Douglas Becker – Page 33 – The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God

June 26, 2015

United States Goes Gay

Floods, droughts, famine, forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, tsunamis, collapse of the economy, disease epidemics and even maybe a meteor strike or two — will all be the result of the United States going gay with marriages — at least according to the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia ultraconservative Bible thumping hypocrites claiming that because the United States is a lost tribe of Israel not keeping God’s Laws of the Old Testament is going to be punished for disobedience and just plain perversion. The latest ruling of the Supreme Court of the Land now makes homosexual marriages legal in all 50 states. People are lining up to get their marriage licenses. Divorce lawyers are lining up for new opportunities. And the Armstrongists are lining up to make hay while the sun shines making that giant double rainbow in the sky.

Let us be clear here: This article is not about being for or against same sex marriage — it is against the illogical, irrational, chaotic hypocrisy of the Armstrongist leaders.

So since the Armstrongist leaders claim that the Bible is the Word of God and the Foundation of all knowledge, let us first point out that no one will find the words “United States of America” or “British Commonwealth” in the Bible. We’ve debunked British Israelism once and for all and all of you out there claiming that DNA just changes arbitrarily from one haplogroup to another, let’s be clear: If that were to be, then no court could ever use DNA as evidence and while we’re about it, lets eliminate fingerprints as evidence as well. The point is that the United States is absolutely not a tribe of Israel, lost or not, and using British Israelism as the Key to Prophecy has produced some pretty terrible failed prophecies and false prophets, some of whom insult Christ by claiming the false prophecies are given “in Jesus’ name”. If we are to believe the New Testament, the Armstrongists are preaching a false gospel as well of The Corporation of God™ instead of a message of redemption through Jesus. In other words, the Armstrongists have nothing but contempt for a good and gracious Father God, dispensing of Him in favor of a harsh condemning God who is implacable, ready to mete out doom, destruction, devastation at every turn, even if you don’t know you’ve done anything wrong. In this, the Armstrongists do not want to retain God in their knowledge.

Here is what Romans 1:20-28 says:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

If you believe in the Bible, then the Armstrongists are preaching a false Christ and insulting God by making Him in the image of a modern high-powered corporate CEO. It is an insult. They are liars, and here is what Scripture says about these liars in Revelation 22:15:

For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

This is no joke, for Deuteronomy 18:20 says:

But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.

Just to be clear, Jesus said in Luke 12:47:

And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

So here is the picture: If Roderick Meredith, a false prophet of over 60 years, David Pack, the false prophet who prophesied death of other Armstrongist leaders and everyone flocking to him, six-pack false prophet Gerald Flurry and insane lying false prophet convicted felon Ronald Weinland do not repent, they will be beaten with whips until they are half dead and then finished off with excruciating fourth degree burns in the lake of fire — and death may not come quickly, they could be out there terrified, naked and afraid for days in terrible pain. So says your Bible!

They do not want to retain God in their knowledge and instead lust for power, prestige, money. But instead of repenting of their evil and admitting the errors of their ways, they condemn those who would seek same sex marriage. Roderick Meredith claims he’s never committed any major sin since he was baptized. How about being a false prophet? David Pack claims he’s never committed any major sin since he was baptized. How about his being a false prophet?

So Robert Thiel can declare that punishment is coming on the United States because of gay marriage? What opinion does he have of Herbert Armstrong committing incest with his own daughter for 10 years at the beginning of his ministry? Should the Armstrongist churches of God be punished for accepting him as their leader? And if there is to be justice and equity, what about Garner Ted Armstrong committing date rape with (by his own estimate) 200 women in 10 years, many of whom were coeds and went on to be minister’s wives? Shouldn’t any one of those in the administration have stood up against Herbert Armstrong and made it stick? Or at least, even if they couldn’t make changes, simply quit in protest and rely on faith to support them? Ministers advising members to drop off their disabled children in shopping malls because someone will take care of them? Really? That’s not just immoral and unethical, it’s illegal. And not a single word from any of them concerning marking one of their own, even if he has been exposed on Dr. Phil multiple times for violation of child labor laws and other offenses. Not one word?

