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
I am currently on vacation through the Southwest and spent a couple days in Monument Valley. I booked a half-day tour several months ago through one of the local guides. Today when I arrived for the tour it was just two of us and we set off.
He shared stories of life as a Navajo Indian. Then things got interesting He said his grandmother got hooked into the Seventh Day Adventist Church decades ago and it basically destroyed her relationship with other family members. Relationships in the family are central to the Navajo. people. The arrogant minter demanded that she ignore everything she had grown up with as a Navajo and devote her life ito sabbath keeping, vegatarianism and preparing for the end times.
The guide said that the Navajo do not focus upon the end times and find it insulting to the Creator that they have to worry about it.
I mentioned to him that I grew up in a splinter group of Aventistism called Armstrongism. He had heard of it. He said it was equally offensives to them as a people. There were some ensnared in it for a while.
It is interesting to see how far the tentacles of Armstrongism reached and how in 2019 it has virtually disappeared.
“When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”
"This was interpreted by Blackwell to mean that God organized the nations in order to allocate them to the oversight of the “sons of Israel.” This was not just a transient, temporal plan but would extend into eternity.
The problem is, this scripture does not say that. It instead refers not to the “sons of Israel” but to the “sons of god.” The full passage speaks of “El” and “Yahweh” and the “sons of god.” The nations were to be parceled out by El to the “sons of god” and Yahweh was to receive Jacob’s descendants from El as his portion in this process. The Masoretic translators altered this to read “the sons of Israel” to expunge anything that would seem to even hint at polytheism (see Michael S. Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God” and also Peter Enns’ interview with Mark Smith entitled “Who is Yahweh and Where Did Yahweh Come From?” both available on the web.) Heiser concludes:
“In light of the evidence there exists no textual or theological justification for preferring the Masoretic reading of verse 8. That verse should read "sons of God," not "sons of Israel."
This reference to other divine beings as “sons of god” should not alarm Armstrongists. Ron Dart preached a sermon that included this topic back in the Seventies."
In April of 2011 this same enigmatic scripture came to my attention with all its implications. Biblical scholars have always wondered how this scripture ever made the cut and was included in the Book of Deuteronomy. I would think the implications of other divine beings as the "sons of god" or as others translate it, "to the number of the gods" which is that classic "uni-plural" Elohim HWA always got wrong.
"An interesting and surprisingly blunt admission of this multiplicity of gods is found inDeut. 32:8-9
“When the Most High (Elyon) apportioned the nations, when he divided human kind, he fixed the boundaries of his peoples according TO THE NUMBER OF THE GODS. (Elohim). The Lord’s (YHVH a lesser god than Elyon) own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share.”
Here we have a rare and somewhat embarrassing admission that there was a god even higher than YHVH. The Most High was Elyon who had the authority to divvy up the nations between the other lesser gods. In this account YHVH is a lesser god who was placed over the limited geographical area inhabited by Jacob. This is why it was always well understood that the power of the god diminished the further away from its allotted land. If they strayed too far, they qualified as “foreign gods,” which we all know were powerless in the new areas and definitely false. You know, “My God is the true god, and …well…your’s is the Satan, or lesser and powerless god around here. “
So we learn that YHVH and YHVH Elohim may have several implications. This can mean that YHVH is the god over a band of lesser gods or that YHVH is a god that comes from a class of gods known as Elohim."
The implications of this scripture when correctly translated are:
1. Polytheism and the belief in many other real gods was a common view held by the people of Israel as well as the surrounding nations.
2. El, who was originally the supreme Canaanite God was co-opted by the Israelites as their own Supreme God with all the associated traits. "El" was a common suffix in the language. Isra-el, Dani-el, Beth-el, Immanu-el, etc)
3. In time, El, evolved into YHVH with all the previous associated traits of El. This is how the Priests of Israel and writers of the Pentateuch work such transformations in print. YHVH also took on the powers of Baal. (The Original Weather God Bob)
"I revealed myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as Ēl Shaddāi, but was not known to them by my name, YHVH."
