Fleeing to a Place of Safety - Exit & Support Network

Since it’s almost Feast time, PCG is again pushing their narrative about members and the place of safety.

Following is a transcript that was sent to ESN by a PCG source. It was from a sermonette given in June 2021 by Roger Brandon and was entitled, “Building the Faith to Flee, Today.”

As you read through this, ask yourself how much fear and striving (works) is in this message compared to the hope and rest that is found in Christ Jesus. (Matthew 11:28-30)

RB=Roger Brandon

GF=Gerald Flurry

HWA=Herbert Armstrong

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

Reads Luke 21:20-21 about Jerusalem being compassed with armies and fleeing to the mountains. RB says, “We know this time is coming really soon” and goes on to say, “It’s a time we might not be prepared for.”

Reads Revelation 12:14 about the woman given two wings that she might fly into the wilderness… and says these Scriptures “represent a time in the very near future when God’s church will be taken to a place of protection, a place of final training, a place of safety as it’s often called.”

Inordinate Amount of Attention on Escaping:

RB: “There seems to be no topic, especially among new members and contacts, that garners more questions and more speculations than when and how we flee to the place of safety.”

RB: “Sometimes there can be “an inordinate amount of attention dedicated to just escaping the Tribulation to come and not enough effort extended on what it will take to qualify to go to the place of safety.”

“We must avoid that save our skin mentality that HWA warned the church about back in the 80’s. There is no place for selfishness in God’s family. And we must be focusing on our roles as future kings and priests–royalty in the Inner Court, serving for all eternity.”

COMMENT BY ESN: Stop and think. If you had been taught that a time of “utter horror” was coming soon in your lifetime, but there was a place of safety you could escape to, wouldn’t you be thinking about this place and interested in how and when you were going to be taken there, instead of sitting back and letting it happen? Isn’t telling members how they can qualify to go this “place of safety,” still escaping? But yet it is labeled as “selfishness.”

RB: “In the meantime, what is our duty to insure that we are counted among those who flee the horror to come. What do we need to do?”

RB: “There’s often a lot of confusion, speculation and conjecture about the place of safety, combined with wishful thinking.

Great Faith Required:

RB brings out that HWA and GF have both “emphasized the need for great faith when the time comes to flee becomes a reality. … The faith of Christ living in us” [not faith in Christ] will be a vital requirement to escape the coming Great Tribulation.”

This doesn’t come easy as RB says: “We must be putting our energies into building the faith required to flee.”

RB then read some of the questions he’s received from new members and new contacts about the place of safety. (Those who were previously in WCG would notice that some of these ideas/answers came from Gerald Waterhouse who often spoke about how we would be attending Bible classes every day in the place of safety, along with working in a vegetable garden.)

RB related how one person said they packed a bag when they came to the Feast in case the church got called to go to the place of safety. Then he made it sound like we would snicker at such a silly thought.

RB: “They [people who ask such questions] all lack faith.”

RB quotes GF from his Prophesy Again booklet where GF said, “There is coming a time when we will need strong faith to flee. It will take real faith to flee when people are calling you all kinds of names and heaping persecution on you and on this church. You and I won’t be able to endure and to flee if we don’t have the faith of Christ. God says We had better be ready. ” (p. 65) [bolding ours]

COMMENT BY ESN: The above words by GF are almost identical to what HWA said decades ago. So where are we today? God’s church (WCG) was to have fled to Petra in 1974 as Christ was to return by 1975. Some in PCG continue to say HWA’s prophecies about fleeing were just “delayed.” Read: Haven’t HWA’s prophecies just not come to pass yet? (Q&A) This is nothing but excuses for false prophecies.

How to Build the Faith to Flee

RB quotes Matthew 24:19 and says GF gave us some new revelation about this in a Trumpet back in November 1995 in an article titled, “The Faith to Flee.” [Notice how long ago that article was written.] In it GF said it was a “strong warning for the Laodiceans” and a “strong warning for those spiritually immature in the church.” GF had this in all caps: “They shall lack the faith to flee when they shall see the Abomination of Desolation.” [bolding ours]

RB goes on to say, “This is not meant to be scare tactics.” [Then what is it?] “To build the faith to flee today, we must be spiritually maturing. We need to be continually growing in our spiritual understanding, in addition to our daily prayer and our Bible study. … The best way to do that is to immerse ourselves in God’s Work. That is what we call the ‘Daily’ or the ‘Continual.'”

