Author: Douglas Becker

Thanks to Neotherm over at Gavin Rumney’s Otagosh, we now have the complete picture and proof that the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia is the Synagogue of Satan. Using Scripture and Scientific Proof, including British Israelism, Neotherm has settled any dispute over who really runs the Armstrongist Churches of God. Following is the composite of his posts:

I will not repeat the incontrovertible genetic evidence against the validity of BI. But let me argue within the more restricted boundaries that Franz uses. In his line of reasoning and other similar lines of reasoning, the Irish records are held in high esteem. But these esteemed records address the racial origins of the Irish people and the monks who kept the records did not trace them to Hebrews. In fact these records trace the Irish people to Japheth. One can examine publications containing these records to establish that. When Herman Hoeh encountered this fact, he altered the ancient genealogies to reflect a descent from Shem. His justification for doing this (I think mentioned somewhere in the compendium) was that the monks had changed the genealogies to hide the true identity of Israel. But Hoeh offers no historical support to establish that the monks did this and Hoeh, in fact, is the distorter of genealogies.

The identification of the US and the UK with Israel does not by itself unlock prophecy. One must know the other nations as well, such as the Assyrians. For this one must resort to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. (Sorry for the genetics again.) But these people are really a family that lived in the Middle East and are descended from one man, Noah. Geneticists know approximately where and when the diverse haplogroups of the human family developed and it was not within the confines a few generations in a single family in the Middle East. I believe that the Table of Nations is historical because we can find references in classical history to these people migrating to and living around the shores of Mediterranean (where they remain today). But these people all had the same haplogroup as Noah. And Noah had the same haplogroup as other people in that region of the world. And that is haplogroup J. Essentially, all the people in the Table of Nations are closely related and are haplogroup J. They all looked like Mediterraneans in appearance. This family, though historical, does not account for all the people in the world. They were strictly regional.

To verify this observation, if the Table of Nations accounts for all the racial diversity in the world then this idea should harmonize with genetics. Hoeh and other WCG ministers long maintained that the Blacks brought to north American as slaves were Canaanites. This means that Canaan should have had one of the sub-clades of the haplogroup E1b. But National Geographic extracted Phoenician DNA and discovered it to be haplogroup J. This means that Noah and Ham, only a generation or two earlier, were haplogroup J. Canaan was not the progenitor of Sub-Saharan Africans. He was the progenitor of Phoenician people who were Middle Easterners and were indistinguishable from Jews and other Mediterraneans. When we look at ancient representations of Phoenicians, we do not find Sub-Saharan Blacks. We find graphical renderings of Mediterranean people. Hoeh would have made the argument that Noah, Ham, Shem and Japheth were racially the same but he would not have accepted the argument that Canaan was racially the same as Noah, Ham, Shem and Japheth. He would have asserted that Canaan’s mother was Black and that is how Canaan became the progenitor of Black people. This is nonsense from a genetic and historical perspective. We should then expect to find all the Black people with the haplogroup J instead of E1b, as in reality.

The Bible is about the Jews (haplogroup J). It is not about Celts living in the British Isles (haplogroup R1b). BI is nothing less than an instantiation of the principle contained in the Book of Revelation referred to as the Synagogue of Satan – people who represent themselves as Jews racially but are not. Some of the Armstrongite ministers from the South (always the source of repugnant racism) have taken this anathema further and have claimed that the people we know as Jews are not really Jews. As one of their prominent evangelists told me, the real Tribe of Judah is located somewhere on the North American continent and the Jews look like just regular British-derived Americans. (Hence, Jesus must have looked like and Anglo-Saxon – not one of those dark-skinned Middle Eastern people.)

Another observation: I do recall that Hoeh addressed the issue of why the people in the Middle East do not resemble modern “Israelites” who were Northwest Europeans as we know from BI. Hoeh claimed that the Canaanites were Negroid. They were racially Blacks and were to be identified with the modern day West Africans. (This was later subtle justification why the slavery practiced in early North America was really not that bad to many in the WCG. God prophesied that the Canaanites were to be enslaved. Israel was just God’s tool for doing this.) Hoeh claimed that the Negroid Canaanites spread widely through out the Middle East and intermarried with the locals. This resulted in the Negroidization (that may be a pejorative word – I am not sure – if so, I apologize) of the Middle Eastern populations, hence, darker skin, curly or kinky hair, black hair and black eyes. But the Israelites escaped this admixture.

Though Hoeh never discussed the appearance of Jesus to my knowledge, the direct deduction from his claim of Negroidization of non-Israelites that one may make is that Jesus looked like a Northwest European not a dark Middle Easterner. In fact, through genetics, we know this model of racial development is false. The early Palestinean Jews were haplogroup J as they are today. They were surrounded by other peoples, including the Phoenicians, who were also haplogroup J. They all looked alike – like modern day native Middle Easterners. They were not darkened by Negroidization. One does not find the appropriate subclades of E1b among them to posit a Negroid admixture. What we find instead is the Europeanization of the Jews who filtered through the European sphere. The Ashkenazi populations reflect a substantial fraction of haplogroup J1 and J2. But they also reflect significant fractions of R1a and R1b – classic Indo-Europeans. The Jewish community absorbed people from the resident Gentile population in Europe. At one point, they absorbed an entire tribe of people called the Khazars who are thought to have been haplogroup R1a. I do not think the Khazar absorption is even controversial among Ashkenazi Jews. I read an article on it in Commentary Magazine a few years ago where it was treated as mundane fact.

