Author: James

The Worldwide church of God attempted to annihilate peoples personality, individuality, will, and character. The stranded souls that hitched their wagon to this organization unknowingly supported a power-hungry pharisaic and fastuous authoritative cult leader and his son, Garner Ted Armstrong. For all the alarums and excursions, the fact remains that without knowing it, we nurtured these two ungrateful incubi's. For that I can only ask for forgiveness. After my WCG experience, I went to college to educate myself so I would have a greater understanding of the world about me and to understand why I ever fell for HWA's scam religion. This lead me to the conclusion that the appropriate action to take, in my judgment, is to provide people with opportunities to learn, develop, and exercise their potential as human beings, by freeing them from men who exploit and abuse them. This website and others are my vehicle to do just that.
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Packing Authority, for crying out loud!

In weekly installments, Dave Pack continues to position RCG as Top COG, by showing the other COGs are worse off financially and administratively.

 

In Cry Aloud, Spare Not, Mr Pack lashes out against other COGs and congregations lacking whole-hearted commitment to “the work”. Starting with Isa. 58:1 (“spare not”) he then uses Matt 7:29 (“having authority”) out of context, quotes various colorful terms Jesus used when speaking of evildoers. Following along are quotes from HWA’s notorious 1967 member letter – the one in which HWA uses Loma on her deathbed to demand money. Back in the Clarion Call sermon, Mr Pack conveys his envy of HWA’s masterful writing skills.

 

The point apparently being made is that the self-evident 21st Century Apostle believes he must obey his commission to “speak with authority” which he interprets as name-calling leaders of other COGs and lethargic (insufficiently sacrificing) members.

 

My two shekels worth is about the misuse of Matt 7:28-29: When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. (NIV) These verses a section of Matthew that begins with the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus had been expounding the Law, not denouncing critics.

 

As for authority, the crowds were amazed that Jesus stated his take on a number of issues without reference to scholarly interpretation. Other teachers of the Law would quote their teacher, who may quote another teacher; some may give 50 different interpretations of a single verse from the Torah. Jesus obviously didn’t do that and I suppose one who wished to speak “with authority” would not be repeatedly quoting his teacher (HWA).

 

Some of the teachings in this section of Matthew had diverse interpretations in the first century. Among Pharisees, there were two opposing camps, the House of Shammai, and the House of Hillel (grandfather of Paul’s teacher, Gamaliel).  Jesus’ teachings were usually closer to that of the more liberal Hillel than the stricter Shammai. A notable exception was divorce, as Hillel taught that a man could divorce his wife for simply serving a bad meal.

 

Mr Pack wants to use the “strong words” that Jesus leveled at corrupt rulers, hypocrites, those with teachings or traditions that contradict scripture, and so on. I’d say that Ambassador Report covered a good share of these at the WCG. Let’s see, corruption – siphoning off tithe money (the tithing doctrine itself twisted scripture to enforce a teaching that was very specific), hypocrisy – teaching against doctors while HWA had the finest medical care, contradicting scripture – sacrifice to give to the Church rather than help sick or elderly non-member parents (“honor your father and your mother”) – telling members to borrow money from the bank under false pretenses to give to the Church (lying, fraud) – and many more.

 

But Mr Pack is right about one thing; he did forever change my view of Isaiah 58:1.
………………

Hoss

For more on Mr Pack, see AR 32 under the heading “David Pack’s Reign of Terror”

 

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Pentecost 1974

 

Of Course He Was!

Pentecost 1974 – Many weeks ago…

The other day while scanning the COG sites, I noticed Dr Thiel informing us that Pentecost will be on May 19 this year.

 

On a Sabbath in 1974, a combined service was held so all in our area could hear a tape from Pasadena. We were assembled together for a double dose of doctrinal correction New Truth. As I recall, GTA came up first and explained the new rules on D&R – divorce and remarriage; next, HWA told us Pentecost is on Sunday, rather than Monday. Of course, HWA tried to vindicate his long-held Aristotlian exegesis interpreting the command for counting the Omer to Shavuot by explaining the Hebrew words with English grammar. Perhaps a tale is in order.

 

Herb was driving through a city looking for Pentecost Lane. He read that it was off Fiftieth Avenue. Starting at what he thought was First Avenue, he reasoned Fiftieth Avenue must be 50 streets from First Avenue. So he drove along and started counting streets. Eventually he got to Fifty-first Avenue, and reckoned an unmarked alley was Pentecost Lane.

