Watch until 46:30 for point to be made.
My comment to them early this morning is as follows: “Armstrongism. Its all about the man. Its all about his personal history and his sex crimes which you people never get around to discussing. Here’s an idea for a show. “Does God Use Incestuous Perverts to Further HIS Gospel?”
From Church of God News we read:
Church of God International
Wes White is never far from controversy. Following his article in The Journal on the Church and Politics (Aug.31, p.3), he joked at the start of the September
16th edition of ‘Bring on the Sabbath’, “I’m sure we’re going to get cancelled…” and then (at 17 minutes) he talked positively about the Ambassador Review/Report, which exposed abuses by leaders of the Worldwide Church of God in the 1970s and 1980s, and he also welcomed today’s anti-Armstrongism blog sites, as they are performing the same function on the Internet today.
After another controversial program on December 16th, in which he reiterated the above comments, the show has been cancelled, for at least one week anyway, for December 23rd, Wes White having resigned from the show (but not from the CGI). He has made no announcement yet, and Jeff Reed would/could only comment, “Please be assured that the CGI does not believe in censoring or being politically correct. That is demonstrated by the diversity in approaches we present on our website … And be assured if Wes ever decides to rejoin BOTS, it will still be his decision.”
With what Wes has published on YouTube we feel it is only a matter of time before this truth-teller gets the ax from his handlers and a letter of disfellowship.
Wes, want to blog about your experiences with “Armstrongism” here? Feel free to contact us. We would love to talk with you!
These folks are a far cry from the likes of Bob Thiel, who plays the role of Christ’s ventriloquist. Telling us what “God” says and what to believe because he has a diploma from a mill. The reality is, Bob has no credentials.
The one aspect to this webcast that reaches out and grabs the causal viewer is how “on the defensive” Wes’s experience with Armstrongism has caused him to be. He spends so much of the air time dealing with the past errors and bungling of the Armstrong movement, that he himself actually comes off as being a frustrated dissident himself, although perhaps more properly classified as “dissident light.” It would not be at all unusual if Wes’s presentation has been an external and public processing of his own cognitive dissonance, and that his leaving the program is a step towards resolution of that cognitive dissonance. His next steps will provide the answer to that.
And, then, there is the obligatory mention of and gesture towards “the truth”, the Armstrong belief that the sabbath and holy days were not fulfilled or modified via the passage from Old Covenant to New. That “understanding” was supposed to be the primary factor that God looked upon in determining who his people are, and to whom the correct understanding of end times prophecies would be revealed. It seems abundantly clear through non-fulfillment that the Armstrong understanding was no more accurate or special than anyone else’s. Judging them by their own reasoning, wrong prophecy then turns it all around and indicates wrong doctrine. The two go hand in hand. Eventually, this will dawn on them. You simply can’t wait forever for a man’s misunderstanding of prophecy or indeed his false prophecy to be fulfilled. It’s like ignorantly snapping your fingers over your car battery and expecting your car to start. Some vital act or information is missing from the picture which would take you to the next step.
BB
What I hope comes of this is the slow dawning of the realization of the reality of just how much harm and damage has been done as a result of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia. People like Wes White and perhaps Ian, have lived in areas far away from the central power base — areas more rural and much less urban. It is conceivable that many of the ministers have not had a clue as to just how bad Armstrongism can really be, especially if they’ve been shielded from the narcissistic abuse of a self-aggrandizing leader and his legions of protectors surrounding him. It’s the perfect storm of corporate America where the leader is right, has no accountability and everybody else who disagrees is wrong. These lofty magnate elites never have anyone to tell them ‘NO!’ and simply won’t listen to dissent because they don’t have to.
It appears that it is beginning to dawn upon some of them that, “Hey, there’s something really wrong here!” This is devoid of questions about the fundamentals of Olde Testament Christianity and esoterica of the finer doctrinal points like keeping the Feasts and observing the calendar. These are fundamental to the core of society. Do even the poor have rights? Does anyone have a life outside of giving it all to your cult? Can one man dominate your entire life and be prosecutor, judge and jury? Can someone live a life of an unopposed potentate without checks and balances for some semblance of accountability?
