Calendar

The Church of God Seventh Day is right! Herbert Armstrong got it wrong!

Herbert Armstrong declared many times:

The Sabbath stands or falls with the Feasts.

It’s strange, because the Church of God Seventh Day just doesn’t seem to think so. Here is what they say:

The Church of God (Seventh Day) teaches that Christians are not obligated to observe the feast days, the annual Hebrew holy days of Leviticus 23. Here are seven reasons for this position:

  • The annual holy days were part of the Levitical law of the old covenant and were intimately linked to its system of animal sacrifices.
    The annual holy days were neither Creation ordinances nor included among the Ten Commandments, but they belong to a portion of law that may be called ceremonial.
  • The annual holy days were commanded to the nation of Israel when it departed from Egypt and were to be observed where the Lord placed His name: Jerusalem.
  • The annual holy days have an agricultural framework, inextricably tied to the land, crops, and climate of ancient Palestine.
  • The annual holy days were observed according to an ancient (Hebrew) calendar that is impossible to decipher from Scripture.
  • The purpose of the annual holy days was for the Hebrew nation to celebrate its own history and to anticipate the greater salvation that would come through Messiah.
  • Observance of the annual holy days often casts a shadow on the final work of redemption and grace that was accomplished by Christ on the cross.

Apparently, keeping the Feasts is a point of view.

Some of you know Alan Knight, either personally, through his interview in The Journal or from his book, Primitive Christianity in Crisis. The last time we had lunch, we discussed the current controversy surrounding Robert Thiel, since Mr. Knight had several exchanges with him and after lunch, I asked him the question of what he thought of the Feasts, given that he is something of a scholar on early Christianity. His response was that “Scriptural support for keeping the Feasts is weak”.

One’s skepticism is certainly piqued with Chapter 17, “The Most Important Holy Day” in Showdown At Big Sandy: Youthful Creativity Confronts Bureaucratic Inertia at an Unconventional Bible College in East Texas by Greg Doudna, now available at Barnes and Noble on Nook (apparently, Dr. Doudna took my advice to put it in an ebook). While the WCG nattered on about the other Feasts, the Wave Sheaf Offering, picturing the acceptance of Jesus Christ by God the Father, would, one would think, be the most relevant to Christians, if we were to keep the Feasts, but sadly, no, no there is no observance. Just keep the Lord’s Supper on the wrong day, keep the “Passover” as the Night to Be Much Observed and totally miss that the Days of Unleavened Bread start on the evening of the Passover.

Now one would suppose that keeping the Feasts could be a blessing… but certainly not to hear sermons about Doomsday and the lie of British Israelism.

But perhaps the biggest problem of all is that Armstrongists don’t actually know when to keep the Feasts. If you are going to keep them when they don’t need to be kept at all, you should, by all means, get the dates right. But with the nine variants that the Armstrongist churches of God use now are every one of them wrong — objectively, observably, technically wrong. It is time for them to admit that the Church of God Seventh Day is right and the calendar is impossible to decipher from Scripture.

Having failed to understand the Hebrew Calendar at all, Herbert Armstrong did the really stupid thing and went to the Jews as THE “authority” on the topic. This is a totally wrong move. Think about it: The Apostles went to the Pharisees in the First Century to ask them to tell them when the Feasts were? There’s nothing like stupidly making yourself a martyr. Besides, who would they ask after 70 A.D., do pray tell? The Old Covenant (if people believe the Bible) ended at the Death of Jesus: The veil to the Holy of Holies was ripped apart — there was no more authority of the Sanhedrin. The Christians just don’t go to the Jews for spiritual knowledge, because in the view of the New Testament, they don’t have any. Nevertheless, Herbert Armstrong went to the Jews for their calendar because he made the very wrong assumption that they were the keepers of the oracles and were the experts in such things in perpetuity.

