Churches of God
Here at the Painful Truth, we analyze trends and project them forward; we do not predict, prognosticate: We are a non prophet organization.
So are the nanocults of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong (CoHA), if you look at their record… well, yes, they do have false prophets, there is that, but that’s not what we mean.
Consider our amazement then when 2012 pretty much ended up in ways we projected it might, with the caveat that it was actually a lot worse and certainly screwier than we could have imagined, and around here, we have pretty fertile imaginations: Some of the CoHA nanocult leaders did things beyond all reason, providing entertainment for some and a great deal of pain and embarrassment for others. Many of the scenarios were truly jaw-dropping.
The end of 2012 provided us with the greatest breath-taking events. I suppose you could say that we should have foreseen that Dr. Robert Thiel was going to start his own church after he had left Roderick Meredith and the Living Church of God, but, again, we aren’t prophets: We took our last crystal ball, bored holes in it and went bowling.
To begin with, we would have never guessed the name, which is Continuing Church of God Overseer and successors, a corporation sole. Technically, the abbreviation would be CCoGOaSaCS (I think the spell checker just committed suicide), but in a rare act of mercy with an even rarer flash of insight, Dr. Bob decided to use CCoG, which is a good thing because ccg is taken and so is ccg.org — much to the chagrin of the Canadian Coast Guard. He’s already got a mailing address, where he encouraging LCG members to send tithes as they wend their way from the fold of Meredith to the fold of Thiel. We rather assume that Dr. Bob will certainly have the Feast Days and the Feasts all planned out, replete with five star hotel accommodations and such. Maybe in California. Maybe not.
No matter what, projecting out past trends, we would expect a great deal of dampened enthusiasm as Dr. Bob works out the Church Corporate thing. He’s the heart and sole of it all. He may or may not have been planning this for awhile. He apparently severed from his membership with Living July 14th, 2012, which is 10 days after the celebration of the Declaration of Independence, which probably has no real bearing on anything.
Dr. Bob does bring a few pluses to the table. For one thing, there’s that PhD in something or other he bought online from some outfit in India. He doesn’t say much about defending his thesis, which we rather think is 2012: The Rise of the Secret Sect. We know what you are thinking. Maybe, 
just maybe, the book was about him and the Continuing Church of God Overseer and successors, a corporation sole. We suspect that he may have had that in the back of his mind, seeing as though he got the idea from Doug Winail that Dr. Bob himself (speaking of himself in third person, which is kind of weird for a PhD guy and more like a Felon Mental Patient) is not just a prophet of God, but he is one of the two witnesses. We’re not sure how many sets of two witnesses there are, but there have to be hundreds at the minimum.
We think that Dr. Bob should see if Baron Karl zu Guttenberg might join him in collaboration. It would be a perfect pairing: Dr. Bob, God’s Prophet and one of the two witnesses and the Baron as the Beast of Revelation. Maybe the Baron could run the office using his Beast Powers, if he’s not too busy. Instead of “Headquarters” or “Home Office” they could call it something like “Castle Greyskull”.
Which brings us to the topic of Ronald Weinland, who is also part of a set of two witness, of the which, he is the active member and his wife is the Silent Witness. We’re not really sure how that works out. One would think that a witness who stands up for the Word of God would say something, but apparently not. We don’t pretend to know the mysterious ways of the CoHA and its nanocults. Now if we were to take a wild guess, we’d probably say that Ronald Weinland, as a convicted felon with the tracking bracelet of humility giving sermons over the Internet from his basement as a sub dude, is going to be safely ensconced in Federal Prison for three and a half years around about Groundhog’s Day, but we’ve seen delays before, so we aren’t going to put a large bet on that one. He ran afoul of the Internal Revenue Service for Income Tax Evasion and was convicted in Federal Court by a jury of his peers (even if he does not see them as such). You’d think that as God’s Prophet, he could have seen that coming, but you’d be wrong.
We can wade in reverse through the dregs of 2012 briefly: It was the year that the United Church of God, an International Association found that it’s income is stable, but insisted on a fast for the budget, requested by their new chairman of the board, Robin Weber. Expenses are up, probably because of hiring some ministers or something. The biggest percentage cut seems to be 44% off the International travel budget. This does not mean that the UCG, along with most of the others didn’t have their Christmas Family extravaganzas. The non Armstrongists have something like that every summer and it’s called “Super Sabbath”, but having the CoHA celebration at XMass is awfully suspiciously like some sort of pagan celebration they should really avoid, lest they have the appearance of evil. We project that they will have one of these in 2013 as well. We’ll see. Budget, you know. We suggest they cut the biggest expense of all and slash membership by 100%. Of course, the only reason that Robin Weber became chairman is that Melvin Rhodes stepped down and out at UCG because of some past undisclosed indiscretion.
