Here are some excerpts sent to me from a reader on here who got them from Rod Meredith's sermon preached on March 2, 2013. The older Meredith gets the more delusional he is. Can he truly believe that the ministry of the LCG is the MOST PURE ministry the COG has ever had - especially those that are stationed in Charlotte? I know some of those guys and they are anything but pure! Even sinless Rod is not pure!
The typical COG storyline is, the ministry is pure and agents of God and the people are sinful grumbling worms filled with sins that need to be corrected. Rod says his ministers are pure while the members are disrespectful, full of murmurings and are judgmental. Can the poor sheeeple EVER do anything right?
Notice all the catchwords and phrases that are directed towards the murmuring rebellious lay members.
00:19:30
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: (Hebrews 3:7
)"Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the
rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested
Me….” Remember how often I like to go through Mr.
Armstrong used to read back through those passages sometimes. Sometimes he had
two and one half hours to give a sermon, I’m not exaggerating – the regular
service was three hours. So he spoke straight through for two and a half hours
sometimes, and had time read, and read, and read. And he’d read how they would
disobey Moses, and they’d to kill Moses. They tried to stone Aaron and Moses;
they got mad every time they got corrected. They were bitter, carnal,
rebellious. The murmurings, the murmurings, ‘Well, we don’t agree with Moses,
well Aaron and Moses are taking too much on themselves, we have our human
reasonings.’ Blah, blah, blah - they went on and on - the murmurings of the children
of Israel – God never liked that. And yet we have that sometimes in our church.
That same human nature stirred up by the same Satan the devil to turn those
against human beings that are human, and yet that God is using to do his work.
The state of rebellion in the Living Church of God is apparently running rather deep right now. That probably is what has lead to the drop in income. When people question, are grumpy or pissed off the money does not flow freely. rod wants all of you rebellious miscreants to LEAVE the LCG NOW! Do it on your own before a minister has to do it for you!
I would say this, and I don’t want to
brag by my part - I may be the weakest one. But we have, and I’ve been as I
said in the church sixty three and one half years and watched, somehow got to
know very closely – thousands of hours personally, with Herbert Armstrong, Garner
Ted Armstrong, Dick Armstrong, and Herman Hoeh, and many of the other leaders;
Raymond McNair whom I lived with for a while – went on baptizing tours with,
and of course I got to know terribly well Raymond Cole, Burk McNair, and nearly
all the other older leaders. And taught, and trained, and baptized some of them
like Dean Blackwell, and Dave Albert who was later on the television, and
others like that. I got to know them very, very well. And I think right now,
sincerely, and I mean this (leaving myself out), I think sincerely that we have
probably the most dedicated, and clean, and pure ministry, certainly here at
headquarters, and as far as I can tell around the world, that I have ever seen.
I really mean that. I could give you examples, but I don’t want to tell you bad
things about the past, but we have that. But in the church brethren, some of
them have fallen short, and some of this stuff that’s coming out now even here
has been building up for years – attitudes, and murmuring, and judging, and profound
disrespect for the ministry. And sometimes the ministry was not right there
where they were, working with them and guiding them as much as we should have
been, but they got off track, and really sorry about that because if it keeps
on more marriages will be broke up, more people will be gone from the church,
more people will be gone from their jobs right here. It’s serious brethren! We
need to pray about that and ask God to help these human beings, and work with
them, and teach them, and train them, and fashion and mold them as only God can
do. But we do have a very dedicated ministry to do that. So he says, “Do not
harden your hearts.” Don’t do that, don’t (say), “Here’s what I want! And we’re
gonna have our attitude, and we’re not gonna change!” That attitude will not
stay in God’s church. And if any of you have that attitude, you just should
leave yourself – if that’s your attitude you don’t belong in God’s church. I’ll
just be honest with you, we might lose some of you, I’m sorry about that, I love
you. My dad used to say when I was a rebellious teenager I went through a bad
*spill* – I’m sure none of you went through a bad spell – but I had a bad spell
when I was a teenager, and I remember my father’d say, he said, ‘Rod,’ he said,
‘Rod, that attitude,’ he said, ‘you can stay, but that bad attitude’s got to
go.’ I remember him saying that, ‘you can stay but that attitude has got to
go.’ And that’s the way it is among us here; that attitude has got to go,
otherwise you have got to go. And I hope you can understand what we’re saying.
