I just want to express my appreciation for your site and testimony on WWCG and UCG. A lot of this resonates strongly with me. It hits close to home.
I’ve been a Sabbatarian pretty much all my life with a non-Armstrong church. My dad (a former WWCG member) began attending UCG a few years ago and as an adult I accompanied him for a couple years. I thought it was just my imagination, like I was being “stubborn and rebellious” to their instruction.
But a few things have jumped out at me since Day 1. Upon meeting UCG for the first time, some of them asked me if I was baptized by immersion. The answer happens to be “Yes,” but it seemed they were assessing my spiritual maturity and deciding whether I was deemed worthy in their eyes. One time a deacon told a black man with long hair he couldn’t attend church unless he cut it. That bothered me a lot. (I’d heard about it, I wasn’t there.) Overall, there were just weird things I tried to overlook, like a woman who introduced her adopted daughter to me as her “adopted daughter.” A lot of these people are very tone deaf and lack situational awareness, as if they have been stuck in a time warp for 50 years (as you wrote). Let’s not forget an 83 year-old man tried to convince me that “slavery was not as bad as how the history books portray it.” Classy, huh?
I was speaking to a Protestant co-worker recently and he just came right out and said that UCG sounds very much like a Mormon church in doctrine.1
So, the main reason why I’m cutting ties with UCG is because they seem to believe Grace is a dirty word. It’s strange we have never sung “Amazing Grace” in church. I don’t even believe it’s in the hymnal. Secondly, UCG is absolutely obsessed with the Millennium and prophecy. It’s almost as if they’re relying on their scriptural scholarship to justify their salvation. A malignant and elitist sense of superiority pervades this congregation, even though I’ve seen a lot of them looking out the window and daydreaming during a sermon. The only consolation most of them have is the “fellowship” after services.
I hope I didn’t digress too much. But I was looking for a similar life story to mine regarding UCG, and thank God I found it. [Read: Why I Left United Church of God.
May the Lord bless you. Thanks again for your website. It is filled with a lot of good information.
By Darrin
Also read: Was Just Scratching the Surface about UCG (6-21-21 letter from this author)
Related Articles:
How Do I Receive Eternal Life?
What Were the Lies and What is the Truth?
Confession and Freedom From Specific Cult/Occult Strongholds (includes WCG, PCG & all offshoots)
Footnote by ESN:
1 UCG is more similar to Jehovah’s Witnesses in doctrine than Mormons. For evidence of HWA’s copying from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, read chapter three, pt. 2 and chapter six of Mystery of the Ages (a critical review) by Kelly Marshall (search for the word “Watchtower”) and for his copying from Mormonism, see chapter two of the same review (search for the phrase “Latter Day Saints). [PDF] Also read: Herbert W. Armstrong’s Religious Roots. [Note: Mormons today are known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]
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