False Prophet Ronald Weinland

Back in June of 2006, False Prophet Ronald Weinland announced that he would not be planning for feast observances beginning in 2008, and that 2007 would be the last organized Feast of Tabernacles for the Church of God – PKG.  The Great Tribulation was to begin early in 2008.

The main site for the 2007 feast observance by PKG was in Lexington, Kentucky with a few scattered groups gathering in remote locations such as New Zealand and Australia.  A number of overseas members including Wayne Matthews and others from Australia and Europe traveled to Lexington to attend.  Weinland later described the numbers attending the 2007 PKG Feast as:

You know, last year, at the Feast, if you counted everybody, maybe even some dogs and cats, uh, maybe 450. Total. Worldwide.

The picture below was taken in the meeting room in Lexington.

Church of God PKG 2007 Feast of Tabernacles

This picture shows both of the Two Witnesses shmoozing their flock.  I wonder what the topic of conversation was between the Silent Witness ( in the red blouse and dark skirt on the right) and the young man.

It turns out that 2007 was not the last organized feast for PKG.  For both 2008 and 2009, PKG met for the first day and the last 4 days in most locations.  And this year’s feast, over halfway into the original pre-revision 1260-day Great Tribulation, and almost a Time and a half-Time into his current shortened 980-day Great Tribulation, is to be observed for the full 8 days.

As will be the 2012 Feast of Tabernacles, unless something non-spiritual intervenes, such as Ron being sent to prison.  But that would turn out to be spiritual too.  After all, some of the apostles went to jail, and Ron is an apostle too, among other things.

False Prophet Ronald Weinland was in Richmond VA today.  His regional elder Dave Conley gave the opening prayer and Ron again imported Ralph Dowd from Cincinnati to give the closing.

Ron has put up a few of his older sermons relating to his first multi-colored booklet Time is Running Out.  He also repeated his promise to put up his old Newswatch issues from 1998 through 2002.  But you don’t have to wait any longer, as I have the complete collection of Newswatch in text-searchable PDFs (follow this link and scroll to the bottom of the page).

Ron has posted plans to travel to Australia and New Zealand for Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread.  It’s curious that he mentioned these holy days but did not mention the trips.  He also has posted plans to go to Europe as usual for Pentecost this year.  I wonder if the IRS is closing in on Ron and whether one of these trips will be a little bit longer than usual

Ron spent a good part of the sermon dangling carrots.  All the new people who would be coming into the church and the hundreds and thousands each could help into the new age.  His sermon was personally useful as it put me to sleep for a much-needed nap.

But not the permanent nap with which he cursed me 61 weeks ago.

Al, who is one of False Prophet Ronald Weinland’s Cincinnati area elders, is undergoing a personal great tribulation.  He is currently being sued twice — one of the lawsuits is for a foreclosure against his business property.  His 18-year-old business owns a co-located vehicle body repair shop with a house usable as an office which is on the market for $269,900.  Hopefully he will be able to close a sale on it before the judge bangs his gavel and sends the sheriff to put him on the street.

During the fall of 2007, Weinland asked his members to show Total Resolve for his prophecies.  In his November 3, 2007 sermon, Weinland mentioned his own $381,000 house and stated:

And I think of all that equity in there, it’s not going to serve anybody any good whatsoever.  Serve the church in a very powerful way.  The more we can do as a group, those of us who are running down together, those of us who are part of the 144000.   If we have the means and the ability …  Don’t do it right now either.  Someone asked me this last week here, “If I withdraw a certain amount right now, I’m going to be penalized, by taxes and so forth.”  But see when January or February come around you’re not going to be penalized. (snorts) The following year you don’t have to worry about it too much, do you?

Al is old enough to have a WCG background and would thus being eligible in 2008 to be sealed (Feb 2) and resealed (Sept 30)  as part of the 144,000. Weinland often mentioned the example of Gideon and his army of 300 that sneaked up on the Midianite camp and defeated them, and described them as “running down the hill” (which they didn’t do, they crept quietly) and “breaking their pitchers” as a metaphor for what his members were to do, by cashing in their 401Ks and the equity in their homes.  Since the US was going to be down the tubes by 2009, not even being able to inaugurate a new president, the IRS wouldn’t be around to collect taxes.  Too bad for Weinland that the IRS is not cooperating with his prophecy even through they probably know all about it.

