7 Replies to “Armstrong the Prophet. True or False?”

  1. What’s really galling (and revealing) is how we all came along into Armstrongism long after his bullshit (British Israelism, and more) had already been exposed. We just didn’t know it had been exposed. Similarly, Christian scholars have known for about 200 years that much of Christianity is myth but the churches they attend keep teaching the same old doctrines. I could go on with many other examples of widespread BS that really has no legs but that stays afloat because powerful people with an agenda keep it alive. Alternative media is a MUST if we want to have any hope of figuring out what’s going on. The Internet is killing off the COGs. Let’s hope it kills of a lot of that other BS as well. There are a few signs of hope. But even the Internet is in their gun sights.

  2. True Gun Lap. The Internet is killing off armstrongism. But who is really doing this? It is the cogs themselves. They are using an early 20th century approach to sell gloom and doom. This approach in the information age will cost them dearly.

    Sure we can at this stage in Amerika have an economic meltdown. I expect it. But the version that the cogs have is nonsensical. The E.U. has no army. It is NATO that provides their protection. If NATO falls apart they will be invaded. No more E.U. Remember, we now have currency wars and trade wars starting with Russia. What follows?

    The chances are soon enough that America will cease to exist as a global superpower because of its over reach and heavy burden of debt. A good thing if your for world peace. But Germany will most likely move over to President Putin’s corner and at that point the cog’s will scream that the conquering of the U.S.A. has begun. However, recall that the Herbster said that Russia and the U.S.A. would never fight a war. Is he right? As history shows, HWA got 99.9% wrong. He was stroking all of us before we had the Internet to use as a fact check and then as a counterbalance.

  3. James, although as an optimist I always hope for something better, the scenarios you have outlined are all possible. We should at least consider them. Most of our colleagues in the ex-Armstrong camp would like to believe that absolutely nothing of a catastrophic nature will happen to the US and UK in our lifetimes. We can most certainly understand a knee-jerk reaction such as that to the manipulative false prophecies which cruelly altered our behavior, but such a world view may be just as myopic and inaccurate as the total destruction and enslavement that we were taught.

    I do find our independence from foreign oil to be encouraging, and there has always been a strong undercurrent pushing for some sort of return to the gold standard for our currency. Although I despise them, the so-called “Tea Party” is here to stay, and will most definitely exert some sort of influence over our future. Lastly, I just watched a most remarkable movie, The Aviator, covering the life and accomplishments of Howard Hughes. This man collected the greatest minds of the twentieth century, and applied them to what many saw as insurmountable problems, overcoming many of them, and creating a lasting impact on all of our lives, actually in spite of his own phobias, ill health, and what we now recognize as mental illnesses. As a nation, the United States still attracts the greatest minds from the international community. I don’t believe most church people are aware of this pool of intelligence and their capabilities, which is why ACOG leaders are able to point to such things as AIDS, Ebola, bird flu, etc., and portray them not as solvable problems, but as the wrath of God against people who do not observe Old Covenant law. Fear motivation often speaks much more eloquently and at a higher volume than quiet scienctific research.

    It’s been a heck of a ride, or as The Grateful Dead once opined, “a long, strange trip”. From 1957-75, I really believed, courtesy of Armstrongism, that I would only be permitted to reach the age of 27. Even though I got out early (they didn’t get a second chance from me after the failure of 1975!), the pervasiveness of Armstrongism from my formulative years continued to have an influence on my life, and indirectly, on the lives of those who were close to me. While I can never fool myself into believing that I could have been a Howard Hughes type, I often wonder what I might have accomplished if properly motivated and encouraged, taking life as it unfolded seriously, rather than having been exposed to the defeating influences of a doomsday mentality.

    BB

  4. Bob,

    I take nothing of armstrongism seriously. I am a realist and what I see by these assholes that run the country is disaster. 17 trillion in debt. 1 – 1.5 quad-trillion in derivatives created by the banks that will come back, 210 trillion in the next 75 years for social security that will need to be paid out. No, its not a rosy picture, but neither is it a dooms day scenario. There is a way out and that being the creation of another currency that is debt free and bankruptcy. I ran enough videos here that explain the way this can run. What scares me for my children is that the politicians never do what is right. Never. It is all for them and fuck the middle class.

    Like I always say, never trust a priest or politician. Their all whores!

  5. While quick to condemn false prophets like Harold Camping and Ron Weinland, HWA is always excused with lame apologetics. Bob Thiel wrote that “HWA was almost right” and Dave Pack claimed that if HWA was wrong, Paul was even more wrong…

    Ron Dart commented a few times about the danger of detail: the more specific the interpretation of a Biblical prophecy becomes, the less likely that it will be fulfilled. The interpretations HWA published, at until the 1970s, were very specific and very detailed. And as we saw in “HWA Disproves the Bible”, he couldn’t even predict the past…

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