A&E Network Television Channel has a program called Intervention. It has 14 seasons so far about people who have serious life threatening addictions. A&E sends help for an Intervention for these people and their families. Seasoned professionals counsel with the family. Both the addict and the family are offered treatment. Often the treatment saves the life of the addict and the family members.
Play and watch the above Intervention about Shane: Shane was a talented cellist and an aspiring music producer, whose musical aspirations were out of reach because he abused prescription drugs and dealt drugs out of his grandmother’s house where he was living. He also used cocaine. Jeff Van Vonderen, the facilitator of the Intervention had this to say to the family in the pre-intervention meeting:
Delusion turns into denial and delusion isn’t just really bad denial, delusion is a whole different thing. Shane doesn’t know he’s lying any more. You guys know when you’re lying, don’t you, OK? Look at it like this: It’s like this thinking grid, you give him this picture of reality and on the way in, it takes a couple of hits and gets twisted up and looks different, so when he gives you his answer, it’s based on his picture, and he is so sincere and convincing that you start thinking you saw it wrong in the first place. That’s why, when he tells you his answer, he’s not lying. He’s telling you the truth. That’s why it seems so crazy.
Learn to ask yourself, this is the quick test, “Do I agree with this?” If you don’t agree with it, don’t let it happen. We call him the dependent, because he’s dependent on the chemical for his high; we call you guys co-dependents because it’s actually possible for you to become dependent upon the dependent for your high. Which means when Shane’s looking good and trying hard, looking great and making promises, your mood alters up; and when he’s being scary and dangerous and doing bad stuff, your mood alters down. But now put yourself in his place, where now he has to do well, so you guys have a good day….
Let’s pause for a moment and look back at Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God with his multiple addictions to narcissism, needing constant praise and adulation, needing to feel important and following his addiction to buy expensive material things to satiate his lust for self-importance, his panic following the manic phase of realization that he’s overspent, requiring him to loudly demand the membership to make sacrifices to resupply the money to support his destructive habits with money and prestige being his drugs of choice. Over the years, we’ve covered this topic in various ways. What we have not covered is our own codependence.
When Herbert Armstrong was all positive, looking good, trying hard, looking great and making promises — we would have our high. When he showed us news of the world which supported his prophetic nonsense, we seized on that because we were dependent upon it for our high. He offered us British Israelism to support our codependence. And, of course, when things went south and he started yelling about how “this WORK could go down!” our attitudes and mood would alter down. This kept us in the nightmare of being subjected to his moods and whims for our highs and lows. We lived on his promises that we would become God as God is God for our codependent high and faced the imaginary reality of the Great Tribulation for our depressive lows, only to be raised to manic levels on the promises of a Place of Safety, to sink back to the lows of the reality of life, only to be lifted again in enthusiasm with the promise of attending yet another “Best Feast Ever!” spending, as it were, 10% of our gross income in 10 days to experience the excessive highs stimulating the endorphin flow from sumptuous eating, drinking, travel and activities that supposedly reflected the addictive highs of being Kings and Priests in the millennium wielding great power over masses of people under us, vulnerable to our own mood swings.
Subjecting ourselves to this addict was not healthy. He was not living a sane healthy balanced life. He lived a life of excess, bracketed by real alcoholism. We allowed him to manipulate our thinking in inappropriate unhealthy ways, and, in many cases, causing many of us to follow him to become addicts ourselves as well as being codependent.
After the death of Herbert Armstrong and the collapse of his empire, the problem became worse: Addicts like Roderick Meredith, David Pack, Gerald Flurry, Ronald Weinland and so many others, made codependents of their followers, draining the followers of their resources to support their habits of addiction. People could sit in services at United each week and hear the Regional Pastor express his desperation about not having enough money for retirement and discuss salary and money problems. It was clear where his priorities were. Those of us listening to him week after week, year after year, wallowed in his self-pity, which was also accompanied with his revelation that his parents were alcoholics and addicts who beat him as a teen. This was a gross transgression against the 5th commandment, but we were all hearing it through his twisted grid of reality, fed back so that he altered our moods to make us codependents. In fact, at every turn, the delusions of the addict leaders of Armstrongism make their followers codependents.
The solution, of course, is to stop providing the addict with an environment in which he can abuse himself with his addiction and refuse to be a codependent where his moods are reflected in our own.
In the case of Shane’s family, two members had to get treatment from the Betty Ford Clinic to wean them from their codependence and live their life, not for Shane, but for themselves. Without altering their behavioral responses to Shane, they would provide the environment to support Shane in going back to his addictions after his own treatment.
