One thing most of us have leaders about some COG leaders is that when they open their mouths we no longer are shocked at the craziness that comes out of them.
We have Dave Pack's creature he calls "christ" that is coming back for the 3 or 4th time, any day now, like yesterday. There's Ron Weinland who had his creature returning in 2008. Here we are in 2021, nothing has happened. We have Bob Thiel who self-appointed himself after pitching a hissy-fit getting upset with Rod Meredith claiming his creature is coming at some point but not now, but soon, but not this year or next. Bob's creature is far less important than the boastfulness of Bob expecting us to look in awe of his greatness. Then there is Gerald Flurry, the ultimate king of craziness in the COG movement. Gerald's savior is not the creature he expects to come back and sit upon Herbert Armstrong's old dirty rock but in a man himself, Herbert W Armstrong. According to Flurry, there has never been a greater man to live in human history than Herbert W Armstrong. Poor Bob Thiel left on the back burner again! Always the bridesmaid and never the bride.
Anyway, here is what Flurry says:
How much do you know about Herbert W. Armstrong? The Bible has a lot to say about this man and the work that he did.
“Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap” (Malachi 3:1-2).
God makes a blanket statement here: “[H]e shall prepare the way before me.” Period! No caveats or qualifications. What an endorsement of this man! God made a covenant with Mr. Armstrong, and He knew that Mr. Armstrong would do the job. Did he ever! What a messenger!
Mr. Armstrong’s life is one of the highlights in the history of man. God really was moved by how he delivered His message. Mr. Armstrong prepared the way for Christ’s Second Coming. That means a lot. No matter whom he spoke to, he spoke about God’s law and way of life. He made mistakes as we all do, but he never stopped serving God.
Christ is pleased with His messenger!
If the creature Flurry calls "christ" is pleased about Herbert Armstrong then why did over 500 some splinter groups defect, spitting in HWA's face? They all left in fits of rebellion against the very government that HWA supposedly restored.
“Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this” (Isaiah 9:7).
That is what this is ultimately about. David’s throne will unite the world. God is going to bring all mankind, including those who are so rebellious today, to the point where they will bow down to Him—the Rock—and take a closer look at the love, the way and the life of God! We must humble ourselves before God, and then take on anyone who challenges our Father, the Head of His Family! We have nothing to fear with God on our side.
Gerald's dirty old rock that HWA supposedly prayed it will soon unite the world. Never happening!
God used him to “restore all things”! (Matthew 17:10-11). What a monumental work! Mr. Armstrong did in God’s true Church what Christ is about to do in this world!
If you are a Christian there is only one person who can restore all things. Herbert Armstrong certainly did not. He is an unknown figure in the world, even in all the nations he visited and supposedly witnessed to about some "strong hand from someplace". The church is fractured into hundreds and hundreds of splinter sects doing nothing. Families were broken and in many cases destroyed because of his teachings and the further embellishments of his by-products. The ground is filled with bodies of church members who suffered the ultimate fate because of this supposed restoration, not as martyrs but as victims.
Great will be the day when the last splinter group fades from this earth.
26 comments:
One thing GRF and Dr. Bob have in common is that they have made an ACOG leader into a surrogate father figure.
For any of those in the greater reading audience who may wonder why we insist on calling it "Armstrongism", this addresses that question very eloquently! Followers of Jesus have been called "Christians", and their path, "the Way". Starting with the old Radio Church of God, HWA was elevated to the status of a Biblical character, with ministers referring to him as an Elijah, or God's end time Apostle, and lifting passages of scripture, making them about Herbert W. Armstrong, and making other passages about Herbert W. Armstrong's church.
In the past 25 years, in all of my times of meeting and dealing with people, only one person has ever brought up Herbert W. Armstrong in conversation with me. It was an older gentleman, who was LDS, who commented that he used to love to listen to HWA explaining prophecy on the radio back in the late 1950s. In listening to many of the personalities on Christian TV, even those who advocated keeping the holy days from Torah, never once did I hear HWA or GTA mentioned, or credited. The closest I ever got to an open tip of the hat from anyone to this man was from those who espouse Anglo-Israelism, amongst whom HWA is cited as having been a primary advocate of the theory. HWA has also appeared on lists of those who falsely prophesied the time of the end, and frankly there were many more prominent names of people better known and remembered on that list. Aside from that, he is not unlike so many of the "one hit wonders" in the history of popular music. Entertained for a while, but never voted into the Hall of Fame. Largely forgotten. Who even remembers Frank Ifield's "I Remember You"? Who remembers the group Blodwyn Pig? Basically, a small handful of musicologists, or past members of those artists' fan clubs. It's just not the same as having any sort of major, lasting or effective impact.
People like Flurry, Pack, Weinland and Thiel should, but will never, come out from hiding behind their own imagination. They have created a refuge for their imagination an "Alice in Wonderland" world, where they think they are something, but they are not.
Their whole agenda is using compulsive cunning, analyzing , intrigue, planning and scheming to get what they want out of life in terms of wealth and power over others, while receiving praise and worship from them.
