Living Church of God: Is It Really the Church of Brotherly Love?

For decades the Church of God claimed it was the Philadelphian era of the Church of God.  It was the church of brotherly love that had the truth that Jesus personally whispered to Herbert Armstrong.  That brotherly love did not extend too far out, especially to the Church of God 7th Day whom the church sarcastically labeled the Sardis era, even though it has remained stable and is a church that is actually growing while the COG splinter groups are not.

Ever since the Worldwide Church of God imploded with hundreds of self-appointed false prophets setting themselves up as leaders, the Church of God has become one of the most unloving church ever.  Protestantism and its division is are nothing compared to the bitterness that fills the present day Church of God.  The leaders have tuned into he most unloving group of men the church has ever seen.

Dave Pack's god is getting ready to murder three other COG leaders.  Flurry claims that ALL COG leaders are false.  UCG ruptured after a pissing contest which lead to COGWA forming, all because the ministry could not work together.

Then there is Rod Meredith.  Has the church ever had an evangelist that is more loving and compassionate as he is?  That love still drips from him to this day!

Living Church of God is the only true Philadelphian Church of God in existence in these tumultuous end times!  Or...so says, Doug Winnail:

Real Philadelphia Christians
The Book of Revelation describes Philadelphia Christians as having a strong desire to carry out the mission that Jesus Christ gave to His Church (Revelation 3:7-11). According to the Scriptures, that mission involves preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to this world and especially to the Israelite nations (Mark 1:14-15; Matthew 10:1-7), warning the world about difficult times that will arise at the end of the age (Matthew 24, Mark 13; Luke 21), and preparing a people to reign with Jesus Christ in the coming government of God (Luke 1:17). However, the name “Philadelphia” means “brotherly love,” which indicates that true Philadelphians will also strive to follow Jesus’ admonition to “love one another” (John 15:12-17). They understand that showing unselfish, outgoing concern for others (instead of sitting in judgment of others) is one of the distinguishing marks of a real Philadelphia Christian (John 13:34-35). As we look forward to the coming year, let’s all look for ways to show more “brotherly love” to others so we can be real Philadelphia Christians.
Have a profitable Sabbath,
Douglas S. Winnail

It is good to know that we will all experience that true "brotherly love" that Rod Meredith knows how  to spread so well.   Love is in the air brethren!  Can you feel it?

Rod Meredith Smacks Down Jim Franks and Vic Kubik

From an LCG source:

In his recent Living Church News Rod Meredith takes a swipe at Jim Franks and Vick Kubik in his editorial by stating, "We need to “see” His hand as He leads His Church—continuing to have at least one faithful group preaching the whole Truth, doing the Work and practicing the government of God, and so training its members in the exact kind of government we will be administering in tomorrow’s world!"

LCG may pretend to be diplomatic with COGWA and UCG by letting them tour LCG headquarters in Charlotte and by wining and dining them over a meal at Brio's (Meredith takes everyone to the same place) but it's all a farce. He and his ministers continue to preach that LCG is the ONE AND ONLY true church of God; that they are the only Philadelphian remnant; that membership in any other group makes you Laodicean and puts your eternal salvation at risk, etc, etc. 

Usually Meredith tries to be more subtle about his swipes on other ACOGs, limiting them to sermons and private conversations, but this recent slip puts it all out there. I wonder how Franks and Kubik will feel having their noses squashed. 

It's obvious what fruits LCG's "exact kind of government" have produced. Tyranny and abuse without checks and balances. LCG wants to pretend that their form of government is better than voting because it avoids politicking but that isn't true. LCG headquarters is the epitome of politics, favoritism, ass-kissing, back-stabbing.  

LCG's superiority complex is disgusting. If I were Jim Franks or Victor Kubik I'd quit pretending that Rod Meredith is anything other than a lying, greedy, power-hungry, tyrant who uses fear to rule. Take the gloves off and give Mr. Golden Gloves what he deserves.

Gerald Weston Has Melt Down Over Internet Blogs And Dave Pack's Annoying Ad's

I received the following from a Living Church of God source.  It concerns the latest screed from Gerald Weston about how the Internet is slandering him, Rod Meredith and the Living Church of God AND how Dave Pack's ads are popping up ahead of Living Church of God web links.

The LCG source writes:

No doubt this is in reference to Banned. 

It's blaringly obvious that Weston and LCG simply do not understand that it's not slander if it's true and that they are literally reaping what they have sown. 

If you don't want "bad things" about you on the internet, don't do bad things, right? Banned isn't slandering LCG by revealing the unjust/evil actions of LCG and its ministry! 

