Category: Hoss Cartwright

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Just the Facts, Man



Sometimes I get ornery about nothing and people say I got a bee in my bonnet. It usually turns out to be a wasp in my ten-gallon hat. When I get an itch in the britches – and it’s not “the itch” (Deut 28:27) – I find the best way do deal with the little annoyance is to write about it.

Sometimes the itch is about misinformation, by neglect to verify something, and sometimes from poor scholarship. Sometimes it turns out to be giving information that is intentionally wrong. One time when I heard some incorrect claim in a sermonette. I mentioned this to another member, who responded with something like, “You should tell Mr. — his mistake, he would really appreciate getting his facts set straight”. Hmm. Like in the Spokesman’s Club “Get the facts!” speech?

One ‘sermonette fact’ was given in hysteria over gay teachers in public schools (not celibate teachers in Catholic schools). At that time, and in that city, evidence showed the exact opposite of what ‘fact’ and what the speaker implied. Some years ago a COG leader claimed, “Evolutionists are running scared of Intelligent Design!” Actually, scientists were exuberant at having unmasked ID as rebadged Creationism. They even showed books that were edits of older texts, with theistic terms replaced by benign ID jargon. A non-COG minister used fabricated facts in a debate over evolution; his opponent charged him with “Lying for God”, as if the ends justified the means (like in the “Proof of the Bible”).

A problem with some “proofs” is that parts of verses are patched together like axiomatic proofs of Euclidean geometry. Our dependency on HWA’s “proofs” slowly began to unravel after his demise, and without them, the WCG fell apart. About the only thing that remained was his autocratic form of rule.

And here is one that always gets me peeved – a minister at one of the COGs on the Silenced.co “Dying” list keeps trying to “disprove” Global Climate Change, and for no stated reason – though I privately speculate it’s seen as being contrary to “God controls the weather”. Admittedly, governments have really made a mess of carbon trading, burp tax (penalty on methane emission), alternative energy, and so on, and Al Gore told a few inconvenient whoppers.

A recent rant had to do with the ships frozen in Antarctic waters. Of course it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, some Australian states are suffering a heat wave, but Antarctica being cold disproves global warming. Despite the ice-locked ships, there were news reports of record high temperatures in Antarctica (but unconfirmed). The official summer record high temperature at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole base was in 2011, minus12 degrees C. Still cold, but warm compared to the average warm season temperature of minus 35 degrees C.  Even with Global Warming, Antarctica is still cold in the summer – colder than the Artic. And ice still melts at 0 degrees C…

Well, that itch has gone, and the bee turned out to be a just a mosquito.

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Recovering from a bad date.

Back in Spokesman’s Club, the Minister could spot every little flaw. What puzzled and annoyed most of us was that he let a select few get away with it.

A few weeks ago, following in the footsteps of HWA, Apostle Pack and his Council of Agreers (thanks to whoever thought of that one!) unanimously picked a momentous date that passed uneventfully. Now his apology appears, and he draws upon HWA’s explanation of why January 7 1972 didn’t result they way some people mistakenly assumed it would. Trying to be a dead ringer for his mentor, he also copies his blunders and excuses.

And of course Dr Bob jumps in with his expected Told you so! Ron Weinland is another COGlet leader who Bob would roast over incorrectly timed events. And there are others. No one can pull a prediction past the watchful eye of the Prophet of Arroyo Grande.

Except HWA. He is offered every excuse an apologist could imagine.

The way HWA got away with false prophecies is like the Spokesman’s Club member who the Minister didn’t humiliate for messing up big-time.

Perhaps by Bob’s rules, All false prophets are equal, but some are more equal than others can get away with it.

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Gerry's Judah

Usually I wouldn’t mention Gerald Flurry. On one hand, he has pushed the PCG so far into the lunatic fringe that nothing is surprising. And I feel commenting the PCG membership (except in pity) is like mocking the handicapped. And my apologies to the handicapped – one having impairment cannot be equated to those who are willingly deluded.

But I recently recalled something Gerry spouted some years ago in a “personal appearance” campaign that I thought I’d mention. With a condescending chuckle, Ol’ Sixpack declared that the founders of the modern state of Israel were mistaken; they should have named their country Judah. He apparently was looking through his Anglo-Israel colored glasses when making this comment, which actually contradicted the old WCG position (no surprise there) on the country’s name.

Without arguing the two kingdoms period and the number of people who fled from the northern tribes to Judah compared to the number transported, the answer is quite simple: the territory is still “eretz Israel”, the Land of Israel.

I still remember hearing GTA (on The World Tomorrow) explain “Jew” and “Israel”: “the Jews were at war with Israel”. Any biblical use of “Jew” would mean a descendent of Judah, or an inhabitant of Judah or Judea. On the other hand, the idea of “Jew” in the Bible referring to one who observed Judaism is an anachronism. But, I’ve heard Jewish rabbis and teachers call Moses and Abraham “Jews”. Here, for lack of better term, Jew is used to mean a follower of Judaism. But again, this is an anachronism, as the foundations of modern Judaism lie, at their earliest, in the Second Temple period.

With Bob Thiel’s latest dismal predictions for the US currency, and Gerry’s renewed fervor over Petra, a new medium of exchange may be prudent. To stave off bartering with fellow cave dwellers, PCG could start minting Petradollars, their own answer to Bitcoin!