The Great White Man in the Sky

 

Left, an Ashkenazi Rabbi and, right, a Mizrahi Jew. 

Which one does the Armstrongist God look like? 

Which face would you worship?

The Great White Man in the Sky

By NeoTherm

 “Adam was made by God. The God who made Adam was Jesus Christ. "All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3). This is speaking of Jesus Christ, the Word, or active Spokesman of the Father. Now notice how Christ made Adam: "And God said: Let us make man {Adam} in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). What is the meaning of "likeness?" The facial expression! So Adam looked like Jesus Christ. Adam also looked like God the Father. God said, "Let US make man after OUR image." Both Jesus Christ and God the Father look alike.

   “When Jesus was on earth 4000 years later, He looked exactly like the Father. Jesus was "the express image of His {the Father's} person" (Heb. 1:3). But Jesus also looked like the average Jew! Judas had to kiss Jesus in order to point Him out among His disciples who were also Jews (Luke 22:48).

   “Since Adam looked like Christ and Christ looked like the average Jew, then Adam — the first man — must have resembled the Jew. Adam therefore was a white man as are the Jews! Jews are not Negroes, as a few colored people contend. The Jews are Whites.” Herman Hoeh, “The Race Question”, 195

 “The Great White Man in the Sky” is a fanciful phrase that is rooted in serious Armstrongist theology.  Armstrongists decidedly believe God is a White man – not a biological being but a spiritual paradigm or archetype.  More aptly, God is a White superman.  And, though it is difficult to find clear statements, God very probably abides somewhere in the Cosmos, if not in published Armstrongist theology then in demotic characterization.   This opinion piece is focused on the views on this topic from Classical Armstrongism and uses early information resources.   Denominations derived from the now-defunct Worldwide Church of God may have updated or modified some of these views.  For instance, I recently and unexpectedly collided with the fact that the United Church of God now asserts that God is not bound by space and time.  I have no access to the post-classical theologies of these denominations.  It is expected that most will maintain an appreciable belief in Classical Armstrongism and this writing will be a midrashic response to them. 

The Armstrongist Anthropology 

The deductive path in Hoeh’s statement above is easy to follow.  Jesus looks like God the Father.  Adam looks like Jesus.  Jesus was a White man.  God the Father, Jesus, and Adam all then looked like White men.  Further, Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA) states in his book “Mystery of the Ages” (MOA), page 94, that God in creating Adam “purposed to reproduce himself.”  While Adam was biologically a White man, God is the spiritual and archetypical White man on which Adam is based.  Underpinning this argument is the assumption that God has a body and I have challenged that idea elsewhere.  

Genesis speaks of both an image of God and a likeness.  Hoeh identifies the likeness as God’s “facial expression” or his appearance in the quotation above.   What the image of god actually is varies in Armstrongist publications.  At one point it seems to equate to the bodily form of God (MOA, p. 46).   At another place, HWA states that the image of God consists of two components: “…man, made to become in the character image of God and also in the likeness or form and shape of God (MOA, p. 102).”  Similar variations can be found in archival sources, but nobody seems to have ever retracted the concept of God as a White man.  So this means that, in classical Armstrongism, God is the White man archetype both in persona and soma.  

But a separate question is, “Whom does Hoeh regard to be a White man?”  The two photos at the top of this article are both pictures of Jews.  The man on the left is an Ashkenazi Jew and the man on the right is a Mizrahi Jew.   The Ashkenazi left the Middle East long ago and settled in various places in Europe.  This is the Jewish type Americans are most familiar with.  They are in fact of 30 to 70 percent European ancestry in contravention to the common but mistaken belief that Jews have preserved their racial purity in Diaspora.   The Mizrahi are Jews that never left the Middle East, never went into Diaspora.  They were there in the time of Jesus and they are there now.  Jesus was a Mizrahi in today’s terminology.  There is no reason to believe that Jesus did not look like the Jew on the right. I would expect that Hoeh did not have the Mizrahi in mind when he made his categorical statements about the appearance of God, Jesus, and Adam being like that of a “White” man.  

The Inadvertent Dehumanization of People of Color

God as archetypical White man is a problem.  I would conjecture that this problem was unforeseen at the time that this combination of racial theory and the doctrine of God was developed by whomever and wherever in the Armstrongist movement.   Adam was created in God’s image and Adam was a White man.  This means that the White man is God-like – he possesses both the character and form of God by creation.  What then of people of color?  In line with the Armstrongist view, people of color are a departure in persona and soma from the White ideal and, therefore, from God’s nature.  They are then neither in the image or likeness of God.  And what of people with mixed ancestry?  Might some be only partially in the image and likeness of God?