LCG is NOTORIOUS for slandering it's members. This article for Weston is so full of hypocrisy that it is difficult to read.

The article referenced above is this:  Slander on Steroids 

Gerald Weston, God's new right-hand man, has this to say:

Persecution can come in many different forms, and slander is one of them. Today we have more than slander—we have slander on steroids: the Internet. We all know the Internet can be a tool for good, but also for evil, and there is an evil spirit being who is promoting the latter.

When I refer to the Internet, I’m using an umbrella term to cover a variety of ways people communicate electronically: websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, texting and any other form of information quickly transferable through computers, smartphones and other devices and applications.

The big bad meanies on Banned, Painful Truth, Ambassador Watch, Silenced, Living Armstrongism and scores of Facebook pages are picking on poor little LCG.  

None of us who do these blogs or web sites would ever have anything to write if the leaders of the Living Church of God, and all the other COG's, would start treating members with grace, mercy and justice.  If they truly practiced first century Christianity then they would be the most loving group of churches on the face of the entire planet. But they can't because they can't even get along with one another.

Weston continues with this:

Every minister of the Church has run into people who are “on fire” for the Truth one day but who somehow lose all interest overnight. We know that some of this is the result of their reading something negative about the Church on the Internet. How many are turned off this way we can only guess, but we know it happens. We also know that some unscrupulous “Church of God” organizations actively leech off the others. They deliberately target other churches by paying to have their own website come up when people are searching for other organizations. Look for information about a “Church of God” group on a search engine, and, instead, the other organization’s false site comes up first, masquerading as the one being searched for. They then use the false site to discredit the “Church of God” organization the individual was originally trying to find.

The glorious thing about the internet, in spite of its foibles, has been its ability  to keep Church of God leaders in check.  They can no longer get by with the horrible abuses they did in the past by just disfellowshipping and marking individuals.  These people will no longer shut up and slink off into the dark nether regions of Laodiceanism where they will be perpetually ignored.

Notice above Weston's comment that LCG members are reading this site and others, are asking questions, and are leaving.  Far more must be leaving than we imagined for this to be publicly mentioned!

Then Weston takes a direct shot at Dave Pack.  Dave has been buying advertising for many years which pops up anytime a Church of God search is entered into a search engine.   His ads are on Facebook, Drudge, various news sites and most any web site that allows paid advertising.  Dave took advantage of this way before any of the other COG's dreamed of doing it, now none of them can ever outrank him in ad placement. That is a bitter pill to swallow!

Weston calls the ads by other COG's "false sites" in much the same way Bob Thiel uses "improperly named" as a smear tactic against other COG's and Christians. Weston then claims that this advertising is done to discredit the LCG, even as he next directly discredits Pack as a false church.  While Pack is the biggest user of this advertising, one can also see UCG, COGWA and PCG pop up every once in a while.  This should be fair warring to UCG and COGWA that LCG has no interest in every cooperating, regardless of the recent exchange of HQ visits. (More on this development to come in another post tomorrow from another LCG source.)

Weston then admits LCG has a lot of disgruntled members in its midst.

Of course, every business, social group or church will have a few disgruntled and unhappy individuals who are eager to trash the object of their dissatisfaction. When was the last time you found a hotel online that had 100 percent happy reviews? You cannot please everyone all the time, especially if part of your mission is to call upon people to change their behavior (Isaiah 58:1). Human nature being what it is, we have a tendency to believe the worst, especially if there is a bit of colorful sarcasm and wit thrown in.

It should be pointed out to Weston that hotel reviews and criticism of COG's by blogs and web sites are two entirely DIFFERENT things.  While both deal with poor service, some of it much deserved, LCG claims that it is God's own which hotels do not.   If it is God's own, then it cannot make mistakes or be criticized.  To do so is to criticize God directly.  Hotels/businesses that receive bad reviews usually attempt to change things for the better.  LCG does no such thing, even though it knows exactly how bad their service truly is by all of the various comments made by its own members on blogs/web sites and Facebook.

LCG claims it is there RESTORED truth that practices first century Christianity.  They claim they are God's chosen church and have the ONLY truth available that has been personally handed to them by Jesus Christ through Rod Meredith and Herbert Armstrong.  Really?   

Jesus never abuse members like the leaders of the LCG do.  Jesus never treated members with such disdain as the leadership of the LCG does.  Jesus never had disgruntled members pushed over the edge by one of his sermons, who then storm off to later return to the synagogue and slaughter listeners.  Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, the vile people that Rod Meredith and others refuse to eat with.  When has Meredith and Weston ever sat down at a table and had dinner with a prostitute, a drug user, a homeless family, a gay couple, a Muslim, a Buddhist or God forbid, a Catholic neighbor?  

