COG Prophet Upset LCG Members Read and Post Here

Ever since this blog started I have had various COG members in various groups as readers.  As time goes by, more and more share information about the abusive ministers and leaders of their churches.

The Internet has been a major thorn in the side of many COG groups.  No longer can they sweep under the rug the abusive things they do and say.  People talk, people leak information.  From the Ambassador Report, the Good News Grapevine, the Painful Truth, Ambassador Watch, Silenced, and many other sites, the Church of God has had to continually do damage control.  Members no longer trust their leaders to tell the truth or to do what is right.  When abuses happen, people quickly spill the beans.  This infuriates ministers so much that they stand in front of their congregation and tell members to NOT read things on the internet.  The moment they do that, their members start reading blogs and websites with a fervor.  This what happened when Rod Meredith stood in front of his congregation and told them to not read this blog.  Within hours the readership here increased dramatically and has remained so ever since.

People share things because they are disgusted by what is happening.  They share things because they care about their church and want things to change. They share things about the abusive ministers of other groups because they see how their family members and friends lives are being ripped apart.  They share things when they see self-appointed pissants proclaiming themselves as God ordained leaders when they know for a fact that these men are outright liars and don't have a godly bone in their bodies.

LCG members and members of other groups share here because they have a platform that allows them to comment. All of the deluded COG leaders out there do not allow members to question or criticize things on their web sites or blogs.  If these men were really preaching the truth, then they would be secure in what they teach, but none of them are.  They cannot handle anyone questioning them.  They all seem to think they are immune to criticism because they are "God's" ministers.

Many in the Living Church of God know lots of things about self-appointed Bob Thiel and what a hypocrite he is and they feel free to comment.  This has not made the doubly-blessed prophet and future second witless witness happy.

The world renown Mayan and Fatima authority has this to say about LCG members who read and comment here, particularly against those that mock him.  Elijah Thiel cannot wrap his head around the fact that LCG members do not like him and have no problem stating so here.

P.S. In my 06/29/17 a.m. post on this page, I accidentally omitted that according to the Banned by HWA site, the first three sets of comments I reported about from that site were supposedly "From an LCG source." In other words, an unnamed coward who claims to be a Church of God Christian. That person should consider the following:

16 "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Exodus 20:16)
18 Whoever hides hatred has lying lips, And whoever spreads slander is a fool. (Proverbs 10:18)
8 ... all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. (Revelation 21:8)

This is not the first time someone who claims to have been in the Living Church of God has sent the Banned by HWA site false information about me (see the 6/15/17 a.m. post on this page). Anyway, presuming it was someone in LCG, it is distressing that any who claim to be a Church of God Christian would make up such falsehoods. Such a person needs repentance. 

Furthermore, why would anyone in LCG actually want to help the Banned by HWA site?  

The site is not only anti-COG, it seems to relish being anti-CCOG and anti-LCG. Although I do not know LCG's top evangelist, Gerald Weston, well, it is not likely that he would want his members to encourage the Banned by HWA site at all, let alone want his members to post falsehoods. 

But it is distressing when any who claim to be in the COG spreads falsehoods to get the way of truth blasphemed (2 Peter 2:2). But in this age we keep seeing it. Many do not have the proper love of the truth.

PS Brother Bob

I am NOT anti-COG.  What I am against is abusive liars and self-appointed false prophets who preach abusive bullshit and wreck people's lives, like you are doing.  If a COG member is grounded in their faith and have a relationship with Christ, then there is not one single thing I can say here that will cause them harm.  It is abusers of the brethren like you, Flurry, Pack, Weston, Kubik, and others that are the issue.  I am an issue because deep down you know you are a fraud and cannot handle the criticism.

Jim O'Brien, COG Cincinnati Demands Respect

It is amazing to read the tripe that COG ministers write about all of the time. With people struggling to make ends meet, to people dealing with drugs, homelessness, continued racism, outright hatred, and the myriad of other life issues, the ministry of the COG, being the privileged elite and spiritually lazy ministers of the Church of God that they are, write about useless crap that has no relevance to anyone's life.

