A blast from the past and still relevant today!
I have met a lot of people who are never wrong. They never take back that which they spoke which proved to be either stupid, inane or simply wrong. They waffle, redefine and deny, but they are never wrong. These people are incapable of saying "oops," much less, "I'm sorry," You find them everywhere. They might be a pastor, a politician, a CEO or a President. They might be your mother- in-law, father-in-law, dad, mom, brother or sister. Of course, it could be you, but you won't notice that. One common thing they share is that they are NEVER wrong. Of course they are wrong, misinformed or just plain stupid in the way they view and filter their world, but they are never wrong in fact. Their inability to say "I am sorry," or "I was wrong," is legendary in the family, the church, the office or the government and the damage inflicted on those that fall victim of these people can be humorous, mildly annoying or catastrophic.
Ministers are not above the inability to say I am sorry or I was wrong either. I pastored in a denomination that was never wrong from the top down, but always wrong from the bottom up. Come to think of it, that sounds like the government too at the moment or maybe all moments. Countless, and I mean countless ministers have predicted the exact time that Jesus would return and have been wrong, oh let's say...100% of the time. I can't recall one "I was mistaken." I recall many, "God is giving us more time. I was right but just had the timing wrong."
We here on Banned have noted for YEARS the Splits, Splinters and Slivers, silly and more clever than intelligent big heads with fantastical ideas about themselves and the ridiculous ideas that they see themselves spoken of in the scripture as Elijahs, Zerubbabels, Apostles, Prophets , Witnesses and Joshuas of all sorts. We have well documented Dave Pack outright blunders in scripture and his ideas of prophecy especially concerning himself and who he thinks he is. NOTHING the man has said would be true is actually true and never will be true. Has he had amble time and reason to admit he was mistaken? Yep. Ever hear the man say "I was mistaken."? Nope and you never will. Will any on the Council of Agreers ever admit that Dave was mistaken and they themselves mistaken for not noting his mistakes? Nope...Doubt it.
Will Almost Arrested and Soon to be Probably Be Martyred Bitter Bob Thiel ever uttered the words, "I was mistaken"? Nope. Men like that are never mistaken so why would it cross their weak minds to admit it? Bob is very mistaken about many things.
Will Rod Meredith suck it up and admit he and his advisers have blundered badly with regards to their current dilemma in public and member relations? I doubt it. It is going to be a painful lesson but no real man in LCG will take personal responsibility for the mess. Satan will get the blame and outsiders will be said to just want to persecute the True Church. Somehow it will all fit into proof of the end times again.
Whole denominations have mislead the faithful on a myriad of topics but to say "We're sorry, we were wrong," is just not something even the humble in Jesus can come up with very often. Saying one is sorry is usually something that occurs only after one is caught or trapped. It's has taken over 400 years to absolve the then heretic Galileo from thinking the earth revolved around the sun and that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system, but maybe not the universe.
Churches hold on to their fables and apologies for them way beyond what most normal institutions do. How long will it take to apologize when Church officials decide that Limbo is not the place where the unsaved babies go, like they know, when they announce this reality to the faithful? You can bet you will hear things like, "It was never a doctrine," or "It never was an official teaching," but you won't get away with that kind of "we're sorry," with the average person who was either tormented or only mildly comforted by this when they lost a child prior to the arrival of the sprinklers. Too many ministers have the subconscious belief that if they are wrong, God will correct them and, of course, any apologies or admissions of wrongness will be spoke privately to the deity. They will, however, announce to you that they have done this, but you will never really know. Ministers need to apologize to people for it is people they offend at times.
Some of us can't say we are sorry or we were wrong because we falsely believe that somehow it a weakness to admit such things. More than one psychologist has noted that "Fool me once..shame, shame...on...you," is not so much a gaff as the deeply psychological inability to say "shame on me," which is another way of not being able to admit to being wrong or a committing a misstep. To choke on the words expressing shame, sorrow, apology or being mistaken is not a good sign when we are talking about mature leadership. To come across as anything less than human is not going to win points with the not as stupid as one might think average church goer or American.
We lie when we can't admit we are wrong, mistaken or perhaps have another agenda that we do not wish disturbed. I think Americans are beginning to believe that this last reason is more the case with Iraq and perhaps Iran. Even church goers are beginning to question the motives of those that demand too much of their money for the Lord and remind you that you can be "dismembered" when you ask uncomfortable questions about doctrine or the Bible itself. "Just trust me," is no longer going to work among the informed. Lie Snickers, the Internet is a gift from God Himself.
