The following story was discussed on other group the other day and goes to show how SICK Armstrongism is with it's magical god and stupid stories. What stupid story do you remember?
Anyone ever hear of the story which circulated about a situation at a feast site where a toilet was plugged up in the mens' restroom and several men were standing around, discussing how to unplug it? The story goes that this set of circumstances arose and some stranger stepped out from behind the group and reached down inside the toilet bowl and unclogged it with his hand. Then, he left the bathroom. Somebody tried to follow him, and when he stepped outside the restroom door, the stranger was totally vanished. So, the story got around that angel stepped in to save the day at the feast, and that other angels were among us, but we couldn't see them. Believe it or not, our congregational Super Hero actually performed a copy-cat act to this story! One sabbath not too long after that story first circulated, we had a clogged toilet in the ladies restroom at our local church meeting hall. When the ladies reported it to "Mr.Gung Ho," he had to replicate the angel in the story, and so he went in there and reached down and unclogged that toilet with his hand. He was the same Super Hero who studied Arabic so that when WCG fled to the place of safety, he'd be able to communicate with the locals in their native tongue and serve as a go-between between us and them.
25 comments:
I remember hearing stories about people convinced that the Ambassador Auditorium would be preserved during the Tribulation.
The way I seem to remember it went was like this: The Egrets on the Egret fountain would come to life. They would fly up and pick up all 4 corners of the Ambassador Auditorium and it would be transported by these egrets to Petra where it would land and become God's House protected during the Tribulation.
I wonder if the FAA would have approved a flying Auditorium on a flight path toward Petra.....
There were several "apocryphal" stories that have floated around the church. I will list a few, and perhaps someone can elaborate on the myths...
1) Supposedly there was an AC student, in either the 60s or 70s that could levitate pencils and other objects, which freaked everybody out, and got him expelled.
2) The song "Stairway To Heaven" by Led Zeppelin was supposedly about someone in the WCG.
3) In the autobiograpy, HWA claims to have found a "miracle clay" that could heal all manner of skin disorders. It supposedly cured acne, eczema and psoriasis. Armstrong claimed that it even had RADIUM in it!
The clay mine was in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Skamania County , Washington on a farm. He even marketed it for a short while, (he named it Marve') and he cooked up in the sink at his house during the depression.
So I ask... the miracle clay must still be there today right? If it was indeed such a great discovery, why has it not been exploited to this day?
4) Various GTA rumors that are unsubstantiated. One is that Ted fathered various other children with WCG women, and that those with married husbands, could count on being ordained in "dont ask dont tell" situations about the conceptions. One other rumor claims that GTA had homosexual relations early on, but that his father told him that he could "do what he wanted" as long as it was "heterosexual". The reality of GTA and his peccadilloes was bad enough, and I have doubts about these additional rumors, but would like to know the "Plain Truth".
5) That JWT Sr. was some type of war hero, shooting anti-aircraft guns at kamikaze planes during WWII aboard ship.
6) That Herman Hoeh had pictures of naked children and others in a large collection of photographic nudes in his possession, and that RCM was caught in a Porn shop. These rumors have flown around for years, but no one can substantiate them or pin them down with a name behind the witness or hard core evidence.
So, Id like to know some hard core facts about the above, perhaps some proof, or direct personal witness. There are several other questions and myths that I have heard, but this is a good start to explore.
Joe Moeller
Cody, WY
Joe Moeller I heard the story of the Led Zeppelin song. It was a ministers wife, now ex-wife from what I understand. His name was Ray hers was Kathy. I cannot remember who told me that story but apparently the person telling me believed it to be so.
As far as RCM and the store, the story told sounded like something he would actually say, however, no one ever talked about such a thing even in a kidding way in Pasadena, and he was never really liked, so you would think someone would have mentioned it.
1. Unknown to me.
2. Very unlikely.
3. Its now referred to as "Cambrian blue clay", though it doesn't come exclusively from the US. Does indeed contain radium. Armstrong was unable to market it effectively due to the lack of disposable income among his potential customer base at that time.
4. Unknown to me, that would have been before my time.
5. Gerald Waterhouse liked to tell that story. It's since been soundly disproven by multiple sources. Tkach did indeed serve, but his ship never saw combat while he was on board. Much of his official "biography" as presented in 1986 was false anyway.
6. This one's been around a while, as far as Hoeh goes.
So many categories, and so many ways to have fun with this. There are stupid things outside of the doctrines, like breaking one's fast from the Day of Atonement with a double shot of Wild Turkey. Or, the alcoholic who was so beloved by the compassionate teenagers of the headquarters area that they considered it their godly duty to turn him on to grass instead so he wouldn't suffer the final relapse that would destroy his liver. That alkie telling me on a Friday afternoon that he had to get home to smoke a big fat joint to get into the proper attitude for the sabbath.
