The utter depravity of Armstrongism rears its ugly head now and then, particularly in the more aberrant personality cults like the Philadelphia Church of God. Leaders in these groups pretend that they speak for God and have restored truths never understood for 2,000 years. God supposedly speaks directly through them and the members lap it all up as divine truth.
The PCG has made a huge effort over the years to break up families and destroy marriages if any of their members associate with former members and family members and have left the church. In many documented cases there have been suicides due to the heavy burdens placed upon the members.
When you read below the accounts of PCG members turning their backs on family members it is appalling. Utter disgust is the only word for these people.
The Exit and Support Network has this up:
Son in PCG Will Not Visit His Grandpa on Deathbed:
October 10, 2022
I have family members in PCG. They have been involved since 2000. My grandpa is currently on his deathbed and his son will not come and say his final goodbyes because there is some sort of PCG feast going on in another state at the moment. I am at a loss of what to do. Our family is devastated. Is there anyway I can help them break free of this cult or is the reality that they will not leave unless it’s initiated by themselves? Thank you, –K.
In a follow-up comment there was this:
A Badge of Honor for Members Not Leave the Feast for any Reason:
October 10, 2022
That’s horrible about the son in PCG refusing to visit his dying grandfather during the Feast, but not surprising. Some PCG members actually look at a situation like this as a “badge of honor” for not leaving the FOT for any purpose, even a death in the (non-member) family. My mate in PCG has told me about PCG members’ non-member spouses dying, or being critically ill, yet they brag about still attending. If that’s not sick and twisted, I don’t know what is. I remember being told about a PCG member whose spouse (also a member) who died right before the FOT. The member had his spouse’s body stored frozen in the funeral home’s freezers until he could return home and take care of the arrangements. –Impacted by loved one in PCG
15 comments:
Jesus tells His followers to shine their lights.
I'm glad light is shining on PCG members' conduct.
Way back in my early WCG days a friend had to take part of a day off to go to his college to complete compulsory lab work. No problem at all. Well, it wasn't on a holy day, just an ordinary feast day.
I know some of the parents of pcg leaders got to go to work a couple of days during the Feast since they would have been fired otherwise. These were the heydays of WCG.
The shit about this is that the callousedness learned and engrained deeply in a person's psyche lasts long after one leaves Armstrongism. Always taking introspection and looking for solutions, I discovered that I have some of the Axis II borderline personality disorders enumerated in the DSM, ones that relate directly to empathy or the ability to have other than superficial relationships with people. The reason the ESN tale kind of hit me was because I myself have not visited dying relatives most of my life, long after leaving Armstrongism or being able to use the church as an excuse.
People in the church have no concept of the deep damage and toxic habit patterns of anti-Christian behavior that are taught and caused by their church. In all fairness, there are some undesirable traits with which I know I was born, but this callousedness was not one of them. One of the first things my parents did when they came into the cult was to re-educate us children to the effect that we were to distance ourselves from "unconverted" family, because the brethren were our family now. If you saw an accident and the people were not in the church, you did not stop to help. If a relative died and the funeral was on the sabbath, you let the dead bury the dead and went to sabbath services instead. You didn't develop friendships with non-church member neighbors, people at school, or colleagues at work. No giving to "the world's" charities. Assume that anyone asking for help on the street is going to spend your money on alcohol or drugs.
Such teachings are noticed by outsiders, and leave the perception of letting a very bad and wrong light shine. These behavioral examples do not attract or draw people to the church. The big draw with WCG was protection from the tribulation and Armageddon. Very self-centered indeed! Even at church and Ambassador College, we lived a culture of finding fault with those who were not part of the church, It was "cancel culture" before there was any such thing as cancel culture. In the tribulation, the thinking was, they were just going to get what was coming to them. Laodiceans might earn back their crowns by preaching the Armstrong gospel to their fellow prisoners in the camps.
Armstrongism does permanent damage to the soul!
For me this is a sign of a cult and the cultish mentality that exists in Armstrongism which is why I left an Armstrongist COG a decade ago now. They sadly don't see how in the OT there were 3 pilgrim feasts so why do they keep just the FOT as a pilgrim feast? Why do they compel or mandate their members to go on an 8 day holiday to observe the FOT when the Passover/Unleavened Bread and Pentecost were pilgrim feasts too? Why burden your brothers and sisters with this unnecessary stress be it physical, emotional, financial, etc when there is no commandment of God for Christians to observe His holy days and festivals like the Israelites did ie travel to the Jerusalem Temple? Why command them to triple tithe money when tithing never was on money to begin with? It's all vanity.
This man, like others who when they learn the error of their ways, will feel sick in their stomach I'm sure that they treated their own loved ones and their relationships like they were meaningless and regret not spending what little time they might have left with their loved ones but instead put some man made structure first in their lives which is really the essence of idolatry.
12.47 pm
"..because the brethren were are family now."
As many of us discovered the hard way, the brethrens "love" was skin deep at best, and only s mask in many cases. It was the outside friends and relatives who truly loved us.
In the Star Trek Voyager TV series, the character Seven-Of-Nine represented the equivalent of a former cult member. In the series, they could not physically remove all of her former Borg implants. The writers of the show knew that former cult members do not completely recover from their ordeal. They are permanently mentally damaged to some degree.
PCG is where the pharisees are today. They have no real understanding, they're just going through the motions.
This is pretty common in the PCG. Sadly.
ACOGs ministers push Pharisaic morality by responding to accusations against the responsible by straight away attacking them, ie, an accusation is a sentence.
When the responsible complain about church thugs, the ministers investigate and tell the victims that the thug denies everything, which the ministers claims they believe. The last time I experienced this, l could tell that the minister didn't believe the bully's denial. Another favorite comeback by the ministers is the "I wasn't there when it happened," so again the thug gets off scot free.
This symbotic relationship between the ministers and church bullies amounts to ministers using church thugs as front line troops to push their Pharisaic morality down members throats.
Btw, don't forget to address these ministers with a "Mr."
AnonymousThursday, October 13, 2022 at 5:57:00 PM PDT said
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Btw, don't forget to address these ministers with a "Mr."
Completely violating Christ’s own instructions not to call anyone your spiritual Teacher or Father or Master since we are all brothers.
we are all brothers.
So you're one of those gender benders who thinks a female can be a a "brother" and a male can be a "sister"?
Was that why "brethren" was such a buzzword? Thats the Old English plural for "brother".
Are there even going to be genders in the kingdom? And, if not, what are the implications of that? But, I guess that in Armstrong "God as God is" theology, instead of they and them, both sexes will just be called "God".
5:45 was citing Matthew 23:8-10
In Gerald Flurry's PCG cult, people show their own righteousness by such things as:
Helping Gerald to suppress the gospel.
Raging away against anyone who will not help Gerald to suppress the gospel.
Listening to everything Gerald says rather than to anything Jesus says.
Abandoning and dishonoring their parents for not following a false prophet.
Believing in Gerald's fake pet rock.
Irish dancing.
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