From a Facebook group:
To xxxxx , my brother in Christ who also happens to be my son,
There is no easy way for me to say this to you. But it is necessary that I say it to you.
We once attended services together and believed the same thing. We kept God's Word, His Ten Commandments, His Sabbaths and His Holy days together. You were baptized and became a begotten son of the living God our Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That made you my brother in Christ. I was so pleased and happy when you told me. I was also happy when you chose xxxx to be your wonderful bride and who became your soulmate for life. She also was begotten of our Father and walked in His Ways. Both of you have been a loving son and daughter-in-law to Dad and I.
When I found out Mr. Tkach was teaching that it is okay to sin and break God's law, I could no longer follow him in that Church organization. I left. You both stayed, at least for a while.
We decided to agree to disagree in order to maintain a family relationship.
But now I can no longer accept the idea that everything is okay between us while I know that you are headed into the tribulation and a great amount of suffering if you don't turn it around quickly. How can I live with myself should God protect me as promised to the Philadelphia Era spoken of in Rev. 3 to those who keep his word and do not deny his name during these last days, if I don't warn you?
Our nation is going to receive punishment for it's lawlessness and sins. You and your little family have only a short space of time to turn back to trusting God our Father and Jesus Christ our savior (our only real help in this last hour).
I love you and want what is best for you and your beautiful family (including my grandchildren). I know you know that. But I also know that deep down you know the difference between right and wrong. May our loving Father who chastises every son he loves help you to wake up before it is too late to escape the tribulation that is coming.
There is a very real warning going out for God's Church of which you became a part upon baptism and the applying of Christ's blood as a sacrifice for your sins. You are impregnated with God's Holy Spirit that you received with the laying on of hands. You can't keep taking that lightly and go on in your own human reasonings. Nor can I. My prayer is for you both to wake up. And now you have been warned.
I cannot make the choice for you as when you were a child. I love you so much. The fact that you live so far away doesn't make it much easier to do this:
I must now obey the command to withdraw my foot from every brother in God's Church who walks disorderly. II Thess. 3: 6, 14, 15. "Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us...and if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed, Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother."
I love you both so very much, but in obedience to Christ, I must withdraw my own personal fellowship from you. I will miss you. But I already miss the person you were when you were walking with God. You will be in my prayers.
Love,
MOM
26 comments:
Sounds like my mom. Boy are they in for a surprise when they realize they've been had by Flurry and his little cult. It won't be long now before Flurry kicks the bucket. The guy can barely hold himself together on his weekly KOD broadcasts.
I received something very similar from my mom. My mom, who recently died, was fortunate enough to see the truth about Gerald Flurry and his band of not so merry men before she died. It was heart wrenching to see what she had to endure to get to that point. I was fortunate enough to have a few months with her back in my life before she died and to know that she saw the truth about that church. I feel sorry for those in that group.
Once again, how grateful I am to be out from under the thumb of a brainwashing cult that would cause someone to disavow their next of kin on the word of an unworthy twat like Gerald Flurry.
Can anyone possibly imagine a child learning that there is no Santa Clause going through the type of heartbreak and angst that this woman is going through because of Armstrongist lies?
BB
Jesus returns and tells GF..."Fine job you did keeping everyone out of the kingdom but you and yours, but you and yours ain't going there either!"
Even in the worst of the WCG, Armstrong and others did not enforce such a draconian policy as this one that Flurry has about ZERO family contact.
A new low in wackiness and cruelty.
Gerald Flurry's tithe money is thicker than blood? To Gerald Flurry it is. For some sadly deluded and conned souls also, although they don't see it from Gerald Flurry's perspective like this. They see it from the perspective Gerald Flurry tells them to see it from, otherwise, the jig would be up altogether.
But I think part of what it means to be educated and civilized is to have the ability to adopt perspectives other than our own. It helps us figure out what's real, and what isn't. For example, Einstein developed his theory of relativity by adopting the perspective of a photon traveling at the speed of light. Those who are still in Armstrongism are those who have not yet considered Herbert Armstrong's perspective, and are like rats caught in a maze.