4. In time, YHVH was more commonly understood in the English world as "The Lord"
5. In a bit more time, "The Lord" evolved into Jesus of the New Testament.
The literary evolution of God from the Canaanite EL and his Counsel of the gods, or the "US" of "Let us make man in our image..." etc, where YHVH was a lesser god just appointed over Israel (Chemosh over the Moabites and "The Satan" or Lucifer as a lesser god, with YHVH, in the Council as well becoming the bad boy, should be disturbing enough to the COG membership and ministry. Add to this YHVH usurping EL as now supreme, becoming "The Lord" of their Bibles and ultimately Jesus should give them pause for thought on just how this all evolved from the common polytheism of Israel where the other gods were very real to monotheism and Jesus.
How Trinitarian Christianity is monotheistic is another muddle the explanations for which also evolved over the past 2000 years to accommodate the problems caused by the concept.
When "the Lord thy God", already as YHVH replacing El said, "You shall have no other gods before me, for I the Lord YOUR God am a jealous God," He wasn't kidding.
It is better rendered "You shall not bring any other gods (and there were plenty considered real and powerful in their own appointed territory) into my presence, for (BECAUSE) I, the Lord YOUR God am a jealous God." Understood as such makes much more sense as to why the other gods were not welcome and eventually had to be ousted in the minds of the people, to this day. YHVH had a jealous streak.
I believe this reality of scripture and the actual beliefs of "the Chosen People" should indeed bother Armstrongists as well as a whole lot of other folk.
A more complete discussion of this enigmatic scripture and the realities of this evolution and transformation of the gods in the scriptures can be found here:
Church of God leaders have a great track record of never letting a disaster go to waste. No one is better at this than Bwana Bob Thiel. You remember him, he is that self appointed little upstart that had to start his own personality cult because his spiritual Daddy (Rod Meredith) rebuked him and ignore him.
And just like clock work, our resident wanna-be prophet made another illogical utterance that shows the extreme narcissism that occupies his mind.
In his self-righteous glory, he claims that the Bahama's was destroyed because they do not recognize him as a true prophet of God.
Just over two weeks ago, the Category 5 hurricane Dorian devastated the northern islands of the Bahamas. “Dorian was the most powerful hurricane on record to hit the Bahamas… with wind gusts topping 320 kph (200 mph)” (Deutsche Welle, September 7, 2019). ...
Storms like Hurricane Dorian should motivate us to think about and pray for those who are suffering. These disasters can also provide us a glimpse into far more widespread devastation that is prophesied to impact the world in the years just before Christ’s second coming—a time when “disaster will come upon disaster” (Ezekiel 7:26).
As far as Ezekiel 7:26 goes, it will affect many of Christians in the end-times. Here is the entire verse:
26 Disaster will come upon disaster, And rumor will be upon rumor. Then they will seek a vision from a prophet; (Ezekiel 7:26)
The people in the Bahamas have had disaster, but have not sought out any true prophet.
Sadly, since Ezekiel 7:26 is directed towards God's people, based on Jesus' word in Revelation 3, most Christians will wait until it is too late to flee from the Great Tribulation (cf. Zephaniah 2:1-3;
The people of the Bahama's were NOT punished because they do not listen to liars like Bob Thiel. That is a fact. Bob Thiel is a snake out to poison and destroy anyone who follows him.
Back in the Seventies, Dean Blackwell, an evangelist in the Worldwide Church of God (WCG), was sent out to many congregations to present the official understanding of race then held by the WCG. I heard this special message in a large WCG congregation in the Midwest. To my knowledge, none of Blackwell’s material exists in official written form. I am working from memory in the writing of this op-ed. It is unfortunate that crucial elements of WCG dogmata are not documented. Two generations of Armstrongists have come and gone since the Seventies. Eventually and unfortunately, the doctrinal nature of Armstrongism at its roots will be lost to the passage of time.
Tradition
While the WCG did believe in White Supremacy, it was not one of the traditional types of White Supremacy current in the USA. British-Israelism had to be accommodated. British-Israelism would dictate a different racial hierarchy that looks like the following list with the superior class at the top and then descending:
1. Whites descended from Ephraim and Manasseh (British-Israel; most White Europeans of USA, Britain and former British colonies).
2. Jews and other Tribes of Israel (Jews and Northwest Europeans).
3.Other Whites (with purported descendants of Shem as defined by Herman Hoeh at the highest status among White people).
4.People of color (with Blacks occupying the lowest status).
