Considered a normal part of American and European culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, post-mortem photography was the practice of photographing the recently deceased. Because of the high childhood and infant mortality rate of the time, this was a significant way to memorializing lost family members. In some cases, this was the only photograph that depicted the entire family together.
When you view these photos, often you will see the eyes wide open with the pupils painted on over the eyelids giving the appearance that the child is still full of life.
It has been asked: What if Hitler would have died at birth or was never conceived? How many millions would have lived a normal life without the violence and death that the tyrant bought upon this earth? Let us apply this idea to HWA. If the old man never lived to see adulthood, there would never have been those who suffered violence at the hands of a religious tyrant. There never would have been those minions, who like Hitlers henchmen, inflicted perverse suffering upon the people. But religion as in politics, allows opportunity for the narcissistic and psychopathic who walk upon this earth.
Props were used to position the deceased.
After learning about the Worldwide Church of God in the seventy’s [from my husband] and becoming a baptized member in seventy-four, my life have been one of HELL. Please forgive me if I take you through parts of my life and background….this is the only way you can understand the destruction and severe emotional pain Worldwide Church of God caused, in my life and in the life of my family and relatives.
My goal in life was to become a doctor…but during that time I met a man who I thought was someone of class. We went on a couple of dates in Trinidad W I….then I left for the USA to fulfill my dreams of becoming a doctor. Plans did not formulate as I wanted, so I was back in Trinidad., with the intentions to return in the USA to achieve my dreams.
After returning to Trinidad, I married the same guy I left behind. Before that, he proved to be charming, loving and concern about our relationship as a couple. It wasn’t that long within the marriage that he got hook on the World Tomorrow program and Plain Truth magazines. This is where our life together as a couple, or as husband and wife got screwed. The man I married was not the same. He became HWA clone…[and as you know, once this happens, all plans or dreams were out the window and becoming a doctor was just an idea].
I personally did not like the idea of a church or anyone else dictating to me what I should do with my life….but because of my marriage, I went along with my husband.
This is where the true meaning of hell on earth started.
*Imagine I was timed in the shower by my husband. *Our anniversary or any other days, were not important. *My family and parents were nothing….and as you know the list goes on and on. All the church rules and dos and don’ts, I did question often and always ‘ended-up’ in a minister’s office. There, he had the opportunity to show-off his authority as the chosen one from God.
My life with my husband began to drift apart. He was in charge and in control of everything. Seeing my parents or sisters was a major issue in our marriage. Everything I had, [property or money] became my husbands’. All my friends I had to give-up. My life at this time was only Worldwide Church of God and my husband.
Nazis in the pulpit
WCG child abuse
When I left home at 18, I had no functional brain about life, about nothing. I am about 20 to 25 years behind where I should be in life. It took a long time for me to figure out that there was something wrong, and I finally found out what has caused all of my years of ‘the painful truth,’ a child shall be seen and not heard. That is the same as locking a child up in a closet and then when they turn 18, turn them out into the world. You tell me how that person could get along. It is the only way to describe it.
Then today, people don’t understand that your inept abilities come from your religious childhood. And the stories we were told to make us mind. About when it was time to go to the place of safety (1975) God would call our name, and if we didn’t hear him we would be left behind. Then the Germans would come, and you know what Germans do to little girls. And when they are done with you they will tie one of your legs to a jeep and your other leg to another jeep and go off in different directions.
I am stuck in an abusive relationship because I am afraid to be alone. People tell me to get over it. I can’t. Since I was a little kid I was afraid to be left alone. If my Mom was late, I was afraid that God called her name and not mine and I would get left behind. I lived with that constant fear, it was a part of me, it is apart of me.
I ended up, at the age of 21, marrying a man that was 45 years old. I finally out grew him, but he raised me. How do you get away from a man with 25 years more experience than you who raised you, and the underlying fear of being out in the world alone because what some church had engraved in your mind? Now my daughter is paying the price.
So now Herbert, wherever you are, you are going into the second, and the third generations. It’s the painful truth I live every day.