You’re not to have that rebellious, self-willed attitude that they had ‘in the
day of trial… where your fathers tested me and proved me, and saw my works
forty years. Therefore I was angry….’ You say, ‘Oh Jesus was so wonderful he
would never get angry.’ Yes he was, Jesus was the God of the Old Testament, and
he was angry ‘with that generation, and said, “they will always go astray in
their heart, they have not known my ways.” So I swore in my wrath, “They shall
not enter my rest.”’ And the rest he was talking about was dual of course; the
Sabbath, but primarily going into the Promised Land. ‘Beware, brethren….’ Get
this, verse 12. ‘Beware… lest there be in any of you an evil heart of
unbelief….’
Never one to preach a sermon without talking about sex, Rod starts in on his favorite subject. I guess the LCG is filled with adulterous members.
Interesting how that’s worded isn’t
it? An evil heart of unbelief. If you don’t believe your very Creator, God
calls that an evil heart. That attitude will not take you into the kingdom.
Somewhere along the line I have had to get over the attitude which I’ve had at
times when I was first coming into the church, ‘well Mr. Armstrong was just
making noise, and he’s yelling at us, or he corrected me, or he’s corrected the
church too hard,’ and realized, no he’s the human, but God was using him, and
building the Church of God through him as an instrument. And I had to look
beyond him to God, and not have an evil heart of unbelief, that’s what God
calls it ‘in departing from the living God.’ Don’t ever depart from the living
God, ‘but exhort one another daily.’ It doesn’t say pick at each other, don’t
do that, but you can rightly exhort or encourage, and say, ‘Look John, or
*Jin*’ or tell your wife Joann, or your husband Joe, ‘please let’s, let’s get
with it. This is the Church of God, let’s get clear in or clear out.’ Don’t
hang around on the fringe all the time picking, and picking away at the very
work we’re part of. Be loyal, be right in the center of God’s will. ‘Exhort one
another today, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through
the deceitfulness of sin.’ Sin is very deceitful. ‘Well I see this other woman
over here, and my wife’s getting kind of old and fat, so I just, God won’t mind,
you know.’ Or, ‘my husband is not terribly romantic,’ or something, ‘so I’m
just going to look over in this other direction, and God won’t care.’ YES HE
WILL CARE! God says thou shall not commit adultery, and God said that if you
look at and turn over in your mind attitudes of sex with another person besides
your mate which you’re bound to by God in Heaven, that is the spirit of adultery
– that’s what it is – and you will not go in God’s kingdom with that attitude.
So don’t let that happen to you, the deceitfulness of sin is very clever. ‘For we have become partakers of Christ if we
hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.’ So we’re to hold
that confidence in Christ; ‘his way is right, he’s alive, he’s there, he’s the
same yesterday, today, and forever, he will never leave me nor forsake me, and
he will never change, and I’ve got to serve him and obey him and serve him to the
end of my life.’ So we’re to have that attitude to the end.
