{"id":175,"date":"2011-11-12T17:52:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-12T17:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2011\/11\/12\/universal-church-of-the-kingdom-of-god-coming-through-your-letter-box-soon\/"},"modified":"2011-11-12T17:52:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-12T17:52:00","slug":"universal-church-of-the-kingdom-of-god-coming-through-your-letter-box-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2011\/11\/12\/universal-church-of-the-kingdom-of-god-coming-through-your-letter-box-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal Church of the Kingdom of God coming through your letter box soon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just got a newspaper though my front door (in Oxford) called City News, with a red top and front page splash about benefit cheats and scroungers. As you read through it, it starts to dawn on you that this might not be a free newspaper, but an advert of some sort.<\/p>\n<p>It reads just like a paper. But there are references to something called UCKG, and how it has helped people out of welfare dependency, saving the Government millions. On the back page there&#8217;s a full page spread promoting events round the country, at centres around the country, of the UCKG.<\/p>\n<p>The UCKG is the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n<p>The UCKG has been linked with charges of fraud, tax evasion, extracting money from the poor and directing it to church leaders, money laundering, child demonic-possession cases, and the appalling death of Victoria Climbie (see <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Universal_Church_of_the_Kingdom_of_God\">the wiki page on the church for details<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>The UCKG is a focus of cult watcher Rick Ross. Go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rickross.com\/groups\/universal.html\">here<\/a> for a long list of worrying reports.<\/p>\n<p>There have also been charges of whipping up hatred against Catholics, and even pretending to be the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n<p>If I had a scanner, I&#8217;d scan in a few pages of the newspaper so you could take a look&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>STOP PRESS. I just found this video below. Note the references to curing cancer and creating wealth through prayer.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a different version of the paper to the one I got. The following video is kind of interesting. The Brazilian founder of the church appears part way though explaining to his followers how to con people out of their money, &#8220;Either you give or you go to hell!&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">POSTSCRIPT.<\/span> INCIDENTALLY&#8230;  the UCKG <span style=\"font-style:italic\">has charitable status in the UK.<\/span> The Charity Commission said, after their investigation of UCKG in 2003 (following the Victoria Climbie affair &#8211; Victoria was taken to the UCKG by her aunt Kouao, where she was seen by Pastor Lima. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm200203\/cmselect\/cmhealth\/570\/57004.htm\">The Public Inquiry report said: &#8220;Pastor Lima expressed the view that Victoria was possessed by an evil spirit and advised Kouao to bring Victoria back to the church a week later.&#8221;<\/a> Victoria was tortured to death by her aunt and her boyfriend within a week), that it found no evidence that the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God claimed to be able to heal individuals or purge them of demons. Rick Ross&#8217;s cult watch website says that <span style=\"font-style:italic\">on the same day the CC reported<\/span>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rickross.com\/reference\/universal\/universal30.html\">&#8220;Despite the charity regulator&#8217;s ruling the churches&#8217; website was today advertising &#8220;strong prayer to destroy witchcraft, demon-possession&#8221; &#8211; an apparent reference to exorcism.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just got a newspaper though my front door (in Oxford) called City News, with a red top and front page splash about benefit cheats and scroungers. As you read through it, it starts to dawn on you that this might not be a free newspaper, but an advert of some sort. It reads just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-possession-and-child-abuse-in-the-uk","category-uckg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}