Worldwide Church Of God Morphs Into Grace Communion International

Herbert W. Armstrong was the Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God (WCG). Those studying the Bible with a critical eye recognized him as restoring long lost biblical truths. He stood against traditional Christianity’s error and taught the plain truth of the Bible. Now he’s dead and his successors have effectively dismantled any semblance to what was originally, and correctly, taught.

The final separation of the new WCG from “all things Armstrong” occurred recently with their official announcement that the church’s name will now become “Grace Communion International.” I’m not sure how much closer they could get it to sounding like the Amway of Evangelical Churches. 

The change was also picked up by another religious news source:

Worldwide Church of God Changes Name to Signal Inner Change: Religion News Service reports that the Worldwide Church of God, which re-examined and later rebuked the teachings of founder Herbert W. Armstrong after his death in 1986, has changed its name to Grace Communion International. “We are a church that God radically transformed,” said church president Joseph W. Tkach, who is a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals. “Our new name is consistent with the transformation and aptly describes what God has made of our fellowship.” Armstrong denied the Christian belief in the Trinity and took Old Testament law to heart and encouraged works of righteousness to earn salvation. The church lost half its members, 95 percent of its 1,000-person staff, millions of magazine readers and its college in Pasadena, Calif., when it officially repudiated Armstrong’s teachings and “prophetic speculation” in the mid 1990s.  http://www.crosswalk.com/news/religiontoday/11602619/

Changes in the WCG/GCI

WCG membership peaked in 1986, with about 150,000 members worldwide. However, the new leadership began systematically rejecting and destroying every teaching and tradition Mr. Armstrong established. Immediately, massive doctrinal changes swept the Church, initially concealed from the membership. 

In 1989, Gerrald Flurry and John Amos were disfellowshipped for adhering to the original doctrines of the WCG. The Philadelphia Church of God was then established to most accurately, among all WCG offshoots, preserve the teachings and legacy of its founder, Herbert W. Armstrong.

By 1990, numbers dropped to about 133,000, and in 1992, as income continued to decrease, a prominent minister and 3,000 members left to form the Global Church of God.

Perhaps the most traumatic change came in December 1994: Tkach announced that Christians do not have to keep old covenant laws. Many members did not accept these changes and in early 1995, hundreds of ministers and 12,000 members left to form the United Church of God. 

By 1996, attendance was approximately half  of 1990 numbers (67,000).  In the US, membership slid from 89,000 to 49,000. Thousands more stopped attending any church, and many congregations were left with only half the members they used to have. Church income dropped another 50 percent, and hundreds of employees were laid off. Now, the Worldwide Church of God is about half the size it used to be.

The television ministry, once one of the largest in America, is gone. Circulation of The Plain Truth fell from a peak of 8,000,000 down to less than 100,000. And as stated before, the number of employees in Pasadena fell from 1,000 to about 50, as reduced income forced them to remove some pastors from the payroll, and lay pastors were appointed for small congregations. Ambassador College/University was forced to close because the church could no longer subsidize it, and its properties have been sold. The church’s properties in Pasadena were also sold in 2004. An office building in Glendora was purchased, and all offices were relocated there in 2005. 

Grace Communion International now claims 42,000 members in 900 congregations worldwide, though those numbers are suspect.

Will Rome Take Over Jerusalem?

The Vatican’s Hidden Jerusalem Agenda

March 16, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com

By Ron Fraser

http://www.geographicguide.com/asia.htm

This magazine has been watching Joseph Ratzinger for a long time. As we have watched, we have followed his course from chief confidante of the late Pope John Paul ii to his enthronement as pope and then on throughout the past four years of his controversial papacy.

As we have watched this leading religious figure, we have monitored his involvement in a clandestine project of the Vatican that was documented in Bible prophecy almost 2,000 years ago and which remained a mystery until fully exposed within the last two decades.

Now, as Benedict xvi prepares for his upcoming visit to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan this May—a tour incorporating his first visit to Israel since being elected pope—it is crucial that the Vatican agenda for the city of Jerusalem be publicized.

Back in the mid-1990s, a statement made by Pope John Paul ii during an interview in his native Poland, broadcast in Italian over a Polish radio station, was noted by one of our Italian associates. She sent us a transcript of the interview, which included one particularly startling reference made by the pope regarding the Vatican’s ultimate goal of transferring its headquarters from Rome to Jerusalem.

What was unusual about this admission of John Paul ii is that the Vatican’s intentions to possess Jerusalem are seldom publicized and little commented on. In fact, an air of secrecy—something that the Vatican has a history of creating over various of its affairs over the centuries—has surrounded this project since the failure of the Crusades, the most obvious of the overt and now very historical attempts by the Vatican to seize control of the Holy City. Those attempts have a long history with strong attachments to the German nation, right up to the past two world wars, and beyond to our present day.

