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Articles for the Benefit of Members and Ex-Members of the WCG

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39
WCG: Don't Trust Your Leaders
Part 2

Members of the Worldwide Church of God should not trust their leaders. What they do they do to look good in the eyes of others. Religious hypocrisy is detestable to God!


In December 1990 my wife and I called for a meeting of the 'big wigs' in Elstree House to discuss our curt dismissal from the WCG. We wanted to know why we had been expelled from church membership by Harry Sullivan. He had given us no reasons. We had been thrown out without recourse!

He merely said we had been disfellowshipped "for cause". I phoned him the morning I received his nasty letter of disfellowship and asked to know what that "cause" was. He didn't say. I asked for definite reasons in writing, but he refused to give any.

When you talk to a man and he is slimy, evasive, non-committal and devoid of the love of God, it is impossible not to develop a negative opinion of him. He behaved more like a snake than a saint. But for holding that opinion of him I was condemned, ostracised and kept out of the WCG.

Members had to be totally subservient to ministers' decrees - whatever they were - and hold ministers in high regard. I certainly did not hold Harry Sullivan in high regard! What was there about him to regard highly? One prominent member of the church's Board of Trustees had confided in us that Sullivan was really "a joke"!

Perhaps I should give him some due - he had managed to get us out of the church by craft. That took a bit of doing, because there was nothing with which he could incriminate us. It took a pretty devious mind and a bit of ingenuity to expel us and convince his superiors that it was warranted! And it took him a year to achieve.

So, I give him the respect he is due. He is a good liar! And there are many good liars in the WCG! There have been since Herbert Armstrong fabricated lies to put himself on a pedestal and oust Jesus' position as Number 1! Members dutifully looked up to him as if he were their pope. Those who didn't were eyed with suspicion and distrust. They were wrongly considered a threat to "God's Church". What they were a threat to, was the power and control of the enemy within!

Today, the mentality is not much different. Members treat any missives from Joseph Tkach as if he were God. And he sits in the place of God. He is answerable to no one!

It's strange how easy it is for people to be deceived and led astray by clever men. You would think they would sniff a rat when one is there, but few do. Hypocrisy hides a multitude of sins.

And this is one of the greatest problems with the WCG - its rank hypocrisy!


Hypocrisy Rife in the WCG!

In that fateful meeting my wife and I had in Elstree House with all the chief "men of God", when I raised the objection that a lot of ministerial behaviour was hypocrisy, it was all swept under the carpet.

The wife of a former member of the church's Board of Trustees once wryly commented that the church administration was adept at sweeping things under the carpet! They didn't deal with injustice or problems of their own making. They just swept them aside. The trouble was, the carpet was getting extremely lumpy! It's not surprising they are now tripping up over the bumps of their own debris!

It astonished me that their hypocrisy didn't seem to concern them at all. One minister - whom we had high hopes would seek justice in our case, but who failed miserably - excused all present with the pathetic comment: "Oh, but we're all hypocrites!"

That may seem to be true - that nearly everyone who walks this earth is a hypocrite to some extent. But it doesn't have to be. Nathanael was no hypocrite (John 1:47). And ministers of God should never be! But some of them end up being the worst offenders!

The outcome of our 3-hour meeting was a stale-mate. The "men from the ministry" knew they had made a bungle of things but they didn't own up. They were not concerned about facing up to reality and admitting that they had a problem on their hands of their own making. They probably realised that they had short-changed us, but if they were to openly admit it now that the whole church had been told Helena and I had been put out, they would have to lose face and that would undermine their prestige in the eyes of members - the last thing they wanted. So, we were made scapegoats to preserve the status quo.

In the WCG, ministerial power and control come first. Members' feelings or human rights are secondary.

We had been denied our human rights, but what concern was that to the men who held the reigns of power? None really. It was more important that Harry Sullivan was left in office.

I had labelled him a false minister. His fruits had demonstrated that such was the case. A man of God does not lie and deceive out of malicious motive! He was no man of God. He was an impostor, a hireling, a deceiver, a spiritual crook, a hypocrite and a shame to the church.

The administration - who, at that time was led by the new Regional Director, Leslie McCullough (Frank Brown had been transferred in June 1990) - had to keep me out of the church, for they feared I would speak out about what we had been through. Better to keep me out than have me speak out about their hypocrisy! That could seriously undermine their control.

During that meeting, Helena and I challenged McCullough on statements which Sullivan had made from the pulpit which subtly eroded the sanctity of the Sabbath in people's eyes. He dismissed such things with a casualness which disturbed me. His only response was to quote Herbert Armstrong as if HWA were God and the source of all pure doctrine. He didn't refer to the Bible. That was clearly not his textbook!

