Remember the days gone by when local churches had tape libraries filled with hundreds of tapes from HQ sermons, feast sermons and local sermons? Member who were not able to make services could check them out the following week to listen to them. Those tapes soon disappeared as CD's entered the technology scene. CD's were sent out from HQ to local areas who them lent them to members to listen to. Then MP3's, podcasts and live streaming hit the scene and CD's were outdated. Tech savvy member soon learned how to download those to CD's that they made for fellow members.
All of these technologies have come back in one form or another to bite various COG's in their royal keisters. Living Church of God scrambled as fast as they could to delete Rod Meredith's sermons that drove Terry Ratzman off the deep end when he shot and killed LCG members one cold Sabbath morning in Milwaukee. Then when Stephen Allwine, an elder in United Church of God, poisoned and then shot his wife, UCG quickly started erasing Allwine from UCG memory. The same has happened in Philadelphia Church of God when horrific stories of abuse or the sermons on prohibiting members from associating with ex-member family members and friends started being circulated. When the outrage piles on, sermons quickly disappear, but by then someone has saved a copy somewhere.
This has led the Philadelphia Church of God to resort to a new feature regarding their sermons. PCG has spend tons of money on new audio equipment for each of their congregations that automatically deletes the previous weeks sermon from HQ from any access. Since only a few select people have access to this machine and the sermon it will no longer make it into the members hands.
“In 2017, the field audio department purchased 151 mp3 players in bulk at a discount. Tauer and Information Services manager Patrick Hogan developed and installed a secure application on them for playing PCG recordings, and the units were distributed to all field congregations over the course of the year. (Regional offices purchased and distributed the devices for their respective congregations.)
The department uploads encrypted messages to the players, which are brought to services by contact people who have been assigned by regional directors. The devices plug directly into sound systems and play the recordings. The following week, old audio is automatically deleted and new audio becomes available.” News of the Church of GodAll of this subterfuge in the various COG's to keep their sermons out of the public domain shows how embarrassing their messages truly are. Deep down they know it. Forget the fact they all claim to be boldly proclaiming a message of the Kingdom of God, that is soon to be coming. That message gets lost in between the idiotic sermons where members are castigated for one offense after another. That is what they are afraid of the public hearing. If the public finds out that they can't respect members, they are going to have second thoughts about joining up and bringing their money with them. That is what embarrasses them the most. The "love" they claim to have for their members is embarrassingly absent. If the public sees how they treat members then the public will have second thoughts about sending money in as co-workers or even listening to the "warning" message.
