One of the biggest myths of Armstrongism is the one that Herbert W was resurrected from the dead in Tucson Arizona in 1977. The widespread preaching of this, the church's greatest lie, still is being spread today as gospel truth. Gerald Waterhouse helped perpetuate that lie, among many others.
I remember seeing people in tears when it was announced from the auditorium stage that Herbert had been resurrected. For half the people it was tears of joy, for the rest, it helped usher in years of tyranny from Meredith and other hardliners.
The snot nosed college students who were bucking for ministerial positions printed up huge get well cards thanking HWA for coming back to put the church "back on track."
Today, E. W King is stating that the Worldwide Church of God has also been resurrected just like HWA was. The resurrection of the Worldwide Church of God happened precisely on October 7, 2011. Not only was it resurrected like HWA, it still has HWA in control! Herbert W Armstrong is still sitting in that seat keeping it warm!
I believe that there is an important message behind the 1977 “resurrection” of the Apostle! It kinda pointed ahead to when he finally did “fall asleep in Christ”. He died in 1986. In Zechariah 4:9 we read: “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.” Here is what you need to understand! Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong told the true “Worldwide Church of God” that he [Mr. Armstrong] fulfilled this Zerubbabel office. His short death experience in 1977 showed that even after a brief experience with death he was to continue the work. This tells me that after his life truly ended in 1986 his writings and his work as an apostle are to continue!After Mr. Armstrong's death in 1986 many were left not knowing where to go. Those who left during this time were confused. Many joined false offshoot groups in haste. Those who waited patiently truly understood that nobody could destroy God's true Church! They stuck with the title: “The Worldwide Church of God”! Today God is calling those who left back into His one Philadelphian era church that was guided by the ONE AND ONLY, MR. HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG! He fulfilled the Zerubbabel mission and “his hands shall finish it!” [Zechariah 4:9]Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong's death experience in 1977 represents the time of confusion between the time of his actual death in January 16,1986 up until October 7,2011. God wants us all to learn an object lesson from this portion of the apostles life that has to do with where we are at today. Just as when Mr. Armstrong experienced a short time of death then arose to continue the work...so the Worldwide Church of God experienced a short time of “death” before it, on October 7,2011, was resurrected. Mr. Armstrong is still in the seat! The Worldwide Church of God is still here in the ministry of “Church of God ~ Speaking to the Remnant”.
Since Grace Communion International still owns the legal right to the name I wounder how King thinks he can name his little cult the Worldwide Church of God? Here's how:
Unfortunately this title [The Worldwide Church of God] cannot be used in regards to a legal organization because it is still owned by the apostates. This does not prevent free Christians from using it as a title for what they truly believe.
How many of you bought into the lie that HWA had been resurrected? How many still believe it?
30 comments:
October 7, 2011 corresponds with the time King concocted this little game. For a resurrected church, it appears no different than when it was dead.
I was a little kid during those years. I do remember hearing that sort of thing, which even at that age, I didn't put a lot of stock in it. During that same period my grandfather's bouts with the bottle led him to be "resurrected" several times on the operating table as well. So that might have devalued my interpretation about what it meant to be "resurrected" in a hospital, regardless of what other people might have been intending to claim. I remember thinking that sort of thing happens every day. And so it does.
This is nothing but a concocted recipe of the mind to somehow keep alive the legacy of the Old Worldwide Church of God, and the old way it used to be intact. And that's all it is.
Some of the old school Armstrongite leaders simply cannot accept the reality of what has happened within the church over the past 27 years. It's way too much to handle and even harder to resolve mentally. I mean, we're talking about the Worldwide Church of God here, the One True Church, the tremendous growth, the whole church in unity all singing the same hymns at once at the gigantic and powerful world's largest yearly annual convention - and that's all GONE.
That can't be REAL, im sure they think! And those who cannot ACCEPT the fact that the old empire is really, and truly GONE, they will go at GREAT lengths to keep it alive - and even keep HWA alive - to somehow hold on to what once was. This king fellow, in my opinion, is living in the past and trying to make it the future. He just cannot envision life without the church, HWA, and the name "The Worldwide Church of God". I truly believe it would be too much to admit that the church is gone, HWA is gone, the old way it was is gone, and all his attempts to "bring it ALL back", JUST LIKE Thiel's apparent attempt that seems to resurrect the old format and "philadelphia" era COG.
It's GONE. The Ambassador College is GONE. The Campus is now being used for TV commercials, reality shows, and a private high school. HWA is dead. The WCG is now evangelical. There are remnants of COG, but absolutely NONE of them like the old empire, and none will ever be. This is reality. This is the way it is. And all this "HWA" is in charge" and the "WCG IS ALIVE" stuff does nothing to change that. It's sad,sad,sad people have to live in a fantasy reality then accept what has happened and live in a world they never thought would exist - no empire, no HWA, no big feasts. THATS OVER.
