Gerald Flurry and Cal Culpepper have been regaling their followers with their latest masterpiece of delusional prophecy for quite some time now.
These two towering intellectual giants have solemnly declared that the Caves of Adullam — you know, those charming, damp, bat-infested holes where David once hid like a fugitive — will serve as the exclusive, five-star Place of Safety for the Philadelphia Church of God’s oh-so-special, spiritually spotless elite.
Because heaven forbid Flurry’s pure, superior, hand-selected remnant should have to rub shoulders in Petra with all those filthy, Laodicean, half-baked COG rejects, Protestant losers, certain Messianic Jews, and other assorted spiritual trash. The very idea is simply too horrifying for words!
No, no — his precious snowflakes deserve their very own private, members-only cave system. After all, when you’re running God’s One True Work, and you alone have the “correct” understanding, you can’t possibly be expected to share end-time real estate with the great unwashed masses. That would be... egalitarian. Or worse — common.
So while the rest of the COG world and others crowd into Petra like desperate end-time tourists, Flurry’s enlightened few will be huddling in their own deluxe, divinely appointed rock holes — where the caves are drafty, the ambiance is biblical, and the exclusivity is second to none.
Truly, the height of end-time spiritual sophistication.
Truly, nothing says “God’s favored remnant” quite like demanding your own private apocalyptic bunker because sharing is for lesser Christians.
From The Exit and Support Network
In The New Throne of David by Gerald Flurry (copyright 2018/2021) he said the place of safety was in Adullam. “We must be prepared to go to the cave of Adullam, the place of safety.” (Chapter 2: The New Throne of David, p. 25.) However, he is still telling members that Petra is the place of safety.
One Way Ticket?
In a June 2013 sermon Cal Culpepper (“Come Out of This World”)13 stated, “Do we really think it is going to be that easy? There’s a lot of details that we don’t know yet. We are going to be packing our bags–it will be an act of faith. We don’t know how it will be. Maybe the government will give us a one way ticket.”
So now we need to ask another question:
Do we think the government is actually going to let Gerald Furry leave the country with a bunch of money? Even if he tries to place it all in offshore accounts, wouldn’t he be watched? (More extreme, fanatical groups are being watched today since the Jim Jones and David Koresh tragedies.)
We need to realize that these stories members are hearing about HQs fleeing “first,” or skipping the country and leaving the members behind, usually turn out to be lies or wild guesses, or a rumor handed down from someone higher up the pyramid.14
PCG believes they will be persecuted in the future. They believe “the Work” will finally end and armies will surround Jerusalem. It is at this time that they believe it will be time to “flee.”15 Herbert Armstrong preached this same fear doctrine for decades. No one ever fled anywhere. Members simply continued to pay in more and more money, as PCG members are doing.
No One Fled Anywhere:
HWA, for decades, predicted end-time scenarios and talked of a “place of safety.” When every one of his WW II prophecies failed, he said his “timing was wrong” but they would be fulfilled in the “next war”–WW III. In the meantime he convinced his co-workers and members that a college needed to be built. When his later prophecies also failed–especially the 1972 one–he merely said God had given them “more time to do the Work” and shifted their attention. Flurry will undoubtedly say something similar.
As Gerald Flurry continues to use the “place of safety” ploy the same way HWA did, members will fear to leave PCG lest they be left to go through the Great Tribulation. Leaving PCG, in their minds, is the same as “leaving God.” Flurry tells them, “Fear of God must always be with us.”16 But this is the wrong kind of fear. It is the fear of a man whom they are unknowingly putting between themselves and the Lord Jesus Christ. They do not know they have been deceived, as countless thousands before them were deceived by the false teacher and false prophet Herbert Armstrong.
By D. M. Williams
Exit & Support Network™
December 2, 2005
Updated June 30, 2021; March 19, 2024; December 3, 2024
More and more, it's looking like Gerry's place of safety will be a pine box, six feet underground. But they had better not bury him on the PCG campus, because if they do the PCG members will so honor his grave that it will make the high places of Baal worship look tame by comparison.
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