Forward: In Part One I wrote about spiritual communism and the useful idiots that support the idea of a one world government. This theocratic “New World Order” is represented by the “Churches of God” and are to be ruled by a king that descends from the heavens above.
Part Two
Armstrong-ism. A Parasitic Leech.
Mark Armstrong, the grandson of Herbert Armstrong, wrote an article entitled “The Misappropriation of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Name.” In this article he laments the constant misuse of his grandfathers name for the benefit of not so few in the ministry. Mark writes “News came to me this week that is sickening. That is, that one of those claiming to have inherited “the authority of Herbert W. Armstrong” has told his congregation that they should liquidate any holdings and send in their money.”
“How many abuses will be committed in the name of my deceased Grandfather? And how long will some poor abused people remain in a state of deception, or worse, mind control?”
Mark tells it like it is. I have lost count as to how many of the “Churches of God” have proclaimed the authority of Herbert W. Armstrong as if he handed them personally the keys to his “thiefdom.”
(Mark, have your eyes been closed and ears plugged as to the abuses of these self proclaimed apostles and prophets?) These parasites have been using your Granddad’s legacy and family name to impoverish people, and undermining their financial security for decades! They are just following the successful corporate model that Herbert Armstrong implemented.
A Marxist is a Parasitic Leech.
“While the communist is busy beating his people to death and they are dying of hunger…”
“It was communists who a century ago came up with the idea of Income Tax… it was intended to fleece the rich of their wealth and to level everyone to the ground.” Likewise, the “Churches of God” have been successful in using the resources of the “people” in order to build and support their theocratic New World Order. The tax was a tithe, or two, and in some years, three. The squeezing (extorting) money from the membership kept committed and submissive sheeple in line. Like in a communist society, rebelling meant sure death. Now the Armstrong churches might not shoot you in the head, but they claim the authority of God almighty to have you thrown into the lake of fire! It is this alone that kept you and I in line and submissive to their authority. The end game was about money and power. As one article in particular pointed out on the Painful Truth, the organization existed for itself alone. There was no love, mercy or compassion, only contempt!
Earth-bound.
Within the closed totalitarian society of Armstrong-ism lies the seeds of its own destruction. Unable to grow exponentially and unchecked, the information age has decreased the survivability factor a thousand fold. Potential members who never heard of Herbert Armstrong will find umpteen web-sites and articles that offer information on the man and the organization he administrated. Few web-sites are supportive of his efforts and rightfully so.
The unscathed mind will articulate the deception with a click of the mouse! With incredible ease one can decipher this insane notion that America and Britain are the decedents of some lost tribes of ancient Israel. The belief that modern Israel is the result of a promise made to Abraham, and that prophecy cannot be understood without this knowledge, is the Achilles heel that will bring down the movement. It is just unbelievable how many hoops one has to jump through to come to the conclusion that America and the Brits are heir to the promise made to Abraham. The necessary twisting of the scriptures alone is enough to drive the discerning mind far from the grasping hands of the COG gurus!
The “Churches of God” just stunt their growth with all their nutty ideas. They undercut their ability to grow and prosper, to change and move forward. They bash communism, and at the same time express their love for free market capitalism. If they were capitalist they would allow the free expression of the membership in choosing the next generation of leaders. But that is not how they work. Free expression is the enemy of the totalitarian gurus. It is the deathblow to the organization and the power of the upper-class who rule over the regime. If there is to be change it must come from free-thinking individuals who are committed to the free expression of ideas within the confines of their church. The problem is, just how do you open minds in a heavy handed religious regime without being sacrificed on the alter of dissent?
More on the next blog entry.
Inside North Korea. Cultism and the guru.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxLBywKrTf4
James, I never cease to be amazed at the depth of your blog entries: They keep improving with an ever expanding understanding of the issues discussed. If I didn’t know better — and I do — I would think you had a professional ghost writer.
What you wrote is so true and insightful.