These are questions which never occur to the loyal myrmidons of the CoHAM fiefdom. It’s the Divine Right of Kings with a capital DIVINE. If God is behind you, you have full confidence that you will always win no matter what.
We all know how that works out in reality. Remember Saddam Hessein? He was so BRAVE! Saddam routinely cited his survival as “proof” that Iraq had in fact won the war against the U.S. He was quite defiant right up to when he was captured. He murdered people, tortured women and children and illegally arrested nearly 400 people.
His attitude was not much different than that of Herbert Armstrong, Roderick Meredith, David Pack, Gerald Flurry and Ronald Weinland, not to mention quite a few others: I’m in charge and you owe me! Witness Meredith bragging that his opponents had died save one — he’s outlasted them all. As a matter of fact, he’s outlasted a lot of his victims as well. In spirit, these men are as horrible as Saddam Hussein was, but didn’t have the more absolute power of life and death as Hussein (or for that matter Kim Jong-un) did. Still they were despots and dictators who could never be questioned.
On 30 December 2006, Saddam was hanged.
I’m sure that if there is a Lake of Fire, no one will remember the date later in eternity.
These despots don’t have any self-awareness and have no idea how they impact others. In an interview about his role in “The Arrow” (on CW), John Barrowman remarked about his portrayal as a villain, “Every villain is a hero in his own mind”. It should be easy to see from that ponderous video over at Banned! that certainly the villain Meredith sees himself as a hero. They never question the right or wrong of their motives (they also don’t have much in the way of ethics or morals outside of ‘the end justifies the means’). Meredith gives no second thought to stealing and bankrupting Global. In fact, he counts his betrayal of Global as part of his resume of being a hero.
Now the unfortunate thing is that Wes White did limit himself. He isn’t going to go into what’s wrong with the man who does all the evil. He’s limiting himself to what is wrong with some of the practices of Armstrongism. It’s an improvement to begin to recognize what’s wrong with Armstrongism. We do hope that he and Ian will bring forth some positive practical solutions about how to improve the situations and enable the people ‘to heal’. Unfortunately, as is pointed out in “Take Back Your Life” the leadership is exactly what’s wrong with the cult and it does need to be addressed. It isn’t possible to understand the reasons for what is wrong without doing that.
Here at The Painful Truth in the masthead we post “Understanding the psychology of religious seduction and spiritual abuse.” The goal is that the understanding will lead people away from the seduction and abuse. Perhaps in 2017, Ian and Wes can contribute to that understanding. It would be a positive move in the right direction.
In the meantime, soon we will release “2017: What’s Ahead” with our good friend Tim Blais with an amazing presentation.
Here’s hoping that 2017 will be better for all of you (except for the 1% of Armstrongism) than 2016.
At least, we hope it’s no worse.
I wonder what his take is on British Israelism. I found a book, ordered it and received it that shows that British Israelism is science fiction, specifically mentioning G. G. Rupert.
There were also reports here and there that British Israelism was founded by the Druids.
It looks like 2017 will be a fun year.
For some of us.
If these reformers want to get anywhere, as in advancing to the next level, the best thing they could do would be to salvage whatever doctrines they can from all of the extrabiblical theories and bluster, totally elliminate any mention of HWA or connections to him, dump the bogus prophecy mold, and then move forward, concentrating on Christian living, values, and fruits.
To do this, though, they will need to stop worrying about the members of their little communities who would attempt to hold them accountable to the Armstrongs and Armstrongism. Then, the leaders would need to unite loosely with others under the basic framework of doctrines upon which they can agree, similarly to the way that the Willow Creek organization has acted for non-denominational Christians.
Unless they can stop the splintering, the ever more ridiculous theories, the stupid date setting, the ego-fueled titles, and the HWA worship, they will never be able to regain any sense of organization and the limited control which would lead to growth.
It would be a tough road, no matter what. They almost need to be willing to risk the whole thing dying out in order to right and repair it. And, then, there is the basic question as to whether it is even worth saving, or should it all be discarded for more valid theology?
BB
And sometimes… it’s not worth the effort to save something, only to learn the lessons of what went wrong.