We live in a time where Presidents, Politicians and Pastors who have the inability to say that they have been misguided, unguided, mistaken and plainly wrong is endangering not only our intellectual health, but our lives on the planet. Suck it up guys. Just say it when it dawns on you. Allow it to dawn on you from time to time. "I was wrong, I am sorry."
When was the last time you heard your executive, judicial, senatorial, congressional or pastoral leaders say "I was wrong," "We were wrong," "I am sorry"? From "I did not have sex with that woman," to "those weapons of mass destruction must be around here somewhere," just saying "I'm sorry," seems the hardest thing to do. Give it a try anyway before you kill us all.
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26 comments:
Dennis, Astute observations of what has pervaded WCG and splinters always. Having grown up in that quagmire of deceptions and mistruths, I witnessed that often as a child and throughout my AC and Pasadena years, continuing uneasily into this decade until I'd had enough of the arrogance, hypocrisy, lies and deceit and finally, belatedly, walked away after over 50 years of believing the "one true church."
In sermon #972 recorded Jan 14, 2017 and posted on the LCG sermon's site, LCG's pompous and never-wrong Richard F. Ames proclaims that HWA's "1975 in Prophecy" was not meant to be taken literally as predicting anything, as setting any dates, but merely as an answer to those smug futurists who predicted a "helicopter on every lawn by 1975." He indicated that many members took it wrong and set dates, but no, not HWA and HQ. HWA and his minions weren't wrong, but the members were the ones who set dates. His lame lies and deceptive spin were so blatantly false and unbelievable I had to listen twice since upon first hearing I couldn't believe he'd actually had the arrogance to deny the facts of what many of us witnessed back then. I recall hearing Ames as a 9-11 year old in Akron, OH, and thought then that he was pompous, condescending and boring, as he still is. Some things in the COGs never change, they just get spun deceptively to where wrong becomes right.
Primarily, I blame the media for politicians refusing to admit they are wrong. If a politician so much as hints he might have made a mistake the always-wrong-themselves media attack them ruthlessly. They couldn't admit to anything even if they wanted to.
Employers and PCG ministers are never wrong. No matter how much they mess things up due to their own stupidity, it's the employee who gets fired or the member who gets kicked out and his life ruined. Heck, the gods-in-power never even bother to get the facts. They know so much already--especially about how great they are--that getting the facts is a waste of their precious time.
Well, now we can read 1975 in prophecy on the web and see that they are lying when they deny what they said.
Considering the three math equations they taught us in Second Year Bible Class in support of the 1975 date, and the fact that the entire church banked on those dates, if the inside joke amongst HWA and his top aids was that this was only his adaptation or co-opting of the portrait painted by futurists, then it was his sacred duty as a leader to correct church members' misconceptions before they got out of hand. Basically, his prophecy failed, and he backpedalled to save his work, and to save face. As Dennis reminded us, he failed to take the high road, which would have been honestly admitting that he had been wrong.
The revisionists of today have either forgotten the truth they lived up until '72-'75, or they deliberately lie, as they fan the flames, and attempt to continue the sense of urgency that facilitates on-going extortion. These are the people who taught us to take their every word as if it had come directly from Jesus Christ. You can't ever admit to being wrong and still have people believe that. Fortunately, we're smart, and figured that out. They just don't realize it.
BB
Revisionism is the process of getting the lies out of history after enough time has passed that adults should be able to face the truth.
Byker Bob, would you please post the three math equations. If possible, post references to those equations in published RCG/WCG literature. This would once and for all expose Ames and other revisionists for what they are.
It is interesting to note that the booklet 1975 intended for the general public defenitely did not set a date.
However the illuminati at AC were by BB s testimony taught 3 ways to calculate a date for the rapture.
The general church membership bu mu knowledge was only aware of the 19 year time cycle.
Kind of like the esoteric mysteries in the Compendium that were hard to acquire for an eleven year old kid like myself asking the adults to deliver it to me for further inquiry and comparison to my public library research.
By the time I was 13 I figured that the entire wcg teachings on race were flawed as compared to my science magazine subscription. By the time I was 15 I figured the entire apocalyptic time line to be flawed since according to my pastor a nuclear war would precede the world tomorrow while my science magazine said that it would take a million years to clean up after a nuclear war.
