The United Church of God - Page 2

The Laodicean Era of the Church?

Notes:

10. Should You Attend Church?

    The United Church of God (UCG) has carefully cultivated the illusion that it is a reasonable and decent church that is obeying God. The March-April 2003 issue of the Good News magazine that the United Church of God published had an article called Should You Attend Church? The article contained such subheadings as A safe refuge, A classroom for spiritual development, and A sanctuary for truth and justice. The last subheading was How much are you missing? The article did quite a job of making the UCG appear to be the place to go. It might even influence some naive and trusting individuals to part with their minds and their money, which was the obvious intent of the article. However, it cannot be emphasized enough that the article describes what a church SHOULD be like and NOT what the UCG is actually like. What really goes on in a church is never as good as it is made out to be.

    It should be remembered that the UCG ministers stayed in the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) while it slipped in many doctrinal changes that it said were not changes. They did not leave the WCG until several months after the WCG had openly turned against everything that Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA) had taught. It has been reported that while they were still in the WCG, some of them helped to kick out of the WCG other people who were opposed to the doctrinal changes at an earlier date. Perhaps this is where UCG ministers learned how to be so crafty.

    Nobody should carelessly believe what the Good News magazine says about the United Church of God being a "safe refuge" or a "sanctuary for truth and justice." Some incompetent UCG ministers like to bring in unrepentant unbelievers, and make it comfortable for them to behave badly towards the true believers. This is passed off as showing "love." True believers who are being mistreated by the unbelievers who go to the UCG are told, "You are not comfortable here" and, "Stay away." This is UCG "justice"??? This might not prove to be the great recipe for church growth that some confused and incompetent UCG ministers seem to think it is. How much are you missing? Well, hopefully you'll miss out on some of this! Obviously, their real concern is not how much you are missing out on. Their real concern is how much potential additional income they might be missing out on. It does not seem to occur to them that if they would do things right, God could take care of their incomes and church growth. The UCG is a place where some of the highest paid ministers in the Church of God (COG) business do what they think is expedient. They do not care about right and wrong like they should, and don't hesitate to resort to simply lying when it suits them. Then, they distribute brochures throughout cities to try to get more trusting people to subscribe to the Good News magazine. They seem to view the current situation on the COG scene as a time for them to do as they please and get away with it. It does not seem to occur to them that this could be the time that they are being watched and tested by God, and that they might not get away with their behavior.

    One UCG minister got the gap between his ears filled with some sort of "gap" theory. For lack of any better name, let us call him Robert H. Berendt. He liked to think that he was some modern day hero "standing in the gap." Robert Berendt thought that Abraham had stood up for the sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah, and he wanted to do something similar today by standing up for wicked people in the UCG. Standing up for innocent people and defending them did not seem as glamorous to him. Someone had to point out to Rob that, in fact, Abraham's concern was for any righteous people who might have been living there. Abraham's question for the LORD was, "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" (Genesis 18:23, NIV), and, finally, "What if only ten [righteous people] can be found there?" (Genesis 18:32, NIV). The LORD's answer was, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it" (Genesis 18:32, NIV). But, Abraham's nephew Lot was the only righteous person in the place, so Lot was brought out of the city and Sodom was destroyed. If someone like Robert Berendt could have been there to intervene in his own way, the people of Sodom could have continued with their violent orgies, and Lot could have been kicked out and accused of "not showing any love to anyone."

    Old Bob is one of those guys who seems to "mean well," but who just can't seem to figure out the difference between right and wrong. He said he had a beautiful daughter who married outside of the church, and ended up divorced and so messed up that she cannot even get a minimum wage job. It is, therefore, understandable that he would care about non-members who make mistakes. Nobody is asking him to forget about them or to give up on them. But, he should consider that perhaps it is his own lack of concern for what is right in God's sight that leads to such unfortunate outcomes. He is absolutely eager to give up on innocent people.

    Sincere people who try to go to the UCG in peace can be harassed and slandered from the beginning by unrepentant unbelievers who like to hang out there. Stuffing the place with people like that is a pathetic way to try to keep the UCG's attendance numbers up. Ministers like Robert Berendt are powerless to get them to behave decently, so he just kicks out anyone who is being treated badly. This makes successful the vicious slander campaigns of the wicked people who go there, and their noise level then goes down for a little while. Then, Robert makes smooth-sounding claims about how the church meets in peace.

    Ministers who come up with theories that contain logical "gaps" cannot be corrected easily. Paid ministers find it too difficult to repent of their bad bahavior. To defend his pet "gap" theory, Robert went on to quote verses that he thought supported his behavior. He found the verses where God said, "The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice. I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none" (Ezekiel 22:29-30, NIV). Robert Berendt misunderstood this to mean that God wanted someone to stand up for wicked people and support and defend them!

    Robert Berendt is not the first minister who never really understood what the Worldwide Church of God under Herbert W. Armstrong was trying to teach. HWA had taught that the Ten Commandments show how to love God and man. Robert has some completely different ideas about how to show what he calls "love." Rob's ideas suggest that he stayed too long in the WCG under Joseph Tkach and picked up some of the WCG's new teachings.

