Saturday, January 18, 2020

Paper Tiger: How The Church Wasted Your Tithe Money As It Was Begging For More

20 comments:

nck said...

Both Paper Tiger and (award winning) Paper Moon have a theme of "don't pretend what you are not".

Paper Tiger has the conventional hollywood "annoying American" popping up amongst the civilized crowd.

It seems a warning by Rader and Kuhn to the 2 WCG top dogs that they had them by the balls.

Psychologically it might also be HWA's formal apology for BB's perceived 1975 debacle. - after which the church trippled in size in 2 decades.

Anyhow David Niven later got a very nice donation for scientific research find solutions for a rare disease. And Paper MOON got broadcasted 4 times over Europe last year through the Arte Channel with German dubbing, as a quirky artsy early seventies movie from that strange freedom loving culture overseas which is kinda alien yet so attractive since Elvis Pelvis was stationed in the Fulda Gap.

The german dubbing of all things American was of course prophesied by hwa. Perhaps a bit of healing power through foundation funds was also envisioned.

A lasting reputation as the Charly Chaplin (CHARACTER) perhaps not.

Nck

Byker Bob said...

Well, if it hadn't been for the 1975 debacle, nck, I wouldn't have been able to have all the fun partying in its aftermath! It was like a total cathartic release from all the repression. Remember that real cool David Bowie song "Diamond Dogs"? Remember the opening lines after his recital of the opening apocalyptic poetry? "As they pull you out of the oxygen tent, you ask for the latest party!"

Back in those days, we were thinking that maybe Mark Armstrong, when he got the church, would be the one leading it into reform, perhaps having Led Zep or Deep Purple performing in the Ambassador Auditorium, still believing that God loves quality, but just quality from a different genre. We surely never saw the Mark of today coming down the road!

There really isn't any sort of apology HWA could make which would undo all the evil he brought into everyone's life. Still, I forgave him many years ago, as I worked very hard to recover from the parts of his damage which were not permanent. While he may have given the world "Paper Moon", he pretty much gave us (the real financiers) the toilet paper from his own moon!

BB

nck said...

Yes BB.

I was thinking about that. As I said elsewhere, I just saw Ron Howard's "Eight days a week" on the Beatles 1963 - 1966. And I wondered why on earth would 1963 American girls go out of their minds like that, screeching and screaming in total hysteria. The only explanation for that phenomenon to me is that they collectively hailed from an extremely repressive society and then there was the release or catharsis by those totally natural boys from England behaving like "normal" kids wondering why black people had to sit segregated in the stadium and politely asking for that to end, which it did immediately after the Florida concert.

HWA inadvertently gave Europe American culture and liberty through his World Tomorrow broadcast whose advertising money payed for the pirate stations to exist familiarizing an entire generation with Rock music. (Re The boat that rocked IMDB). Of course the British establishment tried to stop this polution and recognized is as a strategic CIA opp.

This is Radio Luxemburg...........The voice of freedom............bringing you the World Tomorrow..............after an entire day of pop music from the Land of the Free.

nck

nck

Byker Bob said...

I wasn't there in England when Pirate Radio, as it came to be called, was in operation. So, it is difficult for me to make an accurate assessment as to whether this was an HWA impact. However, several aspects to your theory are very problematic. For one, HWA absolutely detested rock music in all forms, even the insipid pop music of the day. He even complained about Petula Clark's "Down Town", and Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night", and if there is any wimpier rock n roll than those two songs, I've never heard it. It would have been disingenuous for him to sponsor an invasion of the British isles with rock music, circumventing the carefully controlled BBC, although there was "Top of the Pops" on the Beeb. We know for a fact that HWA did throw a great deal of our tithe money at the preservation his own preferred musical genre, classical music, via the Ambassador Auditorium. No doubt, the TWT broadcast did help pay the bills at Radio Luxembourg, but the broadcast was promoting HWA's agenda, not American pop culture.

Also, when the Beatles first came to America, and the girls began screaming, the news media thought it reminiscent of Sinatra. Apparently there was similar hysteria at Frank Sinatra concerts back in the late 1930s and '40s.

