The Invisible Man at the Podium: Ode to the Taped Sermon

One of the oddest, and most awkward part of growing up in the Worldwide Church of God was the experience of the Taped Sermon. Every one of us remembers the experience. 

We would all sit there - in dressed up suits and ties and dresses, mind you - briefcases on knees - staring up at an empty lectern, a waiting microphone, while an invisible voice boomed - oftentimes unintelligible - from the speakers in the hall. As a child, this was very confusing. What is it exactly that we were looking at? No one was there. Yet, there we stared. In retrospect, I think a good many of us were trying to simply interpret what in the world was being said!

Of course, because of the technology at the time, at some point, we'd get a break - often mid-word - for the sound guy to flip the tape over to side B. Oh good - we were halfway through! Commence re-staring at the empty podium and microphone. 

It was at this point in which I'd start to get genuinely antsy and bored. I would begin either: Staring at lights, or crossing my eyes to make two podiums. Or, I'd look around wondering how long people would stare at that empty lectern like someone was actually there. 

There was a time I remember very clearly when the Taped Sermon was absolutely unintelligible. A combination of horrible acoustics in the ramshackle meeting place and horrible tape quality combined to make a drive-thru speaker seem like high-quality sound. Eventually, the pastor decided to cut the tape halfway and I believe pulled a sermonette out of somewhere and just gave that. 

I always hated it when I saw "taped sermon" in the Schedule of Services in the bulletin. It just seemed weird and strange. Nowhere else, anywhere else, did we ever sit and listen to an audio presentation over tape like we did at Church. Even in school, it was video (even reel-to-reel projector in my elementary years!) Music class was audio - but we actually sang along with that. Secretly, I had always hoped that the tape would mess up. I had hoped we'd hear the Pastor speaking on Chipmunk Speed, or that the tape would break. I don't think I could have refrained from laughing if I had heard the Pastor on chipmunk speed, but it would have been a break from the sheer monotony. 

The Taped Sermon always seemed to be something absolutely uninteresting - usually a change in policy, or a new mandate, or some type of correction. Why did I have to listen to it all then anyway? After it got "played", it could be checked out from the Tape Library to be listened in the home anyway. It's not like I could understand what was being said anyway!

In what universe besides our Church did one go to Church to stare at an empty podium listening to a Cassette Tape, acting as if someone was really there? The only thing that ever rivaled that in strange weirdness was taped special music. Yes, that happened too, if I remember correctly. 

It would have been a memorable Church Day if someone had slipped the Taped Sermon out for a tape of Metal Rock. I honestly don't think the hearts of many could have taken that kind of shock! 

Perhaps if the audio was understandable, the sermon was at a decent length, the message wouldn't be completely interrupted at an awkward time to flip the tape, and we didn't have to sit and stare at an empty podium dressed formally it would have been a little better. 

But it would not have made it any less weird.

submitted by SHT

50 Years Ago: COG Member Tried To Start WWIII By Burning The Al Aqsa Mosque In Jerusalem

Armstrongism has produced a steady stream of zealots over its 70 some years of existence.  From prophets to apostles, Elijah's and Elisha's and Pharisees to Chief Overseers, the list goes on and on.  Each one gets crazier by the moment.  None though surpass Denis Michael Rohan, when after being influenced by the prophetic lunacy of Herbert Armstrong and others, decided to set fire to the Al Asqa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

Excerpts from:  The Australian shearer who torched Al Aqsa Mosque in a bid to bring on the apocalypse

Fifty years ago, a young shearer travelled from Australia to Israel to orchestrate a plot he believed would prompt the return of Jesus Christ and usher in the end of the world.

Denis Michael Rohan started a fire which seriously damaged Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque — one of Islam's holiest sites — and shook a region already shrouded in tension.

Many Muslims believed the attack had been orchestrated by Israel, and protests erupted across the Middle East.

Carlo Aldrovandi, who researches religion, conflict and peacemaking in the region, says the political consequences still ring today.

Rohan, religion, and the radio

In the early 1960s Rohan was working as a shearer in Grenfell, in the central-west of New South Wales. 

He had suffered a mental breakdown in the mid-60s, and did a stint at Bloomfield psychiatric hospital in Orange. 

This was where he first discovered the Radio Church of God and an American religious broadcast called The World Tomorrow, which was syndicated on commercial radio throughout Australia. 

Its presenter, Herbert W Armstrong, was known for prophesising the end of the world that would dawn after a global war centred around Jerusalem. 

In 1969, at 28 years of age, Rohan travelled to Jerusalem.

Around four months later, on August 21, he carried a thermos flask of kerosene into the Al Aqsa mosque and started a blaze. 

"It has been proved that Rohan acted alone motivated largely by his own apocalyptic belief," Dr Aldrovandi says.

