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
Superfantabulous Dave, God's mightiest man ever in human history will soon be looked upon as the man to unite all 400 splinter Churches of God. When the Man of Sin arises (Thiel or Lil'Stevie Flurry as some are speculating) Super Dave will be there to unite the Churches of God into one massive work that will do a mighty work for 45 days.
There may be certain warnings to the ministers in the splinters. You know, where you start dealing…you start calling certain people out—“that man is not of God”—or certain other men may have to be ready to lose their lives. It’s going to be a busy 45 days. The Man of Sin does not personally enter the splinters, probably then unified…Now, let me just explain something. If I judge the house, I’ll just tell you what I would decide. I’m going to tell them immediately, “Guess what, you’re now one church, because God has one church. You’re not 400 churches anymore.”
If I’m given the authority to rule them…Think of Matthew 24 and we are, we’re not going to work with them in 400 hundred groups…I’m going to tell them, “Guess what, today you’re in one organization” and they will be looking for help. They’ll…Absolutely, they all want to be together. Not the ones who aren’t converted, who are going to follow what I call the “spiritual sleeper cells.” They were appointed to this ungodliness when they crept in unawares long ago and then they rise up to do their evil according to Acts 20, verse 30, when Christ says, “some will rise among you” and so forth. Those people are not going to agree and the people who follow them aren’t going to agree, but thousands of brethren are going to be looking for direction. Maybe with or without their own ministers, so, you know, we will be in a position to say a lot of…a lot of things that I hope will be very, very helpful.
Superfantaublous Dave will be able to show the world that he has God on his side when he stands up to the Man of Sin (Bob Thiel?) that's arisen out of the church. As the Man of Sin attacks the church, all of the splinters will be sooooooooo impressed that Dave holds him at bay that they will flock to his side in admiration in order to finish the greatest work ever imagined.
Now, we read and heard last week and the time before, there’s a period of 45 days from 1,335 until the 1,290 when the Man of Sin sends his system and his representatives directly into the Church, and the fire explodes in intensity on the Church, because after 45 days, there’s a group of people that didn’t buy in and there’s another group working with them. Now God allows some of them to die. We understand that some get slain. Some get killed, James said…They’re called the flock of slaughter; we know all those verses…but most, I would hope, do not.
So, we’re looking at what does that first 45 days look like? Because, here again, in Zechariah, Joshua’s given “places to walk.” Now that doesn’t mean places to stroll around town or the campus. It’s places that you’re going to go. “I’m going to give you ‘access,’” the Hebrew means, and this is important.
Now the entire world descends into chaos. Somewhere on Earth there has to be an authority that says what’s going on. So, number one—during that 45 days, the Work of God will continue, and probably mushroom. Because they’ll realize…And many, many, many, many millions know there’s already…there’s a place that speaks with authority, not exousia. In a certain way, I guess, it’s like exousia. The apostles were given some exousia. So I guess, in a certain way, we have authority in that regard…as though you were casting out a demon, that kind of authority.
But, it is critical to understand that the world is going to wonder, who’s got the answers? Is this right? They’re going to see things that do not add up! That’s why, in Habakkuk, it says some people know this is just a thief, or he’s an adulterer, or he’s raping the world! And there will be somebody saying, “You’re right”—biting and vexing him, I’m sure, because he can’t get the Press to agree with him, at least a little part of it that may have a big authority, if you will. So there will be many in the…
So let’s break this 45 days down. “Places to walk”…I wonder…It’s hard for me to believe, really. Is it…Is it possible…I suppose it is…but is it possible that there’s never any direct confrontation with this man and the two with him? Well, I have my doubts about that. I just have my doubts. I cannot imagine there isn’t a kind of a cobra-mongoose moment, if you will. Where, you know…Moses in front of Pharaoh…Elijah and the Prophets of Baal…or John the Baptist and Elijah confronting the Sadducees and the Pharisees and calling them serpents. I just would be surprised if that’s not one of the “places to walk,” if you will. I can’t turn to a verse; but conversely, I cannot imagine that it doesn’t happen.
Obviously, we’ll have 45 days to tell the splinters, “If you think it’s bad now, wait a month and a half,” and to get them ready so they have a maximum chance when tremendous pressure comes on them—tremendous miracles and power and fear—and maybe even, they see some people they know and love die—that they not collapse. Because remember, God’s overall purpose is that they pass—that they make it.