00:28:13
You look to
Christ, you obey the Ten Commandments, you do what you’re told in a right way
within God’s church, based on the Bible. You show God that you are loyal, you
show God that you’re responsive; he wants to have you be responsive to him –
Christ wants you to be responsive to him. He’s going to be your boss, he’s
going to be the king over the kingdom, he will be your Savior, your High
Priest, and your living head, and your leader throughout all eternity. And if
you won’t respond to him now through his human church, how can he possible
believe that you would respond to him later on in his kingdom? You will say,
‘Well yes, but. Well I disagree with this. This is my opinion, my opinion, my
opinion.’ I don’t think Christ is
interested in my opinion or your opinion. If I’m God’s servant and doing what
he said, and you have to figure that out – does Christ have a true church, does
he have true ministers, and do we really understand what’s in here (Bible) –
you need to prove that to yourself, and I hope all of you will. But then it’s
not just my opinion, what I’m reading here, it’s God’s opinion, and you’ve got
to really have a humble attitude, that teachable attitude, and say ‘yes Lord,’
not ‘yes Lord’ to me, but ‘yes Lord’ to Christ. Not ‘yes Lord’ to Dr. Winnail,
or Mr. Ames, or anyone else, but ‘yes Lord’ to Christ. So that’s the attitude
all of us need to have, and be sure that we respond to that.
00:31:55
(Hebrews 4:15)
‘For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses,’
Christ is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, he’s been there, he’s been a
teenager, he’s felt the pulls of sex, and the desire to hit back, the desire to
get even, the desire to have fun-fun, just like all the other kids. Don’t think
that he didn’t have any of that surging in his body, or in his mind, he did, he
had these same problems to fight as we do. ‘For we do not have a High Priest who
cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we
are….’ ALL points, ‘yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the
throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of
need.’
Rod then takes another swipe at his BFF Bob Thiel. Rod loves him so, but poor Bob is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO misguided.
00:33:58
I noticed in the Church of God today –
we love them all, but some are weaker than others – we’ve had some fellas out
there who have appointed themselves as prophets or apostles, no one else
appointed them that, they just appointed themselves that (snickers) and of course
if you read this whole chapter (Hebrews 5), frankly they’re in trouble
(smiling) – there’s nothing in the Bible that indicates that they should have
that office at all. ‘And no man takes
this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was.’ And no man should appoint
himself, you know, a minister, and no man should certainly try to take various
offices like the High Priest. Christ was set there by the God who spoke that to
him, the Creator.
Satan seems to be having a field day with LCG members. Satan's mind games seem to be causing a lot of issues!
00:38:07
You need to cry
out to God when you sense that Satan is messing with your mind, he’s stirring
up resentments, and bitterness, and rebellion, and lust, and greed, and the
desire for power, and to justify yourself, and to argue with the very ministers
of Jesus Christ on this earth. And if I die next month or next year, I still
tell you the same thing, it’s not about me it’s about God. It’s not about me,
it’s about Jesus Christ that’s the *light* hand of God. Don’t be that way
brethren, you won’t make it into God’s kingdom, have the fear of God in the
right way, the AWE of God. That’s what God wants you to have.
Rod thinks they have things "basically" right. So if they are "basically" wrong then that is OK too. Bad fruit basically might bring forth a little good.
00:50:30
‘And He [Christ]
is the head of the body, the church….’ Who’s the head of the church, Rod
Meredith? No. Richard Ames? No. The head of the church is Jesus Christ. And yet
we human servants under him are being guided by him, and God shows that so many
times in the Bible, and he will guide those in authority as long as they walk
his ways. As long as you see the fruits, that the basic truth of God is
preached, that the work of God is basically being done, and the government of
God is basically being carried out, then you better sense that’s where Christ
is working. If you find where those three things are done somewhere else you
should go there. Think about it, you should go there. I don’t know of any other
place, and if I were to die tomorrow it would still be that way because we have
men like Mr. Ames, and Dr. Winnail, and Mr. Gerald Weston, and our other
leaders here that are in the church; our leading men that are so dedicated and
sound and solid that carry on this same work of God in the right way.
00:52:45
If Christ tells
us to do something now, and we say, ‘yeah, well but,’ and we water it down, he
knows that same attitude will be there later. He’s our High Priest, he’s the immediate
head over the church to do that kind of thing. So he’s assigned by the Father
to do that. So we can finally come to that attitude, you know, that we saw at
the end of Luke chapter 22, ‘Not my will, but thine be done.’ That’s the
attitude he wants in all of us.