As far back as the eighth century a.d., emissaries were sent to Jerusalem by Emperor Charlemagne to negotiate an agreement with the Muslim Caliph Haroun al-Raschid. The result was that Jerusalem became a protectorate of the Holy Roman Empire.

Historical records indicate that such a protectorate was limited to the oversight of the welfare of Christians, the care and protection of designated holy sites, and the properties of the Roman Catholic Church in Jerusalem. The fact that the caliph would be a financial beneficiary to this enterprise was a given. Muslim support of the Kaiser’s army in World War i, and again of the Nazi regime in World War ii, was the end result of a long historical nexus between the Muslims and Germany.

From the time of the Charlemagne/Haroun pact, through the attempt by Kaiser Wilhelm to seize Jerusalem in World War i to this day, elements within Germany have historically viewed themselves as protectors of the Roman Catholic Church. From the time of the failure of the great crusades, German elites have worked to find ways and means of seizing the plum job of protector of Jerusalem.

Recently, courtesy of the actions of Germany’s Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany has aggressively stepped up its diplomacy in the Middle East. This action comes in advance of the upcoming visit by a German pontiff, Josef Ratzinger, under his adopted papal name Benedict xvi, to Jerusalem. Both Vatican and German diplomacy in Israel are linked to a common end: possession of the Old City of Jerusalem, as well as most of the eastern half of the city. The Jews are the pawns in this grand game of international diplomacy, the Palestinians the all-too-willing grunts on the ground eager to facilitate the division of Jerusalem and the annihilation of the State of Israel in the process.

The Vatican already has a significant presence in Jerusalem by virtue of free access to its holy sites over which Rome has legal jurisdiction, under Israeli law, including both its institutions and assets in Jerusalem. The consolidation of these arrangements came by virtue of a bilateral agreement termed “The Fundamental Agreement Between the Holy See and the State of Israel,” which the Israeli government signed with the Vatican on Dec. 30, 1993. The terms of this agreement, composed in secret, were subsequently legislated by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. What remains largely unknown is the secret deal done by current Israeli President Shimon Peres and the leftist peacenik, former Meretz party member Yossi Beilin, known widely as “Peres’s poodle.”

Six months after the signing of the bilateral agreement between Israel and the Vatican, on June 15, 1994, the Israeli government inked a further agreement with the Vatican endorsing the Roman Catholic Church’s participation in negotiations to determine the future of Jerusalem. This was followed in February 1996 by Secretary General of the Vatican Serge Sebastian announcing that Rome recognizes Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem. The Vatican had thus revealed its hand. From here Rome was to go on to actively work through its proxies in the “peace process” to exploit Palestinian claims as a means of splitting the city of Jerusalem asunder, seizing the Old City and possessing East Jerusalem. This involved the management of Palestinian aggression as part of the process, regardless of the suffering and loss of life that it would inevitably incur. This would in fact be a vital part of the initiative to take East Jerusalem by force in the event of the failure of diplomatic means. The same tactic had been instigated by Germany and Rome in the Balkan Peninsula to achieve a desired result with implicit UN agreement, with the Serbs becoming the pariah in the world’s view. This time, it’s the Jews who are being pilloried, in particular since the Gaza incursion, in the lead-up to a similar result as that in Kosovo: the seizure of iconic territory to be placed under the influence of Berlin and Rome with the willing acquiescence of the United Nations.

Journalist Joel Bainerman, a well-known commentator on Israeli affairs, claims, “The end goal of the Vatican is to seize control of the Old City of Jerusalem out of the clutches of the State of Israel. To that end they have a secret agreement with Israel which obliges Israel to respect the ‘extraterritorial’ claim to their physical presence in the city. In short, we have accepted the Vatican’s rights to have little Vatican sovereign embassies throughout our eternal capital of Jerusalem. That same Vatican has committed itself, in public and in a written agreement, to ensure that the Palestinians have sovereignty in the Old City of Jerusalem.”

Yet, beyond the proof of the hidden agenda of the Vatican exposed by commentators, there is the “more sure word of prophecy,” which we have well documented in our publications, that forecasts the coming of an individual who will be the spiritual head of a great religio/political institution centered in Europe, spreading its tentacles “toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land” (Daniel 8:9).

Believe it or not, your Bible prophesies the hidden agenda of the Vatican! The press and media remain fixated on what they believe are the faltering mistakes of a pope out of touch with reality—witness the imbroglio over Benedict’s Regensburg speech and the latest kerfuffle regarding the lifting of the excommunication of the four Lefebvrist bishops, including the Holocaust-minimizing Richard Williamson. Such diversions are but a smokescreen for those whom Lenin famously called “useful idiots” to keep them diverted from following the scent on the track to the ultimate Vatican story, the coming takeover of Jerusalem by Rome!