I knew that when I posted the picture of the Trashed Bible from the 1969 Envoy that it would gather a reaction. And it most certainly did. Some even doubted this picture even came from the Envoy. Others rose to righteous indignation pertaining to the quote that I had graphically inserted over the picture. I would not expect anything less. But let me make a very pointed and clear point: What I said - the one statement - is absolutely nothing like the Church did regarding every other religion on the planet, besides theirs, for over 50 years.
Here is the full text which was printed below the trashed Bible picture. This is just a very small ample of the kind of vitriol that the Church displayed to all other religions over it's 50 years. They charged every other mainstream church with vicious slander - stating they have not converted, nor saved, nor reformed the Western world - ensnared in "pagan" customs, and ignoring the customs Jesus practiced - forgetting that Jesus practiced them in a world that was still under the Law!
The largest point of the text above is that all the "world's Churches" have lost their AUTHORITY. Indeed, authority was the one thing that the Church used the most in the propagation of their agenda. They accuse mainstream Christianity of twisting and distorting the Bible to read their "human-devised" teachings - and say that their formula - the formula of "reading the Bible without interpretation" - "makes sense".
A better way of saying "without interpretation" is "without context". The method that Armstrongism has always used was to read scripture like a book, from front to back, with absolutely no proper historical and religious context as to what and how each section and book meant - and then hiring their own experts with already programmed bias (i.e. Herman Hoeh and his B.I. bias) to confirm what they already believed. As such, they turned the word of God in it's proper perspective and context into a book that both promoted an obsolete code, and demoted an active Jesus christ. The Law was always paramount, and Jesus was stuck in heaven until his second coming letting Satan loose on the earth ruling the world until Jesus decided Satan had had enough, and comes down to rule with super authority, forcing the world to be happy by the full weight of law for a thousand years.
Yes, what I said drew a reaction. I expected no different.
But let's look at it from the other side of the story.
Herbert Armstrong, and the Church, have charged the churches of the world with every possible horrible charge you could ever imagine. They have accused the churches of being satan's churches, while their own church was full of satanic attitudes from the top down and the inside out. They have accused the other denominations of slandering the word of God - twisting and distorting it to meet their own man-made interpretations - while they have doneexactly the same thing (consider the marked up Bible of Richard Ames to illustrate exactly what I mean here.)
Armstrongism has a history of hypocrisy. They would never have any problem accusing everybody else of such horrifying spiritual charges - but refuse to look at themselves and the main reason they were doing what they were doing - using religion as a crux for physical and corrupt gain of mammon. They dared accuse other churches of satanic influence when the burgeoning nest of hungry demonic creatures infested their own dark castle with a web of deceit, lies, greed, crimes, covetousness, lust, and envy. They dared blast the likes of Billy Graham and Oral Roberts - certainly not perfect people, doctrinally or otherwise - but never applied the same condemnation to themselves. The focus of Armstrongism has always, without hardly any cessation - been completely and malignantly physical.
What I said they did to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true - if you read the scriptures and see exactly what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross for all of mankind. If you read the verses for what they say, you will see that Jesus accomplished far more in His first coming than Armstrongism ever acknowledged. They took the spiritual power of the Gospel of Christ and weakened it to the energy of a flea on a bad day with no dog or cat as host. They took the life and deity of Jesus and reduced his reign and rule to "on hold" for "4,000" years, because they refused to acknowledge the work of the Spirit of God (or that the Holy Spirit even IS God - but I will not open that can of worms!) in the New Testament (covenant) age of the dispensation of grace. And grace is another thing the church refuses to fully acknowledge - placing law and authority on a much higher footstool than grace ever had within Armstrongism - a religion that placed burdening, stifling emphasis on the Law without realizing that the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8) - which promises no condemnation for Christians - when all the Worldwide Church of God ever did was condemn not only other religions, but their own people for their own inadequacies and failures under the burden of law and authority - the burden of tyrannical government.
It really amazes me how one picture of a trashed bible with one quote can bring such a response when used against the ones who made the picture - when the Church has done nothing but charged everybody else with enough charges you could make an encyclopedia out of it if one sets their mind to it. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of love, because God is love - the purest, holiest love you could ever imagine. And while we always preached true love is obedience to the commandments of God, the physical interpretation of such always and every time took precedence over the spiritual execution of what love is all about as Jesus mentioned in Matthew 25, and all throughout the New Testament. A timeless love that transcends anything physical on this earth today, especially as to how we treat people of all ages, races, and genders - and certainly what physical church denomination one belongs to.
The photo and the caption I posted did what I intended it to do - expose the hypocrisy of one of the most hypocritical movements of religion in the 20th century - using the very method they used on everybody - and about a handful of remnants trying their hardest - unsuccessfully- to revive that greed-filled, mammon-oriented, Jesus-denying, spiritually HARMFUL way of thinking. This little blog is a world-reaching stumbling block to that movement simply by showing what they have said and done over the past 60 years, how they did it, and what they are doing in the splinters now.