If you read the memoirs of the old Chicago blues musicians, and those of the 1950s rock, roots, and rock-a-billy musicians, as well as those of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, you learn that American musicians often had an entire second act to their careers, long after fading from popularity on the American scene, in England and other parts of Europe. They found that they were top concert draw in England, at a time when even small clubs were not booking them in the USA. Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Ike and Tina Turner, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and others literally groomed the budding English musicians in the early 1960s, leading up to what is now called the first British Invasion of rock n roll. The Teddy Boys of that era were an imitation of and throwback to the Booze Fighters, the motorcycle club whose exploits at Hollister, California were the basis for Marlon Brando's 1953 movie, "The Wild One". I'm just not seeing any primary influences here from HWA. The primaries were rooted in the American music and film industry. At best, HWA may have been a faint secondary, but he would probably have been very angry and would have violently flapped his jowls if anyone had suggested that he financed or promoted anything other than his message, or fine arts. He eschewed the culture of the working man, and comsidered it to be base.

BB

Tonto said...

Like many things Armstrong, "Paper Tiger" was a "WHITE ELEPHANT"! Supposed rising chid star of this movie "Ando" had a. career that went nowhere.

Rader at one time tried to lay claim to being the thought creator for the movie "Raders of the Lost Ark"

nck said...

True BB.

HWA never knew who really "miraculously opened doors" for him. Although he hinted many times that some people in his entourage were specifically employed by the church "because they knew the way the world worked", which he readily admitted, he knew not.

He really had NO CLUE whatsoever why Sadat left 11 US senators waiting for 45 minutes in the hall and Bob Dole had to exclaim, "that is herbert armstrong coming out of the office.

Nck

Miller Jones/Lonnie C Hendrix said...

Leaving aside the question of whether or not the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation made any positive or lasting contributions to world culture, I believe the central question for an organization which purports itself to be God's Church should be how does this activity advance the preaching of the gospel, minister to the poor or nurture the flock? Did the AICF contribute to these fundamental missions of the Church or did they advance the reputation and stature of certain individuals? And, even if we say that augmenting the reputation and stature of certain leaders ultimately contributed to the influence and advancement of the organization's primary responsibilities, can't we easily argue that more efficient and effective means could have been employed in achieving the same (or a greater) result? Yeah, I'm thinking the title Gary chose for this post was very appropriate - with emphasis on the wasting of tithe dollars!

Byker Bob said...

It was pretty darned telling, nck, when HWA, in one of his "dumb sheep" lectures at Friday night Bible Study in the '70s, proclaimed that God had given him the wisdom to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to world leaders in such a way that they would not realize that it had been preached to them.

I thought to myself as I walked to my car that that had been about the worst bunch of gobblety gook that I'd ever heard in my life. What could possibly be the purpose of preaching the gospel if it were not recognizable as such? Would God inspire trickery such as that? How can you have accountability without an understanding the concept or warning for which you were to be held accountable? I mean, right now in the present, it doesn't mean anything anyway, because nobody outside of a small circle remembers HWA or what he preached anyway.

Someone in the WWF should use the stage name "Herbert Armstrong!"

BB

the Ocelot said...

Wondering why he never had a Dwight Armstrong music gestifes

Anonymous said...

BB
HWAs 'strong unseen hand from somewhere' was code for Christ's second coming. World leaders understood this. It was what protocol and diplomacy permitted. Many of them would have known of the prophesies of the church.

nck said...

BB. HWA said that he would preach it in a manner that would not offend them. You remember it different that is telling.

The "strong unseen hand" code 4:38 speaks about, is understood by everyone with an understanding of basic economics like the elites hwa spoke too, as FREE TRADE. And 4:38 proves what it meant to the funding base.

In the same manner if you have seen Charlie Wilson's war with a focus on extremely low budgetting, a lay man would understand how great a CIA asset is that is not actively seeking converts a mere 90.000 people while paying to sway an entire young generation within all US allies during the Cold War from communism to American liberal culture.

