Tornado Disaster in Oklahoma City

Recently heard about the terrible tornado disaster in Oklahoma that killed so many people. When I heard that had happened my very first thought was that that is when Gerald Flurry's cult is based. I could not help but think of them. I do not want them harmed in a tornado. I want them to stop dividing families, stop imposing the infamous no contact rule against "Laodiceans" and ex-PCG members, stop making making people scared of using medicine and going to see a doctor.

I shudder to imagine what fear inducing nonsense they will say about this terrible tragedy. So far they have released an article by Jeremiah Jacques which leaves itself to advertizing a booklet peddling fear inducing nonsense.

Exploiting this tragedy to cause people to fear and then using this fear to extract three tithes and offerings from this is of course a terrible thing. The COG leaders, if we take them at their word, seem to think they are doing their duty, but actually such crass behavior only reveals the terrible spiritual decay Armstrongism has thrown itself into. 

Unaccredited HWA Collage Graduation; Gerald Flurry Calls Tocqueville's Opinion a 'Prophecy'

Recently Banned by HWA released a post about Gerald Flurry's speech at the graduation of HWA Collage, a collage built on the sweet and tears of thousands of tithe paying PCG members.

The video starts with brief introduction by Stephen Flurry.

Then at 0:24 the student body president, Reniel Padua, speaks of the many things they learned there.

At 2:07 we are shown the choir singing two songs, first 'May the road rise to meet you' by Mark Jenkins and (4:50) 'We are the pillars' by Ryan Malone.

At 8:55 we are introduced to a speech by 'That Prophet,' the cult leader, conceiver of the No Contact policy towards 'Laodiceans' and ex-PCG members, the one who forbids PCG members from getting medical treatment, who forbids women from wearing make up, Gerald Flurry.

Listening to it I was amazed to see that his speech closely echoes what he wrote in his article, The Law of History, in the February 2002 issue of The Philadelphia Trumpet. (You need to sign into the website to read the article.) For a brief time I was a subscriber to PCG's recruitment magazine from 2001. That issue was the last one I received. In both that article and his speech he laments how historians tend to portray history as an unfolding process of historical forces, marginalizing the importance of individual great figures in history. It surprises me that he speaks about the very same things even after so many years.

I was also amused how he referred to an opinion of Tocqueville's as a 'prophecy'. He discusses how Tocqueville comments that historians of a democratic, republican society such as the US will be inclined to view history as a process of social movements and shared ideas. This is in contrast to historians of an aristocratic society who would be inclined to describe history as a succession of great individuals, such as aristocrats who pass on their power and wealth from father to son. He called this opinion of Tocqueville's a prophecy. See 9:59 onwards. He says, "And there's just a painfully obvious prophecy that was fulfilled and certainly should alarm us." Surely it must be a slip of the tongue.

After that at 15:11 we are shown the graduating students being handed degrees by Gerald Flurry. It is mentioned that students from the US, Canada, the Philippines and Zimbabwe are among the graduating students.

At 15:55 the video ends and so does this post.

Map of COGs of the World

Silenced.co has released an interactive map of COG congregations all around the world after aggregating the data the various COGs provide on their websites.

Whenever I see maps like these I cannot help but wonder about the Armstrongites out in the Third World.
I see Meredith's cult, LCG, has a congregation in Kalaymyo, Sagain, Myanmar. There is another in Imphal, Manipur, India.

Within Thailand LCG has congregations in Ta Song Yang, Mae Sot and Chom Thong.

If I recall correctly in the pro-Tkach hagiography Called to be Free there is a WCG/GCI minister who states that he spread Armstrongism within Zimbabwe and now hopes that one day he might return there to make clear his renunciation of Armstrongism. Looking at the map it would now appear that most Armstrongites there are now affiliated with UCG or its offshoot, Church of God, A Worldwide Association.

Amusingly, outside of Oklahoma, Flurry's PCG does not appear. This is because

However, there are some big gaps in our data, most notable from PCG, which claims to have 200 congregations across 50 countries without listing a single one, just some PO boxes for regional offices. So outside of Oklahoma, PCG isn’t represented on the map.

What a fitting self inflicted wound to their prestige PCG has given to themselves. Being secretive did not pay for PCG this time. On this map they are practically non-existent. The world would be better off if that were true. It would be good for the many families divided by PCG's vicious 'no contact' rule.

All in all, I would have to say Silenced.co's map is a most welcome addition to our knowledge of the COGs.

Meredith Claims LCG Members in Rebellion; They Should Leave Themselves Before They Are Forced Out

Banned by HWA has the perfect blog title for one blog entry discussing a recent sermon Meredith made.