We have those of power and influence in the Churches of God who are immoral, unethical and occasionally illegal. It would just seem that they should put their own houses in order before they take on Gay Marriage. You know, like the rampant alcoholism among them and their members. In some cases, adultery — lots of it — at the highest level. These are supposed to be spiritual leaders. I would not knowingly choose a man who committed adultery on his wife while she was dying of cancer to be my spiritual leader.

So you Armstrongist leaders out there seem to think this is all a big joke and Scripture doesn’t really apply to you. That would make you de facto atheists. You don’t believe in the Bible and the punishments of the evil such as you, you just use it as a tool to leverage yourselves into positions of power, influence and money. If we’re not mistaken, that is more the despicable spirit of Satan than it is any sort of Holy Spirit. This should certainly be an incentive for you to repent and set a good example for a change. Perhaps you can be saved.

But maybe you’re right. Maybe the Bible is useless with many forged books and myths. In that case you don’t have to worry: You will not be beaten with many stripes and you will not be thrown into the Lake of Fire. No you’ll just die. And that will be the end of you.

We can hardly wait… either way.

June 20, 2015

The Corporation of God™

Herbert Armstrong claimed that he was the very first to bring the gospel of the Kingdom of God to this earth in over 1,900 years. The gospel Herbert Armstrong brought was far different from the one described in the New Testament — the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” and told the Romans, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” The gospel of Christ was one of redemption. Herbert Armstrong brought a far different gospel — not of the person of Jesus, but of a kingdom of laws, rulers, power and a fierce hierarchy with little room for sinners. To attain this ‘kingdom’ of power, glory and authority, you would have to be absolutely PERFECT! In fact, there was so little latitude for those with flaws, Herbert Armstrong had the perspective that only he had a lock on salvation and that the members of the Worldwide Church of God did not: The only use he had for them was related to how well they served and supported him as God’s Apostle and they might have salvation on his coattails depending on how well they fulfilled their subservient role. He saw the members as lesser ciphers which he held in contempt.

He had this attitude early on in his ministry as he told the story of when he met the leaders of the Church of God Seventh Day: He did not sense in them greatness and power — they were too ordinary, after all, he had dealt with multimillionaire Corporate CEOs and highly placed executives in major American Corporations. He viewed those not exuding the personal high power of Corporate Executives as being beneath him. In fact, when he was reduced to financial hardship, he was not only embarrassed to do manual labor, he was embarrassed to associate with the ‘simple folk’ of the Church of God. He was just out of place, having to deal with the lowly and humble, particularly since he had not only associated with the high powered Corporate types, but also since he spent so much time at the Central Library in Portland, Oregon where he had found the writings of G. G. Rupert, which in his mind — with its focus on Old Testament physical rituals, such as the feasts and British Israelism — was an enlightenment far beyond what the simpletons of the Church of God Seventh Day knew. He, as a novice, attempted to enlighten them without success, their having rejected his wrong-headed heresies.

This was too much for Herbert: He was great, he knew he was great — and superior too — and they didn’t have his understanding, wisdom and vision. At the same time, for the first 10 years from the beginning of his ministry, he committed incest with his daughter, which, undoubtedly, gave him the feeling of power with the complete domination of another human being who was at his mercy. It is fairly clear that Herbert Armstrong never really repented and did not have anything which could be deemed to be conversion. Add to that the record of his being difficult and uncooperative with the other ministers of the Church of God and the record is complete. In Chapter 23 of his book, The Journey: A History of the Church of God (Seventh Day), Robert Coulter clearly demonstrates that Herbert Armstrong was a liar and he also broke his pledge with the church. Herbert Armstrong insisted that he broke away from association with the Church in 1933, but actually continued until 1938 as one of the Salem Church’s seventy evangelists and reports in The Advocate show this very clearly. Mr. Coulter added this observation in “Demise of Armstrong’s church empire”:

But Armstrong, like most autocrats, reigned over his religious kingdom. Unilaterally he always had the last word! And as usually happens with autocrats, he failed to develop a plan for the succession of leadership in his church. During his lifetime, Armstrong assumed that the title of apostle and may have become a victim of the speculation of some of his members and clerics who reportedly speculated he would “live until Christ returned to establish his kingdom”.