I found the resurection theory for holy roman empire tintillating, bu found no evidence we were expieriencing the final tenth.
I was done very quickly with the idea that this was a viable church but liked it as long as old Herbert was around as a master story teller. After his passing I got bored and walked away never returning never answering a call to my old friends never engaging in any religious ceremony in all the headquarters of most of the world religions I scour like professor Langdon or Indiana Jones all over this blue planet. I moved on loving the world and its inhabitants and the stories they tell for comfort.
Nck
Nck, you are one of those who just abandons old friends?
NCK, the booklet did set dates in both a direct and general way, with the intent being the apocalypse was clearly centered on those dates. Altho the exact setting of that date was not directly, unequivocally stated, the intent is clear to anyone with a grasp of spelling and grammar.
The three math equations involved 1) Assuming there are 6,000 years for man, and 1,000 years for God. Then, taking the church-approved hypothetical date for creation (based on their correction of Ussher's Chronology, as opposed to Jewish sources for whom the current year is 5777), and subtracting that creation date from 6,000. That put the end at 1975, and backdating 3-1/2 years timed the arrival of the Germans sometime in 1972.
2) Two 19 year time cycles for Paul, so two 19 year time cycles for HWA. They timed these from HWA's first big radio broadcast, again bringing up the same date.
3) The third equation concerned a more complex scenario involving their speculation regarding the times of the Gentiles, and while I've forgotten the finer details, it took them to the same date.
I don't know whether all three of these ever appeared together in any specific booklet or magazine, but all three were discussed separately from time to time in Bible Study and Sabbath Services.
We were taught them in Second Year Bible at Ambassador College in Pasadena, and my classmate Glenn who also posts here and was sitting in the same class on the same day has also corroborated it in the past. My brother, who graduated from Big Sandy, also recalls having been taught them while he was a student. It's something that we all eagerly lapped up and accepted at that time.
The ministers were also reading the news department's digest of world events each week at Bible Study, supposedly demonstrating by pick and choose that we were in the final countdown. You should have heard the commotion a few years earlier when they heard Barry McGuire's top 40 hit "Eve of Destruction." That made it into the weekly news report as well!
BB
If someone says the end will come within 10 (for example) years, they are setting a date. It's the date the article was written or published plus 10 years. Even if they do not state a particular date (like Jan 1, 1975), they still set a date.
By the way, the Radio/Worldwide Church of God had a history of treating inconvenient elements in the same ways as the Russians did in their purges. Expunge all memory. They did this not only with 1972-75, but with books and articles written by GTA, pro-segregation statements in the founding documents for AC and Imperial, the STP, and other things which don't immediately come to mind.
You get some insights into the lack of respect which they had for legitimate and truthful history through such concoctions as "A True History of the True Church", by knowing what types of historians they cited whenever they did get around to using footnotes (Hislop, Velikovsky), and by their selective memory of HWA's Depression Era and World War II vintage prophecies. Their major paradigm has always been that the end (literally and figuratively) justifies the means. They'll say and do anything to promote their agenda. If peoples' lives didn't get messed up in the process, it'd be hilarious to watch.
BB
2.15 PM
Well put. Herb get saying 'we don't set dates' when for all intents and purposes he did. This protected him and his church from legal liability. He used the guile he acquired from his advertising training to exercise power without accountability.
The JW's also believed at some point that 1975 marked 6000 years since Adam...
http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/1975.php
I still don't know for sure who stole from who...
It is interesting that before the end of his life Velikovsky had some vindication from measurements that aligned with the predictions of his theory.
Hello Gordon.
A) No it was a process, so "just" is not the right wording
B) To "abandon" implies wickedness on my part and not feeding them if they would ask for food. Wrong. (to quote Potus)
C) I acted in a way I felt mandated as not "to sow discord" amongst those who wished to remain. So I walked away like you leave a movie theater during the break.
They contacted me to send their love, but none would probe and activate an answer from my part
No I have not rejected any asking to connect through linkedin 30 years later.
Gordon.
I did meet in person with people I only met in the way I met you and have corresponded cordially in private with others.
So I am sorry if you read too much in my clean break.
Nck
Worldwar II vintage prophecies is in the eye of the beholder.
On the painful truth blog I commented on the PT's excellent reporting on an invasion of Ukraine at the time the entire world was cheering Chamberlain.
I believe the first PT issue warned for a Japanese attack on American soil 8 years before the event.
