The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God

My book, Assertive Incompetence — An Introduction to Management Malpractice, has been a worthless failure, because… we’ll get to that at the end.

Armstrongists don’t realize that there is an entire Seventh Day Church of God out there, publishing literature world wide and keeping the Feasts annually, including the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles with the Seventh Day Church of God is a totally different experience than the one in the Armstrongist churches of God. It is more like a Bible Camp. Actually, it is a Bible Camp. There may be some tents that people put up, but there are campers these days with a bed and a simple sink and toilet with running water and enough electricity for a light and a few small appliances. There is generally a communal kitchen where the ministers and members together cooperatively prepare the meals. There are a few motel style cabins available. You see where the Feast was kept in Washington State in 2008 here:

http://www.fruitlandbiblecamp.com/fbc_2008_002.htm

The “services” are quite a bit different too. It isn’t all hymns, opening prayer, sermonette, hymn, announcements, hymn, sermon, hymn and closing prayer, although there is often a flavor of that. Services are bit more informal and there may be, occasionally, some gospel singing group come in and perform. There is Bible Study at 7:00 AM, breakfast, activities, services, lunch and… well, it varies. At night, around 7:30 PM, there’s another service with a sermon. It is as quaint and rustic as you might expect, and about 25 miles from the nearest town of any size.

The Seventh Day Church of God has been keeping the Feasts since 1919 when Gilbert G. Rupert championed them.

The Seventh Day Church of God has noted the problems with the official Jewish calendar in general use: The Spring Equinox is not April 6 / 7. That’s not scientific. Therefore, they prepare their own holy day calendar which is published and sent world wide each year. Paul Woods is the minister who currently maintains the calendar. I did talk to Mr. Woods [who is the current editor of The Herald of Truth] about the calendar in 2008, briefly, but there were a couple of other things we discussed. One of them was about the Lord’s Supper and the Passover. Those are separate events as one can see from the Scriptures — 24 hours apart. The Days of Unleavened Bread begin on the evening of the Passover — which the Armstrongists keep instead as the Night to Be Much Observed.

One of the things we discussed was the topic of Herbert Armstrong’s baptism. It turns out that Herbert Armstrong was baptized by A.H. Stith, of the Seventh Day Church of God and the baptism was witnessed by Mr. Stith’s daughter. My response was, “Herbert Armstrong lied? I’m shocked!”. I wasn’t really, but fortunately, Paul Woods has a fine sense of irony as well as being a very nice minister.

That the Seventh Day Church of God keeping the Feasts falls well beneath the radar of the Armstrongists, should not be a surprise. Who would tell you? Herbert Armstrong? What incentive would he have?

Nevertheless, there are some customs and practices which are universal. One of those involves the power and privilege of special classes of people in the Churches of God. Remember that the Sabbath keeping Churches of God have been around a lot longer than the Armstrongist ones. People grow up in families in the Churches of God and they know each other with a long history of association. Word gets around and they are a tight knit group.

A family was going to attend the Feast of Tabernacles with the Seventh Day Church of God. The rule was, first come, first served. If you got there late and didn’t get the better accommodations, that was just too bad. Like or lump it. Except, except. Some of the ministers were going to come in late, so, against the official rules, certain accommodations were set aside to make provisions for them. Sound familiar? So the family came to the Feast in plenty of time, but were told that they would have to take other accommodations — the not, shall we say, very good ones. So the teenager, Nicholas, had to stay in a very small cramped space in one of these campers. Night passes. He sleeps. He wakes up and 18 inches from his face is this big RAT! He shrieks! They’re outta there. That’s just what power and special privilege can do for you.

And where there’s one rat, you can be sure that there are plenty more.

You can be sure the ministry had better digs. After all, aren’t they worthy of a double portion? Maybe so, back in the days of the First Century AD, when ministers could be and were martyred. These days, the real risk for the ministry is dropping dead of a heart attack or stroke from excessive consumption of meat and drink.

If you were looking for the finer things of life at the Feast, count your blessings.

Rats!

How disappointing.

The story is reminiscent of the one where a poor married man with an unbelieving spouse came to the Feast alone and ended up in a motel room. First night off, he hears noises. He turns on the light. The cockroaches scramble for cover. He’s got an infestation. He goes to the motel manager, tells him the story. The motel manager says, “There you go, just keep the lights on!”. The poor man left.