Rod seems to think that a lot of LCG members have their minds below their belts most of the time. If that is so, I wonder where they got the example from?????????????????
Brethren have you come to that point?
Think about it profoundly and be honest with yourself because you can’t, you
can’t get saved by giving me the right answer – God knows your heart, and he
sees what you mean by your heart and by your fruits – what do you actually do?
So through Christ in you are you really overcoming the self? Are you overcoming
your vanity, ’I’m important and I think I’m as good as anyone else, and my
opinion is just as good as anyone.’ Well your opinion is just as good as mine,
maybe better than mine on cooking or building houses, or all kinds of things,
but if I’m the human leader under Christ, then God would say you ought to
listen to me in spiritual things. You could figure that out. And if I’m gone
you ought to listen to Mr. Ames, or Dr. Winnail, or Mr. Weston, or other
leading ministers. Be honest about it, that’s what it obviously means. We’re
your teachers, honor what Christ is doing through those offices – honor that,
and show that by the way you react. So think about it. Are you already
overcoming that human self-will and vanity; the desire for pleasure, ‘I want
fun, and I want it how ever I can get it;’ the desire for liquor, you want to
drink too much; the desire for SEX? Some people somehow get their minds down
below their belts, ‘well I can reason this and that because my human drive is
just too powerful.’ No it’s not too powerful, everybody has that. Christ had to
control that; Christ was never married at all! And he probably had a lot more
sex drive than any man in this ROOM! ‘Cause all the wheat germ was in the wheat
back then (snickers) see what I mean. He had POWERFUL drive, but he controlled
it, he focused on something bigger.
Damn! All one needs is some original Palestinian wheat germ to become the best he-men ever! Who needs Viagra! Give us wheat germ!
So don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by
your own LUST, and your vanity, jealousy, lust and greed – your self-will, ‘I
want what I want’, and the spirit of REBELLION; ‘if they tell me this, I’m
outta here.’ NO!! You shouldn’t be outta here no matter what. You say, ‘God’s
will be done,’ if you disagree with something you come humbly and talk about
it, and be willing to listen to those that God is using. And then do as Christ
directs his church to teach, and if you find a better church you better go
there, but you’re not going to find one at this point as far as I can tell. As
I’ve said, that’s what I would want my own family to do, to stay where Christ
is primarily working at this time.
00:56:12
(Ephesians 1:19-23) ‘and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe,
according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He
raised Him from the dead and seated Him
at His right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name
that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He
put all things under His feet,
and gave Him to be head over
all things to the church, which
is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.’
Brethren, you should not fret about problems in Charlotte. Jesus Christ will NEVER let us make a BIG mistake! Global wasn't a mistake, apparently.
Brethren, if I kick the bucket tomorrow, you had better damn well OBEY my son Jim! Jesus Christ and I put him there. If you disobey Jim you disobey Jesus Christ!!!!!
Brethren, Christ
is head of the church, of all aspects of it, he’s the head over ALL things in
the church. He’s the head of the visiting program; he’s the head of Church
Administration; he’s the head of the Business Department; he’s the head of the
Living University; he’s the head of every aspect of the work, he’s the head of
Editorial. He’s the head of everything we have in the work of God. And we have
humans under him – they may make mistakes, but God will never let them make a
mistake big enough to wreck the whole work. And if any of you ever have a
problem with your supervisor, you’re to go to his supervisor, and he’s to come
to Mr. Ames or me, or some of us at the top of the human organization, and we
would cry out to God for wisdom, and you should react to the one that God puts
there. As I said, if I’m gone tomorrow, you’d better, you better have that
attitude whoever is put there, and show that depth of conversion to follow
where Christ is working. Will you be led by your vanity to rebel against that?
Christ, who is the head over all things to the church? That’s what this book
tells you right here.
Rod can't stand the effeminate, wishy-washy, lovey-dovey, grace-filled, pulsating Jesus Christ of the New Covenant, so he has to trek into Hebrew scriptures to hid his Jesus Christ.
