (i.e. claiming alone to be God's chosen people or at least that they are elite), or if they have a special identifying title or denomination or are insistent on having no title, or if they are the result of a split over doctrine, or if they have a special dress code or other strange rules, then I say that movement is highly questionable. It's taken me several years to learn this lesson!  With, I suppose, the exception that (as I think I have observed elsewhere) main-stream Christianity itself is, of course, founded on the teachings of a single man.

What I find most disturbing is the multiplicity of Christian movements which have a substantial following and think they are right, but which are mutually in disagreement with each other. And, worse, that I have unwittingly been involved in two of them.

Don't get me wrong - it is not my intention to decry any of these movements. Let their own members decide for themselves. I say, along with the apostle Paul, that each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. It is both foolish and irresponsible to blame another person for one's state. The only trouble with this line is that I find that I am not yet "fully convinced". Indeed, the older I get the less convinced I seem to become.

In the grand Calormene manner

I was brought up in a conservative Bible believing home and thus read the book with the presumption that it was all literally true. I find I can no longer do that: I read with a more open mind and discover nuances that eluded me before. An example is the OT book of Job which seems to me to be a highly structured tale. The details of the plot can be taken with a pinch of salt but the underlying moral is clear. To me, realising that the book of Job is fiction does not detract from the power of the message - for sometimes fairy stories say best what's to be said. When applied to the rest of the Bible the effect is refreshing. Some might find it heretical saying: if Job is to be fiction then next you'll be claiming that Jesus didn't do all those miracles or rise from the dead, which logic I refute.