Rats and cockroaches aren’t the only infestations in this world. There are many more, for example, termites.

My first experience with termites was as a lad. My dad had a pile of wood and pointed out some termites in it. Fortunately, that was pretty much my last experience with them. They are so insidious: They come into a building and set up shop. They start doing what comes naturally and begin eating up the support timbers. They are good at hiding. If they happen to break through the wall, they cover it up immediately to prevent discovery. No one hears or sees them until the day the whole place collapses.

If you are not convinced, then you should see articles about the Formosan Termite imported in the wood of the crates made to ship property of GIs home from the Pacific after World War II. They have made a meal of much of the New Orlean’s French Quarter. They have spread far and wide throughout much of United States warm and wet South. They are aggressive and love all things cellulose, including, but not restricted to, wood, paper, fruits, nuts, cork and live plants, and they’ll gnaw or squeeze their petite little bodies through virtually anything to get to their food, including electrical wires, plaster, plastic, and the tiniest cracks in concrete. They get into everything.

Several tell of the story of the water skier on Lake Loma that came down in on an island on the lake into a nest of poisonous snakes and, according to the account, died instantly. I have my doubts: There was probably a lot of pain and agony for a few minutes.

Most of the time, an infestation begins with only one. That was certainly the case with the Radio Church of God — which then became the Worldwide Church of God. And not to put too fine a point on it, after the nest is established, some break off to establish a new nest, and then, later, they break off, and so on and so on. The Tkatches were interesting because they were an internal infestation, infesting the infestation!

Now, Herbert Armstrong was bad enough, but Roderick Meredith has managed to spin off toxic infestations — a lot more than you may think. And, yes, United has managed to spin off dozens of infestations, while Gerald Flurry’s and John Rittenbaugh’s nests have been mostly contained, but Meredith has really done a lot of collateral damage in ways you can barely begin to imagine. Global: Now there’s a nest that managed to implode in on itself. The pests, sometimes called “ministers”, scurried off to invade communities far and wide. But you know, it isn’t like we shouldn’t have been able to see it coming: You should take a look again at his “Manpower Papers”. If that didn’t give us all a clue to the future, nothing would. These infestations always do what they are programmed by the Universe to do — what comes naturally to all psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists. Without them, there would probably never be any infestations.

Today we will concentrate on a small infestation in Oregon which you may have never heard of: The Church of God in Peace and Truth — terms which are manifestly self contradictory. The progenitors of the nest are the Haneys, which, again, you are probably blessed never to have heard of.

Every year, it is always a challenge, for my wife wants to go somewhere really good for vacation. To me the Feast of Tabernacles is not a vacation. It is a lot of inconvenient effort which generally ends up to be “interesting” as in the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”. Last year, I chose a spot which looked benign, Bend, Oregon. Safely nestled between the Independent’s Feast Site and United’s, I figured, what the hey, what could go wrong, right? We knew people who were relatively civilized who were attending, so it seemed like a good idea — sort of like the movie, “The Magnificent Seven” where the guy explained why he jumped into a cactus patch without any clothes on: “It seemed like a good idea at the time”.

It was a promising start. Nestled in the high desert country of Oregon, the Shiloh Inn in Bend had a one bedroom apartment with a full kitchen, a leather couch and big leather chairs in front of the fireplace. It was the nicest accommodations there — and most expensive. The entire Church of God in Peace and Truth had come to the Shiloh Inn complex to keep the Feast of Tabernacles and my wife and I had the best accommodations, right across from the conference room where the services were held. The deacon and the deaconess who had been a part of the defense with United against the UCG stalker at the court that issued the restraining order were there as well, since their son was married to the daughter of the presiding minister. The people attending were really nice people. The main congregation was based out of Gold Hill, where there were about 50 people. The minister, Don Haney, was first in Worldwide, then in Global. The main congregation was from Living and they ended up the way they were because their Living minister was very terrible to them in ways that are hard to imagine, but have become standard fare. We were well set up and things looked promising (for a change).