As a matter of praxis, are the various Armstrongist denominations now on the scene willing to tell people of color in their congregations that they are not in the image or likeness of God while the White congregants are God-like by creation?  

Does this departure from God’s nature mean people of color are somehow inferior to the White race?  The answer, in spite of some earnest advocacy of humanistic values in some of Hoeh’s articles, seems to be ‘Yes.’   This is apparent from Chapter 7 in the MOA.  Here we find that the Gentiles, both White and people of color, will be ruled over in the wonderful world tomorrow by the greatest White people of all: the “Israelites” (as defined by the ideology of Anglo-Israelism).  As HWA states (MOA, p. 341), “And, again, no gentile nation will be as great as one of the Israelite nations.”  For eternity. 

Some Biblical Issues and Christian Views in Brief

The idea that God is a racial type is, of course, wrong. God is Spirit.  The idea that God even has a body as a part of his eternal essence is illogical.  Belief in a corporeal God is just a failure to recognize figures of speech in the Old Testament for what they are.  The image of god and the likeness of God are not a matter of personal proclivities of character and bodily form, respectively, but have to do with intellection, creativity, and the capacity for spiritual understanding. (Admittedly, precisely what Imago Dei is, is controversial among Christian theologians and preachers but what it is not is clear – it is not about bodily shape.  It is about persona but not a particular racial persona.  God would not be limited in such a way that he only knew what it was like to be White in persona and soma.   Such limitation would place the valuable personal attributes of sub-Saharan Africans, for instance, outside God’s cognizance and creative purview.)  And as for the Israelite nations (as defined in Anglo-Israelism) ruling over the Gentile nations, we have this statement in Isaiah:

“And the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering … they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them … Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:19-25)”

This shows Gentile nations (including a dark-skinned Hamitic nation) interacting directly with God without the priestly intervention of national Israel and occupying a status equivalent to Israel in the sight of God, in spite of what Dean Blackwell may have said decades ago. 

Further, the separation of “image” and “likeness” into two different concepts, here reconstituted by HWA (MOA, p. 102), was abandoned by Christian churches in the Middle Ages.  Neither term was thought to refer to God’s bodily shape.  In Genesis 1:27 we find “image” used alone and in Genesis 5:1 we find “likeness” used alone yet both usages in similar contexts.  They seem to be used as synonyms with Genesis 1:26 being a repetition of synonyms for emphasis. 

And A Genetic Constraint

If one insists that the first man was a fleshly replica of God, it is important to establish who the first man was.  The first modern men were haplogroup A and were sub-Saharan Africans of the Negroid racial type.  Other racial types developed as mutations from this original type.  I believe this proliferation of races was guided by God.   This genetic history is imprinted on all human DNA.  And using the logic of HWA’s exegesis, this would make God racially a sub-Saharan African.  I believe that Adam was, rather, a haplogroup J Middle Easterner but that is a larger treatise. 

Conclusion

This is not a diatribe against White people.  I see no reason to believe that White people are in any way more or less important from a Christian perspective than any other race of people.  But for those who accord White people a superior position in the plans of God, this essay may seem like an audacious act of lèse-majesté.  Nobody should accord White people, or any other people, a role in the world as Übermenschen and certainly not based on a misconceived and underdeveloped version of the Doctrine of God.  God is not a man with cellular biology, a genotype, and a phenotype.  He is Spirit.  He does not possess race as an attribute.  There is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ.  And God is not the great White man who lives in the sky.  

Note:  Armstrongist dogma is notoriously difficult to research because each topic is scattered in many publications.  I would appreciate knowing about any published and official dogma that contravenes what I have written.  Please provide the source.  I would especially like to know if the idea that God is a White man archetype has ever been directly retracted. 

 

Religious and Theological Obsession and Fanaticism in the Churches of God

 

While not a psychologist nor endeavoring to play one on BannedHWA, observing the seemingly God-Haunted workings in the minds of some of my past life peers lies somewhere between fascinating and terrifying. 

What is going on in the minds of these men, such as a Dave Pack, Ron Weinland, Gerald Flurry, Bob Thiel and others, who have come to believe and promote what they do?  

Religious fanaticism

Religious fanaticism is a pejorative designation used to indicate uncritical zeal or obsessive enthusiasm which is related to one's own, or one's group's, devotion to a religion – a form of human fanaticism which could otherwise be expressed in one's other involvements and participation, including employment, role, and partisan affinities. Historically, the term was applied in Christian antiquity to denigrate non-Christian religions, and subsequently acquired its current usage with the Age of Enlightenment.