Just how wrong this is has been exposed scientifically: The calculated calendar by Hillel II, the last of the Sanhedrin, declared that the solar year is 365 days and 6 hours, based on the stellar advice of an astonomer friend. Unfortunately, the Universe is unforgiving in such things, and he had the year off by a surplus of 11 minutes and 14.4 seconds. That may not sound like much, but given the past 1,650 years+, the Hillel II calendar is 12 days, 21 hours 7 minutes and 12 seconds off, putting the calculated Spring Equinox around March 6th or March 7th (depending upon leap year). If this were to be continued about 21,000 more years or so, the Feast of Tabernacles would coincide with Christmas Vacation Week in December between December 25th and January 1st. This would mean that people would not have to ask for time off for their children to keep the Feast and Boeing Employees could go because they get the week off every year. So, in the scheme of things, it’s very convenient… maybe… some day.

Hillel II was also off on what the moon transit time was by 6 millionths of a day every month being about .5184 seconds. This might not mean much month to month, but over the centuries until now, the Jewish Calendar is about 2.94 hours later in its expectation of the New Moon. This, under some circumstances can amount to one day.

It gets worse, though.

Hillel II set about to make sure that certain things didn’t happen in the Calendar, such as having the Day of Atonement on a Friday. However, documents from Jewish History show very clearly that the Day of Atonement did occasionally fall on a Friday during Christ’s time First Century A.D. and there were instructions on how to deal with it. This is important because no one can arbitrarily set the Passover in the First Century AD by a Calendar issued later in 359 A.D. by Hillel II. It is for this reason that the Armstrongists insist that Christ died in 31 A.D. to make their Festival timeline fit, when, in fact, they have it wrong and according to the self-correcting Hebrew Calendar at the time, would have made 30 A.D. the year that Jesus Christ would have been sacrificed to be put in the tomb in the evening of the Passover.

Things really get dicey from here. For one thing, the prophecy of Daniel 9 is impacted. For another, the Armstrongists don’t keep all the Feasts any year, even though, sometimes they keep a few of them on the day set forth by correct calendar computations, meaning that they can’t claim to be keeping God’s Law of the Old Covenant Correctly, and since, according to Herbert Armstrong, the Sabbath stands or falls on the Holydays, they are technically breaking the 4th Commandment, and hence, cannot have salvation.

Does your head hurt yet?

It’s no wonder that Armstrongist leaders doesn’t want to open this particular bag of snakes and convinces their membership it’s too complicated to understand and we all have to leave it to the “Authority” of the Jews: They couldn’t get the people together to keep the Feasts, which would reduce the effectiveness of the control Armstrongism has over the people and most of all, they would lose out on the money. That is a lot of powerful incentive to keep the people in confusion and delusion.

In actual fact, it isn’t that hard. After all, the ancient Israelites seem to have been able to calculate the Feasts, didn’t they?

I first learned about postponements in 2003, when the beautiful full moon was out on Thursday and the Feast of Tabernacles started on Saturday and a member called the minister and asked why and the minister said he didn’t know. At the Feast in Redmond, Oregon, I asked a minister about postponements and he lied to me and brushed me off saying, “I studied that once but I don’t remember”. He knew. He just didn’t want the answer. It would foul up Armstrongism and threaten his job.

In 2005 and 2006, my wife and I kept the “Passover” with Wayne Bedwell and his wife Carol in his home, along with the Edwards. Shirley Edwards was a delight and quite a woman. In the 1950s, when women weren’t supposed to do such things, she learned to fly, got her pilot’s license and flew to Cuba! My wife still has the picture of Shirley on the wall where she receives the silver prize in the Arizona Senior Olympics 50 yard swim at the age of 83 years old! Wayne Bedwell and I had an opportunity to discuss many things during our stay in the Tucson area, particularly his booklet, The Original Calendar for Our Day. He was an Engineer who once worked for NASA. I guess this calendar thing really is rocket science. He told me that he had travelled to New York to study in the very extensive Jewish section of the New York Public Library to learn how to calculate the calendar. He mentioned the fact that the First Century Jews did not use postponements and that the Day of Atonement could indeed fall on a Friday. He also noted that 30 A.D. was the only year where the Passover occurred on Wednesday night within years on either side: It could not be 31 A.D., 33 A.D., 29 A.D. or any other of the dates picked by others. It is also convenient, he explained, that from 30 A.D. to 70 A.D. there was a 40 year trial period for the Jews.