God, as you know
brethren, says that the Old Testament was written for our admonition upon the
ends of the world are come. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And Christ, of course, was the God of the Old Testament. 1 Corinthians 10:4, that
Rock – the Rock that guided Ancient Israel – that Rock was Christ. so let’s
turn to the High Priest back here, the leading priests and judges, and some
instruction about that back here in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 17. He says here
to us, and he’s talking here to Ancient Israel, but this is for our admonition
too, the principle is exactly the same. Deuteronomy 17:8, ‘If a matter arises
which is too hard for you to judge, between degrees of guilt for bloodshed,
between one judgment or another, or between one punishment or another, matters
of controversy within your gates, then you shall arise and go up to the place
which the LORD your God chooses. "And you shall come to the priests, the
Levites, and to the judge there in those days,’ who would usually be a
Levite as the whole scripture shows in most cases, ‘and inquire of them;
they shall pronounce upon you the sentence of judgment. "You shall do
according to the sentence which they pronounce upon you in that place which the
LORD chooses….’ Now where did the Lord choose today, as many of us talked, and
consulted, and fasted, and prayed, and we did for months before we moved here
asking God to guide us. And for many reasons God brought us to Charlotte, North
Carolina. This is the human headquarters of his human church at this time –
that’s why we’re here. So the principle is this: we’re here, the leading
ministers are here, and if you follow the principles of God’s Word, if you have
some upset about something you don’t agree with in the church, or in your
department if you’re working for us, or whatever it is, you’re to go to the
leaders. First you go to, of course, Mr. Rod McNair, Mr. League, the ministers,
and if they can’t help you with it – feel it needs to be brought on up, then
Mr. Ames, Dr. Winnail and I could get in on it. And ‘they shall pronounce upon
you the sentence of judgment.
"You shall do according to the sentence
which they pronounce upon you in that place which the LORD chooses. And you
shall be careful to do according to all that they order you….’ That’s what God
says. ‘"According to the sentence of the law in which they instruct you,
according to the judgment which they tell you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to
the left…’ say, ‘Well, yes but.
Well, yes but. Here’s my [opinion],’ you don’t see any of that here do
you? ’ Now the man who acts presumptuously…’ ‘Here’s what I think,’ or, ‘I’m
gonna (do it) nobody’s gonna tell me anything.’ Frankly how long did that last
in Ancient Israel? (smiles) Not very long. That’s why the dead bodies of those
Israelites littered the whole desert as they came across, as is described
elsewhere in the book of Hebrews, as well as back in Exodus. They rebelled,
they rebelled, and only two men made it clear on over, who were they? Joshua
and Caleb. The rest of them all died – that’s amazing when you, you read it
most of you – all of them died of that generation. ‘Well, yes but, here’s the
way I think of it.’ And they would argue. So God tells us this and he’s trying
to get this through our thick heads. ‘Now the man who acts presumptuously and
will not heed the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God,
or the judge, that man shall die. So you shall put away the evil from Israel.’
And brethren, of course we do not administer the death penalty, I hope all you
brethren know that. Of course all you older brethren do, but it will be the
same today eventually (smiling), but GOD will administer the death penalty if
you argue, will not do what is said, and if you don’t repent of that somewhere
along the line. Somewhere along the line you’re going to have to follow what
God tells you, and what God’s leadership guides you to do, or you won’t be
there. As I’ve said, I may not be here to argue with you in another year or
two, I hope I will, I’m just being honest with you.
You’ve got to
look to God and know that God is real. You’ve got to obey God, and fear God,
and cry out to God for his help, and mean it just like Christ did who was heard
because of his godly fear – that
godly AWE that even the Son of God had! We need a little bit more of that in
our democratic society, we’re so used to watering things down, ‘Here’s what I
want,’ we want to do what WE want to do.
Apparently, it is all about size.....
