Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Growing Up In A Faith Healing Cult






From the Patheos Friendly Atheist Blog:  Growing Up In A Faith Healing Cult

 by Rachel Holierhoek. Rachel is a Secular Humanist living in Canada with her partner, Roy, and their four children.




We were different. We were the only ones in our small town who belonged to the Worldwide Church of God, a church founded by Herbert W. Armstrong; a self-proclaimed apostle and prophet. Armstrong was a fundamentalist, end-times-are-coming Sabbatarian who also taught strict dietary restrictions and commanded the keeping of Old Testament holy days, forbidding Pagan holidays like Christmas and Easter. Ours was the only family in our school district who had to annually provide a letter from our minister about the Feast of Tabernacles to explain our week-long absences from school every fall. Sure, we’d get our school work to take with us but when you had three-hour church services daily (six hours on high days at the beginning and end of that Festival) along with nightly special sessions (like those on the demonic influence in modern rock music) you really didn’t have much time for homework.

We were also different because we didn’t see doctors. We didn’t get immunized. To do so was a clear display of a lack of faith in God. God would heal us if we really believed he would. If we were righteous, we wouldn’t even get sick!
In 1952, Herbert W. Armstrong published the booklet “Does God Heal Today?” (PDF) In this booklet he laid out his doctrine for faith-healing. His doctrine taught that sickness, disease, even injury were the result of sin. They were a person’s punishment for sin and faith healing was nothing but God’s forgiveness for those sins. According to Armstrong, people wouldn’t get sick if they weren’t sinning and they wouldn’t get healed, either, if they weren’t really faithful. Many members of the Worldwide Church of God canceled their health insurance and wouldn’t see a doctor for anything other than childbirth (which wasn’t considered an illness) and even then the necessity of a Cesarian Section indicated unrighteousness in the woman needing it.

In 1968, Armstrong’s own wife, Loma, died of a bowel obstruction because Armstrong refused medical interventions and instead annointed and prayed over his wife. Despite this, the doctrine against medical care stood unchanged from its 1952 position. Armstrong equated dependence on the medical professionals with Pagan idolatry and a breech of the commandment to “have no other gods before me.” Armstrong equated modern, science-based medicine with ancient ritualistic healing practices that had no scientific basis.

When I was ten years old, my younger sister became increasingly ill. She had always been frail; pale, thin, and lethargic — even her hair was thin and dull. This time my sister Missy (not her real name) was much worse. My older sister (who was then a teenager) tells me that my younger sister was too weak to walk to the bathroom and my father would carry her there frequently. My older sister would barrage my father with demands that Missy be taken to the doctor. My little sister was too weak to even attend Saturday church services where she might have been anointed by a minister in a ritual called the “laying on of hands.” The minister would take the sick person, and the parents if the person was a child, and go into a coat closet and close the door. There, everyone would kneel and the minister would take a small bottle of olive oil out of a pocket and place a dot of oil on the sick person’s forehead. He would hold his hand on the spot where the oil was placed and begin to pray.

Everyone would bow their heads as the minister beseeched God to forgive this sick person of the sins for which she was being punished. When a person was too ill to attend services (which for us were an hour drive away from our hometown) the minister would send home an anointed cloth. It was a piece of gauze with a drop of oil on it that the minister had prayed over. The small square of guaze was ceremoniously placed in a small manilla envelope for safe keeping. At home, our parents would take us into their bedroom where we would all get down on our knees and one would hold the oiled cloth to our forehead and all heads bowed, praying that God would heal us. Some people take a spoonful of medicine. Not us. We got down on our knees and put oil on our foreheads and prayed. Sometimes we got better. Sometimes we did not.

My mother has often told the story of how she nursed me to health, along with anointing and prayer when I was all of five months old. I had measles and was severely dehydrated with fever and chills. She would tell how she would rock me for hours on end in a rocking chair dribbling broth from a spoon into my mouth because I was too weak even to nurse. Obviously, I had not received my infant innoculation against measles.

Prayer and anointing were not working for my little sister. In her six years of life we couldn’t imagine what horrible sins she had committed to be so drastically ill. Armstrong explained, however, that “you might not have been guilty of any wrong, yet nature’s laws were violated or you wouldn’t be sick!” How’s that for double speak? Sickness and injury are the result of sin. Unless they’re not. But, hey, something caused it!

