The point of the provocative title and content is to get people to actually look at the relevant scriptures which represent the mind and inspiration of Christ.
You find it disturbing for good reason. You also mentioned ‘cults’, though perhaps you were responding to the nature of the message and didn’t know that the UCG is indeed a religious cult. From CARM:
Analysis: The United Church of God is a non-Christian cult that denies the Trinity, the true divinity of Christ, and requires both baptism and obedience to the commandments to be saved. It teaches that there is a “God family” of which we can become members through keeping the Law. Jesus is one of two divine beings, the Father being the other. The Holy Spirit is a force, a power, and is not the 3rd person of the Trinity, and it is received only through the laying on of hands by their church members. It also teaches that their members are obligated to keep the Sabbath and must observe seven festivals. They cannot eat unclean meat. This is a false religious system that teaches a false God, false Christ, and false gospel. Stay away from it.
Other Teachings:
They teach that the wicked, or unsaved, are not alive in hell but are annihilated. Baptism is by immersion. The Bible is inspired and inerrant. They are pre-millennial and maintain that Satan is a fallen, evil angel. Christians are not to go to war and should refuse being drafted.
Quotes
God: God consists of two different beings, Father and Son, in a ‘family.’
“...the one God is a family, presently consisting of God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ. And God is in the process of adding to the divine family multitudes of others - eventually all human beings who are willing and who faithfully choose to follow God’s way...the Father and Jesus Christ are both God...The real message in these pronouncements is that there is no other God apart from the true God’that is, outside the God family now consisting of two divine Beings, the Father and the Son. In short, the God family alone is God...the true God means the one God family to which others will yet be added.”3
Holy Spirit: The UCOG denies the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is God’s divine power. “...the Holy Spirit is the very nature, presence and expression of God’s power actively working in His servants...the very essence and life force through which the Father begets human beings as His spiritual children...The Holy Spirit is spoken of in many ways that demonstrate that it is not a divine person.”4
The Holy Spirit is received by the laying on of hands, after being water baptized by immersion.5
Jesus
“Jesus is one of two divine beings”6
Jesus is sinless, the creator of all humanity, who was raised from the dead, (physical resurrection is not explained).
Jesus will return
Law: “The Ten Commandments are the 10 points of God’s law of love. We believe that breaking any one point of the law brings upon a person the penalty of sin. We believe that this fundamental spiritual law reveals the only way to true life and the only possible way of happiness, peace and joy.”7
Man
Man is fallen but can become “partakers of the divine nature.” This means that they can be added to the God Family.
After death, you cease to exist but are resurrected for judgment. “The soul ( nephesh ) is not immortal, because it dies...what happens to the spiritual essence that separates man from animal? Does it continue as a conscious, immortal soul independent of the physical body? Certainly not!”8
“We believe that at the return of Jesus Christ a resurrection to spirit life will take place for all who have been God’s faithful servants.”9
Rest at link: http://carm.org/ucog
>> “I have been a born-again evangelical Christian for 50 some years” <<
.
Nobody but Yeshua is ‘born again’ yet.
The “Born Again” he referred to was the changing of our corrupt bodies into incorruptible flesh. That rebirth happens at the last trump when he comes in the cloud with his angels.
It only happens for “Those that endure to the end.”
What is enduring? - It is keeping faith and his commandments each and every minute of every day, which one can only do if he has traversed the Mikva of the Ruach Kodesh. (the baptism of the spirit in modern English)