Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
It should come as no surprise that another person has died in the Philadelphia Church of God due to its draconian and vile doctrines. Once again, another person died because they refused medical treatment, or in this case, the husband refused it. Members live in this constant state of fear that they dare not cross the doctrinal line of the PCG for fear of losing one's salvation, while Gerald Flurry and other PCG elite regularly seek medical attention.
My Ex-Wife Died in PCG Died Due to Medical Neglect: January 30, 2022
Reviewing these pages has helped me understand and strengthen my thoughts about the PCG and my ex-wife’s passing.
My wife joined the PCG in the early 1990s. I continued attending a traditional Christian denomination while she attended the PCG. I kept getting vibes that her “church” was a cult from the members I met and because of the control it had on her thoughts and actions. We eventually ended up divorcing [several] years later due to the strain it was causing on our children and marriage. She married a member of the PCG and ended up moving multiple times to different states and loosing contact with her children.
Her husband called us in the middle of the night [date removed] that she was dying, was incoherent, and couldn’t talk. Word quickly spread and my son called the town’s police to do a wellness check. They arrived and insisted the husband allow them to call an ambulance and he argued. One was finally called but the husband refused any medical treatment at the hospital because that was her wish. He produced a hand written note stating she didn’t want medical intervention and later he admitted signing the paper. We learned later she possibly wasn’t allowed transportation (by her choice or others) to medical help for a few weeks leading up to her death. PCG members would come over and sit with her to pray and use healing cloths. This was murder by neglect. We also suspected the husband may have had a hand in her demise. The police never did an autopsy or investigation. Later [date removed], he remarried a PCG member and had a child.
The PCG stole my wife, contributed to her death, and emotionally scarred me and my children.
Your pages have given me knowledge that my experience was unfortunately shared by others. –[name withheld]
Other than the miraculous birth of Bob Thiel, which was planned before the foundations of the world had been set so that he could bring about redemption to the faithful in the end times, there is no other date in Church of God history as significant as December 7.
EDMOND—On the Sabbath of December 4, thousands of Philadelphia Church of God members around the globe marked the December 7 anniversary of the founding of the Church.
In Edmond, Evangelist Stephen Flurry gave a sermonette reviewing the history and accomplishments of the “32-year miracle” of the Church. His father, Pastor General Gerald Flurry, delivered a sermon about Bible prophecy and the radical political movement to revolutionize the government of the United States.
The 32-year-old miracle came about because Lil'Stevie read his daddy's plagiarized Malachi's Message while camping at Robber's Cave, Oklahoma. The earth stopped at this moment, just like when Bob Thiel was born, as God's mighty plan was put into place.
Gerald Flurry always fails to mention how he was disfellowshipped for insubordination which removes his ordination rank in the church. A church that he was essentially a nobody in.
December 7 was the beginning of a spiritual war that the true church has supposedly been fighting, all thanks to Gerald Flurry and HWA. For some reason, they left Bob Thiel out. What a bummer!
“This day serves as a reminder to all of us that we are to be persistent in this spiritual war,” Ohio prospective member Adam Williams said, “and to never give up believing in God’s Word, like Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Flurry.”
December 7 marks the date that Mr. Flurry and his assistant, Preaching Elder John Amos, were fired from the Worldwide Church of God for remaining loyal to the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong and Mr. Flurry’s manuscript that would become Malachi’s Message. The Church has since raised up the ruins with 32 years of a Bible prophecy magazine; 29 years of youth camp, 28 years of a Bible prophecy radio/television program; 20 years of college; 18 years of holding copyrights to 19 books and booklets by Mr. Armstrong, including Mystery of the Ages; and 13 years of a K-12 schooling; as well as regional offices, personal appearance campaigns, a corporate airplane and other milestones. Philadlphia Church of God Celebrates 32 Years
(Note: Dr Bob, notwithstanding, the Science of it is not clearly understood or decided to date but genetics are not likely, at this time, seen as a factor. However, regardless, there are deep seated causes and, as we shall see, Bible characters may not have been immune from the struggle or tendencies. Well of course they weren't!
Sean Penn: “Men have, in my view, become quite feminized… There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt.”
(Bob seemingly starts out confusing feminized men with gay men as being one in the same. I would assume he'd do the same with a more masculine seeming female as being a lesbian.)
and of course, goes on to quote...
Romans 1: 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
...and every other scripture he can think of
Properly read, one can conclude that the penalty for not retaining the "knowledge of God", was God giving them over to a depraved mind. So, their depravity and inability to overcome can seem to be the doing of the Deity.
However,
The Late Episcopal Priest John Spong suspects the Apostle who wrote Romans might be struggling himself with being a very conflicted gay man in First Century Palestine
John Spong, looks at the Apostle Paul through Paul's unmarried state, admission of some deep unnamed struggle he was unable to correct with his mind, severity in the way he treated himself to keep himself in line and need to overcome law with grace and love.
Bishop Spong concludes, for himself, his belief that the Apostle Paul may well have been a deeply conflicted gay man who psychologically could and would break with the Laws that condemned him and come to Grace that would forgive him.
Romans 7: 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a]For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Of course, Paul does not share what that heavy and unsolvable problem was just as he dithers over what the "thorn in the flesh" God gave him could have been.
I personally would concur with John Spong's suspicion that the roots of Paul's conflicts and teachings may well stem from him as a first century, non-practicing and very conflicted gay man. At best, Paul admits to having practices and sins that he simply has no control over. Instead, he blames himself and then relieves some of the pain by concluding it's not really him, but this "thing", sin, that lives in him. (Like some kind of virus or monster)
Paul's doctrines of Grace over Law may have sprung from his personal reality and living in a culture where the price for not resisting this monster in him was very high.
Paul concludes, and he doesn't say he finally overcame it ever...
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[b] a slave to the law of sin.
For Bishop Spong's original chapter on this issue and from "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalim" see:
