Ryan Malone from the Philadelphia Church of God cult based in Edmond, Oklahoma has an article geared towards the singles in PCG and how their potential dating outside the church can pollute the pure seed of the church culture.
Anyone who has been part of the Armstrongist church culture knows that the church has set itself up as the pure one true faith on earth today that practices 1st century Christianity and has restored all truth to humankind. Being that they are soooooo special, it is vitally important that their "truth" not be watered down by dating or marrying outside the church and ultimately polluting the cleanliness of the church culture. After all, anyone outside the PCG or COG is unclean.
PCG then drags up a story from Hebrew Scriptures about the 5 daughters of Zeldophehad and the land they inherit from their father at his death. Moses took the situation to God asking for an answer:
Mahlah, No’ah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah were five sisters about to enter the Promised Land. The fact that they were all daughters made their family situation unique. It also puts them in a rare dating situation.
See, they were about to inherit land on behalf of their late father Zelophehad, the youngest of Manasseh’s great-grandsons. In Number 26, Moses was conducting a census not far from the border crossing into Canaan. None of those in the original census at Sinai nearly 40 years earlier were still alive except Joshua, Caleb and Moses (who would die not long after this).
Numbers 27 records how these five sisters asked Moses to give them a plot of land on behalf of their father, since land inheritance was dictated as generally going through sons. When Moses took the case to God, God told him, “The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a man die, and have no son, then ye shall cause his inheritance to pass unto his daughter. And if he have no daughter, then ye shall give his inheritance unto his brethren” (verses 7-9).
Then, just like today in Church of God land, the money-hungry greedy leaders got all pissy that Zelophehad's daughters might incredulously marry foreigners! Oh, the humanity! They quickly saw the wealth slipping out of their control. Leave it to the Manasshites to get their robes all in a twist:
But a little while later, another question became remarkably obvious (Numbers 36:1-4). Tribal leaders from Manasseh realized these young girls would soon start marrying, and they considered what would happen if they married men from other Israelite tribes. (Genealogies show that inter-tribal marriages were common.) Once these women had children, if their husbands were from other tribes, the Zelophehad plot in the province of Manasseh would go to the heirs of these other tribes—which would forever confuse the tribal boundaries.
Moses, unable to make a decision gain, gore to God for more answers:
Under God’s direction, Moses said: “This is the thing which the Lord doth command concerning the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, Let them marry to whom they think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry” (verse 6). The next three verses show the intent and precedent of this ruling. It applied to all five daughters, not just the firstborn. All five would inherit and share a sizable plot in Canaan. Their five husbands would work the land, and all the children growing up there would be of the same tribe.
Malone then adds this?
A principle emerges that applies particularly to singles in God’s Church.
Uh, no it doesn't! What Malone is starting to do is to control his readers just like the PCG does in every aspect of their lives. Even in dating, the needs of the church come first!
Typically, a son in ancient Israel didn’t need to be “tribe conscious” when dating, but girls in a family without sons did. We don’t date with the same tribal restrictions today, of course. But singles in God’s small and scattered faithful end-time remnant can probably relate to Zelophehad’s daughters because they too have relatively limited dating options.
Those limitations put more positive pressure on each single to get involved. Think of the needs our Church’s size creates—needs requiring everyone to step forward and participate.
He then has to drag Dead Herb into the mix, after all, everything thing Herb uttered or wrote down is now sacred scripture.
Herbert W. Armstrong described this principle in Mystery of the Ages: “All these various members God has set in his Church are interdependent—mutually dependent on one another. They form a team—an organized spiritual organism—utterly different from any secular and worldly organization!”
All members of the church need to suffer together as one (overused phrase) spiritual organism. As the Philadelphia Church of God implodes and more and more people are leaving, including the younger members, the dating field shrinks and shrinks. The more it shrinks the more the members need to stay inside the church to preserve the purity of the church and its culture.
Malone continues:
The smaller the community, the more pronounced this mutual dependence becomes.
Consider this hypothetical scenario for Zelophehad’s daughters, who were essentially told, Marry whom you want, as long as he’s from Manasseh.
What happens if the men in that particular tribe aren’t really interested or, worse, have an aversion to marriage and family? What happens if they don’t involve themselves in the dating “scene,” or make themselves available for a singles “program.” What happens if there is a Manasseh Singles Mixer, and all Zelophehad’s daughters show up, but only one Manassite male comes?
What happens to the women in that tribe if most of their options are withdrawn? And what happens if—while the Manassite men are showing no interest—men from other tribes are giving these girls all kinds of attention? This is going to create problems.
This isn’t just to pick on the men. There are cases where guys can feel similarly limited because their sisters in God’s Church barely notice them. Then if those men receive all kinds of attention from girls in a worldly workplace, this will also create problems!
PCG is pretty much like the Living Church of God in that both sets of members can never seem to do anything right.
The PCG and the COG as a whole have had a terrible retention problem with it comes to younger members of the church. The dating pool in most COGs is so small and many times filled with some of the most lecherous men and women imaginable, which greatly reduces the dating field and causes people to leave and find real love OUTSIDE the church culture. The problem the churches have with that is that the income they would make off these people has slipped out of their hands. That's why they need to control them as much as possible. They are just like the Manasshites mentioned above, all hot and bothered about land and money going to someone else.
