Reading PCG's Booklet, Character in Crisis

Let us now read Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry's booklet, Character in Crisis. This booklet was originally published in 1998 during the height of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal. It has since been revised in 2005 and 2012. This booklet essentially says that America has fallen far from its original ideals and there is a drastic national repentance the USA is doomed to be destroyed in the Great Tribulation. You can read the current version of this booklet on their website.

Let us begin.

The Founding Fathers may not have known that America’s earliest settlers were in fact descendants of Israel (write for The United States and Britain in Prophecy for proof), but they certainly likened America to a “New Israel.” (p. 2.)

Did the Founding Fathers believe they were descended from the Biblical Israelites? The answer is no. They did not.

Just as the Israelites of old fled from an oppressive Egypt to settle in a new land given unto them by God, so did many of the early colonial settlers flee from religious persecution to the shores of America—a land they claimed to be theirs by God’s divine right. This biblical concept is what Manifest Destiny was all about—a belief that it was God’s will for America to stretch from sea to shining sea—from the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific Ocean. (p. 3.)

What about the Native Americans? How do they fit into this narrative? That land which was settled was not empty.

Our Founding Fathers created the Constitution. It will be perilous if we ignore their deep understanding. The Constitution was established only for a people with strong morals. But we have degenerated terribly in this area. Without character our liberties will lead to deep division and anarchy. Only character can stop that natural flow of events. What makes our forefathers’ statements so weighty is that they agree with God! (p. 5.)

The Constitution that the Founding Fathers created allowed slavery. In fact the slave owners and their representatives in Congress and the Senate were so successful in using the Constitution to justify slavery that some abolitionists burned the Constitution because of how it was used to sustain slavery. The Constitution was only amended to ban slavery after the cataclysmic Civil War.

Codevilla [a cited author] goes on to say that the tendency for Americans to liken themselves to the children of Israel was so common that it even spread among the Negro slaves. (p. 10.)

Why are they called "Negro slaves" here? Who calls African Americans "Negro" nowadays?

Of course the "Negro slaves" (their words) found inspiration in the Bible. They read how the children of Israel were liberated from slavery. They dreamed that something like that would happen for them.

Up until page 12 the Flurrys talk about the state of American society at the founding of the Republic. America's early history is presented in a very nostalgic manner. The painful things within it, such as slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans, are just simply willfully forgotten.

It is particularly strange to me that the Flurrys seem to have little such awareness about the historic plight Native Americans considering that the Flurrys live in a State that used to be called the Indian Territory, has the highest population of Native Americans per capita of any State and was the destination of the Native Americans who were viciously deported along the Trail of Tears in the 1830s.

Consider the changes in America over the past 200 years. President Clinton received his highest approval ratings while in the midst of numerous White House scandals. This is what should disturb us, and even frighten us, most of all. That would not have been the response of Americans even 20 years ago! A White House scandal is not just about the White House. It’s about America and Americans. It’s about all of us. It’s about you! (p. 12.)

The Flurrys make it sound like as though a President had never indulged in adultery before. In fact such things had occurred before but such adulterous affairs previously were never politicized or used to try to bring down a sitting President as occurred during President Clinton's time.

Then the Flurrys assure the reader that (PCG's) God is angry and furious at the United States and that you should be very afraid.

It is very bizarre that Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry should be so angry over President Clinton's adulterous affair that they even wrote a booklet about it yet at the same they praise to the high heavens HWA, a man who committed incest most foul for ten years with his own daughter. This monstrous affair has recently been confirmed to have occurred by his own niece and his own grandson. As inexcusable President Clinton's affair was what HWA did as he supposedly established the "Philadelphian era of God's Church" was far, far worse. HWA should have been thrown into jail over this. In some States he could even have been executed for it. How pathetic it is to condemn President Clinton's adultery yet willingly ignore HWA's ten years of atrocities against his own daughter.

We now continue.

God is full of anger. He is not neutral or unconcerned. This prophecy should strike fear in our hearts! ... The leaders of the people commit adultery and walk in lies. The two sins go together. Many people who commit adultery also lie about it! (p. 14.)

Gerald Flurry dares to condemn President Clinton for lying? Strange that, considering how many of the ideas within Gerald Flurry's booklet, Malachi's Message, were plagiarized from The Letter to Laodicea by Jules Dervaes, written December 1986-January 1988. It was sent to 237 WCG ministers including Gerald Flurry and John Amos. 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. Gerald Flurry later claimed to have received this booklet from an angel. And Gerald Flurry dares to condemn President Clinton for lying after doing things like that? What hypocr

The Flurrys say (PCG's) God thinks America is as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah. The Flurrys then condemn the prevalence of pornography.