So my mom searched herself for what sin she must have committed to cause her daughter to be so deathly ill. I heard her murmered prayers from her room (Armstrongists go behind closed doors to pray in private) asking God to forgive whatever she has done to make my little sister sick. She always emerged from those sessions wiping tears from her face having sobbed the entire time.

My older sister could take it no longer. She said our little sister would die if she couldn’t get to a doctor. My mother took Missy to a local emergency room on the weekend where she was treated for the flu. By Monday, Missy was much worse so my mother called the local doctor’s office and scheduled an appointment. While there, the doctor took some of Missy’s blood and examined it at the office. He returned to the exam room looking quite grim and saying only, “I don’t think it’s leukemia.” He was puzzled but Missy’s condition was dire. Her heart was too weak for her to even walk. The doctor carried her to my mother’s car and they met again at the hospital. Overnight at the local small hospital her doctor realized they were not able to address my sisters’ illness and moved her to the nearest children’s hospital. He also instructed my mother to allow no blood transfusions — in my sister’s severe state where her heart was weakened, a transfusion could overwhelm the system and bring about heart failure.

My sister was gone for weeks. She was so sick I wasn’t even allowed to visit her. No children could visit her. I spent many afternoons alone. I spent many afternoons taking my sister’s most recent school photo down from the wall and crying over her image. I looked at my sister’s school portraits on the walls. She had been a pain in my ass as long as she had been alive but only now did I see how frail and weak she had always been. I was wracked with guilt. Maybe my sin had made my sister sick. She was always such an annoying pest, telling mom every little thing I did and some things that I never did! I’d wished such horrible things on her. Had I caused this illness? Was it me? I’d take that picture and head into my bedroom, get down on my knees and beg god to let me be the sick one. Let me take this punishment, she didn’t deserve it! I was sure she would die.

I overheard my parents and older siblings talking about how weak she was and how the doctor had already saved her life by refusing a blood transfusion before he knew what was wrong with her. There was something wrong with her blood, but he didn’t know what yet. She was experiencing a severe aplastic anemia crisis but at the time, the doctor did not know why. He was poring over enormous books on diseases of the blood attempting to diagnose her. Her heart was very weak. A team of ten doctors, along with the one we originally saw in our hometown, worked diligently to figure out what was causing Missy’s aplastic crisis.

In the midst of all this activity, my mother had church elders come into the hospital and anoint Missy.
As it turned out, Missy had congenital spherocytosis. It is a disease that affects the outer membrane of the red blood cells and causes the cells to be sphere-shaped. The spleen, which helps the immune system by filtering impurities out of the blood will filter and hoard the spherical blood cells. People with spherocytosis have enlarged spleens because of this constant filtering and hoarding. They also have thicker bones than others as their marrow is continually trying to replenish the blood supply because spherocytes have a shorter lifespan than normally shaped blood cells. People with this blood disorder are at heightened risk of complications from childhood illnesses that are often trivial to others. The Fifth Disease (parvovirus) most often appears as bright red marks on the faces of children affected by it. Children with spherocytosis (and other blood disorders such as sickle-cell) often end up in aplastic crisis. The doctor suspected my sister had contracted the Fifth Disease as it was making its rounds through school that year and her weakened immune system made a sick little girl that much sicker.

The threat of aplastic crisis in a person with spherocytosis is eliminated by removal of the spleen. Missy was not well enough for the surgery for several weeks. When finally she could have the surgery she was left with an enormous scar; a testament to how enlarged her spleen actually was. Though Missy weighed barely 60 pounds, her spleen was the size of a quart jar!
When Missy finally emerged from the crisis and her body began to recover, the doctor told my mother, “I can’t explain it. She should have died. That girl is a miracle.” The doctor gave my mother confirmation that God — not this doctor or any of the ten others or the surgeon — saved Missy’s life. I asked my mother, “Could God have healed Missy if she were not in the hospital receiving the treatment that would bring her out of aplastic crises and end the threat of aplastic crisis for the rest of her life?” Although she said that God could not have healed Missy unless she received the medical treatment, she still insists that the healing was God’s will. She also clarified that “sometimes God doesn’t heal at all. Sometimes he doesn’t heal right away.”

