Things are not looking too bright for the United Church of God's Angola branches. The government is cracking down on sects that claim to be churches. UCG is being required to get 60,000 signatures of active members that are also willing to have their names publicly listed as members of the church. UCG will never be able to do that as their entire church worldwide is around 22,000. Even if you took every COG splinter out here and added their totals up you will not achieve 60,000 active members.
This not only will be hitting United Church of God but also the other COG's operating there. This will certainly be an issue for God's most perfect COG to ever exist, the improperly named "continuing" Church of God. Bob Thiel will soon be screeching PERSECUTION!
United Church of God
Prayer request from Jorge de Campos, senior pastor, Portuguese language areas:
In the last few years, the Angolan government set up a law entitled the “Law on Freedom of Religion and Worship” which requires any new religious organisation to meet certain requirements to be able to exercise its religious duties. As the Church in Angola has not been registered, it was deemed to be a new religious organisation. One requirement to be registered is that the Church must have 60,000 signatures of members (over 18 years old) who are willing to have their names publicly listed as members of the organisation. 94 religious organisations in Angola are listed as not recognised, and God’s Church in Angola is one of those.The Church has applied for that recognition with the help of an attorney organisation. After a number of years of waiting for a decision, finally such decision was reached by the governing authorities and the Church’s application for recognition was refused.In a letter received just after the Feast, the governing authorities recommended that the Church “join a recognised religious confession whose doctrine and principles relate to the religious beliefs and practices identified with your denomination” and furthermore stated that “you must immediately close down the activities of your Church, under penalty of disobedience, in the general terms of the applicable law.”The penalty for disobedience to this “Law on Freedom of Religion” would involve closing of the Church’s halls and the associated minister or pastor being placed in jail.We are working with the Angolan leadership and are ready to assist them in their endeavours to look for a solution. We will do what we can do, but the key factor is in our Heavenly Father’s hands and subject to His miraculous intervention according to His will.As such, we request your prayers to our Heavenly Father, through His Son and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, for His intervention in this most difficult trial.
Please note that the school we have sponsored in Angola is not affected, as it falls under a different government department and will be able to continue to provide its service to the community.
8 comments:
Similar laws will eventually become the norm in western countries, including the English speaking countries. There's an anti Christian tide world wide.
“The government is cracking down on sects that claim to be churches.”
Well, shame on those godless UCG scoundrels for pretending to be running a legitimate church.
Also, that 22,000 number for the UCG was from before the big UCG-COGWA split.
This is not an attack on the COG's, this is an attack on religious freedoms.
It is unfortunate, but in places like Angola, some shekels placed in the right person's hand in a discrete fashion, will turn such situations quickly around.
This is not an attack on religious freedom. It is the government's right to stop aberrant American cults from proliferating and deceiving Angolans. It's not only little COGs that are impacted by Pentecostal fringe groups, fringe Catholics, and fringe Protestant groups.
Anon 9:21 said, "This is not an attack on religious freedom. It is the government's right to stop..."
That is the very opposite of freedom.
This is NOT an attack on the Churches. Too much has been happening under our noses with trafficking all over the world. Real assemblies don't need to attach themselves to 501c3 anyway. Come out of Her/Him His People! It was 100k and they reduced to 60k. The Angola state sees that 50% of the Churches there are from other nations and they are changing their customs, etc. You can find articles from 2018 mentioning 2,000 churches closed down.
2.21 PM
It is not the role of the Angola state, or any other state to lord it over its citizens faith. In 2Chronicles 26:17, God turned king Uzziah into a leper for usurping the priestly role of burning incense. God enforced the separation of church and state. In the book of Daniel, everyone was expected to worship the golden image. This always happens when greedy, power hungry governments (including the ACOG ministers) decide to choose what the "stupid little people" should believe.
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