And so much more.
Excellent, if you are into it!
Nck
Gordon,
I like what you said about Velikovsky.
In official communication and life's decisions I am bound to science and science only.
However the likes of Velikovsky sometimes get partially vindicated when time passes and through further scientific research. I like those types like zerohedge or others for information the majority has missed and only after I ay have placed a speculative bet finds out and follow the crowd to increase volume and create a new reality.
I would not bet or speculate my life savings on information found in "alternative sources outside of the scientific method." However as I said at 9:40, I would like to think that I would or could have been amongst those more suspicious about "Chamberlains" victory and look a bit more into Germanies strategy on Ukraine through an "alternative source."
It is like really studying the "origins" of Isil and Al Quada for that matter. Which is quite unlike the general mainstream media's narrative spoon fed to the western peoples in sound bites. Some institutions of higher learning are slowly finding out and producing research on these phenomena and shed some light on how the world is held captive through our own vices and the frankensteins/demons created in the process. It has all been revealed in art and literature. But mankind just seems unable to supersede themselves.
Be careful out there in the internet wilderness though.
nck
The ministers as a group try to portray themselves as junior gods to their members. So of course they can't admit to wrong doing or making a mistake. After all, only puny humans make mistakes. Never the junior gods.
I admit it. I'm sorry, but I used to believe and teach all of the following man-made, Satan-inspired, theories...spiritual Junk Food:
• Satan is a spirit being that cannot die or be destroyed
• One can USE God's Spirit and even sway God to change His mind
• Human beings will be eternally destroyed in a lake of fire
• Eve chose to eat off of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil
• The “man of sin” will be revealed as some modern-day human being
• Jesus Christ is soon coming to reign on earth for a (Mickey Mouse?) Millennium
• There will be a 3rd resurrection
• Some Old Testament prophets will be part of the 144,000 Firstfruits to be sealed
• Zerubbabel represents Herbert W Armstrong
• Some human beings will experience the second death
• All men are NOT being saved
• Some "Last Great Day" represents some 100 year period
Etc.!!!!!!!!!!!!
Enuf said. More items could be specified. In my mind, salvation has not been impacted by any of these items, and that God is/was "...in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them..."
As Junk Food continues to be uncovered/revealed it will, like the above, be discarded...live and learn...life goes on...AND
Time will tell...
John
Though I admit that much of what WCG speculated on was pure BS, I am also aware that just because something has not yet happened, does not mean that it will never happen.
(2Pe 3:3) first, knowing this, that during the last days scoffers will come walking according to their own lusts,
(2Pe 3:4) and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For from which time the fathers fell asleep, all things remain so from the beginning of creation.
(2Pe 3:5) For this they willingly forget, that the heavens were of old; and the earth rose up from the waters, and by means of water, by the word of YAHWEH.
Sweetblood777, yes, but it may happen way beyond our lifetime. For example, the 2Pe 3 verses you cite will occur during "the last days," AFTER Satan is loosed from the bottomless pit. Many look forward to the promise of His coming to occur soon and Jesus reigns on earth.
If that particular coming occurs over 1,000 years from now, then who could blame the scoffers for still walking in their own lusts and and questioning Christ's return...kind of like people question it today.
But, yes, that promise of His coming will happen, but when?
Time will tell...
John
Hey Byker,
I know you read HWA's piece about the Ukraine invasion over at Painful.
HWA makes mention of "maps" that are on his desk in 1939 about the pending invasion of Ukraine in 1941, while the entire world is cheering Chamberlain.
Now read National Geographic.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/us-cia-maps-strategy-foreign-policy-display/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20170926news-resurfmapscia3&utm_campaign=Content&sf116689150=1
nck
Sorry, nck. Nothing readable will ever convince me that HWA was other than a piece of crap, a fake "Mr. Plastic", who just glommed on to weird things to support his so called ministry and agenda. I'm busy watching old historic youtube videos of the Buffalo Springfield and searching Craigs List ads for an updated Harley. You know, having a real life.
BB
Hey
I am not trying to convince you. Zuckerberg's algorythm just delivered Nat Geo on my doorstep after I looked at Painful. I have not searched for it nor the 1939 PT it was delivered.
AI knows my mind.
I thought I'd share the "1939 maps on my desk" remark. Thats why I like dissenting opinion (on all issues, especially financial contrary opinion) They always come up with new interesting material one could not come up with oneself.
Nck
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