Plagiarism is a long, well-established practice with Armstrongists and the calendar presented by Wayne Bedwell was no exception. It is true that Ted Phillips of the Church of God Modesto used his calendar for the Feasts with full attribution. However, James Russell over at the Church of God In Truth did not acknowledge the source, particularly when he changed the assessment for the occurrence of the new moon: To wit, to change the beginning of a new moon from the time that the earth,  moon and sun were in conjunction, all nicely lined up, to the very first moment Jerusalem time, when the moon went down before the sun did. Another cult leader set the time differently by insisting that the Sabbath didn’t begin at sunset, but at nautical twilight. The differences could mean a full day’s difference. Nevertheless, this wasn’t anywhere near as bad as when the official Jewish Calendar was one full month off from the non postponed one. One should note that there are those who insist that the new moon really begins with the crescent of the moon, usually two days later than the real true lunar new moon. While it is completely silly in practice, there is a rationale to it because of yet another problem.

In 2008, when I met Paul Woods at the Feast of Tabernacles in Fruitland, Washington, hosted by his church, the Seventh Day Church of God of Caldwell, Idaho, I discussed the calendar also, since he publishes the Hebrew Calendar through The Herald of Truth, of which he is editor and publisher. The Seventh Church of God is quite independent from Herbert Armstrong, and their particular group came from Gilbert G. Rupert and has been keeping the Feasts since 1919. In our discussion, he showed me from Exodus, that the Passover, beginning on the evening of the 14th day of the First Month is also the beginning of the Days of Unleavened Bread and that the Armstrongists have that all wrong as well — so at the very least, the Armstrongists always begin the Days of Unleavened Bread at least one day late. Paul Woods solves the inherent problem with the Feast of Tabernacles with one simple assumption: That, as he puts it, the moon rules the day. What that means that on the day of the new moon, the moon must have arisen either at sunrise or shortly before sunrise before that evening can be declared the beginning of the new moon. This means that there will be a very slight sliver of the moon visible, but not as great as those who, say, follow William Dankenbring’s assessment of the timing. This solves the very great problem that there is a full moon on the 15th of the month each time and every time, meaning that the Israelites would have had a full moon on the Night to Be Much Observed when they left Egypt and also the Feast of Tabernacles always, always, always begins in the light of the glorious full moon in the fall, with either the Harvest Moon or sometimes more rarely, the Hunter’s Moon.

So just exactly how does one find the First Month in all this? Go out and look for sprigs of springing up barley in the hills in Israel like Carl O’Beirn does? In all of this, you have to remember that the ancient Israelites were not carrying iPods, having reflecting telescopes and certainly didn’t have orbiting satellites they could use for JavaScript programs to calculate new moon conjunctions at midnight, when they couldn’t even see the moon. It is a “keep it simple, stupid” scenario which could be understood by those not in tune with calculus and geometry: Remember, observations, pen and papyrus only. They did know when the Spring Equinox was (before it was fouled up by Hillel II in 358 A.D.). Here is a simple formula from Paul Woods for figuring the Holy days:

1) Find the spring equinox;

2) Find the new moon nearest the spring equinox (either before or after);

3) Use Jerusalem time (The moon is new to the whole earth at one time);

4) The first night the moon has completely ruled (had authority) over the is counted as number one (1). This day is the Biblical new Year Day;

5) Count to the fourteenth (14th) day of that moon and you have the Passover Day. The Lord’s Supper Service is to be held the evening of the preceding day.

Say what!!??!!!

Yes, it’s true: If you are going to do it right, you need to read the New Testament (along with the Old) very, very carefully — the Lord’s Supper Service is to be held on the evening of the 13th Day of the First month and the Passover begins the Days of Unleavened Bread on the next evening.

Here’s how it works in 30 A.D.:

Tuesday evening, Jesus has his last supper with his disciples;

Wednesday, during the day, Jesus is crucified, dies and at sunset is in the tomb and sealed in just as the evening of the 14th begins the Passover;

Thursday, Christ is in the tomb;

Friday, Christ in the tomb;

Saturday, Christ is in the tomb, but at sunset, after three days in the tomb, he is resurrected and leaves the tomb; 50 days later he ascends into the heavens on Pentecost;

Sunday morning, Jesus ascends as the Wave Sheaf Offering.

