For many decades there were several books that the Worldwide Church of God used and considered "sacred" to the legacy of Armstrongism. They were, Hislop's Two Babylons, Foxes Book of Martyrs and The History of the True Religion.
The History of the True Religion, by A.N. Dugger and C.O Dodd was a mainstay in the church because it reportedly told the story of HWA's contemporaries of the Church of God in Salem, Oregon of which Herbert Armstrong was part of and ordained in.
The latest issue of the The Journal of the Churches of God has an article up by Horst Obermeit about a new book by the Church of God Seventh Day.
Obermeit says:
Mr. Coulter’s factual reporting from the church’s Colorado archives gives a much better understanding of the history behind the beginning of the Radio Church of God (which was renamed the Worldwide Church of God in 1968 and Grace Communion International in 2009).
The RCG/WCG/GCI began with Herbert W. Armstrong’s membership and ministry in the CG7. Mr. Coulter states in his introduction that the archived records show that Andrew Dugger’s and C.O. Dodd’s book A History of the True Church made little use of the church’s historical archives.
Rather, the Dugger-and-Dodd book, says Mr. Coulter, is a counterfeit history of the church that has been soundly rejected by the General Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day) as its genuine history
Then Obermeit mentions something from the book that will send many in the Church of God in to raging fits of denial:
Then Obermiet mentions how the book has this to say about Herbert Armstrong:Mr. Coulter shows that the Churches of God are not a continuation of an apostolic beginning. They do not have their origins in earlier Sabbath-keeping Christians in Western Europe.He states that the claim by various COGs of an apostolic succession is “pure fantasy!”He further states: “The Church of God (Seventh Day) had a definite beginning here in the United States. It is strictly an American institution. All of the earliest pioneers of the Church became Adventist through William Miller’s Adventist movement of the 1830s-1840s.“None of the earliest founders of the Church practiced Sabbath keeping at the time of their conversion to Christianity, nor practiced an annual communion service.
Imagine that, the Churches of God do not have ties tot the Waldenses that so many of them falsely claim today. The Churches of God are an American invention just like the LDS church is and is not carrying on any apostolic succession.The chapter titled “Herbert W. Armstrong’s Relationship to the Church of God” gives evidence that Mr. Armstrong was less than honest about his relationship with the Church of God (Seventh Day).It also points out flaws in Mr. Armstrong’s “egotistical claim of being God’s man of the hour,” as Mr. Coulter puts it.
Imagine that HWA was less than honest... the house of cards continues to fall down!
This book is definitely being added to my COG collection of books!
26 comments:
Probably the only recourse the ACOGs will have in dealing with this "honesty" project will be to dismiss it as being revisionist.
In a way, I'm somewhat amazed that Horst's article would be allowed to grace the pages of the Journal. I expect some vigorous rebuttals in future issues, although they will probably be of the same general quality as the materials these churches have presented countering dna and radio carbon dating.
BB
Those of you who rely on The Journal for accurate information should think again: They quote the book's price at $25 when it is being sold for $26.
Now don't get confused between Robert Coulter and Fred Coulter with articles about each of them beginning on page 1 The Journal: They are not the same. Kudos to Fred, though, for taking Dixon C. to task for the idiocy in The Journal as wrong-headed as it may be.
It wasn't enough to post History of the CoG7 by Ken Durham at AmbassadorReports.com, but if you don't want to wait for The Journey book, you can get some of your CoG7 history there.
Of course, there's a hidden Easter Egg surprise at AmbassadorReports.com to support that Herbert Armstrong was less than... truthful (OK, he was an outright liar who committed incest with his daughter for 10 years), but most will miss the little surprise. We'll give you a better copy of David Robinson's letter later.
So now the book is out, just how much effort will the Armstrongists put forth to try to mitigate the damage done to their rubbish created by their dead false prophet kook?
Byker Bob, one only need look at Ronald Weinland's PKG with all of his specific prophecies failed multiple times and the episodes of Dr. Phil exposing Yisrael Hawkins and the House of Yaweh to ascertain that the very last thing the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia want to do is to find the truth.
If you have been watching their strategies, the Armstrongists have become really creative with their coverups: Witness Richard Rittenbaugh claiming (as quoted in Fragmentation of a Sect) that Herbert Armstrong was not a false prophet because (gasp, choke, cough, cough) he was an apostle (he wasn't but you know any lie will do).
