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
Other than the miraculous birth of Bob Thiel, which was planned before the foundations of the world had been set so that he could bring about redemption to the faithful in the end times, there is no other date in Church of God history as significant as December 7.
EDMOND—On the Sabbath of December 4, thousands of Philadelphia Church of God members around the globe marked the December 7 anniversary of the founding of the Church.
In Edmond, Evangelist Stephen Flurry gave a sermonette reviewing the history and accomplishments of the “32-year miracle” of the Church. His father, Pastor General Gerald Flurry, delivered a sermon about Bible prophecy and the radical political movement to revolutionize the government of the United States.
The 32-year-old miracle came about because Lil'Stevie read his daddy's plagiarized Malachi's Message while camping at Robber's Cave, Oklahoma. The earth stopped at this moment, just like when Bob Thiel was born, as God's mighty plan was put into place.
Gerald Flurry always fails to mention how he was disfellowshipped for insubordination which removes his ordination rank in the church. A church that he was essentially a nobody in.
December 7 was the beginning of a spiritual war that the true church has supposedly been fighting, all thanks to Gerald Flurry and HWA. For some reason, they left Bob Thiel out. What a bummer!
“This day serves as a reminder to all of us that we are to be persistent in this spiritual war,” Ohio prospective member Adam Williams said, “and to never give up believing in God’s Word, like Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Flurry.”
December 7 marks the date that Mr. Flurry and his assistant, Preaching Elder John Amos, were fired from the Worldwide Church of God for remaining loyal to the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong and Mr. Flurry’s manuscript that would become Malachi’s Message. The Church has since raised up the ruins with 32 years of a Bible prophecy magazine; 29 years of youth camp, 28 years of a Bible prophecy radio/television program; 20 years of college; 18 years of holding copyrights to 19 books and booklets by Mr. Armstrong, including Mystery of the Ages; and 13 years of a K-12 schooling; as well as regional offices, personal appearance campaigns, a corporate airplane and other milestones. Philadlphia Church of God Celebrates 32 Years
(Note: Dr Bob, notwithstanding, the Science of it is not clearly understood or decided to date but genetics are not likely, at this time, seen as a factor. However, regardless, there are deep seated causes and, as we shall see, Bible characters may not have been immune from the struggle or tendencies. Well of course they weren't!
Sean Penn: “Men have, in my view, become quite feminized… There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt.”
(Bob seemingly starts out confusing feminized men with gay men as being one in the same. I would assume he'd do the same with a more masculine seeming female as being a lesbian.)
and of course, goes on to quote...
Romans 1: 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
...and every other scripture he can think of
Properly read, one can conclude that the penalty for not retaining the "knowledge of God", was God giving them over to a depraved mind. So, their depravity and inability to overcome can seem to be the doing of the Deity.
However,
The Late Episcopal Priest John Spong suspects the Apostle who wrote Romans might be struggling himself with being a very conflicted gay man in First Century Palestine
John Spong, looks at the Apostle Paul through Paul's unmarried state, admission of some deep unnamed struggle he was unable to correct with his mind, severity in the way he treated himself to keep himself in line and need to overcome law with grace and love.
Bishop Spong concludes, for himself, his belief that the Apostle Paul may well have been a deeply conflicted gay man who psychologically could and would break with the Laws that condemned him and come to Grace that would forgive him.
Romans 7: 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a]For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Of course, Paul does not share what that heavy and unsolvable problem was just as he dithers over what the "thorn in the flesh" God gave him could have been.
I personally would concur with John Spong's suspicion that the roots of Paul's conflicts and teachings may well stem from him as a first century, non-practicing and very conflicted gay man. At best, Paul admits to having practices and sins that he simply has no control over. Instead, he blames himself and then relieves some of the pain by concluding it's not really him, but this "thing", sin, that lives in him. (Like some kind of virus or monster)
Paul's doctrines of Grace over Law may have sprung from his personal reality and living in a culture where the price for not resisting this monster in him was very high.
Paul concludes, and he doesn't say he finally overcame it ever...
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[b] a slave to the law of sin.
For Bishop Spong's original chapter on this issue and from "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalim" see:
Bob is obviously heavy on the right side of the political spectrum. Obviously anti-vax, anti-vax, anti-current administration and mostly likely in love with the last one. Most if not all of the splinters or at least their pastors are such as well as are the majority of alumni on the Ambassador College Alumni site.
