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
Oh how well I know the feeling this kid has of sadness. I was told as a little child that my friends would all die either from famine, be eaten by their parents or die in war. That I would never graduate from high school, never go to college, never get married and have children, never be able to enjoy the wonders of this world. Instead I would be imprisoned in Petra with thousand of other people being trained by Meredith ans other "true" ministers. 40 years later and these same shits are telling the same lies. Damn them all!
Well, even science agrees that the world will end sometime, perhaps some 4 Billion years in the future when the sun cools and then expands larger than the orbit of the Earth.
In the meantime, there will likely be a number of asteroid or comet collisions that will wipe out life on the planet, or a super volcano will erupt causing global darkness, or perhaps a super Nova of a star within a few hundred light years will spray us with gamma rays killing everything.
While any of the above are possible over the next million years or so, or even in the short term, it would be rather incredible that mankind will be avoid a serious nuclear conflict over the next couple of centuries. In fact, just since 1945, we have had a couple of close calls already.
So life is indeed tenuous. It would be naive to believe otherwise.
Here is what can be criticized... self appointed doomsayers who claim that they KNOW the exact when these things will happen with certainty. False Prophets who create followings using these falsified precise predictions as a form of income and lifestyle. Fear mongering whores, who appeal to basic human insecurity to create empire, power and wealth.
This goes on in many arenas, including the political, environmental, conspiracy theorist, financial press. Fear is actually a far greater motivator than greed, but if combined, make a great marketing campaign.
Thus owning the gold that we will sell you will make you rich when the collapse we predict occurs. (Wouldn't keeping the Gold themselves make more sense, rather than selling it?). Or we alone can provide a "place of safety" for you, but it does come at the cost of your slavery to our hierarchy and system, and a cost to your pocketbook. However, this short term cost will result in your glorious reign and empowerment forever as a KING!
There is a God, and there is a way. Be very aware of the exclusive God Franchisers, and those who claim that he speaks thru them and that you HAVE TO BE ATTACHED TO THEM ALONE. God knows my telephone number, knows I have a Bible, and knows my email address. He really does not these interlopers whatsoever!
It indeed is a dangerous world, but do not be exploited by fools who use this fact to exploit you. Life is about living, growing, expanding in spite of all the obstacles. As Jesus said:“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Scientists also believe that the world will end, they just don't use that inevitable fact to leverage people out of their financial resources, and into bizarre, slavish behavioral patterns!
Pretending to know something that Jesus clearly stated that nobody can know, presuming to be able to explain Jesus' words away, has given lie to the whole Armstrong movement. They lied, and they have continued to lie for the past 40 years. Shame on the people who have allowed them to continue to get away with this, to turn a non-event into perpetual fear-manipulation!
As for the kids, hopefully when they leave home, they will get therapy to overcome the effects of the lies and beatings, enabling them to have some sort of life.
Anonymous 11:36 AM - I can sooo relate. As a young teenager growing up in the WCG, I never dreamed I would live to grow-up to be an adult let alone to be almost 60 years old. I use to sit on my school bus thinking all my classmates and school kids would soon be dead as a result of the German attack on America in January, 1972.
I even have a very vivid memory of looking out the bedroom window of my Laurel, Md. home in the dark of night during the prophetic January week that the 19 year time cycle came to fruition looking to see if I could see the Germans ready to attack my neighborhood.
When the German attack didn't happen, the silence was deafening from the Church. Finally, the letter from Mr. Armstrong in February, 1974 explaining the real significance of the 19 year time cycle. After years of sermons, congregational chat and PT articles, instead of German bombs dropping on America in January 1972, the real significance of January, 1972 was .....drum roll please....God opening up the doors for "the Work" of advertising in Readers Digest!
From then on, the WCG was a three ring circus to me. I could never take it seriously again, and left the Church in 1976 after being rejected 3 years earlier by Ambassador College in 1973. Unfortunately, my family stayed in the Church well after my leaving, and there were times when I was estranged from my mother because of the Church. She died a card carrying Armstrongite in 2009 following the idiot Rod Meredith after the splintering of the Church. When my mother died, I promptly wrote Mr. Meredith a letter requesting that he remove her name from the LCG mailing list, and informed him that his income stream would be going down as a result of my mother's death.
