Today, Continuing with writings on the Ambassador College Correspondence Course, I want to talk about lesson 8. It is titled, not so subliminally, "This Is God Speaking".
The following are untruths - read - things attributed to God that did not happen - in this writing which is being attributed directly to God. These statements were said in the 1963 edition.
1. I come to announce the imminent arrival. (This was 55 years ago. Nothing was imminent.)
2. It is at your very door! (It was not.)
3. Quick and determined action MUST BE TAKEN if you are to ESCAPE! (There was nothing to escape.)
4. At the peril of losing your life, listen attentively. (No Armageddon would occur in 55 years.)
5. My great final intervention is poised and beginning to occur. (It has not happened.)
6. I am giving you personally every warning...so that you may escape (Personally, none of this applied to the 1963 adult.)
7. I give YOU NOW a CLEAR WARNING PICTURE of the TERRIBLE DISRUPTION JUST AHEAD (It wasn't.)
This was doomsday apocalyptic cult religion. This was fear religion.
Instead of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ - and His power, accomplishments, and what is available for Christians today - the message of hope, life and truth was replaced completely by this fear-inducing series of lies.
Let's be frank about what was really going on here:
1. Fact: These were sayings attributed to God that God would say according to the Church. Truth: Herbert said these things, not God. This was presumptuous and false teaching. Challenge: Disprove this.
2. Fact: What was said to occur was not at their very door. Truth: 55 years and counting after this date, no Armageddon. Challenge: Disprove this.
3. Fact: Listening attentively had no bearing on anyone's life being lost whatsoever. Truth: This was a fear statement which had no bearing whatsoever on reality outside of Armstrong. Challenge: Disprove this.
4. Fact: The Biblical "beginnings" of a great intervention have not "begun". Truth: There have been times on this planet far worse - FAR worse - than the 20th Century and today. History is the truth on this. Research. Challenge: Disprove this.
5. Fact: No person needed any "personal" warning from Herbert Armstrong. Truth: 55 Years later, those who were warned have either lived out their lives to an old age or have died. Herbert's Warning to that generation was a lie and a false warning. Challenge: Disprove this.
6. Fact: The Terrible Worldwide "Disruption" was not "Just ahead". Truth: The warning was not "clear". It was a lie. Challenge: Disprove this.
The General Population was who was spoken to here in majority. Those who joined up with Herbert to his Church would be the ones who would experience tribulation in their lives, upheavals, "trials", loss of friends, loss of income, ministerial abuse, dictatorial control by overbearing ministers, loss of relationships with spouses, relatives, friends, depression, anxiety, and fear in many cases. They would be in constant fear of Petra, famine, Germans, Armageddon, they would believe that Satan had so much power and was ready to attack them in a heartbeat at the slightest let-down of zeal, and they would experience the massive upheavals of GTA, the Receivership, and The Changes of 1995.Those who did not join continued in life as if Herbert Armstrong and his propaganda never existed.
Was the foundation Jesus Christ? Or was the foundation doomsday fear mongering religion with selfish, money-loving, greed-oriented, power-focused lies and deception? Without a doubt in the world - it was ALL LIES. This was a SCAM. This was spiritual extortion. This was deception. This was NOT the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this was NOT truth. History proves this without a shadow of a doubt with hard, cold, factual, indisputable evidence. I'm not out to change minds. I am presenting evidence. What anyone does with it? That's on them.
submitted by SHT
LCG was still doing the proclamation of when they thought the major events would take place. They would scream so and so will happen "in the next five to ten years of your life." They didn't learn anything from the past or maybe they do it purposely to instill fear, to keep people in the Church, to keep the tithes coming. You know what's funny people that criticize people on this site for having nothing better to do...yet they keep coming back to the same blog🤣🤣😂
ReplyDeleteOnce again this shows how vulnerable the "scripturally ignorant & unchurched" were. With no background to refute these lies the "sheeples" were easy prey. I was once one of them, too.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, I know better now.
Herb used terror tactics to control his members. Just like every other twentieth century dictatorship. It's a tacit acknowledgment that the church culture is at war with nature and Gods true laws.
ReplyDeleteNoah warned people for a hundred years before the flood came, and when it came the scoffers were helpless, hopeless, and hurting...
ReplyDeletec f ben yochanan
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWassup, DPR? Over the past week you must have written 20 posts and then immediately deleted them.
DeleteBB
When god was speaking through Herb Armstrong it was in fact old Herbies vanity that was actually doing most, if not all, the speaking !
ReplyDeleteIn 1995, I took sermon notes in which Rod Meredith said that certain end-time events would happen in "the next 5 to 15 years."
ReplyDeleteIn 2010, having obtained proof that Rod's messages were not inspired by God, I left LCG.
You keep wallowing in this ancient history you're going to miss your actual life.
ReplyDeleteAll the things you list have not happened.... yet.
ReplyDeleteThe gospel of the Kingdom, with hope of eternal life and the ruling truth of Jesus Christ, have not been fulfilled.... yet.
Yet both are promised in the Bible. And God's timing can be a lot more patient than ours. In both the short-term and long-term.
So it's not either/or, as you put it. It's both.
12:56
ReplyDeleteYou are forgetting a very important fact: That in those generations, according to scripture, the same people being warned were the same being impacted. People were said to have lived a lot longer back then! That is not the scenario here.
