Wednesday, February 13, 2013

New Video: Phoney Preachers Exposed

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

As pointed out in The Joe Schmo Show, we can't give anyone the benefit of the doubt these days, especially Armstrongists who have been proved wrong: Why give them a free pass?

Anonymous said...

Nice!

(At 6:39, it says "Garner Ted Armstrong's Living Church of God", which is not accurate.)

Other than that, it's a great video!

Thanks!
-Norm

Anonymous said...


The mention of Gerald Flurry's deliberate deceit brought back old memories.

The Philadelphia Trumpet magazine was advertised on its website as "the most informed news source on the planet." This might have sounded impressive to outsiders who did not know that Gerald Flurry had to prevent members of his Philadelphia Church of God from becoming too well informed by forbidding them to read anything that he did not approve of.

It is questionable how much Gerald Flurry's Philadelphia Trumpet magazine could tell anyone about the future when it can't even be honest about the past. The February 2000 issue of the Philadelphia Trumpet magazine was a special, expanded (20 extra pages) ten-year issue that said on the cover, "He Was RIGHT! Remembering Five Decades of Accurate Forecasting by HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG." This was designed to give readers the impression that Herbert W. Armstrong was right with all his predictions. They might naturally wonder why so many people from the Worldwide Church of God would stop listening to a forecaster who had been right for fifty years.

Gerald Flurry called himself "That Prophet" but had to subscribe to Stratfor to try to guess the future. All Gerald Flurry's own babblings about how we were in not only the end time but the end of the end time, and about it being the last hour, and about what a short work his church was prophesied to do, suddenly got interrupted by a massive building program. This probably disappointed some of the early losers in his group who had been led to believe that they would be fleeing to Petra within a couple years.

Lake of Fire Church of God said...

Great video. From someone who lived through those times, I say Thank You!

Richard

Byker Bob said...

It is important to keep the truth in the forefront, because these guys would just love to sweep it all under the rug and pretend that such statements and promises were never made!

We who grew up in WCG homes (actually, Radio Church of God at that time) most certainly believed we would never see our 30th birthdays, and lived in sadness and fear at the prospects of our "unconverted" friends and relatives being enslaved, starved, and tortured by the Germans.

The ACOG splinters pretend that no specific dates were ever given, and that the prophecies were open ended to occur at some time in the future. They are either misinformed or lying. There were the supposed 2 nineteen year time cycles given for HWA to complete the preaching of the gospel around the world, a complex equation involving the times of the Gentiles, and the basic math of combining the years AD with the total of the years added up from the OT geneologies which were all offered as "proof" that the trib would start in '72, and JC would split the Mount of Olives right on schedule in 1975, probably on the day of Trumpets.

We grew up speaking of "when we go to Petra". There were no ifs ands or buts about all of that. It was spoken as fact. Being lied to or fooled about anything that you base your life upon is cruel, but had I had my choice, I would much have preferred to be lied to about Santa Clause than all of this stuff!

BB

Allen C. Dexter said...

I'm extremely thankful for modern communication developments. The lie mongers can't avoid videos, blogs, forums, etc. like this. None of them can ever hope to rise to the level Herb did. This run down is itself devastating and must make Rod Meredith and several others really squirm.

Lake of Fire Church of God said...

Byker Bob said, "It is important to keep the truth in the forefront, because these guys would just love to sweep it all under the rug and pretend that such statements and promises were never made!

We who grew up in WCG homes (actually, Radio Church of God at that time) most certainly believed we would never see our 30th birthdays, and lived in sadness and fear at the prospects of our "unconverted" friends and relatives being enslaved, starved, and tortured by the Germans.

MY COMMENT - That is EXACTLY right, Byker. I remember sitting in my school bus alone by myself in the Fall of 1971 thinking everyone on the bus would soon be dead!

When January, 1972 came rolling by, I remember looking out my bedroom window in the cold dark night before going to sleep looking to see if I could see any Germans attacking my neighborhood.

When January, 1972 came and went, the silence from the Church was deafening. It was like the Church wanted to pretend everything that was said from the pulpits wasn't said.

Soon, in February, 1972 I believe, it was HWA's letter to the Church that the real significance of January, 1972 was.....(drum roll)... ADVERTISING IN READERS' DIGEST Magazine!

What?

Advertising in Readers' Digest instead of the Great Tribulation and German bombs dropping on America? Was this some kind of sick joke?

Apparently, it was! And for any of these WCG and splinter ministers to say it didn't happen the way YOU Byker Bob and I are saying it happened makes them OUTRIGHT LIARS!

The truth always trumps lies!

Richard

Lake of Fire Church of God said...

Allen C. Dexter said, "I'm extremely thankful for modern communication developments. The lie mongers can't avoid videos, blogs, forums, etc. like this. None of them can ever hope to rise to the level Herb did. This run down is itself devastating and must make Rod Meredith and several others really squirm."

MY COMMENT - So true Allen. The information age ensured none of the Armstrong wannabees would ever rise to the level of Apostle HWA. Of course, the Armstrongite would say that this is a fulfillment of the sign of the end - that knowledge has increased.

Dennis Diehl said it best. When the internet became widely available in the 1990s, he told me he knew that that was the END of the Church!

Richard

Allen C. Dexter said...

I remember, in the early 60s of a COG7 person recounting some of the lies she knew Herbert was spouting. Of course, we chalked it up to bitterness and wouldn't believe what she was saying. It's much the same with what we trumpet here. Those who are determined not to believe the obvious won't -- until something happens to make their minds open up.

Velvet said...

Not that the Church ever set concrete dates a la Witless Weinland, but I remember in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, when I was growing up in the Church, it was a commonly-held belief, that we would be going to Petra. Waterhouse helped most of that along, with his "miraculously-healed DC-8s" I think.

I don't recall the local ministry talking about it much (or at all) from the pulpit...but we did discuss it as common fact amongst the members. Make of that what you will.

Also, when I was growing up, although they did push the Nazis-gonna-getcha-if-you're-unfaithful angle pretty heavily (it went along with the United States of Europe prophecy after all), they had definitely softened the Armageddon rhetoric, by that point; when I was growing up, it was emphasized more that those who suffered and/or died during Armageddon,would at least get a second chance at the Second Resurrection...in fact, all of the resurrections, but most prominently, Jesus' resurrection, were focused on in sermons, by that point in the Church's timeline.

Sermonettes tended to be of the prophecy-is-now-here-it-is-in-the-news and processed-white-sugar-and-refined-white-flour-is-of-the-devil rhetoric, but as I mentioned on an earlier post, the lay-ministry in the congregation I spent most of my formative years in were far worse (and much farther off the mark) than the actual pastors we had.