This sounds a little bit like my parents too. We were never in PCG though, so they would never say these things to me, or cut off contact, although, I am sure they still think the "great tribulation" is "within 5 years" and I'm surely going to perish in it. But hey, if you don't think about imaginary things like this that have been "within 5 years" for the past two millenia, then life just goes on. The sun keeps shining, the sky stays blue, and the moon never turns to blood.
Centuries ago, I'm sure people fought over whether Zeus and Apollo, or Thor and Odin were real or not, in just the same way some people today believe in Jehovah or Allah and some people don't. I'm sure, back in the day, parents had issues with their kids who didn't believe in Romulus anymore. But of course today such squabbles seem laughable. And a few centuries from now, when religion is extinct, I'm sure people will read about how people used to fight over Jesus and think "great tribulations" were always on the horizon "way back in the 21st century," and just laugh. But for now, I guess parting ways with the gods isn't always a laughing matter just yet.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." —Philip K. Dick
In his later years, Herbert W. Armstrong became concerned about the youth in the Worldwide Church of God and the prophecy in Malachi that said, “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse” (Malachi 4:5-6, NIV). Church programs like Y.O.U. (Youth Opportunities United) and S.E.P. (Summer Educational Program) were developed to try to do something along these lines. There was even a magazine called Youth [19]8X near the end.
Of course, as soon as HWA was dead and out of the way, Satan quickly raised up his own servant Gerald Flurry and his own counterfeit PCG impostor cult to try to put a stop to all such efforts. The idea was to cut off all contact between parents and their children and to turn their hearts permanently against each other, and to do it all in the name of HWA and of God.
I've posted about this before, but about ten years ago, at a gun show (Why Bobby, you bad, bad boy!), I picked up a booklet called the "Freedom Outlaw's Handbook" by Claire Wolfe.
One of the demographics usually in attendance at these big gun shows is the survivalists. This book is probably targeted at them, because one of the chapters addresses the question that, if civilization as we know it were to collapse, assuming we were able to get some communities together in the aftermath, how would we know, in governing ourselves, what was right, and what was wrong? Get the connection? Basically this is a slightly different version of the Petra shit that was inflicted upon all of us Armstrongites during our period of incarceration in the cult.
The author introduces two basic concepts: mala in se, and mala prohibita. Actions which are mala in se are things which in general all civilized people have considered to be inherently bad, and therefore have laws against. Things such as murder, stealing, rape, incest, lying, fraud, etc. These and other similar activities are to be continued to be avoided by the freedom outlaw. Mala prohibita activities are things which are illegal simply because a piece of paper tells you not to do them. These activities include things such as driving over the speed limit, building without proper permits, telling a TSA inspector that he's a fascist dupe, or rolling and smoking a big bomber.
Here's a problem with the place of "Safety". Armstrongism does not properly understand mala in se and mala prohibita. If you disobey anything they say, it is tribulation or Lake of Fire time. Once you enter their doors, you give up even your God-given rights that would normally be guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They tell you that they are the gatekeepers to Petra, and the gatekeepers to the Kingdom, but it is all a dirty lie! They are simply tyrants, exploiters, and profiteers. It woulld actually be preferable to have to face their "Germans" for three and one half years rather than live decades under their soul-killing domination, as their slaves. Slaves do not learn how to become rulers and priests! You do not spend a lifetime in slavery, only to have someone pour rulership talents into your psyche upon resurrection. You develop kingdom skills by living life and learning to exercise dominion right here and now.
A pox on these soul killers! It is a Christian's duty not to kowtow to such lying tyrants, but to act in a positive and exemplary fashion, defying all things that they would tell us to do that we recognize as being mala in se!
BB
"I'm sure, back in the day, parents had issues with their kids who didn't believe in Romulus anymore."