I knew from the first that trouble was ahead. Don Haney said in the first third of his sermon, “I am going overtime” — in a church that proclaimed they lived by the Ten Commandments, one of which is, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”!?! Stealing our time?! That’s just rude! He saw me cross my arms and we were off and running in an adversarial relationship. I got to see how bad things were by reading the first few chapters of his booklet [I couldn’t stomach reading the whole thing], “Satan’s Seat of Tyranny,” where he took his misgivings concerning the Living Church of God and Roderick Meredith to a whole new plateau. From the front cover: “Its damaging rule over the Church of God” and “The bonds of restraint broken by the freedom of God’s Truth!”. From the back middle paragraph:

“However, Much of God’s Church Has Been Subjected to a Pyramid of Power and Intimidation, Which Has Hurt and Unnecessarily Divided God’s People, Thereby Impeding the Spreading of the Good News. Those in “POWER” Have interpreted Scripture for and Exercised Authority Over Those They Have Subjected to Themselves for So Long That They Seem to Have Cultivated an Even Greater Influence Over Some in God’s Church Than the Direct Authority of God’s Written Word!”.

I have to admit that I understand the sentiment: Roderick Meredith  is like a community organizer whose sole purpose is to create havoc, divide people, for the sole purpose of self aggrandizement. His swelling ego was a result of his winning the Golden Glove regional boxing championship and then finding his way to Herbert Armstrong who was impressed that Meredith was “a man of quality”. It’s all heady stuff to be set on a pedestal by a highly successful cult leader. The admiration and its results differ little from the current U.S. government political landscape. Roderick Meredith ended up having a lot of power and influence: He was over the students at Ambassador College and he directed the ministers from headquarters. After Herbert Armstrong, he was a god in his own right. His opinions were law and he could oppress people, insult and abuse them, just about any way he chose as a harsh, hard slave merciless slave driver who assumed that he was a Man’s Man because of his being a winner. He didn’t see the real truth: He was a testosterone poisoned, brain shunken despot whose cruelty was legendary. He ended up spawning rebellious leaders who couldn’t wait to get out from under his control, only to set up their own fiefdoms of despotism. After all, he bankrupted his own church, Global, just out of spite.

It was as if Roderick Meredith said, “You haven’t treated me as the GOD I know I am, so I’m going to sink you and do a number on you!”. The sermon in Kansas City was one to remember when he told his congregation that he “would abide by the decision of the council” of elders in Global. He lied. You have to remember that Roderick Meredith has said, “I have never committed a MAJOR sin”. You know, like Adultery. At least not in the carnal sense. I suspect he has missed something in Revelation 22. You know the part where it says that liars will not enter into the Kingdom of God? He doesn’t seem very well positioned for repentance. I occasionally wonder in an off moment whether he has committed the unpardonable sin. It is this rebellion that has, in itself, spawned even more rebellion among those chaffing under his harsh relentless despotism, promulgating even more despots rebelling against his egocentric malignancy. I do often wish he would repent to reduce the massive harm he has done, but I doubt that he can really face himself in the spiritual mirror.

Trust me when I say that Satan’s Seat of Tyranny is the worst written booklet I have ever seen, but is filled with totally rank hypocrisy. [And yes, the author DID capitalize all those words!] He took his hatred and anger of the administration of Roderick Meredith to a whole new level. His basic theory: We will all come to live under the Laws, Statutes, Judgments and Testimonies of Scripture, and, from the Return of Jesus Christ on, it will be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth as the judges determine — and to hell with what Jesus said in Matthew 5:38-39. He was the very picture of the Pharisee as an Old Testament Christian. Here’s how it works: You are just fine as long as you do everything he tells you to do and wants you to do, without any hesitation. He is perfect. And under his administration, there’s no room for mercy, just blood letting. His congregation was fine with that. I suspect they were Stockholmed. If Haney really wanted to see Satan’s Seat of Tyranny, all he had to do is look at his backside in a mirror.

I met a young man at the Feast. His father was an Elder. His mother was with United. He had set up shop, so to speak, with his girlfriend in Eugene, and while things had started out fine with their live in arrangements, he was out of a job and not doing well. He got enough money to leave the Feast in the middle, to go back to his live-in girlfriend and get into the State’s job program. Since Don Haney made so much of how we were all going to [be forced to] keep all the Old Testament Laws, Statutes, Judgments and Testimonies, that I told him my expectation: That he, as the minister of the church, would obey the judgments in the New Testament and obey the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 5 and put the fornicator out of the church. His response, “He’s left the Feast”. No can do. Not my problem. It took care of itself. And the whole congregation felt good about themselves for having such “love”.

No wait! What!?! Hey, hey now!

