EXCLUSIVE: UPDATED Former Church of God Member Kills Pastor of Another COG, Then Is Shot and Killed By Police

Edward Acquisto (today)

Another disturbed Church of God member goes on a rampage and kills another man in a cemetery and then is shot and killed by the police.

Edward Acquisto, a member from the Providence, Rhode Island congregations, shot and killed John Cloud a member from the Boston congregation. Whether or not these two men were still in COG congregations to this date is unknown, at least from the source that sent me this information.  He was apparently part of the congregation in 1995 after getting out of prison.

John Cloud, pastor of Called Out of God, lived in Kingston, a suburb of Boston, but for many years hosted God’s three annual festivals in Newport, Rhode Island, owing to the area’s Christian history. He was there on June 13 this year, as the congregation observes Pentecost on a Monday.  Church of God News

This is not Acquisto's first brush with the law:

This is the third violent death tied to Acquisto, who had received a life sentence in the 1979 rape of an ex-girlfriend in her Woonsocket apartment.

In 1978, Acquisto beat to death John Teja, a bartender in Woonsocket. He was sentenced to serve 10 years concurrent to the life sentence in the rape case.

In 1977, Acquisto was charged with attempted murder after Donald H. Shepherd was found unconscious in a pool of blood in Woonsocket. Charges were dismissed for lack of a speedy trial. After 12 years in a coma, Shepherd died of his injuries.

The Rhode Island parole board refused to release Acquisto more than a half dozen times, noting often the seriousness of the crime and parole guidelines for lifers. But in 1995 the board released him to electronic monitoring.

At least twice he had his parole revoked, once for drinking and a second time, in 1998, for shoplifting. He served an additional five years before he was released in May 2003. Acquisto had heart surgery while in prison.

Rhode Island man, 80, kills 81-year-old man in cemetery before he is gunned down by cops following car chase

See another story here: 

(late 1980's)

TIVERTON, R.I. – An 81-year-old Kingston, Mass., man was shot to death in a Rhode Island cemetery Monday night by an 80-year-old man who died an hour later in a shootout with police. 

Police said John Cloud, 81, was shot and killed in the Pocasset Hill Cemetery in Tiverton, R.I., by Edward Acquisto, 80, of Tiverton. Fall River and Tiverton police officers fatally shot Acquisto after he fired at them, police said.

Police said Acquisto and Cloud met at about 6:30 p.m. in the cemetery, where Acquisto had been seen reading a Bible in the past.   81-year-old Kingston man shot to death at R.I. cemetery

New York Daily News

Authorities say 80-year-old Edward Acquisto of Tiverton shot and killed 81-year-old John Cloud of Kingston, Massachusetts, at the Pocasset Hill Cemetery in Tiverton about 6:50 p.m. Monday. 

People who were in the cemetery at the time called 911. 

"They were visiting loved ones' grave sites and heard the commotion, heard the gunshots and called police via 911 calls," said Chief Thomas Blakey of the Tiverton Police Department. 

While a motive for the killing is still unclear, police said it was a prearranged meeting between Acquisto and Cloud. 

Tiverton man shot by police served time for manslaughter, sex assault

SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave
SaveSave

SaveSave
SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

PCG Lays Down the Law on Congregational Hymns

from Twitter

From a PCG source:

In the PCG a new policy has been implemented which has changed the way hymns are sung during Sabbath services.

As many PCG congregations are small and typically don’t have piano players, during Sabbath services hymns were sung accompanied by pre-recorded piano-only versions of the WCG hymnal, either in MP3 or CD format.  Effectively this practice gave small congregations something to sing along to, and although not ideal, it was a fairly effective way for small groups to be able to participate and contribute meaningfully during their Sabbath services.  Whether or not you like the COG hymnal, this arrangement meant local groups could have their own song service.  Song leaders could lead the members and the people singing could hear their own voices.   In other words, each Sabbath there could be some semblance of a song service even in a small group of only a few people.

For some inexplicable reason this situation was recently deemed unsuitable by PCG musical director Ryan Malone, who set about re-recording the entire WCG hymnal using a full-blown choir.  These recording were then sent to all congregations worldwide with strict instructions for them to be used in place of the piano-only versions.

For those who don’t know Ryan Malone is the individual who has singlehandedly taken over, and together with his wife Paula, come to dominate every aspect of music in the PCG.  Whether it’s the spectacular failure of Ryan’s embarrassing church-financed musicals, his tedious and repetitious compositions, or his and his wife’s ubiquitous presence in the musical life of the church, everything and anything musical in the PCG has to be controlled, sanctioned and dominated by him.

The sad irony here is that the man who supposedly is the PCG’s musical director, ostensibly an individual tasked with the development and growth of music in the church has allowed his obsessive control over all things musical get to the point where he has now destroyed the member’s sole opportunity to contribute musically and handed it over to and a handful of pre-recorded PCG HQ elites, featuring of course the stupefying voice of his wife Paula. 

