American Protestants were fairly enlightened until the time Armstrong came on to the scene, its all gone down hill since. Billy Graham once referred to Herbert Armstrong as "a great man of prophecy". Herbert Armstrong predicted the end of the world would come in 1972 - doesn't pay a prophet to be too specific. We jokingly refer to Armstrong's church as a "non-prophet" organization.
For me it wasn't a conversion by choice, my father joined the religion when I was very young and I was compelled to go. I did spend about 34 years in the religion, which is not unusual, most Catholics grew up in their religion too, they didn't convert to it. In 1993 I began to see the little man behind the curtain for what he was. Then me and few friends started an internet campaign to change the organization and reveal its corruption. About half the membership left it for more productive lives. Those that remained splintered into dozens of new organizations. The parent organization is now a Karl Barth Calvinist style church.
I won't go into all the scandals of the religion, if you are interested in the sordid historical facts of its founders they are available at: http://hwarmstrong.com/ on a web site run by a friend of mine. I am not bitter towards the religion, the experience was a mixed bag. I still maintain friendships with those that don't mind having a heretic for a friend. Somethings taught were very good, but the image they presented of God, was frankly a monster.
The religion was soaked with fear and because the end was always near members never put away money for their children or their retirements. Fear of God, fear of the end times, fear of even your own God given reasoning and common sense were hallmarks of the religion. Armstrong practiced a self-censoring form of mind control and had studied not only Hitler, Marx and Hegel...he says just to know how evil they were. In one letter to co-workers he admits to being an FBI informant during the McCarthy era.
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One of the lawyers on that case told me the State of California went after the wrong things. They tried to find something wrong with the books. The Church had an air tight accounting system - in fact it was state of the art - it was a real time system that gave their current cash position at any given moment (that was in 1982). It was also pass phrase encrypting on the record level. What the State of California didn't ask was what Herbert W Armstrong did with that money, and all that required was a compliant Treasury who'd sign off on it. If the State came down, he could always have plausible deniability and fire the Treasurer. Those who didn't comply did get fired. I know of two such honest men.
The rest of the comments are here: Rumor Mill News: Bobby Fischer