It could only be added that besides the obvious focus of British Israelism, the other component which kept the masses tied to Armstrongism was the fiction, “The True History of the True Church”, which gave an additional credibility to what would otherwise be an empty fantasy. This stupidity borrowed insanity from Dugger and Dodd who stole it from Ellen G. White (and who knows who she got it from), “locked in” the true believer who never questioned its substance, thinking that it must be true.
The “hook” for all such con games is to tell people something they believe is true and then they fall for the rest of the baloney, hook, line and sinker.
The depth and breadth of the contempt of Herbert Armstrong for others is jarring: Everyone was a piece of crap but him. It would seem this expansive narcissism is always at the root of every parasitic leech which comes along, because if there were any respect at all, people would not be treated as objects to be used in any way desired, with no concern for collateral damage.
I, too, must congratulate you on a very good article. Most of us were blissfully unaware of what was going on, at least at first. Toward the end, I began to see, but the process was so slow. A person usually can’t shake off the deception over-night. It took me a bit of time, but by the time I actually broke it off in the mid-seventies, I was pretty jaded.
HWA only carried on so long in his baloney church of God due to the lack of information available to the membership. When the AR was starting up, Herbert didn’t see it coming. As time passed the damage was mounting. The membership began to question his character and culpability as to the church finances and various scandals.
As time went by, some became callous as to HWA’s behavior. The incest charge by the AR didn’t faze most of the membership. They blamed it on Satan instead of openly questioning Armstrong as to the validity of the accusations. As we know, the lake of fire was sure to follow if you questioned the “chairman” of the party. The death sentence would be carried out promptly!
I have actually meet some of the membership who still follow Armstrong knowing full well that he DID molest his daughter. How you justify that support is beyond me. God used a child molester to bring the gospel to the world for the first time in nineteen-hundred years? What is wrong with this picture?
Back in the old “partying” days (a de riguer and surefire method of coming down in the aftermath of years of abuses from Armstrongism), my brothers and I used to make up satirical little characters, games, and skits to poke fun at and expose the inanities of the WCG, HWA’s teachings, and the gullibility of the brethren in general. On one Friday night, I created an evangelist type character named “Saint Shit”, and we did some brainstorming in which we set out to demonstrate how Armstrongism could make such an individual actually appear credible, using HWA’s marketing cliches. “Don’t look to a name, brethren!” was the first cliche that popped into our minds.
The fact is, when one first hears the outrageous teachings of Armstrongism, it’s an assault to the senses, and even to sanity itself. But, then, the ministerial team applied their spin, logic, and marketing cliches to it all, and it all seemed to make perfect sense in a surreal sort of way. Members became members as a result of reaching their own inner ascetic, surrendering their self will not to God Himself in a personal relationship, but to those masquerading as His duly deputized agents, and finally giving up on anything other than the time of the end and the work to be done. Of course, it was blatant brainwashing, and HWA even remarked in sermons that true brainwashing, the type which he did, was a very good thing indeed. The net result was that, without the benefit of second opinions or input from independent sources, members would think and do exactly as instructed, shutting out all else. There is a remnant, a cadre of such soldiers scattered around the world who either seek, or believe they have found HWA’s spiritual successor.
It really requires an incredible trauma to dislodge such people from this mindset. Even those who eventually become dislodged will often pick and choose elements in which they still believe, using these elements as criteria for salvation, defending them ravenously against attacks from those who understand differently. It takes a miracle to escape, and recovery from such a case of spiritual rape is a life-long process. Fortunately, recovery is not totally impossible, although for some, it would certainly seem to be.
BB
“Even those who eventually become dislodged will often pick and choose elements in which they still believe, using these elements as criteria for salvation…”
There may not be a difference between true belief and true fear.
What grabbed my attention in the beginning was an issue of the PT my uncle had with the headline “Hitler Did Not Die” — another bombastic untruth. A lot of people, including 18-year-old me, were wondering about that. I wrote in and asked for all the back copies they had so I’d get that article. The rest is history.
Attention grabbing headlines really work for those trained in advertising like Herbert was. He knew how to sucker people in with them.
