4 Million Hits Later as the Church of God Implodes

Who would have dreamed that this blog would have ever had 4,000,000 page views in its short history!

We have watched the slow death of Armstrongism over the last last 6 years since we started playing here in 2010.  We have witnesses together the demolition of the church, both literally and spiritually.  We have watched despots arise after self-appointing themselves after having some nightmares, to men who love to bastardize and worship the law more than Jesus, as we watch others sink further into mental illness.  We even had one narcissistic mentally unstable buffoon threaten to sue us after sicking his babbo lap-poodle in Arkansas on us.  

The felon Ron Weinland prophesied that I would die a painful death. Followers of Neville Stevens threatened to come to Los Angeles so they could personally slaughter me with a sword as they helped their fake jesus kill all critics.  I offered to pick them up at LAX but they wimped out like all their ilk do.

We became the "go to" site for news on the corruption in the Living Church of God.  Rod Meredith even publicly denounced us in a sermon which in turn brought in tens of thousands new hits.  Now Living Church of God members come here for news on the church and to have a safe place to vent about current issues.  LCG HQ mentors this site daily which I think is hysterical.

We have witnessed countless others that have found the freedom of leaving Armstrongism by having a safe space to share their concerns.

We are just one more in a long line of observers, blogs, web sites, books, and individuals that are holding the cult leaders of the Church of God movement accountable for their sheer stupidity. Thanks to Gavin with the Ambassador Watch, The Painful Truth, Silenced, As Bereans Did, Living Armstrongism, and many others. Together we hold the spiritual abusers to the grand stone! If they are dumb enough to say it, we will expose it!

So THANKS Almost Arrested Bob Thiel!  Your bible thumping, crooked bookshelves and self appointed has provided an endless supply of fodder!  You have proven to us what happens when a person takes their self too seriously. Keep it up Bro!  Thanks to the Chief Pharisee and law bastardizer James Malm and his Wiccan side kick!  Blessed Be! Thanks Rod Meredith...your endless obsession of sex and spiritual abuse has been unending!  Thanks Dave Pack! You have single handedly defined what narcissism is to tens of thousands of people who STILL have not joined your cult. Thanks Gerald Flurry for showing us what alcoholism does to ones mental capacities.  Thanks Vic Kubik and UCG as we watch one expensive epic failure after another.   

Above all thanks to the readers and contributors here.  Your experiences and words of wisdom have helped a lot of people!  Thanks to Dennis for leading people to actually use their brains.  

As we saunter into the end times of James Malm and Bob Thiel, we are sure to have much more to post there.  Where would the Church of God be without these liars in our midst?

Dave Pack and the Flat Earth Believers

Armstrongism has always had a fringe element in its midst.  From conspiracy theorists consumed by the Illuminati, Jesusit conspiracies, Protocols of Zion promoters, people fascinated by money guru Gary North, Reconstructionism, to the flat earth believers.  

The Pasadena church HQ, the site of the "pure truth" and home of "original Christianity," was rife with these beliefs.  Top level employees quietly promoted these theories to other church members.  Being that Pasadena was the church HQ, it automatically attracted thousands of raving lunatics who thought they had a direct pipeline to God.  Prophets, sages, apostles, end time witnesses, visionaries, picketers, and others regularly descended upon the campus with their pet theories and "truths."  That lunatic fringe is equally matched in this day by lunatics like James Malm, Bob Thiel, Dave Pack and Gerald Flurry.

One of the more fringe elements in Pasadena were the Flat Earth believers.  That belief still is alive in the Church of God movement.  Of course it has found its base in the more radical groups like the Philadelphia Church of God and the Restored Church of God.

It has gotten so bad that even Dave Pack has had to deal with it.

Unless you make a decision to move to the wrong side of the fire, you don’t ever need to worry about safety or health. If you leave God’s Church, you probably shouldn’t worry about much else. If you don’t want to be part of this, you really should leave. I’m not suggesting anybody doesn’t, but we had people leave this week.

