Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
I'm waiting for something that will never happen. What I would like to see and hear, is just once, one or more of these guys admitting that they were part of a group or movement that was bogus and totally devoid of understanding, and announcing their plans to go back to theology school to complete further studies and to reach a better understanding.
But they won't. They will continue to modify and teach a bogus synthesis concocted by a high school dropout who freely admitted being without portfolio, but skipped the part about being without degree or credential. As was the case in one of HWA's parables, the lies of his prophecies have caused people for decades to remark as they leave, "And I'm going to check into this Jesus Christ business, too!"
Apostle Malm has posted Steve Andrews' letter to David Hulme today.
Reading it, it sounds to me like David Hulme ceased believing in HWA's god, British Israelism, and the old WCG theology a long time ago, probably before setting up COGIC, but he's been a closet atheist up until now in order to hang onto the status, privilege, and a paycheck (the amount of which he is able to determine). However, when he has to "preach the gospel" by writing articles and giving sermons, there are certain tell-tale things he can't bring himself to say, like how the cause of every human effect originates in a magical supernatural realm, and the failure to invoke such magic in his chain of logic is a glaring omission which gives him away. Finally, it seems, his followers are starting to notice this?
If Hulme is a closet atheist, is it any wonder he decided to model his "gospel outreach" on the one HWA publication (Quest) that was secular and never tried to perform any such function? Seems like the perfect ploy to straddle the great divide Hulme has been straddling. Steve Andrews levels the following charge of secularism against Hulme:
"Your attempts in two separate board meetings and in the pages of Vision, to construct from the psychology of neuroplasticity, 'our new way forward,' is nothing more than a corruption of I Corinthians 2 and the gospel. It denies the power of the Holy Spirit."
The cited reasoning is an argument I could imagine Stephen Covey or Dr. Vilanur Ramachandran making, but a "true" worshiper of HWA? Never! But if he's begun to notice the shameful scholarship and circular reasoning HWA used in the first place, it's no wonder he's embarrassed by his religion.
If he were honest, he would have hung up the religion shingle in 1999, and gotten a job in Corporate America, and by now, he could probably be some sort of executive or another, vested, and able to retire on some sort of pension. Instead, since he had as many worshipers clamoring to be conned as he did, he decided instead to give them what they wanted, even it meant he had to do a little playacting. But it seems the role has gotten harder to play convincingly as the years have passed, and now the glory days might be drawing to a close.
Andrews also makes the following assertion, "When the Church was preaching the gospel in a manner pleasing to the Father we were blessed." But when was COGIC ever "preaching the gospel," according to HWA standards, and when was his organization ever "blessed"? No one has ever established a blessed/not blessed threshold criteria for determining this, therefore I guess the second assertion can't be rigorously disproven.
So, why did it take 14 years for this to finally come to a head?
I decided to post this in a separate comment, because, even though it too comes from the same Steve Andrews' letter, I wanted to say something different about it. It's just a perfect example of the flawed theology of Armstrongism contained in one sentence:
"Can we disarm the natural human hatred that the human mind has for our Creators?"
In a religious context, what does the word "natural" mean? Well, it doesn't mean anything Darwinian, that's for damn sure. According to religious folk, doesn't "natural" mean, "that which was designed and created by god" as opposed to "synthetic" which would be "that which was devised or created by man". I can't think of a third category, except for perhaps how some people believe that the dinosaurs were god's creation that was perverted and debased by Satan into brutal and violent forms. I suppose they think the same thing about sharks and crocodiles. Whatever. At any rate, I've never heard anybody make an argument for Satan being allowed to tinker with humans in this way.
Given that, what would "the natural human hatred that the human mind has for our Creators" be? According to Andrews, wouldn't it be the hatred that god designed and created within mankind for us to have toward him? Doesn't such phraseology assume such hatred is fitting and proper because it bears the divine stamp of approval? But of course, in typical Armstrongism logic, any sermonizer worth his salt would immediately comment on how such "natural" hatred of god was our fault. That's assuming any such hatred exists in the first place.
During his lifetime, HWA consistently engaged in this exact reasoning using the phrase "human nature" by which he meant the "natural" resident evil, created in humans by someone who could only have been god, perhaps original and integral, or perhaps added in by god at the "fall of man" after they bought produce from the wrong fruitstand. No matter how you slice the apple, it's core is still "original sin," just, by another name, and it's just another argument to convince people to accept shame for something they didn't do.
8 comments:
Hey, is there a link for that?
I'll bet they are all going to David Pack. He is the only one doing anything. I lie....
Would like more details please.