In his May 3, 2008 sermon, Weinland stated:

So if anyone who gave above and beyond – I just want to add this too, so you can examine your place and what you did.  Because I know how the human mind is, I know that some gave offerings that aren’t normal.  I hope that if there are some that are regretting that, having second doubts about that, I want to say something right now, real clear to you.  Ok .  I’ll return it.  Those of you who have given 10 thousand, 20 thousand, 50 thousand, 80 thousand, 100 thousand, and more because there are those of you who fit in those categories. Above and beyond normal tithes and offerings. But you need to let me know before Pentecost. Thought I’d give a week, I thought “no” I’ll just say it “’til Pentecost”.    Otherwise, to understand,  you are saying that you’re in full agreement of those monies being used fully to whatever I deem necessary.  Because we’re going to continue moving forward, putting everything into what we’re doing.

In a later sermon, he stated that the only request came for refund of tithes and offerings from an ex-member.  At another point in the 5/3/08 sermon:

We hit over a million dollars at one point. But we’re way below that right now. We’re not there any longer because of all the monies we’re throwing into Google, and everything else we’ve been doing. But for a small group like us to be able to do something like this, like we’ve been able to do on the Internet, to be out there, for people to be able to do a search and here we pop up, being this small?

And yet at another point in his May 3, 2008 sermon:

So if you didn’t believe that you have any mortgage payments after April the 17th, or you didn’t have to pay off your credit card, then you made a mistake! You know. You can’t blame me! I don’t know how long some of this is going to take place. Live life wisely.

This statement was only a few weeks after prophesying “nukular” explosions within 45 to 90 days after April 17, 2008.  Indicators are that Weinland did not throw down his own pitcher as did his members–he’s still paying the property tax on his $381,000 house directly to the county instead of through a mortgage company.  I expect that if he’d refinanced the equity from his house that the mortgage company would require him to pay into escrow.

Weinland, as he often does, has shifted all of the blame to the member for whatever happens to them as a result of throwing down their pitcher.  So I wonder how expensive the pitcher was that this elder threw down to light the torch of Google advertising for Ron’s fictional book “2008 God’s Final Witness”.   It’s sad that he’s losing this modest family business which was also the employment for another of Weinland’s elders, Tom, who has the same last name.  While Weinland blames the economy, and I expect that played a role in this situation, I also expect that pitcher-breaking also had a lot to do with it.  I wonder how many other PKG members are similarly suffering, but I doubt that Ron and Laura are among them.

Ron, when you respond to this by accusing me of lying, twisting and distorting, be specific.  Be very specific.  And no twisting and distorting of your own.

Over on his As Bereans Did blog, xHWA has compiled a number of Ron Weinland’s words about himself.  Click on over and take a read, and leave a comment there as well.

False Prophet Ronald Weinland stated that he has cut back on advertising. Quantcast and Alexa, two websites that track Internet traffic to websites, agree with that statement.

This graph of traffic to the-end.com goes back nearly 3 years.  Right after the Feast of Tabernacles in 2007, Ron began spending increasing amounts of money on Google advertising, resulting in a significant increase of traffic early in 2008 based on various apocalyptic key words.  The advertising budget was cut after the failure of the first timeline and the announcement of the 50th truth.  Keyword advertising on Google and Yahoo rebegan with the second timeline in October of 2008.

This graph of web traffic to the-end.com from Alexa goes back only two years and is consistent with a bit more detail.  The sharp drop-off in traffic early in 2009 coincides with the 2-day fast at the end of January last year during which PKG members were to pray for an increase in the Thunders to humble people.   It also shows the traffic dropped of dramatically just before the Feast of Tabernacles last year and then picked up again right after.  Ron stated that he was going to leverage the apocalyptic movie “2012″ that was released back in November, and traffic did increase about that time but has tapered off.

This graph from Google Trends shows the search for the keyword “2012″.  Searches increased just prior to the release of the movie but have tapered off since, similar to the drop-off in traffic to the-end.com.  It appears that this keyword has been removed from their ad program as searches on “2012″ no longer serve up a sponsored link.

The reduced traffic to the-end.com will result in fewer people willing to ignore the lack of evidence and join Ron’s church.  It seems that Ron was able to handle most of the baptisms as he traveled around the country, so I’m not sure what his current flock of elders do.  Questions to an elder are likely to be referred to the FAQ page on the church website, and failing that to Ron himself.  After the first rush of excitement of the 59 new ordainees and their trip to Cincinnati next month, how are they going to handle the lack of opportunity to practice their new eldering skills?

Ron is dangling the carrot that hordes of people will be drawn to his church when the great tribulation finally hits.  But he was claiming as far back as 2004 that disasters would make advertising unnecessary. And they’re still waiting.