Category: James

Editor of the Painful Truth

Posted on

A Little Sleep, Folding of the Hands

Blast from the past…

I have enjoyed the retired professor’s essays to say the least. He has been able to express very vividly a line of logic that reveals the man that was behind the curtain, The Wizard of Odd, HWA. Fortunately for the professor his awakening started in college at an early age. Mine not so soon.

I was raised in the church. When it came time to go to college I was turned down by Ambassador, thankfully, and instead continued with my life. This was 1969 and as members at the time will remember all of this was to end in 1975. So I fell into a career just to be a tithe payer and started a family. I was intellectually asleep for some 22 years as I labored to support my family and waited for the pending return of Christ.

That all ended in 1988. My wife whom I met and married within the church was tired of our financial situation. She knew that in order for us to do better she needed to be educated in a career and get a job. I thought that this would go away soon and that my place in the recliner was secure. After all it was much easier to exist in the state of slumber than to be an active participant in life. My wife thought differently.

As B.J. started taking classes something wonderful began to take place in her. She began to blossom as an individual.  She began to question her environment, our place in life, and our faith. We started having stimulating conversations about various topics. My mind was being challenged and it hurt. I wanted to sleep, to fold my hands and just wait for the second coming.

After about two years of going to school part-time and continuing to be a housewife, B.J. started encouraging me to go to college. She explained that by taking the same classes together at the local community college we could share the books and save money. Besides because of our economic state we qualified for educational grants that would pay our tuition and give us a little gas money to boot.

At first I resisted, then after awhile I agreed to enroll with her just to get her off my back. My plan was to flunk out and then return to my recliner. Something happened to me. My mind slowly began to awaken. Our conversations and discussions were going to a deeper level. I was enjoying the stimulation. I was learning new things, interesting things like sociology, psychology, and archeology. My belief system was being challenged. I was awakening and my friends at
church could see it. Some rejoiced with me, others shunned me.

I aced that first semester. I had a talent for college. I got it. I enjoyed it. I liked what was happening to me and my wife. Our life together was getting better and better. Yet I was very fearful. I was leaving my comfort zone. I was being pushed into the real world and it was scary, very scary. As a team we pushed on. B.J. eventually got her Masters in Social Work after 13 hard years. I graduated with a double major in Graphic Design and Illustration in seven. We both had chosen fields we liked but that didn’t pay too well.

So after graduation came student loans, low paying jobs, grandkids, and a new life. We left the church with the courage we had developed by going to school in our forties. We were broke and weary looking for a nice rut to get into so we could prepare for retirement. We bought a house trailer and paid it off but still had many debts to dispatch before we could retire. B.J.’s student loans totaled over $50,000 alone. Yet we had come so far in a short time. Yet the chains of slumber still ensnared us. After all it was the easy way. Get into a routine, slide into retirement. Sit on the porch along the way.

Life has a way of shaking one out of a slumber. As I was slowly drifting into another type of sleep my security blanket was ripped from me. B.J., my wife of 33 years was suddenly taken from me. She was killed in a head-on collision just blocks from our home. Now what was I to do? As the dust settled I began to see two paths before me. Continue in the rut alone, or wake up and begin to live life to its fullest. Again I found myself in very new territory. I was once again
tossed into the world, but this time it didn’t seem so scary.

I decided to find another life partner that I could share life with. I went online and met a wonderful woman who right from the start challenged me to open my heart, my mind and my very being to what life had to offer me. She taught me that it wasn’t the scary place that I had been taught and that life wasn’t to be endured but celebrated in abundance and joy. Such a different way of thinking. I married her.

Once again I had fallen asleep waiting. This time it wasn’t for the second coming but for retirement and eventually death. After all we had accomplished we had allowed ourselves to be lulled into a slumber. Maybe it was because the struggle had been for so long and so hard. Maybe it was because our upbringing ingrained in us that life was only to be endured so we could partake of the “kingdom of heaven”. I don’t know. I’m just glad I awoke before it was too late. It’s really sad that it took the loss of someone very close to me to wake me up. I thank my new wife, Chris, for helping me in the process. Never will I allow myself to go to sleep again.

Michael

Link

Posted on

February 25, 1985 Herbert W Armstrong Co-Worker Letter. HWA's New Book "Mystery of the Ages" and Germany Agenda

Dear Brethren and Co-Workers with Christ:

A drastic, world-shaking turn of events may occur unexpectedly this year.

This is the “Fortieth Year” and historically the 40th year has been the year of a drastic turn in national and world events.

It was after 40 years that Moses left Egypt as a prince and fled to Midian. It was at the end of another 40 years when God called Moses at the incident of the burning bush to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery in the great migration to the promised land. It was at the end of that 40 years that Moses died and Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan river into that promised land. These were actually turning points in national events of world significance in history.

It was at the foot of Mt. Sinai that the nation of Israel was born at the great ceremony after God had in a voice of thunder spoken the words of the Ten Commandments in the hearing of the more than two million people that composed the new nation of Israel. It was at the end of 40 days of fasting atop Mt. Sinai that Moses received the two tablets of stone on which God with his own finger had engraved the words of the Ten Commandments. It was at the end of 40 days of total fasting that Jesus qualified to wrest the government of the whole earth from Satan after the great temptation recorded in Matthew 4.

And now in 1985 we are at the end of 40 years since the founding of the United Nations and 40 years since the dividing of the continent of Europe right down the middle as a result of the Yalta Conference, February 4 to 11, in 1945. The nations of Europe had been involved in wars among themselves, culminating with the Second World War. That conference made a drastic change in the nations of Europe. The Eastern bloc of nations was gobbled up by the Soviet Union — came under Soviet domination. The Western bloc of European nations came under the military protection of the United States. (Editor: Herbie claimed he spoke for God. Funny neither saw this coming.)

