How curiosity saved me from a doomsday cult | Gabrielle Steele | TEDxAirlie

 

What if the opposite of certainty isn’t doubt, but curiosity? Gabrielle Steele reflects on her 21 years inside an apocalyptic cult and how unquestioned beliefs can quietly shape identity, morality, and belonging. Through her personal story and research, she shows how curiosity disrupts inherited certainty and becomes a pathway back to empathy, responsibility, and freedom. 

Gabrielle Steele grew up in a cult — and lived to laugh about it. Now a clinical trials project manager with a master’s in Exercise Physiology, she blends science and satire to explore how we form and fiercely defend our beliefs — in cults, politics, and corporate culture alike. 

Through humor, resilience, and sharp insight, Gabrielle challenges audiences to question their certainties and trade judgment for curiosity. When she’s not speaking or writing, she’s mentoring others, riding her bike, and raising two sons — approaching life, like a long ride, with endurance, humility, and a little mischief. 

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Thankful for the Truth Nobody Else Is Allowed to Understand

Armstrongism has always sold itself as the last unlocked room in the house of Christianity. Everyone else had the furniture. Only Herbert W. Armstrong, we were told, had the key. "The Truth" was not merely the gospel. It was a restored package: Sabbath from Friday sunset, annual holy days, meats, tithes, God as a Family, British-Israel identity, sequential church eras, and one visible organization still obedient enough to qualify as the Church Christ actually built.

That claim was exclusive by design. If God hid the meaning of Scripture from historic Christianity and then handed the decoder ring to one twentieth-century broadcaster, then gratitude becomes a membership perk. You thank God not only for Christ, but for being among the few who can see. Satan, conveniently, has blinded everyone else-Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, and, after 1986, every Church of God that did not follow your particular evangelist out the door.

Living Church of God still writes in that voice. Douglas Winnail's Sabbath reflection asks members whether they are thankful for truths "hidden from the world," including a real God guiding history, a purpose for life, and Christ's return to restore all things. Fine sentences, as far as they go. Then comes the Armstrongist turn: the capacity to understand the plan of God is a gift God is "only giving to a few at this time." The rest of the planet, apparently including two millennia of Christians who somehow managed to preach Christ without Ambassador College or the Worldwide Church of God, remains under a special blackout.

It is a moving piety, until you notice that Bob Thiel, David Pack, Gerald Flurry, and Gerald Weston can all read the same paragraph and assume it describes their flock. Each man inherited the same grammar. Each insists his group is the one still proclaiming what no other group quite proclaims. The binders are identical. Only the letterhead changes.

Herbert Armstrong taught that other churches were not simply wrong on the calendar. They were a counterfeit. God had restored lost truths through him. The true church would be identifiable by Sabbath, holy days, the name "Church of God," hierarchical government, and a message about the coming Kingdom. After his death, when the old Worldwide Church of God dropped most of that package, the system did what exclusive systems always do. It shattered, and every shard claimed to be the original vase.

Pack's Restored Church of God says Christ's body is not divided into fellowships; it is one organization in full doctrinal agreement, and his is the restoration of the pre-1986 work. Flurry's Philadelphia Church of God says the apostasy was prophesied, Malachi's Message identified it, and Philadelphia continues in Edmond. Thiel's Continuing Church of God says the Philadelphia remnant can be documented by restored truths, early church history, and prophetic credentials the other groups lack. Weston's Living Church of God says it practices original first-century Christianity, restored through Armstrong and Meredith, and that members should thank God not only for being called into the truth but for being preserved in it.

The sarcasm writes itself, except the people in the pews are not a joke. They tithe, rearrange family calendars around holy days, and are taught that leaving the right corporation is spiritually dangerous. Meanwhile, the leaders treat one another as Laodicean, compromised, or simply not the Work. If "the Truth" were as self-evident as advertised, it would not need four incompatible copyright pages.

