LCG Mentioned In Article on "War on Religion"

Jonathan Madison, in an article for The Daily Journal, out of San Mateo, CA, mentions the Living Church of God in an article about attacks on places of worship.  The mass killings at the mosque in New Zealand spurred on the article.

I am saddened to learn that 50 victims have been identified among those killed in the March 15 terror attacks on two Christchurch mosques in New Zealand. The tragedy marks the single deadliest massacre in New Zealand’s history.

One can only fathom why someone would take the lives of innocent and peaceful members of a congregation engaging in a worship service. It is no wonder why the tragedy has shocked the world and has marked a period of mourning. As shocking the event and its aftermath, history reminds us that terror attacks on religious institutions and congregations are much more common than one might think. 

The Roman Empire is notoriously remembered for its relentless persecution since 64 A.D. The empire made terror attacks on believers in Christ a blood sport. These persecutions would occur in public places such as the Colosseum, and also involved floggings, beheadings and crucifixions. 

More recently, church bombings and shootings are on the rise in America and abroad. According to research by Charles Chinn, a church security expert, more than 617 innocent victims have been killed on faith-based properties in the U.S. since 1999. These deaths occurred as a result of 18 fatal church shootings in that timeframe. Below is a list of some of the churches in which those fatal shootings occurred.  The war on religion

He then goes on to list many of the church related killings in the United States between 1999 - 2017.

Living Church of God is included in this list.

Living Church of God made the news in 2005 when one of its members went on a killing spree in the Brookfield, Wisconsin church.  Terry Ratzmann, an LCG member, shot and killed seven people at Sabbath services.  Numerous media reports and even LCG members said he was spurred on by the rage filled sermons by Rod Meredith about the end times.

That is the difference between the LCG killings and most of the other incidents reported.  It was the aberrant teachings of Rod Meredith that spurred on Ratzmann. His endless bellowing aberrant sermons on the end times, his appalling homophobia, and constant brow beating of members that they were not worthy in God's sight, slowly built up into an uncontrollable rage in Ratzmann.  After years of hearing this dangerous concoction of misery, doom and unworthiness, Ratzmann snapped.

Living Church of God, as have most of the other Armstrong Churches of God have still not learned their lesson.  How long will it be till a Restored Church of God member, or a recent fired employee goes on a killing spree? What about the Philadelphia Church of God?  They are on the verge of fleeing to Petra.  How long will it take for a disgruntled member to snap and kill PCG members? Then there is the blithering idiot Ron Weinland and his dingy second witless witness wife Laura.  Has the ACOG ever had two more psychotic people in charge than these two?  Even Bob Thiel is going to have issues with is little group.  Having no control over his African "members", how long will it be till one of his "evangelists" leads his followers into killing themselves like other "Christian" ministers have done in the tribal areas?

Persecution of ACOG members has always come from within.  Its top leaders are to blame. They all have mental health issues that they need to get treatment for, and in some cases, committed!

Restored Church of God: Are You A Maggot Like Jesus?

It is Passover time in the various Armstrong Churches of God.  It is a time to face the fact you are a worthless piece of garbage in God's sight, so much so that you are nothing more than a maggot.  The church has been very good and making members believe they are unworthy, but the Restored Church of God takes it further.  You are a maggot!

Rod Meredith loved to say we are all worms and loved to reinforce that idea at Passover time.

Reading further in Psalm 22, Christ stated a comparison that can better help us understand His emotional state: “I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people” (vs. 6).

Let these words sink in.

A worm can describe many different creatures such as microscopic grubs and 5-inch-long earthworms. Yet all of them live under man’s foot. They are disregarded by all above them, and they are subject to being stepped on and crushed.

The God-being known as the Word had lived for an eternity before His birth as a physical human being. He, under the Father’s direction, created billions of galaxies and planets. His glory was like the sun in its strength. He had limitless power. And His joy never ceased.

Christ gave that up to become a mere, fleshy human being. Yet that was still far above a worm. Recognize what it took for Him to feel like a pitiful ground crawler.

Job, too, referred to himself as a worm to describe his emotional turmoil. He stated: “I have said to corruption, You are my father: to the worm, You are my mother, and my sister” (17:14).

The Hebrew word translated “worm” in this verse is rimmah, which is defined by Strong’s Concordance as “a maggot.”

