Friday, August 16, 2013

UPDATED: Gerald Flurry Fails To Buy A Large Portion of Bricket Wood Campus



It seems that Flurry was not able to buy as much of the old Ambassador College Campus in Bricket Wood, St Albans England as he wanted too.  Other people were bidding on the property also, and they won!  Poor Gerald, so much Herbert Armstrong merchandise to buy up and no money to do it with!  He just cannot ever reach the pinnacle of success that Herbert Armstrong was able to accomplish.  Poor Gerald still remains the laughing stock of the Church of God for his idolatrous worship of Herbert Armstrong.



HSBC training site set to be used for 160 new homes AFTER months of fine-tuning, a planning application to build more than 160 homes on the former HSBC training centre site in Bricket Wood has been submitted to St Albans district council. Developers St Congar Land intend to turn the 185-acre site in Smug Oak Lane into 167 new homes and convert the existing New Lodge and Hanstead House into a further eight dwellings. The project, to be named Hanstead Park, would be focused on the areas of land that have already been developed, and much of the existing high quality trees would be retained or supplemented. St Congar Land director Steve Taylor said: “We’re delighted to be submitting this proposed scheme for the much needed redevelopment of the former HSBC site. “Future residents of Hanstead Park will enjoy a range of housing types, surrounded by stunning landscaping that is in keeping with the area.” Mr Taylor added: “St Congar Land would like to thank the local residents for their feedback following the public exhibition in September and subsequent meetings. “We were encouraged by the high turnout and this vital engagement has allowed proposals for the site to be shaped with sensitivity to the surrounding area and the needs of local residents.”  The Hert's Advertiser
St. Conger's plans for the former campus are here:  Hanstead Park

Poor Gerald also was never able to buy up the old Imperial Schools either.  It is the local Community Hall and been used by UCG for many years as their church facility.

Here is one of the buildings that Gerald was after.  Locals are not too happy he is getting it.  Another American cult in their midst is not that appealing.  Hanstead Estate



Here is our favorite idol worshiper kneeling at what is supposed to be the very rock HWA prayed at over 80 years ago.  Gerald went to great lengths to dig this up and haul it all the way back to Edmond to place on his compound. Whenever Gerald needs strength he goes and sits on the bench staring at the rock asking God why he has never been able to do the same things HWA did.


UPDATE:

The report suggests that Hanstead House is part of the conversion into apartments. As Hanstead was the original college building, he would be gutted, I'm sure, if he didn't get it and maybe wouldn't want anything else. The Japanese gardens surround Hanstead & the mansion housed the library, some offices & originally student accommodation. Dr Rae had his office there and was confronted by a newspaper reporter doing an expose & had a heart attack & died as a result. The reporter left without helping him. The other newer bits of the campus, such as the gym and dorms, are quite a distance from this central "gem." There is also a small private cemetery on the estate with railings around it, built by the original owners. I think there are at least 2 WCG members buried there, one is Mrs Silcox, wife of the Head Gardener & Deacon, Howard Silcox. I think the other was a Dr Bogdanovich, a musician who taught at AC and who's wife taught at Imperial.

I Want All of you (who feel it) to Get Up Out of Your Chairs

 Dennis "Beale" hopes you will go to your windows...

man yelling out of window | Flickr - Photo Sharing!




"So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell:

I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!...You've got to say,

I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! "

Howard Beale--Network


I grew up in a home that , while very stable and calm.  With a handicapped brother, my parents had a full plate and I knew it.   I have never seen my dad angry until this past year in his 97th year when he got confused and his grief over mom's passing erupted.  He threw a bucket at a window in the home , breaking the window.  Dad has kept a lifetime of anger inside as was our custom. 

Expressing anger or emotion was pretty much out.  "We don't say that...."  was a common response when I'd let something loose and over time, I didn't say it anymore.   I packed it in. (Yikes maybe the word "Pack" causes me to react!)  I kept it to myself and the only way you could ever tell I was angry was when I get stone cold quiet and say,  "it's ok...don't worry about it."  Ok, let me rephrase that.  


The only way you can tell I AM angry is when.....    

When I got some counseling for depression towards the end of my WCG experience, the counselor told me that my humor "tended" to be passive aggressive.  LOL.  I said,  "well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me!  Ya think?"   No...I didn't say that, but I thought it.  He also told me after taking some test of sorts,  "Dennis, you tend to break the rules you disagree with."   That was about all I could take.  I asked him what he did and my first thought as an example to myself at that time was how I treated the "To be played in all the Churches" tapes.  Alas, I could not argue with him on that one.  It's probably why I held (passive aggressively)  my  "Ask and you shall not have.  Do not ask and all things are possible"   approach to some of the snow flakes from heaven that came down to me as minister from on high.  "No more YOU dances because two kids fornicated in New Jersey" was one that I rejected in Kentucky as we had the best Proms in the universe for the kids and even if some of them fornicated, I'm not doing away with it!   Next it would be no more pot lucks because someone farted in Missouri.