The deeper issue is not that these men believe Jesus will return. Plenty of Christians believe that. The issue is that they will not let the New Covenant be what the New Testament says it is.

Armstrong taught that the New Covenant is largely still ahead-a marriage covenant to be finalized at Christ's return-and that Christians now live between covenants, still bound to selected Mosaic requirements. Sabbath, meats, and holy days remain identity markers. The old covenant is "amplified," not administered into obsolescence. That maneuver lets a church quote Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 while still policing belonging with Sinai's sign-laws.

Exodus 31 is blunt: the Sabbath is the sign of the covenant with Israel. Colossians 2 is equally blunt: festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths are a shadow; the substance belongs to Christ. Hebrews 8 is blunter still: in speaking of a new covenant, God has made the first obsolete. Armstrongism keeps the shadow in the display case and postpones the substance until the Millennium, when it will be safer to admit the new covenant has actually arrived.

So "the Truth" becomes a backward glance. Correct day. Correct diet. Correct feast. Correct era nickname from Revelation 2-3, as if Jesus mailed seven letters to first-century congregations so that a California radio ministry could later assign you a prophetic ZIP code. The future kingdom is preached with real urgency. The present church is managed like a museum of Leviticus.

They will say they do not teach salvation by works. Armstrong said eternal life is a gift. The successor groups repeat it. Functionally, though, assurance, identity, and often fellowship are tied to the package and the organization that claims to guard it. Grace gets you in the brochure. The calendar keeps you in the directory.

In Scripture, truth is not a secret curriculum restored in 1933.

Truth is a person. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Knowing the truth is knowing Christ, not passing an exam on whether America is Manasseh.

The New Covenant is not waiting in a file cabinet until the Second Coming. Jesus said the cup is the new covenant in his blood. Paul called himself a minister of a new covenant, of the Spirit rather than the letter. Hebrews says Christ is already mediator of a better covenant, and that the first is aging and ready to vanish. One may debate how Israel's national promises reach their public fullness. One may not, with a straight face, use that debate to keep the church under Sinai's worship schedule.

The law is not thrown in the street. It is written on hearts. That is not "a few insiders finally decoded the holy days." It is the Spirit forming people into the likeness of Christ. The moral will of God remains. The Mosaic covenant as the terms of belonging does not.

The church is not one corporation with a successor evangelist. There is one body, and it is made of those united to Christ by the Spirit-not those who survived the correct 1990s split. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 1 to rebuke "I am of Paul, I am of Apollos." Armstrongism cites the same chapter to congratulate a remnant for having information the rest of the household of faith missed.

And the gospel is public. When Paul said the god of this age blinds minds, he was talking about the gospel of the glory of Christ, not about people who celebrate the resurrection on Sunday or eat shrimp. The apostles preached in streets and synagogues. They did not require a proprietary restoration before anyone was allowed to understand.

Under the New Covenant, gratitude sounds different. You thank God that the veil is taken away in Christ. You do not thank him that your group finally obtained the decoder ring and that Satan has, for some reason, issued a communications blackout to every other pulpit on earth-including the three Armstrongist pulpits across town.

The tragedy of COGland is not that it takes the Bible seriously. It is that it takes Armstrong's restoration so seriously that Christ becomes the mascot of a remnant brand.

A faith that must keep insisting "no one else has ever understood this" is already nervous. A faith that then splits into hundreds of groups, each repeating the sentence, has confessed the problem out loud. If the truth were the person and work of Jesus, it would be large enough for the catholic church of all who belong to him. If the truth is a restored code plus the right human government, it will keep shrinking until it fits inside one man's office.

Winnail asked whether readers were thankful for the opportunity to understand truths hidden from the world. A better question: thankful to whom, and for what? If the gift is Christ, the Spirit, and sins remembered no more, then the thanksgiving is Christian. If the gift is exclusive sight, withheld from the rest of the body and located in one lineage of evangelists who cannot agree which lineage is real, then the thanksgiving is just the old boast in a Sabbath suit.