This post ended with two questions: "...How many of you bought into the lie that HWA had been resurrected? How many still believe it?..."
Answer: I don't know, but it all sounds so stupid.
If/when Mr. Armstrong thought/said that he fulfilled Zechariah 4:9, well, that was like "junk food:" might sound nice, but it was not nourishing at all.
People have speculated a lot about the identity of Zerubbabel, but it's a reference to Jesus Christ, whose hands did start something relative to the foundation of this house (God's Church) and they will finish it.
Context in Zechariah seems to indicate that Zerubbabel/Joshua were foretelling the coming of Christ/Peter, respectively, hundreds of years in advance, but time will tell...
...and I'm no prophet.
John
"When God resurrected Mr. Urmstrong...." was always one of my "oh brother, give it a break," moments when GW came bore the church to death for 4 hours.
I always took it as a metaphor of some demented kind but in reality meant, "we got him back and he's not dead yet."
In hindsite I realize how many boundries and walls I had between my own upbringing and WCG's sometimes who cares ideas. It explains being told by an Evangelist type, "I never thought you belonged in the ministry." lol
I got a good laugh in '72 when Jesus second coming now delayed or whatever'72 was all about was replaced by the miracle of getting adds in Readers Digest. Wow....what an overarching and amazing fulfilment of prophecy! lol
argh...
Don't send tithes and offerings to these people; send them Thorazine and Haldol instead. They need psychotropic medication more than dollars.
John said:
"People have speculated a lot about the identity of Zerubbabel, but it's a reference to Jesus Christ,"
It is not. No Hebrew had any Jesus of the future in mind. They may have hoped for a new King or the Hebrew Messiah, but no Jesus is foretold in all this. It is wishful thinking and speculation on your part as well.
"Context in Zechariah seems to indicate that Zerubbabel/Joshua were foretelling the coming of Christ/Peter, respectively, hundreds of years in advance, but time will tell..."
No it doesn't.
"time will tell" = If I am wrong I am off the hook. Typical of a Bob Thiel view that if a prophet's prophecy does not come to pass, he is not a failed prophet but rather it MEANS it is not yet time.
IMHO
In the New Testament, "according to the Scripture" means "according to the Old Testament."
If you do your homework, you'll find that NT writers cobbled the Jesus story (Matthew the most notorious to do this,) NOT from KNOWING what happened or how Jesus came to be or even what he said and did, but from searching the Old Testament for stories that could tell the story of Jesus that no one really knew. (Birth circumstances, death etc) Pharoah kills all the children to get to Moses. Herod kills all the children to get to Jesus. It never happened but it is how Jesus is gotten from one place to another that other OT scriptures speak of and can be used in the story with proper transitions.
It is called Midrash.
Matthew's 21:1-7 mistaken understanding of Zach 9:9 and corrected by Luke and John shows his story was just an OT update and he did not see this happen in reality. He incorporated his mistaken view of the OT scripture into a ridiculous story which others corrected when they spotted it.
Great stuff but not from eyewitnesses and not history but Midrash.
Any stories or speculations in the NT speculating on and using OT stories of Zerubbabel are similar. Writers are trying to explain the present by looking back into the past and telling a story "according to the scriptures," which is not the same as actually knowing anyting about it.
It is why non prophecies of the OT look like fullfilments in the NT. The NT writer wrote the story according to the OT story which is why the appear to match.
Hard to admit I know but that's how humans do it and how first it was done.
and...like it or not...
NT writers used Psalm 22 to tell Jesus Crucifixion story which is why Psalm 22 "seems" to predict Jesus words etc on the cross. Psalm 22 had nothing to do with Jesus but everything to do with the writers of Jesus needing to write a story that they neither knew in fact or were witnesses of.
and now amen...off to do Oncology massage at the Infusion Center for those challenged by cancer .
Probably the only folk I'll rub the right way today... lol
Anonymous said: "Some of the old school Armstrongite leaders simply cannot accept the reality of what has happened within the church over the past 27 years. It's way too much to handle and even harder to resolve mentally."
I agree. True believers like E.W. King, Bob Thiel and the many thousands of others provide a classic example of cognitive dissonance at it's deadly worst. It's all about the will to believe. People WANT to believe HWA's wacky worldview so badly, want it to actually be true, such that they are willing to go to deceptive and embarrassing lengths in order to "prove" it still is, in spite of all the mounting evidence to the contrary. It also shows how the human mind can and often does live in a totally delusional fantasy world completely at odds with actual reality when the "will to believe" is strong and persistent enough.