You see, I didn’t really care about the man committing the fornication. This was a matter for the congregation and the minister. After all, if you proclaim that the Laws, Statutes, Judgments and Testimonies are going to be kept — all the way for beatings and replacing sheep and oxen, to death for those who commit kidnapping — surely, SURELY, the minister is going to keep what the New Testament says to do in his own congregation today. The truth is, he won’t. That also explains why Garner Ted Armstrong was able to get away with committing date rape with 200+ [by his own estimate] Ambassador College Coeds, in full view of Herbert Armstrong, who was responsible for the whole mess. Instead of prison, he got lots of money, fame and position — until he didn’t, only because the whole matter became too public and SOMEBODY HAD TO DO SOMETHING, even though the damage was done: Leaving a legacy of hopelessness for the ministers who later married the coeds and have had to deal with clinical depression from their anger ever since. It’s too bad so many get locked into the infestation in their warm little nests.

In the end, we lived well — even in the ankle deep snow that fell in early October, snarling up traffic and making it impossible for some to get to services in Sun River and Redmond. We sat in the big comfortable leather chairs in front of the fireplace in our own little fiefdom. We ate well [I fancy myself to be a good cook]. We slept soundly. We had peace, though not the peace of the Church of God. If living well is the best revenge, then we had our revenge. It is also best to observe a drama without getting drawn into it. We also really yucked it up by taking Haney’s preposperous propositions to their logical extreme: We supposed that we should all carry paddles at the Feast for when we needed to relieve ourselves! No one could figure out why my wife and I were breaking out in laughter! Hey, it’s the Law… or maybe Statute: We have to do it! That’s what everyone will do in the Millennium, so we’d better get used to it now! Forget toilets and water closets: God wants us to carry paddles!

The people in the Church of God in Peace and Truth are still nice people, except for the minister. I assume that afterwards, the minister took his posse and went hunting in the wilds of Oregon as he said he would. He lives a comfortable life and he is master of all he surveys. Things would be perfect for him, except for ALL THAT ANGER. It just can’t be good for you to hold it like that. It’s all a comfortable little nest of infestation which will continue for some time to come.

Near the end, I encountered someone I had first met in the Radio Church of God in 1963. I told him United was a cult. He told me that I had the root of bitterness. It is interesting that when an infestation is exposed, the nest bands together immediately to cover up their incursion. That’s how they manage to stay the cults they are, and “the root of bitterness” is yet another tool of the tools who make up the infestation. It’s what narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths always do: Seek first the destruction of credibility of truth seekers and ye shall inherit the nest of infestation. Next time you hear that you have a root of bitterness, just point out that they are attempting a coverup — they don’t want the truth at all because they like their lies too much — and they’ve just proved the points you just made [“Truth! You can’t handle the truth!”]

This year, the Church of God in Peace and Truth moves their venue for the Feast of Tabernacles from the desert mountain high country [God’s country?] to the beach [and there will be no more oceans] at the Embassy Suites in Mandalay Beach, California. For us? Never again. High concept about how things should work out is often disappointing in unanticipated ways — and we do not fear a tidle wave — it’s just that the hypocrisies of these infestations are not something I want during the only really good time to get away — even if it isn’t my idea of a fun time. I’ve had one too many laps in the cesspools of the Churches of God to appreciate the kind of hypocrisy home grown in the toxic infestations of hypocrisy. Better it is to be with someone who’s made a terrible mistake and learned from it than to join with those who are self righteous ungodly godly people who ARE IN CHARGE! I can get all I want of that from work at taxpayer expense.

I don’t know, but I suppose that if I were God, I would wonder if the leaders of the Churches of God would ever do what I said to do of their own volition.

The infestation of the Armstrongists is the worst kind of infestation: The leaders are parasites, living off the host. They take the resources of the host and live from it, providing nothing in return and making the host progressively more sick. When the host can provide no more, it is cast off. The infestation of the Armstrongist parasites then moves on and finds another host to live on.

Yellowstone Park has signs, DON’T FEED THE BEARS! Each year there are a few who do not heed the warning. But the bears have such appeal. So some roll down their windows and give the poor bears a sandwich. Have you ever heard the expression, Hungry as a bear? It’s a reality. The people who run out of food soon find the bear goes from fun to frightening. They will tear the car apart looking for more food. So the Armstrongists seemed to have such appeal. We fed them our “tithes”. That wasn’t enough. They wanted offerings. Then they wanted long term loans. Then, heck, send everything. Then they tore us apart. To add insult to injury, they grabbed the wheel and drove off, leaving us stranded along the side of the road. DON’T FEED THE BEARS! Let them survive or die in their natural habitat. Otherwise, you will have an infestation of parasites you will have a difficult time exterminating.

