COVID Hits LCG Leadership: LCG's Upcoming Council of Elders Meeting Now Online

God's most highly favored church in these perilous end times has been hit by COVID once more. This time it is several Council of Elders members. LCG had planned to have a face-to-face meeting next week with the Council. Now it's back to ZOOM. 

Where was God's protection of these highly favored men? Gone are the days of old in the WCG when church leadership bragged about how its members and ministers were immune to so many health issues that the world suffered with.

The in-person Council of Elders meetings scheduled for this coming week have been postponed due to several recent COVID cases among Council members. We will instead hold online meetings this coming week and plan to have in-person meetings June 20–22. 

Upcoming Council of Elders Meetings

As Mr. Weston mentions in his opening comments, the in-person Council of Elders meetings next week will be held online. Meetings will be conducted on Monday and Tuesday, May 2 and 3. Mr. Weston plans to hear reports from the International Directors as well as guide discussions on needs in the Work, growth in the Church, and other matters. Plans are being made for the next in-person meetings. Your prayers for next week’s meetings would be much appreciated. For your information, here are the current Council members:

Mr. Gerald Weston 

 

Mr. Richard Ames 

 

Dr. Douglas Winnail 

 

Dr. Jeffrey Fall 

 

Mr. Lambert Greer 

 

Mr. Mario Hernandez

Mr. Jonathan McNair 

 

Mr. Rod McNair 

 

Mr. Rand Millich 

 

Mr. Peter Nathan 

 

Mr. Wallace Smith 

 

Mr. Rick Stafford 

 

Mr. John Strain 

 

Mr. Rob Tyler 

 

Mr. Stuart Wachowicz 

 

Mr. Dexter Wakefield

 

Did Church of God International Give Up In Defeat Over Bill Watson?

 

Bill Watson’s Corrupt Leadership

By

Lonnie Hendrix

Apparently, the leadership of the Church of God International has thrown up their hands in defeat and surrendered in the battle that has been raging over that organization’s messaging. As regular readers here know, CGI headquarters has been trying to rein in the overt and highly partisan political messaging of rogue Pastor Bill Watson and his allies for some time. Indeed, the Executive Committee of that church even voted to remove some of Bill Watson’s and Adrian Davis’ controversial messaging on Covid-19 from their platforms! Last month, the church held a ministerial meeting to confront and address the problem, but Bill and his allies were having none of it. Watson insisted that his remarks were completely appropriate – that he was only talking about “policy.”

What makes this writer think that CGI leadership has surrendered to Bill and company? The appearance of Pastor Watson’s latest sermon on their website! In his latest political diatribe, The Leaven of Corrupt Leadership, Watson talks about how the Democrats have caused the soaring inflation currently being experienced by most Americans (no mention of the former Republican Administration’s handling of the pandemic and the current war in Ukraine in this connection). Did you notice that very ACOG theology sounding title for his sermon? I bet some of you are wondering what in the world that has to do with politics. You should never underestimate Bill’s capacity to weave politics into his message!

He begins by stating that Christ’s work isn’t just about salvation and that the first chapter of Acts proves that he was busily telling his disciples about the Kingdom of God before his ascension to heaven! And, yes, in case some of you were wondering, for Bill, the Kingdom of God suggests a political entity or “polity.” Indeed, Bill went on to mock the notion that Christ was dwelling on what he had done for his disciples – making salvation possible for them and the rest of the world. For Bill, the Christian message is inherently political – it’s all about overthrowing this world’s governments and resurrecting the defunct Kingdom of Israel under Christ and his disciples.

From there, Watson launched into another diatribe about how Christ handled the religious leaders of his day – the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, and lawyers. He talked about the contempt that Christ had for them, and how boldly he challenged their teachings and authority (there is no mention of the fact that he told the people that they occupied Moses’ seat and that they should follow their teachings, not their hypocritical behavior). For Bill, both secular and religious leadership in 2022 are full of corruption and incompetence, and it all tends toward authoritarianism.

