Living Church of God Still Trying To Control What Members Say

Wyatt Ciesielka

For many Living Church of God members, there is no love lost when it comes to Wyatt Ciesielka. He is intensely disliked by many in LCG.

LCG has had a horrendous time keeping their members under control. They are not like those in the old days in the church that when a minister spoke it was as if God was speaking and people submitted. Today, in 2019, that no longer applies and no one cares what some ministers have to say. The internet has changed the way that COG members look at the ministry. People freely share their opinions about church issues, ministers and leaders. People no longer toe the line and LCG is NOT happy!

HWA took the OT pattern and reinvented it as a justification for tight ministerial control over church members. That pattern continues to this day. Just look at LCG's latest online sermon:  The Lips of the Righteous: Conversation Acceptable to God.

If you are a Christian, you have God's Holy Spirit dwelling within you. How arrogant and insulting it is for some minister to dare to tell you whether or not God finds your conversation acceptable. Especially when we know that ministers are some of the ones with the worst conversations tearing each other down behind each other's backs. In an ACOG, it's unacceptable for brethren to warn one another about a wolf-minister in the fold, but it is acceptable for a minister to spread falsehoods about members in order to divide and control them.

Fifty years ago, new members were willing to come under such control, back before HWA's prophecies were proven false. Today, old-timers will listen to these sermons and roll their eyes, knowing from experience that when a minister says "be careful what you talk about" there is indeed something rotten that members need to warn each other about. Prospective new members, however, will move on to a healthier church that doesn't so readily blaspheme the Holy Spirit at work in the hearts of the brethren. 

Holy? In What Universe?

Looking back on my decades in Armstrongism, there is one question that looms louder than any other question: How could we possibly think we were keeping the Sabbath and the Holy Days, well, Holy??

It's not as if I never understood the rationale that the Church and ministry gave us. Obedience, commanded assembly, Church authority, you follow, don't cause division, etc... Yet honestly there were always things that occurred, on the Sabbath, and Holy Days, that always, consistently, week after week or Festival after Festival, that made me question the "holiness" of the Holy Days the way that we observed it. 

Not only were the glaring differentials in the way we "observed" the Holy Days different from How scripture commanded their observances shining out like a spotlight over dark skies - the reality of our version of what makes a holy day holy just didn't add up to the Biblical definition of holiness. Something always seemed completely amiss about our definition of holiness compared to what was defined as holiness in the Holy Scriptures. 

In our worldview, to keep the Sabbath Holy was to obey the Church Polices exactly. To keep the Holy Days was to obey the Church Policies exactly. Yet, at the exact same time that the policies were being kept to the letter of the Law, some of the most carnal, disgusting, and dare I say worldly attitudes were consistently spewing out of members every single week. It was an inconsistency that never made sense to me. I thought to myself, "Why is it that we are calling how we do this holy when there's nothing holy here?"

Never mind the fact of the absolute disrespect we gave God while attempting to worship Him in the most disgusting, cheap, ungodly buildings you could think of. Now I know how you would respond to this. You would probably say that the building is not the church, and you would be right. Yet, when you have awful attitudes and ungodliness smelling the place up like a cow farm, it just made it seem doubly carnal, if you get my drift. 

Sure, we'd stop "working" at sunset on the dot, but the attitudes didn't stop "working". And was "working" on the Sabbath without pay truly not "working", because we were doing it "for the Church and brethren"? It was difficult to work out exactly how it was okay to work your butt off on the Sabbath for fellowship hour, potlucks, or hall set up and take down, but yet you couldn't sit down and watch television because you might get "worldliness" in your head. It was allowed to get suited up and ready for Basketball before Sunset at a district weekend ready to play as soon as the clock hit sundown, but if your mind is on Basketball dressed in the uniform while it's still the Sabbath, aren't you breaking it anyway? These were just a couple of tens of tens of examples that I constantly saw where church leadership, instead of confronting the main issue, used the easy out of "Binding and Loosing" to ease any doubts. "If the Church says it's OK, it's OK, so don't worry about it, it's not your problem."

The problem is, it was our problem. It was all of our "problem". For all of our crowing and pious praises of how great and awesome we were at keeping the Law when everyone else in the world were heathen sinners who did not follow or obey the Law of God, we were breaking it all the time, willingly, and often, knowingly, thinking we were on the right side of the Law when even the slightest breaking of the Law was breaking all of the Law. To say we fell short? That's the biggest understatement ever. We didn't even get past the starting line of law-keeping. And holiness? How many of us truly ever kept the Sabbath holy - in deed, action, and thought? How many of us broke the Sabbath without even knowing we broke the Sabbath - and then used grace as a license for lawbreaking - doing the same thing we always accused protestants of doing - protestants - who we always said never had an understanding of law and grace anyway? How many of us noticed the inconsistencies, just to brush them under the table - afraid to bring it up or talk about if for fear of causing division? How many of us just brushed it under the rug because we believed we didn't have any responsibility in our conduct and behavior once the ministry "bound and loosed"? 

If it was all about obedience to the ministry and the Church, then keeping the Sabbath and Holy Days would have been a piece of cake. Simply call or ask the minister, and if he says it's okay, great, and if it's not okay, don't do it. A surely powerful and effective way to grow in maturity and character, isn't it? Just pawn off all the responsibility to the minister while acting, thinking, and behaving like the word "Holy" simply meant "Human". 

