LCG: Gerald Weston "dismayed" that some LCG members are "lukewarm"

Gerald Weston was well trained by his mentor (Rod Meredith) in fear mongering his flock.  He recently sent out a member letter on April 19 outraged over Cadbury's "Easter" controversy and how supposedly a couple in the UK had their foster kids taken from them for refusing to say the Easter Bunny was real.  Instead of being outraged at the homeless situation in Charlotte, or being outraged that low income families can't feed their kids or provide adequate housing, or that LCG members are struggling to survive financially because of all the money they are expected to send to HQ, or expressing outrage at how families are being ripped apart by LCG's draconian legalistic laws, he is upset over Candygate.

Then after the usual screed about pagan Easter, he dumps on "lukewarm" LCG members.  LCG members should face the fact that they will NEVER be able to do anything right in the eyes of the church leadership.  They are too dumb, too lukewarm, and too Laodicean, at least in the eyes of the leadership.

Brethren, the world is about to explode!  It is a dangerous mess!  We are being overwhelmed by the news.  No more of those handpicked  single "major" news stories of the day; now people can find instantaneous news from thousands of sources.  Much like LCG members can find instantaneous news about the corruption of the LCG leadership, of which, Weston is none too happy about.

The time is short.  The end is near.  We have heard this mantra shouted out by Rod Meredith for 60 some years.  Not once in that entire time has he ever been right.

Dear Members and Co-workers, our world is getting crazier with each passing day! We never know what new shock may greet us each morning! Journalists once strove to publish the one major news story for the day. Sometimes they really had to scramble to find one, and we would often comment, “This must be a slow news day.” Not anymore! Today it is a matter of which major story takes precedence over the others. Will there be a war with North Korea? Will the U.S. and Russia have an incident that sparks a major conflict between the two antagonists in Syria? Will war break out between Israel and its neighbors? Then there is the specter of a terrorist attack at any time and nearly anywhere. 

Those who study the Bible should understand that we are truly living in the last days. The Apostle Paul warned us, “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1). What we see today is only the beginning. It will get much worse. We cannot know every twist and turn world events will take, but the Bible gives us the outline and the outcome. One troubling trend is that the very people of God will be lukewarm, neither hot nor cold at the time of the end (Revelation 3:14-19). 

How strange! One would think that it would be just the opposite. People should become more zealous toward God and doing His will as they see end-time events descending upon them. Such is not the case.

What can Weston expect when he, Meredith and the COG as a whole have lied to its membership for decades?   People are following God and are still zealous, just not in LCG or a COG.  That is a bitter pill for COG leaders to swallow.

Of course, there is the big bad bogeyman Satan who is the cause of all of this.

There is a real spirit being directing the course of this world (Ephesians 2:1-2). He is a master of distraction. He gives us every physical toy we could ever imagine. Television, once considered the greatest time waster, now competes with Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, Instagram and a host of other electronic devices and programs that vie for our attention. No technology is evil in itself, but taken together without exercising character to set proper priorities, people wear out before they get to those things that are important.

LCG members and COG members as a whole are worn out because of the constant abuse levelled at them by the church leadership.  Legalism trumps grace every time.  The "rules" must be followed over showing love to one another.  Love and grace are four letter words that COG leaders despise.

So what is important in your life? What is your passion? What demands the greatest devotion from you? Is it your hobby? Is it your family? Family is certainly important, but is it the most important? 

Apparently many in the LCG are placing an emphasis on their families and doing things with them instead of taking that money and sending it in to Weston.  How dare they!  How can Jimmy Meredith spend thousands of dollars every year skiing, snorkelling, boating, and travelling to exotic locales when that money should go directly to Weston's church fund?  He has a message to get out Lil'Jimmy!  Get on board!!!

At some point, we all come to the place where one question stands out above all else. Is there life after death? The Bible says there is. Does it not make sense to investigate the possibility? Hobbies, while of temporal value, will not get you there. The trappings of success, such as money and material possessions, cannot get you there, and you cannot take them with you beyond the grave. Even family is of no lasting value if you put family before God. Read Jesus’ own words for yourself:  “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate [love to a lesser degree by comparison] his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). Is there life after death, and what must I do to find it? 

What will it take to stir each of us to take action and go all out to serve the living God? Jesus tells us, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together” (John 4:34-36).

Living Church of God members are asking just how much Gerald Weston, Lil'Jimmy, Rod McNair and others will sacrifice for the work?  LCG members have never seen these guys or the leadership as whole set any example.  Instead, LCG members and employees have experienced this:

My husband worked there for over 5 years and he never saw a bigger group of backbiters and cut-throats.

