5 Minutes Before Sunset, OH NOES!!!!!!

This is not unique to SDA's, but happens in COG too.  Of course, keeping the letter of the law was never a strong point in the COG. If you were in Pasadena, various department heads had you work on Saturdays or before sunset was over, particularly if they had scheduled a Saturday night concert in the Auditorium.  The biggest abuse was having students and members dress up in Sabbath wear and work the WATS lines on Saturday as "volunteers" taking phone calls.

Richard Elfers on The Best and the Brightest

Richard Elfers, a former Armstrong Church of God member writes for The Courier Herald in Enumclaw, Washington.  He mentions his time in Armstrongism in relation to his story on John f Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson.

Kennedy, Johnson, and America’s “best and brightest”

The year was 1975. I had just received my master’s in history from Pepperdine University in Central L.A. I had also just left the religious cult I had been involved with since I was a teenager in 1963. Traveling home to Renton from Pasadena, California, in my 1963 American Motors Ambassador station wagon with all my worldly possessions packed in the back, I had a lot to think about. 

A few months earlier I had read David Halberstam’s book, “The Best and the Brightest.” 

“Published in 1972, it’s the definitive account of the decision-making process that led to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, written while the war was still being fought.” (Shapiro, David. “Geopolitical Futures”, March 5, 2019) 

Halberstam’s book dramatically changed my rather cloudy thinking about the Vietnam War and the Federal government. It was as if scales fell from my eyes and I saw reality from an entirely different perspective. 

The cult, the Worldwide Church of God, led by Herbert W. Armstrong, was anti-war. I was classified as an “IV-D” divinity student on my draft deferment. The WCG, as we called it, paradoxically favored the Cold War interpretation of the Vietnam conflict as a war against godless communism. Implicit in that stand was the belief in the domino theory myth: If Vietnam fell to the Communists, all of Southeast Asia would fall, too, all the way through the rest of Asia to Europe.

Read the complete article here.

How One Single Event In California Has Invalidated ALL COG Self-Appointed Prophets

How many years have we heard various self-appointed prophets of doom in the Armstrong Churches of God that the recent California drought was a direct punishment from their god? From James Malm zealoting in his kitchen to Bob Thiel claiming that gays had caused the California drought, the list of causes is endless.  Of course, add to this the mindless bellowing of Rod Meredith, Ron Weinland, Gerald Weston, Gerald Flurry and many other COG leaders and you will have heard the same message for over 7 decades. God is pissed at Manasseh and the other British Israelite nations and is punishing them for their sins. Drought is the favorite trial that the god of the Armstrong church leaders loves to use. Drought leads to pestilence and starvation and these guys get turned on by that. Once pestilence sets in, people are weakened and they are easy targets for the rampaging hoards of Germans, Chinses, and Muslims that will take over the nations.

That all came to a screeching halt this month in California.

This winter, California has been inundated with rain and more importantly snow.  With 300 - 500 inches in the Sierra's, California is now considered drought free.

Since scripture tells us if any prophet makes a prediction and it fails, he is a liar and is not to be followed.  Now that so many of the Armstrong COG leaders are certified lairs, why is anyone following them?

California drought free for first time in over 7 yearsLOS ANGELES — California is free of drought for the first time in more than seven years and only a small amount of its territory remains abnormally dry as a very wet winter winds down, experts said Thursday. 

More than 93 percent of the state is free of drought or dryness, and areas of abnormal dryness along the Oregon border and in parts of four southern counties amount to less than 7 percent of the state, the U.S. Drought Monitor said in its weekly update.

California drought officially over after more than seven yearsThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tweeted that weather in 2017 helped matters, but moderate drought persisted. Rainfall this winter further alleviated the drought, although 7 percent of the state remains "abnormally dry." 

"The storms this year have really helped snowpacks, the reservoirs," said Jessica Blunden, a climatologist with NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. Colder temperatures also helped prevent snow from melting off, she said. 

This winter — the meteorological winter starts on Dec. 1 and ends at the end of February — has been the wettest in the United States as a whole since records started being kept in 1895, with an average across the nation of 9.01 inches, which is 2.22 inches above the nationwide average, Blunden said. 

That precipitation has not just benefited California. "It’s been a great winter for the West," she said. 

The U.S. Drought Monitor website, which is an effort by several agencies including NOAA and the national drought mitigation center, says that well-above precipitation in the West helped build snow pack and fill reservoirs, and that normal conditions have returned to the Salton Sea in the southeastern part of the state. 

The Los Angeles area experienced cool winter temperatures that brought the fifth-longest streak of 41 consecutive days with a high temperature below 70 degrees since records began in 1877. Rare snowfall was reported in parts of the Los Angeles area in February.