They continue to escalate their preposterous nonsense of excuses to preserve something which should not only die, but should have never come to life in the first place.
And The Journal deserves a special place in the nine circles of hell. Just reporting one good thing does not justify its existence of promoting the insanity of the Armstrongists.
Oh, bummer. Now the only way to claim any apostolic succession is to admit the truth -- they are all descendants of the great Catholic whore church. LOL.
Truth bites.
The Dugger and Dodd book was poorly done and made leaps and assumptions that it wanted to make for its own political reasons. I am glad to see COG 7th Day minister Robert Coulter, who is a true historian of the church, publish this book.
COG groups today can all trace their roots to the post Miller "Disappointment of 1844". These early Adventists were all Sunday keepers.
A young Seventh Day Baptist layperson named Rachel Oakes Preston living in New Hampshire was responsible for introducing Sabbath to the Millerite Adventists. Due to her influence, Frederick Wheeler, a local Methodist-Adventist preacher, began keeping the seventh day as Sabbath, probably in the early spring of 1844.
Thus the only thread running backwards before that time would be thru the Seventh Day Baptist Church. There is no "ordained succession" through a ministry of Sabbatarians to be found however from the Seventh Day Baptists and the early SDA or COG groups.
In the case of the Seventh Day Baptists, they can trace their beginnings to 1617, and once again to Sunday observing Baptists at that time through one John Trask, and also thru Peter Chamberlein in 1651.
There the connections of Sabbatarians runs cold. I personally believe that there have likely always been Seventh Day observers around throughout the last 2000 years, many running parallel to each other, however, there is no evidence for a continuous corporate or organized body with an "unbroken laying on of hands" through time.
The ordinations of men, in the present time, trace their history and authority back to Sunday keepers. Even HWA was baptized by a Baptist minister, and not by a Sabbatarian.
These realizations open up many interesting questions about church authority, Sabbatarian supremacy to other Christians, and many more. I personally believe in the Seventh Day Sabbath, however, to define the Sabbath as the ultimate primal definition of a Christian is an obvious ,and historical mistake.
It may be a shocking truth to many COG people that the authority of their current minister relies upon and ordination line that traces back to Sunday Observers.
If you look back further, Miller broke away from those pagan Baptists as I recall. But what the hell. All these groups use a book put together by the Catholics. The bible is a Catholic book. Why don't we discuss this ACOG'ers?
You didn't have to wait for this book to come out to get the gist of how this affects Armstrongism however. Dixon published an article about a talk given by Coulter in 2008 to CGI in Tyler in which he specifically addresses the phony claims that Herbert Armstrong made about COG7 (which IMHO he was motivated to make in order to "support" a bunch a phony claims about his own church). A lot of this you could also deduce from Wikipedia.
But all the splinters continue to make these phony claims. For example, on UCG's website they still make this phony claim, in the specific form of: "We trace our origins to the Church that Jesus founded in the early first century." This is a claim, of course, founded upon Dugger & Dodd, who, in the first place, were not acting in an official capacity in publishing their book, but represented a rogue position anyway, even at the time.
In the article, Coulter says, "As a matter of fact, the CG7 is 150 years old this year, 2008. It was begun in southwestern Michigan by Gilbert Cranmer, who was born in 1814 and died in 1903...Mr. Cranmer became a "Millerite Adventist [believer in a literal Second Coming] in 1843. Mr. Dugger and Mr. Dodd believed they could trace the true church back through the Mill Yard Church, a Seventh Day Baptist congregation founded in England in about 1653, and, earlier, through other Seventh Day Baptists."
As if that weren't enough, he also points out that Miller was a Sunday-keeping Baptist and that Cranmer and his friend Joseph Bates (who was a friend of Ellen G. White) became convinced of a seventh-day sabbath in 1852, and the "seventh-day" aspect did not become associated with adventism until after that time, (1858-1863). Moreover, they didn't call themselves "Church of God" until much later, originally disqualifying them from being the "true church" by Herbert Armstrong's standards.
So all these phony claims of "tracing our orgins" are effectively cut off at the knees. But when was honesty ever a virtue in the ministry of Armstrongism? Besides, this dishonesty is just small potatatoes, right? There are bigger fish to fry here, like the fact the Christian god isn't there...
