Remember the glory days of old when the Worldwide Church of God used to proclaim that God lived in the Auditorium and that God and Jesus were present in the everyday activities of the church?
Well, that all came to a screeching halt when the Great Apostasy happened and the church splintered into the winds with some of the wildest and most idiotic men ever produced by the COG movement.
Jesus and God soon found themselves standing on St John Ave wondering what in Gehenna fire happened! Never fear though. The Holy Spirit was quietly working in the background and Jesus and God soon found a home once again when Maranatha High School and Harvest Rock Church bought the lower campus in 2004.
The Auditorium (that glittering “Carnegie Hall of the West” Herbert Armstrong built as a literal house for God) was soon rocking to praise and worship under Che Ahn’s charismatic crew. Herbert had his second coronary at this point.
Then, God’s House went up for sale! Oh noes! Never fear, though—Samuel Kitchen stepped up to the plate to buy it. We are still waiting on that one. (In the meantime the $45 million listing from 2024 got quietly yanked off the market by Harvest Rock in May 2025. Divine timing, no doubt.)
It wasn’t long until earlier this year that Jesus had a home once again on campus—in Mayfair! Steadfast Church sprang up using the old mansion (the historic 1902–03 Tudor Revival Sprague/Mayfair house on Orange Grove) as their worship space. They were part of a church-planting group that starts in people’s homes and small offices or rented rooms from other churches.They were able to meet in Mayfair for several months until their pastor made the decision in June of this year to shut it all down.
Jesus got evicted again! Is the property cursed, or what?
7 comments:
A sect called the Message, headquartered in Jeffersonville, Indiana, claims angels line the wall of the BranhamTabernacle, which is their main church. Many of their members claim William Branham, the founder of their sect, was God in the flesh. Of you want to know more about these crazy things, go to william-branham.org These folks almost make the ACOG'S look sane!
More blasphemy taking the Lords name in vane.
There sure are a lot of prissy little people on here lately looking to be butthurt over one thing or another.
There's nothing strange here. When the shekinah glory reluctantly floated up and away and departed from the temple of God in Jerusalem, this same temple operated for decades as an ongoing institution in one godless form or another 'til it was finally destroyed.
I have mixed emotions when I see these updates on the campus. My emotions don't derive from a sense of loss, because I really don't attach anything special or magical to the remaining buildings, or to my past experiences there. They are not some of my favorite memories! I was there during a time of my life when I was deceived, and the "education" we were receiving consisted of further and deeper deception. There was zero intellectual freedom, or for that matter, freedom of speech. What made all of this somewhat tolerable was that the campus was a sanctuary from what was going on in the real world during that era. Youth had sunken into drugs and weirdness, and their clothing styles and personal hygiene were atrocious, although I loved their music! The other side of that equation was no more attractive, as your John Bircher types were defining patriotism as serving your country by fighting in a useless and very stupid war. It was good to have the freedom to object to that, although some would then treat you as if you were some kind of deceptive hippie, one that simply had short hair and bathed regularly. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same, because today is also an era when normal centrist people have no political representation, not that we ourselves were exactly centrists back then!
I really didn't make friends amongst the gung ho types who idolized HWA and the ministers and ran the campus. I actually called most of them parrots. Because the people I hung out with were the freer thinking individuals, most of my friends ended up being asked to leave, or left of their own volition..
One memory still stands out! There were a bunch of funky old buildings that I just loved, like the old 1940s gas station that was used as the Transportation Department, and the old gardening sheds and office buildings that were demolished to build the Hall of Administration and Auditorium. Some students didn't like that they had to live in the ancient apartments on Olcott Place while the new dorms were being built, but I loved them. Later on as my career kicked into gear, going on other campusses, USC, UCLA, and Occidental College still had old, ungentrified buildings. Loved them, too.
Let me just say it. Putting buildings on a campus amongst restored mansions and apartments, the new buildings being a gauche and radical departure from the classic ones, always struck me as being an outrage, blatant savagery, and completely disrespectul towards the prevailing character of an historic neighborhood. There was no more profound example of this "nouveau riche" debauchery than the Loma D. Armstrong Academic Canter. Placed anywhere else, somewhere where it had actually fit in, these garish buildings may have actually been quite spectacular. As it was, the new buildings did not in any way compliment the old ones! The pictures of some of those buildings being demolished are some of my favorite ones of the campus. Though I have not seen them, I have no doubt that the new apartments and condos have carried the abomination further. His other faults aside, HWA was truly not the only architectural sinner!
In searching for something to close with, the thought occured that the one thing which has been preserved for sure, is the cultic flavor of that neighborhood! That aura is probably not worse, just a little different! And yet still very weird! Probably fits much better than those multi million dollar attrocities ever did!
BB
Don't worry about 'em! Trolls can easily disguise themselves as prissy little people who have found a way to get some kind of reaction! š
How would you even do that, 7:32? Engrave the tetragrammaton on a weather vane?
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