The New Covenant does not need a replica Armstrong. It already has a Head. He does not require four competing press secretaries to protect him from the rest of Christianity. The substance belongs to Christ. The shadows were never the prize. And a truth that can only survive by declaring everyone else blind is not the truth that sets people free. It is a flashlight fight in broad daylight.

Are You Thankful for the Truth?

The Sabbath is a good time to thank God for giving us an understanding of His truth—that there is a real God who is guiding the course of history (Job 12:23; Daniel 2:21; 4:17), that there is a real purpose for life (1 John 3:1–3), and that Jesus Christ is going to return to bring peace and justice to the world and restore all things (Isaiah 9:6–7; Acts 3:19–21). We are told that the saints will reign with Christ and fill the earth with a knowledge of God’s ways (Daniel 7:27; Isaiah 11:9). The capacity to understand the truth about the plan of God is a gift that God is only giving to a few at this time (1 Corinthians 1:26). The Bible reveals that Satan has blinded the rest of the world to these important and wonderful truths (2 Corinthians 4:3–4). Are you thankful for the opportunity to understand these truths that have been hidden from the world? —Douglas S. Winnail

The Ministry Vacated So Christ Had To Ordain Me

 

There is a special kind of confidence that only exists in the Armstrongist remnant universe. It is the confidence that allows a man in Keosauqua, Iowa, to look at the wreckage of the old Worldwide Church of God, notice that almost every ordained minister either changed doctrines, started their own group, retired, or died, and conclude: "Well, that leaves me. Christ had no choice."

Samuel Kitchen has made the claim with remarkable clarity. The ministry vacated their posts. Therefore Jesus Christ was compelled to ordain a man still inside "the church." Either Kitchen is a false minister, he writes, or he has been ordained by Jesus Christ. There is no third option. The logic is airtight if you already accept the premise that the entire visible ministry of a denomination that once numbered over 100,000 members simply walked off the job and left the Son of God holding an empty clipboard. 

That is the entire argument, dressed up in a thick coat of King James verses. Herbert W. Armstrong was ordained by Christ. The Worldwide Church of God is "the vine." Everyone who left is scattering, planting tares, and will be uprooted. When the hired help disappears, the Owner of the vineyard is forced to tap whoever is still standing in the building. In this case, that person happens to be a third-generation member who runs websites, writes AI-assisted hymns, collects tithes under a letter of authorization from a Philippine elder who later moved on, and explains that the authorization remains valid because Jesus is still Head of the Church. 

It is an elegant solution to a staffing problem. No messy laying-on-of-hands by existing evangelists. No need for the kind of public recognition Armstrong himself insisted upon. Just a quiet, private promotion issued after everyone else "vacated." The verses about false prophets, blind guides, and plants the Father did not plant are then aimed, with impressive precision, at everyone except the man now claiming the office.

The same texts that warn "leave them alone" are offered as both shield and sword. Hosea's "let him alone," Christ's warning about blind leaders of the blind, and the fruit-inspection passage in Matthew 7 are all pressed into service. The implication is straightforward: anyone who questions the new arrangement is the one who should be left alone. Those not "with the vine" will find themselves barred from the Kingdom. It is a tidy theological circle.

Forty years after Armstrong's death, the old organization is gone. Grace Communion International kept the legal shell and dropped the distinctive doctrines. Dozens of splinter groups claim to be the faithful remnant. Into that crowded field walks a man who argues that the vacancy itself constitutes the call. The ministry left; therefore Christ ordained the remaining occupant. The claim is not that Kitchen sought the office. The claim is that heaven ran out of options.

One can almost picture the scene in the heavenly HR department: the last qualified candidates have all taken other positions or started competing franchises. The position cannot stay vacant. A third-generation member in rural Iowa is still showing up, still posting sermons from the 1970s and 1980s, still insisting the corporation may have died but the spiritual organism did not. Fine. Stamp the papers. Forced ordination it is.