The net effect of this is that Christ looked like a Middle Easterner. He did not look like a Northwest European. His appearance would have made him totally unacceptable in the First Baptist Church in Cleveland, Mississippi. And you can understand why Armstrongites from the South breathe a sigh of relief when considering the doctrine of British-Israelism. This makes Jesus a White guy. And since Jesus is the express image of God, it makes God a White guy. And since Adam looked like God, it made Adam a White guy. All those people of color are mutational outsiders (and this is what the WCG originally taught). What more could a White Supremacist ask for than a religion like Armstrongism that apotheosizes the White race.

And then there is the case of Rahab the Harlot. Back in the early Seventies, I witnessed an explosive sermon given by Dr. Charles V. Dorothy in the Field House in Big Sandy, Texas. Dr. Dorothy was a “kinder, gentler” version of Herman Hoeh. I believe this occurred near the Spring Holy Days. His sermon dealt with the invasion of Palestine by the Israelites. He spent a considerable amount of time establishing that Salmon was one of the spies sent to have a look at Jericho and gave Rahab a “scarlet thread” as a symbol of the Royal Line of Judah. Salmon and Rahab also became an item. In accord with orthodox Hoeh preachments, Dorothy described Rahab as a Canaanite and Negroid. Then at the conclusion of the sermon he stated that this same Rahab is represented in the genealogy of Christ and that Christ had some Negroid ancestry. At this point, Dorothy stopped for a moment and scanned the audience. There was complete silence – what one might call “explosive” silence. Recall that this is a huge issue. Noah was pure in his generations and Gerald Waterhouse used to preach that HWA was, like Noah, pure in his generations. This racial purity seemed to be essential for being used as an first-class instrument of God. Then Dorothy, in a raised voice, told the audience “I know you are shocked at this. I can see it on your lilly-white faces.” I would not have been surprised if Dorothy had been bodily removed from the pulpit but there was no response – just silence.

Hoeh had inadvertently, through his argument that the Canaanites were Negroid, made Jesus to be of some Negroid descent and mixed racially. A wholly unacceptable outcome to the racist WCG. There was never any further discussion of Dorothy’s sermon that I knew about but I was at the periphery in Big Sandy. I do not know what ever happened to Charles V. Dorothy. I do know that some time later Ken Hermann had an article in one of the WCG publications about Rahab. Without historical support, he asserted that Jericho was Moabite city and that Rahab was a Moabitess. Thus he transformed without quibbling a city that has been considered by everyone to be within the Canaanite pale into a Moabite (read Hebrew) city. Thus, Ken Hermann purified the racial pedigree of Christ and a loose end was tied down.

The fact is, this is all nonsense. The Canaanites were haplogroup J just like the Jews. Jesus no doubt descended from a long line of haplogroup J people and because of the isolation of these populations, he was very likely to have had no admixture, if that were to make a difference. I just saw a special on the History Channel about excavations taking place in some of the ancient Palestinean cities. The anthropologist/archaeologists involved posited that the similarities between the indigenous Canaanites and the invading Jews was so great that the Jews might have been a branch of the Canaanites. They suggested that the differences among these people were political rather than racial. There is nothing in the genetic analysis that would invalidate this view. These people were all in the same gene pool, patrilineally and matrilineally. Canaan was Shem’s nephew, the Bible tells us.

My last observation: British-Israelism is an occult belief. In the Book of Revelation it is described as emanating from the Synagogue of Satan. It is described as the idea that there are people who claim to be Jews but are not. Armstrongites would be on this like a cheap suit with the idea that they are not saying that they are Jews. They are saying that they are Israelites and that is different from being Jew. You know, the Northern Ten Tribes, the Anglo-Saxons, etc.

But that is begging the question. They are assuming BI is true in formulating their response to this issue when BI is the issue at question. Genetics tell us that this debate cannot be addressed in that way. There is no way in biology that Jacob with haplogroup J, like all the people of the MIddle East at that time, could give rise to people who are haplogroups R1b and R1a (Celts, Anglo-Saxons). That is just as farfetched as your pet dog giving birth to a cow. We know that R1b and R1a were already in existence at the time of Jacob. We know that R1b and R1a did not originate in the Middle East. And to seal the case, we know that R1b and R1a developed from haplogroup P not haplogroup J.

So the writer of the Book of Revelation was referring to the correct model and not the BI model, if you believe in the inspiration of the Book of Revelation. Under the correct model both the Northern Ten Tribes and the Jews, Levites and Benjamites in the south were all at the same place in the gene pool and can be subsumed in the generic term Jew. The Lost Sheep of Israel were just the Jews in Diaspora.

