The "Creepers" In The Church of God

Silenced has a great blog entry about creepy men in the Churches of God.  Those were the single guys over 35 that stood around with their tongues hanging out watching all the single women.

Pasadena was full of these creeps.  Because Pasadena was the HQ for the Church it attracted a lot of really weird and sick people.  Most were men.  There were a few women in the mix, but mostly it was men.  The auditorium attracted most of these guys because the students were assigned to attend there, so it was a young and nubile smorgasbord.

They would stand in the lobby of the auditorium and stare at coeds and well dressed women.  Some would then follow these women into the auditorium and sit behind them so they could stare at them all through services. Others, would have typed lists of expectations on how women were to act if they ever accepted a date from one of these guys.  It was all about being submissive and knowing who was in charge.

Church dances were a favorite venue for these creepers to come out of the wood work. They would gather up the courage to ask the single women to dance with them and then the touching would start in.  You could see it in the women's eyes as they returned to their seats with their friends.

Sadly the ministry never did much about these guys.  However they would tell women to go out with them, sometimes even commanding women to date certain of these creeps.

Silenced goes further into the topic relating how women were molested by these men.

Creepers and terminally single males

There weren’t many men to choose from anyway, and the remaining single, unattached males tended to be older and mentally unstable, as they had been trapped by COG dating prohibitions to keep their sights within the church. They sunk into loneliness, depression and instability as their opportunities and years passed them by.

The “terminally single males” as we jokingly called them tended to be 35 or older and socially awkward with the tendency to stalk. They would single-out women they liked at dances and social gatherings, despite their obvious disinterest, glare at them, make them uncomfortable and even sometimes make crude or harassing remarks.

These “creepers” were pervasive across COG groups, and the ministry did nothing about them. After all, they were men and tithe-paying members. Drop-kicking them out of the congregation would hurt the COG’s bottom line.

There were hundreds of tales of older men stalking and hitting-on women half their age or younger. These women are powerless and often frightened to bring this before COG pastors, who would simply be negligent to do anything about it anyway.

Many of these men ended up being sexual predators.  Silenced relates how a man in United Church of God called Mr. H preyed on women in the church and STILL does to this day because UCG will not do anything about him.

One illustrative example of a sexual predator online and in real life was a COG member we’ll call Mr. H.

He was a young man, late teens/early twenties, who was an infamous stalker of UCG women, teens and young adults. He would send them salacious, sexually charged messages, harass them before and after church, made lewd and suggestive phonecalls, and do things that would usually get people arrested.

However, his victims were afraid to speak out against him, because he was a “member in good standing,” his profile’s gallery was full of pictures of him and prominent church pastors shaking hands and smiling, and he outwardly was one of the pious and self-righteous church sheep ever produced, and that hid a very dark side that was gaining fear and infamy throughout the young people in UCG.

Mr. H is still a member in good standing, as the ministry has done nothing about him.

A horror story related to Mr. H was recently left on one of our posts by a current member of COGWA:

I will say that I completely agree 100% with Silence/et al, who point out the creepers/stalkers. I know exactly who you are referring to with Mr. H – I have had my own experiences with him, and after he sent salacious messages to a MINOR, I had him reported.

Mr. H was not reprimanded by the COG for this.

Most of these men jumped ship during the changes and went with the various splinter groups. LCG, UCG and PCG took in a lot of them. These guys have to be in their 60's now which makes it even creepier!

 Read the entire entry here: I wept for my sisters

Andrew on "What Is Sin?"

What Is Sin?

Anyone who has spent anything more than a few minutes involved in Armstrongism knows what sin is. All twenty-seven definitions. I jest. Slightly. It’s the transgression of the law, the missing of the mark, and all those wrong thoughts that are “broadcast” telepathically directly into your brain all 43,200 seconds of the day by the Prince of the Power of the Air, a.k.a. Satan.

In secular terms, a “sin” would just be a mistake, an error in judgment, or a grasping and fumbling in unfamiliar and confusing circumstances. But as soon as you wrap it up in religious terms and propose that every embarrassing thing you’ve ever done has been chiseled into eternal stone to be used against you in the most intimidating circumstance imaginable to determine your eternal fate, well then every thought, intention, and act, necessarily becomes fraught with eternal significance.

We’re not really going to argue things like murder, rape, grand theft, etc. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t agree that these are serious offenses that one cannot generally do “accidentally.” Probably no one in history has ever uttered the phrase, “Oops, I didn’t mean to become a serial axe murderer.”

“Oh,” we might all say, “that was an understandable mistake. Becoming a serial axe murderer could have happened to anyone.” No, I think we can all agree that does not constitute a valid defense in anyone’s book. Instead, we’re talking about the criminalization of much smaller mistakes.