The simple antidote to those who still suffer from this malady? Just humbly acknowledge bad judgment on your part for having once bought into all the incoherent, inconsistent, nonsensical things HWA ardently sold as "the Truth" - that the collection of ancient books called the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God, that their exists a supernatural realm of gods, angels and demons, the totally bogus conspiratorial view of history, the claim that HWA was "God's Apostle" and that you'd better believe it or suffer the consequences, the extremely vague concept that church eras exist, and all the many other ridiculous facets of such a toxic and deadly belief system.
Just consider all the tragedy and suffering this lunacy has lead to, and where its gotten those who won't admit they were mistaken for accepting it in the first place.
Folks truly need to face reality and move on as best they can. Persisting in this delusion will only produce ever-increasing amounts of craziness, further detachment from reality and more intense pain and suffering. Just look at what it's done to the minds of HWA-worshippers like Weinland, Pack, Thiel, Flurry, King and their gullible followers. What a tragic waste of humanity and resources.
I realize there are those who will simply refuse to admit their errors, and willfully persist down the road to personal destruction no matter what. Well, that's their choice. But I can't help but think that there is hope for the many others who've been lured in one way or another to currently be on this crazy path to disappointment and destruction.
This is the reason that we, over at the Painful Truth wrote, News Flash: Herbert Armstrong is Dead!
The message just isn't getting through.
Yes, I've encountered this concept before. The idea that HWA is still fulfilling his commission via his followers. Some years ago I talked to a member who believed HWA was the Elijah to come and yet couldn't quite make sense of his death way back in 1986. His corny solution to this problem was essentially to talk himself into the belief that though HWA is dead, his literature and TV broadcasts are still available on the Internet, and therefore still witness to a new generation. In some strange way, this explanation helped this guy hold onto his fervent belief that HWA was who he claimed to have been, in spite of his death so many years ago now. Oh brother. The lengths believers will go to in order to keep their obviously failed faith alive rather than face obvious facts.
Douglas wrote: "The message just isn't getting through."
Yeah, it's astonishing how resistant the human mind can be to factual reality, when such reality stands in sharp contrast to long-accepted delusions, cherished beliefs and wishful thinking. I've always been interested in this phenomenon. And yet it scares me because I AM a human, and have a mind that's capable of the same thing. For instance, I bought into the tenants of Armstrongism for many years, and was as genuinely sincere in my adherence to it as the day is long. But at the end of that day, I was proved wrong for having done so. Leads to some very profound metaphysical questions, doesn't it?
And the world is filled to the gills with countless gurus and experts willing to tell us what we want to believe as long as such beliefs prove warm and fuzzy enough to emotionally comfort us. I've come to see this essentially sums up the history of religion.
I'm currently reading a really interesting book called PREMATURE FACTULATION by Philip D. Hansten. Using insightful quotes from 16th century thinker Michel Montaigne it documents the many ways we human beings fall into various traps and illusions in our thinking. The author defines premature factulation as "the process of coming to conclusions without adequate study or contemplation, usually applied to complex concepts and situations."
I've found it to be helpful in coming to grips with my own personal experience with COGism which began when I was a teenager, as well as understanding the forces driving the unending lunacy of latter day HWA wannbes which this website documents so well. And yet this just represents a tiny sliver of the entire religious history of mankind.
I think all this to be worthy of serious study and thought, as it strikes at the very foundation of the human experience.
When E.W. King begins his analysis with "I believe..." at least he's being honest about the source of his convoluted and zany explanation.
As I've often tried to point out in my various comments on this website, there is a vital distinction between belief and knowledge that most of us fail to perceive. In ordinary everyday language, most of us use these two words as if they were interchangeable synonyms, but they aren't.
The famous author Daniel Boorstin once noted that "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."
Belief, especially when dealing with religious belief, is indeed very often the "illusion of knowledge." And when we carelessly mistake ardent belief for demonstrable knowledge based upon solid evidence, this begins our journey down the path to delusion. We do well to beware of the journey of faith (i.e., holding beliefs for which there is no real evidence), for though it may temporarily comfort us, it eventually will disappoint and hurt us greatly.
Just look where it's lead for folks like E.W. King - a near-total disconnect from reality.
There is currently a woman in a small COG group who has been claiming her 9-year-old son is one of the Two Witnesses. The dangerous side effects of HWA's teachings never seem to end.
Did I buy into the lie of HWA's supposed "resurrection" - yes, I'm ashamed to say I did at the time, although to be perfectly frank, I never really gave it much serious thought until Gerald Waterhouse began his infamous spin-doctoring of the occurrence.
It was only later that I learned that numerous people have had the medical experience of their heart temporarily stopping before having it resuscitated back to beating again, typically by paramedics or the like. HWA's experience was just this, especially given his age, and not all that unusual in the normal world. But within the COG universe, in standard HWA fashion, the event was spun into a dramatic "resurrection" to be used to keep the flock awed and obedient.
So thus which such faulty reasoning we have ground to claim that there are many "resurrections" that occur within the human race, right?