Those of you who assume this phony history came from Dugger and Dodd, think again: It came from Ellen G. White, replete with (gasp, choke), the Waldensians. Apparently, they plagiarized her and her husband's work and then, Herbert Armstrong, following that fine precedent of lying and stealing did the same thing.
At this point, the ACoGs are facing both proof that British Israelism is wrong and their church history is wrong.
What this book will do is create a firestorm and there will be no turning back: The lies of Herbert Armstrong are proved to be rubbish and there is absolutely no valid reason to be in the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia, period.
And don't you Armstrongists think for a millisecond that this will ever be over until Armstrongism is absolutely gone with no trace.
We've been having a discussion on another blog with an individual who has taken on the name of a Biblical character, in this case that of an Ethiopian eunuch. This individual has expressed a preference to be known not as an Armstrongite, but as a Christian typical of the early first century church. I had to point out that it was HWA who had created the operational model taught in the ACOGs as being this type of Christian, of course still making him an Armstrongite.
Armstrongism redefined just about everything for us, and then labeled it as "the truth". Unfortunately, that "truth" remains as many peoples' standard by which they evaluate all of the incoming information which would normally correct misconceptions. Their bumper sticker would read: "HWA said it, I believe it, and that settles it!"
BB
James said...
"All these groups use a book put together by the Catholics. The bible is a Catholic book. Why don't we discuss this ACOG'ers?"
Alright, let us discuss it.
What is commonly called the Old Testament of the Bible was put together and preserved by the Jews. The Catholics had nothing to do with it besides trying to add some Apocryphal books to it, which the Jews still do not accept, and trying to oppose and do away with virtually everything that it quotes God as saying. The Catholics replace God`s biblical Sabbath with Sunday, and God`s biblical Annual Holy Days with Christmas, Easter, Halloween and many other such things. The Catholics replace God`s laws about clean and unclean creatures with eating the uncleanest creatures around such as swine. The Catholics replace the biblical Aaronic priesthood that was handed down from father to son with a bunch of supposedly celibate but actually sexually active homosexual pedophile priests.
Even what is commonly called the New Testament of the Bible gets messed up by the Catholics. They replace praying to God with praying to Mary, make Jesus out to be a hippie like some umpteenth century Italian artist's painting of his long-haired, swish-type, homosexual lover, and basically teach that Jesus was some smart-alec young man who came to do away with his father's laws. The Catholics try to add their Apocryphal books to the New Testament too, but the Protestants still do not accept them. In rebellion against what Jesus said, the Catholics call some man on earth their holy father, or pope. Once again, the Catholics replace the idea of the married New Testament apostles with some doctrine of demons forbidding priests to marry, but allowing them to be secretly sexually immoral in the worst ways.
The Catholic church trying to hijack God`s Bible and oppose and pervert its teachings is no different than a satanic cult like Gerald Flurry`s PCG trying to hijack the writings of Herbert W. Armstrong and oppose and pervert them—and delete them, while adding other nonsense.
Yes, 10:25, you do know and can recite all of the Armstrong cliches and stereotypes that we all heard in sabbath services. Very impressive! I'd forgotten many of them. However, can you do your own research and draw your own conclusions?
Afro-Centric Puppy Dog
Except that the Catholics were the ones to assemble the canon of the New Testament. Its because of the Catholics that we have the collected works today. I believe that is the question the poster was posing.
You really cannot believe anyone's version of anything. I've found they all lie and twist the truth to suit their own agenda.
Anon June 13, 2014 at 10:25 PM
"They replace praying to God with praying to Mary, make Jesus out to be a hippie like some umpteenth century Italian artist's painting of his long-haired, swish-type, homosexual lover, and basically teach that Jesus was some smart-alec young man who came to do away with his father's laws."
Yes, the Catholics did just that. But it gets worse. They turned themselves into a bank!
"What is commonly called the Old Testament of the Bible was put together and preserved by the Jews."
Until the Council of Trent:
"It was not until the fourth session of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) that the bishops and high ranking officials of the Catholic Church "officially" cataloged the books they thought should be included in the Bible and bound them upon the consciences of all Catholics."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent#Canons_and_decrees
You wrote: "...Jesus was some smart-alec young man who came to do away with his father's laws"
Yes, the COG members were taught this phrase by HWA himself. You a member?