It’s been what… maybe two years? The discussion is over. It’s now become a dead issue! We’ve won! British Israelism has been thoroughly debunked! Even Dixon Cartwright, Editor of The Journal, declared that he did not believe in British Israelism. When someone like that makes that sort of declaration, the losers need to shut up and go away! There’s no way to win on this issue. There is a growing awareness among many of the Armstrongist Churches of God that British Israelism is the key to false prophecy and to becoming a false prophet. Some of the more “progressive” ACoGs are trying to distance themselves from British Israelism because they know that it’s going to come back and bite them. Some of the Armstrongist ministers are even taking open pot shots at Herbert Armstrong. There is no future to British Israelism. It’s about as dead as it can be.
And yet… and yet… some people haven’t gotten the memo.
If you take a look at the above UCG local bulletin, you can see the ridiculously stupid attempt to invoke British Israelism as authority to evoke fear! No, the United States is not a lost tribe of Israel. We’ve settled that. Nevertheless, irrelevant Bronze Age writings of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are supposed to be relevant. What’s really insulting is using the passage in Isaiah to Israel as a prediction of a curse on “our people” — the United States. “As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.” Is this some sort of prediction for the 2016 elections? Hillary Clinton hasn’t even been elected yet! No! No! No! Does not apply! Go check with Dixon Cartwright. Go check with the United ministers who are on the staff of The Journal. While you’re at it, check with them about just how viable the Bible is. You might be in for a shock — if they will admit it to you.
This UCG sinister shock-jock just isn’t with the program. He’s still sticking with all the old stuff. Does he not know what’s coming 2Q in 2015? Check out United’s plans:
Nerds with technology! How cool is that? Happy times! The format attractive, the technology sound, the message? Crap.
If you’ve watched the video, tell us, just where in all that is there even room for British Israelism? If the appeal is to the public on social media, then British Israelism with doomsday prophecies sort of kills the buzz, doesn’t it?
Dixon intimated that British Israelism is harmless. He should have checked out
Check out Part I: Religion under The Anglo-Israelites on page 13:
One of the earliest American Anglo-Israelite treatises was Two Sticks, or the Lost Tries of Israel Discovered, by an anonymous minister in the Church of the Brethren. But it was J.H. Allen’sJudah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright, published in 1902, that introduced bible students, among them Herbert W. Armstrong, who would later spread the doctrine through his Worldwide Church of God.
She tells the tragic take of Randy Weaver who believed British Israelism. Here is an account of what happened as a result of his embrace of British Israelism:
The problem with British Israelism is that it lends itself to racism and people who espouse it can get into trouble for no particularly good reason except they want to be left alone.
The story of how things unfolded at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 isn’t always clear. This is our best take on it.
Randy Weaver was a former United States Army Combat Engineer who moved to the remote mountaintop Ruby Ridge to live in a cabin that he and his wife built themselves with no electricity and no running water.
He had grown up in a deeply religious family and accepted Jesus into his life at the age of 11. He met his wife Vicki who had also grown up with strict religious views. He married her after leaving the Army where he had become a Green Beret.
Their paranoia about the government was intensified by their intense deep religious commitment. Randy Weaver had never been a part of Aryan Nations but was a separatist. He and his wife had quite the collection of firearms. In 1989, undercover Feds purchased two sawed-off shotguns from him in hopes that he could be an informant within the Aryan Nations, but he refused to cooperate and instead he was indicted on two felony counts of making and storing illegal weapons. He didn’t show up for trial and the Feds watched. Finally, in 1992, his 14 year old son Samuel engaged in a gun battle with Federal Marshals and was killed. After that, the tragic events of Ruby Ridge unfolded and more family members died, including his wife. The trial revealed that it was ATF entrapment and eventually the government paid Randy Weaver and his family $3.1 million in damages.
Randy Weaver visited the Waco Branch Dividian site in 2000.
Timothy McVeigh cited the Ruby Ridge incident as a factor in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.
Of course, because British Israelism is at the very core of the teaching of Herbert Armstrong and his teachings cannot have existed without it, the incidents of extremists in the Worldwide Church of God certainly had their roots in British Israelism. Dennis Michael Rohan springs to mind.
Look folks, for the sake of sanity and safety, all current Armstrongists need to do a dump and run — it’s not safe to espouse British Israelism and it sure isn’t harmless.
