Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
Cultish has scheduled a program on exposing Herbert Armstrong and Armstrongism. They have done recent exposes on Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Mormonism.
With the rise of several aberrant Church of God leaders over the last 20 years and who have serious mental health issues, it has become important to expose these charlatans for the liars they are. It will be interesting to see how they deal with Dave Pack, Gerald Flurry, Gerald Weston, Bob Thiel, Ron Weinland and the other self-appointed frauds that are destroying the lives of thousands of COG members around the world.
Here is just small sampling of some the topics In 2020 we want engage if we can reach our year end goal of 25k.
This will allow us to fund and support our research team going into next yeah so they can laser focus in on creating weekly podcast, video and blog content for the following topics that many of you have asked us to talk about! -The Hebrew Roots Movement -7th Day Adventists -The Passion Translation -YWAM -Herbert Armstrong and The Worldwide church of God -Another Cultish/Sheologians Crossover -Reiki Energy Healing -An in-depth series exploring all the origins of yoga š§♀️ up and to it’s current and present forms -The world Mission Society Church of God (The Mother God Cult) -The Manson Family: A Cultish True Crime Story -William Brahnam And much much more Thank you all for listening and supporting and sharing our content this past year and participating in these conversations and please consider supporting us so this type of program can continue! Please help us now hit our year end goal of 25k by donating here
... and as we wrap up another year hear at BannedHWA together, I'd like to wish you all a safe and restful holiday.
Thank you for sharing all your experiences and views on our common experience and no matter where your journey through it all has taken you, I wish you a positive acceptance of the experience, a grateful appreciation for lessons learned in life and a kind heart through it all.
I can only speak for myself, but I've learned a lot along the way this year with all your observations and shared experiences.
During the peak of my own experience with transitioning out of WCG, when there was more going on in the story of my own life than I evidently could handle, I found counselor with some foresight to give me some insight on what was going on and how to maneuver through it all. After I had filled out the appropriate forms and answered some questions prior to our first session, he finally walked in the room and his very first words to me were "Wow! You got fired by God!" Perhaps at another time I would have thought this funny and I told him that but at the moment I said I hoped he would not utter any scriptures to help me along my way. He apologized and told me he used to be a minister too to which I said, "I hoped he would not utter any scriptures to help me along my way and we had a good laugh.
I talked at length , imagine that, as he listened. I shared personal fears, guilts and regrets. In hindsight, I was in a bout of clinical depression with a heavy dose of anxiety gifted me by the whole transition in my life and woven deeply into the story of it.
One particular subject I brought up was how it made me feel to be divorcing, not only as a former minister who would have "frowned" on such things and had a bunch of scriptures in my holster to back me up on the topic, but that, in the personal story of my life, I was the only divorce of the siblings and the minister son at that. I mentioned that I grew up with parents who were married for, at that time, 55 plus years (They went on to 75 plus and died at just under 100 about a year apart as we suspected they would), but I could not match that success etc.
Then he said something that produced in the classic "ah ha" moment and has served me ever since . He said, "Dennis, that was their story. They did not live your story. It is just a story and you and I are not our stories." I felt a great burden simply lift from my shoulders. This is the same man, who in the same session told me, "Dennis, you leave your boxes quickly. We all come in the box our parents gave us and most don't even take a good look at that one just living their lives sitting down in the corner of it. You have left another box and you only have two choices. Stay in the box you were in and everyone will love you. However, you will be on antidepressants the rest of your life because you will never again be able to speak up and be yourself. OR, you can leave the box, which you have....but you go alone." Truer words were never spoken. And so it was.
Here on Banned we do what? We share stories, hurts, personal pain that came as a result of our various Church, minister, member and Organizational associations. We poke at each other at times and support at others. Sometimes we project our pain on others and question motives or reach for an experience that tops the one someone else had. All well and good an part of any healing processes we need to experience and go through.
We all have a story to tell. Our stories are all different with different causes and effects. Some lighter than others and some way too heavy for which we can all feel sorry for those who had to go through "that" as part of their own personal story.
I simply wish remind us, not because we don't already know it, but because so often we forget it in the heat of processing it all. We all have a story but we as a person are not our story. Our story is not our identity or who we actually are. It's just a story.
It's just a ride
Bill Hicks/George Carlin
Personally, I came to recognize and realize that if it had not been the WCG story it would have been another one. If I had chosen the Roberts Wesleyan Seminary I had been accepted to over Ambassador College/WCG, I would have had a different story, different children, relatives and partner. I suspect some of the story would have been similar to the one I actually wrote, but yet much different with different experiences.
Had gone down i with a member who badly judged the weather over Chicago in his Beechcraft Bonanza , as it seemed was inevitable, the story would have been much different. Head a couple of head on crashes not been diverted, the story would have been different. You know, zig vs. zag. Had the pneumonia been just bit worse or my wife's first bout with cancer at 33 been too much, (my first personal experience with prayer and anointing seems to fall on deaf ears and not prove effective after all, the story would have been different.
Had I not been asked to work just one night on a campus job someone of import to me asked me to stay and consider for the summer instead of leaving for Boise, Idaho the next morning, the story would have been different. I wimped out and deferred to the faculty member instead of my airline ticket because me and LA did not get along in summer. But still, it just would have been my story and not who I actually was as a person. When driving together in LA this past summer with Gary of BannedHWA, I did ask him to drive well as if we both went in the same accident I could only imagine the comments about that! LOL.
For years it seemed, when asked about who I was or what I did, I tended to preface it with "I used to be a minister." That stage is long gone. That was not and is not who I am as a person. It is not the definition of me and I slowly found that I naturally dropped that preface as I continued to write other chapters of the story.
So, for all our experiences, the good, the bad and the darn right ugly, disillusioning and more than a bit annoying, those are just our story. Neither you nor I or anyone we know here or have never heard off and are just "out there", , though we all have a story, are not our story and should not let it define us for the rest of time. It is not always easy and there is a tendency to resist it, but recognizing this fact will always serve us better than sticking to the "story of me" as if it actually was who we actually are as a one unique person among billions, in our experience of being here in the first place.
Someone once told me:
"You know Dennis, we write our life stories before we incarnate here on earth"
(Just as in religion, you meet a lot of people lost in Woo Woo in Therapeutic Massage)
I said, "Well, that may or may not be so, but if it is so, I am going to suggest that there be no drinking during the story writing time because I had to be drunk to write this one!".