"The Catholic church trying to hijack God`s Bible and oppose and pervert its teachings is no different than a satanic cult like Gerald Flurry`s PCG trying to hijack the writings of Herbert W. Armstrong and oppose and pervert them—and delete them, while adding other nonsense."
If you read about the events at the Council of Trent you will see that the bible is not Gods book. Never was. The Catholics put it together. Now as to Gerald, yes he is changing all sorts of things. He will eventually distort Armstrongism into something else. Something as unholy and corrupt as Armstrongism itself.
The armstrongist should come up with their own bible. Put together your own version like Luther did.
Wait! Isn't Gerald doing just that?
One tradition that Armstrongites are unaware of is that artists came up with their rendering of Jesus from sources such as the shroud of Turin, or earlier portraits which were lost to antiquity, and therefore no longer exist. Funny how people so keyed into the conspiracy theories which provide the only real support for their beliefs would fail to consider those options.
Also, many of the so-called hippies (you never knew you were one until someone called you by that name) actually imitated Jesus' teachings in their interpersonal relationships.
If you read the writings if the antenicene fathers, you will learn that they were all about preserving the faith once delivered, and about stamping out heresy. HWA dismissed them as "Catholic"
BB
If God exists does he care at all if there is an unbroken chain of people who kept the seventh day Sabbath going back 2000+ years? Does he even care what day people keep holy, or any day at all. The fact is that the bible was written by men, all religions are devised by men, and when you give money to a church you are giving to men not God. Doctrines are also concocted by men.
Apostolic Succession can't exist because there was no Apostolic Succession. The end of the age was to happen within the lifetime of the apostles according to Mark 13, Matt. 24 and Luke 21.
There is absolutely nothing in the NT to suggest any kind of Apostolic Succession. It was all supposed to be a "short work" Rom. 9:28 in the first place. Not a work that would go on for thousands of years.
Some people get it, most don't.
James...phreneologist Fred Coulter has already done a Bible in its CORRECT order since no one else has ever been able to do that in the past 1,900 years. Then there is the polygamist Yisrel Hawkins who has his fake CORRECT Jewish bible. Leave it to two idiot Armstrongites to do that.
"Alright, let us discuss it..."
The OT is not history. It is Hebrew mythology, most likely composed during and post-captivity based on earlier myth, legend, and mysticism. Archeology refutes the Exodus, the wandering in the wilderness and the battle of Jericho. If the Jewish people ever were distinct from the Canaanites, they entered the land not as a conquering army, but as waves of immigrants. Yahweh and El are Canaanite deities, suggesting that the Jews may simply be Canaanites after all. And the OT isn't the story of a monotheistic people anyway, it's the story of a polytheistic people who gradually evolved a theology in which the remainder of the pantheon of gods were demoted into archangels, angels, and demons. And let us not imagine that "the Jews" are in any way united about what "they" do and do not accept. Mainstream Judaism today is hardly about Tanakh anyway, it's about Talmud and Kabbalah.
The NT began to be written, possibly as early as c. 50AD, and includes books possibly written as late as c. 300AD. By my count, there are at least 36 apocryphal gospels, 23 apocryphal books of acts, 14 apocryphal epistles, and 30 apocryphal apocalypses. That doesn't include the books in the canon that scholars are all but certain do not belong in it. There are surely some others that I have missed and many more that do not survive. The early church fathers voted on which books to include in Constantine's canon, but by 331 no one in the world had any idea which were the "legitimate" books, and which ones were not, and in the end, all they could do was just guess anyway. And thus our NT was formulated, no doubt, part of the formulation included calculations designed to give Constantine the sort of "holy book" he wanted.
But the NT was written in Greek, which means it was written for people who could read Greek, and most people in Judea/Palestina could not, as Aramaic was the most common language. This is but one indicator of Hellenistic nature of the NT. Moreover, it was written for Jews, but for Hellenized Jews, not Jews who were hewing to a pure form of an older religion. In addition, it was written about a Jewish Messiah who was supposed to soon rescue the Jewish people from the Romans. However, when Constantine turned Christianity into the official Roman religion, that fundamentally upended the original meaning of the entire religion. Finally, since Christianity became a religion filled with Jewish polemics, tarring Jews as Christ-killers, it's original context and meaning has been thoroughly stripped out and replaced in every place around the world and in every time, with local values and culturally palatable local meanings. Therefore, even if the NT were inspired by a deity, which is incredibly unlikely, for the last ~1650 years, misunderstanding the original intent of the NT has rather been the point, hasn't it?