No posting like this would be complete without mentioning false prophet Roderick Meredith at least twice (it’s like mentioning Hitler: It has to come up some time as some sort of law). Roderick Meredith prophesied, yeah, verily and forsooth, that the Price of Gasoline would drop so LCG members could keep the Feast. This was a major fail, especially in some areas, where, like in California, the gasoline prices went up to a record high just before the Feast and came down a few weeks later. We’re still looking for Meredith to fail predict the past which has already happened, but he just didn’t get the message. Now we aren’t saying the old fool hasn’t failed to predict the past accurately, we just don’t have an obvious example to point to. Living is still unable to escape being under the shadow of the Ratzman shooting and we can certainly say that attending could very well be hazardous to your health. We wonder if Dennis Luker is sizing the drapes. Thiel may have first dibs.
David Hulme with his Church of God, an International Community, apparently is on the skids. We wouldn’t have noticed, except for the posting at Banned! This is really small potatoes among the nanocults, folks.
Davy Pack is our personal favorite with his Restored Church of God. We’re not sure what it’s restored from, but they may want to do a little more remodel over there. Shovels have been turned for Davy’s theme park to rival Ambassador College, but the banks just weren’t buying it for the loans. Something about ROI and that’s even without the internal member letters and documents being leaked. We say, if you want to keep your secret, don’t tell anybody. Davy blabs. Probably an ego thing.
We’d mention CoGIC, but it’s so obscure nobody much ever pays attention to it. Apparently, in 2012, people paid even less attention to it, if that’s possible.
Jim Franks over at the Church of God, Worldwide Association was up to his chin with alligators draining the swamps again in 2012. The CoGWA still has not significant media presence, were forced to start media projects from scratch (although using Flipping Books on their website was a master stroke, even if the material is garbage). Some of the members are still visiting the UCG and really lack a commitment to one of the newer nanocults of the CoHA. Nevertheless, it does appear that our illustrious Mr. Franks did a bit of damage by exposing Melvin Rhodes to the United Leadership to force his exodus, proving once again that politics in the Armstrongist Churches of God is alive. Not alive and well. Just alive.
Craig White (Europe to sell Alaska to Russia for helping to invade the United States), “Apostle” Malm, E. W. King (with multiple insignificant generalistic type prophecies fulfilled), M. John Allen (Yahweh is a reptilian extraterrestrial from the planet Nibiru [no mention of whether he comes through the Stargate at the bottom of the ocean]), Gerald Flurry of the Philadelphia Church of God and a host of other colorful characters litter the dump of the CoHA nanocults.
After all of this, do you want to know what could possibly happen in 2013?
We think we see trends and we suspect they will continue:
1) Expect the unexpected;
2) It seems likely there will be more scandals to rock the CoHA nanocults;
3) More divisions may be coming (well, duh!);
4) Weirdness will increase;
5) Budgets will fall;
6) Hyperbole will increase;
7) Indecision will continue;
8) Problems won’t find solutions (but keep looking, innovation may not help, but it sure could be entertaining);
9) Very few things will be hidden for long, in spite of the best efforts of cover up;
10) Jesus will refuse to return in 2013 and won’t even bother to initiate the Great Tribulation as the start of the end of the end;
11) But you can be sure, someone will predict it anyway.
Will people keep the Feast of Tabernacles in 2013? Yes.
Will there be fewer people attending the Feast of Tabernacles in 2013? Yes.
Will it be more difficult for people to attend the Feast of Tabernacles in 2013? Yes.
Will it be more meaningless to attend the Feast of Tabernacles in 2013? Yes.
See! We’re not all negative!
We enjoyed rereading Daughter of Babylon: The True History of the Worldwide Church of God by Bruce Renehan again in 2012 (in the new Flipping Book version) from AmbassadorReports.com. We were reminded that the True History of The True Church is nothing of the kind, but pure rubbish stolen from Ellen G. White through the auspices of Dugger and Dodd. Bruce Renehan actually went to the effort to write to the Waldensian Society to prove they were never Sabbath Keepers, let alone kept the Feasts: They considered themselves good Catholics at the time and are now Protestant.