I rarely, if ever, comment on politics. I don't care much for it all. But I do find the personalities that rise to the "top" and their disorders quite fascinating. This includes the "I see me in scriptures" types we are all so familiar with. Dave Pack, Gerald Flurry and Ron Weinland being our most beloved examples of this kind of mental illness and personality disorders.
To me, here is Bob's best ignore-ance on display presentation yet on atheists, agnostics, secularists and those who don't tremble at Biblical perspectives on how, long ago, the authors thought their world worked and who were the main problems. Bob spits out the word "secularists" so fast it comes out "securlists" as he flaps away. The man is an ignorant "raca" himself, stuck in his WCG routine of scripture mining to promote his choce to be ignorant of reality and opt for all things Bible.. IMHO of course. In many topics, I personally don't care one bit what the Bible says about who or what the problem is or what the supposed cause or solution is in an age where we can know better. But you knew that.
"God said it, I believe it. That does it for me" is Bob's excuse to stay judgmental, foolish, ignorant and hardly the scientist he imagines himself to be.
Bob notes:
"Secularists and atheists are not truly scientific. They tend to deceive themselves that they are, but the Bible says something else"
Let's go to Psalm 53...The fool..."
"Secularists claim they believe in science and observable facts, but yet they fail to accept certain facts about the creation. "
There are very good reasons for that Bob!
Bob quotes:
"Where for leftists your freedom is their misery. Your slavery is their joy. There is a certain level of madness required to reach the state of our country it is in today. The political left is now the side that is most appealing to narcissists, sociopaths the emotionally unstable, etc...and this attraction is attracting a mob that can easily be exploited by the establishment..."
Gerald Weston had an epiphany the other day in that as Christians it is their duty to help those in the world around them, in addition to their primary purpose of preaching some kind of gospel that they think the world so desperately needs. Though, as usual in COGland, there is a condition to that assistance, those people that LCG magnanimously decided to help had to be subscribers to their magazine, The World Tomorrow. Due to the recent rash of damaging tornadoes, LCG was so moved that they decided to give people some money.
Weston had to be very very careful in how he helped people as he did not want to jeopardize their great mission.
I have already shared with our Living Church of God members something that we did recently, but I want to share this with you who are co-workers with us. As many of you know, a series of terrible tornados last month cut across the central part of the United States. One plowed across the landscape for 227 miles, destroying everything in its path, including several small towns. Mayfield and Dawson Springs, Kentucky, were especially hard hit, and I think we all desired to do something to help the individuals whose lives will never be the same.
We know that we cannot rebuild houses or replace destroyed vehicles, nor can we help everyone who suffered a loss. We also know that our primary calling is to preach the good news of Christ’s Second Coming and warn the world of what will happen if we do not change directions. At the same time, we have the example of the Good Samaritan, and when we see a specific need to do what we reasonably can without jeopardizing our primary mission, we should do so.
Several of us discussed how we could provide some direct help and concluded that we could offer a small amount of financial assistance to Tomorrow’s World subscribers to cover some incidentals they may need in the aftermath. This offer went out to 93 individual households. Only a handful of grateful people have so far responded, and the amounts we give for this come out of our Disaster Relief Fund, so this will not impact our primary commission. And, by the way, my mention of this fund is not a veiled request to contribute to it as we have sufficient resources from past member contributions, and we do not want to tie up funds in an account restricted to only one use, as this special account is. And on another note, we will not announce any of this to the world, but I want to share this with those of you who are in our inner circle of members and co-workers.
The lunatics are loose in the asylum in Edmond Oklahoma. Lil'Stevie thinks that the PCG is so important that people will be running to them tugging on their garments to find out the awesome truth that the PCG has to preach. Once more, Bob Thiel was seen whimpering in the corner because he never thought of this!
Apparently, PCG believes they are living life so abundantly that everyone will want to join them when they see this. Unfortunately, the only people living life abundantly are the elite and their children/grandchildren.
Just to show how far off the rails Stephen Flurry is getting, he gave a Bible Study titled “Ask and You Shall Receive” where he talked about how we members (including the PCG youth) should know how to answer questions. He said the following which I thought was more than a little ridiculous:
“There is going to come a time when people are going to be chasing us down, pulling at the hem of our garment, to get answers to life’s most important questions. And we’ve got to be ready to answer everyone that asks.”
On the other hand, if a member were to ask a minister (especially your highness SF or GF) something that they don’t like, don’t want to hear, or can’t answer, you can be sure that person will be suspended on the spot.
In this Bible study, SF took a long time to brag non-stop about Herbert Armstrong, ad nauseam, raising him up as the whitest of white saints.What would PCG ever do if they didn’t have HWA to continually refer to? The Bible, and especially the Christ of the Bible, wouldn’t be enough for them.