Consider that Job had just lost all of his livestock, his children and his health. He was treated maliciously by his wife, and felt rejected by God. The best way he could summarize the crushing humility was by calling himself the son of a maggot.

How utterly worthless one must feel to compare himself to a larva that crawls on dirt and eats decomposing dead matter!

Because Christ labeled Himself a worm, He gave us a way to more deeply appreciate His sacrifice.

The term “worm” referring to Christ in Psalm 22 is different than the one Job used. The Hebrew word is tola. It also refers to a maggot but specifically “the crimson grub.”

When understood, this term sheds more light on Christ’s sacrifice.

Crimson grub is a species of scaled insect called Coccus ilicis or Kermes ilicis. Unlike most other worms, they are born with legs. However, females eventually lose the use of their legs, possibly giving them their worm designation.

The tiny insect—7 millimeters in diameter at largest—is notable for its color. Brownish-red when young, they become more reddish in color when maturing. According to The Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition, when the insects reach maturity in March, they “appear full of a reddish juice resembling discolored blood.”

When the insects reach this state, they are collected and killed to extract a crimson dye. Crimson is a deep red color, with tinges of blue or purple, close to the dark color of deoxygenated blood.

In calling Himself a crimson grub, Christ described His state in two ways.

First, it represents His sacrificial body and the blood He shed for the sake of mankind (Matt. 26:28). Interestingly, the dye produced from the crimson grub was so valuable that it was used as tribute paid to conquering Roman armies. Landlords in the Middle Ages also accepted it as payment for rent. Christ’s blood is the ransom payment for our sins (Rev. 1:5).

It is this blood we symbolically drink during the Passover (I Cor. 11:25).

Second, the crimson grub comparison reveals Christ’s state of mind as He was despised and rejected by men and His Father (Luke 17:25).

The Rotten Fruit of the Armstrong Churches of God

"While ministers claim they are speaking godliness, truth, life, and hope, 

70 years of historical fact and evidence has proven it has been a 

volatile, cancerous mass of lies, deceptions, greed, and life-sucking, vampire-like, 

materialistic full-blown deception straight from the depths of the most harmful and destructive methods ever used by religion for greedy, 

unconscionably executed acts."

Over and over again, in the New Testament writings, on every occasion while talking with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, Jesus exemplified the greater elements of the Law which are activated and enabled by the Spirit of God. These attributes are defined by the Fruits of the Spirit, such as gentleness, meekness, love, temperance, patience, peace, mercy, joy, and self-control.

These have been the qualities of perfection that Jesus continually said to strive for – to bring the soul and spirit to perfection in Jesus – through the power of the Spirit. To become more like God – in love, in attributes – and less like Satan – who is defined by actions that are contrary to the fruits of God as listed above.

What the Churches of God in Armstrong did – and continue to do – is completely and totally disrespect the foundation and function of the intention of the Law of God through the highlighting of activities that do nothing whatsoever to blossom the spiritual fruits of the Spirit of God.

Sabbath keeping – as good in intention as members are to try to please God by keeping the Sabbath – fall short, for one very glaring reason. You can keep the Sabbath with complete physical compliance and completely break it by the slightest impure thought, the slightest illegal transaction – and a million other possible code violations of the Spirit. Jesus continually tried to hammer this point home to the legalistic Pharisees whenever they boasted at how they were the chosen and called ones because of their compliance to the Law. They were not. The Spirit of God calls for a higher code than Sabbath keeping.

The same exact principle is in play for Holy Day keeping (another form of Sabbath Keeping). There is absolutely no way, as good in intention as anyone possibly could be, will meet God's standard no matter how compliant one is physically. Because regardless of sunset times, work avoidance, looking at the moon, barley, or any other physical compliance of an ancient national code, these activities never touch the attitude and the fruits of the Spirit. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

Whenever you focus on the things of the physical over and above the things of the Spiritual, you begin to amplify and magnify the things of the physical. It's a law that when you begin to believe you are qualifying of yourself through your actions to salvation – which is, denial or not, what each of us believed – the negative spiritual fruits begin to take root. The chief of which is pride, which grows in conjunction and parallel with works. Once pride begins to take root, every other negative fruits of the physical begin to also take root – one of the biggest of which is judging (condemned by Jesus). This happens every time, over and over again, without fail. The pride of works also brings a certain arrogance that works against the Spirit's commands of love and understanding – facilitating the very hubris that leads to the self-righteous indignation that promotes the hatred, bigotry, and intolerance of the most religious and pious of professing Christians.