Thus Europe was divided right down the middle, between the world’s first two superpowers, the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. Germany was divided with the eastern area under Soviet domination and the western area dependent on United States power to protect it from communist takeover.

Dissatisfaction has been mounting in Europe. The Western nations of Europe are tired of being under the American umbrella. The Eastern bloc of Europe has suffered increasingly in economy and insufficient technological progress. Now there is growing talk about Germany being once again united in the “Fatherland.” httpv://youtu.be/UYtbEJfQtDI

For more than 40 years now The PLAIN TRUTH has been proclaiming an outstanding series of Bible prophecies of something due soon to occur in Europe that will change the whole world and shake up the lives of every one of us. (Editor: This of course was all bullshit.  Herbert Armstrong’s “outstanding series of Bible prophecies” was nothing more than an attempt to create prophecy from the headlines of the day. “Bible prophecies of something due soon to occur in Europe that will change the whole world and shake up the lives of every one of us.” Armstrong, as usual, was characteristically vague (as usual) as to “what” this event was going to be.) 

 

httpv://youtu.be/AORrIlQGATM

Daniel’s prophecy in chapter 2 pictures 10 nations in Europe in our time right now, as the 10 toes on the two feet of the great symbolic image. Five of those toes picture five nations in Western Europe and five in Eastern Europe. Then is pictured a great stone, representing Christ at his soon Second Coming, smiting those toes, and coming to rule in the Kingdom of God over all those and all other nations on earth. This is further explained in the 17th chapter of Revelation, depicting those 10 nations of Europe uniting under the Roman Catholic Church. In the last decade certain leaders in Europe have been working feverishly to bring about such a reuniting of Europe. I have personally spoken to the principal leaders in this struggle, and to leaders in Spain, Greece and Austria.

For some reason God has been holding back the fulfillment of this prophecy — BUT IT IS CERTAIN TO OCCUR! Could this 40th year be the year that will bring it about?

Meanwhile God’s Work is growing now as never before. The first two TV broadcasts of this year each broke all records for responses from viewers. Those records were surpassed in February, with over 17,000 telephone responses from a single telecast.

I am now hard at work on a new book. It probably will be the largest and most important book I have ever written. The title is MYSTERY OF THE AGES. It is being written as a textbook for the second year Theology class in Ambassador College. It will be published before the fall new school year begins. Copies will be made available to you.

Meanwhile remember this is the shortest month of the year and therefore one of our most difficult financially. You have your own vital part in keeping this greatest Work on earth going — and GROWING.

With love and prayers, in Jesus’ name,

Herbert W. Armstrong

Link

Posted on

Hey Bob Thiel. HWA said the Gospel Commission has been Fulfilled!

Hey Bob Thiel. HWA said that the Gospel Commission has been Fulfilled!
Is Bob calling HWA a liar?

HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG
PRESIDENT and PASTOR

January 4, 1985

Dear Brethren and Co-Workers:

The time has come to send each of you your receipt for tithes and offerings for 1984.

I want you to realize the magnitude of the accomplishments you have helped make possible — yet I wonder if it is humanly possible to comprehend just how great is the Work the living Christ is accomplishing through our combined efforts and sacrifice under him and through the boundless power of the great Creator God.

We are humanly inclined to judge by what we can see physically. What we see physically is one of the smallest church bodies on earth. Yet what we should see spiritually is something so stupendous as to defy any comparison, so colossal above all that has been accomplished by all the combined efforts of the large churches of this world. Spiritually it is a gigantic worldwide accomplishment compared to no spiritual accomplishment whatsoever.

Jesus Christ sent forth the first apostles going afoot, or on horseback or by sailboat, to the small world of that day, centered around the Mediterranean Sea. In 20 years there was violent controversy over whether the gospel to be proclaimed was a gospel ABOUT Christ, or the gospel OF Christ. For nearly 1,900 years Christ’s Gospel of the Kingdom of God was thereafter NOT PROCLAIMED to the world. But Jesus had said, “THIS gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness unto ALL NATIONS, and then shall the end [of this world] come.”

The tithes and offerings of this little church began proclaiming 1,900 years later the Gospel of the Kingdom — the only true Gospel started by Jesus — throughout Europe after it had gone forth for 19 years over the United States and Canada.

It is now true that this Gospel has been proclaimed within EVERY NATION ON EARTH BY THE WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD.

NO OTHER CHURCH has proclaimed THIS true Gospel at all!

Following are actual figures you should know of for the year 1984 in comparison with 1981, just three years earlier.

+ In 1981, 22 million PLAIN TRUTH magazines were sent to homes or distributed on newsstands. In 1984, 73 million PLAIN TRUTHS went out. Monthly circulation soared past seven million copies.

+ In 1981, 800,000 GOOD NEWS magazines were mailed. In 1984, 3.7 million went to members, co-workers, and other subscribers.

+ In 1981, 191,000 copies of YOUTH 81 magazine were sent to teenagers and other readers. In 1984, 1.2 million YOUTH 84s were sent out.

+ In 1981, two million books, booklets and reprint articles were sent out. In 1984, more than six million were sent upon request.

+ In 1981, our Mail Processing Department received 2.5 million letters, plus 336,000 telephone requests on our toll-free lines. In 1984, five million letters were received, plus 800,000 telephone requests.

+ In 1981, 52,000 enrolled in the Ambassador College Bible Correspondence Course. In 1984, 250,000 enrolled.

What tremendous growth in just three years your tithes and offerings have made possible!

With love and gratitude, in Jesus’ name,

Herbert W. Armstrong

LINK