At least I found this link:
http://silenced.co/2013/12/the-imminent-implosion-of-hulmes-cult/
I'm waiting for something that will never happen. What I would like to see and hear, is just once, one or more of these guys admitting that they were part of a group or movement that was bogus and totally devoid of understanding, and announcing their plans to go back to theology school to complete further studies and to reach a better understanding.
But they won't. They will continue to modify and teach a bogus synthesis concocted by a high school dropout who freely admitted being without portfolio, but skipped the part about being without degree or credential. As was the case in one of HWA's parables, the lies of his prophecies have caused people for decades to remark as they leave, "And I'm going to check into this Jesus Christ business, too!"
BB
Apostle Malm has posted Steve Andrews' letter to David Hulme today.
Reading it, it sounds to me like David Hulme ceased believing in HWA's god, British Israelism, and the old WCG theology a long time ago, probably before setting up COGIC, but he's been a closet atheist up until now in order to hang onto the status, privilege, and a paycheck (the amount of which he is able to determine). However, when he has to "preach the gospel" by writing articles and giving sermons, there are certain tell-tale things he can't bring himself to say, like how the cause of every human effect originates in a magical supernatural realm, and the failure to invoke such magic in his chain of logic is a glaring omission which gives him away. Finally, it seems, his followers are starting to notice this?
If Hulme is a closet atheist, is it any wonder he decided to model his "gospel outreach" on the one HWA publication (Quest) that was secular and never tried to perform any such function? Seems like the perfect ploy to straddle the great divide Hulme has been straddling. Steve Andrews levels the following charge of secularism against Hulme:
"Your attempts in two separate board meetings and in the pages of Vision, to construct from the psychology of neuroplasticity, 'our new way forward,' is nothing more than a corruption of I Corinthians 2 and the gospel. It denies the power of the Holy Spirit."
The cited reasoning is an argument I could imagine Stephen Covey or Dr. Vilanur Ramachandran making, but a "true" worshiper of HWA? Never! But if he's begun to notice the shameful scholarship and circular reasoning HWA used in the first place, it's no wonder he's embarrassed by his religion.
If he were honest, he would have hung up the religion shingle in 1999, and gotten a job in Corporate America, and by now, he could probably be some sort of executive or another, vested, and able to retire on some sort of pension. Instead, since he had as many worshipers clamoring to be conned as he did, he decided instead to give them what they wanted, even it meant he had to do a little playacting. But it seems the role has gotten harder to play convincingly as the years have passed, and now the glory days might be drawing to a close.
Andrews also makes the following assertion, "When the Church was preaching the gospel in a manner pleasing to the Father we were blessed." But when was COGIC ever "preaching the gospel," according to HWA standards, and when was his organization ever "blessed"? No one has ever established a blessed/not blessed threshold criteria for determining this, therefore I guess the second assertion can't be rigorously disproven.
So, why did it take 14 years for this to finally come to a head?
I decided to post this in a separate comment, because, even though it too comes from the same Steve Andrews' letter, I wanted to say something different about it. It's just a perfect example of the flawed theology of Armstrongism contained in one sentence:
"Can we disarm the natural human hatred that the human mind has for our Creators?"
In a religious context, what does the word "natural" mean? Well, it doesn't mean anything Darwinian, that's for damn sure. According to religious folk, doesn't "natural" mean, "that which was designed and created by god" as opposed to "synthetic" which would be "that which was devised or created by man". I can't think of a third category, except for perhaps how some people believe that the dinosaurs were god's creation that was perverted and debased by Satan into brutal and violent forms. I suppose they think the same thing about sharks and crocodiles. Whatever. At any rate, I've never heard anybody make an argument for Satan being allowed to tinker with humans in this way.
Given that, what would "the natural human hatred that the human mind has for our Creators" be? According to Andrews, wouldn't it be the hatred that god designed and created within mankind for us to have toward him? Doesn't such phraseology assume such hatred is fitting and proper because it bears the divine stamp of approval? But of course, in typical Armstrongism logic, any sermonizer worth his salt would immediately comment on how such "natural" hatred of god was our fault. That's assuming any such hatred exists in the first place.
During his lifetime, HWA consistently engaged in this exact reasoning using the phrase "human nature" by which he meant the "natural" resident evil, created in humans by someone who could only have been god, perhaps original and integral, or perhaps added in by god at the "fall of man" after they bought produce from the wrong fruitstand. No matter how you slice the apple, it's core is still "original sin," just, by another name, and it's just another argument to convince people to accept shame for something they didn't do.
gaveDon't try to confront anyone in that church. They militantly defend their group and they believe their church is the one and only true church.
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