Monday, May 23, 2011

Andie Redwine: What Happens on May 22?



Andie Redwine reflects on "The Day After May 21" and her experience with the same kind of lies when Herbert Armstrong made a similar prediction.;

Forgive my cynicism, but I’ve been through this before.

I grew up in a church where I was scared to death of Jesus coming back at any moment. Luckily, members of my church were going to be whisked away on the wings of angels to a place of safety while the rest of the world wished that they had heeded the voice of Herbert Armstrong, my cult leader.

I was always afraid that I wasn’t going to be among the faithful. And at six years old, this can be a pretty paralyzing fear.

The people involved in my church weren’t monsters. They weren’t unkind. They weren’t unintelligent. They had just been duped by a false prophet who used fear and mind control techniques to recruit and sustain a large money-making operation. In the name of God, Herbert took well-intentioned seekers of Christ and turned them into devoted followers. Followers of Herbert.

 This was before the Internet, but Herbert’s game before religion had been advertising. He created a magazine called The Plain Truth, he had a television show, and he was a prolific author (although a great deal of his work was allegedly plagiarized). And because this was before the Internet, there was very little ability to fact check any of Herbert’s ideas or background. 

And he was convincing as hell. In its heyday, Herbert’s Worldwide Church of God centered in Pasadena, California had congregations all over the world. New York. Sydney. Brussels. Bangkok. Amman. Chicago. Philadelphia. London. Paris. He was a go-getter.

Herbert was also an end-times prophet. Growing up under the threat of nuclear war, Herbert offered people a way to escape the coming apocalypse. His way. God’s way.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting in a rented hall listening to Herbert Armstrong. I thought he was God. His voice would be booming through speakers from a cassette tape, but I would be looking at the podium with an empty microphone and just know that God was speaking to me. Everyone around me gave the podium their undivided attention, and so I did likewise. I figured if the adults were taking notes and flipping through their bibles when this man spoke, he must be God.

Jesus didn’t come back the way Herbert had thought. And it was the fault of the congregation. It’s because we weren’t ready. The church had to get back on the right track. We were off course. Sinners in the hands of an angry Herbert, who could direct his ministers to throw us out of God’s church.

We were terrified of this. All of us. Terrified. It was the fear that Herbert created in us to hook us, and it was the fear that kept us coming back for more. If we left, we’d be obliterated. There would be no hope.

Read the rest of her story here:  What Happens On May 22?

Andie recently released a movie about life in a cult, Paradise Recovered 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I read that according to a San Francisco Chronicle interview, Camping said he was "flabbergasted" and that it hadn't been a good weekend.

What occurs to me is that he'd received a record influx of his followers' money leading up to the anticipated rapture and destruction.
His followers who dumped all their money and efforts into supporting this false prophecy may have more of a reason to call it a bad weekend than he does.

According to scientists, 5/21 was a normal day for earthquakes around the world(there are normally a bunch of non-destructive earthquakes every day).
However, I noticed some of his followers were tweeting about those common and non-destructive earthquakes as if to allay their cognitive dissonance by suggesting they're something that they're not.