I can’t imagine going into Jerusalem and not saying things to the leaders there…“This is the wrong guy. The right one will be along shortly.” But there’ll even be another one that’s wrong called the prince of Tyre and the king of the North, and we’ll get into get into that more I hope next week. I can’t imagine not going to certain Israelite nations during this period, before Christ comes to sit on David’s throne, and telling the leaders of Israelite nations…I mean, I just can’t imagine. I had a long time to think about this…and certain things are not said to the leaders of those particular nations that things are about to change. There’s a new ruler coming…
One of the myths that the Worldwide Church of God promulgated was that their Pasadena Campus was somehow sacred. It was so beautiful that when the German Armies invaded the United States they would arrive In Pasadena and stand in awe of what they saw. They would be so impressed by it that they would make it their war HQ and thus preserve the entire campus. This idiotic lie was one of many that Gerald Waterhouse belched out and field ministers latched on to.
Gerald Flurry feels the same about his campus in the middle of the Oklahoma plains. It too will be preserved because of its beauty and its sacred auditorium. However, Flurry will have already abandoned his Edmond cult compound by that time and will be in England with Herb's prayer rock getting ready to dig up the Ark of the Covenant so they can haul ass to Jerusalem and let Jesus sit on Herb's rock and be crowned King of Kings.
Dave Pack, is late to the game. His compound is stuck in Ohio next to a pollution belching freeway and a big lot store across the street. Due to his inability to impress tens of thousands of COG members to join him in his superfantaulous work, he has had no money to build his holy auditorium or even his student center. Since Jesus is returning to Wadsworth before heading over to Jerusalem, he is going to be mighty upset to arrive and find no auditorium in existence. However, Dave's cult compound is so significant that a wall of protection will be around it in order to keep the man of sin out and anyone wanting to persecute the church.
But just not everybody is going to agree with us, and they can’t just come strolling onto God’s World Headquarters, into this time of enormous difficulty, as though God says, “Well, they can destroy the campus, but they can’t touch you.” You see? So the Work of God will be enormous during that period. Now let’s leave that for a moment. The devil will be blocked from stopping us and there’ll be angelic protection, but walls and super power will be necessary, because not everybody is going to adhere to what the devil is rebuked to understand, so to speak, if you can…if you can understand the obvious there.
Dave Pack's mind continues to spin more tall tales as the days roll by. He has been discussing the Man of Sin arising out of the COG who will be possessed by Satan and will the pretend to be Jesus. He will start looting nations around the world in order to send it all to Jerusalem so that the Jews can rebuild the Temple. Workers will stream in from around the world to build the finest building ever built. Jesus apparently does not want to return to Ambassador Auditorium, Armstrong Auditorium or Dave Pack's unbuilt auditorium.
One additional point from last week, however, before we get back into more regarding exousiacomes. If we go back to Ezra, chapter 3, it’ll give you an interesting insight into how the Jews and the Man of Sin will think once the sacrifices begin, and it probably would have been a good thing to mention last week, but…I, I had it in my notes and then just skipped over it…but in Ezra 3, you’ll recall that as soon as the Jews came back from Babylon and they were prepared to build Zerubbabel’s Temple in the wake of Solomon’s being destroyed, the first thing they did, in the fall of the year, right around Trumpets, was start the daily sacrifices. Verse 4, we can pick up…
“They kept also the feast of tabernacles, as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings by number, according to the custom, as the duty of every day required” (Ezra 3:4). The first thing you do, though…you start the sacrifices, and then you build the temple. But actually, there’s something you do between the sacrifices and building the temple, and I wish I would have included it last week, but here we go…
“And afterward [verse 5; they] offered the continual burnt offering, both…the new moons…all the set feasts of the LORD that were consecrated…of the LORD that were consecrated, and of every one that willingly offered a freewill offering unto the LORD. From the first day of the seventh month [That’s Trumpets] began they to offer burnt offerings unto…[the foundation]…But the foundation of the temple of the LORD was not yet laid” (vs. 5-6). So they started the sacrifices, and immediately, they began pouring in tremendous amounts of money and funding to build the temple.
Well, that’s what is going to drive the Man of Sin, with the Jews rooting for him, to loot the world. One of the reasons he does that, of course, is to have the funds and the materials and probably even the skilled labor to build the temple of the Lord. So it’s interesting, the Jews’ next problem was money after the sacrifices began; the first problem when the Man of Sin, the antichrist, comes, after the sacrifices begin, will be money, and he’s “God,” so he’ll go obtain it. And so I thought you’d find that interesting.