Although Armstrong’s church has reversed all of its doctrines and become a mainstream evangelical Christian church and my mother’s beliefs have followed suit, her 30-year indoctrination by Armstrong holds firm. She quotes the same scriptures Armstrong did to support faith healing. When I asked if she believed that sickness was the result of sin, she said “Well, sin is a lot of things. It can be eating things that are not good for us, or pollution, or contaminants in our water — those are sins, too.” And genetic disorders? “Who has a hand on that code?” She asks.

Still, the doctors took the time to educate my parents. They had nearly lost their daughter to a blood disorder and they too could face a fatal illness through her if she was not immunized against childhood diseases. Her body, without the spleen and after years of ill health, would never be able to fight infections the way healthy children might. Every illness would be cause for alarm and immediate action. She should probably take antibiotics for the rest of her life along with folic acid. My mother wouldn’t have her on prophylactic antibiotics, but would supplement her with folic acid. Every one of us got innoculated against all the common childhood illnesses. However, when it came time for booster shots, mom had to be threatened by the schools with removal of us kids from classes before she would actually go and get us our shots.

To this day, if Missy gets the flu she is usually hospitalized with pneumonia as well. Every illness is a severe illness. There is no such thing as ‘a little cold’ for Missy. Her own children have inherited the genetic defect that causes this disorder, but are much healthier than she had a chance to be. They were monitored and innoculated and kept out of school anytime the Fifth Disease made its appearance. Those with the severe form of spherocytosis had their spleens removed at age six, before they ever went into an aplastic crisis.

Despite my mother’s belief that prayer saved my sister’s life, I am positive that it nearly took it. God didn’t save my sister’s life. Science did. Do I worship science? No. I certainly have a healthy respect for it, though. Science at least admits when it is wrong.


Monday, May 6, 2013

Bob Thiel Disproves Evolution in 11 Minutes While Sitting on the Floor




The non-ordained self-appointed Dr. is back with another fabulous video.  He totally debunks evolution in 11 minutes 22 seconds.

Love the word "Pathologic" that keeps popping up next to his head on the book.  Is this subliminal seduction taking place?

This time the barking spirits seem to be gone, but one pesky spirit seems to be causing a lot of static. I still can't get over the impressive set with a door in the background and Walmart bookcases.  Impressive!  I love how he juggles his big floppy books and sheets of paper attempting to point things out.  Impressive Bro!  Really impressive!  I just have to keep going back and watching that clip. I am so astounded!

The bookcases look like they have been straightened up this time around.  Nothing is more impressive for a world renown leader such as Bob Thiel than having book selves filled with stacks of old paper and books showing their edges instead of the spines.  Thiel seems to have learned nothing from Herbert Armstrong and the use of quality in all things produced.

Dennis Says: The Apostle David C. Pack is NOT Spoken of in the ...






...or anywhere else in the Bible for that matter.  

Dennis Diehl - EzineArticles Expert AuthorIt is hard for me to personally fathom any current living human being looking into the Old Testament and , sure enough, seeing themselves spoken of by the prophets.  We all are familiar with the "look back into the Bible" approach and like millions before us, have been deceived by the ego centric Bible Babblers and our own desire to believe, do and practice the correct things in the true church.  It takes only the study of reality, history and an open mind to realize there never was one true Church, ever.  The splits over the who and what of Jesus started before the body started to cool.  If you believe the characters in the New Testament , Peter, James, John and Paul all spoke the same thing and even tolerated each other at times, you would be wrong.  The men and on occasion, women, who have seen their times and themselves spoken of in scripture probably runs into the tens of thousands over the past 2500 years.  Mental hospitals are filled with every character you think of from Adam to Moses, Joshua to Jesus.  As I have said before, I have met 23 of the Two Witnesses of Revelation in my lifetime.   Most in mental hospitals or out on farms.

!00% of them were 100% wrong 100% of the time to date.  Their time will run out as well and then they can be added to the list.  I'll throw good intentioned in there to be kind, but what kind of a man sees HIMSELF spoken of in the scriptures?  That is simply an amazing study to me in all sorts of aberrant thinking, the outcome of which gives birth to even more skepticism in the minds of people who at least can learn from such insanity.

