Gerald Flurry Says President Obama is an "Antiochus-type" Figure Just Like Tkach

Did you know that PCG's leader, Gerald Flurry, says President Obama is just like the Man of Sin, Tkach, and is being heavily influenced by Satan to lead America into catastrophe?

Neither did I until I read his 2013 booklet, America Under Attack. (You can read this booklet at their website.)

President Obama is labeled as "another Antiochus-type" figure specifically.

Now for many years Herbert Armstrong taught that the final Pope would be the False Prophet and Man of Sin who would use the power of the Roman Catholic Church to help give birth to a European Empire that would destroy America in a nuclear World War III.

Often this Man of Sin was symbolically linked with Antiochus Epiphanes, who infamously desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem and placed an idol there. Under his oppressive rule the revolt of the Maccabees arose to liberate their country from his tyranny. This is the Antiochus referred to in Flurry's booklet. 

Then after HWA's death, one WCG lay member, Jules Dervaes, wrote a series of letters entitled Letter to Laodicea, condemning Tkach as a sinful successor and denouncing him as a spiritual Man of Sin fated to lead WCG away from (HWA's) God's blessing.

Afterwards Gerald Flurry, likely influenced by Dervaes' idea, wrote a booklet entitled Malachi's Message to God's Church Today, in which he denounced Tkach as the Man of Sin.

(It is well known that 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.) 

WCG's leaders, in responding to this booklet in an article in 1991, noted correctly that HWA's WCG had never taught that the Man of Sin would be a man within WCG.

Despite such inconvenient facts Flurry continued to propagate this teaching.

Later in 1995 Tkach died and was succeeded by his son, Joseph Tkach, Jr. It appears that Flurry then changed the identity of the Man of Sin from the father to the son. Having read PCG's early booklets I saw no evidence that Flurry viewed Tkach, Jr. as the Man of Sin. It was only after 1995 that Tkach, Jr. was asserted to fulfill that role. This is why Stephen Flurry, in his book, Raising the Ruins, keeps asserting that Tkach, Jr. was the real mastermind behind the Tkach changes and not his father.

But in all this Flurry never said that there would be another Antiochus-type figure until 2013 with the release of his booklet, America Under Attack. That is exactly what Flurry has done in this booklet.

This is the way Satan operates. In order to destroy God’s Church, he managed to plant a spiritual Antiochus right [Tkach, Jr.] at the top, who desecrated the spiritual temple and cast the truth to the ground. And in order to destroy the nations of Israel, Satan brings a political Antiochus [the European dictator] who will lead an army right into the Holy City, Jerusalem, to begin his physical assault (e.g. Daniel 11:31; Mark 13:14; Luke 21:20). The United States, Britain and Israel (the Jewish state, biblical Judah) are all prophesied to fall together at the hands of that European power (Hosea 5:5).

Biblical prophecy shows that Satan leads both the spiritual Antiochus and this political Antiochus.

[Now Flurry introduces his new idea.]

Is it possible that he uses the SAME STRATEGY to weaken physical Israel in between those two attacks?

Does he have another Antiochus who undermines the nations of Israel and prepares them for their destruction by the Holy Roman Empire?

The highest office in the world’s number one superpower, which happens to be a descendant of ancient Israel, would have to be a big target for Satan, wouldn’t you think? I am certain of it. (pp. 14-15.)

Later on it is strongly insinuated that President Obama fulfills this newly created role.

Further on in the booklet Flurry discusses some executive orders President Obama issued following Adam Lanza's massacre. Flurry presents these executive orders in an alarmist way and as a sign that President Obama is disregarding the laws of America.

I am sickened by what Adam Lanza did. But what makes me sicker is somebody using that massacre to promote a political ideology! I think those 23 executive orders are just about getting around the Constitution and conditioning the minds of the people to accept the president saying, Don’t worry about the supreme law of the land! Listen to me! Just like Antiochus did. (pp. 30-31.)

And shortly after that Flurry insinuates that President Obama is being influenced by Communists. He then profess to be uncertain of that but then insinuates that President Obama is being influenced by Satan in the same way that Tkach, Jr. was in implementing the Tkach changes (so Flurry would have us believe).

In a sense, this plan has been coming to pass in America. I don’t claim to know the degree to which the Communists organized it, or that the president fits a Communist plan (though there is some evidence to suggest that).

But I DO KNOW ABOUT THE DEVIL! And I know he is doing EVERYTHING HE CAN TO SINK AMERICA. And I have seen him use a man at the top—an Antiochus—to bring down an organization. And I’m watching as this government takes one step after another that is weakening this country and hastening the fulfillment of some of the most terrifying prophecies in the Bible! And I know that the devil, who is a liar and who hates law, is BEHIND THAT! (p. 33.)

And so we see that Gerald Flurry has been saying some very silly things to his followers.

What will Flurry say once President Obama hands the reins to his successor in January 2017?

How is this any different from calling President Obama an Antichrist?

(Also Flurry also insinuates that Christ will return by 2023.

Everything is set for a new government to be in place on Earth very shortly—almost certainly in less than a decade. (p. 6.)

What madness! It will be 1975 all over again.)