    Without ministers like Rob around, innocent people might be able to defend themselves. But, with such ministers around, the wicked have an ally. Consistent with his twisted theory, Robert supports chronic liars who go to UCG meetings, even ones who are not even members. He denies the victims of these slanderers justice by kicking the victims out of the UCG. And, wicked local leaders from other WCG splinter groups can always come to Rob for a new position when their old group finally gets rid of them. It does not occur to him that helping the wicked to do evil and get away with it is not really helping anyone at all. Of course, neither the world nor the churches need any more corrupt leaders who proudly support evil. The world and the churches, including the so-called Churches of God, are already full of people who do evil and who support others who do evil. What the world needs now is someone who will do things right. The Bible explains how someone could really "stand in the gap." God said, "But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds" (Jeremiah 23:22, NIV).

    The problem with the behavior of mixed-up ministers like Robert Berendt is that it denies people all the things that the UCG's Good News magazine promised them: "A safe refuge, A classroom for spiritual development, and A sanctuary for truth and justice."

    Of the larger splinter groups, the United Church of God seems most like the Laodicean church mentioned in the book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Bible. God said, "You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see" (Revelation 3:17-18, NIV).

    Herbert W. Armstrong had taught that he was leading the "Philadelphia era" of the church, and that after that era a "Laodicean era" would arise. While thinking that it was doing quite well, the behavior of the Laodicean church would actually be so bad that it would need to, and fully deserve to, go into a "Great Tribulation" to get purified. Not surprisingly, the UCG seems to have rejected the "church eras" theory that HWA had taught.

11. UCG politicians try again, and elect Clyde Kilough

    On May 12, 2005 the 12-man Council of Elders in the United Church of God (UCG) selected Clyde Kilough to be the fourth president of the UCG. For some reason, the UCG presidents all seem to get turfed out after a single term in office. Sort of makes one wonder how God was supposed to be guiding those who elected them in the first place.

    Brief biographies of the people on the Council of Elders are given at http://www.ucg.org/about/council/index.htm at the UCG's Web site.

    Not everyone believes that the leaders of a church should be voted in. In one of David C. Pack's sermons for his Restored Church of God (RCOG), called Set to Defend--Yourself, he said that, "When the first 155 [doctrinal] changes were made [in the WCG] he [Clyde Kilough] was a cheerleader for them." The RCOG has a booklet called The History of God's TRUE CHURCH which gives this bleak forecast for the UCG:

    "Like the majority who remained in Sardis, the 1995 group [the UCG], having begun with many false doctrines already in place, may soon pass out of Christianity altogether. This is because they continue to accept additional wrong teachings, and are watering down the remaining truths they have. This organization's march back to the world continues to accelerate even beyond the most liberal forecast."

    Well, as events in the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) demonstrated, anything is possible. David's assessment of the WCG was even blunter:

    "In summary, the WCG completely left the truth, making it a dead church."

12. United Church of God growth rate of zero percent year after year--Why?

    The Worldwide Church of God (WCG) under Joseph W. Tkach, Sr. (JWT, Sr.) fell apart at the start of 1995 after openly turning against virtually ALL the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA) and the Bible. When the United Church of God (UCG) splinter group was officially formed several months later on May 1, 1995 about 20,000 people quickly went with it. The UCG literature of the time mentioned that at the rate it was growing there would be about 25,000 people in it by the end of the year. So, of course, that did not happen. The UCG writings also mentioned that it had taken HWA many years to grow his WCG to the size that the UCG was now already at. The writer did not seem to realise that the only reason the UCG had so many members so fast was because it was feasting on the remains of what HWA had built and what JWT, Sr. had destroyed.

    In the June 24, 1985 Worldwide News newspaper Herbert Armstrong wrote that,

    "God had blessed His Church with an unprecedented approximate increase of 30 percent per year for 35 years. As these liberals began gaining more and more control God removed His blessing. I have often said that God blesses us as we please Him. During these liberal years in the 1970s, the income virtually stagnated. In 1974 the Church experienced a 1.6 percent decrease in income under 1973, the first negative growth in the Church's history. It fell another 4.8 percent the following year."

    "Since God brought me back from total heart failure, and directed me in removing these liberals, and putting the Church back on track, He has restored His blessings. Income for the Church this year will run two times the dollar volume of 1978. Income growth is allowing the Church to get the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to the world as a witness as never before. These physical blessings are matched by new spiritual growth and new truth added to His Church."