From there, you are on your own.

That’s as close as I think we can get: You may have different ideas, but they probably don’t work. One thing is clear: Herbert Armstrong was wrong about the calendar and most of the 700+ spit-offs are wrong as well. There are all sorts of excuses, the main one being, “We need to keep the brethren together”. It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? Wrong in the first place and wrong ever since. If the Jews didn’t get it right, what chance do you think Armstrongists had, when they went to the Jews for faulty advice?

Perhaps, and likely, this is all wasted effort: The question remains as to whether or not there is a requirement for Christians to keep the Feasts. The best evidence is that support for keeping the Feasts in the Bible is rather weak, if it exists at all. The Feasts, were, after all, a shadow of things to come, about half of which already have. As for keeping the Feast forever, it’s not going to happen, since, according to Revelation 22 there will be no sun or moon. So much for forever.

Get Your Fill of the Spirit
Get Your Fill of the Spirit

Moreover, there is no good Christian way to fund the Feasts given in the Bible, even if there might be a blessing in keeping them. There is no such thing as second tithe to keep the Feast. In Greg Doudna’s book, he points out that in 1975, the WCG very nearly cancelled the Feast to have everyone stay home so the church could get the money. You don’t really believe that the Armstrongist leaders are in sincerity and truth when they claim that the way to salvation is to keep the Feasts, do you, when they can propose cancelling them altogether? Besides, how much of a blessing is it to listen to sermons filled with false prophecies from false prophets about doomsday scenarios based on the ridiculous fully disproven British Israelism scrap? It’s no wonder the Church of God Seventh Day doesn’t keep them, even if we could figure out when they really are.

There is a lot that the Armstrongists don’t volunteer. It isn’t just that Herbert Armstrong had a cup of coffee and a donut on the Day of Atonement “to keep his strength up” before he gave the sermon; there is the matter of special dispensations that many members did not know: For example, those with health problems could skip fasting on the Day of Atonement — at first under doctor’s orders and approved by headquarters, and then later, anyone with diabetes had an automatic dispensation. There are all sorts of different various exceptions to the Sabbath and Feast Days, hidden away from the rank-and-file members, with special exceptions given, especially to those of the ministry (we are not forgetting that the ministers did not have to keep “second tithe” and “third tithe” because they were “spiritual Levites”. There’s nothing like corrupting a corrupt system adapted arbitrarily for whatever purpose someone wants and have it enforced by God and the Bible. It’s no wonder that the Prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 1:14-15,

Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

But then the record of Old Testament Scripture was that the Israelites didn’t keep the Feasts for centuries at a time and God didn’t seem to mind — it was the idolatry that got to Him: The same kind of idolatry the followers of Herbert Armstrong commit today. Some of those Armstrongist church history theorists insist that at least one era of the church had so many problems that they did not need to keep the Feasts — that God just looked the other way as yet another entitlement. The problem is that there is no such thing as church eras and what was that about Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever? Is that forever, as in thou shall keep the Feasts forever in your generations? If so, it never happened. Armstrongists paint God the Father as being so fickle, double minded and inconsistent that it’s hard to take anything they say seriously: There are explanations everywhere as to why they don’t do what is commanded in the Bible in the Old Covenant that after awhile, it becomes little more than confused mental mush. It’s no wonder they don’t understand the Calendar… not that it makes any difference, since they don’t really keep the Feasts anyway: Hey! It’s a church corporation type convention — HP, IBM, LINUX Expo, Promise Keepers. Go for it. If you can afford it. If not, don’t worry, since it apparently isn’t required anyway. And don’t forget to booze it up: Just remember that the word Symposium comes from the Greek word for “drinking party”. Maybe the Armstrongists should rename it to the Symposium of Tabernacles and be done with it.

If you do attend the Feast of Tabernacles, do insure that you go someplace with good reception so you can be connected to the world through the Internet and your cell phone: You wouldn’t want to miss out on anything that is going on — after all, the world could come to an end and you wouldn’t know it.

The Calendar is always an interesting exercise.

Let it not be an exercise in futility.

16 Replies to “Calendar”

  1. “Having failed to understand the Hebrew Calendar at all, Herbert Armstrong did the really stupid thing and went to the Jews as THE “authority” on the topic.”

