EDMOND—Philadelphia Church of God Pastor General Gerald Flurry, who is editor in chief of the Philadelphia Trumpet newsmagazine and presenter of the Key of David television program, delivered personal appearance campaign lectures to Trumpet subscribers on February 11 and 12 in Houston, Texas.
Mr. Flurry, personal assistant Grant Turgeon and Western United States Regional Director Brian Davis took an hour-long midday flight aboard the Church’s corporate jet, and Mr. Flurry spent the afternoon revising a message he had given at a campaign three weeks earlier to subscribers in Norwalk, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.
At 7:30 that night, almost 200 Trumpet subscribers listened to Mr. Flurry speak in the ballroom of a hotel near downtown Houston, where he summarized Hebrews chapters 1-5 on the first night and chapters 6-13 on the second.
Mr. Flurry was markedly more direct in Houston than he had been in Norwalk: He emphasized that the Apostle Paul wrote Hebrews just before Roman troops destroyed Jerusalem in a.d. 70, killing 600,000 people and resulting in the starving Jews resorting to cannibalism. This suffering, Mr. Flurry said, is a type of what Americans will soon experience.
Mr. Flurry said that in Hebrews, Paul tried to give members of God’s Church a hopeful vision. “Lose the vision, and you will fall,” he said. While traditional Christians focus on the dead Jesus Christ, true Christians should focus on His role as Advocate and Intercessor in their lives each day, and on mankind’s potential to become Spirit-born Sons of God as Christ did, Mr. Flurry said. He also urged listeners to prove and keep the Sabbath day to have rest from sin.
Mr. Davis called the lecture “masterfully put together and delivered.” He said, “I know that God inspired that. It was a noticeably strong message both nights, and the people responded positively to that.”
On the second night, Mr. Flurry spoke to a group of approximately 80 subscribers, giving two reasons why God’s people should be bold:
1. Be bold because you can enter God’s throne room.
2. Be bold because Christ is in the Holy of Holies interceding for you.
Faith is assurance before possession, Mr. Flurry said, citing Hebrews 11:1. Noah built the ark for 100 years without a sign of the coming Flood. If God has made a promise, Mr. Flurry said, feelings and physical evidence don’t matter; just believe.
Correction brings joy, Mr. Flurry said. God corrects His sons, who will one day be made perfect spirit beings free from evil human nature.
pcg online marketing manager David Vejil said that invitations for the personal appearance campaign went out to every Trumpet subscriber in Texas and Louisiana. He said that typically about 5 percent of subscribers request tickets to each personal appearance. Subscribers who responded drove to Houston from Louisiana as well as across Texas: Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi and Odessa, which is a 10-hour drive from Houston.
Ten non-pcg members signed up for a follow-up Bible study delivered by Mr. Davis on February 18, and 14 showed up. All 14, plus five additional nonmembers, committed to attending a second study on March 4.
“We are living in dangerous times, and people are seeing that,” Mr. Davis said. “I think they responded because of that and because of God. They are responding with a certain level of seriousness and sobriety that you don’t always see from new contacts.”
Mr. Flurry delivered 10 campaigns in 1999 and 2000, and another 10 between 2006 and 2008. He restarted personal appearance campaigns eight months ago, visiting Chicago in July 2017 and Norwalk in January.