A key problem with turning every trivial error into an act of cosmic significance is the fact that we are born not really knowing very much, and learning involves making mistakes, and that means doing some “sinning.” Realistically, it just can’t be helped. Yes, it is true, we do have a “choice” in a manner of speaking, whether to sin or not in any given situation, but given tens or hundreds of billions of people, the bible itself says that not one person ever passed the test of living a “crime”-free life.

If the bible is to be believed, on the one hand, God intentionally designed us so weak that every single one of us is going to do some “sinning” every time we try to do anything at all. On the other hand, every mistake and every learning experience has cosmic significance, obviously as an expression of the idea that God doesn’t want us to ever do any “sinning.” Does anyone else see a conflict here? Why would God put us in a no-win scenario like this? Under the burden of so much religious-based accusation and judgment, is it any wonder that so many people suffer from low self-esteem?

Of course, this is a biblical thing, not just an Armstrong thing, so Armstrongism isn’t alone in this. Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam all have their fundamentalism that inflicts the same conundrum upon their followers.

So then, because every single human being ever created is such a heinous criminal (hmm, I wonder why), God’s kingdom would have exactly zero new additions from this earthly experiment except for the enormous and benevolent grace of God, who sent his only begotten Son to die to pay for all our heinous crimes. And we must be eternally grateful and beholden for such a wonderful deed done on my behalf because we are all such heinous criminals.

At the risk of sounding like an absolute heretic, excuse me, but who set this whole system up in the first place, starting with how I was created, and then criminalizing every mistake I was sure to make, thus guaranteeing such an enormous debt of “sin” would be hanging over my, and everyone’s head, that needed paying for in the first place?

The traffic codes are written in the same way. If they were written for safety, then they were written for robot  drivers, not human drivers.  The way the traffic laws are, you can’t help but break some of them every time you drive. They seem calculated to take advantage of human frailty. Any time the city needs some extra income, they can simply go out and fleece the people by issuing a slew of moving violations. Every time you get behind the wheel, you are probably incurring hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of debt (I know I am), which may or may not be demanded of you.

I understand the point of much of the “law” laid out in the bible as a code to genuinely help everyone avoid making some large mistakes, and that’s fine. But what if the whole system of “sin” and “sacrifice” was laid out with the same intentions as the modern traffic laws? What if it’s just the fabrication of a fictitious debt combined with the biggest guilt trip in history for the sole purpose of bringing an entire society under the control of religious authorities?

What if we were to let go of all the neurotic energy bound up in the word “sin”? Not to say that many “sins” aren’t genuinely bad ideas, but just to say, let’s abandon the cosmic significance part of it.

What if we were to say that a mistake is just a mistake? Yes, there will be consequences. You won’t score the brownie point, you might lose the girl, you'll have to pay the fine, or maybe you’ll look like the loser and idiot that we all feel like from time to time. And then a funny thing happens. Everyone forgets. And it’s just not that big of a deal anymore. There’s no cosmic significance. Nobody is going to bring it up a thousand years from now and rake you over the coals for it. And a mistake suddenly becomes something that is affordable. It’s just not that serious. And you can afford to laugh at yourself.

-Andrew

Is The Prophet Thiel and Beast Guttenberg Bromance About To Heat Up?

Prophet Thiel is all hot and bothered today with the prospect that Baron Guttenberg will be speaking in Georgia this week. Prophet Thiel breathlessly writes:

The former German Defense Minister Baron Karl zu Guttenberg  is to speak in Georgia next week:

Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg will join F. William Smullen III, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell for the keynote addresses at the Feb. 23-24 event. The symposium will focus on the role of conflict management and peace building in the United States’ security strategy.
It will feature panel discussions with experts from the military, academic institutions and international policy organizations.
Guttenberg will speak at 6 p.m. on Feb. 23 at the Embassy Suites in Kennesaw. Smullen will speak at noon on Feb. 24 at The Commons on the campus.
Both speeches are free and open to the public.  http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/16928431/german-defense-minister-to-speak-at-kennesaw

The Prophet goes on to write:

As regular readers know, I have long had my eye on former German Defense Minister Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg...

We KNOW Bob, Really!  We KNOW!

Prophet Bob's sick obsession with Guttenberg seems to grow more and more each day.  Will Bob fly to Georgia so he can listen to the guy speak?  It's real close to LCG HQ so he could run up there afterwards and give a full report.  Stranger things have happened.

Prophet Bob thinks Guttenberg is the Beast of Revelation and that he is on reconnaissance here in the US to gather information with which to destroy us later on during LCG's tribulation.

...one to watch as a possible candidate to be the final King of the North of Daniel 11 and Beast of Revelation.  I believe that he is making political and military contacts in the USA and elsewhere that he may be able to use later.

