Like Dave Pack, Meredith Also Promises His Followers that "Every Nation on Earth, Not just a Few" will Hear LCG's Witness

Recently Banned by HWA has been noting how Dave Pack has been promising his followers that the work of RCG will soon greatly expand.

The Real Truth magazine subscription list will begin sprinting toward multiple millions....Of course, the number of magazines distributed in the Newsstand Distribution Program will skyrocket because of much greater funding.

Powerful Public Bible Lectures will be held worldwide. Our websites will become the biggest thing in religion online that the world has ever seen. Internet advertising will multiply to awesome proportion. So will large newspaper ads. The list of how the Work will grow bigger could go on and on.

Pack is just like the advertizer who always says "and more..." at the end of his product description.

These words instantly reminded me of how Meredith would claim to his members that LCG is just about to witness astounding and drastic growth. He promises his followers that soon the whole world will be listening in rapt attention to what Meredith and LCG has to say about true religion, the future, society, etc.

One can see this in his booklet, Fourteen Signs Announcing Christ's Return. This is seen under sign eight: 'The Gospel of the Kingdom Preached to All Nations'. This is still posted in LCG's website.

The great “Olivet prophecy” of Jesus Christ is pivotal in understanding future events. In Matthew 24:3, Jesus was asked by the disciples, “Tell us, when shall these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” As we have seen, Jesus first warned them about false prophets, wars and rumors of wars leading to world war, famines, disease epidemics and earthquakes, and said, “All these are the beginning of sorrows” (v. 8).

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation” (v. 9). The coming Great Tribulation will affect the Church as well as national Israel. “And [they will] kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.” This verse is quite significant because it says, in effect, that God’s true Church and Work will be known by all nations. People will not hate it unless they know about it, will they? They will hate the true Work of God because they will hate its message....

Every nation on earth, not just a few, will hear about this...(Source.)

Note that Meredith uses the future tense. This is supposed to happen in the future. Some COGs and individual Armstrongites teach that HWA already witnessed to the world and therefore say there is no need for them to tell the world about Armstrongism. Meredith is not from that school of thought.

Has this great expansion of 'the work,' spreading Armstrongite heresies, occurred? Obviously not.

We can count this as yet another false prophecy Meredith continues to spread.

Is Dave Pack Self Deluded after Fourteen Years of Producing and Listening to his own Propaganda?

From Banned by HWA:

An inside source has told us that Dave Pack's fledgling little group consists of 1,700 people.

Dave is also disappointed in this SMALL number of people.  Try as he might will all the media advertising, bombastic boastful letters, attacks on all the splinter groups, and outright poaching of men he thought would bring legions of followers with them, he cannot draw members into his group.

He seriously is perplexed as to why no one cares!  Can he be that naive?

I think he is that naive. But there are reasons for this.

For a start he has deluded himself. For the last fourteen years (5110 days) he has surrounded himself with (1) people who genuinely believe he is God's gift to humanity, the successor to HWA, or (2) cunning flatterers and yes men who agree with whatever nonsense he spouts in order to be on his good side for selfish reasons.

For all these fourteen years these people have continuously put to fruition whatever Pack proposes to do. 

In RCG Dave Pack has no one to answer to for his acts.

If anyone dares to cross him he fires them, disfellowshipps them. Even in his days as a WCG minister Dave Pack displayed strong authoritarian tendencies. Maybe his vicious acts of repression teaches him that anyone who oppose him is worthy of contempt. No one tells him, "What you have done is a terrible thing." Instead they agree or acquiescence in it and he (in his simplistic black and white thinking) encourages himself into deluding himself that he only acts out of the noblest of intentions. There is no accountability whatsoever. He is free to act how he wills.

(I am not blaming those who work with RCG for Dave Pack's wild megalomania. I am simply describing a situation Dave Pack has created for himself. He persuades and coerces people to conform to the will of himself and his organization. Dave Pack bears responsibility.)

What must it do to someone to be told for fourteen years he is wonderful and excellent, that whatever he does is noble and pure?

 

They all tell Pack that he is a great man. They tell him news he wants to hear. Pack is stuck in a information bubble of his own making.

Maybe he actually believes his own propaganda.

Maybe he is drunk with his own filthy propaganda. 

Maybe he is like a fourteen year alcoholic.

Maybe at some point in these fourteen years he forgot that the point of his false teachings is to control people and instead actually believed it literally.

Why shouldn't he? No one around him will say he is wrong.

The Boom and Bust of Armstrongism

From a comment by Joe Moeller at thisBanned by HWA post.

