Crackpot Bob has a new article that is so dripping with fear your computer monitor will get wet just reading it. AI biological viruses, disease, famines, earthquakes, biological weapons, chemical warfare, doomsday bug, the Black Death, botulinus, rice fungus, wheat rust and the pale horse of Revelation. All of that packed into one fear laden article.
Living in a constant state of fear is not scriptural. It is a control strategy with a body count measured in ruined sleep, strained marriages, and people who leave the group only after years of wondering whether questioning the latest pestilence update means they have the mark already. Bob Thiel and the broader Armstrong tradition have turned this into an art form. The latest exhibit is the familiar mash-up of AI-designed viruses, 1969 Plain Truth reprints about the "doomsday bug," Matthew 24, the fourth horseman, and a swift pivot to the mark of the beast because computers exist. The message is always the same: the world is one lab leak or language model away from fulfilling prophecy, and you should stay very, very alert (and loyal).
Fear works. It keeps members from asking why failed timelines never produce an apology, only a new chart. It makes leaving feel like walking into the tribulation without a raincoat. It is also what much of the wider culture does with climate, pandemics, elections, and now AI. The church version just baptizes it and schedules it around the Feast of Tabernacles.
This is not New Covenant Christianity. The New Testament does not run a 24-hour prophecy scare channel. "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7). "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). Jesus told people not to be anxious about tomorrow and left them peace, not a subscription to weekly pale-horse updates. The apostolic letters spend far more ink on how to live with one another than on decoding every new pathogen as the fourth seal. Armstrongism's operating system is closer to an Old Covenant plus British-Israel plus "the end is unusually nigh this decade" firmware update. That combination produces high-control environments where dissent looks like rebellion against God rather than a reasonable question about yet another recycled 1969 article.
Chronic fear is not free. It dysregulates the stress response, trains the brain to scan for threat, and correlates with anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, and difficulty trusting anyone outside the approved sources. When the approved sources are also the ones collecting the offerings and defining who is "Philadelphian" enough, the arrangement is not accidental. People stay because leaving feels cosmically dangerous. That is the point. The same dynamic appears in secular form whenever institutions discover that a frightened public is a compliant public. The church version simply adds eternal stakes and a leather-bound proof text.
Fear is the real gospel of Armstrongism.
5 comments:
I remember when there was grave concern about the year 2000 virus. Remember that, when the clock clicked over from 1999 to 2000 all technology would go bonkers etc etc. Now AI. There are concerns, yes indeed, but also huge benefits. That aside, perfect love casts out fear. The Armstrong remnants have a different gospel which is preached from their pulpits. One of fear. Our rest is in Him, not in the continuing fear spread by this dwindling dying movement. How refreshing and liberating is the gospel. No that doesn’t mean we are blind to the trends that are developing in society at large. Or a license to sin. But there is a peace that comes from taking His yoke which is light and easy upon ourselves.
Armstrongism is a traumatic experience that wounds people so that they can never think rationally again. Witness Dr. Bob.
I do remember Y2K! New Years Eve, my ex wife and I were watching Waylon Jennings and his band, along with his wife! Jessi Colter! We really weren't worried too much about the lights going out, but apparently over on the East coast, some kind of bomb had gone off earlier in the day underneath the stage for one of the New Years celebrations. I figured that if we were to meet our demise, who better to be with than ol' Waylon!
As for Bob Thiel? There are actually laws these days against influencing others to commit suicide. You'd think he would have learned something from Terry Ratzburger! But, apparently not!
BB
Added tithes.......OT Israel: 20% every 7 years....... Herbie: 90% every 7 years.
Atleast Dr Bob has his Witchdoctor friends to help him
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