Reading PCG's Booklet, Jonah: A Strong Warning to God's Church

Let us now look through Gerald Flurry's booklet, Jonah: A Strong Warning to God's Church. Here Flurry uses the Book of Jonah to say that those who understand "the truth" must respond to it or else face dire punishment. This booklet was first published in 1996. It was later revised in 2004. That is the version looked at in this post. You can read this booklet on their website.

Let us see what he has to say. I wonder if it is like so many of his booklets in which he says (insert name of Biblical book here) is actually all about the Tkach changes, the rise of PCG in opposition to this, and only PCG members will get to the place of safety while all others will endure the Great Tribulation. Will this booklet do that as well?

The word of God also came to the Philadelphia Church of God (PCG). God’s people are commanded to deliver this warning message along with what has already been revealed to Herbert Armstrong. ...

We can never escape our responsibility to deliver God’s message and still live—physically, spiritually or both! ...

People who receive God’s message and won’t deliver it are called wicked. If we fail to deliver God’s message, we die physically because of this failure! And 50 percent of God’s people die forever for not repenting of this sin! That is how fearfully serious it is when God reveals His message to us. ...

The most cardinal sin we can commit is to fail to deliver the message God personally gave to us! It is a monumental sin that destroys us forever, unless we repent! Jonah is a book about what happens to people who either deliver God’s message or fail to do so. It applies to all people who have had God’s truth revealed to them. ... They, like Jonah, must learn there is a prodigious penalty for running from the job God gave to them. (pp. 2-3.)

If you like what I am saying to you then you must give me money (three tithes and extra offerings) or else PCG's God will kill you!

This Flurry will say anything to get more peoples' money.

However, Jonah only received a pittance of what God revealed to Mr. Armstrong and the PCG today. So if God was angry with Jonah, He must be wrathful with the Laodiceans today! Concealing so much of God’s truth is a mountainous crime. If we bury God’s message, He is going to bury us. (p. 4.)

Behold how Flurry denigrates this distinguished forerunner of the faith. No wonder Flurry so cynically injects his legend of Malachi's Message (that the Biblical prophesies are all about the Tkach changes, the rise of PCG and that only PCG members will go to the place of safety) into more and more Biblical books. If even Jonah "only received a pittance" of divine revelation why would Flurry and his collaborators treat the Book of Jonah with any respect? Instead of letting it say what it says Flurry makes it parrot Malachi's Message.
And Flurry often does this.

Also it needs to be stated that much of Gerald Flurry's new revelations in Malachi's Message are plagiarized from the writings of Jules Dervaes, specifically The Letter to Laodicea. In fact on September 26, 1990 Jules Dervaes sent a letter to Gerald Flurry in which he denounces Malachi's Message as "a direct and clear plagiarism" of his work.

We now continue.

When God reveals His message to us, we automatically become messengers. We must deliver God’s message. How serious is it if we fail to do the job? We shall die forever! And that means we must deliver precisely the message God reveals to us. ...

We must ask God to reveal our own evil heart and then change. This is our only hope. God is sick of phony repentance and phony religion. We MUST remove any obstacle to our delivering God’s urgent message! This is how we put God first in our lives. (p. 5.)

If you want to keep the money you earned or inherited to better yourself and your family or give you are wicked and God does not love you. That is what he really means here.

The message was to “Nineveh, that great city.” The Hebrew reads: “a city great to God.” Why was Nineveh so great to God? God must have believed that Nineveh and the Assyrian empire would repent. And they did.

Whether the world realizes it or not, Nineveh is the great hope to the nations of this world. ... It was a shining example of what can happen to evil nations. It should be a great encouragement to the nations today! And it will be an example for nations in the World Tomorrow to see what could have been! (p. 7.)

Flurry speaking nicely about Assyrians. How unusual. Usually Flurry presents Germany as the great threat that in the future will destroy America and Britain in a future World War III.

The word of God came to Mr. Armstrong and the Philadelphia Church of God as it did to Jonah. Now God’s Philadelphians must collectively support this message—or receive a fate worse than Jonah’s! (p. 8.)

Pay us money or PCG's God will kill you. If you do not pay us then you must be wicked. Flurry is once again crudely threatening his readers that they must do as they told or else face the Great Tribulation. He is trying to induce an irrational phobia that Germany will soon destroy America and Britain. Alas, many PCG members truly believe these threats and that is why so many stay in PCG despite all the things that go on there.

Any person can prove when a message is from God! If they don’t believe God, it is still a witness against them (Matthew 24:14). So much tragedy could be avoided if people would believe God. If they don’t, then their own weak faith is the problem. The whole world would be in the PCG if they believed God! Because that is where God’s only message and work is! (p. 9.)