Prophet Bob has spent a couple of years now smearing the mans name and reputation in Living Church of God circles and on the web.  He has been spreading the same lie all this time.  Of course he conveniently tries to cover his rear by adding this to all of his posts, AFTER he has maligned Guttenberg:

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg could simply be a somewhat politician with many ups and downs. And all his intentions could be fine. But Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg does seem, to me at least, to be taking the types of steps that one who could possibly be the final King of the North would actually take.

Bob, giver it a rest!  Either that, or come out of the closet and admit your secret desire for the man.  Your obsession with him  is really starting to look suspicious!  Besides, you are embarrassing the hell out of the Living Church of God! 

When those German tanks come rolling into Charlotte, I can give you three guesses on where they will head first!

Dale Schurter Resurfaces Claiming He Is Suffering "Intense Persecution"

Poor little Dale is suffering from persecution!  Are we making your miserable life even more miserable?

One thing I have learned over the years is that when an Armstrongite claims persecution they are generally lying through their teeth.  Armstrongites have NEVER faced persecution like they perceive they are. Real persecution is what is happening to the Copt's in Egypt, Iraq and Syria.  Persecution is the 50 some million Jews, gypsies, gays, JW's, Russians, etc., that were killed because of ethnic cleansing in WWII. Persecution is what happened to the Christians martyrs killed in Rome's coliseum.  Being pussy whipped by a few blogs is NOT persecution.

You despots in leadership positions in the Churches of God that claim persecution, while sitting in your quarter million dollar homes around your dinner table with a spread of food before you as classical music plays on your stereo on Friday nights, have NO idea what persecution is!

You, Dale Schurter, are one sick puppy!

There also continues to be persecution for me, some quite intense. All who have regained spiritual sight will suffer persecution. As we participate in this end-time Work of proclaiming the Good News of the coming Kingdom of God, along with the trials we also experience joy. Both will continue to increase “as we see the day approaching” (Heb. 10:25).

Dale starts out his appalling letter with this:

Thank you for the encouragement we have received from so many of you. What a joy to have returned to the Body of Christ, with God’s Government in place and all its parts zealously doing the Work, headed by Jesus Christ!

It's all about control! Government that makes members lives a living hell is NOTHING to be joyful about! I have news for you bud, Jesus is NOT present in your organization. Never has been and never will be!

Apostate Schurter continues:

My wife and I are so thankful to God for answering our prayers to be led to where He is truly working. We had become severed from the True Vine, but are now reattached. As some of you may know, I have studied and employed biblical agriculture for decades, and understand what happens when a branch is cut from a vine or tree. The environment in which it falls will determine how long it will remain alive and able to be reattached, grafted back into the vine before it completely withers and finally dies—then to be gathered and burned. Brethren, I was withering as a part of Laodicea, as “blindness and nakedness” crept into my life and work. I had taught against taking on a Laodicean attitude and lifestyle for decades. Yet I had drifted into it myself. What a sobering reality!

Yes, denigrate the WCG and UCG which paid you hundreds of thousands of dollars which you took eagerly over the decades.  You stayed on the dole in UCG stealing their money for years when you were researching and teaching things that UCG did not agree with.  As for your "biblical agriculture," your experiments at Big Sandy have left infertile ground that can only support pigs right now.  Some fruitful vine that produced!

You continue:

After we prayed diligently for a solution, God performed a miracle and led us to The Restored Church of God. It was a jolt, to say the least, but so heartwarming to confirm where the Head of the True Church is continuing His Work—and not only continuing, but greatly expanding it. The fruits are truly manifold. I cried with inner joy! We had again found the faith once delivered to the saints, the Government of God, the Church of God headed by Jesus Christ, an apostle in place, and a dedicated ministry, staff and brethren—all on fire—vibrant and very busy doing the Work of God!

News again bud, the "faith once delivered" was NEVER lost.  Millions of Christians have know about it for centuries. I also have news for you, that if HWA ever came back, he would not recognize the filth that RCG preachers.  Even he would be appalled!  Thanks for confirming that your apostate leader has now declared himself an apostle.

Apostate Dale writes about his reeducation process he has been through recently:

Last week I had the privilege to again travel to The Restored Church of God’s World Headquarters in Wadsworth, OH, and engage in an uplifting and motivating three-day work experience. The urgency and work ethic there are inspiring.

I certainly do bet it was an "experience" to be told to abandon the things your have been fraudulently preaching for the last few years as revealed truth.  Apostle Dave  can't have his minions running around dreaming up new ideas and thoughts.  If his brain did not manufacture it, it is not worthwhile.

For those of you not turned off by revolting garbage, you can read the rest of Apostate Dale's pathetic letter here:  What a Joy to Be Back in the Body of Christ!

Excuse me while I go and throw up.....