10 Million and Counting!

 

Who would have imagined that this blog would have ever hit 10 million site views? It was not even a spark in the back of my mind over twelve years ago when I originally started this to post information about books that were critical; of Armstrongism that were banned by the church so that members did not read them. 

I remember one time at a Deacon/Elders get-together at Dean Blackwell's home when he took us to his garage. It was filled with thousands of books, of which was a huge collection of anti-WCG/Herbert Armstrong books. One of the self-righteous deacons became rather upset seeing all of these books. Blackwell shut him down rather quickly and said that if you were ever going to debate and challenge assumptions about the church then you need to understand the opposing viewpoint. He also mentioned that many of the books that were critical of the church contained a lot of accurate observations about the condition of the church. It was at that point I started collecting these kinds of books and currently have over 50 of them from the early 1960s to the present day, as the count keeps growing yearly as more and more exCOG members tell their stories.

Of course, no one in their critical thinking would have imagined the Worldwide Church of God imploding in such an appalling fashion as it did in the mid-1990s. I was one of those who supported the changes in the church and knew them to be drastically needed. Working in Pasadena or even attending there as a student or as a church member at church services, you quickly learned that the church never practiced what it preached. Its public face and its behind-the-scenes face were two different entities. One proud and boastful and the other, a vengeful spiteful hypocritical mess.

As the church imploded many of these vain spiteful men broke off to form new Church of God movements, which most of the time were nastier and more abusive than anything that WCG had ever contemplated. Each and every one of them told the lie that they were returning to the "truth once delivered" and returning to 1st century Christianity. There is not a single COG out there today that has ever accomplished this and never will even as they continue to lie that they are.

With the rapid birth of hundreds of these harlot daughters of Armstrongism, the church grew crazier by the day. Failed or discredited ministers in the WCG soon earned a following in the splinterdom of Armstrongism.  None of us could have imagined the absolute craziness that they all started preaching and how they began to act.

Gavin Rumney soon came on the scene documenting the rapid decline of the church and particularly the fallout over the doctrinal changes affecting the college and church as they were both imploding. Numerous people in Pasadena and the church were feeding him a steady stream of stories about conditions in the church. Soon, members in the splinter groups start sharing stories of abuse already happening in these young churches. Also during this time, Ed Mentell started The Painful Truth site which was a no holds barred expose of church abuse and its heretical teachings. In 1997, Dixon Cartwright started, The Journal-News of the Churches of God, which rapidly became a slightly neutral ground for various COGs to share their stories and doctrinal stances. Former members and present members also shared their stories of how they were abused.

Never would I have imagined that this blog would end up doing the same thing, but when the church started getting so crazy and the internet was rapidly holding them accountable this blog also took off Gavin Rumney, unfortunately, had died and the Journal ceased operating. During this time and now, church leaders in the Philadelphia Church of God, Restored Church of God, Church of God Preaching the Kingdom, and the absurdly named "continuing" Church of God started saying and doing incredibly stupid things. 

Never has the Church of God been filled with such incredible theological idiots as have in Gerald Flurry, Dave Pack, Ron Weinland, and Bob Thiel. These guys may be the weirdest leaders, but the church also has to deal with lesser men like Weston, Kubik, Zerubbabel, and others. 

So, as long as these blithering idiots say and do stupid things I will continue to highlight them for as long as I am able or get so tired of their stupidity that it's time to hang it all up. But, till then all I can say is, Keep it up, boys! Especially Bob Thiel! Has the church ever had a more vain, narcissistic, tone-deaf leader than we get to watch in him?

 It is never a dull moment in Armstrongism as we get to watch in real-time as the church disintegrates into meaningless nothingness.