Over the decades, the Church of God has been blessed with an endless parade of crackpots, each one more unhinged than the last, peddling their precious pet theories, wild speculations, and outright bald-faced lies. It’s this proud tradition of gullibility and zero discernment that has allowed modern con artists like Bob Thiel and Dave Pack to flourish, happily vacuuming up whatever few desperate, wide-eyed followers they can find. Nothing says “led by the Holy Spirit” quite like flocking to the newest liar with a website and a printing press.
Liars have always found the most fertile, well-fertilized ground in the Church of God. It’s practically their spiritual homeland. We’ve endured generations of lying false prophets who knew the exact timeline of end-time prophecy — every single time. (They were wrong, of course, but the next one will definitely be right. Just wait.)
We’ve had genuine crackpots who stood up and declared that four egrets in front of the Auditorium were about to come alive, grab the whole building, and fly it to Petra like some divinely sanctioned Uber, with a fifth egret acting as celestial navigator. And yes, some actual functioning adults left the church to follow this majestic egret-based theology. Truly, the finest minds at work.
Then there was that absolute masterpiece of biblical exegesis floating around Pasadena when I got to college: the unshakable belief that God Himself had personally branded the campus with His sacred name through — wait for it — street signs.
Green Street, Orange Grove, Del Mar, St. John
First letters? G-O-D-S.
GODS.
God’s campus. God’s church. God’s holy vending machines. Some genius actually convinced people this was divine proof. Because obviously the Creator of the Universe moonlights as a city planner in Southern California.
But here’s the real kicker — the biting truth they never want to admit: flip those letters around and it spells DOGS.
And honestly? That makes way more sense. God didn’t claim that campus — He let the dogs have it. The whole thing has been one big theological dog park for decades. A place where every stray crackpot theory could run around off-leash, hump each other’s legs, and leave little steaming piles of false prophecy wherever they pleased.
And the funniest part? That “God’s campus” belief is still limping along today as a housing development and a College-Prep private school, even though the Almighty apparently looked at the property, said “Yeah, I’m out,” and abandoned it decades ago like a bad blind date. But sure, keep clutching those street names, folks. Divine endorsement never looked so… canine.
Maybe this is a prophetic truth that will allow Samuel Kitchen to buy the Ambassador Auditorium and HWA's mansion. This is the COG after all, anything is possible.
What an absolutely stellar, rational, and spirit-led organization this has been.
What an absolutely stellar, rational, and spirit-led organization this has been.
Peak 1st Century Christianity. .
17 comments:
God didn’t claim that campus — He let the dogs have it.
Why be so quick to attribute the outcome to the Divinity? I propose that we still don't know the answer to the question that is dogging us all:
Who let the DOGS out?
Christianity in general is full of crackpots. Just tune in to TBN and you'll see craziness unleashed.
And as usual you need to be reminded this is NOT about Christians in other churches but about Armstrongism, the one true church, the elect, the chosen, the only true practitioners of 1st century Christianity.
One of my favorite stories that HWA ever told was about a young farmer who went to his local pastor and informed that pastor that God had called him to the ministry.
Incredulous, the pastor asked, "So, John, how do you know that God has called you to the ministry?"
The farmer smiled, and explained, "Well, Pastor, last week I was out in my field, working it over with my tractor, and when I gazed up into the sky, the clouds were formed in such a way that I could clearly see the letters PC! You know, Preach Christ!"
The pastor smiled, and replied, "No, John! You are a farmer. Your work is important! It feeds God's children. He was telling you to plant corn!"
Part of HWA's package was his "Seven Laws to Success" As part of that, he taught his readers to avoid being the proverbial square peg in a round hole. He used this story to illustrate that. It was told during an era when a large percentage of the members of the Radio Church of God were farmers.
Oh, no! Now I'm starting to sound like nck! (just kidding.) Seriously, there was some good along with all the bad. We just have to find it and use it. The thing is, the ministry HWA raised up and groomed also misread many of what they considered to be signs. Oddly enough, the tale of the young farmer reveals that HWA actually knew better. In the case of the acronym constructed from bordering street signs, as his own promoter, we see that he allowed the occasional self-serving one through. There is no reason to wonder where Dave Pack, Bob Thiel, Gerald Flurry, Ron Weinland, or for that matter Gerald Waterhouse and Rod Meredith in earlier days, learned hype. They studied at the feet of Gamaliel! (Well, our own flawed version of Gamaliel, anyway)
BB
And you try to make it look like only "Armstrongism" draws kooks. They are everywhere and no one should be surprised that there are some in the COG movement.