And I am quite sure that parents sat slack-jawed in incredulity when their children told them that they didn't believe anymore because they didn't see any evidence for the existence of Romulus:
"But...but the evidence is all around you if you just would open your eyes! I mean, how did we get here if it weren't for Romulus? And look at all the miracles done in Romulus's name! Just the other day your Aunt Sally's leukemia just disappeared! Romulus!
Paul Ray
"Of course, as soon as HWA was dead and out of the way, Satan quickly raised up his own servant..."
What do you mean his 'own servant?" If there is a Debil, HWA was his shining protege. Unaware, mind you, but still working for the Debil.
Paul Ray
My word! It has been twenty five years since Gerald Flurry started up PCG. And this mother still thinks that the Great Tribulation is just about to occur any minute now?
Gerald Flurry has been insisting that now is the last hour since about May 2001. And fourteen years later she still thinks Flurry is right?
Didn't she notice how Gerald Flurry, Stephen Flurry, Brad MacDonald and other leaders of PCG boasted for years, long before 2011, that Egypt would become radicalized like Iran by the Muslim Brotherhood and ally with Iran. But in 2013, after just a year in power, the Muslim Brotherhood was deposed from power and bloodily suppressed by the authorities with much loss of life.
Didn't she notice any of that?
It is so sad that she is so completely taken in by what the beneficiaries of her tithes say to her.
Is anyone surprised at this? This is the "armstrongism way". This no-doubt happens in all the COG's. Even the more moderate churches like the UCG. Lets not assume that this only happens in Flurry's or Pack's groups.
The evidence that Anon 7:32 is off the reservation is simple: The entire post is based around the identity of a person. It's that myopic HWA-or-nothing mentality that plagued the COGs from the beginning.
That's not Christianity. Whatever one thinks of Christianity, it is not based on a preacher, or a theologian, or anyone but Jesus Christ, period. Not only does the New Testament shout that out, so does the Old Testament, as Jesus' words contained in the narrative testify.
So HWA could shout all he wanted about this, that, or the other, and it changed not one iota what the scriptures say. Where he read things correctly, fine, but where he went off the rails and made things up, not so fine. Rational people understand this, and are comfortable rejecting his errors and thinking for themselves.
Posts like 7:32's reveal a lazy unwillingness to think for one's self, nothing more. Just like the letter from the PCG mother to her son. Such wasteful, hurtful thinking. We humans are capable of such harm, it's astonishing.
"From a Facebook Group"??
Can you be sure this letter is authentic? It seems to be in line with what we read about the PCG, BUT!
Mom,
Have you read that book I gave you, "Life Code" by Dr. Phil? I gave it to you so you could read it, absorb the material and use it to prevent con men from ripping you off.
Remember how we have discussed your shock at Yisrael Hawkins and the House of Yahweh when Dr. Phil exposed him? I want to protect you from people like that -- people who are ripping people like us off and then end up going to prison and having segments about them on Dr. Phil.
We've had this discussion before. You know, back in 2005, how you were so glad that you were not part of Meredith's group: If Living Church of God members couldn't be protected in church during Sabbath services, how could anyone be expected to be protected in a Place of Safety? And how glad you were that we had never been a part of the PKG when Ronald Weinland went to prison for committing 5 counts of felony tax evasion? Do you remember how sad you felt when you saw what happened to that young man who joined David Pack's little cult? How they worked him to death and made him move every few weeks until he finally had to leave that it got so bad in the Restored Church of God? Remember we discussed how outraged you were that a man decided to become a leader as a minister when the other Churches of God wouldn't accept him because he committed adultery on his wife as she was dying of cancer? And how glad you were that you were not a part of the UCG, especially when it broke apart and the CoGWA was formed? Remember the sadness you felt when Don Weininger shot his wife outside the divorce lawyer's office in Spokane and then killed himself, or when Chuck Harris killed those people in the Seattle Church?
