In my reading about the false prophet HWA I can't help but notice a remarkable similarity HWA took in his approach to "preach" to world leaders. HWA assumed that if he preached to the ruler, it is the same as though he preached to the entire nation.
"From the beginning, Mr. Armstrong received astonishing welcomes from kings and presidents, prime ministers and cabinet members, legislators and educators. These summit and near-summit sessions are of overriding importance because, as Mr. Armstrong stated: "When I get Christ's vital message of the Kingdom of god to the king, president, prime minister, and others high in the government of such nations, I have, in God's sight, gotten His message to that nation or Kingdom." (Outsider's Insider Update, Vol. 2, Part 2, quoting Stanley Rader, Against the Gates of Hell, Chapter 9, p. 154. Note: Against the Gates of Hell is hosted by a small Armstrongite church.)
I also recall reading something very similar in Ambassador Report.
This sounds very similar to how HWA approached the leadership of the Church of God (Seventh Day) way back in the 1920s. Once again he assumed that if he tested the leader then the whole church has been tested.
"God’s church, he reasoned, should be willing to confess error and change....His test of the Church of God (Seventh Day) assumed....that a test of a church’s leader would be a sufficient test of the entire church....Apparently it never occurred to him to ask the Church of God to test him. It was the Church of God (Seventh Day), not he, that was on trial." (Ralph G. Orr, How Anglo-Israelism Entered Seventh-day Churches of God: a history of the doctrine from John Wilson to Joseph W. Tkach.)
This is also similar to how HWA would declare that "King" and "Kingdom" are synonymous in the some contexts in the Bible. As HWA wrote in Who is the Beast? referring to Daniel 7, "the word king is synonymous with kingdom". Again the leader is viewed as somehow being one with his followers as also described above.
What are we to make of this blind assumption HWA held that if the king/leader is preached to/tested then all of his following has been preached to/tested as well? This is obviously untrue. What are we to make of this? Does this show that HWA possessed a sick sense of elitism assuming that the 'little people' are all only following their leaders? That they are only automatons following their leaders? That he thought that people are to be judged based on what their leaders did and heard? If so I feel that this is a very disturbing attitude. It is an attitude that shows absolutely no regard for people, only the leaders. This only exposes HWA's complete fixation on power and those who had it.
My view is that HWA fell away from the truth at the time he began to meet with world leaders. Like Solomon, he clung to the love of pagans more than being loyal to the one true God. Anything HWA wrote after 1972 can pretty much be disregarded. A similar view is held by the Church of God The Eternal where they would also have a cut off point but they tend to cite doctrinal changes to be the reason.
ReplyDeleteThe mandate for visiting world leaders was not to teach them the truth from the Bible but was for vanity, prestige and power.
Is it a coincidence that Solomon and HWA both had their kingdoms or empires torn up and destroyed?