Or how about the misguided wannabe hippie/musician, who took a Nazirite vow so that he could grow long hair and warn the world of the coming end times with his music?
My friend, the consummate gardener, entrusted with the special duty of caring for the ministers homes on Orange Grove, who just by innocently sticking to the weekly schedule entered one minister's pool area only to discover several ministers' wives indulging in nude tanning.
The obsessive-compulsive legalist, who removed all of the elastic from his socks to avoid wearing mixed materials, and was always seen dutifully wearing sagging socks with his suit to Bible Study and Sabbath Services in the headquarters area.
People who would automatically pick a hero and imitate one of his extremes, like the AC student who heard one of the evangelists remark that he only slept four hours per night so that he would have more time to do God's work.
Then, there are weird sermons, like one beginning with, "Brethren, Jeremiah was NOT a Bullfrog!"
Ministers speaking beyond their intelligence, like the pastor who regularly mispronounced epitome, (he said epitoam).
People stating that this was the last time they would have to buy a car or renew their license before the end.
Idiots claiming that they did exactly what HWA said he did in the last sermon, like on a hot day drinking half of a Baby Oly, then pouring the rest down the drain.
The freshman every year who, a couple weeks into his first semester, would go to El Rancho, buy a tube of Brylcreem and slick his hair straight back, just like Herbert W. Armstrong, and begin uttering HWA's favorite expressions, like hogwash and balderdash.
It's not as if, in my own efforts to remain independent and rebel, I didn't do some really stupid things myself, but somehow it seems funnier and more perplexing if people do things for cultic reasons!
BB
So many categories, and so many ways to have fun with this. There are stupid things outside of the doctrines, like breaking one's fast from the Day of Atonement with a double shot of Wild Turkey. Or, the alcoholic who was so beloved by the compassionate teenagers of the headquarters area that they considered it their godly duty to turn him on to grass instead so he wouldn't suffer the final relapse that would destroy his liver. That alkie telling me on a Friday afternoon that he had to get home to smoke a big fat joint to get into the proper attitude for the sabbath.
Or how about the misguided wannabe hippie/musician, who took a Nazirite vow so that he could grow long hair and warn the world of the coming end times with his music?
My friend, the consummate gardener, entrusted with the special duty of caring for the ministers homes on Orange Grove, who just by innocently sticking to the weekly schedule entered one minister's pool area only to discover several ministers' wives indulging in nude tanning.
The obsessive-compulsive legalist, who removed all of the elastic from his socks to avoid wearing mixed materials, and was always seen dutifully wearing sagging socks with his suit to Bible Study and Sabbath Services in the headquarters area.
People who would automatically pick a hero and imitate one of his extremes, like the AC student who heard one of the evangelists remark that he only slept four hours per night so that he would have more time to do God's work.
Then, there are weird sermons, like one beginning with, "Brethren, Jeremiah was NOT a Bullfrog!"
Ministers speaking beyond their intelligence, like the pastor who regularly mispronounced epitome, (he said epitoam).
People stating that this was the last time they would have to buy a car or renew their license before the end.
Idiots claiming that they did exactly what HWA said he did in the last sermon, like on a hot day drinking half of a Baby Oly, then pouring the rest down the drain.
The freshman every year who, a couple weeks into his first semester, would go to El Rancho, buy a tube of Brylcreem and slick his hair straight back, just like Herbert W. Armstrong, and begin uttering HWA's favorite expressions, like hogwash and balderdash.
It's not as if, in my own efforts to remain independent and rebel, I didn't do some really stupid things myself, but somehow it seems funnier and more perplexing if people do things for cultic reasons!
BB
Oh wow, lets see.
There was the mother who baked a "Sabbath pie" every week and the size of the kids' pieces depended on how well they behaved during services.
The alcoholic pastor who insisted on the church women scrubbing the rented hall by hand before Passover.
The crazy deacon who decided to give an entire sermonette on the evils of "E.T.". I am not making this up.
There was the freak who decided the light in his china cabinet would be the "Sabbath light", and it was flipped on and off as close to sunsets as possible.
The pastor's son who got caught selling marijuana and proceeded to beg off by claiming that another kid in the congregation made him do it. Guess which kid (and his parents) automatically got the boot on the hearsay.
The overprotective father who was convinced everyone wanted to bang his fat, nasty teenage daughter, to the point that he made sure to attend every single YOU event possible to "keep the boys away". (There were no takers in the first place - but the sad deluded man was convinced they were just hanging out in the shadows waiting to seduce the ugly girl).
