Living Church of God has hit a mind-boggling new milestone! Out of 332 million Americans living in the United States, they have gained 90 new members! Woo Hoo! 90 out of 332 million! HWA would be soooooo proud!
Canada also hit a new milestone, it has 45 new members out of 38.25 million citizens.
When that door is open no one can shut it!
Greetings from Charlotte,
The Council of Elders met this week, and it was most encouraging to hear of new members coming to the Church and reports of harmony and warmth at our Festival sites around the world. All except Mr. Rob Tyler were able to attend in person and Mr. Tyler participated electronically for most meetings, in spite of the significant time difference. It was also encouraging to learn that we have about 90 new people attending services in the United States and 45 in Canada (and there are many more who are still showing some degree of interest) as a result of our Tomorrow’s World Presentations this past year. There is no video update this week as we have all been extremely busy with the Council of Elders, telecast tapings, review of the new Germany in Prophecy booklet, and other pressing matters.—Gerald Weston
Germany, Germany, Germany! Where would the COG be without Germany? Germany is Armstrongism's end -all bogeymen. Without Germany, LCG would have no need to function.
13 comments:
This reminds me of a simple magician trick of misdirection- yeah they may have 90 new attendees, but I would be interested in learning how many have left in the last few months. I personally know of 3 different groups (in a small area). Have they released FOT attendance numbers? The old revolving door of armstrongism.
So, you still think that numbers equals legitimacy?
Numbers are important to man made organizations. They can show how successful a campaign has been. All of that is irrelevant to The Church. Man does not recruit members, God the Father draws them in as He desires. All The Church is to do is put the truth out there. Those whom God is working with will respond. No one else will hear it.
There are probably more new members of the Hells Angels each year than this batch of LCG members. Maybe they should turn LCG into a motorcycle club. We know one thing for sure! The Feast of Tabernacles would be a blast! Of course, with two wheeled transportation, the kids would have to stay home, but that would give them some real incentives to remain in the church so that they could ride.
Oops. This would never fly. The ministers are all geriatric and would feel left out!
I wonder how many of them will still be attending after 12 months. I also wonder how many of them are people who have immigrated to LCG from another COG.
"There are 3 kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Mark Twain.
The pride of these men won't let them talk about losses -- only gains -- because they idolize the corporate image.
The losses are something to cover up while the gains are something to gloat over in order to justify their existence as a body -- a kind of philosophical existentialism or justification by works.
Once they shed that false image the true image will come out.
If numbers are important, we should all be Catholics...
That open door which no man can shut that LCG likes to talk about is the same door through which a steady stream of people leave LCG. the Leaving church of Gerald. It is more of a revolving door than an open door to be sure. I know of half a dozen people here who have not attended since around early 2020 and the covid thing. their fears of getting covid are not the reasons they do not attend.
I'm preparing for a trip to Utah, so I asked an LCG associate if he had eaten at Castle Burger while he was at the FoT in Utah last month.
The LCG associate, in true COG form, could not answer my harmless question without including a disparaging remark about Mormons.
So I said something like those Mormons are a wild and crazy bunch with so many doctrines coming from a book outside of the Bible.
The COGlodyte then added, "just like the Catholics and Protestants".
I replied that the COGs were known for their doctrines that were not found in the Bible and gave him three examples.
For each example, he could not cite any scripture but said that he felt they were addressed in the Bible, and to my surprise, he said, "these are not salvation issues, so it doesn't matter".
After being shocked by his statement I agreed that these examples were not salvation issues but said justification is a salvation issue that LCG will not address.
The COGlodyte said I was wrong and texted me a link to LCG sermons and literature and told me to do a search.
I searched on the spot and could not find a direct match for the word justification.
He then sent me a link to the LCG Statement of Beliefs and said I would find it covered there.
To my surprise, I did find the word justifies in the Statement of Beliefs (I have not yet compared this current Statement with older versions to see if it was recently added).
However, this is what was written: "God justifies us from past sins."
Then the Statement of Beliefs goes on to describe how you must keep the law to earn salvation.
The LCG rendering of justification is not biblically accurate.
God forgives (not justifies) us of past sins - present and future sins too.
However, the definition of justification is Jesus' righteousness is given to us to make us righteous.
This righteousness, from Jesus, is the only righteousness God accepts - and it is not relegated to cover the past - it's an ever-present, forever righteousness that is the only way we can enter the Kingdom.
I guess I'm glad that LCG is looking at the concept of justification but I'm also appalled to see how badly they've mangled the term.
When I pointed out the LCG's egregious mistake to my LCG associate, he quickly changed the subject to how LCG is coming out with a new booklet on Germany.
He seemed excited about this new booklet, which surprised me because one of my examples of extra-biblical doctrines beloved by the COGs was phrased as "Does the Bible reveal the identity of modern Germany".
He kind of admitted that Germany was not named in the Bible.
However, just like his church and fellow COGlodytes, they get much more excited about a non-biblical topic, mere speculation, of the antics of that evil Germany then they care about a beautiful concept that is lovingly displayed in the Bible, such as justification.
This LCG associate would not comment on my wondering if the new LCG booklet on Germany will cover any of the failed prophesies about Germany preached by HWA during the 1930s and 1940's, any of the failed prophesies involving Germany that were recorded in the booklet "1975 in Prophesy", or any of Dr. Winnail's recent praise of that disgraced booklet.
With all the biblical proof that racial/ethnic identity don't matter because we are all one in Jesus, I cannot fathom why LCG feels they can get away with hate speech about the Germans.
I'm really surprised that LCG has recorded 90 new attendees (not members) - even though that's a very small number when compared to the population of the US.
I'm sure that 90 number includes anyone who attended once, like got dragged to church by their spouse, or someone who was curious, until becoming weirded out within a visit or two.
Also, that 90 must include COGlodytes jumping from other splinters; many must have left RCG.
If LCG was actually growing, they would report total number of attendees, as well as the annual increase.
LCG is known for their deception.
And consider the TRUE Church that Christ started which added 3,000 in just one day. Someone needs to get the memo on how to grow a church to these splinter groups. Use a man made pagan model, and you get what you get.
3000 in one day, but how many of them stuck it out? Not many.
They encourage feedback for their ANGLO-ISRAEL booklet, but won't publish comments!
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