The COGs' Selective Amnesia -- Part 1

I have taken a look at PlainTruth.com which Ambassador Watch has recently highlighted. I read an article of this website that AW pointed to. In that article I read this statement:

"They [HWA and GTA] predicted long before anyone else of the coming European Union (in 1934!)"

This completely ignores the fact that HWA

• expected Christ to return by 1936. (Plain Truth, June-July, 1934, pp. 3, 5.)

• that he proclaimed Mussolini to be "the Beast" who would fight Christ at His coming.
  "Mussolini will fight Christ!" (Plain Truth, Herbert Armstrong, Jan. 1939, p. 4.)

• then Hitler became the Beast. "It is CHRIST and the Angels that Hitler will fight!... THAT is to be HITLER'S END!" (Plain Truth, March-April 1943, p. 6, left hand column, paragraph 7.) I am indebted to Wikipedia for the last two quotes.

• then after that the coming of Christ was reset to 1975,

• then said that the second coming had to occur by 2005.

Now I do not want to pick on PlainTruth.com. The COGs have used this selective historical amnesia to hide the flaws of their history for a very long time. The number of times this has happened are too numerous to recount.

The man who first started this art of selective amnesia was HWA himself.

You will not find any information on the previous failed prophecies in his last book Mystery of the Ages. In that book HWA even set a date that Christ would return by 2005. Those ordering MOA from PCG will not know of this because those statements have been cut out by PCG.

In HWA's Autobiography he wrote hundreds of pages about his life. He tells us about how he met his wife, about how he was an advertizer, his obscure disputes and power struggles with other COG7 ministers, the proud milestones of his radio broadcast show as it gradually gets bigger and bigger. We even learn how he first heard of the Pearl Harbor attack while on the first plane ride of his life and telling his audience about it just hours after it occurred (see Chapter 42). We are treated to all of these specific details about his life. He clearly recalls these little things.

Yet reading that large two volume work you would never know that he told his listeners and hearers for years and years that the Great Tribulation would occur any moment, that Christ must return by 1936, that Mussolini will battle the returning Christ, that Hitler is the Beast, that the Nazis will overthrow and conquer America and enslave them.

A book that relates HWA's personal experiences on one day (December 7, 1941) does not even mention what he taught on the radio and in his publications for years and years. For HWA to not mention such things must be judged to be a deception.

These are not 'accusations' inspired by the Devil as HWA & Co. told us but are perfectly provable facts. Some of these facts may be seen here and here.

Is There a Holydays Fear in the COGs?

In the same way that Mr. Gavin Rumney asked questions recently imitating a UCG blog, I have a question for you readers.

I have this suspicion that some within the COGs have this fear that Satan will tend to strike at them during the Fall (or any other) Holy Days. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

The reason I believe this is because of these various things.

I recall watching a sermon by Meredith once and he said that Satan likes to strike at 'God's people' during the Holydays.

I also recall once reading a little COG website which focused on spreading HWA's infamous and harmful views on medicine. (I wonder whatever happened to him? I hope he is all right.) He stated that once two ministers' wives died at one of the Fall Holy Days Feasts around 1970. He then used this event to push his hard (and erroneous) views against medicine.

Now I never went beyond calling the minister when I was an Armstrongite believer so I only have these anecdotes to base this belief on. I would love to know whether or not this is a strong belief among the COGs.

COG Reading List

Here are some book from Amazon about WCG/Armstrongism. This list is by no means exhaustive.

Survivors' Testimonies:

Showdown at Big Sandy by Greg Doudna

On Angels Wings by Patricia Ann Laessig

The God that Prevailed by Dennis Gerard Embo

Flying Free by John Morgan

Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web by David Robinson

Critiques of Armstrongism

Herbert W. Armstrong & the Worldwide Church of God by Walter Martin

Herbert W. Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God: A Critical Examination by Roger T. Campbell

The Plain Truth-The Worldwide Church of God: What do they believe? by Val Waldeck

Other resources may be acquired through Exit and Support Network's Booklist.

Pro-WCG

Another Gospel by Ruth Tucker
I have included this book because I think that it was during the writing of this book that WCG first made contact with the author and so began her relationship as essentially a lobbyist for WCG.

Transformed by Truth by Joseph Tkach, Jr.
Tkach Jr.'s account of the transformation. Viewable at WCG's website here.