I was shocked to find out how much money my mother gave to the idiot Meredith in her last years. The Living Church of God should have a plague in its HQ building honoring my mother.
The idiot Rod Meredith has been saving "we have 3 to 5 years left" since 1969 when I first heard him say it. He has been saying the same thing for 45 years now. As PT Barnum of circus fame use to say, "You can fool some of the Armstrongite tithe slaves ALL the time".
My parents believed that 1975 would put an end to all our earthly hopes and the plans based on them. When I left Ambassador and started attending a "worldly" college, my father warned me I was making a foolish move because there was no point in making plans that extended past about 1972.
I had mulled things over already. There was a chance the prophecies could be right, and it would all be over in less than ten years. There was a chance I could get run over by a truck the next day. There was a chance they were wrong, and that I would live to be an old man.
Considering the uncertainties, I determined to choose the most satisfying things to do day by day, always remembering the need to avoid actions I would regret on my deathbed, whether I lay in it the next day or or had to live with each decision for seventy or eighty more years.
So far I have lived with those decisions for fifty-five years. As you might expect, I have not completely avoided all regrets. I cannot claim, like Rod Meredith, that I have not committed any major sins, even though my list of commandments is much shorter than his. It consists of only one: Treat other people the way I would like to be treated.
However, in spite of the regrets accumulated along the way, every stage of my life journey since abandoning Armstrongism has been more gratifying than those endless sermons every Saturday, the restrictions the ministers imposed, and the nagging sense of being in the wrong place during my year at Ambassador.
If you reading this are a young person in an ACOG who chafes under the burdens as I did, consider charting your own course instead of following the route mapped out by anyone else. Take my example into account, but don't adopt it without studying many others.
Oh how well I know the feeling this kid has of sadness. I was told as a little child that my friends would all die either from famine, be eaten by their parents or die in war. That I would never graduate from high school, never go to college, never get married and have children, never be able to enjoy the wonders of this world. Instead I would be imprisoned in Petra with thousand of other people being trained by Meredith ans other "true" ministers. 40 years later and these same shits are telling the same lies. Damn them all!
ReplyDeleteWell, even science agrees that the world will end sometime, perhaps some 4 Billion years in the future when the sun cools and then expands larger than the orbit of the Earth.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, there will likely be a number of asteroid or comet collisions that will wipe out life on the planet, or a super volcano will erupt causing global darkness, or perhaps a super Nova of a star within a few hundred light years will spray us with gamma rays killing everything.
While any of the above are possible over the next million years or so, or even in the short term, it would be rather incredible that mankind will be avoid a serious nuclear conflict over the next couple of centuries. In fact, just since 1945, we have had a couple of close calls already.
So life is indeed tenuous. It would be naive to believe otherwise.
Here is what can be criticized... self appointed doomsayers who claim that they KNOW the exact when these things will happen with certainty. False Prophets who create followings using these falsified precise predictions as a form of income and lifestyle. Fear mongering whores, who appeal to basic human insecurity to create empire, power and wealth.
This goes on in many arenas, including the political, environmental, conspiracy theorist, financial press. Fear is actually a far greater motivator than greed, but if combined, make a great marketing campaign.
Thus owning the gold that we will sell you will make you rich when the collapse we predict occurs. (Wouldn't keeping the Gold themselves make more sense, rather than selling it?). Or we alone can provide a "place of safety" for you, but it does come at the cost of your slavery to our hierarchy and system, and a cost to your pocketbook. However, this short term cost will result in your glorious reign and empowerment forever as a KING!
There is a God, and there is a way. Be very aware of the exclusive God Franchisers, and those who claim that he speaks thru them and that you HAVE TO BE ATTACHED TO THEM ALONE. God knows my telephone number, knows I have a Bible, and knows my email address. He really does not these interlopers whatsoever!