 You'd like that, wouldn't you?

One of my Ambassador College professors, Dr. Herman Hoeh, said that Germany even thought of proclaiming a national repentance before the world, after World War II. But then they decided against it because there was no precedent. They thought no nation had ever done such a thing. They didn’t even know the Bible history of their own nation! How sad. (p. 10.)

What on Earth is Flurry talking about? That is why so many Germans were put through De-Nazification courses in order to free themselves from Nazi ideology and stop thinking as this ideology dictated to them. And also many prominent leaders from the German nation have tried to address the crimes of the Nazi era and manage relations with those who were slain and oppressed by the Nazis and their heirs. So actually many Germans are trying to responsibly manage relations with the victims of the Nazi regime.

God said, “I am broken with their whorish heart.” The word broken means “broken-hearted.” The Laodiceans act like their Husband is a statue with no real love for His bride. Their betrayal has left Him broken-hearted. Any husband who loves his wife should be able to understand that emotion. (p. 10.)

Here Flurry is once again inciting hatred of "Laodiceans" in order to keep PCG members isolated from other COG groups in order to keep PCG members thinking that they can only join PCG and must remain in it or else lose God's favor.

God is saying in the strongest words that you don’t really know Him if you don’t believe His message! The Laodiceans have rejected God’s message and therefore don’t truly know Him. What a scathing condemnation. (p. 11.)

So believing in God is taught to be the same as believing what Gerald Flurry says, according to him.

God has “not said in vain” that He would punish them. How did God say this to the Laodiceans? This is being done mainly through the PCG’s warning message. The Philadelphians speak for God and are telling the Laodiceans of the evil that will come upon them. This is what the Laodiceans are going to remember in the Tribulation. (p. 11.)

This is a major reason why PCG was able to build itself up so quickly. Flurry was able to exploit the widespread disaffection with the Tkach changes among many WCG members and rallied them to resist the Tkach changes by joining PCG and then try to convert as many WCG members and ex-WCG members to join PCG as possible. However inevitably PCG reached its saturation point and, presumably, growth in membership among WCG members dried up or at least slowed down to an unsustainable level. This was inevitable.

But instead of accepting this as a fact of life in 2000 Flurry petulantly ordered PCG members to shun all Laodiceans and have no contact with them, even with close family members. This was done as a crude and heartless attempt to coerce WCG members and ex-WCG members not paying tithes to PCG to join PCG by blackmail. Of course most people seeing such extremist behavior only looked on in heart broken horror at the level of authoritarian depravity PCG has seen fallen into.

(Also, hypocritically, this does not seem to be enforced among PCG's leaders such as Stephen Flurry, who interviewed Aaron Dean (UCG) and Roderick C. Meredith (LCG) while doing research for his book, Raising the Ruins. Just look at the footnotes.)

The fourth chapter of Jonah presents another problem. Jonah was very angry that God saved Nineveh. Once we run away from God’s work, I believe it often has lasting damage. Jonah still seemed to have an attitude problem. The Laodiceans lose a large portion of their reward because of their running from God today. (pp. 13-14.)

One of the peculiar doctrines Flurry teaches is that even the Laodiceans who repent in the Great Tribulation will only be given a small role in ruling the World Tomorrow. He says even after they repented and are glorified as God beings they are still of a lower rank than the glorified PCG members.

In other words Flurry will still be mad at you for not paying him money even during the afterlife as a God being for all eternity.

Flurry ends with these words.

If God will warn a great city before He destroys it, He will certainly warn great empires. He is doing just that in this end time. That grave responsibility has fallen upon God’s Philadelphia Church. God wants us to see how terribly important His message is. We must be deeply sobered and moved when “the word of the Lord came unto” the Church of God! (p. 14.)

Intriguingly the cover for the current version of this booklet (which you can see at the link above) was made by one Darrel Tank who works with Goodsalt.com. Take a look for yourself. It is certainly not COG. So PCG which constantly denigrates "false Christians" and even orders PCG members to shun members of rival COG groups uses an image made by one of these "false Christians" (who probably never at any time believed HWA was used by God) to illustrate one of their booklets.

So we see that once again Flurry has simply used another book of the Bible, this time Jonah, and applied the script for Malachi's Message onto Jonah.

Also Flurry tries very hard to persuade the reader here that to please God one must join PCG or be cursed with the Great Tribulation because not acting upon what Gerald Flurry tells you is wicked and will guarantee PCG's God's wrath.