Did you know that Herbert Armstrong was NOT a false prophet? The logic behind this is that since HWA never claimed to be "prophet" he therefore cannot be a false prophet. The
Preaching
the Gospel blog is promoting this "truth."
One of the accusations against Mr. Armstrong is that he was a false prophet who made predictions about the future that failed.
But Mr. Armstrong could not have been a false prophet because he was never a prophet at all, and he never claimed to be.
Mr. Armstrong taught, "Don't believe me, believe your Bible, believe God."
Obviously we are supposed to believe that God did not speak to HWA at anytime. According to the writer HWA only learned from the Bible. I guess we should forget about his selfish six month study in a public library when he should have been out supporting his family. Six months day and night going over scores of books in order to find his true knowledge. In essence he spend half of a freshman year in a Bible school. Freshman don't learn very much in 6 months of school and neither did HWA.
God gives examples in the Bible of how He communicated with His
prophets. God spoke to Samuel with an audible voice, and the first time
this happened, Samuel thought he was hearing the voice of a man calling
him (1 Samuel 3:1-19). Christ spoke to Moses face to face (Exodus
33:11). Others experienced dreams or visions in which God spoke to them
(Genesis 28:10-15, Ezekiel 1:1-3, 2:1-5, Daniel 10:1-14). Perhaps others
received direct revelation from God in other ways.
But these things did not happen to Mr. Armstrong. He didn't learn the
truth from God in this way. Instead, he learned the truth from the
Bible, just as we should do.
Mr. Armstrong learned the doctrines he taught from the Bible, not by
direct revelation from God as the prophets did. He was not a prophet.
Apparently God did not reveal to him after 1,900 years the lost knowledge that the rest of the world had no idea about. HWA found that in a public library. Anyone copula have found it there, but God gave HWA special dispensation to receive certain hidden knowledge. Only HWA had his mind opened for the knowledge, the regular church member was too stupid to receive it.
God opens our minds, those of us called by God, to be able to understand
the Bible. That does not make us prophets. God also opened Mr.
Armstrong's mind to understand the Bible. What is the difference between
how God opened Mr. Armstrong's mind to understand and how He opens our
minds? The difference is degree, not kind. God gave Mr.
Armstrong spiritual gifts for the work he was to do. God gave him wisdom
and understanding in learning new doctrines in the Bible without a man
to guide him. I do not have that gift to the same degree and neither do
most of you, I would think. I would not have learned the true doctrines
just by studying the Bible alone without the teaching of Mr. Armstrong
to help me find the scriptures that apply to each doctrine.
But God does give us enough help to understand the scriptures for each
doctrine as we study the Bible so we can prove the doctrines Mr.
Armstrong taught.
More circular reasoning:
When Mr. Armstrong speaks of his own opinion, even if he makes a
dogmatic statement about doctrine or about future events, he is like
Nathan telling David to go ahead and build the temple. But if Mr.
Armstrong was a prophet, God would give him direct messages as he gave
to Nathan when he told him that David was not to build the temple. Has
God ever given Mr. Armstrong such a direct message about doctrine or
prophetic events? No. Therefore Mr. Armstrong was never a prophet. Did
Mr. Armstrong ever claim that he received a special message from God by a
vision, a dream, a voice, or a face-to-face meeting with God? No.
Therefore he never claimed to be a prophet.
HWA never made any false prophecies. He only made mistakes:
Mr. Armstrong sometimes made mistakes when he estimated how soon
prophetic events would occur. But he never claimed to receive any
message from God setting dates. Otherwise, why would he say he is not a
prophet if he thought or claimed that God was giving him messages? Why
would he say, don't believe me, believe your Bible?
Mr. Armstrong made mistakes in estimating how soon prophetic events
would occur. He was wrong in many cases when he said in his writings
that something would happen "in ten to fifteen years" or something like
that. He made other mistakes too. As he has pointed out, he learned the
doctrines of the Church little-by-little over a long period of time, and
he had to correct his mistakes.
But you could always tell in reading his literature what he was teaching
from the Bible and what was his human opinion and estimate. If you
followed the FIRST PRINCIPLE of his teaching, don't believe me, believe the Bible, you would not be confused and could not be deceived.
Using this reasoning it is easy to gloss over the humongous errors in the US&BC booklet from the 1960's:
When Mr. Armstrong taught, he gave his reasons, mostly from the
scriptures, and if he said something that he did not prove from the
Bible, then it is understood that it was his opinion, which could be
mistaken. You could tell in his writings what was opinion and what was
doctrine proved from scripture.
For example, I remember the front pages of Mr. Armstrong's book, The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy,
saying something like this, "...events sure to happen in the next 10 to
15 years..." or something similar. I don't remember the exact number of
years, but the copyright of the book was in the 1960s I think, or some
date that made the statement turn out not to be true.
But those statements were not backed up with scripture in the rest of
the book. That is how I knew they were Mr. Armstrong's opinion.
I remember that some of the dates the literature either stated or
implied were wrong. But Mr. Armstrong never said that God gave him any
message about exact dates. The literature proved the doctrines from the
Bible. Anything not backed up by scripture was understood to be opinion.
That is the way I understood it. So when I saw the front of the United
States in prophecy book say these events were sure to happen in a
certain number of years, all I had to do was read the book, look up all
the scriptures, and remember that Mr. Armstrong said, don't believe me,
believe the Bible. When I did that, I saw that no scripture set any
exact date, nor did Mr. Armstrong say in the book that any scripture set
any exact dates. From that, it was easy to see that the statement in
the front of the book about x number of years was just opinion.
If you really believe that HWA made mistakes you should remember we are not to judge, but if you still insist, then please cut him some slack! Just count it all an honest mistake!
Before we judge Mr. Armstrong for his errors, we should remind ourselves
what Christ said about judging. "Judge not, that you be not judged. For
with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure
you use, it will be measured back to you" (Matthew 7:1-2). None of us
would like to be called a false teacher for the mistakes we make in the
things we say or teach. And we all make mistakes.
If you see that Mr. Armstrong made a mistake, be merciful, as you want
God to be merciful to you. Give him the benefit of the doubt. Cut him
some slack, as they say. Just count it as an honest mistake that he
made, and believe what the Bible really says.
So there you have it. Armstrongism was an honest mistake! Get over it!
Doing a quick view of the church’s website, I found that they put out a magazine called, ‘The Real Truth.’ Perhaps that’s what they want the domain for, but attempting to go about getting it in this manner likely goes against any moral or religious dogma of how they would wish one to act when one wants something.
http://realtruth.org/home.html