    And have said that, the churches of god also use a book put together by the Catholics! They trust in the very people they hate!

  2. While the Bible may have been put together by the Catholics, they shot themselves in the foot with a number of scriptures such as Romans 8:29-30, which puts all huan religius organizations out of business. Pauls’ influence i n the book of Romans has a powerful effect if viewd in the context of human law, as it was intended. The real bottlneck of Jewish law actually did happen at the time Jesus supposedely walked the earth, because two opposing philosophies competed for dominance with Jewish thought. Hillel proclaimed that the human mind CAN, if diligently applied, be consistent with the Torah and apply Talmud in such a way that God’s will can be known. A faction represented by Jesus declared that this is impossible, that the Pharisees, kept the people from knowing and practici ng the law in a more democratic fashion(Matthew 23:13, Luke 11:52) and the Pharisees substituted themselves as human authorities, when Jesus said to call no man master, rabbi or father. gain, as a renegade Pharisee, Paul spit right in Hillel’s eye with Romans 8:7, saying that the natural ca nnot be su bject to God’s laws, consistent with Isaiah 55:8. Paul laid the theologuical foundations in Romans, with chapter 8 and 9 eliminating all possibility of any human system ever representing God. In Romans 9, Paul was careful to explain that the covenant or promise to Abraham dealth ONLY with those who were orn under the conditions as Isaac: foreknown, predestined, called, and justified. (Galatinas 3:29, 4:28), That is precisely the focal point of law on which both Paul and Jesus focused.

  3. Well, this feast thing either defines or perfectly illustrates legalism, doesn’t it? The poor people south of the equator have to keep feasts based on the agricultural events in the northern hemisphere, thus totally destroying the majority of the symbolism! How can you have a spiritual experience based on this type of ritual? The answer is that you can’t.

    In the Old Testament, the same type of strong language was used to express the perpetuity of circumcision as was used to express the perpetuity of all of the other Levitical rituals. Yet, we know what Paul (and later the Jerusalem Council) had to say about circumcision and Christians. There are other clues as well. St. John described feasts in several instances as “the Jews’ Passover”, etc. What would motivate him to express himself in this specific manner? It could be taken as a kind of a slight, or a chop, much the same as if I used the words “your sabbath”, or “the Jewish sabbath” when speaking with a sabbatarian. Unless, of course, those days were intended soley to identify the Jews during a certain time period as set apart, or different people, and John knew this, and was differentiating between the order of things prior to Christ, and after Him.

    I think the real problem I have with Armstrongism in considering whether or not they were really Christlike spiritual guides is the type of unenlightened behavior which was an outgrowth: Don’t help anyone outside of the group. It’s presumptuous to even pray for them, because God is punishing them. Let the dead bury the dead. Your minister’s swimming pool, luxury home and car are far more important!

    BB

  4. Adding to the points above, I would point out that Christians are to love God for all they are worth; the Feast was to teach ancient unconverted Israelites to fear God — that’s what the Scripture says; perfect love casts out fear; therefore (wait for it…!):

    Don’t keep the Feast if you want to love God.

    For those protesting Zechariah 14, Zechariah 14! Awk! Awk! Like some manic parrot, let me point out that the unconverted who fought against the Messiah will have to go up to Jerusalem to keep the Feast or they will have a drought until they do. That isn’t love — that’s fear inducing. I guess you have to hit them over the nose and break it before you can give them a hug.

    Of course, there are a few minor problems with mapping Zechariah to the New Covenant, such as Byker Bob points out: The Feasts were to be kept forever, in the same way as circumcision.

    Right.

    We know how that turned out.

  5. Looking at feast attendance numbers its a banner year for no shows!
    So what can we gather from this information?
    When the economy crashes (and it will) so goes the Armstrong churches. Bankrupt and out of the whoring business.

  6. Just as likely is the lackluster Feast sites which have no appeal, aging ministers giving sermons of hyperbole about doomsday (even though it’s supposed to be all about the world at peace under Jesus), lack of other single members of the opposite sex in your age group (but plenty of aging bachelor weirdos), the promise of things to come shortly obviously a very long way away, the realities of the world far different than promised, inadequate explanations of today’s world news, no focal point to drive the community (needing a strong arm from some place after Armstrong died) and people catching on to the lies, false prophecies and broken promises.