Racist and in church
Racism in my church. We had ONE black family. At church dances we were instructed to not dance with them.. We had an Asian woman and her white husband join…During the Sermon they were called to stand and were given as an example not to follow. ( They had married before entering “the church”) My mother was called a “Spiritual widow” because my father didn´t attend church. We were treated as second class citizens because of this. My best friend at 16 was forced to marry our earlier YES teacher because she became pregnant by his abuse… He was in his late thirties. He came from a prominent family and everyone excepted it. Even though she had maintained sexual relations with him since she was 13. He would later on sexually abuse their 2 year old daughter and she would be asked to leave the church and him allowed to stay. Another friend who also tithed her non-church going husbands money… She wanted to leave him because he abused drugs, she was told by the pastor that she would be discommunicated for leaving her husband. My sister was kicked out for wearing gold earrings that resembled calves( they were koalas!). My brothers left to assume crime ridden lives. I left and had a family of 4 kids by the time I was 21. My mother and younger sister left to join the Spin off church that was voted on in our area. The still attend. My sister and mother are followers… They just did away with ALL their beliefs and joined a Sunday worship, xmas celebrating, ham eating church. I was so excited to tell my father this years later. (She never told him of the changes). Needless to say, there was no Ham brought into that house after that day by my dad! My Dad years ago stopped drinking, I have told him about all the secrets and abuse and he hugged me and said ” I would of protected you if I´d only known” I don´t know if that´s true or not… I´ve forgiven my mother. She only did what she knew growing up. She was brainwashed, weak, ill. I rejected ALL faiths for years. It was very hard to learn to love a “new” God! A forgiving, loving God.
The World Wide Church of God did NOT worship God. We worshiped HWA and his teachings. We cannot forget this. HWA had many symptoms of Schizophrenia, from finding secret messages in jumbled up scripture to thinking he was God or God´s Prophet. Most people who “run” cults may start out in the beginning thinking they´re in it for the money or even to do good, but most actually end up thinking they are God to their followers, and they are! We gave HWA and his Elders the power and we have the power to take it away.
So why does the Painful Truth still speak out about the legacy of Herbert Armstrong and of the corruption of his deceased empire?
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me- -Martin Niemöller
It is these very words that should cause recourse in your mind to do what good you can while on this earth. We are the victims by the way of our past association with Armstrongism. It is we who speak out in order to assist those who are currently being abused and to protect the public from these unscrupulous cult leaders and those who within who wreck havoc on the very fabric of our families. Quit being a victim and join those who reach out and expose these cults for what they really are. It is not your salvation, but you destruction if you remain. If you don’t agree, go back and read this article again. If these stories don’t resound with your conscious then your either brain dead or a psychopath.
“Armstrong was a man utterly without honor, without principles, without a shred of genuine decency or patriotism. He was the ultimate exterminator of religious life for thousands, and the grand compelling creator of a vast army of atheists.”
6 Replies to “Post-mortem. Part One.”
David Robinson pointed out that if the incest Herbert Armstrong committed was discovered and he was tried and convicted in Texas prior to the mid 1950s, he would have been sentenced to death.
Yet people in the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia take it in stride as if it were no big thing. It’s just another factoid of infotainment.
Herbert was an undiscovered criminal felon who would have been put to death if he had been discovered, but he wasn’t and as a result, he learned that he could get away with stuff. He found he could push people around and get what he wanted. He was the ultimate pervert who defied the authority over him in the CoG7D. He lived a life where he knew he could do anything he wanted and get away with it.
So today people give him a free pass. They even make excuses for him. It’s the incest. It’s his tithing less than 10% of his income. It’s his being a proven false prophet upon whom the death penalty was pronounced by the Old Testament. It was eating a donut and drinking coffee on the Day of Atonement. It was the booklet How to Have a Happy Marriage while he got a divorce which cost us $5 million. It was his lies, deceits, false prophecies, his narcissism. And people pass it off as no big thing.
It is a big thing: His actions doomed thousands of people to a miserable dysfunctional life. He created generations of despot ministers who lord it over their congregations. He created a hideous corporate monolith which looked good on the surface but ruined the lives it touched.
