Meredith writes in his latest member letter:
Back in the late 1940s and early 50s, I saw how Mr. Armstrong—on the radio and in person—described how Germany would rise again and become the leading nation of a coming European Empire. How the United States and Britain would be brought down from our pride and prestige if we did not deeply repent of breaking God’s laws. How we would soon begin to lose control of the vital “sea gates” which God has promised the descendants of Abraham (Genesis 22:17). Later, Mr. Armstrong predicted again and again that the hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, tanks and guns would be withdrawn from the eastern European nations and that the Berlin Wall would come crashing down! I tell you sincerely that all of these specific prophecies Mr. Armstrong proclaimed have come about or are in the process of coming about right now.Meredith says this after talking about the "sea gates" around the world:
Herbert W. Armstrong had the faith and the courage to “stand alone” and proclaim these powerful events in a way that no one else was able to do!Yep, faith and courage to talk about "a strong hand from someplace." He was too embarrassed to talk about his god and had to use coded language so he would not offend people. The main purpose of the creation of the Ambassador International Cultural Foundations was to give him an "in" in countries around the world that would not allow an American cult to otherwise enter. Of course bringing a blank checkbook with him to buy his way into countless countries helped a lot. Who needs the Bible when a checkbook and some Steuben Crystal do a great job in opening doors.
No one in the Church of God had the one on one contact with HWA that Meredith had, to so he claims. Even Dave Pack cannot compare. Because Meredith's track record is one of massive failures, he has to trot out HWA as a safety net.
In the early years of this Work, I had the opportunity to assist Mr. Armstrong for thousands of hours, to have hundreds of meals with him, and to get to know him as a “second father” as God used him to help build the Work of God. Now, at age 86, I am trying to carry on that Work with all my heart and with all my strength.He then has to attack Christianity:
Dear brethren and co-workers, are you personally “stirred to action” by the total collapse of nominal Christianity in our nations, and of the increasing downgrading of decency and human dignity in our present society under the sway of Satan the Devil? Are you, personally, willing to go “all out” to help build the final Work of God which will eventually SHAKE this world before His Son returns?I would think Meredith would have look into the mirror and caught a glimpse of the total collapse of the Church of God over the last 40 some years. Ever since the great Petra fiasco, the church has been shrilling down. The the Tkach empire dealt the deathblow to the church. The church ruptured into hundreds and hundreds of little personality cults all doing nothing. The church cannot even get along with its fellow brethren in other COG's so how in the world will it EVER shake the world?
He then ends with this:
Certainly, all of our lives will eventually come to an end. We will return to the dust. In the sight of God, what will be your legacy and your level of commitment to reach this world with His message at the time of the end? Let all of us do all we can with our time, our talents and our resources to help get Christ’s message to this terribly mixed-up world while we can!What will rod Meredith's legacy be? Being publicly rebuked by Herbert Armstrong? Being sued by Leona McNair? Being sued by the Scarborough's? For stealing all of Global's money, the bankrupting it? For forcing Raymond and Eve McNair to get on their knees in from of him begging forgiveness? For the Milwaukee church slaughter? For ripping apart hundred and hundreds of marriages? For his blatant nepotism? For encouraging Bob Thiel to believe he is some kind of a prophet?
Yep, that is some legacy to be proud of.
21 comments:
Would someone please tell poor Rod that having spent long hours with Herbert is NOTHING TO BRAG ABOUT? It adds NOTHING that would make us want to follow you. It gives you NOTHING whereby we would want to listen to you. NOTHING!!!
If you were one of the peons, one of the put-upon local members who was sending in too much money, just being able to see Herbert in person, "live and on stage" was supposed to be such a huge event in your life. Travel 500 miles? Be so far back you could barely see him? Listen to others prattle about how great it was to be there? Hear someone make some goofy statement about it being a "Mini-Feast"? Accomplish nothing else the whole weekend? . . . Something to forget - not remember.
Rod, and Davey Pack and all the others, want you to know that their experience of the man was far greater. Okay, Rod, I get what you THINK you can claim, but I don't see it like you do.
It means that you spent tons of time around a criminal who lied to me, stole from me, and got me to ruin my life and alienate family members while doing it. As we say here, how's that for a legacy?
Unfortunately, the reason why Meredith had a following to start Global, and the reason why he still had a following when he unscrupulously bankrupted Global and started Living, is because those are people who idolize Herbert Armstrong to such an extent that they literally think Meredith's being in HWA's presence for thousands of hours gives him the halo of disciple cum apostle, in just the same way as they think being in the presence of Jesus for thousands of hours gave those 1st century disciples cum apostles halos. As long as you remain loyal, that is. If you are not—or if Meredith simply declares that you are not—then you deserve to be strung up like Judas. And judging by the nature of the brouhahas that have happened recently in Living, he would if he could too.
