The Philadelphia Church of God has a new website up in an effort to legitimize their standing as a church and its Armstrong Foundation. Like Herbert Armstrong, Gerald Flurry is embarrassed at many times by his Philadelphia Church of God and its crazy teachings. In efforts to mask those dangerous and heretical teachings, he places great emphasis on his Armstrong Auditorium Concert Series, his Jerusalem dig with Eliat Mazar and its recent Ophel coin find, and his new website called Watch Jerusalem. The interesting thing is that this site is copyrighted by Gerald Flurry and not the Philadelphia Church of God.
It is a mixture of wild prophetic speculating and pseudo-news beefed up in a slick new formula.
The same goes for their Key to David's City, masquerading as an educational site through the auspices of Herbert W Armstrong College.
It is these kinds of deceptive tactics that rope innocent searching people into the madness, just like the church did under Herbert Armstrong. The problem with PCG doing this is that it has developed into a dangerous personality cult with an abusive leader and equally abusive ministers. Families are being destroyed and lives are literally being lost. This sickness is not unique to Gerald Flurry's Philadelphia Church of God, it is equally applicable to the Restored Church of God, Living Church of God, Bob Thiel's African cult and James Malm bastardization of whatever it is he thinks he is doing. United Church of God and Church of God A Worldwide Association, while may appear to be more benign, are just as sick as the more dangerous ones mentioned above.
For a church that claims to be the end time restoration of true 1st century Christianity, it is in such a theological and spiritual quagmire that it is amazing that anyone even finds it beneficial.
5 comments:
Wolves in sheep's clothing.
Or, more bluntly, dangerous cults disguised as harmless info-sites.
Herbert did it, as you alluded to - with the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation. With all of his booklets under the Ambassador College Press. It worked for Herbert, so, they press on with whatever of Herbert's strategies they can still try to use these days.
Jesus - oops, I mean Christ, was the "Strong Hand from Someplace". I guess the Bible is the "Inked Writing from Gideon", using his analogies. For some reason, none of them can just come right out with what they're selling. If they did, they'd have a better chance profiting with lemonade sold by the youth in Edmond then gaining one convert from their message.
To me, this is just as bad as labeling a package of hydrogen peroxide as fizzy cola. Deceptive, corrosive, and something you'd want to spew out of your mouth.
- SHT
Bible morality is very different to what these groups practise. These groups are an example of the drawback on dependency on others. One is royally taken advantage of.
The only reason some people come to services is because it gives them access to victims to exploit. This is the dirty secret that many churches use to grow their numbers. The ministers keep the victims beaten down with endless preaching about mercy, forgiveness, and turning the other cheek. At their core, they are mafia like.
um, yeah, I don't think the mafia preaches a lot about mercy, forgiveness and turning the other cheek. Just saying...
Not related to COG as far as I know, but started about the same time, and maybe some similarities.
An example of a group that sees Jesus as 'strong' rather than merciful, some fundamentalists who are a loosely affiliated secretive group in power. This is a link to an interview with Jeff Sharlet. Group is associated with The National Prayer Breakfast. I read the history of that group online. Haven't read Sharlet's book yet.
"They have a very unusual theology in the sense that they think that Christ had one message for an inner circle and then a kind of different message for a sort of slightly more outer circle. And then the rest of us, Christ told us little stories because, frankly, we couldn't handle the truth. And the core members are those they think are getting the real deal..."
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=120746516
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