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 Then MP3's, podcasts and live streaming hit the scene and CD's were outdated.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 GodAll 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.
Armstrongism always did have a 1984 Big Brother quality to it. Tithes checked by computer, AC dorms bugged, virulent ratting to gain brownie points. This was such a profound influence that some today believe that Herbert Armstrong's empire was a storefront for the CIA.
ReplyDelete"Good Morning Mr. Coal-Peppers! Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to screw over and intimidate as many PCG members as possible! As always, if you get caught in your lies, Mr. Flurry will deny all knowledge of your activities. In fact, starting now, all tapes of your sermons will self-destruct within ten seconds!"
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Remember the old Mission Impossible series now found on TV Land, with Peter Graves? After be given their assignnment the cassette tape would catch on fire and destroy itself.
ReplyDeleteFLASH FORWARD TO 2018...
"PCG MISSION IMPOSSIBLE !"
(stoic announcer voice)... " PCG members, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to LEAVE the PCG, and sabotage all things Flurry in the meantime. Should you be caught, this website will deny all connection to you. Good luck on your mission. This Post will self destruct in 5 seconds".
The PCG claims that it alone is the true remnant of the WWCG. Every one else has fallen away. They use this as the excuse to barring contact with other splinters, and erecting their own church iron curtain.
ReplyDeleteThe church leaders know this to be untrue, and not just deep down but on the surface. They know they are lying.
Anon 10:09 AM, I attend a PCG congregation but I also attend a Seventh-Day Church Of God congregation. I don't let the membership know my business because it is my life and I don't need any unnecessary drama that they would obviously create.
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ReplyDelete“Forget the fact they all claim to be boldly proclaiming a message of the Kingdom of God, that is soon to be coming.”
According to Herbert W. Armstrong in his Autobiography and in his last book called Mystery of the Ages the church's “very purpose,” its “true purpose,” is to carry out the Great Commission that Jesus had given to his apostles to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God to the whole world as a witness to all nations before the end of the age comes. HWA taught that the true gospel had been suppressed for many centuries until the WCG came on the scene and was given an “open door” to preach it.
Gerald Flurry in his plagiarized and revised “little book” known as Malachi's Mess. said that HWA had already preached the gospel, and reasoned that with a “new church era” comes a “new commission” to the church to “warn the Laodiceans.” By simply calling it a “new commission” rather than calling it a “new gospel” or “another gospel” Gerald Flurry was able to slip in this unbelievably massive doctrinal change away from the core of what HWA had taught. Gerald Flurry pulled off this massive change while praising HWA and pretending to be faithfully holding on to everything that HWA had taught.
While HWA had taught that the church was led by Apostles, Gerald Flurry wanted to be called “That Prophet” and lead the church. The fruits of false prophets are always bad. They cannot bear good fruit. The way the PCG “warns the Laodiceans” is by requiring its members to cut off all contact with family members, relatives, and friends who were in the WCG but did not join the PCG, or who are in any of the other COGs. The WCG's duty to “feed the sheep” got replaced by the PCG's plan to treat them like mushrooms, that is, to keep them in the dark and feed them manure.
As the apostle Paul pointed out so correctly, this “new commission” of Gerald Flurry's is REALLY no gospel (meaning “good news”) at all! Gerald Flurry's ignorant and wicked PCG member accomplices are right now definitely suffering under the apostle Paul's double curse on those who would PERVERT the true gospel.
BYKER BOB-- It looks like great minds think alike!! Our posts are very similar LOL!
ReplyDeleteAh yes! I’ve known that for some time, Connie. And, I’ve always appreciated your great mind! Have a wonderful sabbath and a great weekend!
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It's the PCG version of Maxwell Smart's "Cone of Silence" on "Get Smart".
ReplyDelete"Would you believe.... an encrypted message mp3 player?"
From OKLAHOMA! The Shiny Little Flurry with the Hair On Top! EDMOND version!!!
