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
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Thursday, June 6, 2019
When Herbert W Armstrong Leveled a Revolver at a Black Person's Head for Work Insubordination
People still love to cover up the inherent racism that Herbert Armstrong used against African Americans. Some thought it is quaint, and others say it is just the thinking of his time and to let it go.
HWA's racism was fed, in part, by the racist characteristics of Meredith and other HQ evangelists. Race was a widespread church issue well into the 1980's. Even though the church had a couple black evangelists, there were many areas of the country they were not allowed to go to. They were also elevated to those positions to placate the Black member of the church to make them feel special when they were segregated to separate Feast sites. as "gentile" converts they were always considered a little "less than."
HWA admits that his great fear was the fear of losing his job.
That's the WCG/splinter experience in a nutshell. Men claimed to fear God, but when put into a crisis they feared for the loss of a visible paycheck, rather than the loss of relationship with an invisible God.
Even Rod Meredith stayed on with the Tkaches for three years after he knew they were apostates... because he needed WCG's protection in the Leona McNair lawsuit. Within a month of the lawsuit being settled (and RCM didn't have to pay a dime of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that went to Leona McNair and hw lawyers in the settlement), he formed the Global Church of God. The men who formed UCG were even worse, disfellowshipping brethren in March 1995 for holding the same beliefs these ministers would claim to uphold in July 1995.
Yes, the vast majority of men in the ACOG ministry followed HWA's example, living in fear of losing their jobs, and putting those jobs ahead of the brethren they were supposed to serve.
BINGO. The terror, the illegality of it, the fear - all of that was worth it so long as HWA has what he needed for himself. He learned a lesson that day - that fear has power. And he used it his whole life.
I read this as a child in "the Autobiography" (as we called it), when it was originally published serially in the Plain Truth. Because of the respect we all had for HWA at the time, I did not then see it as appalling, I mean is was after all something that "Mr. Armstrong" ('Ol Hog Jowls) had done.
He's just lucky he didn't try this on Ice T or 2pac. Either one of them would have told him they were going to take that gun away from him and shove it up his ass! And they would have, too!
HWA wished something like this happened. He wanted to be seen as a hero when he really was a zero. The tale he tells is to enforce that not only was the antagonist a coward but all the " colored men" were cowards. You just have to put them in their place then they fall in line. It's a hateful story by a hateful little man.
Perhaps that thuggish behaviour was more acceptable in the early part of the last century, but the "I'll show em whose boss" screams signs of a Napoleon complex - a scared little man who needed to puff his chest and show the black man that he can't mess with Herbert Armstrong. Overcompensating for the weakling that he was, it didn't occur to him that maybe Hub and his crew had some legitimate concerns and wanted some respect (if this event actually happened, and it does sound exaggerated to say the least).
Dialogue, listening, negotiation certainly were never some of Herbie's, nor the Tkach's strong suit. In Herbie's days it was called "Being the boss," in Tkach Jr.s days, it was called "Episcopal Organizational Structure."
Seems I recall Joseph Tkach gaining influence with his tale weaving of his personal Navy adventures during WW11 that ultimately proved to be embellished and inaccurate but were part of his bio to greatness. Little men need great stories evidently.
HWA's tale probably started out with him telling a black man that "we better get back to work or we'll both get fired," and it evolved in his mind from there. People do that....
I always doubted HWA's fantastic account of an Angel grabbing his steering wheel to take him somewhere he needed to be but was not going. Angels do that a lot too.
Extremely interesting to read up more about worker conditions in the USA. (although I usually see documentaries on the violent american worker uprisings and perceived socialist communist threats at the time). Then the immigration quota were installed for non whites from pauper nations taking "non american ideas" with them like catholicism and socialism.
Interesting also how the bossman puts a 17/18 year old teenager in charge of a large and largely uneducated manual labor force that is happy to have a job during those crisis years of the early 19 hundreds (just follow the yellow brick road book was a bestseller) but does not know yet how to articulate abuse.
As HWA says. Youthful teenage bravado at a time when young churchill had served in india, sudan, south africa already at 20 years old also with a pistol before moving on to more white collarly jobs.
HWA says he did not fear the behavior of the men under his charge. He knew they were good people. He wanted to prove to his own boss that he could "own up" to the responsibility handed to him and as always went out of his way through this and other examples to be open about his personal character flaws.
As Dennis says. HWA used many of these examples to prove from "how far he had come" to his conversion.
Its like the usual evangelical lay preacher or even george bush jr, to openly declare their former drug abuse or wild life style before jesus called them to the altar.
The autobiography is not a literary masterpiece but definitely bears "style characteristics" to impress a certain audience of a bygone age... .leaving us with treasured first account data of those times. Leaving an obligation to study the context of those times.
