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
I read the literature in the 1960's and HWA definitely led members to believe in 1975. He gave himself a legal escape hatch with his "I don't set dates, but consider evidence a,b,c,d,e,e,f,g, etc, etc. But I don't set dates." Lying and denying the obvious is part of ACOG culture to this very day. It amounts to worshipping deception. It's the belief that it's only perceptions rather than truth that matters. Control peoples perceptions and one can get whatever one desires in life. A big contrast to Christs 'the truth shall set you free.'
I noticed Dave Pack copied Herbs ploy in one of his booklets. First, he claimed that he never answers critics. He then brought up complaint number one, answered it, then again claimed he doesn't answer critics. Then he brought up complaint number two, answered it, then again insisted that he doesn't answer critics. This went on for a while. So members are expected to look away from reality, and blindly believe ministers words. Even when obviously untrue. The Borg Church of God.
It all boiled down to wether a member believed the bible. In the bible it says. No one knows the time. Period.
If one had never read that I think it is possible HWA s sense of urgency might lead a member (including ministers) to set a date in their head and possibly their calendar.
In my congregation, early eighties, two families left for Petra. I thought them "sad". But they were welcomed back a few months later and wiser.
Nck I was expecting Herbs defence attorney to respond. Members believed their bibles AND they believe "Gods Chosen Apostle" as well. Many members were bible novices, and still had the deeply embedded habit of believing the daddies of the world. Herb understood this, and ruthlessly took advantage of this vulnerability.
I too read the literature in the 1960's and HWA definitely led members to believe in 1972/1975. Besides the literature which included the Booklet "1975 in Prophecy", HWA allowed and encouraged a Church culture that all expected a 1972/1975 end time culmination in the Great Tribulation and the return of Christ. including sermons preached in local WCG congregations pointing to that timeframe date. My weekly Sabbath services notebooks (which I still have) all document such references made from the pulpit. Then there were visiting HQ evangelists such as Rod Meredith who said to the Washington/Baltimore WCG congregations combined services in 1969 that "we have 3 to 5 years left" and then according to my sources went on to make the same misrepresentation for the next 50 years.
As late as the 1970 Feast of Tabernacles in Mt. Pocono, I wrote in my Sabbath Services notebook the direct quote from Herbert Armstrong stating, "Our Work could be over in the first week of January 1972".
To say Herbert Armstrong did not set dates is a lie. In fact, the last date I ever heard HWA set was long after I left the Church in 1976. I was watching the World Tomorrow television program sometime in the early 1980s, and heard HWA say referring to the Great Tribulation that "if you don't see all these things happen in the next 10 to 15 years, you will know I was a fraud and the truth was not with me". That was almost 40 years ago!
"Many members were bible novices, and still had the deeply embedded habit of believing the daddies of the world. Herb understood this, and ruthlessly took advantage of this vulnerability."
All members were Bible novices as were their ministers and HWA himself. You give too much power to HWA thinking he "understood this." HWA responded mostly to the adulation those kiss assers under him heaped on him. I don't think he knew half the time what he was doing or how he was doing it.
LOFCOG said HWA said: ". I was watching the World Tomorrow television program sometime in the early 1980s, and heard HWA say referring to the Great Tribulation that "if you don't see all these things happen in the next 10 to 15 years, you will know I was a fraud and the truth was not with me". That was almost 40 years ago!"
I want this clip. Does anyone have any idea which WT episode this was at all?
This has everything to do with being who and what you say you are. In the minds of most real members of Armstrong's church, HWA had absolute authority in their lives because they believed unequivocally that he was "God's Apostle", the "endtimes Elijah". It was his job to tell the members what to believe. During the 1950s and '60s, and the early part of the 1970s, he taught his 1972-75 prophecy mold, supported by his two 19 year time cycles, "God's" plan based on 6,000 years for mankind, and the expiration of the times of the Gentiles. During the latter part of the 1960s, news events actually did appear turbulent enough to make these prophecies credible.
When the events did not come to pass on schedule, HWA instructed his members to believe that he had never set dates. Some left, others reprogrammed. With the advent of the internet, old materials thought to be long lost to antiquity began to be collected and archived on various websites. These materials were not only from the 1950s through '70s, but also from periods of previous prophecy failures in the 1930s-'40s. They prove that he and his understudies did indeed set dates, and worse, they did it "in Jesus' name" (as all the letters were signed). Still, because there are people who still believe that he was who and what he said he was, it is not difficult to find people who repeat and believe that "Mr. Armstrong never set dates". That is what he instructed them to believe post 1972-75.