Discovering the Plain Truth by Larry A. Nichols and George Mather
Another Evangelical hagiography about the transformation.

The Liberation of the Worldwide Church of God by J. Mike Feazell
Mike Feazell's account of the transformation.

Pro-HWA

God's End Time Man by Joseph P. Waitz
As though HWA's unreliable Autobiography was not enough, here comes another hagiography of HWA.

The Essential Teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong by Stephen Boston
Ditto.

Pro-PCG

Raising the Ruins by Stephen Flurry
Please be aware there are many problems with this book, which are detailed elsewhere on this blog. This cannot be regarded as a reliable book. Please see the relevant blogs to see why.

Also:

Sects, 'Cults' and Alternative Religions by David V. Barrett (1996). This book has a section on WCG.

Random Encounter with an ex-Armstrongite

One day I was reading conversion stories of how some people converted to Christianity from Islam.

This web page use to have some accounts of people converting to Islam. They are not there any more. Last time I checked those stories all lead to broken links. But when I first went there they were working.

In one of those stories a lady mentioned encountering Armstrongites. She said she thought that belief system was very logical. She referred to them as "Church of God" if memory serves correctly. In my brainwashed state I saw that statement as further confirming my decision to embrace Armstrongism, even though she had since rejected it and now embraced Islam.

My brainwashed state completely ignored and overlooked the many irrationalities of Arstrongism, like how it illegitimately changed the observance of the Feast of Tabernacles and its many false prophecies.

Armstrongism is not true.

Front Organizations

In the 1970s Herbert Armstrong, under the influence of Stanley Rader, set up various corporate bodies which could be called front organizations, such as the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, Ambassador Auditorium and Quest magazine.

Quest did not live up to the standards of the Worldwide Church of God. Infamously it took the Lord's name in vain in the first issue, and sold book catalogs which included works promoting the occult and other practices which WCG condemned.

Quest was a severe financial drain on WCG and turned out to be a publishing failure. The leading editor resigned because HWA wanted to crudely inject a fluff piece about his visit with President Sadat of Egypt. Eventually HWA had to ignominiously abandon it and sell it off. It went into forgotten oblivion.

PCG is trying its best to imitate HWA's lackluster efforts at forming front organizations with its Armstrong Auditorium, Armstrong International Cultural Foundation and sending students to excavate in the Holy Land.

Now other religious organizations have been able to create viable organizations which they own. Examples include hospitals owned by the Roman Catholic Church, cereal companies owned by the Seventh Day Adventist Church or founded by its members.

Other religious organizations that have also been able to produce long running secular publications such as the Christian Science Monitor owned by Christian Science, a pantheistic/gnostic religion, or The Epoch Times published by Falun Gong.

All of these have been far more successful than WCG's pitiful attempt with Quest.

However out there is another organization that has been able to far out do what HWA amateurishly tried to achieve.

The Unification Church, led by Sun Myung Moon, who are often called Moonies, established The Washington Times newspaper in 1981. Like Quest they appear to have had some editorial problems with their owners. Like HWA Moon has claimed that this newspaper is God's will. Unlike Quest The Washington Times has endured to this day, although like Quest it seems to have trouble being profitable. Moon has subsidized that newspaper, it appears, to the tune of $3 billion over nearly thirty years. Moon has not yet given up on it, unlike HWA.

More on the Unification Church may be seen at Steven Hassan's Freedom of Mind Center and Scoobie Davis' The Real Sun Myung Moon blog. It really is an amazing organization that Moon has made, a story I feel more should be aware of.

This is far more impressive than what HWA was able to accomplish in this area and serves as an example of what HWA could have tried to do.

Sound Familiar?

The Armstrongite movement is descended from the Millerite movement of the 1830s and 1840s.

Following their disappointment that Christ did not appear in 1844 as expected various movements emerged from this movement. Shortly afterward many accepted the Seventh Day Sabbath due to the influence from the Seventh Day Baptist Church. Most of those Sabbatarians would later rally behind Ellen White who claimed to have visions from God, and found the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Some of them came to disbelieve that God would communicate through a woman and went to found what would become the Church of God (Seventh Day), the denomination HWA would later join (despite his later denials) and from which produce Armstrongism.