They play the game of trying to pass their madness and narcissism as intelligence, godliness and even "love". If they were ever to try to see themselves with any kind of reality, the pain of shame will be something that they would avoid at all costs, similar to someone touching a hot stove.
The PCGs assertions are laughable. HWA won't even be in the kingdom. One example, comparing the original red cover Holy day booklet by HWA and the revised one with a orange cover. Someone "photoshopped" the original, filtering out many statements that were obviously evil to any reasonable person.
HWA taught 1975, yet he knew it didn't come from God. He endlessly preached "outgoing concern" while disregarding the obvious great harm this false teaching would cause. He was a pathological liar who instituted tyranny in his church that surpassed that exercised by the USSR at that time. Even the commies didn't go through their citizens cupboards.
Flurry and similar love Herb not because of any truths he taught, but because of the many lies he projected into the bible.
"The Bible has a lot to say about this man and the work that he did."
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As in Daniel 8?? ....a king ("king" in Hebrew can be only a leader, not someone that has to be secular, or of royalty, or a king of a country: see Proverbs 30:27) with a vehement countenance (!!!), and spouting stuff which appears to be the truth but is not (verse 12), shall stand up. His power shall be mighty, but not by his own power (hmmmmm, whose power??) and he shall CORRUPT to an extraordinary degree, and shall PROSPER (Wow!! Indeed!!), and do his thing, and shall corrupt numerous people (of a church!?). And through his skill also he shall cause deceit to prosper in his hand, and shall magnify himself (call himself Christ's apostle??) in his heart, and during a time of peace corrupt many........(for the last 2300 days of his life?). A paraphrase: Dan 8:12,14,23-25.
The government of God is a real government that will come and will replace every human government that the Kingdom will bring to mankind is the elimination of government corruption, unlike imperfect humans. Jesus Christ is the one God chose to rule the Kingdom. The book of Revelation describes Jesus as "Lord of lords" and "King of kings" when He returns to earth and as these governments today are imperfect, people should not take sides in politics as both sides are a mixture of good and of evil and one of the greatest combinations of good and evil is Christmas, so all true worshipers of God will show their fruits by not keeping Christmas. May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people ( those of church of god a spiritual body of believers).
Bible prophecy is so ambiguous that ANYBODY can put their own interpretation to it and make it fit because none of it will never come to pass.
Speaking of ambiguity, I just read a list of commonly misquoted song lyrics that could be insightful. I mean some of the ridiculous things the ministers are constantly saying make you wonder if someone heard them correctly. If a PCG member, as an example were listening to some Jimi Hendrix, knowimg how awful they think the world is getting, we could perhaps understand if he thought Hendrix had said "scuse me while I kiss this guy!"
Seriously, the list of misquotes had one lalapalooza that gave me a stomach ache laughing. In the song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" the Beatles sang about "A girl with Kaleidoscope eyes." Well apparently enough people thought they heard "A girl with colitis goes by" that it made the list. The laugh from that alone was worth going through all 51 pages, believe me! I'd love to laugh at the things Gerald Flurry says, but unfortunately those things are messing up peoples' lives and families.
6.19 PM
That accusation is similar to the claim that you can prove anything using the bible. While people do twist and misapply the bible, it doesn't mean that people can't discern the truth if the apply themselves with a spirit of truth seeking. I don't study my bible on a daily basis for no reason.
Btw, to be fair, understanding prophesy is tricky.
We?
"why did over 500 some splinter groups defect, spitting in HWA's face?"
Umm, didn't they leave the WCG because Tkatch's apostasy, not because of HWA?
"God makes a blanket statement here: “[H]e shall prepare the way before me.”
This is a statement that applies to John the Baptist who was the fulfillment of the Elijah prophecy. It is puzzling why anyone would think it referred to Herbert W. Armstrong. It may have traction among apocalyptic Millerites because of their presumption that we are now at the End of the Age. From this they back into the idea that there must be an Elijah around somewhwere. This is a very tenuous argument.
The Adentists and other Millerites have always been pre-occupied with Elijah. They published a newsletter called Voice of Elijah back around the time of the Great Disappointment. I recall that a Millerite preacher was thought by others to be in the spirit of Elijah although he did not claim this himself. If you google Elijah and Adventism you will find an abundance of references.
So claiming that HWA was Elijah, without any credible exegesis, is just a by-product of absorption in prophecy. It is really just good, old-fashioned Millerism.
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Most people don't question why they believe the things they believe or why they do the things they do. They just blindly follow others LIKE BLIND DUMB SHEEP. Why don't guys question the things you believe? Why don't you question the things that you do?
So, 10:07, who gets to decide what the true interpretation of scripture or version of prophecy might actually be? Somehow, listening to the dude who stuck his penis into his daughter just never did work! And, yet, in some circles, he is still called an Apostle, and all of his crap is celebrated, revered, and taught as being restored truth!!!