Whether this produces good fruit or simply another small website asking for tithes to "restore the storehouse" is, of course, the test the same scriptures Kitchen quotes actually recommend. In the meantime, the rest of the former Worldwide Church of God diaspora can be forgiven for treating the announcement the way most people treat a coworker who declares himself CEO after everyone else quit: with a mixture of pity, amusement, and the quiet decision to not join forces with him. Exactly as the verses suggest.

Armstrongism's Favorite Control Issue Just Got Smaller: Crackpot Bob and the Case of the Missing Covenant Skin

 

Crackpot Bob, self-appointed prophet of the Continuing Church of Prophetic Recycling, and pretend professional commenter on everything from European beasts to wearables as 666-adjacent, has decided the great moral crisis of the hour is whether Europeans should be allowed to look sideways at ritual circumcision. Belgium investigates a handful of unlicensed mohels; Jewish groups (quite reasonably) defend a core religious practice; EU officials scramble to say they are not trying to ban Jewish life. And Crackpot Bob, who is neither Jewish, Belgian, nor a pediatric urologist, inserts himself like a man who just discovered a new lever for other people's bodies.

This is classic Armstrongite muscle memory. Herbert Armstrong's heirs spent decades turning optional, cultural, or ceremonial items into identity tests. Sabbath? Fine, that's actually in the New Testament conversation. Holy days? Debatable. Then came British Israelism charts, makeup bans, three tithes, and the quiet pressure to treat every Old Testament physical sign as if Jesus merely paused it instead of fulfilling it. Circumcision is the latest exhibit: officially "not required," unofficially "you're unloving and deceived if you don't."

The New Covenant is not subtle about this

Acts 15 is the Jerusalem Council's memo to the Gentile churches: no circumcision requirement. The issue was not "wait until the baby is eight days old." It was whether belonging to Christ required the Abrahamic flesh-sign. The answer was no.

Paul is even blunter:

• Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. (1 Corinthians 7:19)"
• For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation." (Galatians 6:15)"
• If you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing." (Galatians 5:2) 

Romans 2:28-29 and Colossians 2:11 relocate the sign inward: circumcision of the heart, made without hands. That is the New Covenant version. The physical rite was a covenant marker for Abraham's physical descendants and for those entering that national covenant. It was never presented as a universal health ordinance that Gentile Christians must impose on infants to prove they love them.

Paul had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3) for missional reasons among Jews, not because the Council got it wrong. That is the opposite of turning it into a standing pastoral recommendation wrapped in CDC citations.

Early Jewish believers in Jerusalem kept many Jewish customs. Of course they did. They were Jews. That does not convert a fulfilled covenant sign into a Christian parental duty. Justin Martyr and later Gentile churches dropped it for a reason. Pretending "the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were circumcised, therefore you should snip your son" is like arguing that because Peter kept kosher until the sheet vision, every COG kitchen must still avoid shrimp."

Not required, but..." is how control works

Thiel's own writing admits Gentiles need not be circumcised to be Christians. Then the paragraph immediately pivots: parents who skip it are unloving; opponents are "evil men and impostors... deceiving and being deceived"; science and Moses both demand it; infants should not get to decide later. That is not "optional." That is a guilt sandwich with extra prophecy.

Health organizations do not speak with one voice the way Thiel pretends. WHO and CDC have supported voluntary medical male circumcision in high-HIV adult populations in parts of Africa-an entirely different context from routine neonatal cutting in low-HIV Western countries. Many European pediatric bodies do not recommend routine infant circumcision. U.S. rates have been falling for years. Benefits exist in some analyses (UTI reduction in infancy, some STI associations); so do costs, complications, loss of tissue, and the ethical question of permanently altering a non-consenting minor for non-therapeutic reasons. Adults can choose. Infants cannot.

