Matching the questions to the answers may be problematic!
Within the context of 1971 when it was written, the WCG was living in its last days.
Everything about it is provably false.
Your worries are just beginning!
Only if you spent much of it involved with Herbert Armstrong
That's really rich, coming from the Worldwide Church of God!
Uh... Hello! This coming from Herbert Armstrong? He had a $5 Million divorce!
Really???!!!
Written in 1971, the answer appears to be no!
Financial conversions are not covered! Sorry! If you are talking about religious conversion, well, be aware that in the WCG nothing changed for the better!
R.I.P.
WCG
If you are wondering, Herbert Armstrong was against serving in the military. Unfortunately, if you were a conscientious objector, the last place you wanted to be was serving out your I-W program at Big Sandy, Texas for the WCG! The hypocrisy was horrendous and men were persecuted and abused for their religious beliefs by the religion that taught them!
The WCG never did either.
Is this a choice or are they the same??!!
Which doesn't exist any more!
Yes... no... and NO!
Totally wasted in the WCG!
Lost at last!
Gotten totally wrong!
Still missing: Gone AWOL because of Herbert Armstrong
As opposed to the decline of the WCG
And not one word about teens and cell phones!
The truth is that if it's serious, you should go see a doctor!
Should be titled: The Proof of the Old Testament Using Fulfilled Prophecies (some of which failed). Talk about not living up to its promises!
Garner Ted Armstrong
- Gambler
- Adulterer
- Boozing Alcoholic
- Serial Rapist
Yup! He knew Jesus!
Written by Roderick Meredith in 1955. He should have researched to find out how to prevent his diabetes.
Failed to include planning.
Would have helped for planning his succession....
Written in 1964: The truth really changed in a decade!
Fail! Fail! Fail! Fail! Fail!
We have proof the United States and British Commonwealth are not from Israel!
The WCG predicted by Revelation???!!
The author didn't have a clue!
Not any more: Doesn't exist!
The WCG sure knew how!
It's hard to pick one out of the 40 written!
It's more important to know what science can discover about the human mind poisoned by boozing alcoholics of Armstrongism!
Given the Waring tribes of Armstrongism, it would be interesting to know!
If only you stay away from Armstrongism, you'll have a much more awesome future, unless you define awesome as totally dysfunctional.
Oops!
Herbert Armstrong wrote a lot of booklets which made promises — actual and implied. When we go back through and review the booklets he and his staff wrote in the light of what has actually happened, it is clear that the great swelling promises and prognostications were profoundly empty. Looking back, the booklets now seem crassly hypocritical. The Radio Church of God, Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God never measured up to the very standards they set. The slide show includes only 39 of the booklets:
- Answers from Genesis (1973)
- Are We Living in the Last Days (1971)
- A True History of the True Church (1959: ‘Dr.’ Herman Hoeh)
- Ending Your Financial Worries (1959)
- Has Time Been Lost? (1952)
- Hippies, Hypocrisy and Happiness (1968)
- How to Have a Happy Marriage
- How to Understand Prophecy (1972)
- Is this the End Time (1971)
- Just What Do You Mean Conversion? (1972)
- Life After Death (1973)
- Military Service and War (1967)
- Never Before Understood: Why Humanity Cannot Solve Its Evils (1981)
- Pagan Holidays or God’s Holy Days? (1976)
- Seven Proofs of God’s True Church (1974: Garner Ted Armstrong)
- The Bible: Superstition or Authority? …and can you prove it? (1985)
- The Incredible Human Potential (1978)
- The Key to the Book of Revelation (1952)
- The Mark of the Beast (1952)
- The Middle East in Prophecy (1948)
- The Missing Dimension in Sex (1964)
- The Modern Romans (1971)
- The Plain Truth about Child Rearing (1963)
- The Plain Truth about Healing (1979)
- The Proof of the Bible (1958)
- The Real Jesus (1971: Garner Ted Armstrong)
- The Seven Laws of Radiant Health (1955: Roderick Meredith)
- The Seven Laws of Success (1961)
- The Truth about Make-Up (1964)
- The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy (1964)
- The White Horse: False Religion (1976)
- The Wonderful World Tomorrow: What Will It Be Like? (1973)
- This is the Worldwide Church of God (1971)
- To Kill a People (1971)
- What Is the True Gospel (1955)
- What Science Can’t Discover About the Human Mind (1978)
- Why Were You Born? (1957)
- World Peace: How Will It Come? (1978)
- Your Awesome Future: How Religion Deceives You (1978)
- [jqeasytooltip tiptheme=”tipthemewhite” tipicon=”fa fa-frown-o” tipposition=”tiptop” tipfollowcursor=”true” ][jqeasytooltipcontent]The absolutely most embarrassing prophecy ever![/jqeasytooltipcontent]1975 in Prophecy[/jqeasytooltip] (1956)
[jqeasytooltip tiptheme=”tipthemeflatdarklight” tipmaxwidth=”610″ tipicon=”fa fa-book” tipminmargin=”15″ tipposition=”tiptop” tipfollowcursor=”true” ][jqeasytooltipcontent]
Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
by Robert Jackal; Oxford University Press, Copyright 2010
Chapter 7: The Magic Lantern, page 185.
