Mark Armstrong's Update (March 23, 2018)

Mark Armstrong, leader of the Intercontinental Church of God, son of Garner Ted Armstrong, grandson of HWA, has a new weekly update posted (March 23, 2018.).

Let's see what he has to say this time.

This time Mark Armstrong complains that President Trump is not acting as he had hoped by signing the latest spending bill; condemns the March for Our Lives rallies; and reminiscences about his father.

Greetings from Tyler, 

No longer hanging fire is the so-called “omnibus spending bill,” which fully funds much that the President campaigned against.  A half billion for Planned Parenthood, grants for sanctuary cities and full funding for every socialist boondoggle known to man.  The spending bill, a pile of paper stacked nearly three feet in height, two thousand some odd pages, is loaded with legal mumbo jumbo, footnotes and obscure references to obscure references.  In fact, no single human being knows what all is actually contained in the spending bill.  Yet it was presented for consideration less than two days before a deadline would bring the dreaded government shutdown if not approved.

Mark Armstrong states that he is amazed that the spending bill was passed as easily as it did. He grouses that the United States is on the road to bankruptcy. It is not. The United States was actually more indebted per capita then it is today back in the 1940s because of World War II. He complains that Democratic Party legislators boasted of being able to do more while in the minority in both the House and the Senate. This conveniently shifts blame for the spending bill away from his preferred party.

Much to our amazement, the measure zoomed through the House and Senate without drama accompanied by a series of celebratory speeches where those who've been in the forefront of bankrupting the nation are boasting that they've been able to “accomplish more” than was possible when they were in the majority.  Piling additional debt onto our babies' futures is no longer a source of guilt for pious “lawmakers.”

He complains that he got rolled with the President signing the spending bill. He scare mongers that the spending bill may cause severe problems alluding to the Armstrongite teaching that the United States is fated to soon be conquered by a German led European military force with Americans taken as slave labor by this future European military force. The COGs have constantly promoted this fear inducing false prophecy since the 1930s and yet their dire prediction has always failed.

Ruinous funding for the “social justice” agenda is the price for rebuilding the military and sinking America another trillion into debt, atop the $20 odd trillion already accrued.  Every conservative voice urged the President to veto the spending and have a televised heart to heart conversation with the American people explaining why we simply cannot proceed down the path of piling up indebtedness at such a clip.  But that didn't happen. It looks as though he's the one who got rolled this time, along with all those who've supported his agenda.  Brace yourself, the fallout from this expensive faux pas may be well beyond anything the president or his advisors predicted.

He moans about "hand-outs and giveaways" implying such things will somehow cause the United State to go bankrupt.

But this will be the “last time” the President will sign anything like this, he said.  After all, how much of this ridiculous, wasteful spending, particularly on hand-outs and giveaways, can the U. S. sustain?

He appears to be unaware of the fact that the United States was more indebted per capita in the 1940s.

He then suddenly decides to condemn those calling for common sense gun control laws after the massacre in Florida. Even though about 187,000 American students have been exposed to the horror of gun violence in their own schools since the Columbine massacre in 1999 Mark Armstrong insists that those calling for law reforms on this important matter are wrong. He is at peace with the NRA so how dare anyone should criticize their approach to this matter. In his attempt to discredit widespread calls for reforms he cites one instance of a mass murder in France heedless of the well known fact that, alas, gun violence occurs more frequently in the United States than any other developed nation.

You've undoubtedly heard of the crazed Muslim ISIS sympathizer who killed three and wounded a dozen others shooting up a supermarket in the south of France.  Impossible, you might say.  With strict gun control laws firmly in place, surely this kind of thing can't happen.  But it did.  It took policemen with guns to end the carnage.  Unarmed citizens were merely pawns for the terrorist who ran riot knowing there would be no armed citizens or supermarket employees to slow him down.

He indulges in ad hominem attacks against the March for Our Lives rallies. He derides teenage participants as having "emotional immaturity" and seeking "adulation and fame". Insulting the participants of the March for Our Lives rallies is not an argument against calls for implementing laws to prevent gun massacres. He also whines that some people will condemn his statement as being "mean, insensitive, insulting and all the rest." He does not mention in this update that some of those teenage participants he condemns went through the horror of gun violence at school. 

Community organizers of radical, anti-American persuasion, have planned and funded mass “gun control” protests for Washington D. C. this weekend.  Sixty's radicals are taking advantage of the emotional immaturity of thousands of the nation's adolescents and their desire for adulation and fame to produce a massive crowd of sign carrying, script reading kids.  “I don't think we want our nation run by people who ride their bicycles to school,” was the hilarious statement made this morning by radio host Chris Plant.  Some will deride such a statement as mean, insensitive, insulting and all the rest.  But, whether it was timing or content, it was funny.  Of course, nothing is allowed to be funny anymore, no matter how funny it may be.  People are insulted and angry, don't you know.  Thank goodness there are a precious few who, against all odds and in the face of vicious scolding and shaming, still deliver the occasional well-timed punch line. 

Instead of thinking about solving the problem of gun violence in schools he chooses to defend his favored political side. So often he complains about matters occurring in far away lands and yet he seems so eager to stop talking about the horror of gun violence in his own nation's schools.

At this point he finally decides to take a break from indulging in his partisan screeds and he reminiscences about his father and promotes his COG organization as not being authoritarian.

Those who have any background or experience with the Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association and the Intercontinental Church of God know that we don't operate an authoritarian enterprise.  We don't have a task-master ministry or an atmosphere of fear where people report on each other and the church takes disciplinary action.   We recently watched a video sermon that my Dad preached in his waning years where he denied being the “spiritual leader” in the church. 

He boasts of refusing "to be bogged down in the depths of despair, with a simmering outrage that defines our very essence" even though most his weekly updates are angry partisan screeds blaming one side of the political divide for all kinds of problems facing the United States.

He was a great teacher, an accomplished speaker and one who had a grasp, not only of the plain simplicity of the Bible, but broad knowledge on a wide range of subjects, all of which brought understanding and entertainment to his messages.  We simply refuse to be bogged down in the depths of despair, with a simmering outrage that defines our very essence, as has become the norm in mainstream media.  Even comedy can't be funny anymore, it has to be angry and outwardly insulting to nearly everybody's intelligence. 

He ends his weekly screed of condemning the left by slurring them as "those who hate the liberty [the Armstrongite God] has uniquely granted" and accusing them of seeking to destroy that liberty.

We may have to endure dark days from time to time in this life, but they will not define us.  God has given us so many blessings and so much for which to be thankful, we can only hope and pray that those who hate the liberty He has uniquely granted will not be successful in destroying it.  Many of us have children and grandchildren who will bear the burden of errors committed now.  Even the Ten Commandments, the foundation of all civilized law, tell us that the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.  None of us know if this nation or this world will be recognizable three or four generations out, but we do know that we'd better do our part to stand for the immutable truths that made our freedom and prosperity possible in the first place.  

Mark

He includes a postscript discussing the upcoming celebration of the Armstrongite versions of Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, Armstrongite appropriations of originally Jewish festivals.

P. S.  The next monthly letter has just been mailed out, nearly ten thousand copies.  A new edition of Twentieth Century WATCH is complete and will be mailed next week.  And we're looking forward to the arrival of quite a few guests to observe the Night to be Remembered, the Passover (Lord's Supper) and first Day of Unleavened Bread.  We're sure that many around the country and across the world are making similar preparations and we salute you!

And so Mark Armstrong ends his weekly update.