It intriguingly compares the boom and bust of Armstrongism with how a bubble market operates and that the bubble has long popped. The COG ministers are merely fighting over what little remains.

HWA started with 19 people about 80 years ago.

There are about 25k people today who are Sabbatarians who can trace some type of lineage back to that 1934 beginning.

The compounded rate of return of member growth is therefore 9.39% annually.

The rate of return on the SP 500 over the equivalent period of time (with dividends reinvested) is nearly exactly the same as that, from 1934 to present.

Thus we can say that Armstrongism has grown at a rate equivalent to American industry which is not out of the ordinary.

What we can also add, is that the period from 1950 to 1970, where the bulk of the WCG was grown, was a type of "bubble market", much like the late 1990s internet stock boom, or the early 2000s real estate bubble.

Markets that are growing at 30 to 40% annual growth rates for a number of years, ALWAYS blowoff and collapse. 9% is the historical norm for markets and return on capital. WCG was a speculative bubble that was levitating on a unique period of time and space... that of Cold War terror and limited , captive audience, communciation through both radio and TV.

Companies expanding at such high rates of return end up hiring less than trained personnel, and also start to face the dilution factor of new competitors coming into their market share, especially if the margins are so good in the expansion. In effect, they sow the seeds of their own destruction.

What you see in the COG today is a normal correction phase of an inflated market, and a normal market shakeout. Much like the internet boom, the hundreds of companies that had no real business plans and no real markets will eventually fade away. The same goes for the miniature coglets. The hundreds of little websites around will slowly be disappearing over the years.

Eventually, mature market places tend to settle down into perhaps two major players, and two more lesser players, for a total of all four controlling 90% of the marketplace. This has happened in finance, airlines, automaking , trucking and many other industries. It is the nature of things.

The COG is going through a major cyclical market cycle, with the boom top being somewhere around 1995. In the long economic cycles of wave theory, within a 75 year cycle, about one third of it is actually moving backwards. This means 25 years of consolidation, backing and filling, and shakeout per each long cycle. This implies that perhaps the bottom in the COG marketplace might be in finding footing at around 2020 or so.

We shall see.

Joe Moeller
Cody, WY

LCG's 20th Anniversary Celebration: Prelude to LCG's Crises

On pages 20-21 of theMarch-April 2013 Living Church News is an article by Jim Meredith detailing the celebration LCG HQ held for the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Global Church of God.

It is unjust that the man who enforced Herbert W. Armstrong's divorce and remarriage doctrine, causing the unnecessary termination of many marriages and the destruction of many families, who had eye surgery to save his eyesight while followers were told to avoid doctors or else they might be cast out into nuclear World War III and the lake of fire, who spread many false fear inducing prophesies (that Christ will return in 1975, etc.) and exploited people's fear by getting their three tithes and offerings. That is how Meredith gets his money.

It is not right that a man who has caused so much trouble for what Armstrongites call "God's Church" should be honored and adored in such a manner.

One good thing that self-ordained false prophet Bob Thiel's departure from LCG did was to mar this day for Meredith and his collaborators at LCG HQ. They would not have welcomed his temper tantrum, especially at a time like that.

However since this anniversary celebration LCG seems to also be in a financial crisis caused by LCG members not sending in as much money as LCG HQ anticipated. Maybe seeing Richard Ames hand over that "Baccarat crystal eagle" to Meredith made LCG members realize they did not need to send in so much money to them. LCG HQ has even cruelly disfellowshiped Thomas Baca II, an employee in their TV department. One LCG minister, Rod Reynolds, has resigned. 

Things are far from ideal within LCG, despite what their propaganda tries to tell LCG members.

The "HWA is End Time Elijah" Doctrine Dates Back to 1966 At Least

In a Banned by HWA post about Dave Pack trying to associate himself with HWA by boasting of getting a RCG member to pay $24,000 to get a Steuben Crystal and claiming possession of it somehow gives him authority over the scattered COG members.

In that post Byker Bob gives the following comment that I feel deserve greater attention:

This guy is a revisionist, who delights apparently in inserting himself fraudulently into the past history of WCG.

The Elijah connection with HWA was alive and well at AC in Pasadena in 1966, the year prior to Dave's arrival on campus. How do I know this? Some of the less reverant amongst the student body, and I immediately picked this up myself, based on some of the sermons and Bible Studies, began calling HWA "Elijah" some times.

A good friend, whose parents were in town visiting, was given car privileges on one particular summer Saturday night. We ended up using it for an awesome joyride seeing some of the pop culture things we'd only heard about throughout the L.A. area. At one point while rounding the corner from Grove to Orange Grove, my bud wondered, as we passed HWA's home if "Elijah was home".

