Why Do COG Leaders Try To Rewrite History?

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There was great discussion on  a Facebook page today about the Church of God propensity to rewrite history to fit the interpretation that the church was looking for.  There were only a few COG leaders who were actually educated in a "worldly" college and received their Masters and/or PhD's.  Most got their Masters/PhD's from the church run Ambassador Colleges which were not known for pumping out the most highly educated world visionaries or authorities on much of anything.  Though it should be acknowledged that quite a few AC grads went on to higher educational institutions where they received a real education and made something of their lives.  However, that does not excuse the COG historians.

The writer on FB said:

I had a discussion with my sister and bil a few weeks ago. I realized that the only way the cogs are surviving is that they've rewritten history and have convinced the sheeple that they're right.

Just because a self proclaimed authority figure writes a book doesn't make it true.

One of the biggest con-artists in church history rewriting was Herman Hoeh.  His PhD that he garnered from AC was purely based upon the Compendium of World History.  It was used to support the idea that the Church of God had a continuous linage through out history.  The church eventually pulled it from circulation.  Hoeh even admitted later in life the book was filled with multiple errors and that no one should use it as a real guide to world history.




The late Gavin Rumney had this up about Hoeh:

Having known Herman Hoeh (like many others) for nearly 20 years and worked for him for part of that time, if someone had told me that he had adopted elements of the edicts of Zarathustra, I can't say I would be surprised. An intensely private man, Hoeh was an enigma in the truest sense of the word.

If he was anything (and I actually write this with respect), he was an apologist for whomever was in power at the time in WCG.

1) For example, when HWA announced in the 1950s/1960s that the Egyptian pyramids couldn't have survived the Great Flood, Hoeh responded by simply rewriting history. Borrowing heavily from Immanuel Velikovsky's controversial work, Ages in Chaos, Hoeh reworked traditionally accepted Egyptian and Babylonian dynasty chronologies so they fit HWA's Flood scheme. He subsequently published them as "new truth" in the first volume of his legendary Compendium. When HWA later allowed for the pyramids to actually have "survived" the Flood, Hoeh looked like an idiot.

2) The "theology" for HWA's title and rank of "Apostle" came directly from Hoeh. HWA actually initially rebuked Hoeh for calling Armstrong an Apostle, but as we all know, gradually accepted it (although HWA didn't use the title openly for nearly 20 years).

3) In the last months while HWA was dying, Hoeh basically either flat-out hand-wrote sections or heavily edited prior HWA works for the book that became Mystery of the Ages. (Sheila Graham also played a significant role in the production of MOA, which should give Flurry fits). Mystery of the Ages would be more appropriately title "Herbert Armstrong's Greatest Hits," edited by Herman L. Hoeh.

4) Hoeh heavily edited HWA's original Authobiography after Armstrong's death (again with aid from Sheila Graham), adding in HWA letters and the initial pieces about Joe Tkach. The result was a politically tinged tone that produced a quasi-"balanced" view of WCG's founder and made it seem like the selection of Tkach as successor was an orderly process (which it was anything but same).

I had a great deal of respect for Hoeh (particularly in how he and his wife were true servants of humanity), but truly to really understand what he "believed" at any given moment was like trying to nail a wet noodle to a wall.  The Enigma of Herman Hoeh

Rod Meredith's current version of church history being published by the Living Church of God is another case in point.  The same goes to Almost arrested but not arrested Bob Thiel's take on COG history, Catholicism and world history. And then there is Ron Weinland, Gerald Flurry and Dave Pack's appalling take on church history and world events.  All of these foolish buffoons do this in order to make their church look like the "only true church."

All of them are church apologists that go out of heir way to support the teachings of Herbert Armstrong.  Without him none of them had the wherewithal to ever come up with an original idea so it is important to defend Armstrongism in order to stay alive as a group.