Rod Meredith: Oops! My Bad! I Have Had To Set The Reset Button...AGAIN...

Rod Meredith is back with is latest co-worker letter where he lets qll of his members know that they don't have a clue as to what he writes.  Rod is disappointed that after spending 63 years of spouting utter nonsense that no one pays any attention to him any more.  Perhaps the reason is that some many now consider him a hypocrite and a liar. Rod needs to pay more attention to what he wrote in the second paragraph on how Jesus calls him a hypocrite because he does not know to discern the end times.

“It’s happening! It’s happening right now before our very eyes. Most people do not even have a clue. But many of you subscribers to Tomorrow’s World do understand. For all around us, we see the ‘signs’ that the end of this lawless age of mankind is very near.”

In Jesus’ day, He reproached the religious leaders of His time for their ignorance of the “signs” all around them. They understood the signs of the weather, but not the meaning of the prophetic happenings all around them. So the real Jesus Christ of the Bible reprimanded these religious leaders with these words:  “Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:1-3).

“My friends, all around us we see the prophetic events unfolding which I have been preaching and writing about for about 63 years.”

“We constantly explain how you can escape the coming Great Tribulation and how all of us can have a tremendous part in warning our fellow human beings and helping them also escape the coming Holocaust.”

For sixty three years now every single thing that Rod Meredith has prophesied has failed to come to pass.  One lie after another.  One end time concentration camp story after another.  Famine, disease and pestilence should have killed us all of by now.  Concentration camps and the invading Germanic hoards should have been occupying the Pasadena campus instead of the heathen charismatics.

Meredith was one of the major proponents in the early 70's that we would be fleeing to Petra in 1972 and the man no COG member seems to know would be retuning in 1975.  We have all seen how well THAT story has worked out.  Never one to be silenced, Meredith has been spouting on decades later about how wicked and evil everyone is around a him.

His own members are starting to grumble at all of his failures.  The want and demand that something happen soon, but it never does.  Meredith just goes on with more egg on his face.  However, Meredith recently had to address the grumbling LCG members and lectured them on how "the lord delays his coming."

The grumblers are the aging members who have had to sit and listen to this nonsense for decades.  The new members could care less.   Meredith needs to see death and destruction litter the ground around him, then he will know his god is true.  Meredith is going to die before anything he has ever dreamed of comes to pass.

Never fear though, because his god feels that the LCG is not ready and the members have been slacking off too much, more time has been granted.

Brethren, this same passage of scripture also tells us to “watch” for certain events to occur: “So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place” (vv. 33–34). Many of these prophesied events have not yet happened. Certainly, it appears that they may be coming very close. But the reality is that they have not yet happened. Mr. Herbert Armstrong, Ted, Herman Hoeh and I all “hoped” that Christ would come very soon. We prayed. We worked hard to do the Work. But our Father in heaven—in His infinite wisdom and mercy—has allowed human beings on this earth to have several more decades of time than we expected to do their own thing, and write the lessons of human suffering. But finally, He will intervene when humanity truly is on the verge of cosmocide and many thinking people finally realize that “all is lost” without God’s intervention in human affairs.

However, we older members in God’s Church should not give up at the last minute. And we should encourage our young people to see the “Big Picture.” After all, we have been able to go ahead with our lives for these decades.

“At least a few thousand of you older brethren who are reading this letter have had to be patient through the trials and tests of life, of human issues in the Church, and with the realization that Christ has not come back as quickly as we had hoped.”

Meredith's predictions have been an absolute failure just like Herbert's, Hoeh, Martin, Dorothy and Kuhn. Meredith is very deceptive in his writing below.  He makes it look like he has had recent conversation with these men which therefore means that we still might have 20-30 years left from this date before anything happens.  That 20-30 years was tied in to the 1975 failed prophecy and is itself another failed prediction.

“Because I have been one of the pioneer students of Ambassador College and of the ministry of this Work under Herbert W. Armstrong, I have been able to know and converse for many hours with nearly all of the leading men who studied prophecy in detail in the early years. I have also read some articles and books on prophecy and biblical chronology by outsiders. Every one of the leading men that I talked to in this Work—including Dr. Herman Hoeh, Dr. Ernest Martin, Dr. Charles Dorothy, Dr. Robert Kuhn and others—have acknowledged that they came to realize during their study of biblical chronology that we could ‘easily’ be 20 or 30 years off in either direction! Therefore, it should be easy to realize that Christ may not come until about 2030AD! 

Now it looks like Meredith has to eat some bitter crow.  He is letting the younger members know that they will have time to get married, have careers, have kids and accomplish a lot in life before his end times comes.

Do I, personally, think it will be that long? No! But I have “hoped” that it would be sooner for many decades. So I want you to realize—as you plan your life, and as you young people plan your lives—that there may be enough time for you to have a career, and to marry, have children and accomplish a number of wonderful things before our Savior returns as King of kings.

Meredith then exhibits once again how little he knows about the Jesus dude he claims to follow.  Apparently the things Jesus did for salvation history (that the majority of Christians believe) are meaningless drivel and LCG members need to get busy doing SOMETHING to ensure their salvation is assured.