I'm now beginning a study of Maimonides, and looking into the Talmud, because I believe we misappropriated Jewish culture without actually understanding it. I really love one prominent school of Jewish thought from the Chabad movement, that of Tikkun Olam, the idea that God gave mankind a broken world and gave us the responsibility to repair or improve it in whatever ways possible. That alone makes better sense than any other broken world explanations, including the rantings of those who believe that every disease or tornado are punishment for refusing to live by the tenets of Armstrongism.
Agreed! Like why don’t they read the NT and see that the apostles didn’t make people tithe x3 and then kick them out of the didnt! Why don’t people think on that?
Re: Zippos comment and several others on other threads -
We never talk much about Joseph Tkach, Sr. What are people's views of him? I dunno, that feels like an interesting thread of its own.
My views, RSK? Joe Sr. and Joe Jr. knew me, called me by my first name. Sr. seemed to be a reasonable man, and I liked him, in spite of the fact that he really got on my case one time as we stood talking on his back porch.
Jr. was pretty much a juvenile delinquent when I first met him. Somehow, we frequently crossed paths on Saturday nights, and his stories of his escapades earlier in the evenings seriously worried me about him. I remember racing him one year on our way up to Squaw Valley on some of the curvy mountain roads. He was driving his Dad's Chrysler, and had no problem keeping up with me.
The turnaround from his juvenile activities really shocked me, actually quite pleasantly, because he had certainly bordered on self-destructiveness in his sowing of wild oats. I had left the WCG decades prior to the changes that he and his dad brought to the church. I was out of religion completely in the 1990s. But, I really thought that the reforms and corrections they were bringing about were needed, appropriate, and Biblical. The problem was the way in which the changes were executed. In talking with some of my siblings, I understand that coercive mandates were issued, and lies were told. From discussions here, I've learned that retirements and pensions were weaponized against employees who had been loyal to the church and college for decades in the past. And of course, wherever there are big money or assets involved, there is going to be tremendous bitterness towards whoever gets to keep the pesos. So, I understand all of the various viewpoints.
All in all, the one accomplishment that I can really get behind is that they brought down an evil, oppressive, soul-killing empire, and presented a viable alternative. This proved that God was truly not behind HWA/WCG/AC, because the doors that God opens, no man can shut. None of the splinters, most of which do not have even the membership numbers or resources of your average mega-church, are able to get the Armstrong half a gospel out with the power the old WCG was able to disseminate it. And, they never will. The world and unsuspecting prospective members are much better off for that.
Net score, in spite of their flaws, I'd credit the Tkach's as a win.
Joe Tkach was an idiot abd a liar, sn irresponsible leader, an ineffective speaker and a thief.
Oh yes, he was nice to old ladies and widows.
Nck
Cmon Gary, nows the time to ask... give em their own post!
I find it very funny that Bob Thiel keeps recycling a secondhand story about Tkach supposedly labelling the Cathedra Petri as "Satans throne", even though he accepts Tkach as an authority on nothing otherwise. What, Satan got himself a throne only in tbe 1600s AD? Seems to be a long time to spend without one.
10.27 PM
Tkach hijacked all the wealth of the church of Herb. Members didn't give their tithes and offerings to the church of Joe, but rather to the church of Herb.
In this sense, he was a thief.
Joe's church is made up of former HWA ministers, so you can be confident that they took their oppressive, soul killing ways with them.
The people who embraced the Tkach corrections were those who didn't believe in spanking their wives.
7:38~ You don't know a heck of a lot about corporate law, do you? A corporation, although it may change its philosophy or mission statement, still retains the assets. But, what you said about the soul-killing ministers is true. The reason that the GCI never really took off was that they put new wine in old wineskins. They applied HWA's crappy tyrannical managerial style to the new, grace-based doctrinal approach. It ruined the revolution before it had time to blossom and grow. You can't have A-holes teaching and enforcing grace. The word nonsequitur comes to mind.
HWA was not exactly an honest steward when it came to his use of church funds. It was common knowledge he kept several thousand dollars on the jet with him as fun money and had a stash on board to leave the US if he was indicted in the California probe. This was stressed in the Jack Kessler letter. He opened and shut down the Big Sandy AC campus on a whim. And he would often fly to London on a lark to go shopping to go to Harrods and he flew to Romania to go to a clinic to see if he could get "rejuvenation" treatment for his impotence while church members were being discouraged from seeking treatment from traditional medication. Not exactly the standard you would want to see from your leader who crowns himself as an "apostle." I guess that is why Worldwide & most of it's spin offs are crumbling away and being blown off by the winds of history because it was built on sands of lies.
1.50 AM
HWA wasn't just crowned as a "apostle" but rather as the "Chosen Apostle." This title was often spoken from the pulpit in my area
11.25 PM
True, I know little about corporate law. Which is why I didn't use the term, and focused on the morality of Tkach's actions.
Incest is a sin in which a father uses their power as the authority in the family structure to do a vile and unnatural act of perversion and lust. It permanently harms and injures the victim and causes issues for the rest of their life. It disqualified HWA as any type of apostle despite claims to opposite by RCM, Flurry,or Pack. I know Thiel the jackass claimed he proved that it did not occur but that is false and a lie just like how the Chinese Communist Party is claiming covid was developed in the US.
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