Herbert Armstrong was a low life bottom feeder.
And people are too stupid to recognize how rotten he really was from the very beginning.
Hitler and HWA hypotheticals – the bigger the splash, the bigger the ripples. With no Hitler, perhaps no one to bolster and then rescue Mussolini, no funding for what became the space program, no rush to develop atomic weapons. There was still the USSR and Japan.
With no HWA, the big cults would still be here, and CG7 would have gone on with its other problems. Maybe Dave Pack would now have gold medals, and Rod Meredith, golden gloves – unless they took a liking to one of the big cults.
I’ve always wondered what would have happened if HWA had chosen the Seventh-Day Adventists over CG7. He wouldn’t have made as big a splash with the SDAs.
There is a reason why Armstrongism + splinters have generally had the marking and shunning rule applying to former members. If you allow those who have left or have been put out to explain themselves, what they have to say as they do their own post mortem analyses will in the broad majority of cases make perfect sense, and could, over a period of time, open the minds of countless others, causing them to leave as well. When you have created a sham, the state of deception is very delicate, and a creator knows it, and is constantly re-selling the conned. This happens with any sort of deceptive sales activity. When people have been deceived or conned, they become angry if they ever realize it. In the secular world, communication amongst those who have been bilked is what leads to class action law suits.
A precedent was set back in the early 1970s. Prior to that, the disfellowshipped mostly just quietly skulked off, never to be seen or heard from again, tried to reingratiate themselves with their families, and started a new life as best as they could. However, in the 1970s, several high profile ministers modified a few doctrines to suit their own tastes, and provided places for former members to continue fellowshipping, if they wanted to stick with the major doctrines such as the sabbath, holy days, clean meats, and (ahem!) tithing. Also, John Trechak did something on such a large scale, that nobody had even remotely considered before. He actually began publishing a news magazine reporting carefully researched and confirmed events and information which normally would have been suppressed or officially spun by HWA and the management of WCG. This was so accurate and so effective that members of the aforementioned team relied on Ambassador Reports for news that their own people had suppressed and kept from them.
While the marking and shunning policies presuppose the fragileness of the state of mind of those conned, another profile is the resolute stalwart, those who have totally imbibed of the Kool Aid, and for whom there exists nothing else. As an example, surely we can readily understand what happens in the mind of some little old church lady who has committed the past 3-4 decades of her life to Armstrongism as she suddenly runs across one of several “dissident” sites. Maybe she is one of the docile ones who never ran up against “church authority”, never suffered personal catastrophe as a result of any of the doctrines, doesn’t see any racism in the British Israel theory, and chalks up failed prophecy to imperfect understanding. Her programming will kick in, and she will inwardly proclaim, “My word! These people are bitter! Look at all the time they have put into this site! Why can’t they just move on? They are stuck in the past! Why this is exactly what God’s apostle said happens to the minds of those who leave God’s True Church! How awful! They have no lives!”
My response to that would be that there are some very special human beings, who have a sense of humanity, a sense of public service, and who are willing to indulge in self-sacrifice, at their own expense, just to prevent people from being deceived, taken advantage of, or getting hurt. The need for this has not faded. We still have people being ripped off for their 401Ks to fund useless ego projects for abominable tyrants, who in turn “thank” them by abusing them! People with their entire lives ahead of them are still killing themselves because of arbitrary decisions and impositions made upon them by dumb, unthinking, unqualified, and inhumane asses, calling themselves servants of God, as if labeling themselves as that automatically fills them with wisdom or imbues them with authority! So long as these deplorable conditions exist, it is necessary to have people pointing out that surely there is a better way. My question would be, why wait for something bad to happen, when there is an opportunity to leave these groups right now, before suffering? The fruits are already known, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Why do you people in these horrible ACOGs try to kid yourselves that the only thing wrong is your attitude? The fact that you even need to indulge in such mental gymnastics should tell you all that you need to know!
As to the incest, the people don’t care. They lack morals as if they never ever had them. They may never had morals, who knows.
If they ever had high moral standards before they joined their cult, they tossed them when they joined. Why would you do that? For the lie of salvation through your armstrong based church? Does fear do that to people? Just what would God think of the cowardly?