[/jqeasytooltipcontent]Moral Mazes[/jqeasytooltip] aptly describes what is represented by this list of Armstrongist publications:
From the standpoint of public relations, the journalistic ideology closely resembles the social outlook of most college seniors — a vague but pious middle-class liberalism, a mildly critical stance toward their fathers in particular and authorities in general; a maudlin of championship of the poor and the underclass; and especially the doctrine of tolerance, open-mindedness, and balance. In fact, public relations people feel, the news media are also constructing reality. They are always looking for a “fresh” and exciting angle; they have an unerring instinct for the sentimental that expresses itself in a preference for “human interest” rather than substance; and they arrange facts in a way that purports to convey “truth,” but is in fact simply another story. In reality, news is entertainment. And, despite the public’s acceptance of journalistic ideologies, most of the public watch or read news not to be informed or to learn the “truth,” but precisely to be entertained. There is no intrinsic reason, therefore, why the constructions of reality by public relations specialists should be thought of as any different from those of any group in the business of telling stories to the public. Everyone is telling stories and everyone has a story to tell. Public relations men and women are simply storytellers with a purpose in the free market of ideas, advocates of a certain point of view in the court of public opinion. Since any notion of truth is irrelevant or refers to at best what is perceived, persuasion of various sorts becomes everything.
And there it is. Armstrongism isn’t about truth; it is simply about manipulating perceptions to evoke responses to their story telling. Herbert Armstrong was an ad copy writer, after all. As such, he lined up some facts, threw in some colorful descriptions and weaved his fictional stories. The booklets in the slides presentation above is representative of this magical world of the ‘magic lantern’, creating illusions illustrating imaginary constructs of perceived ‘reality’. There is neither truth nor reality in any of it. It is all fake.
Moreover, it isn’t just about Herbert Armstrong and his ‘public relations’ advertising hirelings, it is also about The Journal, which is exposed for what it is in the brief description given by Robert Jackal; to wit: the pursuit of a “fresh” and exciting angle with an unerring instinct for the sentimental that expresses itself in a preference for “human interest” rather than substance; and the facts are arranged in a way that purports to convey “truth,” but is in fact simply another story — in reality, it is merely infotainment. The editor reveals his true self when he speaks of the doctrine of tolerance, open-mindedness, and balance — while secretly harboring contempt for the “farmer theologians” who deign to advertise in its pages.
Moral Mazes has framed it and nailed it in the landscape of the church cult corporate of lies, deceits, conceits, fiction, fantasy — all parading as religious truth — which, if it be told, can be demonstrated as pure rubbish if you but stand back and look at the chaotic mess it represents.
Dr. James Milam, in his book, [jqeasytooltip tiptheme=”tipthemesquareyellow” tipmaxwidth=”100″ tipicon=”fa fa-book” tipminmargin=”15″ tipposition=”tiptop” tipfollowcursor=”true” ][jqeasytooltipcontent]Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.: Houston, Texas; 2013[/jqeasytooltipcontent]Ending the Drug Addiction Pandemic: Discovering the Liberating Truth[/jqeasytooltip], in Chapter 2: Core Evidence (page 17), says:
Within the big lie all of the component falsehoods have been carefully crafted to support each other in concealing the whole truth. To assemble the abundance of decisive scientific and clinical evidence comprising the biogenic paradigm it is necessary to identify, define, and disentangle each piece of the truth from the corresponding part of the shroud of disinformation that has so carefully hidden for so long. Surrounded by the support of the others each falsehood has become an inarguable given truth. It is therefor necessary to confront and discredit them one by one until the whole fabric of disinformation is disposed of.
He adds this sentence in Chapter 3: The Language of Denial (page 34):
The familiar comes to seem normal and every big lie develops its own familiar language of deception that conceals the truth while purporting to represent it.
In the end, Armstrongism promises the truth and fails to deliver. What it delivers instead is empty promises which can never be fulfilled.
‘And there it is. Armstrongism isn’t about truth; it is simply about manipulating perceptions to evoke responses to their story telling.’
And that response in the end was giving money. I gave a lot of money back in the day and never realized that religion was a fraud for weak people. I paid the price to learn about scams. Never again.
Great slideshow. Crassly hypocritical is right. However, that Herbert Armstrong penned some false “news” stories and made some empty promises is to understate the case pretty dramatically, IMHO. He was simply putting his own tip on the iceberg of empty promises penned 2000+ years prior. The bible is full of promises, all of which are just as empty. Just because a scam is ancient doesn’t mean it isn’t a scam, and just because the original proprietors of it are long dead doesn’t mean it’s too late to get your own franchise. The mass of humanity begging to be milked is larger in absolute terms at least, than ever before.
Danny, you may certainly be right, but in this context, the slides collectively demonstrate not just hypocrisy, not just a scam, but anti Biblical booklets.
Herbert Armstrong and his hirelings managed to milk the Bible for narratives it never gave for fun and mostly profit. For example, The United States and British Commonwealth is totally at variance with the Bible. He used Scripture as a prop to create an imaginary world.
It does not matter whether or not the Bible is imaginary, because whether it is or not, Herbert Armstrong interpreted it to mean things it never said.
As for franchises, as the slide show demonstrates, the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia starts with everyone believing that the Bible is true, then just makes up stuff to sound religious, deceiving people into believing in the brand.
I don’t disagree, but even if he wrote pro-biblical booklets, and didn’t just use scripture as a prop, the “world” created by the things scripture does in fact say is no less imaginary and no less made up. Just because the bible is 2000 year-old stuff that was made up to sound religious, it’s still made up stuff. Making up MORE stuff surely makes an imaginary world, but now we’re just dealing with two different but equally imaginary worlds. Armstrongism might be malignant, but believing the bible is literally true is already a force for latent malignancy. That’s the one thing that liberal christianty gets right, because even though they do it on the downlow, they don’t for one second believe the bible is literally true.
Interesting that COGWriter occassionally posts the cover of one of HWA’s booklets, along with a sizeable exerpt. This is usually a lead-in to a sermon or an annotated version of most of the booklet. A few weeks ago, the booklet featured was the above ‘Answers from Genesis’, and most recently, ‘Seven Laws of Success’.
I guess Bob doesn’t have the staff available to rewrite all the WCG booklets like Dave Pack and others did – or the money to buy the copyrights…