WCG Members Willfully Forgot the Great Disappointment of 1975

This is from Weinland Watch, a now defunct blog by AggieAtheist that focused on Ronald Weinland's cult, the Church of God - Preparing for the Kingdom of God.

This article, published February 26, 2008, discusses how WCG members willfully forgot that Herbert Armstrong and Herman Hoeh set 1975 as the date when Jesus Christ would return.

I often think about this article and have copied it here. Why will be self explanatory.

It is astounding how people and groups of people can so utterly "forget" such important things, but alas, this sort of behavior is fairly common among doomsday cults that set inaccurate dates for the end of the world and then strive to continue after the inevitable disappointment.

The rest of this blog posting is from Weinland Watch.

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Selected quotes from a discussion thread on the Shadows of WCG [dead link] discussion board, regarding the Armstrong tract “1975 in Prophecy”.

Here [Deal link] is the original article as it was published in The Plain Truth. All illustrations, photos and text are intact. Ekklesia [Dead link.] also has the booklet [Dead link. 1975 in Prophecy can be read here (html) and here (PDF) at pro-HWA websites, with Basil Wolverton's infamous fear inducing illustrations.], as well as other HWA [Dead link] literature that you will definitely not find on the CoG-PKG’s HWA Compendium site. A cursory examination of the materials is self-explanatory as to why.

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“My father joined in ’76. Neither one of us ever heard of “1975 in Prophecy” while we were in. I never heard of “1975 in Prophecy” until a year and a half ago. The thought-reform of the membership, as little as a year after the alleged “year in prophecy” came and went without incident, was absolutely complete.”

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“I was born in 72 and never heard of 1975 in Prophecy till AFTER college. On the Painful Truth web site! And I had been raised hearing “the church never set dates” and wondered why that was such a fun thing for the ministers to say. I was always thinking “Big deal, so what? OK, we know we never set dates. Why is anyone even talking about it? My husband (same age as I am, within months) also never heard of it. “

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“I never heard about it until I joined this forum in August ’07.  I was born in 1970 and left in 1989!”

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“I was born in 76 and never heard of the 1975 thing either.  My mother’s whole family had been in WCG since the 50′s, my dad joined in like 71 – but never, never did I ever hear anything about dates.”

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Remember, no one in the church after 1976 knew this booklet had ever existed. As little as one year after this absolutely pivotal ”year in prophecy” never came to pass, the thought-reform of the membership of the Worldwide Church of God was absolutely complete, and the  church continued on under the leadership of Armstrong full speed ahead until his death in 1986.Will members of the Church of God Preparing for the Kingdom of God follow suit after April 17? External CoG observers certainly hope so, with the caveat that Weinland disbands his church, or “resigns” his position as one of the two witnesses, without bringing harm to either himself or his followers.Reprinted here in full, is the 1956 text of Herbert W. Armstrong’s “1975 in Prophecy”.Astute observers will note the Russian/Chinese army of 200 million soldiers mentioned in the below tract. This is almost verbatim what Weinland “predicted” at the end of his March 15 sermon.