What is so unsettling about this is that during his research, he found others he had known in the Worldwide Church of God also searching the archives. Many of them were or had been ministers. They all knew that the History was a lie, but continued to teach it as if it were true.
This is the magic of Armstrongism in the Cult of Herbert Armstrong in the nanocults: They know they are wrong — totally wrong, but they teach and preach it anyway. By this time, they all know that British Israelism is pure rubbish, easily scientifically disproved once and for all, but they still hold to the Herbert Armstrong fallacy that “British Israelism is the Key to Prophecy”. You can see how that worked out: Herbert Armstrong was a false prophet and so are they all.
They also know that their teaching on tithing cannot be supported Scripturally. Moreover, because there is no such thing as a “second tithe” (look it up in an exhaustive concordance — we’ll wait), there is no funding at all to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. You are on your own time and money on that one. And yes, it could be a blessing, if it weren’t for all those doomsday sermons based on British Israelism you hear in Feast sermons to addle your brain. Everywhere you look, the cult religion falls apart. There is no viability in it at all.
Armstrongism is a purely physical ceremonial cult religion which was the only thing a non spiritual Herbert Armstrong could understand in his ego and greed as a failed ad copy writer going through a psychotic break he interpreted as a religious conversion. He admitted in his Autobiography that he could go weeks at a time being “off” and unable to produce anything and then having a burst of energy to be able to do “brilliant” work. Anyone who owns a DSM-IV ought to be able to suss that one out as bipolar disease manic-depressive illness. This is not to say he wasn’t a sociopath as well, having, as it were, an adaptive conscience which enabled him to lie successfully as the basis of his “Executive Ability”.
With this background, his “descendants” in this dead end evolution at the shallow end of the gene pool populated with a crowded community of alpha males looking to be top banana, having cemented their Folie à deux permanently into a distorted perception of cult mentality, went forth with their delusions and hypocrisies to form their own cult organizations with them in control with no integrity and no accountability — knowing perfectly well that what they taught was pure unadulterated recycled swill.
As the realization of this dawns, you can rest assured that there is not one shred of possibility to trust these men. None. You cannot trust them. They are unreliable. They just make up stuff. What’s so maddening is that we all can prove that they just make up stuff which has no reality whatsoever and they can perfectly well ignore the dissidents. In some cases, they even threaten those who tell the truth. They have a lot of incentive to keep the lies in place. It is their ego, their salary and their retirement. It is their power base.
And so it is no stretch of the imagination at all and take does not take a rocket scientist or nuclear physicist (with a real PhD and experience working with the HADRON collider) to understand that this is all going to continue into 2013. They will lie to you and take your money.
These are the trends we think we see.
Nevertheless, if you are a member in the Armstrongist churches of God, you may just want to do yourself a favor and skip 2013.
Like I said elsewhere. This is going to be a real bust as to Thiel and his “continuing church.”
Continuing Churches are often numerically small denominations that formed from disputes within a larger parent organization. The ‘continuing’ organizations may be old or the split between the parent Church and the Continuing Church may be recent.
-Wiki
So Thiel believes he is leading the real McCoy of churches, gods one and only factually accurate, for prophet, 2 witnessing, armstrong laden bullshit, three ring circus’s above all.
We’ll see.
For the sake of symmetry, we’re assuming that Roderick Meredith will sign the papers and file tomorrow to change the Living Church of God to:
Discontinued Church of God Overseer and other losers trying to hold together a dying soulless cult corporation.
“But who today understands what the prophets foretold? Why, only the ministers today whose word comes to pass!-those who are appointed and guided by God to preach the truth! Those whose utterances do not come to pass have not spoken the prophecies truly. We give you here the record of what we have been proclaiming for the past 2 years-a message which no other voices, to our knowledge, have been proclaiming…. But what we have been warning you about is happening!-precisely as we have stated…. This is how you can know that our work is not of men but of God!”
-Rod “Spanky” Meredith, Plain Truth Magazine, Dec. 1956, p.3
Oops! Missed a bit!
OK folks, they’re going to have to rename “The World Tomorrow” to “The World Yesterday” with the caveat that any predictions you may hear have already failed.
James, I keep looking at the picture… the Best Graphic ever!
I found it fitting for the occasion. Another profit in a new cog!
Oh great! Just what we need is another COG! Don’t these idiots get it? the whole COG thing is done, it’s finished. The Armstrongite franchise is dying off and this mother f**ker is starting another lost cause. I guess old habits die hard? As long as there are brain dead sheeple who are willing to follow these ass-wipes they’ll keep playing the game by dragging these sheeple through a life of misery by sucking the life out of them, messing up their families, and bleeding their pay cheques and bank accounts dry.