The other COGs who are led by a single guy, like Pack, Flurry, Weinland, Thiel, etc, each have a core following of people who are convinced that their cult leader is the one guy who legitimately inherited HWA's "mantle," too, or else are convinced that their dear cult leader is somehow special in some other specifically Armstrongist way.
I feel sorry for those followers though, because none of their leaders are special, of course. HWA wasn't special either. He wasn't Jesus. He wasn't "Elijah." He wasn't an apostle. He never had a mantle to pass on in the first place. He was just a washed up advertising executive with dreams of being a bigshot.
Idolatry much?
........
Interesting how the start of LivingCOG and its subsequent problems P R O V E D beyond a doubt to those of us who could spot unChristian Behavoir(as in the blatant stealing, the lies, the conniving....)that we were right to run bail out!
LivingCOG members were just following a man all along...sorry they couldn't see it..
He was never a Christian, let alone a Minister.
He's proved that to all of us....
He could have spent "thousands of hours" with Jesus Christ Himself.
Play Acting for power's sake is still Play Acting...
And now for any of you Real Christians out there....Please Seek God. Soon...
You need God, not a dictator who pretents to be a minister.
Of course, he had to end it with a plea for money.
"He wasn't an apostle. He never had a mantle to pass on in the first place. He was just a washed up advertising executive with dreams of being a bigshot."
And, he succeeded due to his audacity and super-salesman personality. He was a phenomenon who happened upon the scene at just the right time and capitalized on what was available to him in mass communications. It's still going on in religion and politics and people are just as gullible and malleable today as they were then. I know. I was one of those malleable and stupid dupes.
Allen C. Dexte
Meredith's legacy? Let's check back in about 50 years. Between now and then we shall see more family disfunction, a splinter church dividing into even smaller and weaker subsets, congregations that are growing older and poorer, harsher oppression, more vindictiveness, even less love and no manifestations of the spirit. Ministers will fight over a shrinking pool of tithe sheep that grows smaller/poorer every year. Meredith's legacy will be broken families, broken lives, oppression, poverty and depression.
Rod lies :"Later, Mr. Armstrong predicted again and again that the hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, tanks and guns would be withdrawn from the eastern European nations and that the Berlin Wall would come crashing down!"
Now that is BULLSHIT! Herbie NEVER said a damned thing about the wall coming down. Rods lying legacy will be shit in th eyes of his own members, and you know what? His grave will be covered in urine like Herbies was. This man is a useless self serving sob that deserves his lake of fire he is so fond of.
Germany has the 40th largest army in the world at about 105,000. Upon taking over the USA, this would leave 2,100 Nazi's in each of the individual USA state. Further subdividing the state's Nazi's into the individual cities, towns, and rural areas would probably leave less than one Nazi per town, city, and rural area. You could probably gang up on the individual Nazi and beat the crap out of them.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/armies.htm
General George Patton: "We are fighting the wrong people over here".
If Patton was right, then:
1. America was on the wrong side. That means we were NOT the good guys.
2. Hitler was fighting the right fight, and he saved most of Europe from Communism.
3. If America was on the right side Eastern Europe would not have been communist.
4. And, therefore there might have been no cold war.
Anon wrote:
"Would someone please tell poor Rod that having spent long hours with Herbert is NOTHING TO BRAG ABOUT? It adds NOTHING that would make us want to follow you. It gives you NOTHING whereby we would want to listen to you. NOTHING!!!"
Yes - for you, me and most people reading this blog.
But the name (H.W.) Armstrong still holds an aura of legend and a kind of magic for many if not most of those still in the COGs. He was the guru, and if you can attach your legacy to his, it still carries significant weight.
But the aura is fading. A whole generation is arising that "knew not Armstrong" but only heard about him from their parents -- and imagine yet another generation of separation in time. Eventually it won't mean much of anything to anyone even in COG.
So Meredith brags how right after World War II he heard a voice on the radio proclaim that Germany would rise up again and he just believed that?
The Berlin Wall was built in 1961. That was about eight years after HWA and Hoeh had started fixating on 1975 as the date for Christ's return with the Great Tribulation proclaimed to begin in 1972. HWA's organization was preaching complete nonsense.
It was also about eight years after Meredith was ordained in December 1952. By that time in 1961 Meredith had invested his entire professional life upon HWA's Radio Church of God organization. By that time he had a strong motive to prop up Armstrongism.
Meredith implies that some great expansion of the organization will soon occur. Nonsense. That is not going to happen for the simple fact that HWA's organization expanded its presence to a large degree saturating its potential market share. Now it has found its niche and it cannot expand out of it. Society collectively pays no attention to Armstrongism because it is unable to attract people not least because of its many failed prophecies.