This was the WCG view of humanity as I understood it when I began attending the WCG in the late Sixties. Since this was never formally taught but existed as oral tradition, there may be slight variations in how this hierarchy is viewed by different WCG members. And it was not entirely without documentation. Herman Hoeh’s two volume “Compendium of World History” was dedicated to portraying the profound importance of British-Israel in all dimensions of world civilization. Point 2 is controversial with regard to Jews. An unofficial faction at Ambassador College, Big Sandy regarded Ashkenazi Jews as Gentiles in alignment with some of the right-wing, anti-Semitic White supremacist groups outside the WCG.
Dogma
Blackwell taught that Israel, principally Britain as Ephraim and the British-Americans as Manasseh, would rule over all other peoples throughout eternity. It was not clear if this encompassed other “Israelitish” tribes (point 2 above). This was supposed to be for the good of all humanity. Afro-American WCG members, Blackwell asserted, were readily accepting of this idea once it was explained. Essentially, this was Manifest Destiny in a religiously intensified form. Implicitly, it denied the competency of all peoples to function as nations without the leadership of British-Israel. And these nations would be servants to British-Israel.
The momentum and pervasiveness of this belief in the WCG is illustrated by the following incident involving one of Blackwell’s sermons that I heard a few years later. Blackwell explained Isaiah 19:23-24 but altered its meaning even as members of the congregation were actually looking at the scripture in their open Bibles. He preached that the scripture stated that both Egypt and Assyria would be servants of Israel in the future. Whereas, from larger context, it is clear that the scripture refers to Israel, Egypt and Assyria all being one day servants of God together. And the status of the three is that of equality rather than a super-ordinate Israel with a subordinate Egypt and a subordinate Assyria. Blackwell’s mishandling of this scripture based on the already established WCG racial model provoked no reaction from the audience.
Error in Translation
Blackwell based the supremacy of the British people on a scripture in Deuteronomy 32:8-9:
“When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”
This was interpreted by Blackwell to mean that God organized the nations in order to allocate them to the oversight of the “sons of Israel.” This was not just a transient, temporal plan but would extend into eternity.
The problem is, this scripture does not say that. It instead refers not to the “sons of Israel” but to the “sons of god.” The full passage speaks of “El” and “Yahweh” and the “sons of god.” The nations were to be parceled out by El to the “sons of god” and Yahweh was to receive Jacob’s descendants from El as his portion in this process. The Masoretic translators altered this to read “the sons of Israel” to expunge anything that would seem to even hint at polytheism (see Michael S. Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God” and also Peter Enns’ interview with Mark Smith entitled “Who is Yahweh and Where Did Yahweh Come From?” both available on the web.) Heiser concludes:
“In light of the evidence there exists no textual or theological justification for preferring the Masoretic reading of verse 8. That verse should read "sons of God," not "sons of Israel."
This reference to other divine beings as “sons of god” should not alarm Armstrongists. Ron Dart preached a sermon that included this topic back in the Seventies. He initiated the topic with the scriptures Daniel 10:13 and Daniel 10:20.
Coda
Deuteronomy 32:9-9 reads differently in various translations – sometimes “sons of god” is used and sometimes “sons of Israel.” The text may be footnoted with an alternate translation. The KJV, the likely text used by Blackwell, uses the phrase “children of Israel.” We cannot fault Dean Blackwell for a mistranslation made by Masoretes. We can fault him for not researching this passage further. And we can fault him for immediately jumping to the conclusion that this verse should be translated in a way that means that all nations will be servants to supreme Israel throughout eternity. This verse, if it actually were to contain the “sons of Israel” phrase, would be much more compatible with the spirit of the Old Testament commission to the Jews to bring the knowledge of god to the Gentiles rather than the White supremacist declaration of Dean Blackwell. As it has happened, this is now a case study in the particular way that Armstrongists gratuitously spun scripture to support White Supremacy.
Epilogue
I spoke with Dean Blackwell in his office in the Roy Hammer Library on the Big Sandy campus back in the mid-Seventies. This was within a few years after I heard his presentation on race and I had a number of questions. Unfortunately, we did we did not spend much time on my interests. His cordial discussion ranged across a number of other general topics. The only substantive idea I remember was a statement by Blackwell that the WCG leadership in Pasadena was very hesitant about releasing Herman Hoeh’s two volume “Compendium of World History” to lay members. The lay membership would be likely to misunderstand and misinterpret it. It may well be that Blackwell did not have a strong background in the WCG dogma of race and was using scripted ideas developed by others when he delivered his sermons on race. I finally excused myself and felt as if we had not communicated much.
