RE: [elijahforum] GTA on YouTube
While I would agree a lot of people heard GTA as 1st contact, it was the writings of HWA that convincted them.
I cannot agree that "others had a vested interest in keeping them apart". From 1980 to 86, I answered the phone when Ted called, and I would ALWAYS tell HWA that Ted was calling, and he always called the home, not the office. Always his statement was (and GTA heard it as I held the phone up and would ask if he heard his father.) "He knows what he has to do". All GTA had to do was write a simple letter to his father so he would know it would not be a shouting match if he did talk to him, and GTA would not do that. It served GTA's purpose better to say he was being kept away by others. After every call was an interview within a day or two where GTA would say "I was cut off from speaking to my father", or "I tried yesterday to call and my father won't speak to me." It was frustrating for me cause I would ask why don't you write the letter.
Stan Rader would have had an interest in keeping them apart, but that doesn't explain 1980 to his death in 1986 when Stan was gone. (Actually SRR had an interest in keeping HWA away from Pasadena in the 70's, not just away from GTA. But GTA had an interest in keeping HWA away from Pasadena as well - because the college was falling apart.) GTA used the estrangement for PR with the press, and with his church. (When meeting with CGI - they told me they were in the room when GTA made the calls, and only would say "See, cut off again". They were never told what HWA or I said, or that GTA had actually heard his father's voice.
I talked to GTA at HWA's funeral, and he admitted that I had never cut him off. I had always liked GTA since I knew him from the time I was 4 years old. I even flew with him when his father had the heart attack and GTA used the G-II. I bear no ill toward him, but that part of the statement below is inaccurate.
Aaron
9 comments:
I'm curious. What was to be the content of that letter? My money is on an act of submission with some concessions thrown in for good measure.
There were letters that passed between HWA and GTA earlier so why the big deal over a "simple" letter?
A sociopath with an agenda. What a shock.
thanks for sharing that Aaron. You were there. It was all such a sad case of ego and too much success in appealing to the fears and hopes in sincere people.
I still don't personally believe it was calculated or deliberate on at least GTA's part. You just get caught up in it all. At least I was not there enough to know what was really the motivations if they were anything more than foolish ego gone awry in the name of religious belief.
I'm also known to be naive and somewhat of an idealist so I might miss the obvious.
M.T. Folder
I don't personally believe that Mr. Dean is to be entirely trusted, based on certain events in the WCG and the UCG.
I don't believe there is anything to be gained anymore by not recalling things as they seemed to be.
M.T. Motives
Well, Aaron's statements seem to presume that HWA was right and good, and GTA was wrong or bad. And, it was never that simple. Both were deeply flawed men, and very poor spiritual guides.
BB
I could never understand the references to the Dean brothers in the Ambassador Report.
My experiences run to when I still attended UCG.
The fact that the entire venue of Armstrongism is rife with obvious provable lies, sort of makes discussion of the viability of the leaders and administrators a rather moot point.
"Both were deeply flawed men..."
It may be irrational thinking, but I don't know if I will ever come to believe that HWA started out as a con man. I just don't believe it. I don't believe he was a con man in the end, either. I think that he believed every thing he taught, and justified his evil in the context of his role in his theology.
Of course I define "con man" as someone who deliberately sets out to defraud people. Like a person who says to himself, "I am going to pretend to be a faith healer so I get rich."
I don't think HWA set out that way at all. He was a True Believer. Yes, he was vain, megalomaniacal, autocratic, and would plagiarize and lie in the name of the Lord, but I can't see someone going to all that trouble, all those years, in order to fleece the flock. You don't have to construct an entire brand of theology in order to make money. Look at the televangelists of the last few decades. The Elmer Gantrys. Etc.
Paul Ray
The fact that he felt he had to reply to that in a mode of self protection is revealing all on its own.
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