Douglas has a poignant post on
DNA Refutes British Israelism about a former WCG member who experienced first hand the "brotherly love" of the ministry and members after years of dedicated service. It is appalling and utterly disgusting what the church and the members did to this guy. You can read the entire article here:
Cult Life: Bruce
Bruce felt the world was screwed up, and coupled with his being highly
religious, he went on a quest to both find a religion and to satisfy his desire
to prove the world at large wrong. He tried some rather fringe cultic types of
Christian congregational churches with political leanings, but it wasn't until
he listened to the World Tomorrow on Radio that he connected with his new
religious reality.
Ambassador College, the Radio Church of God, The Plain Truth and Herbert
Armstrong had an answer for everything in a neat package, and in 1962, he took
the plunge. He had significant savings he had stored up over the years -- enough
that he could afford to do what he wanted for several years without having to
work because he was industrious, prudent with his money and frugal.
This was perfect for this particular British Israelism Cult: A man with money
they could rip off.
Bruce impressed the college entrance personnel and started at Ambassador College
in 1962. A year later, Garner Ted Armstrong told him that Bruce should seek to
serve the work elsewhere: His technical interests were getting in the way of his
path to becoming the smarmy picture perfect plastic minister material they were
looking for.
Bruce left and worked "out in the world". He settled into a church area in the
Pacific Northwest and found a job making plenty of money from repairing cameras
-- a result of just one of his technical hobbies of photography, building
telescopes from scratch for astronomy, rock collecting and polishing, building
electronics including high end amplifiers and phonographs replete with speakers.
Everything he did was quality.
Bruce was generous, and besides "loaning" tens of thousands of dollars to the
Radio Church of God at another crisis brought on by the profligate spending of
the cult leader, he also gave people stuff. He gave them jewelry he had made,
polished rocks (some with more than sentimental value), loaned people high
fidelity collections -- he gave freely and generously. He also loaned over 6,000
quality 35mm slides he had taken over the years to Ambassador College and many
of them were used for the front cover of The Plain Truth
and The Good News.
Due to unfortunate circumstances, Bruce was temporarily unemployed. Though he
was a bachelor, he had a nice apartment with several bedrooms. A family in the
cult had a husband and father who was also out of work and needed a place for a
family of five to stay, so Bruce, not wanting to......
read the rest of the article at the link above.