Rod Meredith Says Jesus Was Filled With Surging, Pulsating, Sexual Lusts and Desires; Who's Sex Drive Was "Bigger Than Any Man's In This Room!" All Because of Real Wheat Germ 

After reading that how can anyone take him seriously?

In the sermon excerpts discussed Meredith at one point claims that some LCG members are in rebellion and if they choose not to obey him, or those who will succeed him after he dies, then they might as well leave before they are ordered to do so. 

Is Meredith still fuming at his followers in LCG for not handing over as much money this year as before? What an immature way to handle that problem.

What an ungrateful attitude Meredith has to people who in many cases have genuinely sacrificed in order to pay three tithes! It is disgraceful how Meredith chooses to lash out at LCG members instead of taking personal responsibility and trying to improve himself and the LCG leadership.

Why Do Armstrongite Leaders Wish It was the 1950s?

One thing that strikes me about the COGs leaders' worldview, and this is true in both LCG and PCG, was this strong nostalgia regarding the 1950s. Often they would say that society had been degrading since the 1960s onwards. Douglas Winnail's article, Cultures in Crisis, from the May-June, 2000 issue of Tomorrow's World is quite typical of this sort of thinking within the COGs. American society before the 1960s is portrayed by Winnail as being essentially noble because of its Protestant Christian nature, joyously maintaining their religious and cultural heritage causing their great prosperity until  ""progressive ideas" promoted by secular, liberal, New Age propagandists" gained widespread acceptance starting in the 1960s causing today's culture to decline and coarsen to an alarming degree.

Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish economist wrote: "In every civilized society… there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality… the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or… the loose system" (Himmelfarb, p. 3). The Bible reveals one of the fundamental challenges of life involves choosing between two different ways of living (Deuteronomy 30:15–20). In America and Britain the strict or religious scheme dominated our culture until the mid 20th century. The loose schemes of morality existed on the fringes of our society, primarily among the so-called "decadent elite" who had nothing but disdain for Bible-based morality (Ibid. p. 7). This fringe element found fertile ground in the growing secularization and urbanization of society, the decline of religious influence, the increased power of the media and the "dissolvent effect" of two world wars on traditional behavior and belief (Ibid. p. 10). The explosive growth of higher education in the 1950s gave increasing numbers of young people "access to the worldview-changing experiences of university life" that undermined traditional values (Ibid. p. 13; Hunter, p. 63).

When I read this article in the early days of my journey into Armstrongism I found this article very persuasive.

Today I find it has many problems. It is a very simplistic ways to view modern day events. There were lots of problems in the1950s. At the time lead paint and asbestos were often used while people were left ignorant of how deadly they were because big corporations that profited from them intimidated people who knew to stay silent on such matters. (See How You became a Guinea Pig for the Chemical Corporations.) It was only in the 1950s that scientists began to discover how toxic and viciously deadly tobacco is, thus letting people know for the first time the true nature of that terrible poison and the urgency to quit.

Another problem was the lack of sex education. Many Americans, while growing up, were not educated about sex but instead were left to discover such things for themselves. One can only imagine the world of trouble and hurt letting the young being ignorant of such an important facet of life. Now that people can freely talk about and teach about these things people are more able to avoid the pitfalls that predecessors were forced endure. Young people receiving sex education is a good thing. Of course no one will be entirely satisfied with what is taught but it is better for people to know and talk about such things rather than being told not to talk about it. If one is not happy with what is taught I cannot see why contrary viewpoints cannot be taught by the parents at home.

Also another problem is how Winnail ignores the issue of racial discrimination in this article. Until the 1950s several states in the United States, mainly in the South, imposed the Jim Crow laws and all kinds of legal restrictions upon African Americans that made it impossible for them to participate in society on an equal basis with white people. Also every now and then some white people, sometimes organized like the Ku Klux Klan, sometimes by themselves, enforced this terrible system of racial oppression by lynching African Americans to terrorize them into submission.

These terrible problems within American history are casually ignored by Winnail. Try and find a reference to these problems here or anywhere else within Armstrongism. No wonder so few African Americans joined Armstrongism. All my time within Armstrongism I can hardly recall anytime they deeply thought about those terrible and painful issues. It is largely ignored. Because most members are white, as far as I can tell, they do not see these issues as worth discussing.

But no, to confront historic and ongoing racial injustice runs counter to the narrative of America's decline and fall that the COGs so desperately push at to anyone willing to listen and get sucked into the cults. Because of this Winnail ignores these issues.

