Dave Pack is no fan of Joseph Tkach Sr. He sound just like Bitter Bob Thiel.
Mr. Armstrong died, and a rather crude, ignorant, poorly spoken man, whose sermons were prepared for him by others—all of them—poorly educated, terrible grammar…arose, and in no time, people sprinted from the truth, in ways they would have fought you to the death, practically, if you had told them six months before Mr. Armstrong died, that in five years or 10 years, you’ll have Christmas trees up. Scores of thousands of them—but they did.
I’ve looked at Mr. Armstrong’s successor…I knew him and talked to him many a time—ignorant, couldn’t write, couldn’t talk without reading. Most people don’t know that man never wrote one co-worker/donor letter in his life—he never wrote anything. I know the man who wrote it. I know the man who wrote everything. He never wrote an article. He never wrote a booklet. He never wrote a letter. He never wrote the notes to his own sermon. He’s the closest thing to having nothing going for him you ever knew.
My best friend was in his close circle. I heard all kinds of stuff, and yet he turned people…like taking candy from a baby. It’s easy to turn people. This guy wasn’t some master debater, some sorcerer, some spiritual David Copperfield who came along. HE HAD NOTHING GOING FOR HIM. No one could figure out why he was the Pastor General, and the answer is God wanted Herbert Armstrong to pick him, as a type of a somebody as bad as that, as weak, and foolish, and biblically ignorant as he was could turn tens of thousands of God’s people on a dime, and have them sprint over a cliff like lemmings on the way to the sea. Will you be instructed by that? The answer is they never changed their hearts. Now that will be a warning to all for the future……
ITS A MIRACLE!...
ReplyDeleteFor once Pack is right and correct in his observation!
Well..finally something Dave n I mostly agree on... Except Dave also is no better in his biblical scholarship n training and als a mere bible reader and badly done.
ReplyDeleteNone of the WCG or Splinter ministry was properly trained in anything but reading it and proof texting to prove their preconceived notions of it. I had to teach myself over 40 years what they and many fundamentalists refuse to see.
ReplyDeleteEven a watch running 12 minutes slow every day will eventually give you the right time. Good luck though in knowing when that moment is.
ReplyDeleteAnd so it is, David Pack has said something more or less correct, although the language he used is somewhat delirious sounding.
It would have been better for him to state it simply:
Joseph Tkach, Senior was a psychopath.
Simple. Direct. Accurate.
Dennis is right. The Ambassador education we all got was nothing more than memorizing the canned party line. It took years of study and reflection to get to where I am today, and I'm not stupid enough to believe I understand it all, but I understand a whole lot more than I did back then.
ReplyDeleteTkach was just another hack using a church to line his pockets.
ReplyDeleteHe lied to people : "nothing is changing" while taking their money.
Like most cults he disfellowshipped people who questioned his lies.
You have to ask when was a liar ever a good leader of anything?
Those who stayed in WCG had no problem with a liar being in charge and that speaks volumes about them.
Those who splintered had their own set of problems.
HWA lived the high life and built ridiculous monuments. His personal wealth and private air force was hardly Christian. He was no better than any other televangelist.
This didnt bother most people at all!
So WCG had those un-phased by a liar and the splinters had pretty much the same thing except they recognized it in Tkach but not HWA.
Sad, very sad for us all.
When I found out that Tkach's entire background and worldwar II record was concocted by ghostwriters I was pretty upset.
ReplyDeleteIt immediately made sense that he didn't look me in the eye when I briefly talked to him.
I have that effect on liars when meeting in person.
It is my opinion that Stanley Rader personally chose his friend Tkach to end the franchise since it had completed its mission.
Stanley Rader had put in writing that there would be no successor to HWA. Rader was a paid consultant to the wcg until 2001. Tkach was his friend. The WCG mission had ended after the Cold War. All the bills of the foundation and the auditorium were paid off at the exact moment the musical series ended. They pulled the plug. Everything else was for tax purposes and end it in an orderly way.
nck
I had several exchanges over the years with Joe Tkach Sr. and on one occasion, he spoke sharply to me. But, even so, I liked and respected him as a person, he always looked me in the eye when speaking to me, and ultimately I found him to be more than fair. He knew I called him "old T-k" and actually addressed himself by that moniker on one occasion in a sermon. He had an endearing sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, I was with John Trechak and Rich Jeszeck on the night that Joe Tkach and Elmer McElroy were searching for John to disfellowship him. That ended abruptly when John decided to take a walk around the block with his unloaded and cased hunting rifle. We laughed our butts off when John told us Joe had yelled "Gun, Elmer!" as they suddenly sped off.