Jews and Muslims have a religious claim that is their business and their covenant. Christians in the New Covenant do not inherit that claim as a command. Some families will still choose it for culture, family resemblance, or personal medical judgment. Fine. That is liberty. What is not fine is a tiny Church of God fiefdom treating foreskin policy as another loyalty test, another way to mark who is "in" and who is worldly, deceived, or insufficiently faithful to "the fathers."

Armstrongism has always been hungry for distinctive physical markers. When the big distinctive (you are the one true remnant, the rest of Christianity is deceived) starts to look thin, the smaller ones get louder. Diet. Calendar. And now, apparently, whether your son's anatomy matches a Bronze Age covenant sign that Paul said no longer avails anything.

If Bob wants to argue medical statistics, he can do it without 2 Timothy 3:13. If he wants to defend Jewish religious liberty in Belgium, he can do it without implying that Gentile Christian parents who leave their sons intact are failing Deuteronomy. The hissy fit is not really about Europe. It is about a movement that cannot stop managing other people's bodies and calling it love.

Saxony-Anhalt Votes, America Prepares for Servitude: The COG WWIII Prophecy Industrial Complex Never Sleeps

  

Congratulations, America. A political party just won a state election in Saxony-Anhalt, a place most Americans could not find on a map if you handed them the map, a highlighter, and a three-hour head start. According to the latest dispatch from the Continuing Church of Prophetic Recycling, this means Ulrich Siegmund and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg are about to shake hands with Moscow, reorganize Europe into the ten-horned monster from Revelation 17, betray the United States, invade the homeland, execute the inconvenient, and ship the remaining millennials to Europe to polish the Baron's riding boots.  

This is not analysis. This is the same movie Armstrongism has been screening since the 1950s, only the actors keep getting recast. First it was Adenauer. Then Strauss. Then Kohl. Then Merkel was secretly paving the way. Now it's a guy who won 43.8 percent in one eastern Landtag and a former defense minister who once called Donald Trump a blonde lunatic and later a clown. 

Crackpot Bob's script never changes: Germany stirs, the Beast awakens, America is toast, and the faithful should really consider the literature table on the way out.  The fear tactic is beautifully efficient. Take a real, messy, democratic event - voters in a poorer eastern state punishing the governing parties over migration, energy prices, and general exhaustion - and immediately inflate it into the opening credits of World War III plus the Book of Revelation director's cut.

Any German politician who is not a perfect Atlanticist liberal instantly becomes "a 21st-century Hitler." Any suggestion that Europe might want its own defense policy becomes "the deal with the King of the North." A talk-show appearance about whether the church should be political becomes "positioning himself for the final reorganization."  

Notice the flexibility. If the AfD governs, that's the Beast rising. If the AfD is frozen out, that's the Beast being restrained until the appointed hour. If Guttenberg criticizes the firewall, he's building a coalition of ten kings. If he stays on the sidelines, he's the little horn waiting for his moment with only a small number of supporters (Daniel 11:23, naturally). There is no possible outcome that does not confirm the prophecy. That is not watchfulness. That is a closed interpretive system that treats current events as set dressing for a story written decades ago. 

The enslavement-and-invasion climax is the tell. No serious reading of German or European politics in 2026 points to panzers rolling through Ohio so that young Americans can become household staff in Franconia. What it does point to is a religious subculture that has spent seventy years needing a German villain the way some people need a weather forecast. The AfD's actual problems - its fringe, its slogans, its coalition math - are far less interesting than the eschatological fan fiction they can be forced into.  Europe will keep changing. Germany will keep arguing with itself. Voters will keep surprising pollsters. None of that requires a two-headed Beast, a secret Vatican-Moscow-Berlin pact, or a sudden American body count. It just requires people to stop treating every regional election as the first trumpet.  

Armstrongism's Longest Running Ministry To Its Members: You Are Too Stupid To Know How To Dress Appropriately, So Let Us Tell You

 

Living Church of God is once again telling grown adults what to wear to church and what kind of swimsuit will not scandalize the Millennium. Coats, collared shirts, ties, and nice slacks for men. For women: no form-fitting clothes, no high hemlines, no cleavage, no bare shoulders, no backless dresses, no crop-tops. At the pool or beach: cover the midsection, ladies. Men: no Speedos unless a European pool forces the issue. After all, you are future kings and priests. You must discern between what is appropriate and what is not.

