There has been a lot of speculation over the last several weeks about the remote possibility that Stephen Flurry might finally scrap the grotesque “no-contact” ruling his spiritual-degenerate father, Gerald Flurry—that self-appointed “That Prophet” and king-of-Britain wannabe pretending to lead a church while playing God with people’s lives—introduced to forbid members from associating with family members, relatives, and friends who had the audacity to leave the Philadelphia Church of God. Many are desperately hoping this is the case. So many are longing to reconnect with loved ones after years of enforced isolation. But on the other hand, what a bitter pill to swallow: after Flurry’s cultish decree has utterly wrecked their lives, survivors now get to sit and watch the whole mess potentially swept under the rug as if it never happened. The irreparable damage has already been done. But this is how Armstrongism has always operated—doctrines and rulings flipped at the flick of a limp -important wrist, with never so much as a mumbled apology in sight.
For nearly two decades this archaic “cutting-off” policy, rooted in Flurry’s own sermon “Exposing Satan,” has demanded total severance from anyone branded “Laodicean.” No phone calls, no letters, no photos, no advocacy—just cold, total exile, even for unbaptized children who dare reject the party line. It has torn families apart with surgical cruelty, enabling abusers, bankrupting parents through unpaid support for kids they are forbidden to see, and leaving behind complex PTSD, parental alienation, and multiple suicides that the organization prefers to paper over as “short illnesses.” One woman wrote to the Exit and Support Network detailing exactly how it gutted her family: parents lost (one already dead), minister brothers turned against her, three teenage sons manipulated into hatred, over $40,000 in child support paid for children whose faces she is not even allowed to glimpse. “Time has been stolen,” she said. Years of growth she will never witness.
That is merely one horror story among dozens. Consider Dan De Gennaro, whose daughter Janet was forced into isolation under the policy, forbidden from contacting her own parents and brother; after three years of enforced silence and mounting despair, she took her life—and only then did Flurry’s regime “relax” the rule long enough to ship her body home in a metal container. Or the father who lost his son Nathan and daughter Elise to the cult’s blackout, never meeting his grandchildren, only to watch another son spiral into suicide after years of grieving the siblings the “no-contact” edict had stolen from him. In the Philippines, the same murderous policy has been linked to multiple suicides—young people like Errol Concepcion hanged after years of mandatory shunning by their own blood relatives under ministerial orders. Grandparents barred from seeing grandchildren, elderly members abandoned when they need help most, teenagers kicked out of homes, marriages strained or dissolved on command: this is the body count of Flurry’s “spiritual purity.”
And let’s not pretend this is some unique Flurry invention. It is pure Armstrongism in action—the same cult environment Herbert W. Armstrong perfected, where “God’s government” always trumps flesh-and-blood family, isolation is sold as holiness, and questioning the hierarchy gets you marked and cut off. HWA himself wrote that when it comes to a disfellowshipped relative, the church family comes first; avoid them completely. Even the more “moderate” Church of God splinter groups—those that publicly soft-pedal the extremes—privately nod along with the same authoritarian instincts. Disfellowshipping policies still lurk in their handbooks, social ostracism of “dissenters” or “Laodiceans” happens quietly, and the underlying mindset remains: loyalty to the organization over love for your own children or parents. It’s the same high-control playbook—secrecy, absolute submission, financial exploitation, and the deliberate destruction of outside relationships to keep the flock trapped.
In the end, this entire archaic ruling stands as a glaring repudiation of the New Covenant. Jesus Christ did not model permanent family exile; He ate with tax collectors and sinners, restored the broken, and taught a process of confrontation aimed at reconciliation, not lifelong blacklisting (Matthew 18). The apostle Paul spoke of a ministry of reconciliation, not a ministry of cutting people off forever (2 Corinthians 5). The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—not the cold narcissism of forcing parents to treat their own children as spiritual lepers under threat of the lake of fire. Armstrongism’s legalistic hierarchy, its elevation of human “government” over grace, and its willingness to sacrifice families on the altar of control are the very opposite of the freedom and mercy Christ purchased. No amount of prophetic posturing by a spiritual degenerate like Gerald Flurry can turn this fruit of destruction into anything but what it is: a cultic abuse that has no place in the New Covenant.
The Exit and Support Network letter sharing how Flurry has damaged her family.