Moreover, all the sacrifices you have made for the parasite infestation — that made you feel so good about yourself — are completely useless, since you helped support something which was harmful, not just to yourself and your family, but to the rest of the Armstrongist community. Now the toxins left behind by the infestation are even harder to rid oneself from than the parasites themselves, because the toxins not only have weakened you, but left guilt and the feeling of stupidity besides. What you have to remember is that this is what they do and they are not really a part of you and never were. They just fed off of you. It will make it easier to walk away by putting the blame on the real culprits: They had a good spiel, we paid for it, now we have an opportunity to get better. Learn from the con and move on to live your own life, not theirs.

Like so many other kinds of infestations, those involving scoundrels often start in the same place and end the same way.

As for my book,  Assertive Incompetence — An Introduction to Management Malpractice, being a worthless failure, it’s all because the information is all there about narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths: Their methods, approaches and processes — but no one actually uses the information but me. Properly used, it could have prevented the current administration, but people love their little nests of infestations, living off of hope, which is merely an unfulfilled illusion, relying on useless saviors, which leads to disappointment.

That’s all I have to say. For now.

It’s been nearly 50 years now — five decades; half a century — that the Armstrongist churches of God have declared war on my family. I just hadn’t realized it until now. I’m a technologist. Stupid fool people stuff is not my thing.

It always starts out the same. I’m curious, perhaps to an unprecedented degree. Curiosity drives me as a truth seeker. As a truth seeker, I embrace new things which have promise rather immediately. After all, if it is true, it is probably a good thing to pursue, right? The truth will set you free and all that. More than that, truth is interesting. The problem is with that tiny little word, if.

It isn’t long that people associated with this new “truth” (new to me and maybe not so true) begin to notice that someone is rooting around in their root cellar where they don’t want anyone looking. Those things lurking were never supposed to be found. The lies and deceptions upon which the “truth” were built threaten to destroy their prosperous little enterprise. This works for churches, governments, business and academia equally.

Instead of welcoming correction, these people position themselves well to protect the lies upon which their social order is constructed. They aren’t just defensive, they are downright aggressively vicious and will rally themselves to galvanize against any invaders. It’s like that Disney nature video where the wasp falls into the ant nest. Soon there is nothing left of the wasp but wings and feathers.

And so it is with the Armstrongist churches of God. They seem so sociable at first, hoping for your support in the form of money and giving over your personal power for the aggrandizement of their narcissistic leadership. The lies always threaten to sink their leadership, take away what they come to think is their money and cause their rather tenuous built-on-a-house-of-cards structure of outright delusional destructive fantasies to crumble.

It isn’t enough for me to gain the proof of how anachronistic the social order is. I must do the high concept thing of projecting the logical conclusion of the outcome, if everyone does exactly what they are supposed to do in the nonsensical framework of absolute dysfunction. Let me give you a concrete example from the real world.

I work for a county which has built a rather magnificent Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for $10 Million. It is an impressive work. It looks like those centers you see on TV with all the monitors high on the wall in every direction, dozens of tables with PC workstations and telephones. Just what you need for some emergency, like an earthquake or Mount Rainier blowing its stack. Not to be outdone, they also have a $600,000 mobile EOC in a massive trailer which can be moved at any time with the attached semi. Now mind you, I’m not certain how effective the mobile EOC would be in an emergency with all the communications gear and such, because it is setting right next to the EOC building in the parking lot. If you can’t get to the EOC building, how could you get the mobile EOC? These are the sorts of questions that county officials just hate to hear. In fact, they don’t hear them: They don’t listen to criticism at all, constructive or not. They made the decisions, and the decisions are wise ones. Who are you to question THEM!?! How like the churches of God. Anyway, the location of the EOC is secret. Did I say secret? With a simple search of about 10 minutes, you can get not only the location of the EOC, but detailed floor plans and building specifications. You see, the county had to go out to bid. Part of the bid process was to find vendors to build the thing. To find the vendors for the RFP, they had to post the plans on the Internet, and, as you know, things posted on the Internet never really go away. So there you have it: In times of terrorists, the terrorists will probably have the location and layout of the EOC. Brilliant, I say!