I believe Dave Pack has gone to the same extremes in his ad hominem attack on Mr. Tkach as he does in everything he ever describes. Way, way excessive, beyond all reason. Obviously, anyone holding to the original doctrines would have an unfavorable opinion of JT, that is a given. But, HWA chose him, Stan Rader liked him (that's a difficult accomplishment right there!), and who knows what they had in mind in passing over poor Dave Pack, who most likely thought it should have been him.
BB
According to Aaron Dean, one of the reasons HWA settled on Tkach as successor was precisely because he knew Tkach to not be wildly intelligent, and thus felt he'd probably be consulting the Advisory Council for major decisions.
ReplyDeleteBut I've got a question for those of you familiar with workings at Pasadena and now amongst the splinter COGs... is it really that unusual for a ranked figure (above the average field pastor) to have prepared sermon material at hand? I find it hard to believe that Tkach was unique in that respect.
Joseph Tkach, Senior was a psychopath.
ReplyDeleteAny evidence for this claim?
To me, Dave is spot on in this article. Any proof Joe was a psycho? Sure, like Dave said, Joe got members to 'sprint over a cliff' and lose their eternal lives.
ReplyDeleteOnly a psychopath could do something so grotesque, the 'you shall know them by their fruits' thingy.
That Dave can see clearly on this issue, is proof that he must privately know the truth about his own bad character and conduct.
I wouldn't mind at all if all or parts of Tkach's sermon were prepared or scripted or researched.
ReplyDeleteI was talking about the research done on his former job in Chigaco and his WWII record that in official WCG publications was listed as having served under fire while in reality the ship never saw battle. And more such lies. So even if that was scripted by an overzealous student historian to not detract it or even publish it in official media makes me feel his entire leadership was scripted.
If BB says it is hard to befriend Rader. Than I would suspect Tkach was Rader's puppet.
And his christian burial with the son presiding over it proves to me that Tkach had absolute loyalty to Rader. I mean Rader served 360 days per year with absolute loyalty. And then have people like that have presiding over your funeral when the edifice you served is reduced to ashes? There must have been a deep rooted trust between them.
HWA's letter to Roderick Meredith is often quoted here. In the letter HWA states that RM will never be the leader of the church because "frankly" he lacks the charisma and drawing power a wcg leader needs."
Now that statement makes it hard for me to believe that HWA was the one who chose Tkach.
nck
Nck, I believe that the quote which has been most remembered over the years from that letter was that Rod "rubbed the fur the wrong way".
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, there seems to be a need to place Herbert Armstrong on a pedestal. Some won't acknowledge his character flaws, his mistakes, his uncontrollable temper, elitism and aloofness, or his need to be wealthy. Therefore, in the minds of some, as someone so close to God, how could he have been responsible for a Joe Tkach? There is one school of thought that Mr. Tkach was simply carrying out HWA's instructions in making all of the changes. The pinnacle of HWA's ministry (1975) failed. It is entirely possible that after years of reflection, travel, and interaction with all of the powerful and elite people whom HWA met, that he might have seen a need for correction and change, but delegated that responsibility to a successor. If so, an awful lot of people have failed to catch the vision, have blown it, and have divvied up and destroyed the man's life work.
There had to be a reason for a man who thought his mission was to warn the world about 1975 to not thunder some sort of end time warning to the international dignitaries with whom he dealt. Why did he wuss out on that? It's always been a mystery to me. Would Elijah have suddenly switched from gloom and doom to a gospel of peace and understanding? Probably yes, but only if something had suddenly convinced him that he had been preaching the wrong message! 1975 had failed. God had not validated it. So how could HWA have repackaged it and preached it to his new and improved audience? The answer is, he could not. So he modified it, and secularized it. Billy Graham did not need to do this as he met with similarly powerful people.
BB
What's the mystery?
ReplyDeleteHWA was a big-time asshole.
Mr. Tkach was an asshole.
Billy Graham was also a raving asshole.
BB
ReplyDeletePeople put Herbie on a pedestal even today because they love his mix of truth and lies. Actually, it's not him that they are putting on the pedestal, but this package deal of truth and error. So much for the bible being the churches reference point.
