Greetings From Charlotte! The world is full of ROT!

From a reader here:

May 23rd, 2019 

Greetings from Charlotte,

Last Sabbath I spoke to and fellowshipped with an enthusiastic and friendly Dallas, Texas congregation. Violent storms passed through the area that day, with lots of lightning, flooding downpours, high winds, and tornado watches and warnings, and the pattern of violent and wet weather that has marked much of the last few months continued into this week. Mr. Millich reports that the brethren in Missouri are safe and sustained no damage to property from the tornadoes and severe weather in that state yesterday. [We are all right - that is all that matters.]] Dozens of tornados and torrential downpours have soaked the South and Midwestern United States, and corn crops nationwide will be down significantly, with farmers unable to plant due to exceptionally wet conditions. The effect will no doubt be seen in grocery stores later this year. It is a total loss for many farmers. 

Regional Director Dan Hall and I held a conference in Big Sandy on Sunday. (See report below.) Mr. Mark Sandor and his family are being transferred to the Minneapolis area and plan to move there this summer to pastor congregations in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Mr. Lenny Bower is finishing his training here in Charlotte and will be relocating in West Virginia. 

Brethren, we are living in sobering times, as seen from the moral decay in our Western world. The speed with which the rot is spreading is truly mind-bending. Now is not the time to spiritually fall asleep or get caught up in silly disputes or personal doctrinal “idea-babies.” [you dumb sheep] —Gerald Weston

"Mr. Hall talked about the importance of widows and women’s roles in the congregations, and stressed the importance of developing meaningful relationships and encouraging the brethren. It was a very profitable weekend" [You forgot the part where Mister Hall left his elderly widowed mother to rot in a special care facility while Mister Hall went off to do more important things like managing a region.] 

When the Churches of God want to know why no one cares to join their little insignificant groups it is because of reading stuff like this from Gerald Weston and the rest of the sick minds running various COG's.  Everything in the world is evil and full of rot.  They ignore the beauty in the world, the amazing people that surround them and the good they do.  They despise them as much as they do the cross and Jesus.

The apostate self-appointed false teacher Bob Thiel is all in snit this weekend over the cross.  You remember it, it's that thing that inconvenient dude died upon.  He is getting his BVD's all in a Pharisaical twist today that the cross is the sign of the beast power and will be used to kill true Christians...i.e. Thielites.  Remember, there are no real Christians outside the vile little world of Thielism.  He spends countless hours a month writing and preaching on every esoteric topic imaginable, except on Jesus and what was accomplished on that cross that he so despises.

Weston's world is filled with sex just like Rod Meredith's. He places his focus upon every bad thing happening in the world as a sure sign that his god is pissed at humanity. His mind and the mind of so many COG leaders are so blinded by the desire to see humanity wiped out that they can not see any good around them.  They have whored themselves out to the law, of which they do not actually keep, because it is an impossibility. Jesus, the cross, the works done there are anathema to these false leaders.  So I say let them live in the world filled with ROT.  They deserve it.

The Winds of Change

Gray Pinstripe suits. Tie clasps. Badges.  Long dresses, and musky cologne. Of course, briefcases. These are the crisp and clear memories of what I call “The Worldwide Church Culture”. It's been a long time, but it could be just yesterday. The memories of a distant life remain not-so-distant, a world long gone yet still so close. 

A Hymnal on every other seat. “Reserved” signs on certain end-chairs. Speaking of chairs, who can forget those gray metal folding chairs – some with the local Church area stenciled on the back? And those Bulletins – filled with Telecast information, prayer requests, local church activities, and of course, the agenda of the service – pianist, song leader, sermonette, announcements, special music, and the sermon (or split sermon). 

The Church experience was a vinyl record with its needle stuck on a groove. It was rinse and repeat, do and do over, week after week, festival after festival, occasion after occasion. Everything became so predictable – right down to the tone and pitch variances of the speaker, the special (or not so special) music, the fellowship hours, potlucks, Bible studies – always the same. 

During the song service, you'd know the voices that carried over the most, for the good, or for the bad. You wouldn't even need the Hymnal – you knew every word be heart. You'd even look around slyly to see who else was cool enough to not need the Hymnal. The prayers were always close to the same – opening, and closing. You could almost say them with the speaker giving them. You'd know what pianist was the best and which one you dreaded the most. And you knew where to sit, and where not to sit – everyone had their spot – and don't sit in someone else's spot. 

Cliques of four or five of the same people every week, in the same place, in the same hall, talking about the same things. The same handshakes. Some strong and hearty, some weak and flimsy. The same greetings. The same smells – of people and the building alike. 

Life in the Church was a constant not subject to change in a world where everything always changes. Cities change year after year. The school you grew up in, the hangout you bought Bazooka gum at, the neighborhood constantly changing. In fact, the only constant thing about life is change. Most neighborhoods now are completely different than they were in 1980. Yet we were trained to live in an environment that never changed. No matter what happened, no matter how the world shifted, moved, we were the one rock that we knew would never, ever, ever change. Until that day when the rug was pulled out from everyone's feet, and we were forced to accept the winds of change in one form or another. 

