If you happen to stumble upon the Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association website, you’ll quickly get the distinct impression that dear old dead Ted is still alive and bellowing from the grave as boldly as ever. The site acts as a digital mausoleum, faithfully preserving most of his sermons, books, and booklets like sacred relics from a bygone era of one-man-show Armstrongism.
One piece in particular stands out like a rotting corpse: The Church and the New World Order. In it, dead Ted trots out the tired, standard Armstrongist argument that is still being pompously leveled at “worldly churches” today — even though this screed was written long before the Great Apostasy and the glorious, never-ending splintering of Armstrongist groups into a clown car of competing mini-splinters.
Today’s various COG factions, from Bwana Bob Thiel to Gerald Flurry and the rest of the self-appointed pack, absolutely adore crowing about how deceived and hopelessly divided the worldly churches are. All while engaging in world-class gaslighting by pretending that today’s Churches of God aren’t splintered into a ridiculous, backbiting mess — with each tiny group fiercely clinging to its own unique, freshly reinterpreted, and conveniently self-serving flavor of Armstrongism.
The hypocrisy is not just astounding — it’s breathtakingly shameless, predictable, and downright comical in its blindness.
Everyone knows about religious differences. From our earliest recollections of our own church experiences, or from our civics and history books in school, we learned that Jews and Christians are different; that the Jewish race, generally speaking, reject Christ as the Messiah, while nominal Christians believe Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Savior of the world.
We know there are Buddhists, Shintoists, Taoists, Confucianists, Hindus, and adherents of Islam. We know about most of the major denominations; Roman Catholicism, the Anglican Church, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Nazarenes, Church of Christ, First Christian Church, Pentecostal churches, and dozens more. It requires a sizeable book or a large section in an almanac just to list them all.
It is plain, from simply informing oneself about how many different churches there are, that they are not all together. They hold different beliefs and customs. Does any one of them believe they are wrong? When thousands of people find their way to their neighborhood church building each week, are they entering a building and participating in a worship service they believe is wrong? No, of course not.
But can all of them be right?
Obviously not, for they are deeply divided, and ne’er the twain shall meet. There is deep-seated division between the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Division which caused the shedding of much blood; division which tore nations apart. Very large history books detail how and why the Church of England rejected the primacy of the popes in Rome, and how the Anglican church was formed. There is a vast amount of literature available about the Protestant Reformation; how many millions of members in dozens of denominations refused to submit to the popes in Rome.
Clearly, if any one of these churches is 100 percent right, then all the others are wrong. There simply cannot be different churches, teaching different doctrines, with different customs and practices, who are part of an undivided church.
Oh, the delicious irony. dead Ted (and every one of his spiritual descendants) loved pointing fingers at the divided “world” churches while running what has since become the most fragmented, ego-driven religious dumpster fire in modern Christianity. Each little COG pope in his tiny kingdom insists he alone has restored “the truth once delivered,” yet they can’t even agree on calendars, titles, prophetic timelines, or how to fleece the sheep without getting caught.
The hypocrisy is astounding. These groups mock the Protestants for their divisions while splintering faster than a dropped box of Legos at every perceived slight, doctrinal nuance, or power struggle. Thiel, Flurry, Pack, Brisby, Kitchen, and the rest preach unity in theory while practicing ruthless division in practice — all while demanding absolute loyalty from their dwindling followers.
It would almost be tragic if it weren’t so absurdly funny. They condemn the “deceived” churches for not agreeing on everything, yet their own movement has produced more “one true churches” than you can shake a disintegrating Ambassador College diploma at. The same old arguments that sounded so clever in the 1970s now just expose the rotting foundation of the entire Armstrongist enterprise: a man-made system built on authoritarian control, failed prophecies, and breathtaking self-deception.
If you still can’t see the hypocrisy staring you in the face, perhaps it’s time to stop listening to dead men (and their living imitators) and start reading the New Testament for yourself. The real Jesus offers freedom, not another endless parade of self-appointed “watchmen” fighting over scraps of Herbert’s empire.
Article reads as if written in uncontrollable overwhelming hatred, bitterness and anger. You need people to pray to God for your healing, not dwelling on long dead people.
ReplyDeleteYou claim Sabbath Christians don't know Jesus, yet you don't let Jesus heal you.