Just not, apparently, without a memo. 

This is not a new burst of pastoral concern. It is a seasonal ritual. LCG has been issuing nearly the same Feast fashion briefing for years - 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and now again - as if the flock keeps forgetting how fabric works between Atonement and Opening Night. 

Armstrongism did not invent modest dress. It did invent the idea that converted adults cannot be trusted to figure it out.

Herbert W. Armstrong did not merely prefer a jacket. In May 1979 he asked, in print, whether some members might be kept out of the Kingdom of God because they showed up in jeans, overalls, or tennis shoes. "THIS IS SERIOUS!" he wrote. Church was coming into the very presence of God. He had pressed his own suit on an ironing board when he owned one pair of shoes with holes in the soles. The rest of you could at least try. 

The system that followed treated clothing as a sacrament of submission. Women were not to wear pants except for sports. Skirts had to reach the knee. Hair had to cover the nape of the neck. Makeup was banned, then allowed, then banned again because Satan had supposedly used lipstick to knock the church off track. It's always the women at fault, not the narcissistic toupee-wearing ministers. Men were not to let sideburns drop below mid-ear or comb hair over the forehead. Toupees were out unless you were a minister or evangelist. If a poor new member arrived without a tie, one could be issued at the door - salvation by accessory. Ministers counseled members on cars, jobs, mates, and, in some eras, what was permitted in the marriage bed. Clothing was simply the most visible leash. 

The makeup saga remains the masterpiece. In 1955 the church "ruled." In 1974 the rule loosened. In 1981 Armstrong announced that Satan had used cosmetics to derail the work, and women were to wash their faces. Headquarters church reportedly complied the very next Sabbath. Some women later admitted they took it off for services and put it back on for the world - a small, human act of sanity that was treated as double-mindedness. The Bride of Christ, Armstrong warned, would not rise to meet Jesus with painted faces. The returning Christ, one gathers, has strong opinions about Maybelline. 

None of this was ever just about taste. It was about who gets to decide that you are serious. "God looks on the heart" is always the continuing mantra. Then comes the verse about hemlines. The proof-texts do honest work in other contexts - 1 Timothy 2, Matthew 22's wedding garment, "come out from among them." In Armstrongist hands, they become a standing implication: left alone, you will dress like the world, offend your neighbor, and possibly forfeit a throne. The ministry will discern for you. You will be grateful.

The swimwear paragraph is the tell. Adults who have tithed, kept the Sabbath, avoided shrimp, and scheduled vacation around Leviticus 23 are still assumed unable to distinguish a swimsuit from a statement. Love God. Love neighbor. Therefore, no Speedo, unless France insists. Cover the midsection. As future kings and priests, you must learn to tell holy from profane - starting with the difference between a tankini and a bikini, as defined this year in Charlotte.

There is a word for a religion that produces people it will not let pick their own clothes. It is not "discipleship." It is childcare with extra tithes.

The tragedy is not that someone prefers a tie on the High Days. Plenty of people dress up for things they consider sacred. The tragedy is the unblinking assumption, decade after decade, splinter after splinter, that the members are the last people on earth who can be trusted with a mirror. Herbert pressed his suit. His successors press the same point: you are almost royalty. You are almost priests. You are almost ready to judge the world.

Just not the swimwear aisle.

Not without help.