Jim O'Brien of the Church of God Cincinnati, writes about one of the Church of God's major pet doctrines, how people dress.  Jesus never worried about the dress of those he touched but COG ministers do. They are more worried about wrinkles or the type of clothing that people wear rather than they are about lying fools that have self-appointed themselves as COG prophets and leaders. The length of a skirt or a pair of blue jeans is more offensive than abusive leaders like Flurry who have driven members to suicide and ripped generations of families apart.  They don't care that Dave Pack is bleeding his members dry, both financially and spiritually with his endless consciousness-streaming of utter bullshit.  Nope, it is more important that members be admonished over some wrinkled clothing.

O'Brien also talks about "lack of respect" in society today but failed to talk about the lack of respect that many Church of God ministers have towards their members.  The ground is literally littered with abused and disrespected Church of God members and ex-members who have suffered because of these fools for 80 some years.

Culture of Disrespect

Laura Ingalls Wilder is famous for her series of books, "Little House on the Prairie," depicting her childhood in pioneer America. One of the memorable experiences of life is being snuggled between our kids-and later grandkids-reading bedtime stories of Laura's adventures as the tiny tots hung on each colorful word.

She described moving to Missouri in a covered wagon to homestead their new land. Alone on the prairie they were running low on food so Pa had to leave Ma and the kids alone for a couple of days to forage for meat. Laura described living in the covered wagon away from any other humans. One morning Ma took their freshly washed petticoats and put them on the step of the wagon to be ironed.

There was no other explanation, but I was left wondering why little girls on the prairie needed to dress in petticoats and I could only imagine what it must take to iron them when there was no electricity.

The kids asked, "Why would they iron their clothes when no one else was around?" Donna, always the font of wisdom, responded, "They were not trying to impress anyone, respect is the culture of civilized people."

O'Brien then uses this as an example of why people need to dress well in church.  Because Jesus (supposedly) neatly folded up his body wrappings before leaving the tomb, COG members need to dress properly and keep the wrinkles away.

An often-overlooked act of Jesus occurred during the minutes after He was resurrected. When the stone was rolled away the Gospel account records that the blanket was neatly folded. It's remarkable that Jesus would take the time to fold the blanket during such a momentous event.

At times I wonder what God thinks of the way some Christians dress when coming to worship Him.

In ancient Israel when the Ark of the Covenant was returned after having been lost to the gentiles for a period of time a tragic event took place. When the Ark arrived men allowed curiosity to overcome respect for the sacred. "But God struck down some of the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they looked into the ark of the Lord. (1 Samuel 6:19) These were Israelites who knew that the Ark was holy to God. You don't open the doors of the Ark anymore than you allow a man to walk into the women's restroom-but then America has forgotten that the body is sacred.

Later when the Ark was being transferred to Jerusalem, "Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. Then the anger of the Lord was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his error; and he died there by the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:6-7)

How can a person read these accounts without concluding that respect for sacred things is a core part of Christianity?

When have most of the COG leaders ever respected members?  How can COG leaders talk about respect for "sacred things" when they know nothing about the man they claim to follow or to even act like him.  It is more important to talk about Moses and the law than it is to talk about Jesus, grace, and mercy.

Compare that with the recent news story of a comedienne holding an image of the severed head of the President of the United States. Is tolerance for such barbaric antics the mark of a civilized people?

Nothing has done more to civilize mankind than the values of the Bible. Few things have done more to undermine civilization than the disrespect encouraged by the popular media.

Until next time,

Jim O'Brien

Why Did The Race Admission Polices at Ambassador College Change So Rapidly In 1970?

1962 Plain Truth

The following is from the Ambassador College Pasadena Alumni site and is reposted here with Greg Doudna's permission.  It deals with the sudden change in the Ambassador College policy on admitting African Americans to the Pasadena campus.

Greg Dounda is the author of the fascinating book, Showdown at Big Sandy: Youthful Creativity Confronts Bureaucratic Inertia at an Unconventional Bible College in East Texas

Gavin Rumney had an excellent review of the book here.   Gavin writes:  

Well, I didn't, and I'm indebted to Greg for plugging a number of gaps from the WCG's past. More specifically, the way the world looked from Big Sandy in the Seventies.