Mr. Coulter adds:

God forbids gloating over the calamity of an individual. But if one believed in church eras, Armstrong’s church of his assumed Philadelphia era was short-lived and now looks more like the Laodicean church. It was advised, “You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Revelation 3:17, NIV).

Armstrong’s Philadelphia church has disappeared, while the Church of God (Seventh Day), which he described as Sardis, never experienced the “flash in the pan,” wealth or prominence he enjoyed. But it still lives! It continues to travel toward God’s eternal Kingdom proclaiming the gospel of Christ. It had no allusions of grandeur for itself. Its pace, while slow and faltering at times, never has been flashy, but its worldwide membership is approaching four hundred thousand, which matches or exceeds that of Armstrong’s church at the height of its glory.

As for the glory Herbert Armstrong enjoyed, he was a Corporate CEO of a multimillion dollar world wide enterprise with a central headquarters with some impressive facilities, including an IBM Mainframe and full scale printing presses. While it was a small to medium corporation, it had the trappings of a major modern corporation, replete with all the internal politics and problems.

Those who have not experienced life as a manager in a Fortune 500 company as I have as a Manager at Weyerhaeuser simply cannot understand what it is like. The best guide is Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers. It isn’t just about the fact that what is right and moral is what the guy above you wants from you — it’s a whole superstructure hierarchy geared to amoral preservation of existence whose central core is that the end justifies the means. The book contains:

Introduction: Business as a Social and Moral Terrain

Moral Probations, Old and New
The Social Structure of Managerial Work
The Main Chance
Looking Up and Looking Around
Drawing Lines
Dexterity with Symbols
The Magic Lantern
Invitations to Jeopardy

Moral Mazes and the Great Recession

It’s appalling and I’ve experienced it personally. There is a certain surreal quality to what can be laughingly called reality — an interaction of dysfunctional environment with distorted perception. If you experienced this for yourself, you would seriously be questioning your sanity — not that it made any difference because as a sane person among crazies, you simply aren’t any better off in such a disturbingly chaotic insane asylum. You should pay attention to The Magic Lantern which is used to shape people’s opinions about the unreality of the Corporation: Every effort is made to make truth disappear to supplant it with feel-good emotions evoked by image making. A good example of this is the Ethyl Corporation making Carbon Tetraethyllead to prevent engine knock as an additive to gasoline, ending up progressively poisoning the world. We can all appreciate the the quote from the THE JUNGLE by Upton Sinclair that “It’s nearly impossible to convince a man of anything when his paycheck depends on it being otherwise”. Corporations do appalling things to survive and it’s especially bad when the corporation is headed by a wrong-headed autocrat. The Magic Lantern in the hands of an expert advertising marketer such as Herbert Armstrong can make the crazy, dangerous and expensive look benign and appealing — consider the topic of three tithes in lesser hands.

If there is one thing we know about The Corporation, it is that it is soulless without a conscience, a non person person which is relentless in its goals without regard to humanity. This is what the Worldwide Church of God became under Herbert Armstrong with the ever expanding goal to influence more and more people. It is what the core of the Armstrongist churches is about today. Make no mistake, I gave United Weyerhaeuser corporate documents which were incorporated into their ‘governance’ — which is why the Council’s endless discussions of exactly the right word and phrase in their organizational documents made the minutes of the meetings look like Novocaine in print. Along with the other sects of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia, it is The Church Corporate with little internally to even imply there is a spiritual side to the business.

What Herbert Armstrong was pushing as the Kingdom of God was nothing more than his vision of The Corporation of God™ replete with God as CEO, Christ as President, himself as one of the high ranking executive vice presidents and a very strong powerful hierarchy of laws, standards and procedures very much like a modern American multinational corporation — or maybe the 1800s version of the same. Be sure that it has a dress code. You can be assured that there are definite classes in a highly defined class structure. Unlike modern politically correct corporation (that way because it’s easier than dealing with litigation from the government), women are lesser creatures relegated to Their Place as are those of races other than whites. There certainly are favorites.