Old Testament Prophets always speak to their own times.  They are trying as best they can to explain what has happened to their nation.  In the case of the Nation of Israel, the prophets took the opportunity to blame the sins of the people and rejection by God for it all.  Actually the armies of the surrounding nations were bigger and better.   If you have ears to hear, the "Suffering Servant" of Isaiah was not Jesus of the New Testament.  It was either Israel or Isaiah himself as he viewed his role in being a "major" prophet in Israel.  I realize that showing New Testament writers used a writing style called Midrash , which is looking back into the past to explain the confusing present, as the technique  they used to cobbled the New Testament story together, but that takes a desire to realize things are not as you have been taught. 

Try this for starters if you are interested at all in learning the bigger picture of how the Bible was constructed and the stories put together.




For example,the Gospel writer Matthew, puts together the entire birth story of Jesus by seeking out Old Testament scriptures he can weave a tale into about a birth he actually knew nothing about.  In his "thus it was fulfilled" stories of Jesus, Matthew misrepresents the original meaning of the Old Testament to make it mean what he wants it to mean to tell a story.  His Virgin Birth story, taken from Isaiah  is an example of this classic cut and paste method which leaves Matthew open to much criticism and skepticism.  Isaiah 7 has NOTHING to do with Jesus. It had everything to do with Isaiah's time.  ( Luke's story of Jesus birth was totally different and you can see he NEVER read Matthew's tale before he wrote his.)   Matthew is good at this proof-texting until he gets to misquoting the OT and having Jesus ride into Jerusalem on two donkeys rather than one.  No problem.  The other Gospel writers saw his mistake and corrected it.  That one story alone proves the Gospel stories of Matthew are made up from Old Testament scriptures and were nothing he actually knew or witnessed.  But hat's another story.

The unknown story of how Jesus died was well served by Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 neither of which had anything to do with Jesus at the time nor were ever intended to.  But they were great for mining and Gospel writers did it often. All that came later in the form of Midrash. If you don't know what Midrash is, you OWE it to yourself to understand it. You'll never hear it explained in church.

Back to Prophets.   All OT prophets speak to their own times.  They don't speak to times in which none of them will live to see. They may project hope into the time to come as do and did we all, but they speak to their own times. 

Church of God members are so used to thinking, "well yeah, that was a type but the fulfillment is what is happening in my Church and today," that they just can't see the point.  They also don't see that there are many failed OT prophecies and explain them away with "well, they just haven't happened yet."  In the Church of God, soon, shortly, the time now is, the day is far spent and so on, do not mean what they mean.  They get a 2000 year hiatus before they mean in this time yet again it is short.  "This Generation" doesn't meant that generation.  It means MY CURRENT GENERATION, which it didn't back then. The mind is a trickster when it comes to making things mean what one needs them to mean rather than what they actually mean and meant.  Since it didn't happen for them, it must mean us.

Hard facts to accept at face value:


Jesus was wrong about himself at times and how it would all work out for him and his  disciples.

Peter, James and John were wrong about it would all work out for them and their communities of believers

Paul was terribly wrong about "we who are alive and remain..." and much of the advice that the sincere took literally which disrupted their lives and relationships was also wrong advice.

The Book of Revelation, written by Jewish Christian for Jewish Christians in the siege of Jerusalem was wrong about how it all would work out for them.  The Romans won and did it in 8 months not three and half years.


Now I know well the need for us in our time to fall back to "it was a type," but back then, it was never envisioned to be a type only for the far distant fulfillment.  One must make the leap from their reality to our hope their reality was a mere type to do that. 

Now to the heart of the matter.  Apostle Dave Pack is NOT spoken of in the Minor Prophets.  Nor is That Prophet Gerald Flurry nor was HWA or GTA....EVER. Certainly Non-Prophet Robert Thiel isn't.  (I, however am.  I am a scoffer but only because I am an observer of what does not happen and is not so).  I know what's coming in the Apostle Dave's yet to be explain presentations.  I have reread the these minor prophets and it's obvious what is coming. Anyone who has any history with WCG can read Haggai and Zachariah and see exactly what's coming.  I can tell you who is going to end up as who in this upcoming tale weaving and how all the types, fulfillments and delusions are going to be explained.  The actual stories are about Israel coming back to Jerusalem after the Babylonian Captivity but hey....great stuff to be manipulated over weeks of wear you out letters and sermons to make it mean what it never meant and doesn't mean.  The stories have lots of room for the mistaken idea that all the splinters will come back again into one place, the Restored Church of God and under one leader, Apostle David C Pack.  Nice analogy.  Totally bogus.  I can't speak to sincerity of belief or teaching, but I can speak to ignorance.