Revelation 21:8 ‘But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.’
The members will join their atheist pastors in the lake of fire. No one teaches armstrongism after finding out through legal documents that the old man screwed his daughter for years. God does not use sexual deviants.
James, it’s clear you are right that people don’t care. They are so fixated on what they want out of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia that they’ve abstracted the horrible terrible evil that he produced: “Well, there’s something wrong with all the groups and there isn’t anyone that has 100% of the truth”. That’s a direct quote. It’s useless to point out that those same groups are 100% wrong, so picking and choosing isn’t really an option.
I see a disconnect between what people know and what they believe based on their feelings. The rotten wickedness of the leaders (and most of the members) of these groups is so staggering that the small minds cannot encompass it. They will argue that there isn’t any proof that Herbert Armstrong committed the incest — “Were you there?” they will say. They have to believe that God gave them a personal message from the cons. They say they’ve checked it out in the Bible. When it is pointed out that they are not following what the New Testament says, they argue that all of Scripture is in effect. When you counter that we don’t keep animal sacrifices, they lapse into insisting that it is what they believe and it would defile their conscience not to keep doing what they are doing, no matter how much it costs: They are addicts.
So I believe that you are right: They lack morals. It’s not as clear cut as someone might think: They have deluded themselves that since Abraham lied, Herbert Armstrong gets a free pass, not realizing that Herbert Armstrong didn’t just lie, he was a liar (and there’s no excuse once someone reads chapter 23 of The Journey). They don’t put it together that Jesus said that Satan was a murder and a liar from the beginning and that Herbert Armstrong was of Satan (and in this case, for the atheists out there, it does not matter if God exists or not — Satan sure does: Maybe not as a person, but certainly as a real solid concept of evil delivery).
The world would be a lot better off if everyone had their own copy and read, “The Christian Delusion” — taking it to heart. The deck is stacked against the truth. Even our own brains are turned against us: Humans are chaotic and irrational. It is uncomfortable to face the truth. Science is an inconvenient truth.
It is my belief that the people who lack structural visualization (as did Herbert Armstrong) just don’t have the capacity to see beyond their own misery where they are trapped in lusting for this world to end because they are so miserable in it. They have been convinced that the only way to a better world is for them to die and the whole world to be destroyed. They dote on it. It is an imperative. Anything that feeds into their delusion they accept as verification of their reality. They would be lost without it.
Beyond that, they have the support of others. They do not realize that it is stupid to rely on anyone in a cult for your belief system. They do not perceive the ‘cult’ in their culture. It makes it seem so reasonable when it is anything but.
What we have here are groups of people who are best described in the DSM-5, led by perfectly rotten people who are best described in the worst portions of the DSM-5. Lies, murders, thievery, false prophets, abuse don’t matter as long as they can get their ‘fix’ of delusions to allay the pain of their miserable lives which would be so much better if they just saw how great their lives really are and what good there is in the world instead of doting on all the negative.
Not only does not God use sexual deviants and / or false prophets, He didn’t send psychopaths to teach people about Him. And it’s up to each person to work out his / her own salvation from narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, cons, the weird and creepy, the borderline, stalkers, fondlers and nut jobs with fear and trembling. That’s why God gave us Dr. Phil and his book, “Life Code”.
Ah, but you can read the book, but you have to put it together and abandon the disconnect to move to the land of reality.
David Robinson pointed out that if the incest Herbert Armstrong committed was discovered and he was tried and convicted in Texas prior to the mid 1950s, he would have been sentenced to death.
Yet people in the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia take it in stride as if it were no big thing. It’s just another factoid of infotainment.
Herbert was an undiscovered criminal felon who would have been put to death if he had been discovered, but he wasn’t and as a result, he learned that he could get away with stuff. He found he could push people around and get what he wanted. He was the ultimate pervert who defied the authority over him in the CoG7D. He lived a life where he knew he could do anything he wanted and get away with it.