Meredith has long insinuated that some great expansion of the organization ("the work") will somehow magically happen and soon the entire world will listen and be witnessed to about LCG's (false) prophecies of the future. That will never happen. LCG may be able to maintain itself but can't expand exponentially in a magical manner like that. It is nonsense. Magical thinking.
"General George Patton: "We are fighting the wrong people over here"."
Did you learn that from your Nazi-colouring book?
It seems the only things that get updated or re-circulated in Armstrongism is all of the LIES that had the best chance of making it look better than it ever was. So Redfox712 or anybody else who knows, where are some urls for the proof of HWA's false prophecies?
RCM is right that people should give some thought to the legacy that they will leave behind.
In the WCG, HWA seemed to make some good points (and some wrong date guesses). Nevertheless, his own son GTA did not seem to care about the legacy of fooling around that he would leave behind.
In the LCG, RCM seems to make some good points (and some very bad ones too on top of his continually wrong “3 to 5 more years” date guesses). Nevertheless, his own children do not seem to care about the legacy that they will leave behind.
The tendency seems to be for self-appointed church leaders to give their own children easy, high-paying, church jobs with authority over others, and pretend that they are so important and indispensable that God himself cannot get by without their help, even though they do nothing but cause trouble and set bad examples.
"For forcing Raymond and Eve McNair to get on their knees in from of him begging forgiveness?"
What happened? This is new to me.
It was reported in many places that after Raymond along with several in Global Church voted to remove Meredith from his position Meredith exposed un unbridled fury. His anger was so fierce that Eve and Raymond went before him and got on their knees and begged forgiveness, with trembling lips, of Meredith. It was soon after this that Meredith took all of Global's money and left to form LCG.
"Did you learn that from your Nazi-colouring book?"
I read that sales figures of books in the USA are good, but only because adult colouring books have been selling very well.
The ACOGs would do well to exploit this trend.
Besides colouring books, the splinters could also sell coloured pencils for profit.
Here's an example-
1) PCG offers an adult colouring book to members for $19.95, entitled, "Herbert W. Armstrong's Prayer Rock" complete with 8 coloured pencils, and there's even a contest involved that's got a reward of fondling the HWA candelabra while drinking Dom Pérignon from Steuben crystal tumblers.
2) Many people buy the colouring book, do the deed, and send in their entries.
3) Contestants are sent a letter which tells them that "Your entry received high praise from our judges, but many other entries are also excellent" ... "We now offer you the opportunity to buy our latest colouring book titled, 'Herbert W. Armstrong finds The Truth at the Public Library' with 27 coloured pencils for only $29.95, with which which you can enter our NEWEST colouring contest!"
4) Many people buy the second colouring book, do the deed, and send in their entries.
5) Contestants are then sent a letter which tells them that "Thank you for your entry! Your entry received very high praise from our judges, but many other entries are also excellent" ... "We now offer you the opportunity to buy our latest colouring book titled, 'The Story of Joseph and his Coat of Many Colors' with 128 coloured pencils for only $119.95, with which you can enter our NEWEST colouring contest!"
(And, on and on it could go, selling more and more schlock to the rubes- as many popular Chistian TV preachers do.)
Anonymous said, "Would someone please tell poor Rod that having spent long hours with Herbert is NOTHING TO BRAG ABOUT?"
MY COMMENT: Why doesn't Rod spin it and claim his exile to Hawaii was a perk, or treat reward?
Another Anonymous said, "Interesting how the start of LivingCOG and its subsequent problems P R O V E D beyond a doubt to those of us who could spot unChristian Behavoir(as in the blatant stealing, the lies, the conniving....)"
MY COMMENT: Other major splinters like the UCG leaders also have blood on their hands and souls when it comes to the "blatant stealing, lies and conniving" they've been guilty of in order to retain their positions of power over their minions.
Well, 5:44, now imagine the myriad Muslims who currently live amongst us. What if it turns out that they really are supportive of some sort of sharia revolution, as opposed to being simple participants in a peaceful faith? Their sheer numbers ought to give everyone pause for thought. Like the powerful pit bull who plays docilely with children, such ones could very well be subject to some sort of catalyst in the future, inflicting sudden and catastrophic damage. But, the ACOGs would rather focus on Germans and Blacks.
Well, 8:31, yes. Any indoctrinated group is capable of being "subject to some sort of catalyst in the future", and "inflicting catastrophic damage"
I'm reminded how Christians have done so-
(Just ask the remaining native peoples of the North American continent.
And there are many other examples)
But of course, it was ok because they were Christian, and their raping, conquering and genocide was performed in Christ's name, and they had solid Biblical support and precedent.
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