The crazy Church woman who insisted that an out-of-wedlock child not received the Blessing Of Little Children while said child's mother was holding him onstage. Geez.
I knew of one pastor who drove all the way to a remote area where one member lived just to make sure they weren't cutting wood for their furnace on the Sabbath.
RSK said...
The overprotective father who was convinced everyone wanted to bang his fat, nasty teenage daughter, to the point that he made sure to attend every single YOU event possible to "keep the boys away". (There were no takers in the first place - but the sad deluded man was convinced they were just hanging out in the shadows waiting to seduce the ugly girl).
A really good indication that this man was banging his daughter himself and was jealous of her. It happens more than people think it does and the more religious a person is, the more likely it is to happen. I read the statistics on that years ago somewhere, I'm sure it's on the Internet.
I left the WCG behind after I turned 18 so most of my impressions are just examples of the monumentally dumb extents some parents would go to in the name of protecting their kids from "the world".
I already reminisced elsewhere about the kid who's parents prohibited him from going to anything billed as a carnival because of the word. There was another one who was big in to declaiming what he called "blasphemous euphemisms"... gee, golly, good grief and the like. Even Leave It To Beaver and Peanuts comics were on the banned media list for that guy's family.
Another guy thought he was being a righteous example when he would see a guy working at a store or behind a counter with long hair, and say "Excuse me, miss?" Bravely, he never thought to use this clever bon mot in a situation where the other person would be free to simply punch him in the face. I always wished the person would anyway.
And then there was the father who went on a long lecture about "subversive music" when he discovered my friends and I had been listening to some Metallica tapes on the way up to a YOU event. A couple months later, he was applauding wildly from the stands at a basketball event as his YES aged daughter was doing a cheerleader routine set to "She Bop", completely oblivious that his little girl was shakin' it to Cyndi Lauper's 1984 ode to female masturbation.
Anon said,
"And then there was the father who went on a long lecture about "subversive music" when he discovered my friends and I had been listening to some Metallica tapes on the way up to a YOU event."
Did they ever listen to the lyrics ? Of course not!
"subversive music"?? Well of course, to their crazy doctrines!
Metallica wrote songs about money-stealing preachers, corrupt religions, and even "christain science". The first one that came to my mind is:
"Dyers Eve" Lyrics
Dear Mother
Dear Father
what is this Hell you have put me through?
Believer
Deceiver
Day in, Day out live me life through you
Pushed onto me what's wrong or right
Hidden from this thing that they call life
Dear Mother
Dear Father
Every thought I'd think you'd disapprove
Curator
Dictator
Always censoring my every move
Children are seen but are not heard
Tear out everything inspired
Innocence
Torn from me without your shelter
Barred reality
I'm living blindly
Dear Mother
Dear Father
Time has frozen still what's left to be
Hear Nothing
Say Nothing
Cannot face the fact I think for me
No guarantee, it's life as-is
But damn you for not giving me my chance
Dear Mother
Dear Father
You've clipped my wings before I learned to fly
Unspoiled
Unspoken
I've outgrown that ... lullaby
Same thing I've always heard from you
Do as I say, not as I do
Innocence
Torn from me without your shelter
Barred reality
I'm living blindly
I'm in hell without you
Cannot cope without you two
Shocked at the world that I see
Innocent victim, please rescue me
Dear Mother
Dear Father
Hidden in your world you've made for me
I'm seething
I'm bleeding
Ripping wounds in me that never heal
Undying spite I feel for you
Living out this hell you always knew
Even though it isn't a COG, i wanted to share it anyway. I grew up in a fundamentalist baptist private church/school. Our 8th grade field trip was canceled because someone was listening to "Huey Lewis and The News" on his walkman! We were only 20min from King's Island(an amusement park).
"It's DEFINITELY a slap at Mr. Armstrong," someone told me, with the straightest face possible.
There was an episode of the original STAR TREK called "The Way to Eden," in which some hippie-like dropouts sought a perfect planet and briefly took over the Enterprise. Their epithet for Capt. Kirk (and all those who couldn't "reach," or relate well to them) was "Herbert." "Herbert! Herbert! Herbert!" they would taunt. (TREK lore has this as a slam at one Herbert Solow, a production supervisor at Paramount, where TREK installments are still made.)
No, Armstrong followers, everything is NOT about you.
Hey thanks, I often wondered about that myself because maybe Mr. Armstrong was fairly well known to the secular world there in the 60's, & he probably was considered by some to be such a "Herbert, Herbert, Herbert", but I forgot about Herbert Solow. But still, what if? (and what if Solow inspired the name Sulu?) whewwwwwwww.