This was 1990, five years before the sanctity of the Sabbath was 'officially' jettisoned! I was shocked that these men in whom I had previously placed so much trust - because I thought they had the same convictions I did about God's truth (John 17:17) - could be so casual. I discovered that they are mere play actors. They were puppets standing before their congregations, "going through the motions" each week to give their sermons which were a repetition in one form or other of what the man at the top has sanctioned.

They are hirelings. They work purely for money. Jesus prophesied:

A hireling, who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them (Jn 10:12, NKJV).

These WCG hirelings weren't in their jobs because they followed Jesus Christ, but because they followed a man. Before 1986 that was Herbert Armstrong. After 1986 it was Jo Tkach senior. Now it is Jo Tkach's son, a man without true spiritual credentials!

If ministers step out of line with what the man at the top decrees, they lose their wages. No wonder many kept quiet or preached politically neutral sermons in the nineties, once Tkach threw out the basis for keeping the Sabbath and holy days!

Leslie McCullough didn't challenge Tkach's doctrinal decisions head on. Had he done so, he would have forfeited his job and pension from the WCG (which he'll lose anyway when the WCG folds up!). He was close to retiring age and he only had to hang on a short while longer to secure that, so he had to play a clever game meanwhile.

Compromise is expedient to a man who places his pecuniary interests ahead of his service to Jesus Christ and to His sheep. McCullough was not the only one who followed this judicious route of tact and "discretion" in order to feather his own nest.

He didn't care about the membership being deluded with false doctrine! They were not warned of the damnable nature of the heresies Tkach was now pumping out of Pasadena at a prodigious rate. McCullough kept quiet until he retired and conveniently disappeared from the WCG scene!

After retiring from Worldwide, he sought to join up with United Church of God under David Hulme. (United holds a diametrically contrary view to WCG about the Sabbaths! So, McCullough appears to believe in the sanctity of Sabbaths, after all! But he never openly contested his difference with the WCG leadership while he remained there. Was he in it just to retain his power and prestige, or to uphold truth?! Hypocrisy has no part in the true Church of God!)


WCG Splits Will Split Too!

When Leslie McCullough went off to offer his "services" to United, they had already been going a while. By this time they had their Board of 12 leading "elders" and didn't really need another. But McCullough was one of WCG's "patriarchs" from a bygone era, and it surely would not be right to leave out such an important man from their ruling leadership! So he had to be their 13th member. Numerically appropriate, really!

United, like Global and Philadelphia before them, is riddled with false ministers. "Falsies" are not just in Worldwide. The synagogue of Satan is ubiquitous. Satan spawned a veritable hornets' nest of them in Worldwide, and they have now fanned out into various segments where they continue to give their human allegiance in return for power and financial gain.

It's very sad to see men who should be trusting God and acting as ministers of Jesus Christ, trusting men and acting on behalf of their human overlords. It's a Babylonian system, just like in the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, or any other church governed by a hierarchic human structure.

God's people are commanded to COME OUT OF BABYLON in all its hypocritical religious forms, not just to come out of the obvious one - Rome (Rev 18:4).

Those structures are going to be dashed to pieces by events that will shake them apart. As I said to Mr. X in the WCG hierarchy in 1992, God spoke through a contemporary prophet to warn of what is occurring:

  • 1. Tell My people everything that can be shaken will be shaken.
  • 2. Tell them to fix their faith.
  • 3. If their faith is not fixed during the crisis, they will not stand.
  • 4. They must fix their faith on that which is infallible, and that which is impregnable.
  • 5. They must have a fixed point for their faith.
  • 6. That fixed point is the Word of God.

Those words didn't make much sense to Mr X in 1992. He should review them now and see whether this writer was presenting God's word to him at that time. The events that have transpired are shattering the faith of some. They need a fixed point for their faith but the WCG is not providing that. The focus of people's faith in the WCG is moveable. It is mere men - here today and gone tomorrow. That faith can be shaken, and it is being shaken now. It will continue to be shaken as the crisis intensifies.

You can only rely upon One and He is in heaven. But He will walk with you as you submit to Him in true humility and yieldedness (Is 66:2). You cannot rely upon church leaders. Too often they are tools of the devil, suspect in their spirituality and teaching, concerned about their wages and control.

Wealth and tradition in N. T. Greek carry the gematria 666. Do you want to be thus marked by the beast and give honour to his name? If you do, then go ahead and give honour to the men who lead WCG, PCG, United, Global or any other hierarchic church whose tradition denies the active lead of the Spirit in its governance.

Don't forget the caveats to Philadelphia and Smyrna. The synagogue of Satan is not without, but within (Rev 2:9; 3:9).

To be continued...

Malcolm B Heap, 13 March 1998

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