Pack has come up with an Al Goreithm, and is equally shameless!

BB

COG authors have always been terribly vague about when this particular idea first arose within the Radio Church of God/Worldwide Church of God. Now Byker Bob tells us it dates to at least 1966, and it seems it was around even earlier than that.

Of course it is complete nonsense. HWA was a false prophet who made many false prophesies.

Is Dave Pack Losing his Mind?

Recently Banned By HWA devoted eight posts to analyzing Dave Pack's latest screed to the other COGs insisting that his organization is far and away the best COG there is and that God is not working through any other human being except himself.

Dave Pack Says COG Members of Other Groups Are Unclean

Dave Pack: All Non-COG People are Infidels

Dave Pack On Vile Rotten Music and Other Filth That COG Members Wallow In Like Pigs

Dave Pack: The Restore Church of God Is God's Temple On Earth and the Dwelling Place of God

Dave Pack: Any COG Minister Coming to the RCG Has To Be Reeducated Before They Can Receive God's Blessings

Dave Pack Damns UCG For Council Report on the Role of Women in the Church 

Dave Pack Says: If you Rejected HWA as Zerubbabel Then You Will Reject Me as Joshua

Dave Pack: My God Is Ready To Strike Down Ministers Who Disagree With Me

To me these posts seem to show a most disturbing turn of mind Dave Pack seems to be undergoing at this moment. Dave Pack seems determined to out do himself in pomposity and wild speculation.

Is he losing his mind?

Thinking you are someone really important and special when you are not is actually a sign of mental illness. Has Dave Pack actually deceived himself with his own propaganda?

I shudder to think what Restored Church of God members have to go through because of this man. He does not show the signs of a stable man. I fear for them.

It is terrible that he has built himself to be such a great man, because this makes it impossible for him to receive correction from other people. So if he makes a mistake no one can advise him to correct himself without being demonized as an unbeliever.

I think Dave Pack's increasing delusions of grandeur are a matter of concern. I fear for RCG members who are under the influence of Dave Pack while he is in a state of mind like this.

Gerald Flurry Bizarrely Obsessed with Shunning "Laodiceans"

Banned by HWA has a very good post about PCG leader Gerald Flurry's vicious No Contact policy with "Laodiceans", namely ex-PCG members, ex-WCG members who did not join PCG, and anyone baptized into another COG. 

I posted the following comment to that post:

Gerald Flurry has always been bizarrely obsessed with shunning "Laodiceans". This was true even in a 1990 edition of Malachi's Message.

Once I did a blog after I read a 1990 edition of Malachi's Message. Here's one part of it relevant to this discussion.

I quote:

""If the work to the world is basically finished - most of what remains to be done is separating the Laodiceans and the Philadelphians.... That should not taken very long - but it will be painful! Very painful - in some cases it will break up families." (p. 78.)

"My word! This has to be one of the most disgusting, horrid and shocking statements Flurry ever says in this book. Here is the terrible no contact policy in embryo. Although (as far as I know) the no contact policy was not yet in force then, it seems clear that the seeds of self-righteous hatred against so-called Laodiceans (WCG members and members of other COGs) is already there in Flurry's heart.

"He knows the hatred he is teaching towards those he defines as Laodiceans will tear up families. But it seems clear from these words he is determined to do it regardless, as early as February 1990.

"It is a terrible tragedy that Flurry found himself in just the right time to gain enough converts from WCG to became one of the major Armstrongite COGs."

End quote.

I have always been particularly disgusted at PCG's no contact policy, even when I was an Armstrongite.

Will PCG Aid Oklahoma Victims of Tornado Disaster?

Recently No2HWA dared Gerald Flurry and his collaborators to set an example for other COGs and aid the victims of the terrible tornado disaster that recently hit Oklahoma, practically on Gerald FLurry's doorstep.

Alas, I am quite sceptical that the PCG HQ ministers will help after reading this from the 1990 edition of Malachi's Message, as I noted in a previous blog about the book mistakenly called Malachi's Message.

Flurry condemns WCG considering giving aid to disaster victims. "Instead of spending money to warn the people why it's happening, we help them financially....Tithes and offerings are going to be spent in vain if they continue this approach." pp. 54-5.

Pp. 69-70 also condemns aid to disaster relief.