I no longer feel sorry for Restored or Philadelphia Church of God hangers on.  There is so much information available to you outside of your small circle and one man shows that there is no excuse to get hooked into something that simply is not so.  Has the Apostle Pack sought council and advice on his views?  Has there been a multitude of counsel in which lies safety over these ego centric, "Yes yes!!!  The Bible speaks of me right here!" musings soon to be truths for you?  I doubt it.  What kind of men would put their stamp of approval on such malarkey?  Has one stood up and said they don't buy it and been allowed to stay?  Doubt it. 

So here is what is going to happen.  Like you being convinced "And yes, I am an Apostle," which took hours of type, analogy and self promotion before that was proclaimed, you better hold onto your sore butts again.  The wear you down with more analogies, types and Mr. Armstrong this and that is underway.  You are going to be numbed into acceptance, unless of course you aren't going to accept it and I advice you not to based on the real meanings, background and history of those books you will be soaking in.  It can sound plausible if you take any of the Minor Prophets actually leading up to the Apostle David.  But plausible is a slippery slope. Ten thousand religious guru types could and probably already have used the very same arguments to make the same erroneous points about their own ministry and mission.  Most are dead now. 

A scripture can never mean what it never meant.  You are about to learn the truth of that statement in spades as you see scripture wrestled into doing just that. 

Why do I bother with this.  I honestly can't question anyone's sincerity.  I believe Ron Weinland probably believes his own misguided, misspoken and misinterpreted views about the Bible and himself.  He's paid dearly for his foolishness in taking people's money to do his work.  But i hate ignorance and manipulation that leads to pain and suffering for yet more sincere people who trust too much, study outside the box too little and believe everything one human being over them tells them.  How many times do we have to learn that lesson? 

I have known Mr. Dave Pack since he was 20 years old.  Winning is everything and it actually is all about the numbers.  

 I personally believe that some of the OT prophet types were probably mentally ill  and what today we call schizophrenia , temporal lobe epilepsy and a host of other human conditions , they called "inspired."  Strange people and behaviors in history could easily be mistaken for spirituality then, but illness today.  I believe with all my heart that a man with mental illness can hide much more easily in a church setting than in a corporate setting.  Visions and interpretations of scripture can be seen more as obedience and spirituality rather than the actual mental disorder they may be.  Dictators who would be either highly promoted in the corporate world (by those like them) or cast out can hide better in ministry as their quirky and maddening ways can be seen as some kind of weird Bible strength.   "Well Ezekiel cooked food with his own dung laid siege to a frying pan, so I'm just like Ezekiel," really doesn't work well today.  Making oneself correct by analogy is not the same as actually being correct.

So, whatever the Apostle Dave presents will be well presented.  It will be done meticulously over many  weeks and finally hours.  And it will be wrong.  The Minor Prophets never spoke of Herbert Armstrong no matter what he or Gerald Waterhouse speculated about.  Dave is only an Apostle because he has claimed he is. NO ONE ELSE outside of himself thinks that is so. Any new titles such as "And yes brethren, I am Joshua," is just silly.   The Minor Prophets are not speaking to or laying any groundwork for the Apostle Dave to appropriate to himself and use yet again to promote himself as special and his sliver as the one true church on earth. 

That is just nuts and I hope you will do your homework well before you end up a few years from now writing about your incredible and painful experience as I do today about my own.    In my view, those who become most skeptical had once been the most sincere.  If you are going to have an experience you may as well share the lessons learned.  Experience is not only the best teacher, it is the only one. Everything else is hearsay.  I just don't like seeing others get hurt in the process of outgrowing foolish beliefs and being discouraged from being yourself in this life.  You do not have to ever filter your life, thoughts or beliefs through another human being or see the world only through their eyes.  History warns us of that mistake.

IMHO