Need examples? Bill has got plenty of them. He went on to talk about the Durham investigation of the Clinton campaign in 2016, and the indictment of one of her campaign’s lawyers. Next, he mentioned the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop. Watson went on to assert that the content of Hunter’s laptop is demonic. He talked about politicians and members of Hollywood’s elite taking advantage of Epstein’s pleasure island. Once again, no mention of the fact that Trump was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein or any of the current investigations surrounding Republican politicians. Are we beginning to discern a pattern in Bill’s remarks?

How on earth does all of this relate to the Days of Unleavened Bread? He says that it’s time for all of us to wake up and not tolerate “the leaven of corrupt leadership” in our society! Bill says that this is all “very appropriate” for him to be talking about because this is “some of the sin we’re swimming in” and “we’re being effected [sic] by it!” Never mind, that these are the very kinds of issues that Bill’s Kingdom of God is supposed to address! For Bill, we (Christians) need to be confronting and addressing this behavior NOW. And, according to Bill, those of us who think it’s inappropriate for Christians to engage in this world’s polity, we are busily burying our heads in the sand. He went on to say that pastors should be condemning abortion, gay marriage, and gender confusion – implying that this should be the focus of Christian pastors, not Christ’s message of salvation!

He said that ignoring all of these reprehensible behaviors is leading to the “reprobate of judgement” – that the ability to discern the difference between “right and wrong is lost in the confusion.” He claimed that ignoring this “leaven” is tantamount to discarding the Bible – the foundation of morality! Of course, Bill means HIS interpretation of what that book defines as right and wrong; and if your understanding differs from his, you’re just plain wrong!

Next, Bill turned his attention to religious leadership, and I must say that I found myself to be in complete agreement with his criticism of the wealth of folks like Kenneth Copeland, Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, and Creflo Dollar. In fairness, unless it has changed, we should also note that Bill Watson is one of the few ministers of CGI who is actually on that organization’s payroll (said to be a modest stipend). He also decried the homosexuality and pedophilia extant within the Catholic priesthood.

Even so, Pastor Watson does not seem to comprehend that God will ultimately address these flagrant departures from the teachings of Jesus Christ – not us. Sure, we should all be spiritually alert and astute enough to not be patronizing these folks, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with pointing out their abuse. However, as in all of the other examples which Bill mentions, God is their ultimate judge – NOT me, you, or Bill!

From there, Bill returned to his theme that pastors have a responsibility to root out all of this leaven and confront it. You see, for Bill, the Church has been commissioned to warn Israel (America) away from their sins. Like the leaders of many of the other ACOGs, he sees himself as the spiritual successor of Herbert and Garner Ted Armstrong. He even concluded his message with a reference to that passage from Isaiah that is very familiar to all Armstrongites – you remember the vision of the “wonderful world tomorrow” with the wolf dwelling with the lamb, the leopard lying down with the kid, the calf and the lion together, and a little child leading them. In other words, the establishment of the physical Kingdom and restoration of Israel is the end game for Bill – not the salvation of humankind.

Finally, although Pastor Watson did reference Christ’s remarks about servant leadership found in the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, one can’t help but suspect that Tyler’s recent attempts to rein in his messaging were uppermost in his mind. In that passage, we read that Christ told his disciples: “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Verses 25-28) For Bill, the clear implication is that the leavened leadership of the CGI shouldn’t be trying to shape his message or use their leverage to prevent him from talking about political topics!