Our version of Sabbath and Holy Day Keeping always was a slap in the fact not only to Jesus Christ and the New Covenant example of Rest in Christ but also to the Old Testament importance of the Law and Holy Days before Christ. It was a farce the way we did it, and a farce to this day in the Splinters. A conversation to have the next time you meet at the Buffet for Sabbath Dinner while the people you hire feed and serve you on such a most holy time.

submitted by SHT

Are We Capable of Causing People To Lose Their Faith?

One of the accusations that is frequently lobbed against us, by hit and run comments, is that we destroy peoples faith.  Of course, that was the favorite mantra that the Church of God used to quell anyone who might think differently than the established system was advocating.  Herbert Armstrong and Church Administration regularly threw that accusation out any time there was the slightest hint of turbulence arising in the church.  It was also used as a moneymaking tool to shame members into constantly giving more and more money to fund the system, just like we are witnessing today in almost every group out there.

Fear of losing faith was a strong motivator in keeping people in line.  The threat of an angry god not allowing us into Petra was a scary thing for many people that led them to knee jerk reactions any time someone criticized the church or the leadership.

We were set up in the church to revere our leaders as the personal mouthpiece of Christ on earth.  Whatever they said we were to obey without ceasing and questioning.  To question was to question God himself!  We loved to mock the Catholics for their strict obedience to the Pope, and yet we were just as worshipful and dogmatic when it came to Herbert Armstrong.  We see this evident still in the various splinter groups of the church today.  Look at how Gerald Flurry and Dave Pack are revered by their devotees today.  They are third in command under God and Christ! Dave and Gerald are the end time mouthpiece sent by God!

Church members were given an endless stream of booklets, magazines, form letters, books, TV programs and correspondence courses to indoctrinate them.  Everything was laid out in black and white as to how people were to believe and act. All of that material did nothing to help establish faith in a person.  If you cornered 98% of the members of any given Church of God today and asked them to prove any doctrine of the church, out of the Bible, WITHOUT using any church-related literature in front of them, they could not do it. Having an endless list of doctrines and rules to follow does not establish faith.  It never has and never will.

When you look at the few followers of Jesus that actually got it, they were not worried about being zealous, adhering to innumerable laws and rules, or dependant upon someone to tell them how to act or believe.  Their minds were totally overwhelmed by the love and compassion that was shown them that they totally reveled in the grace.  Look at the thief on the cross.  He did not have to keep any Sabbath, not eat any pork, or be controlled by some religious Pharisaical nut-job. He did nothing but look at Jesus and witness something that he knew he wanted and needed.  That was faith at its purest form.

What we are witnessing in the Church of God today is a group of men who are mentally unstable. Never has the church had such a crop of mentally unbalanced men.  They all could be test cases for the current DSM manual for mental disorders!

Dave Pack and Gerald Flurry top the list, quickly followed by Bob Thiel, James Malm, and Ron Weinland. These top five are psychopaths getting really close to leading their followers down dark roads of despair, which may, unfortunately, lead to the deaths of many.

The fact that Pack and Flurry have surrounded themselves with a small cabal of men who publicly back them in regards to every word they utter shows just how controlling these two are.  Somewhere, deep down in the farthest reaches of the minds of these men who support Flurry and Pack, there has to be some spark that tells them what they are hearing is a load of bullshit.  Either they are too blinded to wake up or they inwardly are just as corrupt and vile as the men they follow.  Being part of the inner circle of the Church of God has always had a strong appeal to so many mentally unbalanced men over the decades.

The same goes for Bob Thiel and James Malm.  Malm is all about control.  Not a single thing he advocates will ever create faith in his few followers.  He demands zealotry from everyone and strict adherence to the rules and yet Jesus broke the rules over and over leading people to want what he had, so-much-so that they knew that just by touching his garment they would be healed.  That is true zealousness!  Not one single law was required to be kept. No snarling and spitting of Old Covenant laws can ever accomplish that.

And then, there is Bob Thiel.  Really? WTF are we witnessing in him?  Never have we witnessed a man who is so full of himself as we are in Thiel.  His self-importance knows no boundaries; just like his thought processes.  A mentally stable mind would be able to articulate one goal, one vision or one topic at a time.  Thiel's mind wanders as incessantly as his hands do.  Who needs to hear a sermon with 40 different topics covered in it?  How in the hell does that build up one's faith?  I truly feel sorry for his African followers. I am sure many of them are sincere in their beliefs and want to do what is right, but Thiel is leading them astray with his narcissistic personality.  It is all about him, his double blessing and his dreams.   His message is never about Jesus.  It is never about real grace.  It is never about what justification is all about.  It is never about simple faith.  A faith that can be summed up on in a simple, 'help!" or "thanks!"

If what I post here, or what Dennis, TLA, SHT or others post here causes someone to lose their faith, then their faith was not faith after all, but wishful thinking.  Reading about evolution, atheism, agnosticism does not destroy faith. Being forced to question one's adherence to certain splinter group leaders does not destroy faith. Reading about the myriad of lives destroyed by the church does not destroy faith.

I for one feel no need to have to "prove" anything when it comes to God, the Bible, truth, or any other subject that Armstrongism demanded of us.  It was a tiresome and unrewarding process. I find it much more rewarding to live in the mystery and uncertainty,   Living in the questions and having to wrestle with things when it comes to religion and faith is much more rewarding.

If one wants to look at real faith, it is tied to a future vision.  An assurance in the future, a future we are so assured of that we know we already possess the inheritance of Christ in our lives.  We know that the kingdom is not here in a physical sense but we are so assured of that kingdom that we live it out today in our lives and want to share it with the world around us.  We still may screw up, often, daily or hourly, but it is ok. We can still stand firm because we know what was, is, and will be accomplished.

Just my 2 cents.