Well, look at thatâthe Worldwide Church of God didnât just fade; it face-planted into obscurity so hard that entire generations have no clue who Herbert or Ted Armstrong even were. The Plain Truth? The World Tomorrow? Sounds like a bad retro band no oneâs streaming. Those of us still haunted by the memory are creaking well past middle age, hobbling intoâdare I say itâgeezer territory. Gross.
Anyone with half a brain and a pulse ditched this circus ages ago. But some, bless their nostalgic little hearts, couldnât resist the sweet, sweet lies of the tithe-hungry vultures who spun up knockoff ministries faster than you can say âcult.â These sad little factions come in two flavors: the snooze-fests and the straight-up wackos.
First, the snooze-fests: UCG, CGI, COGWAâyawn. Theyâre not quite deranged enough to be one-dude ego trips, and theyâve got some flimsy guardrails to keep their wannabe dictators in check. But, oh honey, theyâre trapped in a 1950s fever dream where women knew their place, gay folks were a myth, and evolution was Satanâs PowerPoint presentation. Theyâll slap their dinosaur dogma on a shiny new website, thoughâbecause nothing screams ârelevantâ like preaching to a demographic thatâs literally dying off. Spoiler: nobody under 40 cares, and their numbers are tanking faster than a bad sitcom.
Sure, some of these folks are sweet, trying to do good in their own deluded way. But, like, good luck with that, grandpa. No oneâs buying.
Then weâve got the loonies, and oh boy, what a clown car. LCG is the âsanestâ of the bunch, which is like saying a paper cut is better than a chainsaw woundâit is still nuttier than a fruitcake. And it only gets worse from there: Weinland, Pack, Flurry, Thielâpick your poison on the crazy scale. These are the self-crowned kings of their own sad little lunch tables, running one-man fiefdoms thatâll probably implode the second they keel over.
To anyone with a functioning brain, these groups are a cosmic jokeâtoo bad the punchlineâs on the poor saps still tithing. Theyâre too dense to get it.
Victims? Pfft. If youâre still here, youâre choosing to drink the Kool-Aid, and after decades of blatant corruption, manipulation, and hypocrisy, sympathyâs in short supply. Cry me a river. The only ones worth a shred of pity are the kids stuck in hellholes like PCG, raised in these soul-crushing pigsties. Most of âem will bolt the second they canâArmstrongismâs never been good at keeping the youngâuns from running for the hills.
This whole messâll be a footnote, if itâs lucky. Good riddance.
Excellent article. Entropy has certainly set in big time. There’s no new energy to power the ‘next generation’. Children are not their future.
This isn’t to say there still aren’t Y.O.U. type programs. There are, particularly for United, but they are MUCH smaller… much, much smaller. There are all sorts of get togethers, but, you know, these days, there are so much more urgent ‘things’ going on, like making sure you have your pack of medicine to keep you going for, oh, another decade if you are lucky, making sure you have enough to eat and a place to stay, especially if you are retired.
It seems The Journal — News of The Churches of God has been gone several years now, with the last issue in January 2018. Gone. Mostly forgotten. There’s nothing new under the sun. Everything is going geriatric.
While that’s not surprising, especially since every single Armstrongist minister is a liar (to keep the dying embers glowing) and prophecy just isn’t what it used to be, the Cult of Herbert Armstrong isn’t the only one dying.
Hearken back to the days of Paul Woods of the Seventh Day Church of God, Caldwell, Idaho. The church building is still there, but there’s a new Sheriff in town, someone with an Armstrongist background and a felony conviction. The congregation used to be viable, something like a regular church from the 1950s, connected through it’s Herald of Truth to over 800 people worldwide and over 100 people attending the Feast. But the handwriting was on the wall all the way back to 2008.
One lady member back in 2008 admitted that all the children left immediately when they reached their majority. Now, to be fair, Paul Wood’s wife started a children’s program back then with a lot of appeal to the young children, but she’s gone, the program’s gone and by now, so are the grown children.
Friends of the Sabbath is still around, but you don’t hear much about that any more.
So, Armstrong is dying — why wouldn’t it: People stop boozing, smarten up, reject the lies, escape from the financial abuse and move on. But other churches of God outside the Armstrongist sphere are dying too. There may be a few that are still prospering in isolated areas, such as The New Life Church of God Seventh Day, but by and large, the world has been changing but the Churches of God have not been adapting, mostly because they’re stuck in the 1850s paradigm.
The only bad thing about the article here is that the deterioration is worse than depicted… but still, it’s something fresh, good and had to be said.