And by publishing his sermon on their platform, we have to conclude that CGI’s leadership has ceded this ground to Mr. Watson. Bill should be allowed to preach his political message and warn Israel, and everybody in CGI should get on his boat! Never mind that CGI’s has clearly stated on their website that “Our mission is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world (Matthew 28:19).” – [See their Mission Statement] Never mind that their “Statement of Beliefs” contains this bullet point: “The gospel is the message preached by Christ and by His church about God’s coming Kingdom, the restoration of His government on earth, and how mankind can enter that Kingdom and government. It includes the message of what Jesus has done, is doing, and shall do—and ultimately is the message of the entire Old and New Testaments. The primary purpose and commission of the church is to ‘Go ye therefore, and teach [make disciples of] all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’” I guess they’ve decided that since Bill is preaching part of the gospel (as they define it) that that is good enough!

666

 

The Patriarch Canaan: Classical Armstrongism’s Stance against Racial Intermarriage

 

Canaanites in an Egyptian Wall Painting.  Canaanites are on the left and Egyptians are on the right wearing white aprons.

The Patriarch Canaan:

Classical Armstrongism’s Stance against Racial Intermarriage

By NeoDromos 

Consider what God specifically says about social fellowship and interracial marriage. Speaking to Israelites about the sons of Canaan, the son of Ham, God said: "Neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son (Deut. 7:3).     – Herman Hoeh, “The Race Question”, 1957.

Intermarriage between the four primary races — white, yellow, brown, and black — is sin. God says so. And it is God who determines what sin is.     – Herman Hoeh, “The Race Question”, 1957.

“From North Africa the dark-skinned Canaanites migrated to West Africa and are called "Negroes" today.”      – Herman Hoeh, “The Origin of the Nations!”, 1957.

In the period between the Days of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost, God began to establish Israel in the land of promise. And the land of promise was already occupied by tribes of Canaanites. These people became highly important to policy formation in the Worldwide Church of God (WCG). The edifice of Armstrongism’s policy on racial intermarriage is built on a theological foundation of error involving the Canaanites. We only know what Deuteronomy 7:3, quoted above, really says when we know who the Canaanites are racially. If this pivotal scripture has been misunderstood and improperly founded then the edifice will collapse. The quotations above all come from documents published in 1957. They represent the view from the vantage point of Classical Armstrongism, the Armstrongism that Herbert W. Armstrong left intact at his death. Post-Classical Armstrongism, the praxis of modern denominations derived from the now-defunct WCG, may differ from this Classical view. This article centers on the Biblical and biological validity of the Classical Armstrongist dogma of racial intermarriage. 

Who are the Canaanites Racially?

The West African Blacks are not Canaanites. In fact, Canaanites were not Blacks at all. While there are a number of ways that one might arrive at this conclusion, modern genetic science provides an elegant and direct verdict. At the outset, it is important to recognize that Herman Hoeh did not have the genetics to rely on as he developed his understanding of anthropology. He relied on the creative interpretation of ancient historical sources – sources that were written to different and less reliable standards of fidelity than modern writing. And conclusions that are developed in this way cannot be tested in a laboratory as the results of genetic analysis can be. One can only speculate what direction Hoeh’s writing might have taken if he had had the results of the field of genetics available to him.

Dr. Spencer Wells was at one time a National Geographic Explorer in residence and is the geneticist that contributed to the video documentary “Quest for the Phoenicians” (National Geographic, 2004). Wells established that the ancient Canaanites were the Phoenicians of later history. And the Phoenicians became the modern-day Lebanese. Wells did not do this by sifting through soft, high-risk resources such as classical history or noting similarities in names – a Hoehist methodology. This was done by hard science – he traced actual molecular genetic connections – a scientific and deterministic methodology. (See The Quest For The Phoenicians).

Wells’ findings were recently corroborated by scientists at the Welcome Sanger Institute, a British genetics research institute. These scientists sequenced the genomes of four ancient Canaanites dating from around 4,000 years ago. From the Welcome Sanger website:

“The Bronze Age Canaanites, later known as the Phoenicians, introduced many aspects of society that we know today – they created the first alphabet, established colonies throughout the Mediterranean and were mentioned several times in the Bible….However, historical records of the Canaanites are limited…. Experts have long debated who the Canaanites were genetically, what happened to them, who their ancestors were and if they had any descendants today…. In the first study of its kind, scientists have uncovered the genetics of the Canaanite people and a firm link with people living in Lebanon today. The team discovered that more than 90 per cent of present-day Lebanese ancestry is likely to be from the Canaanites …”

The research was published in the journal of the American Society of Human Genetics, “Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences”, Volume 101, Issue 2, P274-282, August 03, 2017.