Dennis, Gary, any comments on the ghostwriter question?
ReplyDelete"Rader was a paid consultant to the wcg until 2001. Tkach was his friend."
ReplyDelete"Than I would suspect Tkach was Rader's puppet."
Staff to be members first,... sejaM
IIRC, the wild stories of a young Joe Tkach firing antiaircraft guns against Japanese kamikazes were all sprung from the fertile imagination of Gerald Waterhouse. I suppose one should not be surprised, as much use as WCG in general made of exaggeration.
ReplyDeleteThe official WCG "Tkach Bio" publications that I remember were just carefully worded puff pieces that didnt go quite so far, but were misleading in other ways. They reflect what was probably a serious concern at the time; that HWA had appointed a relatively unknown individual to this vaunted position. You probably remember some of the conspiracy theories that came along shortly after, that Tkach had actually killed HWA to get the job (which the events dont support, but the idea was borne out of the same puzzlement).
As for HWAs letter to RCM, that was not written in 1985 to explain to Spanky why HWA chose Tkach over him, so I see little relevance in it. It was a furious dressing-down written in hopes of getting Spanky to stop causing problems at a time when succession was not so important to its writer.
Well BB,
ReplyDeleteIt might be my professional blinders that I read the letter differently.
Mentioned qualifications:
Management Style: "Rubbing the fur the wrong way"
Leading the Church: "In brutal frankness, you lack the charisma to lead God's work You do not attract-as I said before.."
I don't put HWA on a pedestal, but I acknowledge him being the founder of the edifice. (Which is a secular position.) I do understand that the role model part is under scrutiny. I personally judge HWA by secular corporate standards. (The "David was bad too" argument gets worn out doesn't it?) I compare it to the likes of Steve Jobs or Walt Disney or others in the corporate world with asinine character toward their co-workers, but in the end are judged by some (corporate) achievement or measure of success.
I do agree with the entire 2nd paragraph. I believe HWA directed Tkach to make ammendments and Tkach did very well for three years in making updates and upgrades in the spirit of the founder.
Now, I can only understand your 3rd paragraph in light of the fact that you had already left the fold. HWA was pretty clear to world leaders on the nuclear threat during the cold war. (that is on video but I understand if you're not going to watch old hog jowls) The stated purpose was to be a witness, not to convert anyone. Billy Graham's stated mission was to convert the entire world otherwise we would go to hell. Hwa's definition of hell was self imposed by man.
Speaking about Elijah. I believe that in between the doom and gloom he was to "turn the hearts" of people.
But you are right. HWA was speaking to Chinese leaders earlier than Billy Graham. HWA and Rader praised the Chinese effort to try well for their people, talked about the unseen hand, which is trade (for anyone with some sort of high school degree outside the USA at least) and of course did not talk about Jesus since that might have offended the chinese leadership. Billy Graham of course did not have such qualms and talked freely about Jesus. But again they both had a different mission statement one was to witness Jesus in order to save souls the other was to witness mans inability to solve problems and so doing usher in an acceptance for a better world (1930's hollywood style).
nck
It was common policy in Pasadena for evangelists and ministers to have staff that wrote things they put their name to and took credit for. This was not unique to Tkach Sr.
ReplyDeleteMakes total sense to me, Gary. I have a hard time believing any of them wouldn't take advantage of potential resources like that. Tkach's was only evident because he wasn't the most convincing reader / speaker.
DeleteRSK.
ReplyDeleteThe letter does reflect what HWA seemed to find of importance for a leader (next to the list of biblical qualifications (Timothy I believe).
Yes, I remember the stories how Tkach threw demon posessesed persons from his office. (Not BB listening to his story. :-))
I don't understand sejaM 12:08 posting. Perhaps an allusion at the all time peak number of members in WCG, which amounted to 3 or four officers of the corporation. Perhaps the 1980 Colorado sole had more members.
nck
IMO, HWA and the ministers he ordained should all have eaten Graham crackers.
DeleteAlso, I believe we've just perfectly illustrated why pseudepigraphic writings are no big deal to them. Plagiarism and ghost writing were a way of life for these challenged "teachers".
BB
Since we are in the gunlap of the year of our lord 2016 and we are wrapping up for a clean slate next year I would like to take this last minute opportunity to commend you for the use of the most original word of 2016...
ReplyDelete"pseudepigraphic"
That is great!
nck