Anyway, depression was a part of the mix as minister as the mental habit of "we don't speak up or get angry" was ever a part of my program.  What I was angry with in WCG I ignored, to my harm.  Depression, in my experience, was my tendency to not express myself.  Any anger felt was either felt to be something I had no right to express or the price of doing so would be just too darn high.  In the ministry that was always the case.  I ONCE called Joe Tkach to ask if it was so that Ramona was divorcing HWA as I had heard.  He had to call me back.  I was gone when he did, so he just yelled at my then wife to "tell Dennis to put a lid on it!!!!"   Of course, it was a valid question and she did divorce him.  I learned from that one.   The Tkaches taught me that when they told me "No" it meant "Yes" and "Yes" meant "No" 100% of the time.



Denial of what I was experiencing in WCG was also a close ally to the repressed anger.  I recall knowing that 60 Minutes was going to do it's hit on the WCG and it was not a little hard to take since I had not come into ministry for this bullshit.  I went visiting all day Sunday and made it so I was not home when it aired.  However, once home, the phone rang and rang.  I thought a lot about Dennis the Paleontologist that never was and not minister I seemed stuck with in an organization that seemed so right when I discovered it and was to be nothing but drama and a life lesson for me at Earth School as I now call it.



I  started to come out of the never say what you are actually thinking stage when I even surprised myself  confronting Gerald Waterhouse, whose visits made me nuts as he caused more problems than he solved, with "what are you going to say when HWA dies?"


I have mentioned this before of course, but when he said, "I'll believe it after three days and three nights," and felt my brain click off channel just a bit more on the whole WCG thing, I knew I had crossed a line in expressing myself.  I also got kicked under the table.


All this to say, it is not healthy, and was not for me to repress what I felt, or saw or thought all the times I found myself at odds mentally, emotionally and spiritually with those who had my ministry in their hands.  I also learned that when you repress anger and feel your own views are somehow invalid or not important to the powers that be, you can turn to things for comfort that don't actually help.  Hindsight is great.  It is also painful.  If you wish to push my last button, and there have been times where it has occurred here on Banned with the generic condemnations of "those ministurds", as if all men in ministry were shit, well...just say that.  LOL.   I got a bit irritated at being called a "made man" a few days ago as if I was mafioso, but I took it in context and calmed down.  Judgments like that simply remind me of what I already consider big life decision mistakes that I will pay for to the end.  I already am aware of it and crass reminders are like sticking pins in my eyes. I may have passive aggressive but I probably have found active aggressive at this stage too.



More people with Neanderthal qualities



In my heart and soul, I'd be happy just to be a quiet, meditative Buddhist type in the Western mode.  I'd like to be able to simply accept all that is and say "Is that so..." to all that is yet to come in life without drama or caring about it.  I don't read the Bible for encouragement near as much as I watch the cosmology videos on youtube. That gives me perspective and fits the science done well lover in me.  Once when by myself in the museum in Jerusalem where all the Biblical artifacts I had ever seen on TV, in Biblical Archaeology Magazine or in National Geographic were on display, I made a turn down a small hall of glass cases with the original Neanderthal skulls from Mt Carmel I had also seen all my life in books.  The Bible artifacts were interesting.  But I stood alone inches away from whoever they were and had tears streaming down my cheeks in emotion.  It was a revelation to me as well.  I simply was overwhelmed, not with Bible stuff, but with human origins for real.  It's why when I read of some COG type harkening back to what Adam and Eve did or didn't do I get a bit passive aggressive.



To the point.  I KNOW there have to be PCG and RCG members and ministers who have to be going through the same thing.  You can't possibly agree with all your great yet theologically ignorant and self centered leaders believe about themselves, their work and your place in it.  Yet I know you won't speak up.  You feel you don't have a right to or the price will be too high.  Only the second reason is true if you work for the man or don't want to get thrown out of the one true church on earth, which of course, it is not but you don't know that yet.  Add to this the need not to let you "good friends" down, none of whom you would have met had it not been for church, and you are stuck until it becomes so evident that you simply can't put up with it anymore.


The time when you won't put up with it anymore is coming.  For Dave Pack and his Restored Church, it is even at the doors.



V for Vendetta Televised  ...



So give yourself permission "if you know what I know and feel what I feel" as spoken so well in by the Guy Fawkes character in "V",  to speak up when you know in your soul that what you are hearing from your poorly trained and undisciplined in their theological thinking and ego centric in their title taking ministry comes up with for you to swallow.  No more sitting on the outside but standing up on the inside.  Make the inside match the outside before it gets much more painful.






The mental, emotional and spiritual life you save may be your own and your kids will praise you in the gates.





Thursday, August 15, 2013

James Malm: Since Adam and Eve Were Married It Was OK To Be Naked





Apostle Malm continues to get some flack about his head coverings for women.  Today he made the comment that Adam and Eve were spouses.  In order to be made "spouses" they have to have been married.  Did God perform a marriage ceremony in the garden of Eden?

An acolyte asks
Since you mentioned to Alex above “let us all wear skirts as well”, I have to ask you if wearing robes & the wearing of veils in public were customs and not a command from God. As we know God left Adam & Eve naked in the garden until sin…so the wearing of a veil is not a command from creation, for example, like the Sabbath.
The apostle responds:
We do not know what the custom was before the flood, we do know the custom in Israel after the flood. Further Eve and Adam were spouses and it is entirely lawful to be naked with ones spouse. God did give them clothes when he sent them out of the Garden Gen 3:21, after which they would have begun to reproduce and it was not proper in God’s eyed that any other than spouses see one another naked.