The Painful Truth Asks About Church of God Leaders: : "Just How Can We Trust Them?"

The Painful Truth Blog has an entry today on "Just How Can We Trust Them?".  Credibility seems to have always been a big issue in the Churches of God down through the decades.  We claimed to have the only revealed truth on earth.  Yet myriads of pastors and evangelists have lied and blasphemed over the decades with one stupid utterance after another.  Thousands of failed prophecies, abhorrent biblical interpretations, and despicable treatment of members, all done by "great" shepherds of the chruch.  Today the Churches of God are filled with countless official Apostles and prophets, all claiming they are the final truth.  Why after decades of this silliness do members still sit there week after week soaking up the drivel from Pack, Weinland, Flurry and others?  Check out this inquiring post on the Painful Truth blog and join in the discussion!

Good question. How do you place your trust in men who seem to never do what is right? Men who serve the interest of themselves first and the interests of the member last?


Adrian from Australia wrote with these questions in mind.

•        The church claimed to be the church of brotherly love. My wife often said to me that if that’s what the church people are like then she didn’t want to be a part of the 1000 year reign with them. I agreed. I wondered how come my own family who I was told to reject as worldly, were always kind to us despite us not giving birthday presents to them and having Christmas etc. Despite the bible saying that if you see your brother in need and you do nothing about it how can God’s love dwell in a person. My physical family always helped us materially, church members didn’t ever.  Of course I forgot about all that free advice about how bad you were from members,  but I don’t think that qualifies as helpful. The bible says by their fruit you shall know them. It bothered me that they claimed to have brotherly love.

Byker Bob on "Bogus Authority"

Today's apparent theme of postings has centered around of bogus teachings and false authority of the Churches of God through the decades. Here is a comment from Byker Bob from a thread on an earlier post:

When Jesus didn't return as was vigorously promised and then furiously backpedalled upon back in 1975, I dumped the whole sorry mess of garbage. However, having been taught so much as fact, I still thought that much of the ancient history we were taught about paganism, pagan figures, and the infection of Christianity by these influences was basically true.

I had shelved a lot of this stuff, but when I began to revisit it due to many of the questions and actually accurate information presented on the internet, I was totally blown away by the nearly complete bogussness of the supporting materials with which we were presented. When you do your own due diligence, attempt to "prove all things", and carefully check history, you become aware that we were presented with a lying testimony, which is yet another huge reason why Armstrongism is totally NOT "God's true church"

People in the ACOG congregations would probably be disfellowshipped for presenting real facts that contradict the ACOG version, which is why ignorant people like David Pack continue to get away with teaching blatant inaccuracies and outright lies. It's seen as being an act of rebelliousness to even want to research all of this material on one's own, let alone to have a "voice" to set the facts straight. Basically, to do so is to doubt or want to contadict "God's Apostle". So, the wall is indeed quite thick and very high!

Purely and simply, Armstrongism is "religion". It's most certainly not an enlightened path leading to a personal relationship with God.

BB