Who knew that through the modern miracles of the internet, all of the old materials would surface again, giving the lie to all of the denials? I just don't know how anyone could hold on to the idea that HWA had been any sort of messenger from God, spoke any semblance of truth, or had one scintilla of authority over their lives.. It is one thing when someone simply makes others believe lies. But it goes way beyond any concept of ethics or morality when that individual did so in order to co-opt their lives, and exploit their finances, giving them a lifetime of fear of the Lake of Fire if they questioned or disobeyed.
We're seeing the same deception and lies coming out of the White House where plain recorded statements are later denied, and the same kind of blind fools we all were believe them. It's the same old blind following of a blatant narcissist. I'm just glad I wised up in the mid-seventies.
Allen Dexter, every President, including the previous one who was a narcisist, were liars! This country hasn't had an honest President, and I'm using the word "honest" very loosely, since Taft.
Thats crazy to believe someone who makes a habit of saying, don't believe me.
I'll go with Dennis's response with the addition that HWA was as honest as can be in what he believed was the right thing.
And his talents made it so that he gathered a following. Perhaps in retrospect the following of Monty Pythons Brian. Who also said the same thing over and over.
AB Comment: I think Dennis has the best understanding of HWA as I have seen posted here. I personally was drawn to HWA's organization due to the fact that the bible teaches a way of life that includes the Old Testament teachings. I lived that way of life that but excluded the focus of when Jesus would return to bring that way of life. I still live a way of life that attempts to follow what I believe the Holy Spirit leads me. It is not my responsibility to judge HWA and those who believe what he taught led them to a way of life that wrong and believe they need discredit everything HWA did.
Ok. I believe the large show of hands on this blog that HWA had more power over people than could be expected from his own interpretation of the bible through his writings.
This power waa derived from a reading of the evening news so I understand now.
Herbert (the W stands for nothing) Armstrong was a lying sack of s**t. He absolutely set those dates. Specifically: in the 1967 edition of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, on p. 184, paragraph 3, he states: "That condition is coming! And I do not mean in 400 years, nor in 40 years, but in the very next four or five!" Then on page 212, paragraph 3 he states: "By God's direction and authority, I have laid the truth before you!" Five plus 1967 equals 1972. Also, in the 1956 edition of 1975 in Prophecy, on p. 20, paragraph 6, HWA writes: "Yes, millions of lukewarm inactive professing Christians will suffer martyrdom, and that before the anticipated push-button year of 1975 dawns upon us!" Then on p. 31, paragraph 10, he writes: "your fate, and I say to you on authority of God Almighty that it is absolutely sure!"
What he wrote is what he did. When you say something "on the authority of God Almighty" that it is "absolutely sure" and then it does NOT HAPPEN, he is a false prophet, and he was speaking from his own mind.
This was not speculation, this was not Thiel's "maybe's" or "perhaps" or in any way giving himself an out. And this was not, as was said above, the only time he did that.
He also said that there would be "A Famine inside of twenty years. There, I've stuck my neck out... (if this does not happen)... you'll see {what spirit} is talking to you, my friends."
What he said was not God. What he said was false. What he said was not truth. He was a liar and a false prophet - with a wholly worldly agenda based on material success, ego, vanity, pride, and MONEY.
Dennis I don't agree with your claim that Herb and his ministers were also bible novices. Compared to full time bible scholars, perhaps. But not in the everyday use of the word. Herb and his ministers knew enough about the bible to be easily mislead members. When I asked minister advice in the early days, it was always partial to evil people, with several scriptures readily given to endorse their advice. They were knowledgeable when it came to twisting the bible. Deceitful ploys developed over hundreds of years, are well known by these ministers. And as I've mentioned before, ministers teach each other these ploys. I know, since my former ministers used the exact deceitful, non-biblical wording on occasions.
Nck You are beginning to sound like the court jester with your defence of Herb.
The court jester was the only person to speak the full truth to the king and not be killed.
I'm accustomed to be laughed at when speaking the full life saving truth and have a listening ear from those in power when jesting.
I wouldn't know different anymore.
My main gist is that wxg and hwa were not deceivers in a ploy. It is just another "system". You re probably involved in a few more of these "system" today. Maybe not a church but perhaos the scheme that calls fat people "obese".