America spends over $4 billion annually on pornography. That is more than we spend on professional baseball! So this is not just ghetto pornography. This cesspool material is being consumed by mainstream America. Only a fool could fail to see how pornography rips families apart! America leads the world in producing pornography—and divorces. ... If we don’t stop the process, our nations will become like Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19). Then God will have to destroy us as He did them! ... God is addressing Israel (Jeremiah 23:2). That is primarily America and Britain today. (p. 15.)

America and Britain are not modern day Israel. Of course British Israelism is false. That doctrine is built on a foundation of sand as Silenced.co has recently shown.

So Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry have got it totally wrong. These words from the Book of Jeremiah are not addressed to America and Britain. This is just fear mongering based on the nonsense of British Israelism. It is just a wacky fantasy.

After that the authors cite an article from the New York Times mentioning one University lecturer who was surprised to hear from his students that most of them believed President Clinton was lying about his adulterous affair. This University lecturer cited this as an example of people becoming alienated from the political process.

PCG forbids members from even voting. This practice was inherited from HWA's WCG. That University lecturer would have been even more horrified with his students if they all decided to follow PCG's dictate and choose not to vote.

Then Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry appear to condemn how comedians were making fun of the situation and insinuating that laxity in enforcing censorship is a sign of moral degeneration within American society.

After that Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry blame religious leaders for America's disintegrating morals for saying that the law is a law of bondage. The authors then cite the Epistle of James to say the law is the law of liberty, as is typical among the COGs.

Then the Flurrys recite the history of Israel in the Old Testament saying that they had a very promising start but they did not obey the law and so they fell into sin and thus allowing foreigners to conquer and enslave them, driving them into exile.

After such a promising start, the ancient nation of Israel rejected God and His moral standard, turned to anarchy, became divided, and eventually went into captivity.

Our ancestors—biblical Israel—fell as a nation because every man was doing what he thought was right. That means the people didn’t trust their press, their politicians, or their religious leaders. The big question is, why? The answer is in today’s headlines and all around us! The people were deeply degenerate and cared only for themselves. That led to their downfall. The leaders couldn’t call upon the people to make deep sacrifices in desperate times. The people didn’t trust the leaders. (pp. 19-20.)

It is inaccurate to claim that the Biblical Israelites are the ancestors of the European peoples of America and Britain. To repeat again: British Israelism is false. The doctrine is built on a foundation of sand.

Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry ends this booklet with these words.

As Alexis de Tocqueville said, any free society founded on liberty, yet without a sacred moral code to govern the actions of individuals, cannot stand. It can only end in anarchy. Because America has forsaken the ideals of our Founding Fathers, because we have forsaken our God—that is where we are headed. As it turns out, the Europeans were right. The grand American experiment has failed. (p. 20.)

America has failed and you are doomed to endure the Great Tribulation unless you sent in three tithes and extra offerings to PCG immediately. That is the real message that lies behind this booklet.

The Sidebar Articles

Embedded in this booklet are three sidebar articles on pages 6-9, 13 and 17.

The first sidebar article continues with the booklet's argument that if the leader is sinful this will have a negative affect upon those who follow him. It cites the examples of Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Othniel and David as leaders who, because of their faithfulness to (PCG's) God caused their nation to flourish and prosper. But their failings (specifically David) still had the potential to bring severe disaster upon the nation.

The second sidebar article bemoans broken families and cites George Washington and John Adams as men who believed that stable families were essential in creating a stable and prosperous society and they followed such ideals.

The third sidebar article implies that all of society is all the verge of disintegrating because people are willing to lie when question by the judiciary arm of national government. 

Summary

I find myself surprised at how shallow this booklet is. This booklet is Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry's surprisingly lame attempt to capitalize upon the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal. I mean if the Flurrys really wanted to demonize President Clinton and make him appear to be a sign of the end of the end time they would have been better off talking about the sanctions opposed on Iraq under his watch which inflicted so much suffering upon the Iraqi people and set the stage for the horrors of the Iraq War. Instead they just complain about his adultery and try to call him a perjurer, acts which, however foolish and wrong, did not cause anyone to die or to be trapped in poverty.

[Update: July 23, 2014: More information about this booklet may be seen at this post.]