Young Hwa had no sex or drugs stories to brag about as a born again christian. A young quaker boy fan only brag about his work performance and practical applicability of lessons learned.
Well, turnabout is fair play. Herbert had a gun pulled on him at least once as well. From Dankenbrings "How the Mighty Have Fallen", concerning Vern Mattson (son in law of HWA) when discovering that HWA had committed incest with his wife in earlier years...
"A friend of mine, when he learned of these allegations years ago, went directly to Mr. Vern Mattson, who had married Herbert Armstrong's younger daughter. He was a golfing buddy and friend of Mattson, so he asked him point-blank if the accusations and rumors were true. Mr. Mattson sadly informed him that they indeed were factual.
In fact, when Mr. Mattson himself learned of the truth of Herbert having had sex with the woman who later became Mattson's wife, he was furious, and in a rage took a pistol, and burst into Herbert Armstrong's private office, waving the pistol around. Herbert, shaking like a leaf, apologized profusely and promised to never do such a thing again. "
1:28 hahah nitty gritty........to be doctrinally sound ""a conceived again christian"", double hyphens. I was drawing comparisons to "conversion stories"...
You do not seem to amount to something if you don't have a past of "drugs and rock and roll", what would a good quaker boy have to add to that.........bad work habit or ethics??
It might have even been in one of the 3 states that remained with the North but wanted to keep slavery. The reason Lincoln was ambiguious on the issue for a long time, especially during campaign season, as it was not the reason for the Civil War.
Slavery was not to be abolished in the South, the issue was if it was going to be legal to introduce it in the NEW territories.
The "birth of a nation" movie caused more than a stir ( tongue in cheek) but I am not sure if that one had been released at the time of the incident.
Otherwise it would have been a "worker" vs boss issue.
HWA's racism was fed, in part, by the racist characteristics of Meredith and other HQ evangelists. Race was a widespread church issue well into the 1980's. Even though the church had a couple black evangelists, there were many areas of the country they were not allowed to go to. They were also elevated to those positions to placate the Black member of the church to make them feel special when they were segregated to separate Feast sites. as "gentile" converts they were always considered a little "less than."
ReplyDeleteHWA admits that his great fear was the fear of losing his job.
ReplyDeleteThat's the WCG/splinter experience in a nutshell. Men claimed to fear God, but when put into a crisis they feared for the loss of a visible paycheck, rather than the loss of relationship with an invisible God.
Even Rod Meredith stayed on with the Tkaches for three years after he knew they were apostates... because he needed WCG's protection in the Leona McNair lawsuit. Within a month of the lawsuit being settled (and RCM didn't have to pay a dime of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that went to Leona McNair and hw lawyers in the settlement), he formed the Global Church of God. The men who formed UCG were even worse, disfellowshipping brethren in March 1995 for holding the same beliefs these ministers would claim to uphold in July 1995.
Yes, the vast majority of men in the ACOG ministry followed HWA's example, living in fear of losing their jobs, and putting those jobs ahead of the brethren they were supposed to serve.
3:02
ReplyDeleteBINGO. The terror, the illegality of it, the fear - all of that was worth it so long as HWA has what he needed for himself. He learned a lesson that day - that fear has power. And he used it his whole life.
This incident doesn't appear in the version of the book that the church sent me.
ReplyDeleteIt's revealing about his character. The end justifies the means.
Cowardly piece of shit pulls a gun on an unarmed man. More likely this event never happened. Just the ramblings of a little narcissist.
ReplyDeleteSeems contrived? Too dramatic to be how it might all have actually been? Embellished bravado? Dave Packish? :)
ReplyDeleteContrived? Possibly? Dramatic? Definitely.
ReplyDeleteA good analysis of how he ran the Church? Absolutely.
He couldn't aim a revolver at people who threatened his authority. So he just threatened they'd be killed in the Lake of Fire.
And if that didn't work?
"Now CLEAN OUT OF HERE, Every one of you! And don't you come back, until you come back obeying company rules!"
Sound familiar?
I read this as a child in "the Autobiography" (as we called it), when it was originally published serially in the Plain Truth. Because of the respect we all had for HWA at the time, I did not then see it as appalling, I mean is was after all something that "Mr. Armstrong" ('Ol Hog Jowls) had done.
ReplyDeleteHe's just lucky he didn't try this on Ice T or 2pac. Either one of them would have told him they were going to take that gun away from him and shove it up his ass! And they would have, too!
BB
HWA wished something like this happened. He wanted to be seen as a hero when he really was a zero. The tale he tells is to enforce that not only was the antagonist a coward but all the " colored men" were cowards. You just have to put them in their place then they fall in line. It's a hateful story by a hateful little man.
