Sunday, September 11, 2011

Old WCG Was a Doomsday Cult, Bob Theil

Bob Theil made an article: Australian Wrong: Old Worldwide Church of God Was Not a Doomsday Cult. In response to the release of a semi-autobiographical novel written by an Australian ex-WCG member, Bob Theil insists that old WCG was not a doomsday cult.
There are a lot of misunderstandings about the old Worldwide Church of God (WCG).
But it was not a “doomsday cult.”

Those of us who were part of the old WCG and in the current Living Church of God (LCG) are not like the Jim Jones’ followers–we do not plan on drinking poisoned flavor-aid to end our lives.
This statement is very deceptive. What the old WCG under HWA did do was forbid followers from using medicine or going to doctors causing tragic and needless deaths. Herbert W. Armstrong appears to have gained this anti-medicine superstition from the Jehovah's Witnesses, in which members were also forbidden from using vaccines from 1921 till 1952. Here Bob Theil shamefully ignores this most dreadful and atrocious behavior HWA forced upon his followers and banishes it down the memory hole.

Let us now continue:
Although some are expected to die in persecutions, LCG church members mainly hope to live until the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His kingdom, and hope to proclaim the truths of the Bible to the world as a witness until the end (Matthew 24:14)....

As far as preaching prophecies in the Bible that show that the Anglo-descended nations will be chastised if they do not repent, yes the old WCG and current LCG taught that .... But urging repentance is not a sign of being a doomsday cult. It is a sign of trying to follow what Jesus said to do.
Bob Theil is wrong. Old WCG was a doomsday cult. HWA and his cronies constantly abused the Bible and viciously used false prophetic interpretations to sow fear of being caught within the Great Tribulation to force followers to follow the dictatorial rule of the so called ministers.

HWA taught that Jesus Christ would return in 1936, then after World War II, then in 1975, then he declared in Mystery of the Ages that He would return by 2005. (PCG removed that embarrassing false prophecy in their version, so you will not see it there.)

Those were not just speculations, as was deceptively taught after these failures, but preached as definite facts. They failed. These false prophecies prove that HWA was never a man used by God.

But these facts are simply ignored by HWA's followers, such as Bob Theil, pretending these things did not happen and deluding themselves that HWA was a man sent from God when he most certainly was not.

4 comments:

  1. Bob Theil is without shame. He speaks of the wcg and the lcg in past tense when he wrote:

    "As far as preaching prophecies in the Bible that show that the Anglo-descended nations will be chastised if they do not repent, yes the old WCG and current LCG taught that"

    Well the lcg still does teach this deception and lie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What I find so offensive is that Bob Thiel pretends that all old WCG did was call upon people to aspire to higher, more godly ideals.
    While completely ignoring the many terrible things which old WCG did.

    That is deception.

    ReplyDelete
  3. He may be sincere, but he's sincerely wrong! A "doomsday cult" is by definition any group that focuses on apocalypticism or millenarianism and thus makes prophecies about future disasters or catastrophes (see wiki). So HWA and all the ACOGs are guilty of this and it would, therefore, be accurate to label them such, just like it would be to call climate change or global warming experts such too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. WCG was a doomsday cult which did not seem to have support and kind of of empathetic response to the idea of millions dying in worldwide holocaust. The lack of empathy in the ministers I knew was staggering. For more info see by book about my exiting the church: Coming out of Hell: A Journey from Chaos to Redemption (Amazon)

    ReplyDelete