Rod Meredith promotes an atmosphere where if you stab your co-worker in the back, but give him your version of the story 1st, they other guy gets pushed down the ladder and the bully gets exalted.

Everyone is so insecure and selfish that they expend huge amounts of energy making sure that no one steals their piece of the pie. Working to make sure you get noticed before someone else takes credit for your work is a constant struggle.

If one were to randomly pick ANY worldly work office it would be more harmonious. Typically the people you work with aren't on the same level of self-righteousness, arrogance or filled with as much selfish ambition as the leading men at LCG headquarters. 

It truly is a "brood of vipers".

All the vipers have their little pet projects that feed their egos. It's disgusting.

It was hard being a member in LCG knowing what its headquarters was like. If the average member glimpsed a peek of the lies and other shady behavior that goes on their so frequently that it's become common place, they might think twice about sending in those tithes. 

What Gerald Weston and the leadership of the Living Church of God needs to do is to get on their knees this coming sabbath in front of their congregations and ask for forgiveness on how abusive they have been to the members.  Then every single minister and church leader should fast to prove to the members just how sick and degenerate they have become spiritually and STOP making the membership fast for you! Sadly, this will never happen. Egotism and narcissism cannot allow these "men" to admit they have a weak side or are wrong.  Humility has no room in the ministry of the LCG.  If you want proof of that, just go up to your local minister this Sabbath and ask him if he is a humble man.  No LCG member should ever again fast for the leadership to get its act in gear.  They will always refuse to.  All you are doing is making yourself hungry.

"The husband is the head of the wife and that's the way it is, period" Pat Robertson

"Wives, (Converted RCG women) you can be independent in this. (In RCG women with money to give Dave Pack can have a voice in the family but outside of money issues, not so much.) You have half the worth in whatever is there in your house. I'm officially telling all of you, read verses 17, 18, 19 and focus on it. Wives you have an independent voice. Legally you have half the funds. What are you going to do about it? "

(An RCG man with a complaining wife not in RCG however...)

"Husbands, your wife, "Well, my wife isn't in the church. She doesn't want me to do it." You know what? [starts raising his voice] Tell her, "You don't have a voice, woman."

The Clarion Call

Dave Pack

Let's have a little talk about  the reality of male and female equality Bible or no Bible. Church or no Church.

A member once approached me after services to tell me what her husband had announced to her.  She said, "He told me he was the King and over me because that is God's way and I am NOTHING."  I knew her well enough to know she had more to say so I asked, "And YOU said...?"   I said, "Then that makes you King of NOTHING!"  I knew that's what she really wanted to tell me. Good answer actually.

The following facts are not ones in which your husband, your fundamentalist pastor, nor your literalist Church will rejoice in. In fact, they may ask you to quietly leave if you are going to believe this rather than the inspired, inerrant and historically accurate "word of God."

"The primordial plan for both female and male fetuses in mammals is initially feminine.

Contrary to some creation myths, in mammals, maleness arises from femaleness, not the other way round.

Masculinisation results from organisational effects of fetal testosterone (and its derivatives), which in humans occurs during the second trimester of pregnancy.

To be masculinised means that certain areas of the brain grow larger, while others remain smaller.

These differences to some extend explain sexual behaviors and preferences even in humans"

Dr. Alexander Thiele University of Newcastle upon Tyne Lecture 7: Social emotions -'the sexual brain'

In reality it seems that FEMALE is the default position as human beings develop in the womb. Maleness comes after with the proper wash of hormones applied at just the right time and in just the right amounts. The implications for literalists are staggering and for women, liberating!

In some cultures, young men are taught to pray "Blessed Art Thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has not made me a woman." Mohammed is said to have stated, "When Eve was created, Satan rejoiced." Much if all of the orignal creation mythology's sole purpose is to depose any notion of "goddess" worship, which was an absolute fascination that women had the power to give birth and bring forth life etc, and replace it with a male patriarchy. The Genesis story is not so much how life came to be or that we all came from two humans, named Adam and Eve, as it is to send the message that women, who are the fault of everything, are to have babies painfully now and say "yes Lord" to their husbands. From the totally mythological tale of the fall of man by the disobedience of woman, much misery and ridicuoulously false roles have been demanded of them by men and in particular the Christian church.

"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I permit not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. FOR (the reason being) Adam was first formed and then Eve and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression." I Tim. 2:11-14

So according to Paul, the literal truth of Eve's sin produces the literal idea that women are more easily deceived than men and prone to sin, and thus should be silent in church. Or as St. John Chrysostom, a fifth century church father noted, "The woman taught once and ruined everything. On this account...let her not teach." It seems wrong ideas of how things really came to be have very big consequences over a very long time!