Just to show you how crazy the age is…We have people who left this week, because they’re convinced the Earth is flat! They’ve joined the Flat Earth Society. Do you know how we caught them? They were overheard—overheard. Angry that we have a spinning globe on the World to Come…We were telling a lie to the world that the earth is round. Man…when you call the weak and foolish of the world, that’s what you did! And that’s what God did! I didn’t think anybody could believe that. There is a Flat Earth Society. They’re convinced the moon landing…You ought to hear these people that left…They’re convinced the moon landing is a lie. It’s a hoax. There is no round Moon. The Earth is flat! When it says God sits on the circle of the earth in the Bible…I don’t know what they do with that verse.

Ian Boyne: Jamaican Gleaner article on Trump

Ian Boyne's article is certainly a different view than how most of the Churches of God groups are reacting to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.  Almost all COG splinter leaders are reacting to his election as a good thing to bring back credibility that they think was lost under the rule of a gentile President.  That view is deeply entrenched in the British Israelite thought processes and white superiority that is still pervasive in the church in 2016.

The world is a different place than when the church was evolving during the 1940's - 1980's.  Globalization, the internet and world populations immigrating to most Western Nations has led many Church of God groups to proclaim propehtic melt down of civilization and the dilution of the white race.

Ian takes a different approach to this belief, particularly with observations and a perspective that is outside the United States and as a person of color, two things that do not sit well with so many in the church.

Ian Boyne | White  Power  Trumps  Good  Sense

It is not enough to say that Donald Trump's victory is a 'whitelash' against eight years of a black man's being in the White House. It is, indeed, true that Trump's ascendancy as American president-elect is the culmination of the Tea Party insurgency started just one year after Obama's first victory in 2008. White people, particularly marginalised white males, swept away by the tide of globalisation, have risen up to take back their country and to put America first.

No election in American history has left in its wake so much resentment, bitterness, anger, disappointment and fear - not just in America but around the world. Jamaicans at home and in the US are terrified of the consequences of this Trump victory which, they catastrophise, is likely to torpedo their dreams of a better life. Jamaicans, various minorities, and progressive, forward-thinking people are being counselled that "it's not the end of the world," but for many, Trump's victory certainly seems like that.

'Stunning', 'shocking', 'astonishing' are just a few of the adjectives being used to describe the victory that was not seen by pollsters and pundits. Almost everyone had written off Trump. Except the Silent Majority. Yet, hidden in academia were some books that speak plainly about the phenomenon that the media are now widely reporting on after the fact. One book that narrates the crisis of the white working class and its alienation from the elites is Nancy Isenberg's White Trash: The 400-year Untold History of Class in America (2016). Before that, in 2012, the well-known social scientist Charles Murray had published his Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

In September, the respected Atlantic magazine did a long piece titled 'The Original Underclass: Poor, White Americans' Current Crisis Shouldn't Have Caught the Rest of the Country as Off Guard as it Has'.

Then there is also Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016) by J.D. Vance, whose views are now being sought belatedly by American journalists to understand what escaped them. But if you want one book that grippingly and comprehensively explains the Trump Phenomenon, you have to get The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics. I notice it is now being featured as 'One of the Six Books to Help Understand Trump's Win' and it has been given the thumbs up by the most intellectually astute media host in America, GPS's Fareed Zakaria.

There is a lot of hasty, half-baked commentary being dished out, but this Trumpism deserves a serious and surgical analysis. Yes, white power has been asserted in a most ferocious and aggressive way, and Trump, like all neo-fascists, was able to exploit the fears and anxieties of the majority against "the deplorables". But remember, that's the same country that voted for a black man as president not once, but twice. Barack Obama did better than Trump's opponent among white voters. Did those white people temporarily lose their ingrained racism when they voted Obama? What happened between 2008 and 2016?

In a review essay titled 'The Great White Nope: Poor, Working Class and Left Behind in America', in the November-December issue of Foreign Affairs, which features "The Power of Populism", History Professor Jefferson Cowie says: "Most Americans are optimistic about their futures but poor and working-class whites are not. ... Poor African-Americans who face higher rates of incarceration and unemployment - are nearly three times as optimistic as poor whites". He quotes one economist as saying poor whites suffer from "unhappiness, stress, and a lack of hope" . Says he: "That might explain why the slogan of the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Make America Great Again! - sounds so good to so many of them".

 The rest of the article can be read here:  Ian Boyne | White Power Trumps Good Sense