HWA's "coming back from the dead" in 1977 was yet another manifestation of his extreme narcissism and his followers desire to verify their misplaced faith in him as an apostle. It's what religions are made of, namely now well-documented human experiences magnified out of all proportion by ignorance can easily turn into claims of the miracle of divine intervention.
It's happened many times before in history, and will continue to bamboozle those who love to be bamboozled!
Apparently, for decades it was believed that the human heart can stop for up to 16 minutes before death occurs. But I found this on the Internet:
"A ground-breaking study by researchers at the School of Medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans published in the August 2008 issue of Resuscitation has major implications for the #1 cause of death of Americans -- sudden cardiac arrest. The researchers stopped the heart of laboratory swine kept at room temperature, declared them dead from cardiac arrest, waited 25 minutes, and then resuscitated them with high doses of oxygen using hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The American Heart Association statistics on sudden death have shown that if a patient's heart is not restarted within 16 minutes with CPR, medications, and electric shocks, 100% of patients die. "To resuscitate any living organism after 25 minutes of heart stoppage at room temperature has never been reported and suggests that the time to successful resuscitation in humans may be extended beyond the stubborn figure of 16 minutes that has stood for 50 years," notes Dr. Keith Van Meter, Clinical Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Section of Emergency Medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, who led the study."
My question is, were these research swine also miraculously resurrected?
If the resurrected HWA wants to have maximum impact with his resurrected WCG, he should convert the resurrected Elvis and persuade him to sing songs from the Purple Hymnal on his resurrected World Tomorrow broadcasts.
Maybe Elvis could make those dreary compositions sound a little more like hymns of praise and a little less like funeral dirges.
Doug Graves
E.W. King is a clear (and apparently quite willing) victim of the phenomenon called confirmation bias. Check out this page, posted by E.W. King himself, which gives clear and abundant "proof" that he is a special man of God.
http://christianforreal.blogspot.com/2012/05/ewking-prophecies-coming-to-pass.html
Doug wrote:
"If the resurrected HWA wants to have maximum impact with his resurrected WCG, he should convert the resurrected Elvis and persuade him to sing songs from the Purple Hymnal on his resurrected World Tomorrow broadcasts.
Maybe Elvis could make those dreary compositions sound a little more like hymns of praise and a little less like funeral dirges."
Thanks. Now I see Elvis dancing and strumming his guitar to Blow the Horn let Zion hear. This is the strangest and weirdest mental image I have ever had. Thanks again. LOL
Herbert Armstrong was a crook and we want him back, here is The Evil 8 from Dr. Phil which should explain the type of man he was:
1) Arrogant entitlement
2) Lack of empathy
3) No remorse/guilt
4) Irresponsible/self-destructive
5) Thrive on drama
6) Brag about outsmarting
7) Short-term relationships
8) Fantasy World/Delusional
Maybe E.W.King can legally name his church "The Zombie Church of God"
Norm
Maybe I'm missing something here, but what - in the wacky world of E.W. King - is the supposed significance of October 7, 2011? I don't get it. Why that particular date? There's no 19 year time cycle, nor any biblical numbers involved so far as I can tell, so why 10/7/11? Can someone explain that to me?
Listen to the great Mr. Eric W. King explain the significance of HWA's 1977 "death" on this 12-minute audio segment from the website of Mr. Eric W. King:
http://christianforreal.blogspot.com/2012/11/blog-post_11.html
And Mr. Eric W. King's proof for such claims? Well, not exactly, none actually - but plenty of assertions.
What a blowhard this anal orifice is!
Anyone ever have an aversion to calling ANYONE "Mr." since WCG?
My question would be, if God did resurrect HWA, why let it remain as a repeated secret of something that might have happened in the privacy of HWA's bedroom? Why not provide definitive proof? If God had raised HWA from the dead, why not raise him as a black man, leaving absolutely no doubt about the matter?
BB
Regarding people being raised from the dead, Byker Bob asks,
"Why not provide definitive proof?"
It's not unusual for mainstream Christians to make such claims without providing proof.
Heck, even Byker Bob made such a claim, and then refused to provide proof when asked for it.
Occam's razor indicates that garbage like that, seen on a megachurch jumbotron, and having no one to provide proof of it, is most likely a product of another 'Liar for Jesus'.
Sometimes I wonder why Christians have to resort to the most sleazy sales tactics imaginable.
If I got a vote on this, I'd rather see Jerry Garcia and Brent Mydland raised from the dead to continue their work than HWA and GTA. Boy, would that ever give new meaning to the phrase "Grateful Dead"!
BB
I have been reading some posts from people who claim to have been members of the once real WCG. They seem to have a problem with what they call the "HWArmstrong empire". They claim that they and they only could have belonged to the "true" HWA empire...there is no such thing as a new one. Why, if you no longer wish to be in contact with the old, why so much time ridiculing the "new"???
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