The WCG can probably be grateful that Greg wised up and found better things to do, for it's just plain scary to imagine what he would have got up to if he'd stayed and risen through the ranks. Just reading through his doctrinal papers from that time – positions he has long since moved beyond – indicate that this guy would have raised more than a little hell along the way.

The subtitle says it all: “Youthful Creativity Confronts Bureaucratic Inertia...” Doudna provides insight on a number of characters from the times: Dean of Students Ronald Kelly, for example, who is described as a hard working “company man”... one of many “yellow pencils” cut from the same mold... [who] did not try to disguise his lack of interest in things intellectual.

There are also anecdotes involving Herman Hoeh, Kenneth Herrmann, GTA, Charles Dorothy and other characters. The chapters on tithing and creationism are excellent, the treatment of healing and medicine is downright sobering, and the discussion of the old God Family doctrine is simply fascinating. (Let's all not tell Bob Thiel about that chapter, as he'd probably misunderstand it and gloat insufferably.) 

Race admissions policies at AC--why changed?

One of the dark sides of WCG/AC was race: at beautiful, oasis-like AC, foretaste of the world tomorrow, prior to [1970] 1971 , unmarried African-American church members were by policy not admitted as students to any of the AC campuses, excluded on the basis of the color of their skin, on ideological grounds citing the Bible. This changed in [1970] 1971 (single black students began to be admitted).

Why did that change in [1970] 1971?

Here is the true story on that--a story so little known among us that even Ambassador Report and Trechak missed this one ... a story I too missed in "Showdown" because I also did not then know ... a story of AC history that to my knowledge to the present day remains unpublished in print. (Therefore it is necessary for this post to be longer than normal, to tell this information.)

A first mystery is that although the change in AC admissions policies in 1971 was open and well-known, there was no official explanation from headquarters as to why. They just did it, without saying why. Why the lack of explanation? 

A second mystery was that the change was not done at all AC campuses, only the two US-based ones. Bricket Wood AC continued exclusion of unmarried black applicants from being students until that campus's closure in 1974. Whatever the reason for the 1971 change at Pasadena and Big Sandy, why did it not extend to UK's AC?

Those taking care of legal affairs for HWA and AC at headquarters would have known, even if most at the student level and the church membership did not. It was because the US govt was threatening to remove tax exemptions for charitable institution status from church-related educational institutions which were practicing racial discrimination. This story is told (without mention of AC) in Randall Balmer, "The Real Origins of the Religious Right" (Politico May 27, 2014), here.

Bob Jones University of North Carolina had similar policies to AC: segregation was divinely ordained, interracial marriage was sin, blacks excluded from admissions. "The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: it did not admit African Americans." Note the timing: November 1970. Spring 1971: admissions offices for AC Pasadena and AC Big Sandy for the first time, and coordinated, admit single black men and women students for the 1971-1972 academic year. AC Bricket Wood, safely beyond the evil clutches of the IRS, unchanged.

Bob Jones University resisted the intrusion of a godless federal government interfering with their God-given right to be racist on biblical grounds. All across America, evangelical churches rallied to defend Bob Jones University. The IRS pulled Bob Jones U's tax exemption, costing BJU millions. Still BJU did not cave. BJU appealed all the way to the Supreme Court where they lost there, going down fighting, cause celebre for the newly-organized evangelical right across America.

Unlike Bob Jones University, WCG headquarters in Pasadena, which would have received the same IRS inquiry at the same time as and in practically the identical situation as Bob Jones University on this issue, did cave and got in compliance. This is why the timing, and why this true reason was never told to the membership. It never was about growing in the truth of God or acknowledging and repenting of harm done to the souls of God's creation by racism. It was about the legal threat, and a choice at some level in the upper echelons of headquarters (however it was explained to HWA), a cost-benefit financial calculation, to obey the mandate of a godless state demanding an end to racism, over the law of "God", quote unquote, understood to divinely ordain exclusion of unmarried blacks out of a deep, primal fear in some quarters at headquarters that such would inevitably lead to the existential horrors of interracial dating and marriage, aka contamination of the white race.