In many ways, it was like pulling off the helmet of your spacesuit whilst being pushed off the space station. Everything was moving so fast, you felt breathless, and you had no idea what was going to happen next. The unchangeable changed, The unmovable moved – and every person and family scattered to the four corners of the Earth as if a large water balloon had suddenly popped. 

Many “held fast”, as the saying goes. Many others “ran fast”, others DID fast, and others had pork sausage for Break-fast. But whatever people did, the income fell faster. We all were confronted with a hard fact – we had to make a choice. We had to think, choose, and act. Our culture was about to change. Could we? Would we? 

It has been 25 years, just about, since that fateful day in 1994. In December, it will be exactly 25 years since our culture has changed. It's been 33 years since the Armstrong era ended. And if there's one thing we have learned to do as a people – no matter which way we ended up going – is adapt to change. We all have had to evaluate our priorities, our lives, and our choices. And we all have had to adjust to a completely different world where the phone we hold in our hand is more powerful than the largest computer in a large room in the 1980s. It's a different world, and we are different people. Yet 25 years later, if you close your eyes, and you remember – you could be right back there. In an old, musty, smelly, bingo hall, wearing a pinstripe suit and wingtip shoes holding a large King James Bible, talking about what's about to go down in just 2 or 3 years, afraid to make a long distance call because it was 35 cents a minute state to state, 10 cents local toll, with Climbing through the Windows Leap running through our heads driving home from the 4 hours at Church that Sabbath day – completely unaware and completely sure what was about to happen was never going to happen until it DID happen, and we all would look back in 2019 to 1980 in utter disbelief – many thankful, many grateful, many sad, many wistful – all of us having learnt a lesson or two, all of us victims to the winds of change.

submitted by SHT

Sabbath Day Journey: Chernobyl

There is a great new blog up about one man's journey through Armstrongism and out of the madness:

I turned 18 years old in Russia. What I wanted most at the time was to be a journalist. The jacket and the trip to Moscow seemed to be an auspicious start. Immediately after high school I went to work in the editorial department of the Worldwide Church of God, famous or infamous for its widely circulated magazine, The Plain Truth. I landed a job as an assistant editor for the church’s magazine for teenagers. They issued me a laminated press card just in time to declare my occupation as ‘journalist’ on my first passport.

When I wrote about the trip for the student newspaper at Cal State L.A. it was full of snark and posturing. I had a costume, and I struck a pose. I was a worldly correspondent, like Mel Gibson in The Year of Living Dangerously. I had even secretly snapped a few photos from the roof of our hotel in Moscow, a transgression that could have had serious consequences. In my imagination I was a true journalist, not like the propagandists at Pravda or Izvestia.

But even then I was embarrassed by my employer. I was an unquestioning believer in the doctrine of the One True Church, but I hated the name of our flagship publication. For me, the The Plain Truth was too cheesy, too on-the-nose. Not worldly enough. (I might have noticed that Pravda means Truth in Russian, but I didn’t see the irony then.)

A decade later, as I lived through the collapse of our cult, the educational field trip to Russia began to offer some lessons, a lens through which I could frame what was happening. As I understood it, reform in the Soviet Union began small, with a bit of openness to the world, a little glasnost, a little letting in of some light from the outside. There were deep social and economic forces underneath, but that new openness gave people a taste of intellectual freedom that couldn’t be contained. It would lead inexorably to a complete restructuring of the state, and then to the state’s collapse.

Herbert Armstrong died a few months before our trip, on Thursday, January 16, 1986. He was the unquestioned, absolute leader of the flock, the Apostle that God raised up to restore the final era of the One True Church in 1933. He was “the voice crying in the wilderness,” Elijah and John the Baptist rolled up into one, the faithful servant whose radio, television and publishing empire would at last preach the gospel to the nations, paving the way for the return of Christ.

There were stories of abuses, some of them well publicized. In a divorce case, Herbert Armstrong’s son accused him of molesting his daughter for years. Mike Wallace found enough financial and moral scandal to devote an episode of 60 Minutes to the church in 1979. But inside we had a word for people who made unpleasant accusations. They were “dissidents,” a word usually associated with authoritarian states. To label someone a dissident was to discredit and dismiss them with a single breath. My mother was a dissident.

When Armstrong died, his appointed successor began to let in just a crack of light. He lifted restrictions on women wearing makeup and no longer forbade the use of medical doctors. I’m certain he never realized how far most people would go when given just a little taste of freedom. I’m sure he had not the faintest idea how new technology, the internet, would open a flood of ideas and conversation that could no longer be centrally monitored and controlled.

Check out  Sabbath Day Journey

Somewhere on the road between paradise and the world's end.