A comment on "Same Old Yoke, Same Old Excuses – Must Be the Members’ Fault Again"
It is truly ironic that a dynamic movement which in its heyday warned the world of the end times would end up fizzling out and decaying right along with the world it once warned. One once expected this voice to rise to its highest crescendo as surrounding conditions evolved to their worst and became intolerable. So effective would be this message that we were supposed to be persecuted and expelled for this! And, it is so easy to get deported today!
It seems perfectly obvious that the splinters are clueless and have lost the gift of messaging. With the proliferation of "the influencer" on the internet, how is it that nobody has been able to tap into and exploit the old Armstrongism in such a way as to go viral? It's really kind of mind-boggling, isn't it? If God were truly behind them, all it would take would be a divine nod, wink, or smile, and they would be everywhere! Instead, we find them waddling in their paranoia over a few well-placed termites or strategically released farts from Satan, who most likely could care less their so-called work! Cowabunga!
You people who are out there making Banned part of your sabbath AM studies realize that my comment this morning is not wrong!
In an era when any teenager with a ring light and a TikTok account can command a global audience before breakfast or a twenty-something guy can expose massive fraud of taxpayers' money, the heirs of Armstrongism cannot make their “urgent” end-time warning travel farther than the next church basement. They have the internet, the algorithms, the free platforms, and a ready-made catalog of dramatic prophecies. What they lack is the ability—or the will—to package any of it in a way that anyone outside their shrinking circle actually wants to hear.
If God were truly behind them, all it would take would be a divine nod, wink, or smile, and they would be everywhere. Instead, they are nowhere. The absence of that viral breakthrough is not a mystery; it is the evidence. A message that cannot spread even when the tools for global distribution are handed to it on a silver platter is a message that has already been weighed and found wanting.
Rather than adapt, the remaining groups have retreated into the safest possible activity: paranoia. They spend their energy hunting termites in the walls and detecting strategically released farts from Satan while the actual work of reaching the public is left undone. The result is a collection of tiny, self-referential echo chambers whose loudest noise is the sound of their own mutual suspicion.
That is why none of them are known around the world for their message. World leaders have no idea who they are. No magazines or video productions influence large audiences. Not because the world is too wicked to listen. Not because persecution has silenced them. But because the message itself has become unhearable—clumsy, outdated, and delivered by people more interested in guarding the last remaining vestages of 1970/80s Armstrongism than in speaking to anyone outside them.
Cowabunga, indeed!
TraditionalACOG‘s have to keep tight control over their messages, because they know that if people look into the history of their churches, they will find the truth about them. The Internet influencer style is too open to interaction from people who don’t like them.
ReplyDeleteI do have to give LCG credit for being fairly loose on the comment section on their Tomorrow’s World YouTube channel. Just don’t say, “Armstrongism.” Say, “Armstrong faith tradition.”