When I talk about my experience in Armstrong slavery, the truth that, Yes, they did set dates, is always part of it. Members in local congregations talked about it A LOT, because that was a favorite subject everywhere in WCG.
Everyone was fully aware, even, of Jesus' statement that "that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." But Herbert and all the little Herberts under him were so excited about prophecy, talked about it so much, that an element of the internal culture was, "Even if the Bible says no one knows, here in the One True Church, where we have more 'truth' than anyone, we can figure it out if we just work hard enough at it." I remember fellow local members who wanted to talk about the NUMBERS they'd been working with in their "Bible study," and what they thought they might have figured out.
Being in authority in WCG was about being in control of the people, but they couldn't keep people from these acts of "figuring it out." They couldn't keep them from concluding that recent news backed up what they thought they knew, or had discovered. Herbert himself didn't help with his statements that "Prophecy is speeding up!" He never seemed to realize that, a few days later, it had slowed down again.
I recall GTA often saying that we can't know the day or hour of Christ's return, but that's not to say that we can't know the week, month and year. He wouldn't have said that unless the church had set dates.
The "miscontrual" was nearly universal throughout that era of the church. Members were well schooled (brainwashed) in taking HWA's opinions and conjectures as fact. "Mr. Armstrong says" was a smug retort which, when invoked, always signaled the end of a discussion amongst church members. To my knowledge, the "deeply converted" never replied with "Well, I don't care what Old Hog Jowls says!"
HWA said it, they believed it, and that settles it. There is no misconstrual.
Pastor General Report 01/23/81
I read the literature in the 1960's and HWA definitely led members to believe in 1975. He gave himself a legal escape hatch with his "I don't set dates, but consider evidence a,b,c,d,e,e,f,g, etc, etc. But I don't set dates."
ReplyDeleteLying and denying the obvious is part of ACOG culture to this very day. It amounts to worshipping deception. It's the belief that it's only perceptions rather than truth that matters. Control peoples perceptions and one can get whatever one desires in life.
A big contrast to Christs 'the truth shall set you free.'
I noticed Dave Pack copied Herbs ploy in one of his booklets. First, he claimed that he never answers critics. He then brought up complaint number one, answered it, then again claimed he doesn't answer critics. Then he brought up complaint number two, answered it, then again insisted that he doesn't answer critics. This went on for a while. So members are expected to look away from reality, and blindly believe ministers words. Even when obviously untrue. The Borg Church of God.
It all boiled down to wether a member believed the bible. In the bible it says. No one knows the time. Period.
ReplyDeleteIf one had never read that I think it is possible HWA s sense of urgency might lead a member (including ministers) to set a date in their head and possibly their calendar.
In my congregation, early eighties, two families left for Petra. I thought them "sad". But they were welcomed back a few months later and wiser.
Nck
Nck
ReplyDeleteI was expecting Herbs defence attorney to respond. Members believed their bibles AND they believe "Gods Chosen Apostle" as well.
Many members were bible novices, and still had the deeply embedded habit of believing the daddies of the world. Herb understood this, and ruthlessly took advantage of this vulnerability.
By the time a Church of God guru says "I never set dates" it's usually because everyone else was pretty sure they did.
ReplyDeleteWell said anonymous 8:56 PM!
ReplyDeleteI too read the literature in the 1960's and HWA definitely led members to believe in 1972/1975. Besides the literature which included the Booklet "1975 in Prophecy", HWA allowed and encouraged a Church culture that all expected a 1972/1975 end time culmination in the Great Tribulation and the return of Christ. including sermons preached in local WCG congregations pointing to that timeframe date. My weekly Sabbath services notebooks (which I still have) all document such references made from the pulpit. Then there were visiting HQ evangelists such as Rod Meredith who said to the Washington/Baltimore WCG congregations combined services in 1969 that "we have 3 to 5 years left" and then according to my sources went on to make the same misrepresentation for the next 50 years.
As late as the 1970 Feast of Tabernacles in Mt. Pocono, I wrote in my Sabbath Services notebook the direct quote from Herbert Armstrong stating, "Our Work could be over in the first week of January 1972".
To say Herbert Armstrong did not set dates is a lie. In fact, the last date I ever heard HWA set was long after I left the Church in 1976. I was watching the World Tomorrow television program sometime in the early 1980s, and heard HWA say referring to the Great Tribulation that "if you don't see all these things happen in the next 10 to 15 years, you will know I was a fraud and the truth was not with me". That was almost 40 years ago!
