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.
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."
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