Passover services my chair ( I am a woman) was so close to the man next to me that our thighs were touching uncomfortably. He didn't care. I did care,so I got up and scooted my chair over a few inches to resolve the situation.
The elder ran over told me to 'stand up now!', which I did thinking something was wrong with the chair. Maybe it was broken etc. But no, that wasn't it.
He picked up the chair, slowly swung it in a little arch back and forth over the place it had been and then slammed it back down right where it had been all the while looking at my face.
"It was where I wanted it. Leave it there!" he said.
I sat back down and scooted the chair over without getting up as he walked away.
I knew then this group was horrendous.
This same man had once stated he knew exactly who would be on the "bus to Petra" by their actions in church.
Another man in the congregation had bladder cancer and could barely hold urine and had urgency. When he left to run to the bathroom during passover services this same elder locked him out.
I remember as a child thinking Jesus was a bad name and that we shouldn't say it. It was all about God never Jesus. If Jesus was said it was followed by Christ
I was told by a parent that the moon's surface was cratered perhaps because of spiritual warfare
USA will be invaded by Germany.
We will be persecuted because of our message.
Evolution called "evilloution"
Our church has the truth. God is on our side.
Endless endless endless sermons about top down government
if I ever stuck my bare hand in a toilet to unclog it, I'd want to disappear too before anyone figured out who I was.....lol
HWA wondered if even 10% of the membership "got it"....from reading the stories here I'm thinking he might have had a point....
There is all kind of apocrypha in the COGs concerning various stories of demons and demon possession. Would be interesting to hear a few of them.
I remember when Herbert Armstrong died and the was a bad hurricane storm in Britain around the same time. A woman actually commented that was the storm because Herbert had died.
While creationism is not 'proven' neither is the 'theory' of evolution.
The problem with science if that it begins with a theory and then bends and twists things to create evidence. Some of it works, a lot does not.
It is better science to look at what you see and experience without a theory first and then work with that evidence.
Herbs 'got it' is a left wing expression. If you don't agree with their ideology, you 'don't get it.' Herbie also stole unity from the left wingers. It's one of their themes. Meaning the truth should be subordinated to 'unity,' and every one in each others hip pocket, being a meddling, prying, spying, harassing pest. This insures that no one can embrace the truth.
We got some wind chimes from the NY Worlds Fair in 1965 and hung them in the entryway of our front door. The next time a minister came, he said that when the chimes tinkled, it meant a demon was passing by. As an 11 year old, I petrified! Of course they were thrown in the trash. Now some 50 years later, I have wind chimes all over my porch. Such a huge load of bullshit was shoveled on us.
It was funny that prior to 1975 the Armstrong prophecy mold affected me, even when I was indulging in "rebellious" activities like listening to rock n roll. When Alice Cooper first came out, and then Elton John, and especially David Bowie, I immediately feared that their influence was the vehicle by which our surrounding culture was going to become as Sodom and Gomorrah. I had watched as John Lennon and the Beatles had nearly single handedly turned the youth culture into hippies, and when David Bowie burst on the scene and was suddenly everywhere, I thought he was going to create a bisexual or homosexual revolution amongst youths, equal in scope to the hippie movement.
In my primitive thinking of that era, it never occurred to me that even deep appreciation for Bowie's music couldn't possibly change the sexual orientation that people are born with. Glam rock later came and went, without ever blipping up the rates of incidence of homosexuality in the general public. Most likely, that disappointed Rod Meredith just as badly as Hitler or Mussolini not being the Beast had disappointed HWA!
BB
During the 1970s there was a great deal of hysteria from people who wanted exorcism for their demon possessed pets.
There were also some who poured 10/40 motor oil on their car and prayed that the auto be 'healed'.
None of these things should surprise us at all because Armstrongism is a cult.
How do people not get that? Whenever there is weirdness in ACoG churches, people need to chalk it up to Armstrongism being a cult -- and no one should want to be in a cult: Why would you want to be surrounded by weird insane people?
Musically-
In Stairway to Heaven, "And it's whispered that soon, If we all call the tune,
Then the piper will lead us to reason, And a new day will dawn", the "piper" was HWA, and it was about us joining the WCG, accepting HWA's "tune", and the Kingdom was the "new day [that] will dawn" after being led to the Truth by HWA.
Artistically-
When the time to flee came, the egrets in the fountain would turn into jumbo jets and fly us all to Petra.
lol, that reminds me of going to california.
The endless search for the true COG!
"To find a queen without a king,
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings... la la la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born."
DBP
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