Richard
6:30 Dennis.
ReplyDeleteThat sums about up the difference between anglo saxon common/customary law and the continental "roman" law system.
Nck
Ummmm-- can we call this HWA comment "Revisionism" and "Back Pedaling" ???
ReplyDeleteEvidence- A widely circulated booklet called "1975 in Prophecy"
Available here:
http://www.herbert-armstrong.org/Books%20&%20Booklets/1975%20in%20Prophecy%20(1956).pdf
"Many members were bible novices, and still had the deeply embedded habit of believing the daddies of the world. Herb understood this, and ruthlessly took advantage of this vulnerability."
ReplyDeleteAll members were Bible novices as were their ministers and HWA himself. You give too much power to HWA thinking he "understood this." HWA responded mostly to the adulation those kiss assers under him heaped on him. I don't think he knew half the time what he was doing or how he was doing it.
LOFCOG said HWA said: ". I was watching the World Tomorrow television program sometime in the early 1980s, and heard HWA say referring to the Great Tribulation that "if you don't see all these things happen in the next 10 to 15 years, you will know I was a fraud and the truth was not with me". That was almost 40 years ago!"
ReplyDeleteI want this clip. Does anyone have any idea which WT episode this was at all?
This has everything to do with being who and what you say you are. In the minds of most real members of Armstrong's church, HWA had absolute authority in their lives because they believed unequivocally that he was "God's Apostle", the "endtimes Elijah". It was his job to tell the members what to believe. During the 1950s and '60s, and the early part of the 1970s, he taught his 1972-75 prophecy mold, supported by his two 19 year time cycles, "God's" plan based on 6,000 years for mankind, and the expiration of the times of the Gentiles. During the latter part of the 1960s, news events actually did appear turbulent enough to make these prophecies credible.
ReplyDeleteWhen the events did not come to pass on schedule, HWA instructed his members to believe that he had never set dates. Some left, others reprogrammed. With the advent of the internet, old materials thought to be long lost to antiquity began to be collected and archived on various websites. These materials were not only from the 1950s through '70s, but also from periods of previous prophecy failures in the 1930s-'40s. They prove that he and his understudies did indeed set dates, and worse, they did it "in Jesus' name" (as all the letters were signed). Still, because there are people who still believe that he was who and what he said he was, it is not difficult to find people who repeat and believe that "Mr. Armstrong never set dates". That is what he instructed them to believe post 1972-75.
Who knew that through the modern miracles of the internet, all of the old materials would surface again, giving the lie to all of the denials? I just don't know how anyone could hold on to the idea that HWA had been any sort of messenger from God, spoke any semblance of truth, or had one scintilla of authority over their lives.. It is one thing when someone simply makes others believe lies. But it goes way beyond any concept of ethics or morality when that individual did so in order to co-opt their lives, and exploit their finances, giving them a lifetime of fear of the Lake of Fire if they questioned or disobeyed.
We're seeing the same deception and lies coming out of the White House where plain recorded statements are later denied, and the same kind of blind fools we all were believe them. It's the same old blind following of a blatant narcissist. I'm just glad I wised up in the mid-seventies.
ReplyDeleteAllen Dexter, every President, including the previous one who was a narcisist, were liars! This country hasn't had an honest President, and I'm using the word "honest" very loosely, since Taft.
DeleteWell said 4:25 PM, When we compare the previous President with Adolf Hitler, Hitler looks like a sweetheart.
Delete12:38
ReplyDeleteThats crazy to believe someone who makes a habit of saying, don't believe me.
I'll go with Dennis's response with the addition that HWA was as honest as can be in what he believed was the right thing.
And his talents made it so that he gathered a following. Perhaps in retrospect the following of Monty Pythons Brian. Who also said the same thing over and over.
Nck
AB Comment: I think Dennis has the best understanding of HWA as I have seen posted here. I personally was drawn to HWA's organization due to the fact that the bible teaches a way of life that includes the Old Testament teachings. I lived that way of life that but excluded the focus of when Jesus would return to bring that way of life. I still live a way of life that attempts to follow what I believe the Holy Spirit leads me. It is not my responsibility to judge HWA and those who believe what he taught led them to a way of life that wrong and believe they need discredit everything HWA did.