So today people give him a free pass. They even make excuses for him. It’s the incest. It’s his tithing less than 10% of his income. It’s his being a proven false prophet upon whom the death penalty was pronounced by the Old Testament. It was eating a donut and drinking coffee on the Day of Atonement. It was the booklet How to Have a Happy Marriage while he got a divorce which cost us $5 million. It was his lies, deceits, false prophecies, his narcissism. And people pass it off as no big thing.
It is a big thing: His actions doomed thousands of people to a miserable dysfunctional life. He created generations of despot ministers who lord it over their congregations. He created a hideous corporate monolith which looked good on the surface but ruined the lives it touched.
Herbert Armstrong was a low life bottom feeder.
And people are too stupid to recognize how rotten he really was from the very beginning.
Hitler and HWA hypotheticals – the bigger the splash, the bigger the ripples. With no Hitler, perhaps no one to bolster and then rescue Mussolini, no funding for what became the space program, no rush to develop atomic weapons. There was still the USSR and Japan.
With no HWA, the big cults would still be here, and CG7 would have gone on with its other problems. Maybe Dave Pack would now have gold medals, and Rod Meredith, golden gloves – unless they took a liking to one of the big cults.
I’ve always wondered what would have happened if HWA had chosen the Seventh-Day Adventists over CG7. He wouldn’t have made as big a splash with the SDAs.
There is a reason why Armstrongism + splinters have generally had the marking and shunning rule applying to former members. If you allow those who have left or have been put out to explain themselves, what they have to say as they do their own post mortem analyses will in the broad majority of cases make perfect sense, and could, over a period of time, open the minds of countless others, causing them to leave as well. When you have created a sham, the state of deception is very delicate, and a creator knows it, and is constantly re-selling the conned. This happens with any sort of deceptive sales activity. When people have been deceived or conned, they become angry if they ever realize it. In the secular world, communication amongst those who have been bilked is what leads to class action law suits.
A precedent was set back in the early 1970s. Prior to that, the disfellowshipped mostly just quietly skulked off, never to be seen or heard from again, tried to reingratiate themselves with their families, and started a new life as best as they could. However, in the 1970s, several high profile ministers modified a few doctrines to suit their own tastes, and provided places for former members to continue fellowshipping, if they wanted to stick with the major doctrines such as the sabbath, holy days, clean meats, and (ahem!) tithing. Also, John Trechak did something on such a large scale, that nobody had even remotely considered before. He actually began publishing a news magazine reporting carefully researched and confirmed events and information which normally would have been suppressed or officially spun by HWA and the management of WCG. This was so accurate and so effective that members of the aforementioned team relied on Ambassador Reports for news that their own people had suppressed and kept from them.
While the marking and shunning policies presuppose the fragileness of the state of mind of those conned, another profile is the resolute stalwart, those who have totally imbibed of the Kool Aid, and for whom there exists nothing else. As an example, surely we can readily understand what happens in the mind of some little old church lady who has committed the past 3-4 decades of her life to Armstrongism as she suddenly runs across one of several “dissident” sites. Maybe she is one of the docile ones who never ran up against “church authority”, never suffered personal catastrophe as a result of any of the doctrines, doesn’t see any racism in the British Israel theory, and chalks up failed prophecy to imperfect understanding. Her programming will kick in, and she will inwardly proclaim, “My word! These people are bitter! Look at all the time they have put into this site! Why can’t they just move on? They are stuck in the past! Why this is exactly what God’s apostle said happens to the minds of those who leave God’s True Church! How awful! They have no lives!”
My response to that would be that there are some very special human beings, who have a sense of humanity, a sense of public service, and who are willing to indulge in self-sacrifice, at their own expense, just to prevent people from being deceived, taken advantage of, or getting hurt. The need for this has not faded. We still have people being ripped off for their 401Ks to fund useless ego projects for abominable tyrants, who in turn “thank” them by abusing them! People with their entire lives ahead of them are still killing themselves because of arbitrary decisions and impositions made upon them by dumb, unthinking, unqualified, and inhumane asses, calling themselves servants of God, as if labeling themselves as that automatically fills them with wisdom or imbues them with authority! So long as these deplorable conditions exist, it is necessary to have people pointing out that surely there is a better way. My question would be, why wait for something bad to happen, when there is an opportunity to leave these groups right now, before suffering? The fruits are already known, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Why do you people in these horrible ACOGs try to kid yourselves that the only thing wrong is your attitude? The fact that you even need to indulge in such mental gymnastics should tell you all that you need to know!