The EOC has a computer room. You would expect that. Important stuff would be on computers to help with any emergency. Planning was a bit lacking. There has been unending battles to try to keep the air conditioning operationally adequate. During hot days in summer, they had to open the doors and use portable fans to cool the room. Later, they got portable air conditioners and vented them through the open doors. Then there was the circuitry. You have to know that the toaster and microwave oven are on the same circuit as the servers in the computer room. And, yes, people have taken down the servers with their toast and heating their lunch in the microwave. My suggestion is that they don’t use both the toaster and the microwave at the same time, or their servers will be toast. There’s nothing like great planning! Nothing like it. It doesn’t seem to exist. They can conceptually plan for an emergency, but the Devil, as they say, is in the details. And remember, a county is a complex place. And this is just one SMALL example.

Anyway, you can imagine that the Armstrongist churches of God are not at all pleased when people come along and point out that the Emperor not only doesn’t have any clothes, but he has a nasty rash that needs to be treated. We have a more contemporary version of the fable of the Emperor’s new clothes (which don’t exist). The kid points out what everyone sees, but don’t admit. “The Emperor has no clothes,” the kid says. The crowd gives the parents a nasty glare. The parents shush the kid up. “But he doesn’t!” The parents, with the “encouragement” of the Emperor’s staff find a psychiatrist to treat the poor kid for his delusions. He’s put on Ritalin. It doesn’t help him of course. The last we heard of him, the kid grew up in a mental institution, is in a straight jacket, given psychotropic drugs and is safely hidden away from ever being able to tell the truth. You might agree that this could have happened in the old Soviet Union, but folks, the United States Corporations have adopted the worst of the old Soviet Union Corporate model and implemented it badly — replete with ineffective five year plans. Government has adopted the worst of the Corporate model and implemented it badly, with twists of its own, since government doesn’t have to make a profit and will survive no matter how far in the red it goes. I’ve never heard of a government agency declaring bankruptcy, but it seems like we’re about due for a massive declaration any time now. All because people don’t want to face the truth. Better to live on lies than do the real work of dealing with the difficult challenges by using reasonable process and discipline. The quick fix of lies in a dysfunctional environment is far preferable to the long uphill hard work which is really needed to resolve the problems.

And so it is with the Armstrongist Churches of God which declare that if they find the truth, they will adopt it and correct everything that is wrong. It is a lie. They lie; they cover up the lie; they cover up the cover ups; they make everything undiscussable and then go on to do something really stupid. If you need an example, look at the UCG. They spent years getting established in the Cincinnati area. They bought property and built their buildings. They paid it off. Then why, in heaven’s name, did they decide to move to Texas a mile or so from a Superfund Toxic Waste site? And they weren’t about to, in typical Armstrongist fashion, back down until the whole thing became excruciatingly and unavoidably public. It is only excessive force that will at all influence these suspicious people from doing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. The innocent are destroyed as a casual collateral damage because in their preposterous egoism, no one else counts but them, because they are in charge, and, by cracky, you better believe that Almighty God put them in charge and if you oppose them in any way, you will be dealt with by the rather Retentive Creator of all the universe who is offended by the slightest hint of rebellion, no matter how well intentioned it is to keep people from utter destruction — or more like, rather inconvenient consequences. When you have money and power, you can cover up your mistakes rather handily, it seems.

The story of my brother, Bruce, isn’t the only skirmish in the war that the Armstrongist churches of God has declared against me and my family. There are too many incidences to recount in one place. The CoG cultmeister from Australia springs to mind, but he’s not the only one by a long shot. It’s not even just about my family. The Armstrongist churches of God have declared war on many other families. Today, we will examine one of them.

Back in the early 1960s, a psychopathic con man came from the Philippines and ended up associated with the Radio Church of God. He was married to a very sincere devout white woman who had grown up as a Catholic, but has become very much a part of the Armstrongist church of God landscape and who is totally dedicated to Armstrongist teachings. Her husband claimed that he was a doctor in the Philippines and had managed to convince a real medical doctor in the church, state board certified to be a practitioner, that he was he, too, was a qualified doctor. The man from the Philippines, as you would have expected, ended up wrecking the real medical doctor’s career. There was nothing left of Dr. J’s practice when R finished with him. But R had established his own reputation and credibility in the church. Even though people were proscribed from have medical doctors treat them, R’s opinions in the church were highly regarded, particularly in the ministry. He was regularly asked for his advice, which turned out to be nothing more than opinions, and bad ones at that. He took one look at our daughter’s birth mark and declared that it was cancer and that she would die from it. Our pediatrician told it was a mere birthmark and would disappear. It did. Our daughter is still alive after 30 years. Pediatrician 1; psychopath 0.