 

Although there were some indications that Herb was in the wrong place, he was sure he was at his intended destination. It is obvious that Herb was driving alone, because if Loma had been with him, she would have nagged, Herb, get out and ask someone for directions!

 

From what I remember, HWA said he consulted with someone who taught Hebrew, and, what do you know, he had been wrong was revealed new truth! In Hebrew, he learned, the word translated to from is inclusive, as in the first day from today is today, not tomorrow. So in a sense, counting 50 days from (in Hebrew) was counting 49 days from (in his logic).

 

Of course, there is the other matter of which day to count from. In the command “the morrow after the Sabbath” (Lev. 23) the Sabbath could been taken to mean the weekly Sabbath, or the First Day of Unleavened Bread; “the morrow” is the Day of Firstfruits, when the Wave-sheaf offering is made.

Apparently the Sadducees had taken the Sabbath to mean the weekly Sabbath, and modern rabbinic Judaism takes it to mean the First Day of Unleavened Bread.

 

I don’t know if HWA just assumed that Sabbath meant the weekly Sabbath, or he got that from another source. There is some additional symbolism added when taking the weekly Sabbath, as that puts the Day of Firstfruits on the Sunday after Passover. This day would then be the day of Jesus’ resurrection (assuming Saturday night) or  “Easter Sunday”.

Hoss

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Blast From the Past. "Herbert Armstrong's Trout Stream"

 

By Retired Prof

Interactive Graphic Here

The Painful Truth is full of big reasons to doubt that Herbert W. Armstrong was a true apostle: illicit sex and excessive alcohol, failed prophecies, lavish spending of tithes and offerings on personal luxuries, and so forth. But sometimes the little reasons count for something too.

During the 1959-60 school year at Ambassador College I knew nothing of his bouts with incest and alcohol. I didn’t find out about his long history of false prophecies because he hid his past prognostications and focused our attention instead on 1972-75. He did show off his lavish spending when he invited groups of students over for short visits. For example, in his opulently paneled and furnished mansion he demonstrated for us a color TV, at that time a rare and precious object. He explained that all this extravagance was not wrong, because circumstances forced him to live that way. He needed to make a good impression on leaders of the business world he might have to deal with on behalf of the church. I confess to harboring seeds of skepticism when I entered Ambassador, and this presentation should have nudged them to germinate. Nevertheless, I tried to suppress my doubts and accept his explanation.

One thing that raised doubts I couldn’t suppress was a trout stream. Yes, I know trout streams per se carry no biblical weight. The bible never mentions any, and for good reason: the holy land is too warm for them. But hear me out.

That fall on the Ambassador campus Armstrong had an artificial one built, a winding concrete channel with rocks and gravel in the bottom, over which water flowed down from a man-made spring for fifty yards or so into a wide concrete pool. The water was pumped through a pipe back up to the spring to flow down into the pool again in a continuous circuit. The workmen who built the streambed configured one of the bends wrong and water sloshed over onto the lawn, but that didn’t bother me much. The foreman who oversaw construction was the one guilty of error, not the “apostle” who commanded it. After that bend was jackhammered out and reconstructed, the stream was quite pretty and I enjoyed it a great deal. It was stocked with rainbow trout, and many were more than a foot long. I often dreamed of fishing in a real stream like it where the fish were that large and that plentiful.

Its beauty lasted through the short southern California winter. When the weather warmed up, those lovely trout one by one turned belly-up and died. Rainbows, like other trout, are a cold-water species. Even I, a freshman hillbilly from Arkansas, knew that much.

The death of those fish bothered me a lot. It didn’t stem from a mere glitch in executing the plan; it bespoke appalling ignorance in forming it. If Armstrong really did get divine guidance in every decision, why hadn’t god told him to refrigerate the water? On the other hand, if god didn’t actually direct all his decisions, but merely granted him insight to sift and winnow the words of others and cull out nuggets of wisdom, why hadn’t Armstrong read a fisheries book or consulted an expert on aquaculture?

I could find no answers to those questions that supported the proposition that Herbert W. Armstrong was an apostle of god.

Of course I was guilty of gagging on the gnat of an ignorant mistake and swallowing the camel of the deadly sin of greed, but there were extenuating circumstances. The gnat was tiny but raw and scratchy, whereas that camel was well greased with rhetoric and force-fed through an authoritarian funnel.