DESTRUCTIVE CUTTING OFF POLICY OF PCG
In considering the prospect that the cutting off policy might be relaxed or removed I can’t help feeling quite angry. This policy has been in place for the best part of a couple of decades, and despite any perceived feelings they have of it being “the right thing to do,” it has damaged many, many individuals and families irreparably, including my own family. I’m scared to think how many suicides there have been. I personally know of three; there will no doubt be many more. There will be cover-up stories–“died after a short illness,” etc. I don’t even have words to describe how disgusted this makes me feel and how ice-cold this behavior is. It is narcissistic power and control.
My name is Philippa Labao (was Hercus), from New Zealand, and I’ve been out five years. I’ve lost my parents (Jim and Margaret; dad died last year; my brothers Colin and Steven Hercus; Colin and Jim being ministers. I’ve lost my three children (teenagers) for now. My ex husband Gary Labao was abusive, manipulating, and controlling. He has thoroughly enjoyed the PCG policy and used it to his full advantage. He has lied continuously and everyone appears to believe him. No one checks with me as to the truth.
Aaron Hudson supports and enables him. The children are caught in a web of manipulation–made to feel more righteous for cutting me off, believing every bit of filth their father tells them. It is quite a shock when you realize the stable and apparently loving family you grew up with does not support you. They have not advocated for me, they have not discussed my circumstances with me and tried to help in any way. Why can’t I see my children? I would go as far as to say they have been manipulated into hatred for me. To date I have paid that evil man over $40,000 in child support (alimony). For children I don’t get to see. It’s been over three years. A few months ago I appealed to them all (including top tier ministers) for a change. Not one single reply and not one change!
Aaron Hudson’s own family are not all in the PCG, but they all see each other. MY family refuse to even send me photos of my own children. My point is, they relax this policy now and where does it leave my family? Do they say, “Oh whoops, we can see you now” and expect me to pick up where we left off? Think again. If and when I get to see my dear boys again it will take YEARS to repair the damage. Time has been lost, stolen, in their growth. There are parts of them that I will never see. There are parts of their personality as they grew that I will never experience. Not to mention the long term affects of parental alienation just on them.
I have government funded therapy for my CPTSD, but who is helping them? Where is the accountability for the abuser who sits there raking in money? So they continue to play with people’s minds and lives and really it’s all about money. It’s got nothing to do with God’s love, that is for sure. How absolutely disgusting.
By Philippa Labao
August 3, 2026
ait goes deeper than just the shunning.
ReplyDeleteIt goes much deeper than the shunning itself. It's the bizarreness of these evil and toxic cults themselves! It is not just the repeal of the shunning doctrine which would heal this evil and make everyone whole again.
ReplyDeleteLet me explain. When I was a young boy, if you had looked up the word "family" in a picture dictionary, there could very well have been a picture of my own next to the definition. The extended family did everything together, and everyone got along! It all started innocuously enough, .The 'rents listening to HWA and watching him on television. Then came the rad changes. Suddenly all of the big holidays for family activites were verbotten. Our diet changed. There was all this talk about the end of the age and the Germans. The Catholics we knew there was sudden fear of. Horrible spankings. Kids had to go fanatical and act as if all adults were nobles, forced to call them Sir and Ma'am. Nobody in our entire state did that!
What do you do as a loving family member as you witness your loved ones going off the deep end with this entirely new and strange culture to follow,and also giving all their spare money to a fanatic? Why, you speak up, and argue, of course. That's just part of being a supportive family! And then came the additional advice from the church that you can't really have close personal relationships with anyone outside the church. This appeared to new members to be all happening organically, but the relatives knew who was responsible, knew it was in no way normal, and continued to speak up and to blame the instigator, who of course was untouchable, acting under the cloak of God and religion! It was actually a relief when we moved about 100 miles away from the family town, away from the arguments. But there was also a deep inner sadness that our loved ones were no longer a part of our lives. We were pariahs at school, nobody around us who understood, and the other church members did not live in our town, so basically we quit getting close to anybody. Once you go down that path, you lose some of your natural feelings and empathy for fellow human beings because you "know" what the Germans are going to do to everyone except your fellow culties anyway.
So, what's going to happen when the Flurries lighten up and the families get to see each other again? Oh, they'll get together and talk alright, but it ain't going to be pretty! There are going to be violent arguments every time these families get together! You think there are confrontations "in the world" where family members try to get each other to stop smoking??? Or to vote differently? You ain't seen nothing yet! After a couple months these people are going to be voluntarily avoiding each other for sheer relief from the fights! Why? The damage is already done! They're ruined as human beings, by years of programming, and there is no recovery. What are they going to do, counsel with "God's ministers"? Yeah. A good dose of Armstrongism! That'll cure it.
