Living Church of God: Rod Meredith's Fireside Chat...What Were They Thinking?????

Living Church of God posted a short little video of Rod Meredith delivering a shot clip as a foretaste of his Christmas Eve publicized sermon.  As you can see above Meredith is in a rather disheveled state.

Video is here:  Tomorrow's World Magazine Facebook.  Watch before they delete it.

My favorite LCG source sent me this today concerning Meredith's fireside chat.

Can you imagine Mr. Armstrong or Mr. Apartian allowing themselves to be filmed in such a disheveled state? It would never happen! Not only does RCM say hello to all of us in "radio land" but being in his pajama's makes him look like a crazy old man.

I could almost understand it if they had him in a suave, neatly pressed smoking jacket like Hugh Hefner but instead he looks like a nursing home patient.

This reeks of sabotage. The underlings and boot lickers should have stopped this but they didn't. Could it be that they WANTED him to look stupid?

How does this look to the other COGs? Does this make people want to join LCG? What was the point? Is the average LCG member embarrassed?

The source is right in that Herbert Armstrong would NEVER have allowed himself to be filmed or photographed in such a disheveled look.  HWA was all about appearances and decorum. Someone obviously though this would be a quaint prequel to his sermon.  LCG missed the mark with this one BIG time!

Is "Armstrongism" an accurate name for the COG movement he founded?

Over the decades there have been countless books and articles published about the Worldwide Church of God that was founded by Herbert Armstrong.  Most of these books call his movement "Armstrongism" because he was the founder who claimed to have received revealed knowledge directly from God.

Brandy Webb, of the Church of God International takes exception to the phrase.

The other day, I was reading a comment on a blog regarding COGs (Church of God churches) and it basically grouped them all in the term “Armstrongism.” I have heard the term before, but honestly, I have never really looked into what defined something as being “Armstrongism” until reading some derogatory comments regarding COGs. 

I am not at all easily offended, and I know a lot of people can’t seem to get over the bad things they went through in the past due to Worldwide Church of God (WCG) and the churches that split off from them. Bitterness is a hard weed to pull out of oneself once it has rooted deeply within one’s soul. However, I never knew that the observance of Sabbath and Holy Days were created by Herbert W. Armstrong. Yes, I am being a little sarcastic here, but seriously, it is considered “Armstrongism” if you believe that we are to observe God’s Holy Days. 

Well, I would like to set the record straight. Armstrong wasn’t alive during creation week when God created the sun, moon, and stars to mark His seasons also known in Hebrew as moed, appointed time, place or meeting (Genesis 1:14). This term is the same term in Leviticus 23when God tells Moses to teach the Israelites about His appointed times/Holy Days. In addition, Armstrong was not there when the first Sabbath was created and sanctified (Genesis 2:2-3). In fact, I am positive that he was not the first Christian to desire keeping the Sabbath and Holy Days either. I can see from the Bible that the Sabbath and the Holy Days were kept in the New Testament by not only Jesus but also His disciples, after His crucifixion (some references: John 7:1-44; Luke 4:16; Acts 13:4; Acts 17:2; Acts 20:6; 1 Corinthians 11:23-29). Never in all their teachings did they teach that they were done away with either.

A person commenting on the story had this to say about why Armstrongism is an accurate word to describe the movement:

Armstrongism was the teachings of Herbert W Armstrong that many could not be verified with the Bible but they can be refuted with the Bible. The doctrines of his church could be liken to a potluck where some vain person sampled everything that was offered and claim they were all his. He borrowed some of the beliefs of the Catholics some from the Baptism, and some from secular beliefs and teaching, such as the modern-day identity of Israel, he even borrowed or should we say stole beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist who for the most part he condemn. Armstrongism was based on new revelations that he only had access to. The number one doctrine that was kept hidden was to convince the people to support his personal business better known as the Worldwide Church of God. 

Herbert Armstrong claimed the everything he taught was a direct revelation from his God.  that included Sabbath keeping, Holy Days and the teaching on unclean meats.  Then in his arrogance and vanity, he started adding to those "new beliefs" hundreds and hundreds of peripheral teachings. When families started being ripped apart and lives ruined, the church appropriately was called Armstrongism.  They were his own unique teachings alone that were not part of the New Covenant.  Those teaching where then further bastardized by the likes of Rod Meredith, Gerald Waterhouse, James Malm, Bob Thiel and many others who took things to the extreme.

Dave Pack Deletes Many of His Teachings As He Edits His Sermon Series For Public Consumption

A reader here with an inside track at the Restored Church of God sent the following quote from Dave Pack's recent upload of his endless series of sermons preached at his cult HQ "church."

Dave has made so many wild speculations that he forgets what he has said or claims he has had some new revelation from his god that invalidated a former comment.  So far in his series he has published the transcripts to 49 sermons that he has preached.  Sermons that supposedly are revealing the hidden words of God for the first time since they had been written down. Even Herbert Armstrong was not as smart as Dave! For some reason when Jesus was personally revealing to Herbert Armstrong the truth that had been lost for 1,900 years, he forgot to tell Herb the hidden things he has now been revealing to Dave. Through all of this Dave's members have been sitting there swallowing every revelation as if God personally handed it to Dave.

Apparently though Dave has had to edit almost  every sermon he has preached.  He has made so many mistakes that significant portions have  to be deleted.  Shame on Jesus for revealing the wrong information!

Dave Pack Admits He Has Preached Wrong Information, But Members Refuse to Hold Him Accountable

"As we’re preparing all of these transcripts, one of the things we’re doing, brethren, is we’re cutting large swaths of it out wherever there was error and wherever there was any kind of exaggerated emphasis on me that could be offensive. I want all of that…I want to look like a mustard seed through the 49 or 50, 52 different parts of this. There are just some things I want to not say to everybody outside that they don’t need to hear. They don’t need to understand. 

"I want them to understand this terrible trial they’re going to go through, that they can escape it; how the Kingdom of God will come, and where their part in it is. They don’t need to hear all the error that we’ve had to walk out of through this long series. They don’t need to hear what my role is, or there are just certain things that don’t need to be in it. Partly, to make it shorter and less daunting for even the most serious Bible students, who might say, can I really read all that? The serious ones will and others won’t, and we may break out certain ones for the people who say I don’t want to read them all, and we give them a chance to read certain key ones. The three on the Man of Sin might be such a case—this one, and Part 31, and one other that came a little later. 

"So, in some of these parts of the series, I speculated, and some of that speculation is being cut out; some will be left in. But we’re going to speculate here."