Bob writes:
“If these reformers want to get anywhere, as in advancing to the next level, the best thing they could do would be to salvage whatever doctrines they can from all of the extrabiblical theories and bluster, totally elliminate any mention of HWA or connections to him, dump the bogus prophecy mold, and then move forward, concentrating on Christian living, values, and fruits.”
That would take honesty. I have noticed that some of the writers featured in the Journal do at times take HWA to task for various doctrines or behaviors. That was a first step, a step that we never would have seen 10 years ago.
Times are changing ever so slowly, and with the times comes healing. Those who hinder personal growth and suppress individuality, whether it be by personal opinion or protest, those are the enemies of humanity.
As to the prospect of British Israelism surviving in the ACOG’s? It is slim, if the leaders come clean and admit that the doctrine is unprovable garbage, which it is.
The people should be able to discern truth. When they cannot, they need to be taught the truth of the matter. And that truth is, Herbert Armstrong created an army of mindless insects and a world of fantasy where the membership could feel that they were special and above the rest of humanity. And by what better means is there to do so but by appealing to human vanity? This is what we call psychological abuse.
The basic concept of BI was Herbert’s faulty cornerstone. The whole foundation of Armstrongism is built upon this cornerstone. As he used to say, one cannot understand the bible without it. Sheer malarkey. If Jew and Gentile are alike, why do they need this special identity? They don’t. The Christian religion is suppose to be based upon the teachings of Jesus Christ. Why do these so called Christians need this special identity to achieve salvation? They don’t, but read the ads in the Journal and you would think that if you get anything wrong, your toast. Everyone would like to think that they are unique. The truth is, none of us are special in anyway, shape, or form. We are humans. Flaws and all. When one tries to step above that level, they replace God.
No minister, or deacon, or anyone with so called ‘authority’ within the church, should tell others what they must do outside Christian doctrine to achieve salvation. If you find yourself obeying the dictates of someone you disagree with, you just might be a mindless insect.
The series on British Israelism over at Silenced absolutely obliterated any possibility of B.I. being even remotely true. And before that, we here at Painful Truth had some pretty awesome articles written by several members of the Board of Editors.
In the absence of a rebuttal to this series or the articles, one would have to conclude that the majority of the ACOG members either have not seen, or have deliberately ignored them. They are an instant game changer, and one cannot read them and come away still believing that BI is even a remote possibility.
But, as you say, it’s a slow process with many baby steps. If they could only get past “but, Mr. Armstrong said….” as some sort of all purpose proof, perhaps there would be hope.
BB
No, the proponents of British Israelism are getting creative. The British Israelism World Association has hired Yair Davidity in the hope of finding new ‘proof’ of British Israelism. Brit-Am has organized to change the negative image of antisemitism in British Israelism.
Some of the newer strategies of the British Israelism movements, particularly the Armstrongist ones who have apparently seen the referenced works about DNA are now misusing and abusing epigenetics to ‘prove’ that some how DNA can change spontaneously through the environment so that descendants suddenly become part of a different haplogroup, thus negating the proof of DNA to disprove the BI hypothesis (let’s stop calling it a theory, please). I have not yet addressed this and other novel approaches to reinstating credibility to BI, but I plan to debunk this and other hypotheses in 2017.
Meanwhile, Living University still has its course out there, although one does wonder about the sudden disappearance of Douglas Winnail from any mention within the LCG. Where did he go?
It takes quite a lot of work to keep debunking British Israelism because these scoundrels are persistent and innovative, always upping the ante with new lies. This, of course, allows Armstrongism to remain supremely confident of their position on one hand, while completely ignoring anything that might undercut their absolute nonsense.
Of course, there’s always the Dixon Cartwright approach that no one has to believe in British Israelism and no matter how silly the doctrines and ideas are, the groups and sects of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia should remain together because it is a social group and we wouldn’t want to disturb, upset or inconvenience them with having the headache of pondering what they see as at best irrelevant truth.
It’s all part of the successful program of lies, deceptions and coverups so that the narcissistic can proceed to claim superiority as the elite based on absolute rubbish and make money at it.
So they ignore the threat we pose by demanding the truth and they can do so because they have a captive audience that believes them and those that don’t see the issue as nothing more than infotainment that has absolutely no visceral aspects to it, while the blood-letting continues.