The core belief of Herbert Armstrong he called “The Key to Prophecy” carries with it an enormous amount of baggage. The above United Church of God bulletin article from the pastor of a local church is case in point: The article caused distress and near hysteria in some of those in the congregation that read it. It is unfortunate that Armstrongism attracts the spectacularly unstable types. It’s even more unfortunate that Armstrongist ministers never really get to know their congregants. There’s no time to visit them in their homes. No time to have lunch and dinner with them. No time for their families to get to have one-on-ones. So the minister is blissfully unaware of the extreme fears prompted from the little opinion pieces in the local bulletin: People terrified that ISIS is coming — it’s right across the border and that the United States is going to be attacked because they are a lost tribe of Israel to be punished by Islam extremists because Americans don’t obey the laws of Judaism. Maybe minister in question knows that Americans are Gentiles or maybe not. The big question is, why is this garbage in a church bulletin? It brings misery, not comfort.
Donna Kossy rightly labels proponents of British Israelism kooks. For Armstrongism, the kooks include:
Roderick Meredith and Guy Ames
Gerald Flurry and Stephen Flurry
John and Richard Rittenbaugh
David Pack
James Malm
Robert Thiel
Victor Kubik
Jim Franks
Fred Coulter
David Hulme (on the edge…)
Ronald Weinland
Eric King (in a kook class all of its own…)
And so many more. There are at least 700+ of them. All kooks.
Only in the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia does a local church bulletin create concerns for mental health issues….
We’re delighted with the support the latest The Journal has given our cause! It starts innocently enough on page 3 with the article, The old class system’s roots run deep by David Havir. For those who do not know, David Havir is described at the top of the article as The writer is a church pastor and a regular columnist for THE JOURNAL. Of course he is: He is the church pastor for the Church of God Big Sandy which is the church where the editor, Dixon Cartwright, attends. They are good friends and David Havir’s columns seem to make it into nearly every The Journal there is, without all that mucking about with paying advertising costs. The article he wrote is about “Servant Leadership”. What he wrote about Herbert Armstrong in the article, we think you’ll agree, is significant:
Coercive hierarchy
Many people claim that the major problem with Mr. Armstrong’s approach to government was that he became an advocate for a hierarchy headed by one man. I don’t believe that the worst problem was that he chose to head up a hierarchy. (For the record, I presently participate in a congregational form of government, and I do not recommend a one-mangoverned hierarchy.) I believe the greater problem was that he administered a coercive hierarchy. In other words, there was much psychological pressure to accept the supposed spiritual authority of the hierarchy. (A coercive hierarchy can also be administered by a group of rulers. If you look around, you will see coercive hierarchies being administered by one-man leadership and by group leadership.) I believe the greater problem was that he viewed himself as (1) the leader of God’s government on earth, (2) the leader of the main part of the Body of Christ, (3) spiritually outranking every other human being and (4) the leader of the ruling class.
His last book Let me refresh your memory with excerpts from Mr. Armstrong’s book Mystery of the Ages (published in 1985). All the emphasis is his.
Reading these quotes helps me understand why some people reject the principles of servant leadership. Mr. Armstrong taught that Peter was the chief apostle. (The primacy of Peter is one of the foundational principles of the hierarchy fostered by the Roman Catholic Church and the WCG.) He wrote on page 221: “The surname Peter had for centuries been a surname or TITLE, designating a religious LEADER, HEAD or HEADQUARTERS. Peter was the first and chief apostle.” Mr. Armstrong taught the need for loyalty to the government of God. (Remember, his faulty premise was that loyalty to God meant being loyal to the one true church, over which he presided.) He wrote on page 227: “Bear in mind further: In order for Christ to RESTORE God’s government over the earth, he would need with and under him a qualified and organized personnel of GOD BEINGS—all having rejected Satan’s false way and having
proved their loyalty to the government and righteous ways of God!” Mr. Armstrong taught that there was only one church, and those who splintered off from it were no longer in the one true church. (Remember, his faulty premise was that to leave the church, over which he presided, was to leave the one true church.) He wrote on page 243: “Notice especially, there is only the ONE CHURCH. Not MANY churches. The CHURCH is not divided. There is only one Church. Not a parent church and many little daughter churches that have split off in disagreement. Divisions splintering off are NOT STILL IN THE CHURCH. It is the CHURCH that is to marry Christ in the resurrection at his coming—not disagreeing churches—not groups who have broken off! Not a parent church and apostate daughters.” Mr. Armstrong taught the military model of government with ranks of authority. He wrote on page 256: “The CHURCH, as initially called in this life, is NOT YET capable of RULING the earth [and] . . . of administering THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD. And THAT IS WHY God has placed HIS GOVERNMENT in his Church. That is WHY God’s Church government is theocratic instead of democratic. That is why God has set ranks of government in his Church, apostles, evangelists, pastors, elders, both preaching and non-preaching.”