Mom, I'm afraid for you. You are in a cult which is lead by a man who was arrested on a DUI on a Feast Day and had to be bailed out by his son at midnight. How can you not see that you have been conned the same way you see that Maude and Jerry were conned in GTA's group? Gerald Flurry is ripping you off: There is no Place of Safety and he doesn't care about you.
These 'leaders' only care about 3 things: The money, ego and having male pals they can do fun things with. They are doing this at your expense. You can give and give and give, sacrifice for them, but in the end, they don't care about you at all.
Sure, I know that you think you have 'friends' in the cult, but truthfully, they'd sell you out in a minute if they thought you'd committed some heinous sin, like forgetting a tithe or something, and they'd disfellowship you. Then where would you be?
Where you would be is that the only thing you would have left is family.
I have called in a mental health professional to help you by giving you an intervention. If you agree, you will be flown off to a rehabilitation center where you will learn to live without your addiction. In three months, with the help of others, you will be able to break away from Flurry and the Philadelphia Church of God -- your mind will clear up and you will be able to live a normal life.
Mom, please say you'll do it. Your live may depend upon it.
Love,
Your son
Blogger Ralph said...
"From a Facebook Group"??
Can you be sure this letter is authentic? It seems to be in line with what we read about the PCG, BUT!
January 8, 2015 at 5:09 AM
Even if it was not authentic, this is really how it is. I was there. I never gave up anyone though. I wasn't that crazy. It's like most cults, they don't show their true colors at first. It's a subtle thing. "Here a little, there a little, kinda like a jig-saw puzzle". By the time your down to the last puzzle your totally whacked!
Sad to be totally duped when you are old. Now I am old (in my 60's), I am just not too concerned about a place of safety and saving my own skin. If I go into some horrible tribulation, I will probably die fairly soon without my various pills. What I am concerned about is my children and especially my grandchildren. I cannot understand an old lady choosing a religion over her family. Any reasonable God would understand if she put her family first, it is generally how we are made. Then there's the rest of the world. I really don't want to escape into some kind of "safety" to have to see everyone else suffer.
Perhaps this old lady has already lost her marbles and can't change her mind about anything.
"...who also happens to be my son..."
How sad is that?
This women forsakes her family. What does the bible call those who forsakes ones family???
Anonymous said...
This women forsakes her family. What does the bible call those who forsakes ones family???
January 8, 2015 at 4:54 PM
Forsake your own family just to be forsaken by the PCg family???
This women forsakes her family. What does the bible call those who forsakes ones family???
January 8, 2015 at 4:54 PM
I don't see Gerald Flurry forsaking any family members. He just moves them around the compound. If he ever forsook
Stephen he would be out of business because its like GF is "God" and son Stephen is "the Word" or spokesman for the two. Who would go on TV and take all the heat. GF has too much hot-head Irish blood. It's all a scam.
You need to think again about that dumb question you just asked.???
old EXPCG hag said...
"Even if it was not authentic, this is really how it is. I was there."
There is no way I could debate your comment about being there. However, if the letter is not authentic, ie. false, then what I am saying is 'is it wise to use a falsehood to condemn another falsehood?'
I have no doubts that the PCG is a falsehood simply based on "1Ti 5:8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."
Anonymous said...
This women forsakes her family. What does the bible call those who forsakes ones family???
January 8, 2015 at 4:54 PM
...just one more thing, if I haven't gotten my point across yet...
There is no such thing as "family" in the PCg!
Even now, I remember the mantra, God first, then family, then job. Don't see where it's God, then church, then family, then job. Churches are man made, not in the factor. Period.
And just how bad do you have to be to be "worse than an infidel"?
I'm an "infidel."
I'm not a pedophile, like HWA, or some other sort of criminal. So, just on that score alone, HWA was significantly worse than this "infidel."
I think there's lots of other "fidels" too that are also guilty of a lot worse than me.
The bible is a silly book. Just sayin.
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