A very poor aspect of these choir recordings is that at the end of each verse the singers sustain the notes far too long which effects the timing into the next verse and makes them even more difficult to sing along to.  However, the worst aspect of all is that although the recordings are of a full male-female choir, each song is mixed in such a way that Paula Malone’s voice literally stands out and dominates over all the others.  If you have heard Paula Malone sing you will know why this is bad.

So now not only do PCG field members have to witness the exclusivity and self-indulgence of headquarters from afar, due to this musical micromanagement they are now no longer able to even participate meaningfully in their own song services.

What this all means is that each weekend a handful of ageing PCG members have to stand hymnals in hand and be drowned out by what sounds like a mutation of the Stepford Wives and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

A sad spectacle indeed…

Church of God False Teacher Claims Women Can Only Sing In Church and NOT Preach

and preach...

The Church of God's newest self-appointed false prophet was not particularly happy when The Journal recently had a series of articles on women preaching. The die-hard legalists just cannot get past the idea that only THIER opinions and interpretations are valid.

Almost Arrested Elisha Elijah Amos Thiel lashes out at Tina Engelbart and her interpretation of the Greek words for women preaching.  The most important thing for COG leaders like Thiel, Flurry, Pack and Kubik is that the patriarchy must always reign supreme.

For a woman to preach in church seems to be the most disgusting thing ever to happen.  The only thing women are allowed to do is nurse babies, change diapers and sing.  Women may sing all they want, as long as they don't preach while singing.

First, while Tina Engelbart is entitled to her opinion about what she thinks the Greek means, the reality is that there is no record of Christian women preaching in either the New Testament nor in early Christian writings. While it is possible that the apostate Simon Magus may have had a female preach, and maybe did some other apostates, people who understood koine Greek at the time apparently did not feel that the Apostle Paul was allowing women to preach. 

Second, UCG is correct that women should not be preaching. This is confirmed by the following passage that is in the Bible (hence, even allowing for a different translation of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, this is not something only to be derived from the Talmud as Tina Engelbart indicates): 

11 Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. 12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. (1 Timothy 2:11-12). 

Third, as far as the Talmud goes, Tina Engelbart needs to consider that the Jews DID allow women to sing and hence the prohibition they had related to women speaking before the assembly did not include singing. That is the same in the Christian church as well.

Mario Hernandez from Living Church of God Lists Requirements To Make It Into Petra

Originally posted December 2014

This has to be one of the most pathetic videos I have seen the Living Church of God put online in ages.  Hernandez had a long legacy in Pasadena as a self-righteous, condescending, and abusive man.  Many Spanish COG members suffered at the hands of this man and now he is back to lecture us all on what his god requires in order to make it to the "place of safety." That's going to be a rough trip for Hernandez and the LCG when they arrive and see Bob Thiel, Gerald Flurry and Dave Pack in charge.

Persecution is coming.  Germany has risen from the ashes, Herbert was right. The devil is rampaging. War is a raging in heaven.

I have a feeling that Bob Thiel was trained at the feet of Hernandez because they both produce the most boring and intellectually bankrupt videos imaginable!

LCG's Super Mario

From my favorite LCG source:

He's an extremely virile man who likes to flirt with the single ladies at church. The sermon is actually about a literal marriage we have with Jesus - from courtship to consummation.

David Hulme Church Unable to Retain Members

Remember the glory days when Worldwide Church of God congregations could have hundreds and hundreds of people in a congregation?  The church I get up in had 700+ members.  HQ congregations had 1,200+ in attendance each week with  neighboring churches with 200-300 members each. At it's peak over 5,000 church members were gathering in the Los Angeles area every Saturday.  Feast sites could have up to 15,000 people in attendance.  Bragging rights were certainly things to be proud of.

Contrast that to today in the the Churches of God.  All the churches struggle to get 1,200 in attendance from around the world! Most congregations are now 20-30 people.  Some, like Almost Arrested Elisha Elijah Amos Thiel, have hardly any members in the United States but a few hundred in Africa thus making it a global work in his eyes.

Then there is the Church of God an International Association.  David Hulme thought he was the next best thing after Herbert Armstrong and started his own church after wrecking havoc in United Church of God.  From the several thousand that went with him he has dwindled down to minuscule little gatherings of people.  His magazine has ceased publication, and now is online only, still as irrelevant an worthless as before.  No one read it in the print version, even though it was geared to the worldly heathen Sunday keepers and atheist pagans.

His church church attendance figures have come out recently and someone has compared them to COGIA figures from 2008.  It's not a pretty picture;

2008
“In some parts of the world you will find that there are a lot of people coming into the Church. You find quite a multiplying going on in Africa at the moment. You don’t find it very much in the UK, but it’s not true of everywhere in the UK. You don’t find it everywhere in the US... 

What has been happening in the Church? In the US and Canada we have 1150 people in regular attendance and we have 53 churches. If you do your maths, you realize that a lot of these churches are rather small...

At the Feast last year we had about 1300 people in attendance. Let’s go to other parts of the world. In Australia we have 68 people and six churches. In the Philippines we have 156 people and seven churches. In addition we have 11 members in six countries, remote areas all around Southeast Asia who are looked after by Australia. Last year we had 77 people at the Feast in Bright, in Australia, and 132 in Iloilo, in the Philippines.

