Stung by complete silence after the death of Karl Beyersdorpher and over-the-top public accolades for Bruce Tyler on the front page of his web site, Rod Meredith has finally spoken. He claims all of the recent tragedies in the Living Church of God are actually "tests" by his god in a most unusual way. After a year of many blessings by his god over the year, his god pulled a complete 180 and swiftly started testing the church. What a cruel god it must be that has to strike down three people that were loved by many and then lead a man to kill himself just to see how strong the members of LCG are in their faith.
Rod Meredith has never taken any responsibility for anything down through the decades. Everything that happened in his life was a direct result of everyone else around him and never a result of his own dark actions. It was Garner Ted's fault he was removed as President of two colleges. It was not his fault that he was exiled to Hawaii. It was all Stan Rader and others. It was not his faulty that he lied on the stage in Tuscon about Leona McNair and then had no problem at all in letting the church spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend his vile, vindictive mouth. It was not his sermon that drove Terry Ratzmann over the brink, leading him to murder numerous people in an LCG service.
As usual, Meredith seems to place the burden of these envious upon ht members of LCG's shoulders. Members should be in their knees appealing to God as to what they are doing wrong.
The church knew that Beyersdopher had serious bouts of depression and yet I can almost guarantee the they never encouraged him to get professional help. Therapy has always tended to be looked upon as a tool of Satan. I certainly hope he went outside the boundaries of the church for help. He was seeking medical treatment and I hope it included counseling.Yet, this year, God is “testing” our Church in an unusual way. We have been blessed and the Work is going forward. But we have had three or four terrible tragedies all take place in the last week or two. These events should drive us to our knees even more powerfully and cause us to “cry out” for God’s Spirit as never before! First, one of our fine local members in Paris, France, Mrs. Monique Dalle, was one of those who perished in the well-publicized “mysterious” downing of the EgyptAir airplane in the eastern Mediterranean a couple of weeks ago. She had a family and many brethren who miss her terribly. God allowed this, as He does not protect us from every tragedy—as we all know—yet He does protect most of us most of the time which we have also experienced. We are very sorry for her death and the sorrow that her family must feel. Then, we have recently heard about the deaths of three of our fine ministers—Mr. Bruce Tyler in Australia, Mr. Gideon Benitez in the Philippines and Mr. Karl Beyersdorfer here in the USA. All of these men were very dedicated men who gave of themselves to serve God’s people in many places around the world. Mr. Tyler was an outstanding servant of God who served—often in dangerous situations—in many parts of Australasia. He ably built and held together and helped “grow” the churches all over the Australasian region. Mr. Gideon Benitez was a fine and dedicated minister serving many brethren in the Philippines. And Mr. Karl Beyersdorfer—for many years living in my own hometown, Joplin, MO—was noted as “Mr. B” around the whole region and made himself beloved by constantly serving and giving of himself to the people in that area as Christ’s minister.
However, in Mr. Beyersdorfer’s case, it was a double tragedy in the sense that he took his own life. Hundreds of brethren in that area know that Mr. Beyersdorfer had had quite a number of serious physical ailments—leading to deep depression at times—and finally, about two years ago, completely of his own volition, asked to be removed as the Pastor. He asked that Mr. Gene Hilgenberg carry on and he would just “assist” him as best he could. He was under a great deal of stress and was sometimes not “himself” according to his wife and many others. He was under medical treatment and at the time he took his life was undoubtedly in one of the “spells” under deep depression.
Brethren, Almighty God our Father understands all this. He is called: “The Father of mercies” (2 Corinthians 1:3). Our Father in heaven knows that all of us have moments of great weakness. We who really understand the Bible are fully aware that God does not judge just according to what we do in some moment of weakness. Although we want all our young people to be fully aware of the awful consequences of suicide, we feel that Mr. Beyersdorfer will eventually be resurrected and be honored for what he did do in the decades of faithful service to God’s people when his physical and mental condition were normal. But we certainly need to pray for Mrs. Beyersdorfer and her whole family in this situation. And she has let me know that she has no problem with me telling you about the nature of his death. It is better that it gets “all out there” now rather than having it come up and be asked of her and others over the months and years to come.
LCG members need to be prepared for more tragedies like this in the coming years. Satan is on the warpath and hates the LCG.
For this is a time when the attacks of Satan the Devil—the “murderer” and the “liar” (John 8:44)—are going to intensify as never before. So we all need to be ready! The next few years will be the prophesied time when Satan comes down to this earth “having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time. Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child” (Revelation 12:12-13).
LCG members need to be shaken awake because of the sins in their lives that lead to these tragedies. They need to be shaken up so that they see what THEY are doing wrong
I urge all of you at this Pentecost time to truly “cry out,” as I have said, and beseech God to pour out His Holy Spirit upon the Church as never before, to inspire us, to empower us with the gifts of His Spirit. May God grant that these events—in the right way—“shake us” and bring us closer to God than we have ever been before. For we cannot and must not take all these terrible events coming on the world for granted. We must use them as events to drive us to our knees and draw us closer to our Creator and to His Son Jesus Christ.You can read Meredith's entire Co-worker letter here.