It reminds me of my short three and a half years stint in the Toronto Canada congregation of the CGI (Church of God International). There were a couple of clowns in that congregation who wanted their own COG and did it. Both of these dudes had egos and thought they were God’s gift to the world, well at least to the CGI.
One guy use to drive in about 40 miles every Sabbath from the city of Hamilton Ontario but then he started his own group in his home town. I just checked out of curiosity on line to see if it still going and sure enough it still is. The group is called the Hamilton Sabbath Fellowship, and it appears they are associated with an organization called the Church of God Outreach Ministries.
The second fellow has an off the wall group called the British Israel Church of God, which is an internet based church. I just checked a minute ago on line and yep that good ol’ boy is still going. It also looks like he’s taken raising money up an notch, I’ve just noticed that he has a PayPal donation thingy on his site – what a f**king joker! I guess there is money to be made by teaching a stupid dead doctrine such as British – Israelism as long as you can find enough suckers to buy into it.
I find it ironic that the WWGoG offshoots have offshoots. How many more Churches of God can be formed? I mean hell, their running out of names – the COG this, the COG that. I mean even God himself must be getting a little confused by now?
With the formation of the Continuing Church of God I’d like to quote what Ozzy Osbourne says at the start of his concerts, “LET THE MADNESS BEGIN!” or in this case CONTINUE!
Trevor,
“How many more Churches of God can be formed?”
Start with “A” and end with “Z”
“How many more Churches of God can be formed?”
Start with “A” and end with “Z”
And then you can go to A1, A2, etc. Then A1(1), A2(1) A3(1), then A2(2) A3(2), etc. No limits. Godel’s theorem, in any co nsistent axiomatic formalizatrion suitable for numnber theory, there exists an infinity of undecidable propositions.
Of course, I could try to say “If A is true, and B is true, then C is true”.
Then someone else can say That is true, but it can also be said that “If A is true, and B is true, and C is true, THEN D is true, which is a summary of A, B, and C”.
But f that is true, then so meone else can say “If A is treue, and B is true, and C as welllas D are true, then E is true, whichis a summary of A,B, C,and D”, etc. Then A1, A2, etc. There is logically and mathematically no end. Therefore, Matthew 24:23.
In the land of Harmstrongism, we see rogue authority, social directives, and onerous laws that oppress and weaken the members personal freedoms.
And now there’s a new kid on the block claiming to be a prophet and one of the two witnesses. Enter good old Bob Thiel, the latest guru in the field of cog religion. He just loves to open his mouth and let all kinds of things come out without listening to how self-possession-obsessed they sound like.
But as we enter 2013, there isn’t so much as a molecule of evidence that Bob Thiel is in anyway, the way, the truth, and the light. No, there is something else at work here. Something sinister. Something dark.
For the world is on the brink of a Bob Thiel-induced disaster. And for this reason he must not go unchallenged, hence we experience a repeat of the Ron Weinland fiasco where the brain dead sheep sought out a shepherd, who led them astray deep into the woods in order to consume them.
The first lies to be told will be relatively benign.
Then the lies progress.
And they will continue to progress until there is no more truth.
The lies will grow until they blot out the sun and the member is plunged into darkness.
And in the darkness resides insanity. A world fueled by lies, deceit, fables and fantasy. The prophet is honored where there is no honor. The witness goes forth and does not witness, for they themselves face the fear of a reality of ridicule and pronouncements of mental instability.
Ritualistic invocations of needlessly formal rules will secure their authority over the masses. Baseless fears spoken from the pulpit invoke dependence on the guru and protection from the world outside.
So 2013 offers nothing new. Just a repeat of years gone by. A repeat that gets darker and crazier every year.
It’s like television. Once somebody discovers a hot new concept, commodity, or marketing ploy, everyone jumps in and divides up the pie.
Vultures. By dissipation, that often kills off the whole endeavor until the next new hot thing is developed.
The minute the first splinter proved that pieces of the Armstrong pie could become lucrative, and self-supporting, the whole movement was doomed. Everyone who thought they had the talent or ability did jump on that bandwagon, and like mercury, it’s all splintered up in little balls.
The problem now is that a movement which believes in 18 restored truths that are absolute and eternal now finds itself in the position of the above mentioned TV moguls: waiting for the next new hot concept.
