How Did the Worldwide Church of God Get Away With It?

Name Changed to Grace Communion International

The WCG’s original and crafty plan to perpetuate their hidden agendas and corruption was to change their doctrines. But these changes, motivated by greed, needed years of slowness to allow the seeping of new ways to soak into receptive, unthinking, “brainwashed” minds. The leaders accepted the fact that certain “unsubmissive” members would nevertheless leave and go off into “nowhere land,” and never open their mouths. They needn’t worry about them.

However, before the plan had come to fruition, a few other WCG ministers (i.e., Earl Williams) fouled things up by “jumping the gun” in preaching the New Covenant to their congregations. “How dare they try to usurp authority and take away the credit due to the leaders for the inspired new truth!”

Part of the plan would have to include forming spin-off groups. Global Church of God and United Church of God-AIA would do just fine for catching the fallout of perhaps thousands.1 Ministers would agree to be “disfellowshipped” and moved over to the new groups and then money circumvented back to headquarters. And best of all, the sympathy of the outside Evangelicals could be gained to further the leaders’ sinister goals. “Look how much we lost by speaking the truth of the Gospel!”

Changes came swiftly with guilt and abuse pressed on the brethren, shaking and confusing them. At the same time, propaganda of the new “Armstrong churches of God” reached those that had presumed Tkach, Sr. to be a “liar,” a “Laodicean,” and an “agent of the Devil.” Now these members had somewhere to go!

Like an ugly, overripe pod, basking in the sunlight, the WCG now stands whitened with credibility and praise. Yet inside the doors, wicked leaders lie awake at night, ignoring the sighs of their prisoners, planning in the dark their next deceptive, convoluted scheme. The Christian world, in the meantime, leans comfortably back in their easy chairs, holding in their hands a copy of Transformed by Truth, by Joseph Tkach, Jr.’s ghostwriter. All seems well. They nod their heads and fall asleep…and the evil continues to spread.

By AJW
Exit & Support Network™
Written 1995

“I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and,
lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.” ~Psalms 37: 35-36

UPDATE: In April 2009 Worldwide Church of God changed their name in the United States to Grace Communion International. (Some local church areas and countries may still carry the former name or a different one.) They have since gone on to embrace New Age teachers and philosophies.

NOTE: Religious cults are known to mutate; change their name, and go underground. Be sure and read the OIU Newsletters (PDF file) which looks behind the scenes at the real activities and associations pertaining to the “transformation” of the WCG and their New Age agenda.