I would not on my own think of the gross error of BI as anything but silliness. Like the various stripes of conspiracy theories. It would be on the par of all that droll malarkey about the Federal Reserve being run by the Illuminati. But Revelation says it is different. It is in fact an occult belief. Something that pulls you close to the Synagogue of Satan. To me BI is like a Hazard sign. We have many of these signs on the doors of facilities around where I work. It is warning to the innocent. If you see this sign stay away, be warned. And Armstrongism wears that sign. But as with every hazard, sometimes the naive will enter in just to satisfy their curiosity, much to their regret.

Herr Professor Doktor Hermann Hoeh: I don’t know about you but I find it an excursion into black humor to think that the WCG theorist in racial pseudoscience was a mid-Twentieth Century German. I do not believe that Hoeh carried a torch for Nazism. But his role seems archetypal for that time period. I spoke with Herman Hoeh in the Field House in Big Sandy back in the early Seventies. I had just read a book entitled “America B.C.” by Barry Fell. I was enthusiastic about the book because I thought it seemed to support some of Hoeh’s ideas from his Compendium of World Historoy. I was disappointed to find that he did not share my enthusiasm. Instead he took the side of the critics of the book. I was also disappointed in his demeanor. He was unfriendly, unpersonable and unsmiling. He coldly answered my question and gave me short shrift. I walked away with the impression that my interest in history, his professional field, was just an irritation to him like a fly that had landed on his sleeve. (I think many WCG lay members naively were not familiar with the vast differences between the public and private personas of WCG leaders.)

A friend of mine was a married student at Big Sandy. He met Hoeh after church services one day. My friend was carrying his toddler son. When my buddy introduced himself, Hoeh turned to the people standing around and said “Look, he has a long, sharp nose and his son has a short nose.” That was all that Hoeh said to him. While Hoeh’s eccentricity was legendary, oddly his credentials as a historian within the WCG were unchallengable. Early in my years with the WCG, I learned that Hoeh was related to history in the same way that HWA was related to doctrine in the eyes of WCG lay members. If an historical concept bore the imprimatur of Hoeh, it was fact and if you didn’t thoroughly believe it maybe you had an attitude problem.

But for those of us who were history weenies, something about Hoeh rises to the surface over time. He did not just document and verify history using published sources. He actually created history. It was as if someone had given him the mandate to research historical sources and find anything that could be used, with a great measure of creative license, to support HWA’s world view and, in particular, British-Israelism. His Compendium is really a story about how Israel (read the British derived peoples) have always been the important people throughout the history of the world. Nothing that ever happened that was important happened without the influence of Israel. This was similar in principle to Nazi archaeologists directed to dig up the evidence for an Aryan-centric history from the ground. Of course the archaeologists found what bits and pieces they could and laid on a thick and “creative” shellac of misinterpretation. One of Hoeh’s favorite creative techniques was to find two names that are similar and from this, without any other support, postulate a real connection of some sort, causal or derivative. Hence, Saxon is really ‘Saacs Sons. Most of you are trained in this.

I always wondered how the Hoeh of later years regarded the Hoeh of earlier years. My theory was that he would mellow and maybe even recant. I heard a rumor that he had renounced the Compendium saying that “it was all wrong.” Ray Kurr, whose family befriended Hoeh, told me in the Eighties that Hoeh hated to be asked questions concerning history. Hoeh just wanted to be treated like any other lay member. Kurr also told me that people mistakenly believe that Hoeh does not want to be called Dr. Hoeh anymore but that Hoeh actually preferred the title. Somewhere along the line, I heard that a German AC student was going to marry a Southeast Asian AC student and that Herman Hoeh was in support of this. All these events, though secondhand, made me think there was now a kinder, gentler, less eccentric Herman Hoeh.

But this was not the case. I carried on a correspondence with Hoeh, then a member of what is now GCI, just before he died. I asked him about the racial theories that supported both WCG theology and WCG policy in the early years. He would not admit that there was any such thing. He would only offer that the WCG was merely reflecting the mores and values of the larger society in which it was embedded. In other words the WCG was “going along to get along.” I cited numerous documented arguments against his claims from WCG literature. But Hoeh would not admit to any of it. He sent me instead newspaper clippings about how Blacks were treated in the Fifities in the United States, as if I did not know about that already. He had a guy I knew from AC and who used to work in the correspondence department in Pasadena write me a hypothetical letter of apology as it should have been if the WCG had recanted of its racism. This just seemed contrived. He finally sternly asserted that I should be more forgiving and referred me to a recent article that appeared in a GCI’s Odyssey on forgiveness. My question was if WCG had been guilty of nothing like he asserted, what do I have to forgive? I finally concluded that his total lack of transparency might have been because he thought a lawsuit of some sort was lurking in the shadows. But a plausible answer is that Hoeh always fabricated history. And, perhaps, this “history” that he was now relating to me that provided a sinless backstory for the WCG was what he had created for himself in his last days.

— Neotherm