This set of angst has a long half life! People ask, "Hey! When are you going to stop hating??? Well, you tell me what isotope I am, and we'll look the half life up on the chart. I know it is not as intense as it once was, but this Flurry shunning thing has made me glow like the rods in a nuclear generator!
BB
There's the odd person who starts off well as a new Christian, but then spiritually falls asleep. A jost such as shunning might prod that person back on the original path. But from my observation, that's the exception. The typical church member who had given up on Christianity, had a history of non achievement. So shunning such a person achieves nothing. Churches just use shunning as a tool for North Korean type of control.
ReplyDeleteI put the blame on the ministers since they didn't follow John the Baptists insistence that converts show fruits of repentance prior to baptism. The church put numbers and income before people, even though it meant robbing them of a second life at the end of the millennium. How diabolical is that?
Fruits were defined not by the "Love Chapter" , but by adherence via will power to specified COG rituals if one wished to be baptized. Two biggies were quit smoking, and if you had been involved in a divorce and remarriage situation, break up your current family. Oh, and uh, tithing! The coming punishment of English-speaking predominantly white nations was hit hard, and "here's what you need to do so you and yours can receive protection" was in most cases the initial motivating factor, to becoming a member, because that was HWA's basic sales hook, and if nothing else he was a superb salesman.
DeleteAnd now we know that it was all for nought. The Germans are not coming, they never were. It is China who is gaining control as the major power, and not by war or conquest but by superior intellect and strategy. Consider the following. The Iranian war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz did not cause the global financial chaos which all the talking heads had forecast. Now, as it has recently been noted, it seems that the Chinese drastically reduced their huge oil imports (by about 50%) in response to the global crisis, allowing the currently throttled output of oil to be divvied up by the world's other major economies, most of which are huge consumers of Chinese manufactured products. Yet China's own economy has not suffered in the least. It is thought that they had huge oil reserves, unknown to the global intelligence community.
This as both Russia and the USA's military strengths are being rapidly depleted by the wars with Ukraine, and Iran.
If you go back further, President Trump had made China's unfair competitive practices and theft of intellectual property one of the targets of his first administration, imposing tariffs on them. Suddenly, from China, a strange new disease emerges, coincidentally timed with the 2020 elections. There have never been satisfying explanations for the emergence of this virus, although a laboratory in China has been cited in nearly all the narratives. For a while, the pandemic shut down the world'd great economies, and greatly exacerbated the national debts of the USA and other nations. Was this retaliation for the tariffs?
Speaking of the national debt, and going back further, the USA should have already collapsed back in the 1980s and '90s. It is widely admitted that Chinese investment in the USA, their financing of our national debt, is what saved us from implosion. We find them similarly investing in African nations and in the impoverished countries of South America. At one time, there was great controversy over Chinese management of the ports of Los Angeles, and their role in the Panama Canal. At one time there were many conspiracy theories about the Bilderbergs, the Trilateral Commission, or other entities being the real owners and controllers of our country. Meanwhile, China has slipped in and filled that roll quite nicely. Their birth control efforts have produced a disproportionate percentage of males, whose limited opportunities have made the Chinese Army a compelling alternative. As a possibly unintended result, the Chinese alone have the singular capabilities of amassing an army of Biblical prophetic proportions.
I don't believe that I am the only one who has watched this unfolding. But it is all so obvious even to those of us who are not schooled in international geopolitics. We read daily of China's superior technologies in robotics, computer science, and affordable green technology. This in no way even remotely resembles the HWA prophecy model. How can the Germans match up against this? How could they possibly wrest control from such a powerful "frenemy"? Armstrongites find themselves in some pretty scary uncharted waters. Not only have HWA's prophecies been "delayed", they have become very dated, and virtually impossible. What's in your wallet?
BB
yes BB and China obtained much of German technology when they entered into arrangements to have factories in China.China systematically targets German industrial technology through both legal and illegal means. They lost a lot of their vaunted engineering advantage as a result.
DeleteI've had enough of your mentally ill wife and her vile nasty insults . Is this living the second covenant ?? Why don't you both leave UCG Sabbath Christians in peace and leave UCG once and for all ? Addicted to power that much ? Is the money that good?? Or is it because you now in 2026 treat the UCG members like a free potential brothel when the mood takes you.
