Ex-COG Member Tells Story Of Racism In The Church

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Former racist emerges from the dark Racism wasn't about hate, as one living on the inside of this story as a brainwashed kid.

MONTANA, USA — I was around four years old when my family joined the Worldwide Church of God. It coincided with the Nixon Presidency.

One of my earliest memories is watching a Nixon rally from my dad’s shoulders. The energy of the crowd was supercharged and left a series of posterized moments in my brain. My dad, Bill, was a traveling sales rep for Ralston Purina. He spent long hours on Oklahoma’s flats with a bombastic apocalyptic AM radio preacher as his company. Herbert W. Armstrong was a voice of White Male outrage and certainty, contrasting with uncertainty. 

 

Dark as a child, when he went by another name. 

 

Our identity was racial. This cult is one of several that might be called “British Israelism.” Only the (White) descendants of the British Empire are God’s chosen people and can earn salvation. All other races are not in that club. Everybody else is going to Hell to suffer unimaginable torment. 

Read this fascinating story here:  Former racist emerges from the dark....Racism wasn't about hate, as one living on the inside of this story as a brainwashed kid.

Author's comments:

 

When Dark was still in junior high, the family stopped going to church in Tulsa—an hour car trip each way—but it wasn’t until years later he discovered they had been ex-communicated. He later learned the rift coincided with David Robinson’s tell-all book, “Herbert Armstrong’s Tangled Web,” which caused a schism within the church. Robinson had been the pastor of Dark’s family’s church, and because his family was part of Robinson’s flock, they got lumped in among the unwashed.

Robinson’s book painted Armstrong as a charlatan and narcissist, lining his own pockets with donations and caring almost nothing for his acolytes. It didn’t help that Armstrong’s son and heir-apparent, Garner Ted Armstrong, was accused of not only bucking from his father’s orthodoxies but of sexual adventures outside his marriage. One of Robinson’s most shocking accusations in his book is that Armstrong had a longstanding sexual relationship with his daughter.

LCG: Are you thankful for the "precious Truths" we give you?

Once more, its close to the COG version of the Sabbath, and the Living Church of God has sent out its weekly announcements and Sabbath "love bomb" to its members telling them that they are failing once again to remain true to the path and accept everything the leadership says as 100% "precious truth." Apparently, some are falling short and allowing Satan to blind their eyes to the "incredible privilege" they have to be "called out of darkness" and into the glorious light of the Living Church of God. Can LCG members ever be praised and thanked for a job well done, with no "but's or however's" attached? Is this too much to ask? Once a year, at least? That is just one time out of 52 weeks. Just once?

Be Thankful for the Truth: The Sabbath is a good time to reflect on an important question: Are you thankful for the Truth? It is easy to take the Truth of God for granted if you are a longtime member or if you have grown up in the Church. Yet, Jesus emphasized that people cannot come to a real understanding of the Truth unless they are called and their minds have been opened to see the big picture (John 6:44, 65). The capacity to understand the plan of God, the purpose of life, and the true way of life is a gift that God is making available to only a few people at this time (1 Corinthians 1:26–27). These precious Truths are a mystery to most people (1 Corinthians 2:7–8) because Satan—the god of this age—has blinded their eyes (2 Corinthians 4:3–4). Jesus said that it is an incredible privilege to be given an understanding of the Truth (Matthew 13:10–17). The Apostle Paul said that being called out of darkness into the light of the Truth is something to be extremely thankful for. He also said that those who were unthankful and let go of or rejected the Truth of God will reap the penalty of their error which is due (Romans 1:18–32). Let’s never forget to be thankful for the opportunity to understand the Truth of God that “endures to all generations.” 

 

Have a profitable Sabbath, 

 

Douglas S. Winnail

It is always interesting that COG leaders place so much emphasis upon God calling people into the church (a COG, of course) and yet those who feel called into Christianity in other Christian churches have fake calls. God calling people into the COG is always right, God actively calling people to be real Christians who might attend other churches are always fake. The logic doesn't compute.

You never hear COG ministers quote these scriptures much as the focus is just on believing, not following all the commands of COG leaders and the endless stack of laws they dish out. Followers aren't "called to "believe", they are "called to "obey".

Just believe...that can't be right!

When the City of Pasadena Investigated Ambassador College For Its Racism: Was the Church Inherently Racist?

A reader asked for this to be republished:

Various Church of God apologists love to claim that the church was never racist at its core beliefs.  Almost-arrested Elisha, Elijah Habakuk, Amos Bob Thiel makes many such claims.  But all of them fail to take into account that the church and Ambassador College had written into its constitution racist ideas.  That constitution was greatly affected on the church believing in the erroneous myth of British Israelism and superiority of the white nations who were supposedly descendants of the 12 tribes, who as we all know, were pure lily-white.

It was so obvious and bad that the City of Pasadena investigated the church/college in 1963.

"Incidentally, regarding the Anglo-Israel theory, none other than Garner Ted Armstrong, being interviewed by the Rev. Lester Kinsolving, a syndicated religious writer for the public press, when queried about it, smiled and replied: "It's a likelihood (British Israelism), but it can't be proved. It's an interesting aside. We certainly don't regard this as a required belief, if that's what you're getting at." When Kinsolving pointed out that in 1963 during an investigation of Ambassador College by the Pasadena City Attorney, it was learned that the school's constitution and by-laws, adopted in 1951, restricted the student body "to the race of Israel, whom we believe now to be the white, English speaking Anglo-Saxon and Celtic people, and the democratic peoples of Northwestern Europe, in addition to the Jews descended from the Kingdom of Judah", he said Armstrong appeared surprised and hurriedly said: "That must have been while I was in the Navy. It's been altered dramatically. We have no such restrictions." Armstrongism: The "Worldwide Church God" Examined in the Searching Light of Scripture, Sumner, 1974 

 

There is an advantage of having a huge personal collection of books written about the Worldwide Church of God, Herbert Armstrong, and Armstrongism over the last 70 some years.  Embarrassing facts are in print that can never be erased from the world no matter how much the lying false prophets of Armstrongism attempt to.