“We must never be involved in ‘murmuring’ and ‘disputing’ and complaining about the fact that Almighty God is giving human beings more time to write the lessons of human suffering and for His own children to ‘work out’ our own salvation before Christ returns.”

Work, work, work and no time for play.

LCG Members Raise Money To Take Body Of Teen Camper Home

Living Church of God has another black eye in its handling of the death of a summer camper at their church run summer camp.  Several LCG members have contacted me about this.  They are disgusted that members had to do something that the church should have done.

Apparently LCG members had to set up a YouCaring page to help raise money to send Morgan Montgomery's body home to Australia.  While Rod Meredith and the LCG are using her death as a fund raising tool, they apparently cannot scrape enough money together to give to the family to handle this situation.

In Memory of Morgan Montgomery

Living Church of God Using Death of Camp Worker As Fund Raising Tool

Reeling from the tragic death of Morgan Montgomery at the LCG run summer camp the church has been in spin doctor mode from the get go.  It quickly flew out LCG big-wigs to "comfort" the grief stricken youth.  LCG told the press that they were sending in "counselors" to help the youth to come to grips with what had happened.  That may have look well and good to the gullible public, but those counselors were nothing more than ministers of the church.  Men who have had NO certified training in dealing with grief.

Now the Living Church of God is using Morgan's tragic death as a fund-raising tool to suck more money out of church members.  Perhaps the LCG brass can take all of that money that Lil'Jimmy is using to redecorate the Home Office and use that as scholarship money. It's quit obvious WHERE LCG's priorities really are.

In her memory, the Church has set up a special fund, The Morgan Montgomery Memorial Youth Fund to provide scholarships and transportation for Church youth around the world to participate in the Church’s youth camps, in addition to providing other important services to Church youth.

Donations should be sent to “Morgan Montgomery Memorial Youth Fund” at Living Church of God, P.O. Box 3810, Charlotte, NC 28227. Or you can donate online by clicking the button below. Be sure to designate that the donation is for the Morgan Montgomery Memorial Youth Fund”.

The love and generosity of God’s people is greatly appreciated!Morgan Montgomery Memorial Youth Fund

Gerald Flurry and the King of the East

Gerald Flurry and the King of the East

By

Miller Jones/Lonnie C. Hendrix

From time to time, I force myself to check in on what the various WCG splinter groups are doing. I recently subjected myself to an installment of Gerald Flurry’s Key of David program, and I must say that I was impressed by “that prophet’s” ability to warp and twist prophetic Scripture. The program focused on events in the Middle East, specifically Lebanon, and explored how events there would lead to the fulfillment of prophecies in Psalm 83 and Daniel (Chapters 11 and 12).

However, a more general word about Flurry’s interpretations of prophecy is appropriate before I explore the problems with this particular utterance. Mr. Flurry frequently makes the mistake of applying specific prophecies to himself, his Philadelphia Church of God or groups that he doesn’t like. He is also fond of transferring the identities of ancient peoples and nations to modern nations – especially with regard to the United States and Britain as Israel (which many folks, including yours truly, have debunked here and elsewhere). Finally, “that prophet” has a propensity for seeing almost every prophetic utterance in the Bible as applying to the “end time.” Unfortunately, these predispositions have led Mr. Flurry (not unlike Mr. Herbert Armstrong before him) to make some erroneous predictions about what the future holds.

In this latest example of his prophetic malpractice, Flurry pointed to Lebanon as being the catalyst for a future confrontation between the King of the North and the King of the South. He went on to identify Germany and her allies as constituting the modern manifestation of the King of the North, and Iran and her surrogates as the King of the South (Daniel 11). Based on this dubious interpretation, Mr. Flurry went on to predict that Germany and her allies would eventually triumph over the Iranian led forces.

Never mind that history and most biblical scholars have linked the King of the North with the Seleucid kings of Syria, and that those same sources have equated the King of the South with the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt. Never mind that these designations also make sense when one looks at their respective geographical locations relative the Holy Land (Egypt is South of Jerusalem and Syria is North of there). Iran, on the other hand, is due EAST of Jerusalem (it would be more appropriate to tag Iran as the King of the East). To be fair, Germany is located to the northwest of the Holy Land. So I guess it wouldn’t be too big of a stretch to ignore the western drift of this kingdom – we shouldn’t be too picky!

Even more interesting is Flurry’s justification for these designations. In his booklet entitled “The King of the South,” Flurry writes that “In 65 B.C., Syria was swallowed up by the ROMAN EMPIRE, and became a Roman province. The Roman emperor now controlled Judaea, and therefore the king of the north, here referred to, is, at this time, the emperor of the ROMAN EMPIRE.” Mr. Flurry conveniently failed to mention that Ptolemaic Egypt also became a part of the Roman Empire in 31 BC. So, according to this line of reasoning, shouldn’t we conclude that the Roman emperor also became the King of the South?

Hmmm, I have a prediction of my own to make:  Those folks who choose to swallow Gerald Flurry’s interpretations of Bible prophecy are going to be disappointed in the near future. His offerings may titillate a few of the aging and uniformed former adherents of Armstrongism, but I don’t think that they will get much attention from serious students of the Bible.