Anyone who dares think outside the Fluorite culture is immediately backsliding and in COG culture this is anathema against God!
This psalm shows God’s efforts to include those who otherwise may not feel like they fit in. But He also gave us all free moral agency, and we must do our part. The more limited the options are in anything, the more that those involved have a duty to include themselves. Single-Minded for God brings out: “As we draw closer to God, we will inevitably be drawing closer to others of like mind. Conversely, if we drift away from God, we will begin to forsake others.”
In the final phrase of verse 6, “the rebellious dwell in a dry land,” the word for rebellious is more often used in the Old Testament to describe withdrawing. In Hosea 4:16, it describes “backsliding,” trying to slide out of the yoke. Zechariah 7:11 and Nehemiah 9:29 describe similar imagery: pulling away or withdrawing the shoulder. Some can interpret God’s guidance as a trap and try to wiggle out of it.
Why is it that everyone in COGland is always in rebellion? Why do they go after the heathens?
Yes, we each work out our own salvation. We each have a personal one-on-one relationship with our Father in Heaven. But that process and that relationship links us to a community—to other relationships, and to a team effort. How much do you engage with that community?
God is “yoking” us to a common effort. If we try to slide out, we actually yoke ourselves to more dangerous things. 2 Corinthians 6:14-16 says, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?”
God commanded Israel not to intermarry with the heathen nations around them and similarly restricts those in the Church regarding nonbelievers. We don’t date or form substantial relationships outside the body of Christ. Verses 17-18 explain that God has begotten us as sons and daughters. He has put us in an incredibly special household!
There are more heathens in the PCG than there are outside it, but that is another story. This is just more cultic mind control to make members feel special and called out above those dirty nasty uncultured heathens of the world. Only those of the true faith are pure in God's sight.
Malone then concluded with a heavy millstone placed on his reader's shoulders. It is THEIR responsibility and their fault if anything goes wrong in the church.
Consider also: We are not in this Family of God just for what we can get out of it. We have probably heard a number of times that we are not called out of this world now just to “get into the Kingdom.” We are to help Jesus Christ serve, teach and save the rest of humanity. But if we’re not careful, we can have a “get into the Kingdom” approach into our involvement with the Church.
We can decide whether to “take advantage” of an opportunity based on whether it’s best for us, while overlooking that Church members are mutually dependent. Maybe we need to be involved because it’s best for others. Others might need you.
And here’s the thing about mutual dependence: By serving others’ needs, you serve your own!
Remember Paul’s admonition in Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider [understand] one another to provoke unto love and to good works [in other words, to provoke someone to love, you need to understand what their needs are]. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” We need to be assembling together. And consider the word for “exhorting,” the Greek parakaleo—meaning to beseech, comfort, or call near.
This verse is describing people mutually dependent on one another, who are present at occasions because they have to go, they need to go, and they are needed there. The Greek for word “more” in the phrase “so much the more” can mean more willingly.
The success of the Church’s singles program is largely in the hands of our singles.
It is all the church's singles fault if the program does not work, never the idiot leadership of the church. Never!
Verses 32-33 admonish us to remember what we were willing to put up with in our “first love”—when we became “companions of them that were so used.” We found people we’d describe with the phrase: We’re in this together.
“Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul” (verses 38-39). We either live by faith, or we draw back—or pull away the shoulder—to destruction.
The word for “draw back” is used in Galatians 2:12 to describe what the Apostle Peter did in a moment of weakness. This is recounting a time when God had just invited physical Gentiles into the body of Christ, but Peter was still concerned what fellow Jews would think if they saw him eating with Gentiles. It says he “withdrew and separated himself,” adding that he did this out of fear of what others thought. How often do we withdraw ourselves for the same reason?
That angry vengeful god of Armstrongism is always out to get members.
There is more to the story of Zelophehad’s daughters. Once in the Promised Land, just before Joshua divvied up the land, these sisters came to remind him what Moses had decided about their unique situation (Joshua 17:1-6).
That passage says Manasseh got 10 portions of land west of Jordan, and it was impacted by this unique circumstance. So they were still single at this time. That means someone added this detail to Numbers 36 after Moses died. Verses 10-11 read: “Even as the Lord commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad: For Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married unto their father’s brothers’ [relatives’] sons.”
They dated whom they were supposed to, and there were obviously men of Manasseh eager to date and marry them!
Verse 12 confirms: “And they were married into the families of the sons of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of their father.” The fact that the land remained there means at least some (if not all) of them had children.
Yes, some have fairly limited dating options within this “Church tribe.” Yes, even beyond dating, the Church in general is a little flock and tiny remnant, requiring more of each of us to get involved.
We are not here for what we can get out of this opportunity. Yes, we have needs. But remember: By serving others’ needs, we actually serve our own. That is what it means to be “interdependent—mutually dependent on one another.”
Yes, boys and girls, date within your tribe. Keep it special while you lead miserable lives unfulfilled.
