UCG West Virginia: Sexual Abuse and Embezzlement

Here is another story about sexual abuse  in the Church of God and how the ministry of UCG tried to cover it up.  Check out Silenced for this story about a UCG elder that was sexually abusing women in his congregation.  The members knew about, complained and UCG honcho's covered it up (some of these guys now are parked on their self-righteous asses in COGWA.)

I had heard about this congregation several years ago when it happened.

 An excerpt: 

Several years ago there was an entire UCG congregation in West Virginia which seceded from the mothership after a local elder molested a young lady in the congregation. The local elder had a history of doing this sort of thing. He had repeatedly been admonished by church leaders to stop, but as is so often the case, he didn’t because he knew they would never discipline him. Keep in mind, this was back around 2004 – 2005 when all the leaders of COGWA were still running United. Doug Horchak, Jim Franks, Richard Pinelli, Clyde Kilough, etc., were all aware of what had taken place with this elder and how he had molested a young girl. 

There are three reasons why I’ve waited until now to shine some
light on this very troublesome situation. First, the church asked all
family members to not discuss the case until a decision was reached
or else they would drop the appeal. Second, I really believed that
the leaders of our church would take at least some just action to
resolve the issue of an elder and sexual harassment. Third, after
reading Mr. Pinelli’s misleading response I felt it necessary to
share some relevant facts in this matter.

It is a fact that an elder in WV has sexually harassed my sister-in-
law. The “hugs” were accurately described in posts by
Lindap, the elder would sneak up from behind, lock his arms directly under the
breasts and then squeeze very tightly and lift for an extended period
of time. There was indeed touching that could be categorized, at the
very least as grossly inappropriate, and more accurately as
molestation. I can absolutely guarantee you that such hugs would be
grounds for severe discipline or reprimands were they to take place
at one of our UCG Youth Camps. This situation involves an ordained
official in UCG, are the standards less? This act of touching
inappropriate body parts is in and of itself defined as sexual
harassment in UCG’s own Sexual Misconduct Guidelines (Section N
reads: “No lewd touching or other inappropriate contact of a
sexual nature is permitted with minors”).

There will still be some who will defend this elder’s actions as
Mr. Pinelli did by describing them as “signs of grandfatherly
affection” or by arguing that the elder meant nothing perverse by them. I
already believe the prior paragraph alone, would require for UCG
leaders to take some kind of action. But to those who are still
skeptical let me provide the following evidence that has led me to
believe his actions reflected his intent.

Read the entire story here: More sexual shenanigans recently in the COG

West Virginia seems to  present UCG with a lot of issues.  A few years ago there was a UCG member in WV who embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the bank she worked in.  She would show up at UCG services and hand out envelopes of cash to people who were in need and who needed help to attend the Feast.  She took a lot of the money and built the local congregation their own church building.  When she was arrested and then jailed the government repossessed the UCG church building and took it away from them.  The last I heard UCG made no attempt to repay any of the stolen money.

Apostle Malm: Catholics Invented Islam To Kill Off Church of God Members and Jews

Apostle Malm is doing a series of posts over the next few days on Islam, Christianity and the Jews. One of his acolytes is claiming that Islam was invented by the Catholic Church in order to kill off all Christians and Jews.

James, what do you think of the notion that is out there about the apostate church “inventing Islam” in the beginning as a means to Help destroy the Jews and true Christians? It is said that “The Vatican helped to finance the three Islam armies of old, in exchange for three favors: One was to eliminate the Jews and Bible Believers. One was to protect the Augustinian monks and the Roman Catholics, and the last reason was the most important; to conquer Jerusalem for the Pope. The Muslim army conquered Jerusalem, but refused to co-operate with the Vatican. “. 

There are so many similarities within these religions, from physical idols to human idols, etc., and obviously they are both from Babylon. I guess it really doesn’t matter how Islam got its roots, so long as we realize that all of this false religion is from satan. It shows how the drive for ” peace and all-one religion” will be able to come about so easily when radical Islam is declared to be done away. Their premises are so similar, but most cannot see it

The Apostate Apostle answers: 

You are correct! Tomorrow I am covering the Ottoman Empire to the present. The next day I will cover the fact that all religions including Catholicism, Islam and modern Judaism are only different cosmetically and actually are the same. Satan is the god of this world and has deceived the whole world. God has prevented him from actually uniting these religions into one; but that will change with the final false prophet who will be allowed to deceive the WHOLE WORLD and he will become the ultimate moral authority for all religions. It is this COG “Islam is worst” nonsense that is deceiving them into a false position on prophecy; that I am trying to deal with. James

So much of Armstrongite thought processes take factual events of history, dress it up with conspiracy theories and stupid speculations and them promotes it as truth. Uneducated readers can read the above and find it to make sense to them.  However, if you do research on the topics Armstrongites claim authority on, you quickly see that it is a mixture of all kinds of truths, half truths, speculations and out right lies.  That is exactly  how they interpret scripture too.  It sounds halfway good at first glance but then when you really look into it, it is nothing more than an abominable mess.

The Shrinking Church

This was sent to me today.  Reading this you have to wonder what is the purpose of leaving the doors open any longer for GCI?  While many people had high hopes it would morph into something bigger and better, it just seems to be shrinking smaller and smaller.


To think that over the 70 some years of it's existence close to half a million members were on the WCG church membership list. The chruch area I grew up[ in (Dayton Ohio) had over 700 members by the time I left to come to Pasadena in 1975.  It was common in many areas to have church memberships in the 300+ range.  Sure, there were lots of smaller one, but many were large in number.  Now to see that average attendance for GCI in late 2011 is 26 is appalling.

...the following statistics which I obtained on October 31, 2011 in a phone conversation with Nancy Akers, who is the executive secretary to the Superintendent of Ministers in America. 1) Our weekly attendance in America is 7,832. This is 9% of what it used to be. 2) We have 300 congregations. While this number has only declined by approximately a third, the decline in average attendance per congregation is shocking. In 1989 it was 191; by October of 2011, it was only 26.