ReplyDeleteReference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH2X8Q15hZY
(starts at 0:35)
guys and gals and kids better scurry
When I take you out to the flurry,
When I take you out in the flurry with the hair on top!
Watch that hair and see how it flutters
When I see through those campus shutters.
Nosey folks'll peek through their shutters and their eyes will pop!
The chairs are yeller, the upholstery's brown,
The desks have genuine leather,
With huge stage curtains y' can roll right down,
In case flurry loses his temper.
Two bright sidelight's winkin' and blinkin',
Ain't no finer stage I'm a-thinkin'
You c'n keep your seat if you're thinkin' 'at I'd keer to swap
Fer that shiny, little flurry with the hair on the top!
My dad being a deacon used to have a tape library of all the sermons and bible studies. When Gerald made the announcement that all tapes were to be packed up and shipped to headquarters, my dad was so upset. Unfortunately he wasn't upset enough to get the hell out, but rather continued to go on with the dictatorship. Its obvious now that it was an attempt at removing sermon contradictions from circulation.
ReplyDeleteI recall a sermon where Gerald was having issues with a minister questioning his "revelation" concerning 'That Prophet'. In it, Gerald said it would be better off if said minister were to have their "head shot off and reasoned with later on in the kingdom". You know this minister touched a nerve. I'm ashamed I didn't get up and walk right out of that service and quit attending all together. Took me a couple more years to reach that point, but I made it out.
It is the great commission impossible.
ReplyDeleteNothing could produce an "oh crap" in me quicker than a "To Be Played in All the Churches" packet.
ReplyDeleteTruth in labeling would seem to demand that those tapes be entitled “Supplemental Brain Washing: to be played in all the churches in the borg!”
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The secular trends forecaster Gerald Celente is more accurate than "That Prophet" Gerald Flurry.
ReplyDelete" ... AC dorms bugged ... "
ReplyDeleteYeah right.
Anonymous said... " ... AC dorms bugged .....Yeah right. April 20, 2018 at 6:05 PM
ReplyDeleteActually they did. Not only dorms, but offices. During the receivership a van was equipped with eavesdropping devices that they used to monitor those they thought were causing division. The switchboard in Pasadena had people who were listening to phone conversations, particularly those who were suspected of some infraction against the church.
Do you honestly think they church was ethical enough to NOT eavesdrop?
Anybody who does not believe that the AC dorms were bugged needs to go back and read John Trechak’s Ambassador Review and Ambassador Report archives, carefully and respectfully preserved at the Painful Truth website. You can imagine the shock that must have taken place amongst the administration at the very audible nightly farts laid (on tape!) by your future minister during study hours each evening! This pandemic was of course due to the recapture of true values and finer things of life such as beans being served up nightly at the student dining hall. Believe me when I tell you that keeping my Old Spice easily accessable on my desk at all times was the only thing that got me through dorm life for two years at AC in Pasadena! What would all the old ladies and church widows have thought!
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The switchboard in Pasadena had people who were listening to phone conversations, particularly those who were suspected of some infraction against the church.
ReplyDeleteAt that time - in the late 70s - weren't there federal wiretapping laws in existence? Seems to me that such activity was highly illegal.
I've heard of UCG ministers who had messages removed from the web after controversy developed about that.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, one congregation near the Home Office refused to put a March sermon online. It was because the speaker (involved with Ambassador Bible College) declared if a song mentioning God or Jesus sounds good, "it's probably from Satan."
If a preacher said that in a fundamentalist Baptist church or Assembly of God, he'd probably get away with it. But a UCG Local Elder challenged the speaker on that claim after the service.
10.46 AM
ReplyDeleteI have followed PCG closely, and their commission of warning the Laodiceans only lasted for several years. They were up front about this gaol from the very beginning. Perhaps they were in part motivated by cattle rustling members, but the idea of warning those who had abandoned God seems reasonable. They did go back to Herbs commission, as a glance of their website shows.