ReplyDeleteOk. I believe the large show of hands on this blog that HWA had more power over people than could be expected from his own interpretation of the bible through his writings.
ReplyDeleteThis power waa derived from a reading of the evening news so I understand now.
Nck
Herbert (the W stands for nothing) Armstrong was a lying sack of s**t. He absolutely set those dates.
ReplyDeleteSpecifically: in the 1967 edition of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, on p. 184, paragraph 3, he states: "That condition is coming! And I do not mean in 400 years, nor in 40 years, but in the very next four or five!" Then on page 212, paragraph 3 he states: "By God's direction and authority, I have laid the truth before you!"
Five plus 1967 equals 1972.
Also, in the 1956 edition of 1975 in Prophecy, on p. 20, paragraph 6, HWA writes: "Yes, millions of lukewarm inactive professing Christians will suffer martyrdom, and that before the anticipated push-button year of 1975 dawns upon us!" Then on p. 31, paragraph 10, he writes: "your fate, and I say to you on authority of God Almighty that it is absolutely sure!"
1:16
ReplyDeleteThere is no backtracking on that.
What he wrote is what he did. When you say something "on the authority of God Almighty" that it is "absolutely sure" and then it does NOT HAPPEN, he is a false prophet, and he was speaking from his own mind.
This was not speculation, this was not Thiel's "maybe's" or "perhaps" or in any way giving himself an out. And this was not, as was said above, the only time he did that.
He also said that there would be "A Famine inside of twenty years. There, I've stuck my neck out... (if this does not happen)... you'll see {what spirit} is talking to you, my friends."
What he said was not God. What he said was false. What he said was not truth. He was a liar and a false prophet - with a wholly worldly agenda based on material success, ego, vanity, pride, and MONEY.
Dennis
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with your claim that Herb and his ministers were also bible novices. Compared to full time bible scholars, perhaps. But not in the everyday use of the word. Herb and his ministers knew enough about the bible to be easily mislead members. When I asked minister advice in the early days, it was always partial to evil people, with several scriptures readily given to endorse their advice. They were knowledgeable when it came to twisting the bible. Deceitful ploys developed over hundreds of years, are well known by these ministers. And as I've mentioned before, ministers teach each other these ploys. I know, since my former ministers used the exact deceitful, non-biblical wording on occasions.
Nck
You are beginning to sound like the court jester with your defence of Herb.
6:53
ReplyDeleteThe court jester was the only person to speak the full truth to the king and not be killed.
I'm accustomed to be laughed at when speaking the full life saving truth and have a listening ear from those in power when jesting.
I wouldn't know different anymore.
My main gist is that wxg and hwa were not deceivers in a ploy. It is just another "system". You re probably involved in a few more of these "system" today. Maybe not a church but perhaos the scheme that calls fat people "obese".
Nck
When I talk about my experience in Armstrong slavery, the truth that, Yes, they did set dates, is always part of it. Members in local congregations talked about it A LOT, because that was a favorite subject everywhere in WCG.
ReplyDeleteEveryone was fully aware, even, of Jesus' statement that "that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." But Herbert and all the little Herberts under him were so excited about prophecy, talked about it so much, that an element of the internal culture was, "Even if the Bible says no one knows, here in the One True Church, where we have more 'truth' than anyone, we can figure it out if we just work hard enough at it." I remember fellow local members who wanted to talk about the NUMBERS they'd been working with in their "Bible study," and what they thought they might have figured out.
Being in authority in WCG was about being in control of the people, but they couldn't keep people from these acts of "figuring it out." They couldn't keep them from concluding that recent news backed up what they thought they knew, or had discovered. Herbert himself didn't help with his statements that "Prophecy is speeding up!" He never seemed to realize that, a few days later, it had slowed down again.
This same idiocy still goes on.
I recall GTA often saying that we can't know the day or hour of Christ's return, but that's not to say that we can't know the week, month and year. He wouldn't have said that unless the church had set dates.
ReplyDeleteThe "miscontrual" was nearly universal throughout that era of the church. Members were well schooled (brainwashed) in taking HWA's opinions and conjectures as fact. "Mr. Armstrong says" was a smug retort which, when invoked, always signaled the end of a discussion amongst church members. To my knowledge, the "deeply converted" never replied with "Well, I don't care what Old Hog Jowls says!"
ReplyDeleteHWA said it, they believed it, and that settles it. There is no misconstrual.