    One of the "liberals" in the 1970s was HWA's own son, Garner Ted Armstrong (GTA), who had spent too much time fooling around with women other than his own wife. It was an improvement when HWA expelled his own son GTA from the WCG in 1978. Another reason for lower income in the 1970s might have been the failure of HWA's own prophetic guesses in his own booklet called 1975 in Prophecy!. The Church did not flee to the caves of Petra, Jordan--the expected "place of safety"--in 1972. Jesus did not return in 1975. Members who came along later were not told about these past prophetic mistakes. One WCG minister mentioned in a sermon that in one congregation that he helped to pastor he "had to counsel with about 40 youths who were engaged in ongoing fornication." Some people believe that HWA himself contributed to the problems by changing the WCG's teaching on divorce and remarriage (D & R) in 1974 and then marrying a divorced woman half his age in 1977. By 1984 HWA, too, had divorced her.

    After Herbert W. Armstrong died on January 16, 1986 at age 94, Joseph W. Tkach, Sr. took over the Worlwide Church of God and quickly began the process of running it into the ground. Joe's team of Weasels & Fibbers & Sinners mocked HWA's claims of growth in the Church. Now that the sneaky Tkach team has shrunk the WCG's income by about 90% off the peak, it is time for them to stop mocking HWA's claims of past growth. The WCG attendance, around 150,000 people at the peak, is also way down by a similar amount, though the WCG disguises that fact by using an old membership figure on its Web site to deliberately deceive. It is their current false membership figure that deserves to be mocked.

    Near the end of his life, Herbert Armstrong had made it appear to be so easy to grow the church that some other people thought that they could easily do it too, and even better than HWA had done. Now that the United Church of God splinter group has been around for 13 years, let us examine how it has performed. Below is a table with some interesting numbers.

    Table of attendance projection figures for the United Church of God if it grew at a 30%/year rate compounded annually, starting with about 20,000 people in 1995. 1995 -  20,000 approximate starting attendance 1996 -  26,000 1997 -  33,800 1998 -  43,940 1999 -  57,122 2000 -  74,258 2001 -  96,536 2002 - 125,497 2003 - 163,146 2004 - 212,089 2005 - 275,716 2006 - 358,432 2007 - 465,961 2008 - 605,750 projected ending attendance Actual 2008 UCG attendance: about 20,000 people.

    Well, it could have been worse. One attempt by some "liberals" in the 1970s to break away from HWA and his WCG and form a separate "United Church" came to nothing at all. The ministers who joined this more recent United Church in 1995 to continue to collect a paycheck had gone along rather happily with all the other changes that Joe Tkach, Sr. had made in the previous nine years of his WCG leadership. Some ministers finally rejected the last changes when they saw that the jobs were disappearing from the WCG and reappearing in the UCG.

    Now, why is the UCG not growing by leaps and bounds? Is it not pleasing to God? Well, maybe not.

    A normal, decent person might carelessly assume that the people who show up at the UCG would know something about behaving properly. But, they would be WRONG! Many of the people who attend the UCG meetings do not behave properly at all.

    Next, any normal, decent person might carelessly assume that if someone is behaving badly in the UCG, a minister would have a talk with the bad character and convince him or her to stop the bad behavior. But, again, they would be WRONG! The UCG ministers cannot even tell the bad characters there to behave properly. They can only tell the innocent victims of outright perverts to either keep quiet or else stay away. Of course, this does not exactly set things up for God to bless the UCG and bring in more people to be used, abused, and slandered.

    The UCG has turned into a hangout for unrepentant, unconverted unbelievers and sinners who behave badly. Any true Christians who ended up in the UCG risk being dragged down by the constant harassment of all the ignorant unbelievers and habitual liars in it. The story that UCG members "meet in peace" is simply a work of fiction by a dishonest writer. Even Aaron Dean, who worked closely with Herbert Armstrong in the Worldwide Church from 1974 until 1986 as a steward and then as his personal aide, is faced with other United Church leaders trying to silence him and oust him. Worse than just disliking HWA, the UCG leaders also appear to dislike God's laws. And that is why their UCG social club is not really sociable at all. That is also why, after initially collecting some former WCG members, the UCG is not really growing at all. It appears to be stagnating until the unconfessed sins in it cause a major split or fragmentation.

    Aaron Dean

    Most United Church of God people seem to be united only in their collective desire to be free to sin while pretending to be good church members. It will prove to be a frustrating exercise in futility for anyone to wait for the UCG to smarten up and repent. No improvement in the behavior of those who hang out at the UCG can ever be expected to occur unless and until a well-deserved "great tribulation" forces them to face up to the truth about their own bad behavior. The good news is that those who are sincerely searching for the truth of God do not have to go along with all the godless, lying, slandering unbelievers that the UCG is so full of. In fact, they should avoid such bad influences for the sake of their own mental and spiritual health.

    The leader of one smaller splinter group has mentioned that the UCG started with many errors already in place, and is now losing the truth that remains so rapidly that the UCG, like the WCG, might soon disappear back into the world. That remains to be seen yet, but it certainly is possible. Just a small step remains, as many people in the UCG act like they never came out of the world in the first place. Approximately half the people who hang out at the UCG are obnoxious and/or actually MALICIOUS. The other half, while not like that, don't seem to have any serious interest in the truth or in doing anything right. While this is all most unfortunate, it is simply the plain truth about the way things are.