All this focus on HWA. I am talking about Christian broadcasting in general while The Workd Tomorrow alone, often covered 20 percent of operating costs alone as "the world's biggest advertiser" with minimum damage to the American empire since as you say, no one remembers him.

Oh by the way the world tomorrow EXACTLY mirrors today's world system an consequently all BI's cousins were the USAs main trading partners, so no harm done there either.

The Church assets provided for the Japanese to trade Okinawa gduring the 1970 negotiations and they got to keep it from Nixon. This is strategically important as we see EVERY DAY today as Japanese and US jets scramble from Okinawa to intercept Chinese and Russian warplanes and keep an eye on rocket man.

I could go on and on about for instance favorable articles and visits to military leaders in South East Asia who had just quelched communist uprisings killing 900.000 people. I'm not going to mention the "church" support for Philippine land reform again at Philippines largest military base.

No one remembers the Church but a (small) part of its legacy influences the lives of billions of people today still.

These are just a few of the funnies. I know of an organization still carrying hwa and Rader as it's founders that to this day hands millions of grants to scientific research.

Just last year I showed a Kenyan person on this blog how AICF helped the Japanese invest in what is today Kenyas major agricultural institution serving millions

I gotta stop now or I start looking like a supporter.

Nck

Byker Bob said...

All I know is that Billy Graham never acceded to this coded diplomacy. He was not ashamed of representing Jesus or a church when he appeared before royalty and presidents. The powerful are not generic, either. Each is unique with his or her own personality, sense of vision and dreams. If HWA repeated the same canned message for each dignitary, I would have to believe that it came off just like the two trees did for all of us. In fact, maybe he even gave them the Cliff's Notes version of his two trees sermon! (Yawn! Take the picture already and get the heck out of here!)

BB

nck said...

BB

True. Art Gilmore even pointed the bored faces of the Greek elites out, in the official video.

Yet. HWA's message of the USA's commitment to the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine in fighting communism and the need for Greece to join the EU, was EXACTLY in synch with US foreign policy since 1945, just weeks before a Greek decision on joining EU/EC was pending. This was 1980.

In 1975 40 percent of German youngsters were not convinced Die Rote Armee Fraktion was a totally evil organisation.

To sway the youngsters by American liberties and freedom that was the aim of psy ops abroad through pop music.

Billy Graham was merely for internal use.... until the Carter administration implemented "moral foreign policy" and supported Christian preachers abroad as official government policy.

Nck

Anonymous said...

Hang onto your wallets!, here comes the rotund-big-spending-endtime-profit-of-doom

Anonymous said...


Paper Tiger

So a church helped to sponsor a movie about an old guy who deliberately misrepresented his past, but who was supposedly a swell guy anyway. This does send a strange message.

Most churches like to talk about their Jesus (who was a smart-Alec type of young man who came to do away with his father's laws.) They like to sponsor missionaries to foreign lands with this message to make the people twice as much a child of what they themselves are.

Byker Bob said...

Oddly enough, someone was trying to sell a Rolls Royce, alleging provenance that it had once belonged to Billy Graham. Barrett-Jackson pulled it from their auction after hearing comcerns from Dr. Graham's family that he would never have been so ostentatious as to own such a car.

BB

nck said...

My friend Sree Rajneesh owned about 96 Rolls Royces.

How funny. I did a google search "How many R............."
and google adds "......Rolls Royces did Osho have"....
To funny what (free) love buys a man.

nck

Anonymous said...

It was alleged that the fat-man had a Rolls Royce garaged in England to be used for his 'royal' visits!

Anonymous said...

NCK,
I wouldn't be so sure that HWA didn't know. Loma attended the first U.N meetings in the early years of RCG. Heddy heights indeed even if she got in on a journalist ticket.
It's the equivalent of attending Davros now.

It's a known survival mode of famous people when they have upset the powers that be, to keep flying around.

Anonymous said...

Hang onto your wallets!, here comes profit-of-doom fat-man in his UK Rolls Royce, bankrolled by the poor. David Niven & Stanley Raider did very very well out of this! Just look at Mr Raider's Beverly Hills Mansion, he knows 'The Art of the Deal'!