I’ve fallen for the same kind of thing in sales, like a time share we never should have bought and eventually unloaded at a tremendous loss. At least we escaped the constant drain of fees.
We only used it one time, and it cost us fees to do that because we went somewhere other than our actual unit. Could have paid for a lot of vacations at hotels and motels with what we ended up spending.
We rented it out one year for the Phoenix Open because our unit was in Scottsdale within walking distance of the Open. We actually came out ahead that year. But, the company got wise and started renting the places themselves, making it unavailable, and we never got to do that again. Sound familiar? Herb would have loved running such a setup and screwing everyone.
Before you laugh, think of the ways you’ve gotten taken during this short life. I’m sure you have.
“Hitler Did Not Die”
Al, you make me laugh.
You’ve introduced the concept of “The Plain Truth” as a tabloid!
Indeed, it was ahead of its time!
Thanks!
I just hope I don’t die laughing. Or maybe not. Would that be such a bad thing?
To die laughing beats dying screaming. I hope I just go to sleep and fail to wake up. Who knows?
Yes, the PT was quite a tabloid, and the religious and political worlds are loaded with similar ones. Sensational headlines with no truthful basis just to grab the attention of the vulnerable and get them to “buy.”
Reading the above comments, I get the idea that some of HWA’s written and spoken diatribes had a certain “shock value” to them.
When putting a person’s brain into a kind of “shock mode”, it is then easier to convince the person of things he’d not normally be convinced of.
It may be analagous to what I once read about, of cult members jumping in front of passers-by at airports, offering flowers, followed by a dose of indoctrination. I remember reading how the ‘passers-by’ were evaluated in a covert study, and changes in their eye’s pupils and facial tones indicated they’d been put into a state of mild shock, making them more susceptible to subsequent input.
That “Hitler Did Not Die!” article got me into a heck of a lot of trouble at school, Allen! While we were discussing the Third Reich in History class, I brought it up, upon which my teacher and classmates wanted to examine my source material. When I enthusiastically shared this experience with my parents, they flatly refused to let me take the article or any RCG (at the time) materials to school. This was my first example as to the willingness of the church to authenticate its contentions to the general public. I later learned that members were often allowed to hang out on the clothesline flapping in the breeze. This constituted a marked difference between “normal” churches and Armstrongism.
Later, it was not at all surprising to me that when HWA had obtained some valuable ear time with political leaders, he really wussed out! Billy Graham and others were totally upfront and made no bones about their allegiance to Jesus Christ, but HWA concocted his story about a strong hand from someplace, and bragged that God had given him the wisdom to be able to preach the gospel in such a way that his hearers would not know that it had been preached to them.
BB
Bob,
I can remember Herb saying in a bible study (tape) that he heard (second hand) that Billy Graham thought Herbie understood the bible and Graham wished he did. I can still remember rolling my eyes at the subtle clue that Armstrong put forth. The clue of course was his narcissistic proclamation.
There should have been a debate between the two to settle who knew what about the bible and biblical history. Graham would have won hands down but the membership would have congratulated Armstrong for his superior knowledge.
However, Herbert would have ignored the most basic ground rule of debate. In case you’re not familiar with the rule: attack the idea, not the person. Bashing an outsider was what gave Armstrong an air of authority over the ignorant. His constant demeaning of others he was competing for dollars with was his trademark. Further, his injection of wormwood into our general enthusiasm for the possibility of answers from others outside the cultist group was something he did often and with demeaning sarcasm. And we would approve by laughing along with the old fool. How I wish I could forget!
We should again recognize, as was the case with Karl Marx and others of his ilk, that Herbert Armstrong was so grandiose to make us feel that what he was doing would affect the outcome of the earth and everyone in it for all eternity. His was the movement to transform the world. And, of course, most people got swept up with that or perhaps became disconnected from reality by the shock of the dual attack of dysphoria coupled with the subsequent utopia of a perfect world. Just like Marxists. It was a movement. Grasp of this great swelling grandiose expansive vision was so much like a hot air balloon — all pretty on the outside with nothing but hot air supporting it on the inside.