Paul goes on to say..."The head of every man is Christ; and the head of every woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God....for as much as he is in the image and glory of God, BUT ( as in , don't get the same idea about women) the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is NOT OF the woman, but the woman IS OF the man." I Cor. 11:3,7,9.

No more literally untrue words could every have been spoken by a man about  the origins of men.

Very simply put, Paul said that men are over women because women come from men as in the story of Adam and Eve no doubt.  Christ alone is over men and God alone is over Christ. So it's God > Christ > Man > Woman > pets and small animals. It is notable that it is here that Paul makes it plain, based on the creation of woman out of man mythology, that Men don't come from women at all and that women owe their physical existence to men too. I guess Paul and Dr. Alexander Thiele never actually met to discuss just how do males form in the womb. Like it or not guys, we come from out mom's literally and from the default fetal template of the female in time after we get our hormones in the womb. So men actually do come twice from females. Someone tell the Church!

St Clement, father of the Roman Church denied women the right to even exercise as men. He felt rather it was more in keeping with scripture that they be confined to spinning, weaving and cooking. Of course he could barely bring himself to add "and se..se...sex, unless it was out of the need to bring children into the fold.

St. Augustine, not the most balanced Church Father of the lot proclaimed that man only was made in God's image and not woman. But that's what Paul said too. He went on to note that men were quite complete without a woman, but that women could only be complete with a man. Man alone was self contained and complete alone. Once again, time has shown how untrue this all is, but the concept is still used by many churches and pastors to keep women in "their place" and fulfilling their "role".

Other theologians and Church Father's went on to note that men were the spiritual aspect of God, while women were merely a symbol of the flesh and thus she is the temptress and weakener of men who fail to see what the Church points out.

In the 16th Century, Clifford Alderman notes in a his book, A Cauldron of Witches, that an early Church report noted that "Woman is more carnal than man: there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed with a BENT RIB. She is imperfect and always deceives." Now there is some hot scientific reasoning for you! Of course no one notes that if women are deceptive because of being made out of a bent rib, what is a man that he was made out of red dirt? Maybe that's why men are so dirty minded..:)

Modern Christianity is still designed and used to annihilate the spirt of women. It's is still here to keep patriarchy in place and to defeat the matriarcy of former times. Women were mystical in those cultures as opposed to utilitarian in that of a patriarchy or man led society and religion. I believe I would much rather to have lived in a society where women were held high for their spirituality and creative abilities. As it is, we live in the age, not of Aquarius but of testosterone, where men rule badly, kill often and take the spoils from those who cannot oppose them. I like Rodney King's "Can't we all just get along" far more than those who bluster "Bring em on." But alas, tis not that way in our real world at this point.

You have to love this observation by the great philosopher Rousseau.

"As the conduct of a woman is subservient to the public opinion, her faith in matters of religion should , for that reason, be subject to authority. Every daughter ought to be of the same religion as her mother, and every wife to be the same religion as her husband; for though such religion should be false, that docility which induces the mother and daughter to submit to the order of nature, takes away, in the sight of God, the criminality of their error...they are not in a capacity to judge for themselves, they ought to abide by the decision of their fathers and husbands as confidently as that of the Church." Or as Paul would say, "if any woman has a question, let her ask her husband..."

So when does the church grow up and face the facts of science, and not base silly and demeaning demands upon women on mythology and error? When does a church finally admit to errors in teachings that hurt people? Never from what I can see. Let's remember, the Church took 350 years to apologize for almost burning Galileo at the stake for informing them that the earth was not the center of the solar system with the sun revolving around it or around the Church for that matter. Yet that's about the right amount of time for Churches to come to their senses and stop demanding of people things based in falicies. At what point does ignorance stop oppression and pain?

Only a relative few Christian women will have the confidence to step out of the box of fundamentalist Church control. They will suffer at the hands of ministers who quote Paul who frankly was misinformed as to how things really are in biology, endocrinology and genetics. Literal control over a woman by using allegorical or just plain wrong "facts" is wrong. It hurts the spirit and demeans the woman in a world where we better soon wake up to the fact that we all are one and the same.

So sorry guys... yes, you with the useless nipples. Without a woman, you would not exist, and without a good sprinkling of hormones at just the right time after your conception, the female default position you started out as would keep you there or perhaps acting in ways that the Bible also goes on to condemn you for, mostly with death.

Whether your pastor, church, tribe or friends like it, good science, truthfully so called, trumps sincere but ignorant Apostles, Priests, Popes and Kings. Dr. Thiele is correct.

"Contrary to some creation myths, in mammals, maleness arises from femaleness, not the other way round."