ReplyDeleteWhat about your tabernacles mistress you have brazenly flaunted and openly brainwashed the ucg members with ? How shameful. How desperate.
What will the Johns say in the next life to this ? One will laugh his head off at your antics.
All of your so-called "reports" haven't gotten you anywhere, have they? No one cares what some old biddie's or beta males longing to be made a deacon have to say. Laughing my head off at your antics.
DeleteI can't see the PCG changing their no contact rules. Stephen will be a hardliner just like his dad. I have two older brothers in that church as well as a mom... and to be honest if they tried reaching out to me I wouldn't answer. I just don't need their arrogant, self righteous nature in my life anymore. Unless they leave and have an "ego death", I won't be letting them in my life.
ReplyDeleteI agree. To some it looks like they are relaxing because they hear of a case that is different to their own that isn’t as strict. Depends on minister and each persons own personal fear of what it means for eternal life if they break the rules.
DeleteThe apostle even disfellowshipped his own daughter Beverly and her family - his grandchildren - because she didn't buckle under his ridiculous no make up rule when he first introduced it in the 1950's. . Such was this false apostles obsession with control freak behaviour it was there all his sad life.
ReplyDelete7:28 AM, I heard the actual reason for Beverly and her family being disfellowshiped was she refused to put her kids into the Imperial school system. Also, the dangerous fast he put her older son on, that caused him to have stunted growth, was probably a contributing factor in her putting her foot down.
DeleteMy heart goes out to Philippa. She and her family are victims of a SATANIC system that has NOTHING to do with God, let alone love! Jesus Christ taught the exact opposite of excommunication, disfellowship, and shunning. On the one occasion that the Apostle Paul employed something like it (on an individual within the Corinthian congregation), he later rescinded his edict and told the congregation to welcome the repentant individual back into the fold. By the way, to MARK someone is to take note of that person - it doesn't have anything to do with denouncing them from the pulpit!
ReplyDeleteThe advocates of this wicked practice NEVER quote Christ's Parable of the Tares. Read it for yourself, and you'll see why:
Matthew 13:24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.”
37 He answered and said to them: “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. 39 The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. 40 Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. 41 The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, 42 and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear! NKJV
ReplyDeleteSatan's Favorite False Prophet
You simply need to understand that Satan the devil sent and directed his favorite false prophet Gerald Ray Flurry AGAINST the Worldwide Church of God people. Satan did not send and direct Gerald R. Flurry to play nice. That is why Gerald Flurry has been nothing but evil continually from the very beginning and has only grown even worse over time. Gerald Flurry is the most deceitful, warped, and vicious runt of the false prophet litter that there is
If someone you care about is trapped in the Philadelphia Church of Fraud, pray for God to deliver them from the bonds of Satan.
Anon 6:00, you are clearly mentally deranged. No one knows what the hell you’re ranting about.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts exactly! A rant that we don’t know what or who it’s directed to and don’t care. Doesn’t have anything to do with this post at all.
DeleteJehovah Witness dissidents claim that it's only their shunning policy that's holding their church together.
ReplyDeleteNot sure who I despise more. JWs or the Armstrong movement. At least the Armstrong crowd do not go door to door seeking adherents to their cult. Saw two smartly dressed couples the other day doing the rounds, just down the road from me. Fortunately didn’t get a ‘pastoral visit’ lol. My monies are on the Armstrong movement to disappear first. Any bets folks.
DeleteThey Did NOT Know The Future
ReplyDeleteAt the start of his scam, Gerald R. Flurry wanted all the Worldwide Church of God people to be open-minded enough to read his writings and listen to his talking. However, once the WCG people were in Gerald Flurry's PCG cult, they were no longer allowed to be open-minded or to read anything else or to listen to anyone else. They were totally cut off from anyone who could tell them anything or warn them about what was going on.
PCG members probably never expected that Gerald Flurry's religion would become all about such things as worshipping That Runt and his plagiarized and revised “little book,” wrecking their own families like a bunch of demoniacs, deleting and opposing Herbert W. Armstrong's major teachings, and supporting Irish dancing. Seriously, at the start of it all, did anyone expect the Irish dancing?
The PCG members vastly underestimated the power of Satan to deceive them and control them. Now the PCG members are helplessly under the thumb of Satan's little false prophet Gerald Flurry.