------------------------

Appropriate Dress for Feast Services
While God looks on the heart, dress and outward decorum are also important (Matthew 22:8-14), and it's good to review basic principles for attire at Feast services. For men in most Western countries, coats, collared shirts, ties, and nice slacks are considered appropriate on special occasions. This may vary somewhat in tropical climates. For ladies, 1 Timothy 2:9-10 explains that dress should be "modest apparel, with propriety and moderation." Form-fitting clothing, high hemlines, necklines showing cleavage, bare shoulders, backless dresses, crop-tops, and the like are not appropriate for Church services. Our challenge as disciples of Jesus Christ is to be separate from this world and be lights to it (2 Corinthians 6:17; Matthew 5:14-16). This is especially true as we gather to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles together, multiplying our examples and reflecting the Church as a group.

What About the Pool or Beach?
Swimwear at the Feast of Tabernacles should be modest and in good taste. We are to be guided by the two great commandments-to love God and love our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39)-so as not to offend God or our neighbor in our attire at the Feast. Accordingly, ladies' swimwear at the Feast should be modest and cover the midsection, and men should not wear Speedo-type suits unless pool facility rules specifically require them, as is the case in some European countries. As future kings and priests, we have a responsibility to discern between what is appropriate and what is not-and to live accordingly (Ezekiel 22:26).

When A Church of God Leader Discovers Restraint—Right After Decades of the Opposite

The Living Church of God has never met a late-summer earthquake, fire, flood, or terrorist anniversary it couldn't convert into proof that Satan is personally offended by the Feast of Trumpets and the Feast of Tabernacles. For decades the formula has been reliable: scan the news as Tishri approaches, find something awful, declare it a spiritual assault designed to "deflect" attention from God's master plan, then collect the offerings while the brethren sit in a pleasant state of dread. Bigger body count, better sermon. The bigger the tragedy, the more it gets milked for "end-time events." Armstrongism has always loved this particular flavor of weather-as-theology.

That is why Gerald Weston's latest paragraph lands with such comic timing. After years of the same organization treating every cluster of misfortune as Satan's festival-season sabotage, Weston now writes:

The Feast of Trumpets is almost here. Interestingly, the Holy Day begins on the evening of September 11 this year-the 25th anniversary of those infamous terrorist attacks that took place on United States soil. I mention this because the Holy Days have often seen unusual events occur, though we should be careful not to make too much of what may be only an interesting coincidence. What is certain is that Trumpets will be followed in short order by Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day. Spectacular events will take place when each of these days become reality, and that is not idle speculation. May God speed those days!

Ah. Caution. Suddenly. After the church spent decades doing exactly the thing he now advises against.

It is almost as if someone noticed that living in a permanent state of "the end is this Feast cycle" has side effects. One of those side effects sat in a Living Church of God congregation in 2005. Terry Ratzmann had been listening to Roderick Meredith's trademark sermons about death, destruction, and how little time remained. The man lost all hope. Then he opened fire. Eight people died, including the shooter. The organization treated it as an isolated tragedy rather than an indictment of a preaching style that treats despair as a spiritual discipline.

Fear is useful. Fear keeps people watching the telecast, sending in the co-worker letter checks, and staying inside the one true remnant that alone understands why the latest hurricane is actually about Tabernacles. A congregation that is slightly terrified tithes more reliably than a congregation that is merely informed. Weston knows this history; he inherited it. The "we should be careful not to make too much of it" line is therefore not a sudden conversion to epistemic humility. It is a limited-time disclaimer issued while still reminding everyone that spectacular events will occur when these days become reality-and that is definitely not idle speculation.

So the machine continues, just with a new warning label. Satan is still the convenient author of whatever happens in September. The Holy Days are still the interpretive key that turns random suffering into prophetic confirmation. The only change is that the Presiding Evangelist has added a sentence that lets him claim he never really meant the previous forty years of "I told you so."

The Feast of Trumpets begins the evening of September 11, 2026. Something terrible will almost certainly happen somewhere in the world that week, because something terrible happens somewhere every week. When it does, watch how quickly the caution evaporates and the old script returns. The coincidence will once again become evidence. The evidence will once again become urgency. And the urgency will once again be good for the budget.

May God speed those days, indeed. The overhead isn't going to pay itself.