In short, the bible itself is an originally Catholic anthology of Jewish and Hellenized-Jewish mysticism. While it does bear a relationship to the Tanakh, that relationship is tangential. It isn't a latter-day continuation of an earlier revelation. There is no reason to think that a harmonization of the many disparate elements contained in the Protestant bible is a valid way to interpret any of it.
Well done, Anonymous 9:07. Well done! All true.
I might add that it would probably surprise Anonymous 10:25 to know that the jews of Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, also used and relied upon what are now called "apocryphal" scrolls. There was never an "apocryphal" writing in the sense s/he is using the term at all until there was an "orthodoxy" building around the canon against which to define a book as being apocryphal. If we want to be technical, there are a significant number of the books currently in the canon that are, in fact apocryphal, on grounds of authenticity.
The COGs are, without a doubt, all children of the catholic power and to think otherwise is pure delusion. But this is well-worn practice among them, so this revelation of truth about history will make little difference. Let's hope it gets through to a few more who can still consider sound evidence.
I've talked with Ken Durham who knew Robert Coulter since Ken's days at Spring Vale Academy as a student and Robert Coulter was a teacher.
Ken and I agree: There will be no fits of anger. There will be no angst. There will be no hand-wringing.
The Armstrongists will simply ignore the book.
Just as they do for all the little inconvenient truths, because it's just too much effort to make up inane excuses any more.
Anon June 14, 2014 at 9:07 PM
wrote:
"The OT is not history. It is Hebrew mythology, most likely composed during and post-captivity based on earlier myth, legend, and mysticism. Archeology refutes the Exodus, the wandering in the wilderness and the battle of Jericho. If the Jewish people ever were distinct from the Canaanites, they entered the land not as a conquering army, but as waves of immigrants. Yahweh and El are Canaanite deities, suggesting that the Jews may simply be Canaanites after all."
Here is more to think on. I have this on the website as a link.
http://tinyurl.com/feast-days
A movement that is already based on its members' ability to accept and believe various conspiracy theories never really has a problem in explaining things away. They just invent more theories. I can't really say that I was totally surprised when I recently read one man's theory in the Journal that the Jews of today are not really the Jews of ancient times. That is one of their ways of combatting the dna refutation of British Israelism, making it appear to the stalwarts that they actually still have "the truth". Never mind the fact that these so-called "new" Jews (Ashkenazic), in spite of diaspora, have preserved all of the ancient oracles and traditions as prophesied. Never mind the special brilliance that seems to be associated with them in so many fields. These are two items that would be challenged and contested by skeptics, but are very credible and important to most believers.
But, if you believe that mongrel peoples from a melting pot are the remnants of the so-called last ten tribes of Israel who will be punished for forgetting their heritage and all of the Mosaic oracles, how much of a leap is it to also believe that the people who maintained their own separate and distinct culture and did preserve the oracles for millennia actually aren't the real Jews?
BB
Byker Bob, if Ashkenazic DNA matches that of Western Europeans, then it will not match Arab Y-Chromosome DNA of the Arabs.
Either way, it fails, so not to worry.
At some limit, there are upper limits to using excuses. Of course Armstrongists reject science except when it suits them and then they use magic.
What they do not realize about magic is that it is even more restrictive than science ever thought to be. You can't just arbitrarily substitute lamb's blood for dragon blood or you will either fail in what you are trying to do or destroy yourself. One word wrong in an incantation and you either fail or doomed. You wanted to open a portal to Neverland and you end up with a portal to Purgatory -- we know from Benny, Sam and Dean that Purgatory contains Leviathan and you don't want to go there! (Castiel's existential question of where Leviathan go when they are slain in Purgatory remains unanswered.)
Not just any excuse will do: Either it must be based on science or magic and if it doesn't work for either one, your excuse fails.
Armstrongism is doomed and no science or magic can save it.
If people on this site had any gonads they would take the Jews to task for their role in all this. First they fabricated the OT. Then they fabricated the NT. They exterminated men women and children. They still feel they have the right to do so today. And no Christian preacher can get on the air unless they wail about the holocaust (Herbie) or raise money for Israel which already gets 80% of USA foreign aid (as if they need it).
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