Why would Dave Pack build a mini Ambassdor, as did Gerald Flurry copying HWA, while also teaching their Christ's Second Coming was imminent?  What makes a man, like Dave, give himself every Biblical title he can find in scripture such as "Watcher", "Elijah to Come" "Apostle"?  What would make one believe the Two Witnesses would spring from their insignificant church and that they would, of course, work under Dave's oversight?  How can Dave Pack make one predictive mistake and miscalculation after the next, as if he could know, about the Second Coming of Christ and claim his math is correct and nothing can go past any time he has set no matter how far past that time it goes?  What kind of mental illness is this?

What motivates those in RCG to deny this phenomenon that plays out before them every single week and come back for more?  Does it ever cross their minds it might be time to give up on Dave Pack being anything but delusional as to his role in grand scheme of all things religious?  Do they ever tire of false prophesies and one dramatic but completely and terribly mistaken line of reasoning on Dave's part after another?  Tell me if you know.

What kind of thinking, besides "stinking thinking" does it take for a Gerald Flurry to inflict his kind of oversight, pain and tithe gulping lifestyle on the members of his Church of Brotherly Love?   What does it take to see yourself spoken of in the scriptures and remind the brethren of that with a straight face?  What kind of followers does one attract that can do that with a straight face and deny what they see and hear is not insanity on display?

What of Ron Weinland, a most insignificant player in the world of theology and religion who does a practice run to Jerusalem as the Witness Couple of Revelation, can't stop predicting the end of all things and thinks he only has the truth of anything when clearly, he doesn't have the truth of just about anything theological?  Who does he attract with that record of failure?  Oh, and prison not exactly for persecution's sake?

Bob Thiel is supposed to be an educated man. He claims to be a scientist.  Why can't he get beyond the ignorance of the Bronze Age with regard to the causes of bad weather?  What makes him reason out that "It is God trying to get our attention".  Why doesn't the concept of God "trying" give him pause as to the fact that his version of God is obviously not all powerful, knowing or capable of getting the message over to everyone or anyone?  He is the God that tries and fails pretty much.   Why does an educated man, so called, think his dreams are special announcements in the night about who he is and what his God is "trying" once again to tell him? Why does he draw conclusions from his dreams that billions of others who also dream would never draw? Why the need to be so special?  Is it being ignored in childhood?  Is it the inability to be skeptical about ancient scriptures being valid today in every way?  Is it simply the simplistic view that regarding the Bible, "God said it, I believe it, that does it for me" denying evidence to the contrary?

What is it about all these one man shows that gets stuck in prophecy and seems to have no clue about, or interest in the real message of the New Testament?  Why do they hang out in the Torah and the prophets more than in the Gospels and Church letters? Are they bored with that and if they just taught what the actual Christian Church teaches, who would pay attention to them?  Is it a perverse attention at all costs they crave?  Malignant narcissism? Snakes in suits?  Is prophecy their hook that works the best even when false, fake and futile?  Have they found that fear sells and deliberately so or do they believe their own delusions sincerely? 

What is going on here in the minds of these men who use and fuel fear, guilt and shame to control others and make fools of themselves often. How is it that they can make one foolish prediction and mistake after the next and fail to mention that they did?  Tell me if you know. Please.

"Psssst.....Sermon's over..."

PCG Admits They Are Laodicean?

 

The Church of God movement should change its name to The Endless Excuses Church of God considering how it is constantly having to make excuses as to why all of its leaders, predictions, and prophecies fall apart around them on a daily basis.

Herbert W. Armstrong died on Jan. 16, 1986. So why didn’t this age of man end at that time? To find the answer, we must understand what Christ meant when He said “then shall the end come.” 

 

Notice this quote from Lesson 22 of our free Bible correspondence course: “The word end used here in verse 14 is not talking about the end of the age. In verse 3, the disciples asked Christ about the end (Greek sunteleia)—meaning the entire completion, or consummation, of the age. In verse 14, the word translated as end is the Greek word telos, which can mean the termination or limit at which something ceases to be; or that by which a thing is finished, its close. Thayer’s Lexicon states that ‘what end is intended the reader must determine by context.’” 

 

After Mr. Armstrong preached the gospel around the world as a witness, the end of the Philadelphia era of God’s Church occurred. The Laodicean era—which is the last era before Christ returns—came on the scene. You can learn more about this history in Malachi’s Message. 

 

Revelation 10:11 shows that God’s loyal remnant must prophesy again in the short time before Christ returns to this Earth.