Time for another wonderful summary of the biggest news out of wide, weird world of the COG. This week it’s new headquarters for COGWA, Masonic conspiracy theories, RCG rants and rampant racism. It never gets more boring than it has to be.
COGWA’s Rolling In It
The new COGWA cult is thriving financially with its $1.3 million in reserves and new headquarters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The 5,590 square foot space at “The Office Campus at Allen” and was chose exclusively by the cult’s elite, free of any member input on how their tithe money is spent on their new home office.
It’s a reminder that despite how much these cults may split and shrink, their leadership will always find a way to milk profit from their sheep. The new one floor HQ may not be much compared to UCG’s building or PCG’s Herbert W. Armstrong College, and a far cry from the immaculate Ambassador College campus. But somehow the COG manages to pull millions from their members in compulsory tithes and offerings, and with fewer large assets to maintain, lots more of that can be usurped by the ministry.
Malm’s Masonic Conspiracy
According the intrepid Apostle Malm, the COG has been full of Freemasons. The McNairs, Stanley Rader, Roderick C. Meredith, Joseph Tkach Sr. and others were all part of a Masonic conspiracy to destroy the church. He complains that all of WCG’s old literature about the Freemasons was squashed when Rader joined the church.
He claims to be compiling a list of COG Masons to be published this fall, and that the secret society is trying to silence him. Many COG congregations rent Masonic buildings as church halls. Somehow, God was pretty dumb when creating the angels and allowing Masons to run the “one true church.”
Malm’s rants feed the beast of COG conspiracy loons who eat this stuff up.
RCG Pastoral Drama Continues
Larry McElroy, RCG pastor, is adding to the chorus of disaffected ministers ranting about slackers in the COG, specifically about those who would see following Christ as a hallmark of the church rather than legalistic Sabbath-keeping. He traces his journey of disgust from WCG to UCG and finally sees salvation with David C. Pack’s RCG as the one true church.
In related news, UCG betrayer Dale Schurter seems to have dropped off the map, likely into one of RCG’s reeducation programs. And then every other pastor in RCG seems to be raving about having their eyes anointed.
Pack’s legion of loons may be growing, but they’re all getting crazier.
UCG’s Muslim Problem Manifests
As COG members rant about new Arabic Bibles and UCG continues its racist screeds about the Middle East, the latter is finding it difficult to reach out to the Muslim world.
WOW. WHY WOULD THAT BE???
UCG decided not to distribute the January/February issue of The Good News to the United Kingdom or much of Europe over fears of Muslim sensitivity over articles discussing Islam. It’s a good bet there won’t be any issues sent to Arab countries either, especially with Scott Ashley’s ignorance over the difference between a person of Arabic decent and a follower of Islam, along with various bigoted and racist comments about the Middle East in general. Cultural sensitivity was never the COG’s strong suit.
Silence
Good News having a problem distributing its non information information about Islam?
How is it that The Bible Advocate did the same thing earlier this past year without one hint of a whisper of a problem?
Guess it’s all in the approach….
I’m an evangelical Christian and I keep an eye on what goes on in the Armstrongite world. I was puzzled not to receive the usual Good News this month, but instead a larger than usual edition of the blue-printed British & European Supplement of same. No explanation was given other than that it was not ‘possible’ to distribute the Jan-Feb edition of GN in European countries. It’s a futile thing to do anyway – you can read the latest GN on the UCG website, and print it off if you want to. I glanced at it, and there’s certainly nothing written there that would be actionable under ‘hate laws’ etc. GN articles – whether you agree with UCG ideas or not – are generally well-written and certainly don’t lend themselves to extreme anti-Muslim ravings. You can read that in some of our tabloid newspapers!
GN articles about Islam, at least in the past, tend to gloss over important details and paint with a rather broad brush, while also playing on some tired stereotypes about Muslims. In a lot of cases, UCG ministers don’t actually know a whole lot about Islam, especially how moderate Muslims understand it. And as Armstrongites have done for a long time, they often try to wedge current Islamic tensions into their prophetic views of an impending apocalypse.
It seems that one of those elements set off flags at UCG’s home office, hence the cautionary block on European distribution.
What we haven’t heard for certain is whether the issue is also blocked in predominantly Muslim countries. Obviously, their distribution in those countries is extremely limited anyway, but they’ve bragged about sending GN issues to Iraq, Iran and Syria in the past.
UCG ministers don’t actually know a whole lot
It seems clear that the sentence doesn’t need to be finished: It is universally applicable.
They just make stuff up: A back book cover here, a badly researched reference there taken out of context, thus reversing the premise….
They take perverse imagination and raise it to an art form.
What a way to establish credibility for things that are crazy and make no sense at all.
Douglas Becker wrote:
ZING!
QFT.