Mr. Armstrong taught that he had the rank of apostle. (In other writings and sermons he taught that the main purpose of a saint was to support him.) He wrote on page 266: “What part does the individual local member have in taking the gospel message to ALL THE WORLD? This is done primarily and directly by the APOSTLE.” Mr. Armstrong taught that saints could not grow without his help (as a perceived apostle) and the help of others in the rank system. He wrote on pages 267-268: “The author, Christ’s apostle, can say emphatically that the apostles, evangelists, pastors and elders could not carry on the work of God without the loyal backing and continual encouragement of the lay members. Neither can the individual lay member develop and build within him God’s holy, righteous and perfect CHARACTER without the operations of the apostle, evangelists, pastors and elders.” Mr. Armstrong taught that there was only one way to be trained. (Remember, his faulty premise was that the only way to be trained was in the one true church, over which he presided.) He wrote on page 270: “The ‘loner’ —the ‘individual Christian,’ who wants to climb up into the kingdom some other way than by CHRIST and HIS WAY through his CHURCH—is not being trained in CHRIST’S MANNER OF TRAINING, to rule and reign with Christ in his kingdom! . . . The person who says ‘I will get my salvation alone, outside of the Church’ is totally deceived.” Mr. Armstrong taught that church leaders could put people out of the Body of Christ. (Stopping someone from attending a particular congregation is different from claiming to remove him from the spiritual organism.) He taught that a main reason for
people to be “put out” was “opposition to church government.” (Since that ethereal reason can be subjective and political, it has led to much unjust treatment of saints.) He wrote on pages 271-272: “What about one who has been IN Christ’s ‘spiritual BODY’—the Church—and is PUT OUT for cause (causing division or rebellion or opposition to Church government)? The CHURCH is like a human mother who is pregnant. If there is an abortion, the HUMAN LIFE departs totally from the fetus. There is, however, perhaps one difference in
this analogy. A human who goes out, or is put out of God’s Church, could, on repentance and renewed belief, be admitted back into the body again.” Mr. Armstrong taught that God would raise up a human leader in the spirit and power of Elijah to restore truth. (In other writings and sermons he emphasized that the end-time Elijah would restore the truth about the government of God.)
He wrote on pages 290-291: “Although it is plainly revealed that John the Baptist had come in the power and spirit of Elijah, he did not restore anything. The human leader to be raised up somewhat shortly prior to Christ’s Second Coming was to prepare
the way—prepare the Church—for Christ’s coming, and restore the truth that had been lost through the preceding eras of the Church.” Mr. Armstrong taught that he fulfilled Matthew 24:14.
He wrote on page 291: “These prophecies have now definitely been fulfilled. The true gospel has been restored and has now gone in power into every nation on the face of the earth.”
Mr. Havir goes on to show how wrong this all is and ends with a section entitled “No Easy Fix”. There is no easy fix because every Church of God that has come from Herbert Armstrong is tainted by his arrogant controlling hierarchy, even the Church of God Big Sandy (that also includes the Grace Communion International). If it weren’t for Herbert Armstrong, neither the CoGBS would exist, nor would any other of the 700+ club. He started it all and without him there would be absolutely nothing. There is no way to hide from his influence. The only way to fix anything is to abandon it all and go where someone else has established a social group for those refugees from the Radio / Worldwide Church of God.
Here is what Neotherm had to say about the article at Otagosh:
Black Ops made a reference to Havir and his writing about HWA. So I went back and read the article and was blown away. I cannot believe that Havir would write this and Cartwright would publish it. It is the best article I have seen on this topic to come out of the Armstrongite offshoots.
Havir has it exactly right. Armstrongites do not understand leadership. Most of the “great leaders” in the WCG that I encountered personally were boorish snobs. They thrived inside a system that mistook insensitivity for courage, oppression for teaching, arrogance for dignity and stolidity for perseverance. They were taught and believed that they controlled the salvation of individual adherents. They believed that they were of such importance that they could run interference between God and people. Pretty breathtaking. All these sins were forgiven by their unwavering devotion to HWA. The fact that Havir would strike directly at the black heart of this system is amazing and no doubt will compromise his ability to be an influence on other Armstrongites who hold the traditional HWA-centric views. But I am glad he did it.