It was the image, the vision, the bold scenario of vast import designed to overwhelm the senses of the ordinary to make them believe that Herbert Armstrong really was all that he appeared to be and more. He intensified this in the 1970s with the photo ops with “great world leaders”.
If we had only had the reality behind the fantasy: Barely past eighth grade mentally and emotionally; a total loser; lazy with an aversion to manual labor; vain, proud and dismissive with the smallest reason to be so; morbidly obese (with more than one minister decrying fat women in their own church and talking constantly about gluttony, while ignoring the obvious cognitive dissonance); a self made expert in every field, including, but not restricted to escathology, comparative religion, psychology, archeology, history, physics, chemistry, nuclear physics, political science, language and writing. I’m amazed he didn’t have a group photograph of himself. One would think he thought he was God. No wait. He said he was going to be “God as God is God”, except, it looks to me like he couldn’t wait.
I don’t actually remember him apologizing to anyone. He did demand apologies, though. He delighted that others had “to eat crow”. He was so vain that he always had to turn things around so he could win at every argument. He delighted when people had to admit they were wrong (and most times they were not) and he was right. He delighted in Dugger saying, “you are most certainly right”. He had to be a winner every time and trump his “enemies” (which included everyone who disagreed with him).
In the meantime, he managed to cover up his faults, sins and illegal acts, not unlike Marxists have been known to do. It seems that accounts have been related about his son-in-law waving that gun at him to get him to stop the incest. His son date raped 200 coeds in ten years (by his own estimate), yet the End Time Apostle cum false prophet never lifted a finger.
In fact, while it was the case that the ministry all posed to make you think they cared about you, they were only concerned for themselves and the rest of us were collateral damage. I know this for sure because for years I sat week after week listening to ministers talking about how they were in abject fear concerning their monetary situation and retirement, without missing a beat. No faith, just fear. Herbert Armstrong, often was the source of that fear as an arbitray despot who ruled with a rod of iron and instilled abject fear in his followers. Directions changed instantly with no thought put into them. People lost their jobs on the way to them. No one ever seemed to know what was coming next.
All of this in an environment of a brilliant confident future of glorious security — a future fabulous fantasy which could never be achieved. People endured an anomalous paradox which could never be resolved and never matched the reality. Promises of prosperity in this life with fabulous riches in the next were a fraud used to induce people to spend their resources foolishly with no chance of ever breaking even, based on the promise that “You can’t outgive God!”. That would have been nice, if it were really God that we were giving our money to.
Very interestng post and comments!
The term, “useful idiots” makes me think of those who are ignorantly gung-ho for the Tea Party, and don’t realize that it’s not at all a grass-roots org, but rather something that’s been concocted and continually tweaked by large corporate interests, for and by their nefarious interests.
Hopashor,
Please elaborate on your find.
“Please elaborate on your find.”[Re: the tea party’s large corporate connections]
I thought it was fairly common knowledge, and surprised that you’d be unfamiliar with it. I came to the understanding from common news sources, like newspaper articles, magazine articles, radio news broadcasts and television news broadcasts- nothing like conspiracy theory sites or other kooky sites. Anyhow, I wouldn’t really call it a “find”, since it’s info I’ve come across in my normal perusing of the news.
BTW, you wrote, “It was communists who a century ago came up with the idea of Income Tax.”, but I think that even ancient China had an income tax.
The cults and curches, though, sure have had their “tax-tithe” to insure their leaders the lifestyles of royalty.
Historically, in many instances being king was the same as being the religious leader.
One last point-
I think it’s hypocritical of Mark Armstrong to complain about name usage, because he’s like a total pimp when it comes to his dad’s name.
I am not unfamiliar with how politics work. What I was looking for was just one link where you can prove to the readers here that the tea party is bought and sold like the others.
As to the income tax that was my over-site. I should have wrote “in the last century.” It was part of an idea that I was going to elaborate on but decided to best leave it out as to not side track off course. Thank you for that.
I never listen to Mark’s sermons. How is he pimping out ole dad?