RB quotes what GF says about the “Continual.” Daniel 12:11 is quoted. RB says the word “sacrifice” was “added by the translators because they didn’t understand this verse spiritually.”

COMMENT BY ESN: We recommend reading this verse in The Bible Knowledge Commentary (see our booklist) to see what it says about this verse and how it refers the reader back to Daniel 9:27 where sacrifice is mentioned to cease.

RB informs us that GF says “he who is doing the Continual is in the group that will be taken away when the Abomination is set up. That is the time you want to be taken away–before it actually begins to make desolate. So you don’t have to experience those horrors.”

RB: “So how do we know we are on the wings that escape on a great eagle? … They get in and do the Work of God, the Continual … when we do that, we are building the faith to flee.”

RB: “We have a job to do and if we do it that will advance our spiritual maturity. And we will be worthy to escape because we will have built the faith to flee.”

COMMENT BY ESN: Did you get that? Just “do the Work of God” (the Continual) and we will build this faith to flee. It always goes back to “the Work”; if you’re not doing the Work (i.e., praying, Bible study, sending in your money), then forget it, you won’t be going to a place of safety.

Christ Will Make It Known When It’s Time to Flee

RB references the July 1995 article in the Trumpet entitled “The Place of Safety.” [Note: This is covered in our article Philadelphia Church of God and the Place of Safety.] Quoting GF from that article: “Today we have a work of warning [to the Laodiceans] to do. [all caps:] Only those who finish God’s Work are going to be taken to a place of safety.” [end of caps] Any human idea will lead to disaster.”

COMMENT BY ESN: HWA talked for decades about “finishing the Work.” But what does GF mean when he says “any human idea will lead to disaster“? Is he talking about those that try to escape somewhere else on their own? Those that try to figure out the time to flee? Members in WCG were told that if they tried to escape to the place of safety on their own they would die or be killed. Is this what GF is talking about?

Continuing with GF’s 1995 article: “Christ will make it known when the moment arrives to flee. Those who finish God’s Work will know when that moment is and joyfully respond. [Will they be told to joyfully send all their money to HQs ahead of time?] Going to the place of safety revolves around having faith in that promise. Waiting until the word comes to flee is not the time to begin building the faith such an action will require. That is the time to use the faith that we have.” [bolding ours]

Tomorrow Will Be Too Late

Says that Judah will put her faith in another and she will be double-crossed.

RB: “And that time, as we know, is just over the horizon.The great crisis will require the greatest faith. Tomorrow will be too late to build the faith to flee. We must be building the faith to flee, today.”

CONCLUSION TO THIS ARTICLE:

Do we actually think GF is going to gather all his things together and head off to live in the caves of Adullam? What is he going to do with all the money he has received from members? What about the treasures in his “House for God” (Armstrong Auditorium)? And how are members going to board a jet for the unknown on a moment’s notice when many of them are struggling now to pay tithes and offerings? Who will pay for airfare? Or are they just going to disappear?

While GF tells members that Christ will “make it known” when the time comes to flee (How? Through a “new revelation” from GF?), members are kept hanging and striving and trusting, without thinking. GF doesn’t want anyone to think logically–or to think at all!

You Don’t Have to Live Your Life in Fear

Much fear is freely scattered throughout this sermonette. But fear is not of God. It is controlling and exploiting groups like PCG and other offshoots who use methods of fear–which include sociopathic lying–to keep members from leaving and allowing the leaders to continue to exploit them financially–that is what is not of God.

Stop allowing yourself to be continually strung along year after year with the same false hopes that never materialize. Start asking pointed questions. Are you listening to men who have no empathy? Those who only care about how much money you have? Start thinking critically! That is the only way you will be set free. Let your safe place be in Christ Jesus who will never forsake you.

By D. M. Williams
Exit & Support Network™
June 18, 2021

Update: Roger Brandon became a preaching elder in September 2021 and now assists Cal Culpepper in the Northwest U. S.

Also read the following excellent PCG letters out of many on the ESN site:

God Has Set Us Free (“Flurry and his henchman always told us God would curse us or kill us if we ever ‘stopped supporting the Work.'”

Latest Royal Vision Contains More of the Same Mumbo-Jumbo (“Will mess up anyone’s mind.”)

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
~II Timothy 4:3