I used to work with David Havir at Big Sandy at times. Students were assigned to me and others like me for various work details. Havir was atypical for an AC student. He was friendly and egalitarian. He seemed to not be easily deluded. I was at the lower end of the servant-class at AC and he had no trouble treating me as if I were a person – something I found to be rare in that environment. So I am not surprised that he would write such an article. On the other hand, Don Ward, with his degree in Educational Psychology and considered by many to be the authority on leadership, could not have written such an article unless he has undergone a sea change. (One must be careful with semantics. Armstrongites will maintain that what their ministers do is “service.” This demonstrates how removed they are from a correct understanding of the pastoral function.)
— Neotherm
Probably not. People will read this in The Journal, along with other articles in other issues which will undermine everything Herbert Armstrong stood for, and they will pass right over them without being struck by the obvious cognitive dissonance. It’s all part of the chaotic landscape that’s been created there with absolutely crazy daft advertising mixed with a few sensible observations. It’s easy to get caught up in the noise.
Now some people will applaud the approach of David Havir, and by extension, Dixon Cartwright, many of the staff of The Journal, many of those at the top and near the top of the Church of God Big Sandy hierarchy and quite a number of those associated with the ideas and ideals within the United Church of God an International Association. Behind the scenes, they have abandoned British Israelism. Heresies and false prophets are irrelevant. Many of them seem to have found the research of the Christian Theologians that indicate that most of the books of the Bible were forged, few of the books could have been written by those with their names on them, that there are 40 gospels floating around of which only 4 were part of the New Testament (and were written 30 to 60 years after the events described in them by people who weren’t there to observe the events), II Peter, James, Jude and John are forgeries along with at least half of the epistles of Paul, that Revelation barely made it into the Bible and was suspect from the beginning, that the epistles of Paul were written before any of the other books of the New Testament and the rest of the books are “back fill”. The folks at The Journal and the others associated with it are just fine with that.
David Havir has thrown down the gauntlet, not that anyone is much going to react one way or another, because what is important is keeping the social group together. It certainly mitigates the pain of going “cold turkey” alone without social support.
The main problem with all of that is that the people in the social group do not know. They have the assumption that they are faithfully following Herbert Armstrong and his original ideas. The leadership knows that Herbert Armstrong was crap and his plagiarized ideas from G. G. Rupert are just plain stupid and wrong. They are manipulating the group for both their own agendas and to keep the group together. Clearly, building a new social structure of people who were in a cult of lies and delusions is not the best approach. There is still a class system at work here and it isn’t going to solve the underlying problem. There’s no reason to believe that someone inside a system can objectively observe that system nor assess it. Reinvention in place won’t solve the problem, particularly when members of the social group don’t actually believe the same things (especially considering they don’t believe the same things as the leadership) and this fact is hidden from them. This is similar to the machinations of the Grace Communion International, except that no one is trying to get anyone to change their ideas: They just let people keep their beliefs (which may be wildly divergent from the ideas of those around them), while they happily go forth and perform the physical rituals and pretend that it’s a religion that keeps them all together with Sabbath Services, socials, potlucks and Feasts. It could be any sort of social group, it’s just that it began as a cult.
The leadership can never fully admit to any of this because it would threaten the stability of the group, so a certain amount of deception is required to hold it all together. Not to worry, because as the decades roll on, people in the group will intermarry and become codependent, original ideals will be forgotten and lost and the cult becomes more mainstream even if it does contain some odd and unworkable practices. If it’s going to be like that, then eventually, keeping the Feasts will have to be voluntary and the concept of second tithe will have to disappear: We’re letting people follow the course of least resistance, providing “inspiration” supposedly based on “Biblical principles”. We’ve all seen this sort of thing before. While it may not end badly, it can’t end well either, with people in a society based on cult devised by a nut.
So David Havir and The Journal have sort of done our job for us. It’s nice that Herbert Armstrong was resoundingly criticized openly and cut to shreds by people who have automatic credibility with the Armstrongists. Still, the underlying direction has become rather disingenuous.
While we’re grateful for the help, we’ll take it from here.
I believe the greater problem was that he administered a coercive hierarchy. In other words, there was much psychological pressure to accept the supposed spiritual authority of the hierarchy. (A coercive hierarchy can also be administered by a group of rulers. If you look around, you will see coercive hierarchies being administered by one-man leadership and by group leadership.)