The ancient Canaanites and their modern-day descendants the Lebanese are closely related to the Jewish people. Both are principally Y chromosome haplogroup J. A study that supports this is cited on the website ScienceDaily:

“The study, published in the May 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that Jewish men shared a common set of genetic signatures with non-Jews from the Middle East, including Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and these signatures diverged significantly from non-Jewish men outside of this region.” 

 

The salient conclusion affecting Armstrongism is that when the OT forbids intermarriage with Canaanites, the theological backbone of the Armstrongist view on racial intermarriage, it is not speaking of interracial marriage but intercultural or interreligious marriage. The Canaanites and the Jews are not only of the same race but are closely related within that race. 

The Occupants of the Far-flung Lands Belonging to “Israel”

The Armstrongists believed that the descendants of Canaan encompassed many different peoples both in ancient times and the present. They were peoples who occupied lands that were colonized by the British. These people were all viewed as biological descendants of Canaan and their dispossession was viewed as advocated by the Old Testament. The chart below shows some of these people and their principal haplogroups. 

People	Principal Haplogroup
Lebanese (the actual descendants of Canaan)	J
Jews (closely related to Canaanites)	J
Afro-Americans	E
Native Americans	Q, rarely P
Australian Aborigines	C, K
Maori	C, Others

 

If the pre-occupation concept is true, one gets plausible conformity to the events of the Old Testament and confirmation of Anglo-Israelism. But that is genetically impossible. Within a limited number of generations over a few thousand years as required by the so-called “Table of Nations” (A literary flair of the KJV translators - Biblically termed the families or ‘clans of the sons of Noah”) and Biblical chronology, the kind of diversity shown in the table above cannot be achieved based on the computed rate of mutation. This “clan of the sons of Noah” genealogy in Genesis may be Bronze Age allegory but it seems likely that it is a clan chart of the descendants of a single man just as the Genesis 10 states. Further, the hierarchy of haplogroups imprinted on the human genome has a fixed logical design and haplogroup J (Canaan) could never give rise to haplogroup E (African Blacks) because E occurs logically earlier in the human genomic hierarchy than J. 

 
It is clear that occupying land colonized by the British was not a criterion for being racially descended from Canaan. In fact, the British never displaced the actual Canaanites, the Lebanese. Although the idea of the British dispossessing the modern-day descendants of Canaan would be a nice proof of Anglo-Israelism, it simply does not fit history or biological reality.

 

Not Destined to be Slaves 

The Genesis statement attributed to Noah that Canaan would be a servant of servants is not racially relevant to African Blacks. It also does not seem to be empirically relevant to the Lebanese. How the statement relates to any people is not clear. And the view that somehow God is approving of the enslavement of Blacks and that there is a sense of righteousness one can feel in the slave economy of the Old South is a grave error. It is a viewpoint that is uncharitable and unchristian. It is in no way rooted in theology. Rather, it is rooted in greed. Southerners with means sought to consolidate lands into large plantations that were then operated using slave labor. The purpose was solely acquisitive. And concomitant to this was the oppression of poor White Southerners who were landless and jobless because of the slave economy. Not only did the Confederacy fight for the preservation of the slave economy, it inevitably fought for the continued exclusion of poor White Southerners from participation in economic well-being. Apologists for Anglo-Israelism may seek to transform the unethical institution of slavery into Godliness by invoking the account of Canaan in Genesis but that has no place in Christianity. 