Of itself, Sabbath and Holy Keeping – without the revelation of faith and love – served a wonderful purpose. It promoted a system of order. It signaled a coming change from being cut off from God to being at one with God. It served a purpose of foreshadowing a time when humanity can be reconciled and at one with God, fully indwelt with his Spirit through Christ in His Rest. Yet those who were commanded to keep the Sabbath and the Law of Moses were absolutely not aware of the realities that had not yet been revealed. They couldn't be. Yet they were being made ready for such a time to come through and after Christ fulfilled all that the Sabbath, Holy Days, and the Law foreshadowed.

After the higher order was revealed – the things of faith, hope, and love – the New Covenant, and the revealing of Jesus Christ, and the reconciliation of God to Man – the book and the ways of God were then made known to man. These are the ways as taught in the entirety of the New Testament. These ways include the Beatitudes. Servitude. Kindness. Compassion. Being merciful. Giving. And the new commandment that Jesus gave to all man – to love one another.

What the Church did – what Armstrong did – and what leaders of Armstrong splinters do – constantly – is magnify the physical, and thereby the fruits of the physical, which, in itself, shuts off the very substance of faith, hope and love that was revealed in Christ. What the Church and Armstrong and Splinter leaders do is promote a system which is based on the magnification and promotion of sin, all while claiming it is godly (while the fruits thereof are entirely and purely wicked.)

While Armstrong claimed godly fruits, he was issuing false prophecies, lies, and speculations. While Armstrong claimed godly fruits, he was abusive in many ways, raging, dis-temperate, scandalous, greedy, impatient, and worldly. This is the same with many other Armstrong ministers, which lead to scandal, drama, crime, and intrigue. These very fruits of wickedness led to cover-ups of actions of wickedness, which defined the culture of the church from the inside and out.

While other splinter ministers followed the same formula as Armstrong, the exact same physical fruits of wickedness have borne dark fruit: Greed, materialism, spiritual extortion, crime, abuse, lies, and false teaching. It has happened before, it is happening now, and as long as the same wicked and satanic formula is being used, the same will continue to happen. Because while physical laws are being exemplified by the Armstrong Churches of God, spiritual laws are concurrently being violated, leading to an infiltration of wickedness and evil, all claiming to be godly when it is satanic. It is a masterful, cunning, slick deception to volatile, well-meaning members who are being slowly assimilated into the fold of darkness.

This cancer of Armstrongism – this drug of spiritual wickedness that has formed so many addicts – entraps members into actually enabling, supporting, and being an accessory to the very wickedness that the so-called “ministers” use as their fuel to rob, steal, and destroy. Members begin to lose all sense of rationality – blindly trusting in the untrustable, blindly following the blind, and obeying those who should never be given the time of day, or listened to. All of which is blatantly oxidized by pure, brilliant, paralyzing, and hypnotizing fear.

While ministers claim they are speaking godliness, truth, life, and hope, 70 years of historical fact and evidence has proven it has been a volatile, cancerous mass of lies, deceptions, greed, and life-sucking, vampire-like, materialistic full-blown deception straight from the depths of the most harmful and destructive methods ever used by religion for greedy, unconscionably executed acts. Those trapped in the system become deaf, blind, mute, and desensitived to the harm, instead, steadfastly supporting the very evil they claim to abhor, following the ministry of death in favor of the law of the Spirit.

This is the legacy of Armstrongism. It is never found in a wicked power system which favors the powerful and craps on the peasants. It is never found in a system that has been proven as archaic, destructive, and obsolete. It is never found in a system which has a historical record of lies and deceit, while claiming to be Godly. It is never found in a system of oppression, isolation, and dissapointment.

Armstrongism is a destructive, deceptive, satanic cult which has hid itself as a ministry of light. Though some have made the best of a tragic situation, it does not change Armstrongism for what it is, and has been, and will continue to be, as proven by factual evidence of truth. And once one looks to truth and fact – and focuses on the things of God and not of the physical – blinders can be lifted. Materialism can be a very addictive drug. And Armstrongism was a powerful overdose of materialistic human nature, which some still defend to this day as righteousness. May sanity prevail in those still addicted to the powerful drug of Armstrongism, and the road to rehabilitation be available to those consumed by it's destructive nature.

courtesy of SHT