Even though this Bible study was about how we should know how to ask and reply to questions, SF said God doesn’t want us to question His authority (Translation: PCG ministers), His leadership (Translation: Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry), His Truth (Translation: GF’s teaching promulgated to the exclusion of all other groups).
He told about the “abundant life you all have in God’s church” and “why would you want to give that up?”
The only ones I know who have the “abundant life” are the higher up ministers and their pampered, rich kids. The rest have to endure split families, financial problems, and fearing what’s coming in the future.
I wonder how SF thinks his loud, nerve-wracking, voice (which crescendos in the middle of all his speeches) is going to get anyone to focus on asking any kind of question. But his behavior is all part of mind control which he is very good at. –G. E. Exit and Support Network
What organization, church, college or important enterprise is there which does not have a few -- possibly former members or employees, or those who have had some former contact -- who are dissidents, hostile and bitter or prejudiced?
It seems those who, for a sensational story or broadcast, attack this Work, seek out only those very few dissident and bitter enemies of the Work, and are willing to broadcast or print every defaming thing these enemies will say against us without checking the facts. They never seem interested in checking with the 75,000 members and many thousand other Co-Workers. They imply false motives employ clever and deceptive innuendos, and give false and misleading impressions.
Did you ever notice that our persecutors attack us from two inconsistent angles? 1) They accuse us of embracing doctrines, so difficult to observe that nobody would ever want to become one of our followers -- so unpopular we would never attract members (and in most cases they entirely misrepresent these doctrines). And yet, 2) they imply we are so very successful, and that we are receiving much money. I'm sure you can see the utter inconsistency of this. Why do they not point out, as our Co-Workers know, how every dollar in this Work is made to go farther and accomplish more than any place we know. HOW do you appraise the VALUE of one human life turned from sin and death to righteousness, receiving the gift of ETERNAL LIFE? The living Christ who heads and directs this Work, reaps a harvest, THROUGH this Work of a few THOUSAND of such every year.
Gerald Flurry is constantly seeking to find ways to be relevant in the world like he believes Herbert Armstrong was. He built his own mini-me campus and auditorium near Edmond Oklahoma. He stole hundreds of HWA's works and republished them, got sued, lost the case, and then paid $3,000,000.00 for the rights to publish them. Then proceeded to rework them to edit out anything HWA might have said to make Flurry look like a self-appointed idiot, He started the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation in order to imitate Herbert's Ambassador International Cultural Foundation so he could share the same abbreviations (AICF). Abbreviations are important in COG land, it makes them closer to HWA than they really are.
Flurry also has his students from the cult college participate in archeological digs in Israel just like HWA did. While HWA worked with Benjamin Mazare, PCG has worked with Eilat Mazar, the great-granddaughter of Benjamin Mazar. When she has made a lot of discoveries, she is not held in the highest esteem for her interpretations. She fits right in with the distorted interpretations of Gerald Flurry.
Mazar was a biblical maximalist and, according to herself, "I work with the Bible in one hand and the tools of excavation in the other, and I try to consider everything."[22]
However, Israel Finkelstein and other archaeologists from Tel Aviv University have flagged concern that, with reference to her 2006 dating of the "Solomonic city wall" in the area to the south of the Temple Mount known as the "Ophel", "the biblical text dominates this field operation, not archaeology. Had it not been for Mazar's literal reading of the biblical text, she never would have dated the remains to the 10th century BCE with such confidence.[23] Nevertheless, scholars now agree with Mazar's dating of this structure.[24][25][26]
Mazar was cautioned by epigrapher Ryan Byrne following the 2008 confusion over the inscription on the Shelomit seal, that "in the mad dash to report biblical artifacts to the public or connect discoveries with the most obscure persons or events reported in the Bible, there is sometimes a tendency to compromise the analytical caution that objects of such value so dearly deserve."[27]
Flurry had an office in Jerusalem several years ago until he got the brainy idea to buy the Bicket Wood campus of the old Ambassador College so that he can be closer to Hill Tara in Ireland where he believes he and his cult will soon dig up the mound and recover the Ark of the Covenant that Jeremiah brought to Ireland when he supposedly visited it centries ago. When the campus sale fell through he bought Edstone outside of Bricket Wood and closed down the Jerusalem office due to finances.
Now that the end is just a few months away Flurry needs to spend millions on a new foundation and office to be built in Jerusalem.