In 2000 Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, explained on the Larry King show that the policy against interracial dating had ended the very day of that interview, never had been a big deal to anyone, and had been misrepresented in the press. Read that amazing interview here (so many parallels to AC): http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0003/03/lkl.00.html

Certainly one of the admirable features of the GCI transformation, other issues aside, was coming to terms directly with and repudiation of this past history of racism at AC. Perhaps one day the vision of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech will come true worldwide in reality: a world in which all people of all colors are part of our common human family.

The Chicago Southside congregation recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.  The Chicago church was predominantly African American and this is the video referred to in the rest of Greg's post below.

AC and race

Thank you very much Ken (4904). Based on the "Chicago South Side Congregation Documentary" the start of admissions of African American unmarried students began at AC Pasadena in 1970-1971, a year earlier than I had thought. But it was caused by the IRS ruling of 1970 removing tax-exempt status from church-related schools which had racist admissions policies.

At 12:56f in the documentary Ron Washington recalls, "In 1970, the summer, late July, I was at work in Albany, and I got a phone call from Mr. Jackson, and he said 'Ron,' he said, 'they've just opened Ambassador College for African Americans, single.' He said, 'I'd like to have you apply...'"

Note the timing: only ca. 4-5 weeks before the beginning of that academic year! A decision was suddenly made at headquarters--for the first time ever in the church's history--to allow unmarried African Americans to AC Pasadena to apply for an academic year just about to begin. And phone calls were being made to get some African Americans in, fast. In the documentary Willard High, part of the same entering freshman class as Ron Washington according to the 1971 Envoy, recounts that five unmarried African-American men and five African-American women were admitted that year (1970-71). 

Why the last-minute timing and the rush? Had years of pangs of conscience reached a tipping point in humble, spirit-led deliberations at headquarters, and after heartfelt prayer the headquarters ministry had come to see that a shameful policy should be ended, because it was the right thing to do? 

No, it was the godless IRS ruling. Note the timing: "in July 1970, the I.R.S. concluded that it could 'no longer legally justify allowing tax-exempt status to private schools which practice racial discrimination'" (http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/25/us/excerpts-from-opinion-and-dissent-on-tax-status-of-schools.html).

Evidently, AC officialdom at Pasadena did not wait for the IRS to come calling directly before reacting with a hurried attempt to get in compliance at the last minute at Pasadena. The next year, 1971-72, the same policy was up and running at Big Sandy in a more orderly and timely manner. At Bricket Wood I continue to believe it is accurate that unmarried African-Americans/Africans were refused admission throughout the entire history of that campus from start to finish in 1974, notwithstanding 4902. I checked the 1969 Envoy and I see no black faces in the 1968-69 senior class or in any other class at Bricket Wood. I do see a senior woman that year identified as from India who looks Indian, Grace Clements. So technically Bricket Wood was not 100% white. But in the old South African tripartite division of white, colored, and black, Ms. Clements would not be regarded as black, simply because she was not white. 

Until ca. 2005, all those years, I had just assumed that the racist admissions policy at AC had ended because church officials had come to see that it was wrong and ended it for that reason. I did not realize all those years, until I accidentally read about the Bob Jones University case, that the true reason was far less noble: it was the IRS ruling. I did not even realize until ca. 2005 that the changes in the US Ambassador campus policies never even happened at Bricket Wood. What does it feel like to be excluded, not included? Here is an email exchange of ca. 2005 with fellow student Murdock Gibbs (today a GCI elder) that brought this home to me:

Me: When I looked at the Envoy for 1974 a few months back I was surprised to notice 100% white faces in all four classes of Bricket Wood shown (unlike Pasadena and Big Sandy). How come I didn't remember that? Or did I know it and forget it? Did you know that?

MG: Because you're white. And it really wasn't an issue that affected you. If you saw a Bricket Wood photo of only women, you probably would have questioned what was going on--you being a male, this would directly affect you and your perceptions. I guarantee you, every time a black WCG family or person looks at a photo of AC--paging through the Envoy or some other idyllic portrayal of life at AC, we're thinking, "Where are the black people?"

The "Chicago South Side Congregation Documentary" (25 mins.) is really worth viewing.