    Add to all this how dangerous it is in the world today and how difficult travel is, along with the growing awareness of accommodations rife with bedbugs, cockroaches and nasty unidentifiable things in the rooms where you might stay, a huge expense for no particularly good reason (not to mention that there is no such thing as second tither), and it all adds up to not adding up.

    With alcoholism and mental illness rife in the Armstrongist churches, get togethers are an exercise in navigating fjords with mines. It is less than pleasant social interaction to have to have contact with narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths and nutjobs in an unpleasant game of member contact roulette.

    There is also the matter in some churches of handling the Ghestapo thug ministry: You are a lowly member and if you run into problems, it’s not their problem and you are on your own. Make sure your insurance policies are up to date and here’s hoping you have an effective useable health plan.

    And sometimes it’s just boredom: How many times over so many years can you bear to listen to exactly the same thing for decades at a time with absolutely nothing new? The only thing this might be good for is the obsessive compulsive and high functioning autistic who can’t tolerate any change and need to have the familiar and predictible or else they panic and go manic.

    Entropy has set in big time and that means a swift decline in no time.

  7. Byker writes:
    “Well, this feast thing either defines or perfectly illustrates legalism, doesn’t it?”

    Yup. Its hard to get around Paul’s statements that once you accept Christ, you’re dead to the law, since his death acted to pay the penalty of law on your behalf. The law can impose no obligations on a dead man. This same idea is carried into common law up to the time of Blackstone, but there was an extra imposition of giving up all claim to worldly wealth. The state or the church couldn’t stand to see a person be both free and wealthy. The entire concept of the New Testament was one of legal sovereignty. This idea was later rought into Western concepts of law by the Puritans, who “Hebraized” the New Testament, crossing protections of Magna Carta, which was only in tended for the Barons of England, and crossing it with rights developed by the Jews who wandered the world up to that time. What we refer to as 4th and 5th amendment protections were part of Magna Carta, but were also developed at the Council of Mainz by the Jews a few centuries earlier, and influenced common law concepts in England. With the combined influence of Puritans, Quakers, and Jews, who had come with William the Conqueror in 1066, law became “democratized”. But Paul had the best argument by simply saying that one is dead to the law unless one harms another. That’s freedom from judgement. There is no law aginst a dead man.

  8. By the way! Is that a blue liquor bottle Herbie is doing his show and tell routine with, or is it a bong? His eyelids would seem to indicate that he’s not drunk, but stoned perhaps on some British Israel weed furnished by one of his grandchildren who were just notorious for their enthusiastic and regular usage of the stuff!

    BB

  9. Looks like the shadow of something coming from the left side of the picture of his mouth. Maybe re-touched. “El Ka Bong”

  10. Nah, just didn’t have time to watch the video, and made my statement based on the still shot. Short time budget this past week!

    BB

  11. Wayne Bedwell never worked at NASA and he was never an Engineer. You want to talk plagiarism and lies, you can start with that one. Wayne Bedwell’s step-son Tim B. Bedwell is currently sitting in Fairbanks alaska jail on 36 counts of raping little girls. He (tim) claims Wayne was a psychopathic violent scum.

    The rest of your article is great and while my little note is irrelevant, it can lend to little insights to some people as you look back in life and your time spent with someone like him.

  12. iamwhoiam, I can only rely on the one on one time I spent with Wayne Bedwell and he related to me that he was a contractor working for NASA — not that he directly worked for NASA. There was nothing in all the time I spent with him personally which would have ever led me to suspect anything you said is true.

    But as you say, that is irrelevant, since I was addressing his Calendar and that is the real information is important.

    On the balance, if you got your information from a man sitting in Fairbanks Alaska jail on 36 counts of raping litle girls, it would suggest that Tim is the psychopath. My experience with psychopaths is that they lie — particularly about relatives — and you cannot trust anything they say. I would rather NOT take anything someone like that in jail at face value, since it is at best a distortion. Psychopaths are quite convincing.

    You may still think that applies to Wayne Bedwell, but I was in his home and everything I could tell did not line up with his being a psychopath.