BB
But is it not nice to know we can always come here to PT website, and get a fresh charge of reality? I know I drop by from time to time for just that.
As to the incest, the people don’t care. They lack morals as if they never ever had them. They may never had morals, who knows.
If they ever had high moral standards before they joined their cult, they tossed them when they joined. Why would you do that? For the lie of salvation through your armstrong based church? Does fear do that to people? Just what would God think of the cowardly?
Revelation 21:8 ‘But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.’
The members will join their atheist pastors in the lake of fire. No one teaches armstrongism after finding out through legal documents that the old man screwed his daughter for years. God does not use sexual deviants.
James, it’s clear you are right that people don’t care. They are so fixated on what they want out of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia that they’ve abstracted the horrible terrible evil that he produced: “Well, there’s something wrong with all the groups and there isn’t anyone that has 100% of the truth”. That’s a direct quote. It’s useless to point out that those same groups are 100% wrong, so picking and choosing isn’t really an option.
I see a disconnect between what people know and what they believe based on their feelings. The rotten wickedness of the leaders (and most of the members) of these groups is so staggering that the small minds cannot encompass it. They will argue that there isn’t any proof that Herbert Armstrong committed the incest — “Were you there?” they will say. They have to believe that God gave them a personal message from the cons. They say they’ve checked it out in the Bible. When it is pointed out that they are not following what the New Testament says, they argue that all of Scripture is in effect. When you counter that we don’t keep animal sacrifices, they lapse into insisting that it is what they believe and it would defile their conscience not to keep doing what they are doing, no matter how much it costs: They are addicts.
So I believe that you are right: They lack morals. It’s not as clear cut as someone might think: They have deluded themselves that since Abraham lied, Herbert Armstrong gets a free pass, not realizing that Herbert Armstrong didn’t just lie, he was a liar (and there’s no excuse once someone reads chapter 23 of The Journey). They don’t put it together that Jesus said that Satan was a murder and a liar from the beginning and that Herbert Armstrong was of Satan (and in this case, for the atheists out there, it does not matter if God exists or not — Satan sure does: Maybe not as a person, but certainly as a real solid concept of evil delivery).
The world would be a lot better off if everyone had their own copy and read, “The Christian Delusion” — taking it to heart. The deck is stacked against the truth. Even our own brains are turned against us: Humans are chaotic and irrational. It is uncomfortable to face the truth. Science is an inconvenient truth.
It is my belief that the people who lack structural visualization (as did Herbert Armstrong) just don’t have the capacity to see beyond their own misery where they are trapped in lusting for this world to end because they are so miserable in it. They have been convinced that the only way to a better world is for them to die and the whole world to be destroyed. They dote on it. It is an imperative. Anything that feeds into their delusion they accept as verification of their reality. They would be lost without it.
Beyond that, they have the support of others. They do not realize that it is stupid to rely on anyone in a cult for your belief system. They do not perceive the ‘cult’ in their culture. It makes it seem so reasonable when it is anything but.
What we have here are groups of people who are best described in the DSM-5, led by perfectly rotten people who are best described in the worst portions of the DSM-5. Lies, murders, thievery, false prophets, abuse don’t matter as long as they can get their ‘fix’ of delusions to allay the pain of their miserable lives which would be so much better if they just saw how great their lives really are and what good there is in the world instead of doting on all the negative.
Not only does not God use sexual deviants and / or false prophets, He didn’t send psychopaths to teach people about Him. And it’s up to each person to work out his / her own salvation from narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, cons, the weird and creepy, the borderline, stalkers, fondlers and nut jobs with fear and trembling. That’s why God gave us Dr. Phil and his book, “Life Code”.
Ah, but you can read the book, but you have to put it together and abandon the disconnect to move to the land of reality.