Not every Adventist however accepted the Sabbath. Some non-Sabbatarian Adventists became persuaded that Christ would return in 1874. When this prediction also failed one man who believed this, Nelson Barbour, refused to believe they were wrong and insisted that Christ invisibly returned at that date. This attracted the attention of one Charles Taze Russell, who went and worked with him. After falling out with each other Russell went and started his own organization, The Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, the members of which would become known as the Jehovah's Witnesses from 1931 onwards.

Because of such common ancestry it should be of no surprise that they should share certain similarities. (Common ancestry does not in any way alter the fact that HWA clearly stole many ideas from the Jehovah's Witnesses independently of any ancestral connection his movement had with them.)

Don't these words from the Watchtower Society sound familiar to those of us familiar with Armstrongism?

Consider that "the time is short:" that where we used to give one dollar, or a hundred, or a thousand, we now have the privilege of showing the Lord our appreciation of the truth by using five times as much, both of time and money; the results of which are beyond comparison. ('Old Theology Tracts' in Watchtower, March, 1889. Please note this is from what appears to be a website from a Russellite offshoot of the Watchtower Society.)

The Watchtower Society saying the time is short in 1889, just like HWA did throughout his (so-called) ministry. (At the time the Watchtower taught that the time of the end began in 1799, Jesus Christ invisibly returned in 1874, and Armageddon would come in 1914. Today they say Christ invisibly returned and the time of the end began in 1914 with Armageddon to come soon.)

notwithstanding the opposition of the clergy, who, from their office and profession, should be the very ones to sound the Jubilee trump to our dear brethren and sisters. (Dawn in its Seventieth Thousand, Watchtower, March, 1888.)

This is very similar to how Meredith assert that other religionists are often at the forefront of opposition to "the truth."

down through time, biblical and secular history show very clearly that the servants of God were persecuted most of all by people who had religious jealousy. Other religionists would persecute God's servants. The other ministers and the other religionists would always go after the true servants of God. That is the way it has always has been. That is terrible, but that is the way it is. (Meredith, The Gospel of Matthew -- Program 13 Bible Study, on Matthew 12:14.)

Comparing religious leaders with the religious authorities who opposed Jesus is a very effective polemical tool used by religious cults such as the Armstrongites to demonize any opposition by contemporary religious authorities.

Many do not know that the "Baptists," "Disciples," "Congregationalists," and some others, are not organized into one body throughout the world, in the same manner as are Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and E. Methodists, but each congregation maintains the right to control its own affairs and its own faith independently of other congregations. [This is well, but the same principle should extend to each individual in each congregation. Each should be asked if he accepts the Lord by the only name, Saviour, and the Bible as God's divinely inspired communication to man; and beyond this, each should be left to believe all that he can find in God's revelation, each ready to assist and be assisted by the other, to grow in grace and knowledge and in the love of God.] But those independent congregations, imitating the various sects, have formed "Unions" by which the majority of such churches attempt to fix the faith and affairs of the others, much the same as Conferences do for the Methodists, and the Presbyteries and Synods and General Assemblies of the Presbyterians, and the Convocations Councils and generally the hierarchies of the Protestant Episcopal and Roman Catholic churches. (Chas. H. Spurgeon's Position, Watchtower, February, 1888.)

This is similar to Hoeh's condemnation of Christians organizing themselves together in the 1959 "church history" booklet.

This concerns the founding of the Seventh Day Baptists:

so nearly dead were these congregations that in 1802 MANY began to ORGANIZE THEMSELVES together into a General Conference instead of submitting to the government of God for the carrying out of the gospel. At this serious juncture, MOST of the local churches JOINED THEMSELVES TOGETHER to form the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference and thereby ceased to be the true Church of God.

This concerns the founding of the Seventh Day Adventists.

In the spring, of 1861 another conference was held in an unscriptural effort to reorganize local congregations....Once again men forgot that they can not organize themselves INTO the Church of God. They can only organize themselves OUT OF the Church of God!

These statements against the organizing of Christians together seems very peculiar considering that WCG was also "organized," specifically as a one man dictatorship euphemistically labeled the "government of God."

So once again we must ask ourselves why is Armstrongism supposedly unique?

Sects, 'Cults' and Alternative Religions

Recently I found this book: Sects, 'Cults' and Alternative Religions by David V. Barrett (1996). This book has a section on WCG.