In Africa we have an interesting situation. We have English and French speaking brethren there numbering 700! So they are a sizable portion of our total numbers. They are scattered through 38 congregations. A recent report I saw has congregations in places that even I was not aware we had people! So there are some small groups forming in countries where hitherto we have not had anybody.

In the UK we have about 300 people in 14 congregations. The Feast there is one of our larger ones, about 320 there last year. In Germany we have two congregations and 20 people. We have people of the German language background in Switzerland as well. We have France and Switzerland represented in the French language: 21 people in two congregations. In Scandinavia we have about 10 people, mostly in Denmark and Norway and Sweden, I believe.”

Now compare those numbers above to 2015

The numbers attending the 2015 Festival of Tabernacles were as follows: 

USA : Klamath Falls, Oregon 166; Lake Arrowhead, California 190; Springdale, Arkansas 190; Deep Creek Lake, Maryland - not stated. Total 700+.Total attendance almost halved - mostly accounted for by the loss of members to the Church of God, The Father’s Call, in January 2014. 

Australia : Bright - attendance not stated, but a significant number seem to have gone ‘walkabout’. There are only 12 people (none young) in the festival report photo, including several visitors from the USA. 

Philippines : Talisay 138. 

Africa : Accra, Ghana & Benin City, Nigeria - 70; Scottsburgh, South Africa 19; Gokwe, Zimbabwe 77; Harare, Zimbabwe 111; Cotonou, Benin 123; Busa, Cameroon 45. Total 445. 

Philippines : Talisay 138. 

Africa : Accra, Ghana & Benin City, Nigeria - 70; Scottsburgh, South Africa 19; Gokwe, Zimbabwe 77; Harare, Zimbabwe 111; Cotonou, Benin 123; Busa, Cameroon 45. Total 445. 

The substantial fall in numbers is probably due to a discontinuation of support in some areas - no festival site in East Africa for example. 

Europe : Llandudno, Wales, 260 from 12 countries; Les Rousses, France, over 60 from 10 countries. Total 320+ 

Since John Meakin and some members left to join LCG, a month before Tabernacles 2008, the UK has remained loyal to David Hulme. Perhaps there was no French festival site in 2008, which would account for the drop in the UK. 

Total 2015 festival attendance : 1600-1650.Total 2008 church attendance : 2400-2450.  (From Church of God News)

The people still presume they are doing a work even though they are irrelevant in numbers.  Part of the reason behind that is the myth that Herbert pushed continually upon the church.  "God's true church has always been small in numbers."  Little church, mighty work.  That's the same myth Dave Pack uses to this day, though his numbers are readily declining too.

Perhaps Dave Pack and Dave Hulme can join ranks and celebrate the Feast together this year.  Since the of thousands of other COG members still have not joined up with Dave Pack, he might be overly excited to get a couple hundred from Hulme.

The work is dead.  None of the groups are doing anything worthwhile.  The only thing every single one of these groups has in common is the ability to keep putting money in the leader's pockets.

UCG: It's Not A Salvation Issue

Rumors have been swirling around for the last year and and a half that changes were coming to church doctrines in UCG. The UCG spin doctors immediately jumped into gear and said NOTHING was being changed.

Where have we all heard that before?  From these very same men who lied as WCG paid employees that nothing was being changed doctrinally. Some if them said that any changes that might be coming were "not salvation issues" and not to worry about it.  Well we all saw how that panned out!

While these very same men, now sitting in lofty positions in UCG, were denying changes, they knew things were going to change and immediately started plotting and scheming on how to continue their money stream once thy were out of jobs.

Now these men are sitting pretty in UCG, financially secure for the rest of their lives. So secure that they feel that reformations needs to come to UCG.  Theses were the very same men who supported the changes in WCG. Even though they jumped ship, many of theses men still hold on to the reformations that Tkach Sr. instituted in WCG.

The track record in the church is well established that when ever the leadership starts denying something they are either guilty of it or that have plans to do what they are accused of. Lying has never been an issue in the leadership of the Church of God.

When the troubles started recently in a Canadian UCG over changes happening, the members were told that these things were NOT salvation issues and that they should not worry about them.

To show how unconcerned theUCG  ministry is about members questioning them, the minister in Canada told the upset members to leave if they did not like the subtle changes.

We would never have heard a comment like that out of the ministry from the past. you were either told to be quiet or disfellowshipped.  Now they just don't care.

Part of the reason this pastor could care less is that he is only a year short of retirement. Why should he care if he loses members?  He is set for life.  The boys in Cincinnati have guaranteed that.

It’s going to be in interesting summer in UCG and the rest of the Churches of God.  Meredith and Flurry have had severe health issues, strokes, and are mentally deteriorating.  Stephen Flurry and Jimmy Meredith are heir apparent’s and intensely disliked by most.  Pack’s cult is ready implode.  LCG’s is almost guaranteed to rupture once Meredith dies.  Members refuse to follow Weston or Lil’Jimmy. 

How many more years will the Churches last as they lie their way to retirement?

Who needs those ethic committees anyway!