As less control, and less income becomes available, watch for these people to up the ante in terms of dirty fighting techniques, and ridiculous, attention-getting behavior to hang on to as many crumbs of the pie which remain.
BB
Bob,
You do know that TV has put out stuff that was taken from the Armstrong church theatrics and made them into a TV show?
Its true.
I used to feel sympathy for the dupes of Armstrongism…not anymore. You have to want to be duped really, really bad to fall for any of that mess. Some few I’ve seen, or rather, read about, have re-converted after having escaped it – talk about a dog returning to his vomit…sheesh.
But, there’s always that danger when one keeps right on believing in stuff they know nothing of. Faith = pretending to know things you don’t know. Hoping for it won’t make it any more real than hoping for a million bucks in the morning’s mail.
After having learned about the “big bang” and the evolution of the cosmos and the evolution of biological life on this planet and still have to call in the supernatural because of some primal fear of death and desire to live forever is forever condemning oneself to being a slave of superstition.
Corky wrote:
“I used to feel sympathy for the dupes of Armstrongism…not anymore. You have to want to be duped really, really bad to fall for any of that mess”
These Armstrong people are addicted to this brand of religion. Its like buying your favorite brand of toilet paper. You don’t change brands because you cannot think outside the box you imprisoned yourself in.
I just got a comment on the YouTube video “The Cult Test.” This guy or gal spent only 2 years or so in Dave Packs little cult of horror. Then he figured out the scam. So what’s stopping the decades long followers from leaving? Addiction. Armstrongism is the opiate of these people.
They are kind of in a box inside of another box called fundamentalism and that box is inside another box called protestantism and that box is inside of a box called Christianity and that box is inside the biggest box of all, the superstition/supernaturalism box.
Fortunately, there is a shortcut straight to the outside of all those boxes. Because they are covered with the one lid of superstition and supernatualism, it’s possible to just lift that one lid and escape.
Corky wrote:
“Fortunately, there is a shortcut straight to the outside of all those boxes. Because they are covered with the one lid of superstition and supernatualism, it’s possible to just lift that one lid and escape.”
And that is what it took for me. A “leap of faith” in myself!
I got sucked into the wacky world of Armstrongism back in 1998 or 1999 and got my act together and bailed out about mid 2002. I started off in the Church of God International here in Canada and then quit that racket and hooked up with the United Church of God for two months just to realize that they were a Worldwide offshoot. I didn’t know a whole lot about the churches of God back then especially since I had no access to the internet until about 2002, so I really had no way of knowing or researching.
It wasn’t until I accidentally stumbled upon two websites (Painful Truth, and Exit Support Network) that I figured out that the whole church of God thing was a complete farce. I did have my suspicions especially since a lot of things did not add up, such as tithing, holy day and holy day offerings, a non-biblical so called “third resurrection” that is not even mentioned in the bible, and of course the infamous British/Israelism, and other off the wall teachings.
It’s easy to get caught up in something like this especially when you know very little about it and think that the teachings are biblical. Even after I left there was enough trash taught to me that it took several years to deprogram myself from Armstrongism. Thankfully the CGI wasn’t as fanatical as many of the other offshoots, but their teachings can still mess with your head and lead one astray, especially for people who sincerely believe in God.
I guess there are people who were/are so far brainwashed that even when they’ve left something causes them to snap and then they return to the vomit. I have to agree with Corky I no longer have sympathy for anyone who returns to Armstrongism. The ones I feel sorry for are the little children who have been raised or who are being dragged into this crap. There is so much out there about old Herbie and Teddy boy and their messed up religion that there is no excuse for returning to it.
The Churches of God are like a bad habit, they just will not go away – at least for now. With any luck within 25 years or so (I’m not prophesying, I’m just hoping)it will be just a bad memory. Unlike the Seventh Day Adventists who have been around for well over a hundred years I cannot see Armstrongism lasting that much longer. There are are very few new recruits. Basically the only way they are surviving is from Armstrongites migrating from one Church of God to another, but over the coming years as they quit or die off Armstrongism will hopefully finally be dead!
Trevor wrote:
“Basically the only way they are surviving is from Armstrongites migrating from one Church of God to another, but over the coming years as they quit or die off Armstrongism will hopefully finally be dead!”
And all those palaces dedicated to god (actually men who are wagging their penises at the world by building these administrative church mansions) will be foreclosed on by the banks who will have to maintain them, and in time, un-ass them.
High demand religions demand a lot. How many people are willing to fore go everything in order to keep the masters pride and joy in his family?