It indeed is a dangerous world, but do not be exploited by fools who use this fact to exploit you. Life is about living, growing, expanding in spite of all the obstacles. As Jesus said:“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Scientists also believe that the world will end, they just don't use that inevitable fact to leverage people out of their financial resources, and into bizarre, slavish behavioral patterns!
ReplyDeletePretending to know something that Jesus clearly stated that nobody can know, presuming to be able to explain Jesus' words away, has given lie to the whole Armstrong movement. They lied, and they have continued to lie for the past 40 years. Shame on the people who have allowed them to continue to get away with this, to turn a non-event into perpetual fear-manipulation!
As for the kids, hopefully when they leave home, they will get therapy to overcome the effects of the lies and beatings, enabling them to have some sort of life.
BB
Anonymous 11:36 AM - I can sooo relate. As a young teenager growing up in the WCG, I never dreamed I would live to grow-up to be an adult let alone to be almost 60 years old. I use to sit on my school bus thinking all my classmates and school kids would soon be dead as a result of the German attack on America in January, 1972.
ReplyDeleteI even have a very vivid memory of looking out the bedroom window of my Laurel, Md. home in the dark of night during the prophetic January week that the 19 year time cycle came to fruition looking to see if I could see the Germans ready to attack my neighborhood.
When the German attack didn't happen, the silence was deafening from the Church. Finally, the letter from Mr. Armstrong in February, 1974 explaining the real significance of the 19 year time cycle. After years of sermons, congregational chat and PT articles, instead of German bombs dropping on America in January 1972, the real significance of January, 1972 was .....drum roll please....God opening up the doors for "the Work" of advertising in Readers Digest!
From then on, the WCG was a three ring circus to me. I could never take it seriously again, and left the Church in 1976 after being rejected 3 years earlier by Ambassador College in 1973. Unfortunately, my family stayed in the Church well after my leaving, and there were times when I was estranged from my mother because of the Church. She died a card carrying Armstrongite in 2009 following the idiot Rod Meredith after the splintering of the Church. When my mother died, I promptly wrote Mr. Meredith a letter requesting that he remove her name from the LCG mailing list, and informed him that his income stream would be going down as a result of my mother's death.
I was shocked to find out how much money my mother gave to the idiot Meredith in her last years. The Living Church of God should have a plague in its HQ building honoring my mother.
The idiot Rod Meredith has been saving "we have 3 to 5 years left" since 1969 when I first heard him say it. He has been saying the same thing for 45 years now. As PT Barnum of circus fame use to say, "You can fool some of the Armstrongite tithe slaves ALL the time".
Richard
My parents believed that 1975 would put an end to all our earthly hopes and the plans based on them. When I left Ambassador and started attending a "worldly" college, my father warned me I was making a foolish move because there was no point in making plans that extended past about 1972.
ReplyDeleteI had mulled things over already. There was a chance the prophecies could be right, and it would all be over in less than ten years. There was a chance I could get run over by a truck the next day. There was a chance they were wrong, and that I would live to be an old man.
Considering the uncertainties, I determined to choose the most satisfying things to do day by day, always remembering the need to avoid actions I would regret on my deathbed, whether I lay in it the next day or or had to live with each decision for seventy or eighty more years.
So far I have lived with those decisions for fifty-five years. As you might expect, I have not completely avoided all regrets. I cannot claim, like Rod Meredith, that I have not committed any major sins, even though my list of commandments is much shorter than his. It consists of only one: Treat other people the way I would like to be treated.
However, in spite of the regrets accumulated along the way, every stage of my life journey since abandoning Armstrongism has been more gratifying than those endless sermons every Saturday, the restrictions the ministers imposed, and the nagging sense of being in the wrong place during my year at Ambassador.
If you reading this are a young person in an ACOG who chafes under the burdens as I did, consider charting your own course instead of following the route mapped out by anyone else. Take my example into account, but don't adopt it without studying many others.