The Implementation of Policy Forbidding Racial Intermarriage

By this time it is undeniable that Deuteronomy 7:3 and similar scriptures are not talking about racial intermarriage. These admonitions are speaking of interreligious marriage. This is true also of the intermarriage statements made in Ezra and Nehemiah. The Jews had been intermarrying with the people of the land and on the list were the people of Ashdod, Moab, and Ammon. All three groups are closely related to the Jews and of the same race. The people of Moab and Ammon are actually Hebrews and David was part Moabite.

Racial intermarriage may be forbidden by various organizations for a variety of reasons. What the organizations cannot do is use the Bible to justify such a policy. The Bible focuses on the issue of religion, not human breeding.

Racial purity is the goal of forbidding interracial marriage. Foundational to this idea is the definition of the concept of race. And there is no really deterministic boundary to this definition and, hence, no real ability for anyone to form a criterion for racial category. Haplogroup does not seem to aid in this quest. 

Haplogroup I in Scandinavia and Haplogroup R in Britain are genetically quite distant from each other but most would regard these people to be of the White race because of the simple criterion of appearance. So it is unlikely that Europeans can be thought of as racially pure by the haplogroup standard. For some race is about appearance and geographic residence. My hypothesis is that most people think tribally instead of racially. Race is a far more locally bounded concept than the broad idea of haplogroup.

Racial purity is a myth. Europeans are a combination of haplogroups R, G, I, and a little E and J. I, G and R represent three separate invasions of Europe. “I” people are the early Hunter/Gatherers. “G” people are the later Agriculturalists and “R” people are Steppe Pastoralists. The genetic distance is great between some of these haplogroups. In any case, the idea that Gerald Waterhouse promoted that Herbert W. Armstrong was pure in his generations like Noah (this is a misunderstanding of the intent of the Hebrew) is untenable. At a minimum, HWA had Neanderthal ancestry like other Europeans.

Epilogue

Canaan was a very important patriarch for the Worldwide Church of God. He could arguably be said to rival Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Nimrod in importance. The full weight of the WCG policy on racial intermarriage rested on the racial identity of Canaan and his descendants. Herman Hoeh, interpreting ancient and suspect historical sources, misidentified the Canaanites principally as West African Blacks. From this error burgeoned policies, attitudes, ethics, anthropology, manners, and customs within the WCG. The modern science of genetics has pulled the keystone from this edifice.

This article is not an advocacy for racial intermarriage. Marriage is a difficult relationship to enter into and sustain. A fallen man and a fallen woman in a fallen society attempt to form a nuclear family. The prospects are not good. Everything that can be done should be done to give such a relationship a chance for success – this may include racial comparability. And ultimately it is the grace of God that leads to a successful marriage. This article does advocate the view that the Bible is not a breeding manual for humans. To assert that it is, is to engage in eisegesis. And inevitably it is accompanied by unChristian ideas about what races are superior and inferior.

 

UPDATED: Dave Pack's 14 Enablers

Updated with the addition of Samuel Baxter and deletion of Tim Willard

Tim Willard and his wife just left the Restored Church of God

Dave Pack has fourteen hand-picked enablers that rubber stamps each and every opinion that Dave utters. Not a single one of these men has any balls left to stand up to the endless stream of Dave's lies that are wrecking the lives of RCG members.

These men ultimately do NOT care that members are suffering as they sit in their cult-owned homes on the Wadfswroth compound. If any of them ever made a stand and stood up to Dave they know they would lose their homes and jobs.

These are Dave's 14 advisors, or more accurately, tape recorders. They sit and listen, nodding in approval, and never say, "Dave, you are wrong". They lap it all up and then head out and spread the word to the members.

Bradford Schleifer

Edward Winkfield

Ryan Denee

Dr. Jaco Vilgoen

James Habboush

Andrew Holcombe

Kenneth Orel

Salsa Jezhi

Samuel Baxter

Frank Lydick

Dr. Tim Ranney

Raymond Garb

Carl Houk

Larry McElroy