ReplyDeletePerhaps that thuggish behaviour was more acceptable in the early part of the last century, but the "I'll show em whose boss" screams signs of a Napoleon complex - a scared little man who needed to puff his chest and show the black man that he can't mess with Herbert Armstrong. Overcompensating for the weakling that he was, it didn't occur to him that maybe Hub and his crew had some legitimate concerns and wanted some respect (if this event actually happened, and it does sound exaggerated to say the least).
ReplyDeleteDialogue, listening, negotiation certainly were never some of Herbie's, nor the Tkach's strong suit. In Herbie's days it was called "Being the boss," in Tkach Jr.s days, it was called "Episcopal Organizational Structure."
Seems I recall Joseph Tkach gaining influence with his tale weaving of his personal Navy adventures during WW11 that ultimately proved to be embellished and inaccurate but were part of his bio to greatness. Little men need great stories evidently.
ReplyDeleteHWA's tale probably started out with him telling a black man that "we better get back to work or we'll both get fired," and it evolved in his mind from there. People do that....
I always doubted HWA's fantastic account of an Angel grabbing his steering wheel to take him somewhere he needed to be but was not going. Angels do that a lot too.
This would have been around 1910.
ReplyDeleteExtremely interesting to read up more about worker conditions in the USA. (although I usually see documentaries on the violent american worker uprisings and perceived socialist communist threats at the time). Then the immigration quota were installed for non whites from pauper nations taking "non american ideas" with them like catholicism and socialism.
Interesting also how the bossman puts a 17/18 year old teenager in charge of a large and largely uneducated manual labor force that is happy to have a job during those crisis years of the early 19 hundreds (just follow the yellow brick road book was a bestseller) but does not know yet how to articulate abuse.
As HWA says. Youthful teenage bravado at a time when young churchill had served in india, sudan, south africa already at 20 years old also with a pistol before moving on to more white collarly jobs.
HWA says he did not fear the behavior of the men under his charge. He knew they were good people. He wanted to prove to his own boss that he could "own up" to the responsibility handed to him and as always went out of his way through this and other examples to be open about his personal character flaws.
As Dennis says. HWA used many of these examples to prove from "how far he had come" to his conversion.
Its like the usual evangelical lay preacher or even george bush jr, to openly declare their former drug abuse or wild life style before jesus called them to the altar.
The autobiography is not a literary masterpiece but definitely bears "style characteristics" to impress a certain audience of a bygone age...
.leaving us with treasured first account data of those times. Leaving an obligation to study the context of those times.
Young Hwa had no sex or drugs stories to brag about as a born again christian. A young quaker boy fan only brag about his work performance and practical applicability of lessons learned.
Nck
Nck
ReplyDeleteI for one, would not call Pharisee HWA, a born again Christian.
Well, turnabout is fair play. Herbert had a gun pulled on him at least once as well. From Dankenbrings "How the Mighty Have Fallen", concerning Vern Mattson (son in law of HWA) when discovering that HWA had committed incest with his wife in earlier years...
ReplyDelete"A friend of mine, when he learned of these allegations years ago, went directly to Mr. Vern Mattson, who had married Herbert Armstrong's younger daughter. He was a golfing buddy and friend of Mattson, so he asked him point-blank if the accusations and rumors were true. Mr. Mattson sadly informed him that they indeed were factual.
In fact, when Mr. Mattson himself learned of the truth of Herbert having had sex with the woman who later became Mattson's wife, he was furious, and in a rage took a pistol, and burst into Herbert Armstrong's private office, waving the pistol around. Herbert, shaking like a leaf, apologized profusely and promised to never do such a thing again. "
1:28
ReplyDeletehahah nitty gritty........to be doctrinally sound ""a conceived again christian"", double hyphens. I was drawing comparisons to "conversion stories"...
You do not seem to amount to something if you don't have a past of "drugs and rock and roll", what would a good quaker boy have to add to that.........bad work habit or ethics??
nck
I live in a deep southern state and work a blue collar job and that pretty much sounds like a typical day at the office.
ReplyDeleteI'd like it if I could level a revolver at peoples heads and get some more productivity out of the workers.
Where did we go so wrong?
5:50
ReplyDeleteDid this really occur in a "southern" state?
It might have even been in one of the 3 states that remained with the North but wanted to keep slavery. The reason Lincoln was ambiguious on the issue for a long time, especially during campaign season, as it was not the reason for the Civil War.
Slavery was not to be abolished in the South, the issue was if it was going to be legal to introduce it in the NEW territories.
The "birth of a nation" movie caused more than a stir ( tongue in cheek) but I am not sure if that one had been released at the time of the incident.
Otherwise it would have been a "worker" vs boss issue.
Nck