Next Weston attacks authors of books that a are critical of the church.  How dare they call LCG a cult!  Boo Hoo!

Some Protestant groups distort our teachings and call the Church of God a cult, even meriting whole chapters in some books. There is nothing new about distortions, misrepresentations and name-calling (Acts 24:5), but the Internet in all its facets spreads such misinformation and epithets more swiftly and to a wider audience than was ever possible before through books and tracts. There is sometimes some element of “truth” but always with a twist and misinformation that distorts the “truth,” turning it into a lie. Since Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44), it should not surprise us that he would use this tactic, as seen in the temptation of Christ recorded in Matthew 4. The devil accurately quoted from Psalm 91: “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone’” (Matthew 4:6). But he took these passages totally out of context.

Truth twisted into a lie.  That is the favorite way that the leadership of the Church of God has used over the last 80 some years to discredit anyone who dares to hold them accountable.  They fail to see that that little nugget of truth is a sure sign that there is a bigger cess pool lying just under the surface.

Weston then trots out Paul, David, Jeremiah and others to discredit blogs, web sites and unhappy people.  They have always been there through history ready to discourage the true believers.

Yes, it is hard to find in Scripture an example of a significant servant of God who did not suffer persecution by false accusation. The Apostle Paul was a special target for the “bloggers” of his day...

Weston then gets to the typical end product of screeds like this.  It is big bad meanie Satan who is behind all the blogs, web sites, and otherwise grumpy church people.

It is Satan who stirs up slander, and he has no regard for the truth. He can be sarcastic, funny and charming in the way he sells his lies. How many times have we read John 8:44? And yet do we, as human beings, really get it? Jesus said of certain ones, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” 

Satan specializes in one particular kind of lie, as we read near the beginning of this article. He mixes truth with error and by doing so is able to deceive gullible people.

Satan has no power over anyone who is grounded in faith which is actually true.  Apparently the Living Church of God has massively failed in this department.  Find the truth Gerald, it will set you free, so much so that you don't need to constantly be looking over your shoulder for Satan's next attack.

Of course, Satan is not averse to making up outright lies, as seen in Genesis 3 where he told Eve, “You will not surely die,” even though God had told Adam they would. Just as with Eve, some people naïvely believe a total stranger more than someone they have known for a long time—and that is one of the problems with the Internet. Unknown and unrighteous individuals who have accomplished little, but who have lots of time on their hands, can become a “somebody” overnight. Sadly, there are plenty of people who will believe whatever they say, especially if they say it dogmatically, along with a tiny bit of truth mixed with falsehood.

Gerald....Gerald....Gerald...  The things posted here are coming for your Own people!  None of us sit around looking for things to pick at you and the LCG about.  If you and the rest of the COG's would start acting like REAL Christians and STOPPED mistreating members in such vile despicable ways, then none of us would ever have anything to write about!

Weston then writes:

Instead of preaching the Gospel to the world and warning Israel and all mankind about what is coming, these individuals are content to tear down and slander those who are doing these jobs, and they are often “equal opportunity” slanderers. It isn’t just the Living Church of God they are eager to destroy. They have animosity toward any group that teaches anything about the Sabbath, the Holy Days and the Kingdom of God. Why?

Who is slandering you and the LCG?  Your own members?  Do you recall how you treated the Scarborough's?  Do you recall how your boss drove Terry Ratzmann over the edge with one endless doom and gloom sermon after another?  How about the gay church members that have to sit there week after week and listen to your boss treat them like shit?   Since when have you ever practiced true Christianity and acted like Jesus?  When have you ever taught anything Jesus did?  Do you even know the man?

It should be obvious that they have an agenda, and even if everything they report were true—which it never is—their passion is not for God. How anyone can expect to enter the Kingdom of God by such behavior is beyond comprehension, and maybe that tells us something about what truly motivates them.

You bet we have an agenda!  We are sick, just like your own members are sick, of watching you and your fellow leaders treat members like dirt, steal their money to live your privileged lifestyles, build expensive mini campuses and worship Herbert Armstrong instead of Jesus.  We are sick of you preaching heretical doctrines and practices that ignore the New Covenant and its meaning and we are sick of your bastardization of the gospel about a world where you and your fellow masters can lord yourselves over people in your kingdoms with your rods of iron.  Who wants to be part of that kingdom you promote?  What hope do they have in being under your "government"?  Who wants it!?!?!?

Read the entire article here then let Weston and LCG know how things really are!

Slander on Steroids