    Again, the focus is on the Calendar and not to put too fine a point on it, it is my perspective that no matter how much effort he put into it, it seems as if the Calendar he created is wrong (though closer than many and copied by not a few).

    It is also the case that we have seen odd postings in various venues from people who make off the wall statements about people with no proof except inferences from a contaminated witness. It would be helpful if there were some sort of source for statements such as the one you have made so that there are no questions of slander and libel at some future date.

  13. Yes the focus is the calendar and maybe I have no right to exploit your blog regarding what I know of Wayne. None of my information comes from Tim Bedwell. It is those around him and what others have said about what they all believe to know about Wayne. Then for reasons I can explain another time, I had my uncle contact someone at NASA (as he DID work there for 25 years) to confirm Wayne’s involvement. The letter I hold in my hand states clearly that directly nor indirectly (contract) NASA does not have a Wayne Phillip Bedwell on their records. Which to me, is a matter of importance when one wants to make such claims in order to gain the respect of those around him. The check with NASA was completed over 6 months ago, long before your blog statement. If I can get someone to scan it for me, I will send you a jpeg. As far as my statements regarding Wayne being a psychopath, well, many serial killers hide in plain sight and have children and normal families. He tormented Tim to the point that Tim DID grow up to be very abusive to his own children, become a mentally ill fanatical Messianic zealot to the point that he lives and breathes bible codes. As I understand Wayne is/was a severe alcoholic, something had to occur in Tim’s upbringing to become the monster he is.

    I digress again and to you I’m sure it appears I have an agenda. There are wolves in sheep’s clothing, liars and cheats. I have no doubt much of what Wayne discussed and shared with you were grandiose illusions in his mind.

    The Bedwells and their Messianic (or some say Armstrongism cult) has harassed, tortured and have had several innocent people fired for their lies and beliefs that their bible coding is correct and perfect. The cult has destroyed many good people and have left in its wake countless other victims not even connected to this belief system.

    I have not taken the time to read your blog in length. However I do concur, his calendar is wrong.

    I only wish to set the record straight with what I am aware of. I do not deem myself to be a contaminated witness in any way nor do I believe I am libeling Wayne or the Bedwells and their cult. If you feel I’m way out of line, please remove my posts. Thank you for your time Mr Becker.

  14. People who are or have been associated with Armstrongism are frequently quoted on this and other sites. In some cases, they have knowledge and insights which are valuable in helping us understand the various aspects and experiences. It is possible to have an insightful and benign conversation with such a person, and to receive some valid information without that meaning that one endorses that person, or holds him or her up as exemplary to the point of patterning one’s life after them.

    Bottom line is that a lot of really freaky weirdos were attracted to
    Armstrongism, and in attempting to discover truth, you are in a position where you can’t just throw them away.

    BB

  15. Bottom line is that a lot of really freaky weirdos were attracted to
    Armstrongism, and in attempting to discover truth, you are in a position where you can’t just throw them away.

    Anyone who takes a truly objective look at those who have set themselves up to be the ones to carry on the legacy of Herbert Armstrong will find that every last leader and minister of the cult of Armstrong are truly weird and strange.

    I have personally hoped to find someone — anyone — of some worth within the venue, but it is so warped and twisted that pretty much everyone there is a kook at some level. I keep hoping that one morning, they will wake up and realize just how terrible they are and how much damage they have done — to go “This is terrible, how could I have ever done that?”. It has been decades and they keep on doing what they have been doing. They keep thinking what they are thinking. They keep abusing without so much as a twinge of conscience.

    Worse, they just don’t seem to ever be able to comprehend how reprehensible they are, but do have power to influence people who follow them to do evil deeds as well.

    It may look benign from a distance, but it is really a terrible environment in which to be engaged. Some on the fringes who are fairly prosperous and favored by those ministers so very interested in money or have their egos stroked may even find absolutely nothing wrong because they will be treated well.

    If you are poor or in some way unattractive or you have the audacity to find the truth, you will find yourself abused, oppressed and in real trouble or you will find yourself ignored and abandoned.

    Freaky weirdows is just one accurate way to look at them.

    There are many others much less complimentary.

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