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
One of the erroneous concepts given me as a child and then as a naïve young man all caught up in the Worldwide Church of God's "Whale of a Tale" and "A Theory for the Birds" and concerned more about all things pertaining to the message of the Bible and the consequences for not understanding it and then believing it all, was the concept of Deep Time.
Deep Time in my hand: 12 million year old Megaladon Tooth. 14.5 Billion year old Iron Meteorite and thousands of years old stone tools I found in the Willamette River in Oregon just last year.
Planted firmly in my head was the idea that it all began with two people called Adam and Eve, perhaps thousands of years ago, but only thousands and progressed through the lives of a Noah, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob sometime back in time since then, Major Prophets in the 6th Century BCE transitioning into the life of Jesus in the 1st Century CE, various Apostles, who knew everything, and then leading up to now over the past 2000 years since. That was it. That's all of history and certainly all I ever needed to know or care about.
Astronomically, the Milky Way was the entire Universe up until the 1930's when it no longer was and every lifeform on the planet was an original creation and looked just like those named by Adam in the Garden of Eden, as noted, just a few thousand years back in time.
We, as humans, were the focus, center and reason for it all and that "soon" it would all change for us either by going to Heaven (Or God forbid, HELL) or as I was convinced as a teen, culminate in the Wonderful World Tomorrow and hopefully not annihilation in a Lake of Fire for not getting it.
Hmmm....
It took way too long to appreciate the reality of deep time and all that had really transpired in all that over that deep time would lead to "our time".
Over that deep time there have been, so far discovered, 5 mass extinction events of most of the previous life on the planet over the past 3.8 billion years, though our minds don't do well with the word "billion". These life forms will never again present themselves to tell their story except in their fossilzed remains and humans will make careers finding and placing correctly in deep time. This also applies to the real origins of the human species and "US".
Two personal favorites: 400+ Million Year Old Trilobites Science notes we are most likely in the Sixth Mass Extinction event now with climate change and the stress human progress and population have put on the planet.
So what? What does any of this have to do with Banned HWA and the processing of the WCG experience that it serves? Because, to me and in my own life, the not so deep time perspective of the Bible kept me off course in that which perhaps I should more have done with my life personally. I and it kept me from following my real curiosities about it all. I was too easily satisfied with the myths and tales woven by people I never met and who's world view was not one that most would take seriously today. Except I did until I couldn't any longer.
Since time was short in the 1960's and it was all going to end, my budding interests in dinosaurs, fossils and all that I would later come to understand as Paleontology, mattered not a bit. Having grown up very conservatively Dutch Reformed Calvinist, I was already blind to the concept that there was more, much more to life and the history of it all. The lenses and filters I viewed everything with and through was "Bible Time", which is a very limited view of all that actually was the real history of our planet and life on it including ourselves.
It is too late for me to follow my bliss as they say. I will never be the Paleontologist I now know lay just under the surface of my young life. Whether I "wasted" my life in becoming versed in the story of Bugs Bunny, which I might as well have studied, or not depends on how I view it. I learned a lot and sometimes learning what you don't believe is just as helpful as what you do now believe with more evidence and based on less faith in the unbelievable.
But perhaps just one young person, male or female, might catch their own vision of wanting to do what they actually love and not be sidetracked by the pettiness and limited views of those piously convicted but marginally informed as I was when younger.
Having been a pastor for over 1/3 of what I suspect my lifetime to be, I get to share here my experience and conclusions just as all other do. Just because they don't lead me into another splinter of WCG or back full circle to my Presbyterian Dutch Reformed Roots, as it did my parents who were both Elder and Deaconess in WCG, My sister and son now somewhat Evangelical with another in Catholic mode, does not mean I have no right to share my own experience and conclusions.
It may not help most No doubt it will piss off a few here that I no longer see as they see or am as they are, but it might help one follow their passion for learning instead of getting stuck in the Bronze and Iron Age views of others real or imagined.
How long is deep time?
Deep Time is the term used by scientists to describe the vast amount of time that has passed since the formation of the universe. It is an amazing.. 13,820,000,000 years long For many of us we can almost remember back to our early childhood and maybe can comprehend the lifespan of our parents and grandparents.
He is guilty of molesting a raping many, many young girls at the Y.O.U camp in ORR, Minnesota where he essentially an "all action pass". Anyone who he abused should get into contact with the US Marshall's office. We need to fight these pedophiles you prey on and ruin young girl's lives. He molested me at 14, raped my sister at 16 and had an ongoing "relationship" with my other sister for years- starting when she was about 15. She had Stockholm syndrome and "fell in love with him". He impregnated her at age 16 and made her get an abortion. I have reached out to the US Marshall's office. He needs to pay for his crimes.
Proper masculinity has always been the obsessive topic of Rod Meredith and the Living Church of God. The men of the church never seem to be masculine enough for the current administrations. They need to constantly be reeducated yearly on how to be a man's man.
Apparently, the current state of affairs in LCG and the madness that abounds in the church is leading to this decision to reeducation the men on how to be more manly men and heads of their households.
Introductory Session:
“Men, Masculinity, and Madness: The Current State of Affairs”
No other Church of God could have picked a more appropriately named site to hold this mini-conference than LCG.
Blowing Rock Conference Center in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
Calling all men! If you’d like to spend a weekend learning more about God’s way of life and building bonds of brotherhood with your fellow men from around the country, then register now for the Men’s Training Camp in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. The Men’s Training Camp will begin on the evening of Friday, August 23, and conclude at noon on Sunday, August 25. Men from the age of 16 through 100 are welcome (in fact, we’d even welcome you if you are over 100)!
