Why is the Church of God Fertile Ground for Baseless Conspiracy Theories?

There is one gospel message that many in the Church of God are good at and that is spreading conspiracy theories.  Due to the endless stream of sermons, articles and videos pumped into the minds of church members on the "Prince of the poser of the air" who was actively seeking to thwart humanity in every aspect of life. Church members found the bogeyman hiding all over the world in books, TV, movies, papers, magazines, music, businesses, religion, and in the minds of every human on the earth, except of course, in the enlightened  COG members.  They and they alone could see though all of the corruption and subterfuge going on the world around them.  Satan was busy as hell and they were having none of it!  Expose him and his agents of darkness with  everything you could. So stories were dreamed up, exposes created, all breathlessly whispered or broadcast on Facebook as truth.

Case in point is the photo above circulating on various COG members Facebook pages and on conspiracy laden  conservative Christian pages.

One of the hallmarks of the Church of God is that it always claimed it NEVER lied about things to the membership or the world.  It was all God's truth directly inserted in the mind of Herbert Armstrong and every single minister that ever preached a sermon.  Yet, church members post crap like the above picture on their blogs and FB pages in self-righteous indignation.  Never once do any of them ever check into the facts surround some conspiracy.  If there might be the slightest grain of "truth" in the story then it is good for posting.

Matthew Herper from Forbes Magazine writes about this controversy:

The fetus-derived cell line we’re talking about was created around the time I was born. This is 35-year-old technology. And it is widely used in cell biology. And there is no way you’ll consume them or that the cells would cause any health problems.
The cells, called HEK 293 cells (that stands for human embryonic kidney) were taken from an aborted fetus in the 1970s in the Netherlands. Bits of chopped up DNA from the adenovirus, a virus that causes a pretty severe cold. The kidney cells were forced to take up bits of DNA using a technique invented in 1973 that used a calcium solution. The resulting cells don’t act much like human cells at all, but they are very easy to work with and have become workhorses of cellular biology. That’s why they’re used in the development of drugs and vaccines. No new fetal tissue has been used to keep the cell culture going; the use of this cell line isn’t leading to new abortions.

A tiny company called Senomyx has been working to use this new technology to create food additives. Senomyx has isolated receptors found on cells that detect taste, and added them to the HEK cells. This allows them to test thousands of potential taste additives to see whether they might taste sweet or savory with a speed that would be impossible with human taste testers. Synomyx has announced collaborations with Pepsi, Nestle, and Coca-Cola.    Famous Food Companies Caught Using Aborted Babies for Flavor Additives

Philadelphia Church of God: So Paranoid They Are Now Using Technology To Automatically Delete Sermons

Remember the days gone by when local churches had tape libraries filled with hundreds of tapes from HQ sermons, feast sermons and local sermons?  Member who were not able to make services could check them out the following week to listen to them.   Those tapes soon disappeared as CD's entered the technology scene.  CD's were sent out from HQ to local areas who them lent them to members to listen to.  Then MP3's, podcasts and live streaming hit the scene and CD's were outdated.  Tech savvy member soon learned how to download those to CD's that they made for fellow members. 

All of these technologies have come back in one form or another to bite various COG's in their royal keisters. Living Church of God scrambled as fast as they could to delete Rod Meredith's sermons that drove Terry Ratzman off the deep end when he shot and killed LCG members one cold Sabbath morning in Milwaukee.  Then when Stephen Allwine, an elder in United Church of God, poisoned and then shot his wife, UCG quickly started erasing Allwine from UCG memory.  The same has happened in Philadelphia Church of God when horrific stories of abuse or the sermons on prohibiting members from associating with ex-member family members and friends started being circulated.    When the outrage piles on, sermons quickly disappear, but by  then someone has saved a copy somewhere.

This has led the Philadelphia Church of God to resort to a new feature regarding their sermons.  PCG has spend tons of money on new audio equipment for each of their congregations that automatically deletes the previous weeks sermon from HQ from any access.  Since only a few select people have access to this machine and the sermon it will no longer make it into the members hands. 

“In 2017, the field audio department purchased 151 mp3 players in bulk at a discount. Tauer and Information Services manager Patrick Hogan developed and installed a secure application on them for playing PCG recordings, and the units were distributed to all field congregations over the course of the year. (Regional offices purchased and distributed the devices for their respective congregations.)

The department uploads encrypted messages to the players, which are brought to services by contact people who have been assigned by regional directors. The devices plug directly into sound systems and play the recordings. The following week, old audio is automatically deleted and new audio becomes available.” News of the Church of God

All of this subterfuge in the various COG's to keep their sermons out of the public domain shows how embarrassing their messages truly are.  Deep down they know it.  Forget the fact they all claim to be boldly proclaiming a message of the Kingdom of God, that is soon to be coming. That message gets lost in between the idiotic sermons where members are castigated for one offense after another.  That is what they are afraid of the public hearing.  If the public finds out that they can't respect members, they are going to have second thoughts about joining up and bringing their money with them.  That is what embarrasses them the most.  The "love" they claim to have for their members is embarrassingly absent. If the public sees how they treat members then the public will have second thoughts about sending money in as co-workers or even listening to the "warning" message.