"[He believed] that destroying the existing Islamic shrines and replacing them with a temple would have brought about the advent of Jesus Christ." 

The result of his lunacy has contributed to the conflict we have today between Israel and the Arab world.  All because some crazy Armstrongite wanted to pave the way for Jesus to return!

Many Arab leaders were convinced the attack had been orchestrated by Israel.

"[Rohan's] acts were, and are still seen today by many Muslims and Palestinians, as being orchestrated by the Israeli government," Dr Aldrovandi says.

Muslim nations came together in Morocco and unanimously agreed Israel was responsible.

The move led to the formation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, an attempt to represent this pan-Islamic sentiment and unity.

You can listen to an audio production done in 2009 about Rohan here: 

Rohan and the road to the apocalypse

The Times of Israel has this story: 

How an Australian sheepshearer’s al-Aqsa arson nearly torched Middle East peace

One of the first stories I was assigned as a young journalist in Israel in 1969 was the trial of an Australian sheepshearer who set fire to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, an act that threatened to unhinge the Middle East. It remains for me the most vivid story I covered during my 25 years with The Jerusalem Post, a period that included several wars.

August 23 marks the 50th anniversary of the event. The Muslim world assumed that Israel was responsible for the arson and Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal ordered his armed forces to prepare for a holy war. The Arab League met in emergency session, and from distant India came reports of rioting in Muslim areas, with many casualties.

As cries of jihad rose with the plumes of smoke over the Temple Mount and international condemnation loomed, the Israeli government gave top priority to apprehension of the arsonist. In annexing East Jerusalem after the Six Day War two years before, Israel had declared itself guardian of the holy places of all religions; its claim to sovereignty in Jerusalem rested on that pledge.

For proof on what Armstrongism did to this young mans mind, here is what he said talking to a psychiatrist:

“My trial is the most important event for the world since the trial of Jesus Christ,” Rohan told a psychiatrist who interviewed him. 

Rohan’s performance on the witness stand was uncanny. Mocked as a fool all his life, consigned periodically to mental homes in Australia as his mother and at least one of his siblings had been, he jousted with the prosecution during the seven-week trial without faltering. Within the conceptual framework he laid down, he was consistent, logical, almost convincing. When the prosecutor, a future chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, asked whether God would have wanted him to commit a crime, Rohan was not at a loss.

“What did God tell Abraham to do?” he responded. “Sacrifice his son? Isn’t that a crime in today’s courts? First degree murder, isn’t it?”

What did God tell Abraham to do? Sacrifice his son? Isn’t that a crime in today’s courts? First degree murder, isn’t it?

When his court-appointed lawyer could not be heard clearly, a jaunty Rohan called on him to speak into the microphone so that his remarks would appear in the record. He displayed total recall of dates and incidents from long ago and was never caught out in a contradiction despite the intricate story he told.

“My mind has never been as well balanced as it is now,” Rohan said. “Satan has no more power over me.” 

Later in the article is this:

One day Rohan came across some pamphlets from a California-based Christian cult which he joined by mail and began tithing. He internalized the pamphlet’s prophecies and its biblical cadence before setting out to see the world. He traveled to England and was to continue on to Canada for work, but the prospect of a Canadian winter prompted him to come to Israel instead.

“In Jerusalem,” he told the court, “it all came together. I understand why I was born, why I had to suffer strict discipline from my parents, why I was rejected and despised.” The tormented figure was at last serene. Asked what his attitude would be if found guilty, he said “I am above earthly courts.”

This eerily sound just like James Malm, Dave Pack, Gerald Flurry, Bob Thiel, Ron Weinland, and others, who hear the voice of some creature in their head telling them they are set apart and have a mission to accomplish. 

See Denis Rohan

The Al-Aqsa Fire—The Dangers of Manipulative Education: What Can Be Done    

IN PICTURES| REMEMBERING THE ARSON ATTACK ON AL AQSA MOSQUE: 50 YEARS AFTER THE ARSON ATTACK

Remembering the arson attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque

The 'king of Jerusalem' who almost burnt down Al Aqsa

THE MAN WHO TORCHED AL-AKSA MOSQUE

Denis Rohan climbed a tree on the Temple Mount at five in the afternoon and settled down on a limb to wait for darkness. It would be a long wait.

COG Zerubbabel: The end-time Elijah, finally dressing like a real prophet as he talks about "flying rolls"

James Malm was seen whimpering at his kitchen table at the sight of the greatest prophet the Church of God has ever seen!  Never has an end time prophet to the church spoken more truth and dressed the part as Zerrbubbabl does (aka, Michael Noordhoek).  

We have Ron Weinland to thank for this Pharisaical mess of bullshit.

Why do all COG prophets need big thick bibles in their grubby little hands?