If only I had known what kind of an organization the Worldwide Church of God was, I would never have joined them. I didn't grow up in the WCG, but was lured into the cult by means of the German version of the Plain Truth: Klar und Wahr. I was studying German back then and initially I ordered the magazine as a way to read German. That was over 15 years ago. You know the story. I ordered more and more booklets until I was convinced that I had to keep the Sabbath. Two years later in the spring, I went to my first WCG service. I was 21 years old and my parents thought I had gone mad. They did everything to convince me that I was wrong, but to no avail.

In the WCG I met my wife and we married three years after that first attendance. Her parents and her brother were also in the WCG. They left and joined the Philadelphia Church of God in 1993 as they received (uninvited) material of the PCG, which showed that the WCG was changing more and more doctrines "revealed" to Herbert Armstrong.

My wife left the WCG in 1995, as the whole Armstrong cart-house tumbled down and, due to the influence by my in-laws, she also went to the PCG. It was a very difficult time for us (and actually it still is difficult to accept the situation). I was glad with the changes in the WCG, but in the years following I got more and more information about the dirty WCG past, which I found on the internet and in books I ordered. I also saw the WCG still had an abusive hierarchic structure, so I left in 1998 after being 12 years in that organization.

If I only had the right information in the beginning.

By Kurt 
February 24, 2000