Gerald Weston and the Living Church of God have been heavily promoting the "new" earth shattering series of articles that Rod Meredith is "working" on regarding the "truth" about the Protestant Reformation. The Living Church of God, as well as Rod Meredith, feel that he is the most qualified human ever to comment upon the Protestant Reformation.
This is coming from a man who has had no theological training outside of the Church of God information stream. He has had zero historical education, by qualified and well versed professors, on the Protestant Reformation movement. Most of his knowledge is garnered from anti-Catholic sources that are just as biased as Herman Hoeh's and Dean Blackwell's treatises on church history and the Reformation that the old Worldwide Church of God claimed to be historically accurate.
The latest issue of the
Tomorrow's World contains the article:
The Plain Truth About the Protestant Reformation. Ah yes, the
"Plain Truth," how veeeeery original. Why is it that none of the men in any of the splinter groups can ever come up with something original?
The byline for the article states this:
“Roderick C. Meredith, the Editor in Chief of the Tomorrow’s World Magazine and Presiding Evangelist of the Living Church of God, is uniquely qualified to write this series. His ministry spans almost 65 years, from the earliest years of Herbert W. Armstrong’s worldwide work to today’s multi-media continuation of that Work of reaching the world with the Gospel of the coming Kingdom of God.
Dr. Meredith has long been an expert concerning the history and significance of the Protestant Reformation, and this series collects his research on this highly misunderstood subject.
The article starts out with this:
The Protestant movement today is on trial. The Protestant Reformation has spawned a veritable Babylon of hundreds of different denominations.
Seriously? He has the gall to start out like this when he is part of a movement that has spawned hundreds and hundreds of harlot daughters of the mother church! The Church of God is the most fractured single church movement in modern history. Lecturing others about a "movement" being "on trial" is pretty hypocritical from a man who has helped spawn church divisions.
This entire article is nothing new for Rod Meredith. It is not like he has been focused upon studying the Protestant Reformation over the last few years, and particularly now that he is on his death bed. What Meredith has done is republish his 1961 thesis that was a requirement of the unaccredited Ambassador College "graduate" program. This is a paper that never defended in front of real theologically and historically trained professors.
Church of God News has this to say about Meredith's series:
Roderick Meredith has not collected “his research on this highly misunderstood subject” during “his ministry (spanning) almost 65 years.”
He wrote The Plain Truth about the Protestant Reformation 61 years ago, when he was a student at Ambassador College. His thesis was written in ‘Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Arts in Theology’.
The first article in this “ brand-new series” comprises chapters1-3 of this thesis. It is almost word for word, with some slight (or should that be ‘sleight’?)amendments by the editors, e.g. “thesis” is changed to “series”; “the following chapters” to “this series of articles”; and “the present work” to “this series”.
Why does the Living Church of God need to deliberately deceive their members by pretending that this is an all new series that Rod Meredith's been working on?
