The Living Church of God - Page 2

"Justice" under Rod Meredith takes time and church members

Notes:

13. RCM's slow-rolling wheels of "justice" grind the innocent

    Gavin Rumney's online e-zine, called Ambassador Watch, quoted the following posting on the UCGia Yahoo group about Roderick C. Meredith (RCM) covering up ministerial abuse:

    "I was in a church which fell apart. It fell apart because we had a host put over us to give sermons, counsel, etc. He used to be a minister. But we found out he had a 20 year history of sexual misconduct, which included accusations of rape and child molestation. When people in the church wrote to the ministers they were threatened to be kicked out. Turning this person into the authorities was discouraged." "This person disfellowshipped half of our congregation by the time he was through. Before he was finally disfellowshipped, 22 different families and individuals issued statements which were mailed to district attorneys in all of the counties the incidents happened in. I asked the presiding evangelist why he put this person there, when he told me he knew of his history in WCG. He told me because his wife told him on the phone he had repented." "This [presiding evangelist] was Roderick Meredith. This was in the Global Church of God. So... why would the wife of this individual stay so long with her husband [who] had several affairs and molested several children? Who knows. Maybe denial. This host never went to jail, because the actions were covered up by the ministry and if anyone turned to the authorities they were told they would be kicked out." "So my point is, I am not judging whether or not Mr. Armstrong did the things he was accused of. I was not there. But I would like to point out how easy it would be for HWA or any minister to do things like that and never be held accountable. And lastly, Roderick Meredith is not a very credible source in this accusation, since he has protected people that did much worse than what HWA was accused of."

    It is bad enough that predators can sneak into churches without anyone knowing about it. However, when a church's head honcho knowingly brings them in, promotes them, and protects them--while allowing their victims to be threatened not to tell the truth about them or warn anyone else--the situation is indeed bad. New converts are led to believe that any problems in the church are just "imagined" and, even if not, can be resolved easily as long as they have a "good attitude." They are given no idea just how bad the situation in the so-called Churches of God (COGs) can really be.

    Don't expect to hear RCM ever admit that any of his loyal supporters got kicked out of his churches by the pedophiles and other perverts that he knowingly set up over them. That sort of talk might frighten away potential new wallets. Rather, expect to hear more talk about how some "ungovernable" people have "left" because they "got their feelings hurt."

    Whenever a bad character does finally leave the LCG, or get kicked out, he can always go to some other Worldwide Church of God (WCG) splinter group and start over. While there seems to be no concern at all in the WCG splinter groups for innocent, tithe-paying members who get kicked out by wicked local leaders, there always seems to be a new position for these wicked tithe-collecting leaders in some other group, after they themselves finally end up out of the old one. There seems to be great concern to find them new positions with power and money. Wicked leaders seem to get many chances. The wickeder they are, the more chances they seem to get. In sharp contrast, innocent members tend to get kicked out without a chance!

14. More end-time guesses

    In an August 28, 2004 sermon called The END is Near!, Presiding Evangelist Roderick C. Meredith (RCM) suggested that the year 2017 is the "probable, approximate" date for the end of 6,000 years of human history. The year 2017 seems to be the latest consensus of his latest scholars. The theory is that Jesus will return after 6,000 years of human history to usher in the 1,000 year period known as the millenium.

    Saying "probable" and "approximate" indicates that maybe RCM has learned a little bit from all his wrong end-time guesses that he made way back in the 1960s. Still, some historical perspective needs to be added to such exciting new guesses, for the sake of any excited new listeners. Together, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) and its splinter groups, of which the Living Church of God (LCG) is one, have spent the past SEVENTY YEARS coming up with wrong guesses for when the end will be. The problem with all this guessing is that it just wastes everybody's time and makes them all look stupid--which perhaps they are. When the latest calculated date for the end of the world seems too far off, there is talk about how time is prophesied to be cut short. When there is no shortening, the guesser can string people along for some more years by falling back on the original date. When that too is proven wrong by the passage of time, there is talk about how there is to be a prophesied delay. Eventually, though, new dates get calculated for the end of the age, and this entire cycle can then repeat. The latest eagerly anticipated date is always accompanied by appeals for more money to help spread the news of this latest guess. Those who persist in setting dates might in the end set a date that is too late.

    Using the genealogy given in the Bible, Bishop Usher deduced that the creation of the earth had occurred on October 22, 4004 BCE. (The WCG had taught that the earth might have existed for millions of years before the creation of Adam.) This caused some people to expect that the end would come around 1996. But the end did not come then, and now one hears that there might be as much as 35 years of "play" in Bishop Usher's numbers.

    While filling your head with theories about the end time, you might as well stick this little thought back in there somewhere too. At the time of this writing, the current year on the Jewish calendar is 5765. The year number on the Jewish calendar supposedly represents the number of years since the creation of the earth, calculated by medieval Jewish scholars from the biblical account to have occurred in the year 3760 BCE.

    One worthy of remembrance has been quoted as saying that, "The end of the world is when you die." Over the past nineteen centuries, the best guess for when the "end of the world" would come for any individual would have been in about seventy years, more or less, from the date of that person's birth. This is the end that overtakes all, and is much more easily and accurately predicted than the end of the age and the return of Jesus.

    People have been coming up with wrong guesses for when Jesus will return ever since the original apostles were told, "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11, NIV). As for this "second coming" of Jesus, it will simply be when it will be. Just before Jesus was taken up to heaven, He told the apostles He had chosen that, "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority" (Acts 1:7, NIV). All the wrong guesses and false prophecies that people have come up with over the past nineteen hundred years could have been avoided if everyone had just simply, humbly admitted that they did not know when Jesus will return, that they were not able to figure it out, and that God had not revealed it to them.

15. Some in Living Church of God now dead!

    The way the various Churches of God (COGs) make themselves out to be so wonderful, one might have expected to hear good news coming out about them. After all, they supposedly have all the answers to all the world's problems. But, instead, many articles about a March 12, 2005 shooting in the Living Church of God (LCG) can be found at The Journal's Web site at: http://www.thejournal.org/lcgshts/lcgshoot.html.

16. John Ogwyn from Living Church of God now dead

    There is an online letter at the Living Church of God's (LCG's) Web site about the death of John Ogwyn at http://www.livingcog.org/releases/mr_john_ogwyn061405.htm. As time flies by, the older leaders who came out of the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) to carry on in the various splinter groups are dying off.