In order to impress the faithful followers of Flurry, they announced this on the 32 anniversary of the founding of the PCG by Flurry.
Brad McDonald wrote the following the other day in a mailing to the faithful:
It was around five or six years ago now that Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry first mentioned his plan to start an archaeology institute. I remember the mix of emotion I experienced listening to the idea—the excitement and anticipation pickled in gravity and trepidation.
The idea was logical. We have practiced archaeology in Jerusalem, mainly in support of Dr. Eilat Mazar and Hebrew University, since 2006. We’ve helped Dr. Mazar uncover some truly astonishing biblical artifacts, including King David’s palace and the clay seal of Judah’s King Hezekiah. Our predecessor, the late Herbert W. Armstrong, worked alongside Prof. Benjamin Mazar, Eilat’s grandfather, for almost 20 years. After 50 years of participating in (and even sponsoring) archaeological digs, starting an archaeology institute was the next logical step.
Still, founding an institute would mark a major development. It would require an office in Jerusalem, qualified staff and researchers and a substantial research library. It would mean in-depth research, working alongside scholars and scientists, and then publishing. It would be a pretty audacious enterprise!
How did we get on?
This past weekend (January 16-17)—exactly 36 years after the death of Herbert W. Armstrong and less than one year after the death of Dr. Eilat Mazar—we finalized and launched the website of the Armstrong-Mazar Institute of Biblical Archaeology (AMIBA).
We have an archaeology institute!
This is what Flurry has on the main page of the Armstrong-Mazar Institute of Biblical Archeology and how they intend to educate Israel and the world:
Welcome to the Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology (AIBA). AIBA’s mission is to showcase Israel’s biblical archaeology and to make it available to the largest audience possible, most especially to the people of Israel.
AIBA is a non-profit academic and educational institution headquartered in Jerusalem, Israel. AIBA seeks to share and promote Israel’s biblical archaeology via multiple platforms, including: 1) this website, which publishes articles, scientific reports and videos on Israel’s biblical archaeology; 2) Let the Stones Speak, a full-color, 32-page bimonthly print magazine; and 3) private tours of the Ophel and the City of David, as well as public seminars and archaeological exhibits.
AIBA also sponsors and participates in archaeological excavations in Jerusalem, primarily in the City of David and on the Ophel. (To learn more about past projects, or to follow our ongoing projects, see Excavations & Projects.)
AIBA has deep roots in Israel and in the field of biblical archaeology. The institute collaborates and works in partnership with many of Israel’s esteemed academic institutions, including Hebrew University, the City of David Foundation, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Israel Exploration Society. AIBA is named after Herbert W. Armstrong and Dr. Eilat Mazar, two personalities with a long and rich history with both Israel and biblical archaeology.
Herbert Armstrong was a prominent 20th-century Bible scholar, minister and humanitarian. He was also a keen supporter of biblical archaeology and the Jewish state. From 1968 to 1986, Mr. Armstrong supported multiple archaeological excavations in Israel, most notably the “Big Dig,” a massive excavation on the Temple Mount led by Hebrew University professor Benjamin Mazar. (Our Excavations & Projects page has more information on this.)
Dr. Eilat Mazar, granddaughter of Prof. Benjamin Mazar, was one of Israel’s greatest biblical archaeologists. Eilat was responsible for making some of biblical archaeology’s most sensational discoveries, including King David’s palace, King Solomon’s royal complex, Nehemiah’s wall and the seals of King Hezekiah and Isaiah (among other finds). Dr. Mazar was a brilliant scientist who not only deeply valued the scientific method but recognized the crucial role the Bible plays in the study of Jerusalem’s ancient history.
Since 2006, AIBA has proudly sponsored and worked alongside Dr. Mazar in her excavations in the City of David and on the Ophel. We endeavor to preserve Dr. Mazar’s archaeological legacy and keep it alive by approaching biblical archaeology with the same dedication to scientific and academic integrity, and the same passion, urgency and love. (You can learn more about the work and legacy of Dr. Eilat Mazar here.)
AIBA’s overarching mission can be divided into five specific objectives:
To promote the Bible as a credible and essential historical resource in the practice of archaeology in Israel
To feature and continue the archaeological work of Dr. Eilat Mazar and her grandfather, Prof. Benjamin Mazar
To analyze and explain archaeological excavations and discoveries past and present in the context of the Bible
To challenge the unwarranted and unsupported criticisms leveled against the use of the Bible in archaeology in Israel
To encourage archaeologists to consider and employ the Bible in the practice of archaeology