Yes, Communists did advocate an income tax, but they were not the originators of the idea. Abraham Lincoln pushed for an income tax during the Civil War.
Income tax can get way out of line in both directions. It’s now way out of line in an insane direction. Cut taxes for the richest but keep spending by borrowing fiat money. It’s main purpose was prevention of financial rape by the rich and powerful who tend to grind down the lower echelons of society as they build their aristocracy. That’s what is happening today. If it keeps up, I have no faith that the USA can survive.
It has been said that a depression serves a purpose and that being the collection/confiscation of property for the purpose of reviving the banks. Otherwise the transfer of your wealth to those starving banksters.
If these clowns in Washington would quit spending we might have a chance to balance out the markets. Why do you think stocks are doing so well? When QE2 is done in June we will see what happens then.
Just think of the income you would have without Income Tax. It has stifled the economy.
But then… if we didn’t have Income Tax, how could we continue these useless foreign wars our forebears warned us against?
James,
Odd that you should bring up Billy Graham. I am sure most of us realize now that Billy has built a decades long, incredible track record of integrity, unlike some other ministers, not only in COGdom but also in the mainstream. But, the one thing that tilted my parents towards Armstrongism was that they were able to be persuaded that “HWA had the truth about the sabbath”. They began to listen to both Billy Graham and HWA at about the same time, and then suddenly shut Billy Graham out.
What is interesting is that if you compare the basic Christian lifestyle which Billy Graham preached and taught, it is much more in conformity with the Sermon on the Mount than the lifestyle which HWA taught. In Armstrongism, there was no sympathy for the unchurched. If people weren’t members, you didn’t pray for them you didn’t reach out to help them or minister to them, you just waited for the Germans to do the job which HWA wrongly assigned to them. As a young boy attending Methodist Sunday school I did not learn enough about mainstream Christianity to really understand what it was all about, or what it was based upon. My mind is being totally blown by what I’m learning in my studies today. Armstrongism really misses the depths of Christianity, and they are certainly not alone in this. Single-sourcing one’s spiritual input to any corporate entity and allowing it or them to be one’s gatekeepers is a recipe for spiritual disaster. I used to occasionally ask myself, “What if HWA was actually right, and I’m just too rebellious to accept it?”, but have finally come to the point where I realize deep down that his was a counterfeit system, totally bogus, and propped up by lying witness.
BB
One of the big difference between Herbert and Billy is that Armstrong taught the way of “get” over the way of “give.”
The old fool never gave back to society unless his name was firmly attached to the gift.
“What I was looking for was just one link where you can prove to the readers here that the tea party is bought and sold like the others.”
The tea party is funded by large corporate interests, and the term “useful idiots” that you used in your blog entry is very apropos to those supporting it.
I doubt anyone would be inclined to find “proof” by looking at one link, and I figure anyone can do a quick google if they want to get more info.
“As to the income tax that was my over-site. I should have wrote “in the last century.””
But you wrote that the communists “came up with the idea of Income Tax”, which is not accurate. Income tax was first implemented thousands of years ago.
“I never listen to Mark’s sermons. How is he pimping out ole dad?”
Neither did I listen to Mark’s sermons!
What I meant was that I looked at Mark’s site, and it’s all about GTA this and GTA that.
“But you wrote that the communists “came up with the idea of Income Tax”, which is not accurate. Income tax was first implemented thousands of years ago.”
And I said “As to the income tax that was my over-site. I should have wrote “in the last century.” Otherwise, speaking of the last century.
As to a link about the tea party, just one link…
Admin, when you wrote, “It was communists who a century ago came up with the idea of Income Tax.”, I thought you meant they invented it. I misinterpreted your meaning.
BTW, I believe that a little over a century ago, the USA enacted it’s first income tax, and about a century ago, income tax became a more permanent part of of the USA’s economic structure.
As for looking up links regarding the tea party’s big business connections, I’ll leave that to the readers, should they be interested enough to take a few seconds to google.
I’m sure there’s plenty of links that will appeal to most anyone’s viewpoint. That way, cognitive dissonance can be kept to a minimum 😉