Yes, Gerald calling himself 'That Prophet' is a embarrassment.
2.35 PM
ReplyDeleteChurch snitches will find you out. Different denominations do informally communicate with one another. A person in my previous workplace found this out the hard way.
Anon write: "At that time - in the late 70s - weren't there federal wiretapping laws in existence? Seems to me that such activity was highly illegal. "
ReplyDeleteOf course there was, but when did the church care? They were above the law. The illegal things that went on in the church would shock members. The Ambassador Reports were filled with these shenanigans. Embezzlement, money laundering, pyramid schemes, blackmail, prostitutes, and more
HWA/WCG did not believe in or teach freedom of speech, or many of the other freedoms named and protected by the Constitution or Bill of Rights. So, bugging, spying from vans, or wiretapping on campus were no big deal. They believed in “we ought to obey God rather than man”, and since they miscalled themselves “God’s True Church”, this meant that they were the arbiters and gatekeepers of such things, and not man’s government, like the founding documents of the USA. Sometime way back when, I decided that if that was their attitude, screw ‘em! They were soul mates to the Nazis.
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Why don't they just delete the damn thing before playing it? Would save a lot of trouble.
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ReplyDeleteAnonymous on April 20, 2018 at 9:25 PM said...“I have followed PCG closely, and their commission of warning the Laodiceans only lasted for several years. They were up front about this gaol from the very beginning. Perhaps they were in part motivated by cattle rustling members, but the idea of warning those who had abandoned God seems reasonable. They did go back to Herbs commission, as a glance of their website shows.”
Actually, a look at the PCG's website does NOT show anything at all about it going “back to Herbs commission” as you put it. You need to explain clearly where you got that idea from. The PCG's “new commission” for this “new church era” is still to wreck families and cut off all communication under the guise of “warning the Laodiceans,” as explained in the plagiarized and revised Malachi's Mess. book that was supposedly “delivered by a mighty angel” and is supposedly the “little scroll” mentioned in the book of Revelation. The only change is that the PCG is now becoming more about Irish dancing for the extended Flurry family.
Flurry also later backtracked slightly by saying that he knows that Deut. 18:18-19 was referring to Jesus Christ, but rambled on that a prophet was supposed to come, and so Flurry kept for himself the title of “That Prophet” that he had made up from those verses, as well as the idea that everyone had to listen to everything he said or God would call them to account.
Also, it was about twenty years before Flurry finally became aware that HWA had taught that the church was led by apostles rather than prophets, and so Flurry finally added the title of apostle to his collection of titles, while keeping the title of prophet too.
There is a very good reason why the PCG has been in decline for many years now: Too much satanic abuse passed off as the government of God. The escape to Petra, and later salvation of PCG members, is always highly uncertain, as any local tyrant can kick them out at any time for any little reason at all, or even just for the fun of it.
The idea of warning those who followed That False Prophet Gerald Flurry, who edited and changed HWA's writings, and who mixes in his own rambling prophetic junk booklets with HWA's booklets, seems much more reasonable and necessary than anything that Flurry has ever done.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous at 9:25 PM said...“They did go back to Herbs commission, as a glance of their website shows.”
Take another glance at the Library section of the PCG's website.
Herbert W. Armstrong's booklet called What is the TRUE GOSPEL? is nowhere to be found.
Instead, there is something called John's Gospel: The Love of God by Gerald Flurry.
Hey PCG, maybe you ought to ban electronic devices from your brainwashing activities. I used to take my notes on a laptop computer and many a times, I would record the audio coming over the loudspeakers so I could relisten while studying my notes as we were commanded :)
ReplyDeleteNow in this modern day, everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. If any one reading this is still attending PCG, we should set up a way for you to do a facebook live stream of services (of course using an anonymous facebook group set up purposely to help PCG reach "the largest audience possible" with their godly bullshit.