Its section is about thirteen pages long as this was written during the 'transformation'. It discusses the falling out between Herbert and Garner Ted and points out that Plain Truth readers would had have no idea of the scandals that plagued WCG in the 1970s.

Curiously it states that the circulation of the Plain Truth at its height in the 1980s was only 5 million, rather than the figure of 8 million, which is more regularly reported.

Tomorrow's World Only Source of Understanding?

The following is from Roderick C. Meredith's semi-annual letter of May 26, 2003, p. 1. The semi-annual letter is given to Tomorrow's World magazine subscribers who had not yet paid them. (Bolding is mine. Italics is in original.)

The entire panorama of prophetic events that I have preached and written about for the last fifty years is now coming to its climax! Only in Tomorrow's World magazine will you be given the full understanding of what is happening on the world scene and what you should do about it.

This is not true. There are many other Armstrongite groups out there that share the same understanding of Armstrongite prophecy as Meredith's Living Church of God. Small details do occasionally differ among the groups. (Will the King of the South be a unified Arab combine or Iran? Or Ethiopia?) But they are generally just small details.

This statement is designed to make unsuspecting readers think that the sort of information they are getting from LCG is unique. Yet many other groups share the same understanding of prophecy, largely inherited from the false prophet Herbert W. Armstrong.

This statement is untrue and dreadfully misleading.

"Yes, I KNOW These Pictures are Terrifying!"-- HWA

HWA infamously slapped onto some of his publications horrific images created by Basil Wolverton. These images were vital in scaring many people into giving their allegiance to the false prophet Herbert W. Armstrong.

This was blatant scare mongering. HWA knew it as well.

This fact is shown with the following article in the February-March, 1955, Plain Truth. In it HWA wrote an article entitled 'Yes, I KNOW these pictures are terrifying!' (pp. 3-4, 13-14).

(Warning: some of Wolverton's images may be seen on pp. 2, 5 and 12.)

He discusses the various images of Basil Wolverton that were published at the time, some of which would later be used in the 1975 in Prophecy booklet.

The first paragraph reads as follows:

"These pictures are revolting--horrifying!--yes, I know! I know that some don't like to look at them."

He then justifies using these images insisting that they portray events which are really going to happen by 1975.

HWA writes of their "almost living REALISM--in all their literal horror."

"They picture the realism of what's coming as mere words could never do. They have made many tens of thousands really SEE what's coming on the world. It isn't pretty. It isn't pleasant. But it's REAL--it's COMING upon an unsuspecting, heedless world

CRY ALOUD! I do not spare you--I tell you the TRUTH with all the power God gives me.

These pictures are not pleasing, soothing. They do not whisper weakly--they CRY ALOUD--they boldly THUNDER at you the TRUTH as God requires that His servants shout it to the whole world. They are POWERFUL pictures! They proclaim the Gospel and God's warning in tremendous POWER! "

This shows that HWA knew very well what he was doing when he unleashed Wolverton's grotesque drawings used in 1975 in Prophecy. He knew exactly what he was doing. Spreading fear inducing images producing horror in readers that would entrap them into the exploitative grip of HWA's mind control cult.

HWA knew exactly what he was doing. This article is one brazen manifestation of his ruthless exploitation of people. This was a coldly calculated, premeditated act to extort three tithes from deceived people on the false premise that a man (who said Christ would return in 1936 and that Mussolini then Hitler was the Beast) was working with God when God could never had worked with such a man.

All this is further evidence that HWA was truly an evil man. A sorry excuse for a human being. Such must be the verdict of the evidence left by history.

Remembering 9/11

9/11 has come again. I'm sure everyone remembers that terrible day.

One thing I wish to share here is that just before this event occurred I was reading one of Meredith's LCG recruitment booklets. I was re-reading it again while watching TV when quite by chance I saw those terrible events on TV. I could not believe at first but once I started to believe what I were seeing I just watched the news for a long time. I had seen the images of those events before the second plane hit. Our hearts sank as those events unfolded.

Naturally this only further convinced that Meredith and Co. were right about their prophetic framework. As related ealier I got myself a subscription to PCG's recruitment magazine because of this. No doubt others had similar feelings. But I was then unaware that they are false prophets as is clearly shown by their many failed prophecies. 1975 was only the most prominent failed prophecy. There are many others.