I find this quite grating. To me it serves as a very bad sign for where Gerald Flurry is going to lead his followers. In several places in Malachi's Message Gerald Flurry says one should be concerned about the direction in which WCG teachings appeared to be heading in. The early readers of Malachi's Message should have been concerned about the direction this teaching indicated within PCG.

To self-righteously ignore the plight of those afflicted by disasters seems like a very bad way to start up a new COG.

One time, infamously, HWA condemned sending money to aid the refugees in Nigeria during the Biafra War (1967-70) and called upon co-workers to instead send that money to him instead to preach.

Coworker letter  2/27/70 

"THE APPEAL [to help refugees] WAS TO TREAT THE EFFECT, NOT THE CAUSE!… THIS WORK OF GOD is DOING SOMETHING BIG AND IMPORTANT TO STOP THE CAUSE—to PREVENT MORE BIAFRANS from starving… you are having A PART  in spreading Christ’s Gospel… Right HERE is the MOST IMPORTANT WORK ON EARTH TODAY… GIVE generously as you are able.. The way to DO SOMETHING about the starving and dying in Biafra, India, Egypt, and other such areas suffering evils, is to DEAL WITH THE CAUSE, not the effect—to HELP IN THIS GREAT WORK OF THE LIVING CHRIST!" (From Pam Dewey's website.)

Alas, it would appear that Gerald Flurry took this advice to heart.

It's also sad to see that one of the reasons Flurry gives for opposing donating to charity is that soon there will be so many colossal disasters coming before Christ's return that giving to charity will be useless. It's been about 24 years since he wrote those words and nothing has changed.

It would be good if they helped out, for themselves if nothing else, but after reading this I highly doubt they will.

Tornado Disaster in Oklahoma City

Recently heard about the terrible tornado disaster in Oklahoma that killed so many people. When I heard that had happened my very first thought was that that is when Gerald Flurry's cult is based. I could not help but think of them. I do not want them harmed in a tornado. I want them to stop dividing families, stop imposing the infamous no contact rule against "Laodiceans" and ex-PCG members, stop making making people scared of using medicine and going to see a doctor.

I shudder to imagine what fear inducing nonsense they will say about this terrible tragedy. So far they have released an article by Jeremiah Jacques which leaves itself to advertizing a booklet peddling fear inducing nonsense.

Exploiting this tragedy to cause people to fear and then using this fear to extract three tithes and offerings from this is of course a terrible thing. The COG leaders, if we take them at their word, seem to think they are doing their duty, but actually such crass behavior only reveals the terrible spiritual decay Armstrongism has thrown itself into. 

Unaccredited HWA Collage Graduation; Gerald Flurry Calls Tocqueville's Opinion a 'Prophecy'

Recently Banned by HWA released a post about Gerald Flurry's speech at the graduation of HWA Collage, a collage built on the sweet and tears of thousands of tithe paying PCG members.

The video starts with brief introduction by Stephen Flurry.

Then at 0:24 the student body president, Reniel Padua, speaks of the many things they learned there.

At 2:07 we are shown the choir singing two songs, first 'May the road rise to meet you' by Mark Jenkins and (4:50) 'We are the pillars' by Ryan Malone.

At 8:55 we are introduced to a speech by 'That Prophet,' the cult leader, conceiver of the No Contact policy towards 'Laodiceans' and ex-PCG members, the one who forbids PCG members from getting medical treatment, who forbids women from wearing make up, Gerald Flurry.

Listening to it I was amazed to see that his speech closely echoes what he wrote in his article, The Law of History, in the February 2002 issue of The Philadelphia Trumpet. (You need to sign into the website to read the article.) For a brief time I was a subscriber to PCG's recruitment magazine from 2001. That issue was the last one I received. In both that article and his speech he laments how historians tend to portray history as an unfolding process of historical forces, marginalizing the importance of individual great figures in history. It surprises me that he speaks about the very same things even after so many years.

I was also amused how he referred to an opinion of Tocqueville's as a 'prophecy'. He discusses how Tocqueville comments that historians of a democratic, republican society such as the US will be inclined to view history as a process of social movements and shared ideas. This is in contrast to historians of an aristocratic society who would be inclined to describe history as a succession of great individuals, such as aristocrats who pass on their power and wealth from father to son. He called this opinion of Tocqueville's a prophecy. See 9:59 onwards. He says, "And there's just a painfully obvious prophecy that was fulfilled and certainly should alarm us." Surely it must be a slip of the tongue.

After that at 15:11 we are shown the graduating students being handed degrees by Gerald Flurry. It is mentioned that students from the US, Canada, the Philippines and Zimbabwe are among the graduating students.

At 15:55 the video ends and so does this post.