So thankful I was turned down on AC applying in 1966. I had no intention to go to AC to learn sign language.
You have to look at the percentages, 8:40. Armstrongism was very efficient. It produced and attracted more kooks per gallon of Bull$hit than any other Christian or PseudoChristian faith group.
Good for you, 10:09. Best thing I got from AC was a couple years to mature in a sheltered environment. There was all kinds of weird crap going on in "the world" towards the last half of the '60s. The music on FM radio was awesome, though! Worst danger at AC at the time was letting them superimpose the U.A.P. (Universal Ambassador Personality) over your own. The borg got most of my classmates! Of course, many left when reality struck later!
Ho ho ho, and here we were told not to worship “graven images,” the cross, the Virgin Mary(I did not), yet members and hierarchy did the selfsame thing with the Auditorium and the Stone of Scone and whatever suited their fancy. The worst was worshipping the man HWA.
Anonymous 10:09:24, I am an Ambassador College reject. I still have AC Register William Stenger's rejection letter somewhere. I thank God for rejecting my application to "God's College". I graduated with B.S. degree from the University of Maryland and M.B.A. Drake University instead. My life's trajectory would have been much different. Thank you Lord for rejecting me from Ambassador College.
Anonymous 2:19 said, "Armstrongism was very efficient. It produced and attracted more kooks per gallon of Bull$hit than any other Christian or PseudoChristian faith group".
MY COMMENT - The R/WCG seemed to attract some of the strangest and “fringe” members of society. To mention a few, I remember “the Rockefeller lady”. She believed Nelson Rockefeller controlled the whole world and was head of a secret organization known as “The Illuminati”. The belief was that this secret organization was trying to establish a new world government with Rockefeller as its head dictator. I remember a lady from West Virginia who took the Church’s ban against the use of cosmetics one step further. Apparently, she didn’t believe woman should be attractive at all – so she didn’t believe in shaving her legs! Grossly protruding out from under her dresses were the hairiest legs you’ve ever seen rivaling any of the ape characters in the movie Planet of the Apes.
Long after I had stopped attending, I still had some knowledge of Church people through contact with my family members who remained in the Church after I departed in 1976. In the 1980s, there was a drifter that attended Church that my family gave work to. The drifter laced watermelon with the drug PCP and caused my mother to be drugged and hospitalized. A couple years later, the same drifter walked into a Montgomery Ward’s Department store, went to a gun rack in the sporting goods section, loaded a gun and blew his brains out. There was a tax cheat in the Church that was about to go to prison for tax evasion, who also committed suicide. Suffice it to say, the Worldwide Church had more than its fair share of weirdoes!
Richard
David Pack is the top example of kooks in COG, he alone has brought the most shame of anyone, save Terry Ratzmann & Steve Allwine. But they are effectively "disfellowshipped", in general.
Not many in WCG worshipped HWA while they supported WCG. Many were appalled & nauseated at his hypocrisy during the ghastly divorce/remarriage hopscotch. Many found out he had gobs of heart pills toward the end despite folk pressed to avoid medical attentions here & there. His marriage to Ramona was as wacky as Flurry's with young Ms. Bareiro. Anyone who cashed in assets near 1975 did so to HWA's shame. The singles of color back then who couldn't date as freely as others shows a bleak legacy.
But newer COGs go on without him in peace.
Considering the apoplectic seizures these fiends go into every time they encounter a cross, I am shocked that the administration of WCG/AC didn't petition the City of Pasadena to change the name of St. John street. Sometimes, because I got too lazy or hurried to type out "Apostle", I've used St. this or that, and CoGlodytes have asked me if I were Catholic. Above all things, Catholicism offends the followers of Herbie Dub. And here we have them making lemonade out of some of it!
Every time HWA's name was mentioned in spokesman's club during the late 1970s, there was universal reverence towards him in the room. He was worshipped or viewed as a junior god by most people in my congregation.
Not anymore
True, that, 11:27. There was a time when in fellowship conversation, a member with the "proper" attitude would not so much as use the raw acronyms "HWA" or "GTA". You said "Mr. HWA" or "Mr. GTA". Only people who had been choked out by the weeds and "fallen away" would use the names Herbie or Teddy. That would have been considered akin to blasphemy!
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