God as CEO isn’t that nicey-nice, lovey-dovey, kind, grandfatherly type of warm and fuzzy deity. He’s harsh, hard, implacable, nasty, arbitrary, touchy with a vile nasty temper and you never know what will set Him off to send floods to Texas, drought to California, earthquakes, tsunamis, lightening strikes for forest fires, mud slides, volcanoes or even an asteroid or two. He’s a God of Power and He exercises it in a reign of terror. As CEO of The Corporation of God™ He knows His brand of justice and fires people (as in the lake of fire) when they do not measure up to His impossible and secret standards of perfection. His Office is a place where even angels fear to tread.

And as it is in many corporations and as I have seen for myself, there is going to be a great deal of boozing going on. The Corporation of God™ doesn’t just allow alcohol, it promotes it. Wine cheers the hearts of God and man, don’t you know. Herbert Armstrong won’t have to give up Dom Perignon as it will be a staple in his diet, unless there is a higher quality vintage that’s more expensive. Know too that those in the upper echelons will have the nicer stuff, not available to the ones on the lower rungs of the God Corporate (“Hurray, we’re on the bottom” as Gerald Waterhouse would say). Rank, privilege and power along with heaps of lots of narcissistic source attention will be granted to such as Herbert Armstrong by the rest of the few of us who make it, albeit by accident. (I’ve seen the corporate drinking parties first hand and it’s just another reason I abstain — note that the old guard Church of God Seventh Day ministers are not in favor of drinking alcohol, which might have been another minor incentive for Herbert Armstrong to jump ship.)

What is the real reason Herbert Armstrong would promote The Corporation of God™ instead of the Biblical Kingdom of God?

It’s the only thing he knew.

June 13, 2015

Judas Asparagus

The Children’s Bible in a Nutshell

In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas. The Bible says, ‘The Lord thy God is one’, but I think He must be a lot older than that.

Anyway, God said, ‘Give me a light!’ and someone did.

Then God made the world.

He split the Adam and made Eve. Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren’t embarrassed because mirrors hadn’t been invented yet.

Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden…..Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn’t have cars.

Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel.

Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Methuselah, who lived to be like a million or something.

One of the next important people was Noah, who was a good guy, but one of his kids was kind of a Ham. Noah built a large boat and put his family and some animals on it.

He asked some other people to join him, but they said they would have to take a rain check.

After Noah came Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob was more famous than his brother, Esau, because Esau sold Jacob his birthmark in exchange for some pot roast.

Jacob had a son named Joseph who wore a really loud sports coat.

Another important Bible guy is Moses, whose real name was Charlton Heston. Moses led the Israel Lights out of Egypt and away from the evil Pharaoh after God sent ten plagues on Pharaoh’s people.

These plagues included frogs, mice, lice, bowels, and no cable.

God fed the Israel Lights every day with manicotti. Then he gave them His Top Ten Commandments. These include: don’t lie, cheat, smoke, dance, or covet your neighbour’s stuff.

Oh, yeah, I just thought of one more: Humour thy father and thy mother.

One of Moses’ best helpers was Joshua who was the first Bible guy to use spies. Joshua fought the battle of Geritol and the fence fell over on the town.

After Joshua came David. He got to be king by killing a giant with a slingshot. He had a son named Solomon who had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines.

My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn’t sound very wise to me.

After Solomon there were a bunch of major league prophets. One of these was Jonah, who was swallowed by a big whale and then got barfed up on the shore.

There were also some minor league prophets, but I guess we don’t have to worry about them.

After the Old Testament came the New Testament. Jesus is the star of The New. He was born in Bethlehem in a barn.

(I wish I had been born in a barn too, because my mom is always saying to me, ‘Close the door! Were you born in a barn?’ It would be nice to say, ‘As a matter of fact, I was.’)

During His life, Jesus had many arguments with sinners like the Pharisees and the Democrats.

Jesus also had twelve opossums.

The worst one was Judas Asparagus. Judas was so evil that they named a terrible vegetable after him.

Jesus was a great man. He healed many leopards and even preached to some Germans on the Mount.

But the Democrats and all those guys put Jesus on trial before Pontius the Pilot. Pilot didn’t stick up for Jesus. He just washed his hands instead.

Anyways, Jesus died for our sins, then came back to life again. He went up to Heaven but will be back at the end of the Aluminum. His return is foretold in the book of Revolution.

We’re pretty sure this kid is going to be on the next committee to translate the Bible.

Actually, he grew up and worked on the Systematic Theology Project.