Furthermore it needs to be stated that Herbert Armstrong taught that racial intermarriage was sinful. He even wrote such an obscene idea into his masterpiece of deception, Mystery of the Ages. With such a teacher it is no surprise that most COGs are far from satisfactory regarding racial matters and that they do not take these issues as seriously as they should.

Also, it strikes me as deceptive to claim that before the 1960s America was mainly Christian when in fact Armstrongism teaches that all Sunday observing Christians are heretics and not true Christians at all but instead must convert to connect with God.

After seeing these things I now find it absurd to be so nostalgic for the 1950s. One always wishes that life was more simple, happy and well ordered than it is now but it is not possible to go back to the 1950s, and we should not even want it to be so.

Herbert W. Armstrong 'The Sign': A Useless Video for a Useless Cause

Recently I watched The Sign, a 15 minute video glorifying the false prophet Herbert Armstrong, uploaded by Youtube user, Matthew24signs. There had been mention of it before at Banned by HWA's post, The Sign: Deifying a Man.

The video shows footage of HWA at the height of WCG's power and prestige before the reforms under the Tkachs, with subtitles commenting on the current fall from power the COGs are in now. 

There is no mention of the many false prophesies HWA taught that scared people into joining WCG. One would have no idea that from 1953 onwards HWA taught that Jesus Christ would return in 1975 from watching this video. That is deceptive.

It argues that HWA was sent by God to fulfill certain tasks (namely preaching the 'gospel of the kingdom', the 'truth' (Armstrongism) to the world before Christ returns) and after he dies his work, the work of the Philadelphia church era, is complete and the COGs should no longer strive to proclaim 'the truth' to the world.

After watching it my main response was, if the COGs are no longer supposed to proclaim the 'gospel of the kingdom' to the world because HWA did it, and simply wait for Christ's return, why bother making this video?

To me this argument is absurd and ludicrous. It gives Armstrongites nothing better to do but to simply continue to maintain their identity as Armstrongites and wait for Christ's return.

Often I have heard some Atheists argue that religion teaches people to be apathetic and simply ignore the problems of this present life hoping that one will receive a better life in the afterlife. Personally I find this idea to be mainly a stereotype used to contrast Atheists with (some) religious people. An attempt to polarize people, make them view things in a black and white manner when (usually) things are not so clear cut. As far as I can tell most religious people are not like that at all. The Protestant reformers, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, the mostly Muslim protesters of the Arab Spring should prove otherwise.

But there are some religious people guilty of acting that way. Armstrongites tend to be very bad in this regard. Because they focus so much on Christ's return and assume that event will solve all their problems, mainly refuse to vote and tend to avoid secular politics, Armstrongites often ignore social issues and strengthen that negative stereotype. The Sign perfectly fits this stereotype.

Not only does The Sign promote idolatrous adulation for HWA, it is useless for Armstrongites because it gives them nothing to do but wait for Christ's return.

Income Falls for Gerald Flurry's PCG

Banned by HWA has reported that the Armstrongite James Malm has reported that Gerald Flurry's PCG appears to have "seen a drop in income in virtually every category, including some areas of severe drops, all since 2013 began."

This is great news and I hope this development may lead to more people associated with PCG to free themselves and no longer observe Gerald Flurry's oppressive rules, such as the cruel shunning of ex-PCG members and ex-WCG members, the so-called 'Laodiceans'; to feel free to visit their doctors without feeling any guilt for it; to no longer throw away so much of their income on the three tithes and offerings and instead spend it on themselves and their families; to learn the truth about Herbert Armstrong, Gerald Flurry and the other COG leaders and see that God had never worked with them from day one; to discover their own feelings and make decisions without fear of what the COG collective thinks of them; that their spiritual lives will no longer be corrupted by lying cult leaders.   

I find it curious (and wonderfully serendipitous) that Roderick Meredith's LCG has also been having problems, financial and otherwise, since the start of this year, losing several TV station spots, particularly in Canada; gaining a new rival in their former apologist, the unordained false prophet Bob Thiel; and even cruelly disfellowshipping Thomas Baca II, who worked with their TV stations.

Dave Pack no doubt will experience similar problems because of his useless Headquarters project he is building. (Strange that Dave Pack forbids women from wearing make up because he thinks it is vain, yet he then builds a big headquarters complex out of vanity impoverishing his followers. What a hypocrite!)

Also the false prophet Ronald Weinland's in prison.

Is 2013 shaping up to be a year of even more painful decline for the COGs? Will this cause a mass liberation of COG members from these oppressive, authoritarian cult groups? One can only hope so. I certainly do.