It was a scam all right. Which is why all those subversive ministers who were waiting for Herb to die were part of the problem. They should have told people Herb was a false prophet and to get the heck out. But they kept their mouths shut and lived off the tithe money. Now some people think they were heroes for their "honesty" (just because they were liberals).
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhen god was speaking through Herb Armstrong it was in fact old Herbies vanity that was actually doing most, if not all, the speaking !
That's probably true of all Biblical characters, prophets, priests, Evangelists and Apostles in the Never Ending Story.
CFBY said...
ReplyDeleteNoah warned people for a hundred years before the flood came, and when it came the scoffers were helpless, hopeless, and hurting...
Aside from the fact that it never happened, what is it about God that's takes so long to get a point across and still gets ignored? Poor communication skills?
And too..."scoffers" tend to just be "noticers" that find what was advertised is not really so
What is a scoffer in the first place? Sentient beings have the right and the duty to consider and debate the veracity or plausibility of claims, as well as the credibility and sanity of those who make those claims. That is simply exercising due diligence in processing information.
DeleteVery little of any credible nature has come from the Armstrong movement. Nothing of value except HWA’s exhortation to drink plenty of water.
BB
dd, aside from the fact that there is no life on any of the billions of planets, surely you, as a former minister, know that God is very patient and in no rush to destroy mankind, but hopes that over time we might repent cuz destruction is a last resort...
Deletec f ben yochanan
but, frankly, it is necessary to give mankind a reasonable time and every opportunity to repent so that scoffers wont, in that day, do what scoffers do, which is to question their maker, and in this particular instance would not the question be "but if you had only given us adequate opportunity to believe and repent...";
Deletecertainly God in His Wisdom would be way ahead of that question, and there will be no excuses...
c f ben yochanan
and what are scoffers? well, the naysayers, the unbelievers; the purveyors of the time honored profession of mocking and doubting: legitimizing and justifying childish discourse (e.g., personal insults) by virtue of the mere fact that they disagree with another persons pov...
Deletec f ben yochana
Certain bloggers here are itching for a bitching.
ReplyDelete“This is God Speaking” lasted for a long time, like the booklets, or as an article in the Plain Truths that all of the members hoarded and saved. By the time my parents read it to us, I was totally indoctrinated, and considered it to be truth presented using literary license (about which we had learned when studying literature in school). That exercise gave it a contemporary and captivating aura.
ReplyDeleteNow, in retrospect, attributing scamful lies, timelines, and gross exaggerations to God seems dishonest at best, and damnable at worst, but I am certain that many of the parents who were Radio Church of God members were grateful to have such (then) effective materials to use in raising their children. I can honestly say that when my parents read this to us, it was one time when I wanted to hear more.
This is the height of manipulation as an art form. For many years after leaving the WCG, I realized that there had been veiled and polished disingenuousness used in subverting our minds to Armstrongism. The attitude seemed to be that the end in preaching the gospel justifies the means. What value does a version of the gospel have (they called it “the truth”) if it is preached using trickery and lies? There were not two trees, as in the classic HWA sermon. There were three. The third one, the one concealed in the subliminal, was the one that bore rotten fruit.
BB
HWA and many of the COG spinoffs had marketing down! Always "time stamp" your advertising. Terms like "limited time offer", "buy now, get one free", and adding in a disaster element if you don't, are classic sales bullet points.
ReplyDeleteMost COG television programs are really just glorified "infomercials" to sell the organization.
"Certain bloggers here are itching for a bitching."
ReplyDeleteCertain readers here need ointment for dissapointment.
"The gospel of the Kingdom, with hope of eternal life and the ruling truth of Jesus Christ, have not been fulfilled.... yet.
ReplyDeleteYet both are promised in the Bible. And God's timing can be a lot more patient than ours. In both the short-term and long-term."
For the Christian, YES, these things HAVE been fulfilled, in the Present, and is to come, as well - but the COG's never emphasized the present aspect of the Kingdom of God for believers (now). Though this is not a perfect summary or description, and will be a subject of great scorn and controversy, here's a good starting point as to how I lean on the subject of the Kingdom of God:
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/is-the-kingdom-present-or-future
What we must realize is that there are criminals who are capable of mirroring or miming non-psychopathic, non-sociopathic, non-criminal attitudes, and that in doing this, they are also capable of faking sincerity. This is why certain types of ungrounded people find it so easy to be taken in by financial, political, and spiritual scams.
ReplyDeleteBB
Happy Sabbath everyone!
ReplyDeleteToday wasn’t the sabbath, 3:25. The new moon fell on Wednesday, Nov. 7. So, the sabbath is Wednesday this month.
Delete"...you must have written 20 posts and then immediately deleted them."
ReplyDeleteLike some other people should do.
I agree, 3:52. There must be a reason why you just stepped forward and volunteered, so let’s start with you!
DeleteBB
Anon 6:35 informs us: "So, the sabbath is Wednesday this month."
ReplyDeleteGood catch. Note also that this month Friday the 13th falls on a Thursday.
In fairness, 55 years to God is the equivalent of five minutes to us.
ReplyDeleteThe world nations invitation to the dedication of the Jerusalem third temple altar stones has been announced today.
Who knows how long any of us have.