The con man and his wife J had children. The divorce was inevitable. Now the wife had no place to live with her children, so a self made millionaire in the church provided her and her children a place in his guest quarters. Now the millionaire was quite prosperous. He has his own home theatre. His son’s bedroom is larger than most people’s living rooms. They are well-to-do. Now they were good friends with the minister. Their son married the minister’s daughter and their daughter married the ministers son. The grandchildren are double cousins. The wedding for the millionaire’s son to the minister’s daughter cost $25,000. It was an impressive event to attend. Of course, the millionaire lets everyone know that he is a millionaire because of God’s blessings from his obedience to God. The minister has been very happy to have a very rich relative by marriage. This particular minister has always been telling people from the pulpit how worried he is about his retirement and that he doesn’t have enough money to retire. It is the case, though, that the minister will probably be OK, since he is now the President of United.

It was an accident in the apartment the millionaire provided for the woman who had been married to the psychopath. Something went wrong with a space heater. The fire destroyed the small apartment in the millionaire’s property where she took refuge. This had implications. The millionaire blamed her for destroying his property. He made the minister fully aware of his displeasure. The poor woman went on the minister’s bad list — and he ended up supporting a psychopath rather than helping a genuine church member in need.

There came a day in the divorce proceedings that the question of who would get the children came up in court. The church had an attorney assigned to the woman and paid for the legal fees — up until the day before court, that is. When the day approached, the woman called Pasadena to find out what happened to the lawyer and the church paying the legal fees for the custody of her children. Victor Kubic let her know that she lost the church’s support. She had no legal representation because the church stepped away. As a result, she lost her children and her erstwhile psychopath husband won a major battle.

Once on a minister’s bad list, always on the minister’s bad list. These people have a long memory for vengeance and they play the long game. This same poor woman went about doing good in her church. She helped a man who had a mental disorder. Because she was nice to him, he fixated on her and began stalking her. He continued stalking her after she was remarried for seven years. The couple being stalked begged and pleaded with the ministry which had passed from the Radio Church of God to the Worldwide Church of God to the United Church of God an International Association. The minister staunchly supported the stalker. You can guess why. The couple went to the Council of Elders. No dice. The minister in question is well connected. In fact, during his sermon on Pentecost, he made the comment that he had a talent for putting people in touch with the right contacts. He knows that because I told him that when I gave him my book, Assertive Incompetence — an Introduction to Management Malpractice. At least you can’t say he hasn’t learned anything from me. But I was hoping he would see himself in the book and make changes, like that would ever happen.

You know the rest. God intervenes. Or at least sensible judges in civil court do. The restraining order and all. I’m not certain who really won in this particular part of the war. To make the point: The war with that particular family is not over by a long shot.

The thing is, we might not know who the ministers are, but we certainly have a view of what they are. The Apostle Paul commented that we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices. I think he was wrong about that one thing. We don’t know Satan’s devices, although, I must say, they look a lot like the practices of the Modern Church Corporate. We do know a lot of things, such as what happened to the son of the minister, leaving his wife and going to San Francisco and all with his roommate. I wonder if the guys ever married.

The base problem is what it has always been: After the dust settles, it is clear that those with their lies, delusions and deceptions are not at all what they represented themselves to be; and the truth finally comes out. The only problem that’s left is to find a way to put a spin on it for plausible deniability. And that’s damned inconvenient.

We have had accounts of how crimes are covered up in the Armstrongist community for years now. It isn’t sin, it’s crime. It isn’t like someone works on the Sabbath once a year or skips paying a tithe or something. We are talking about crimes for which the perpetrators should have gone to prison. GTA date raping Ambassador Coeds. The various men committing incest with their daughters. When our daughter was 12, she told us that her best friend in church was being raped by her father. The church did nothing about it but cover it up. It sort of turned out and justice was done: He was working on the toilet holding tank on a ship and it broke open and the contents washed over his face and head. He died shortly after that. In church, a certain elder was known for molesting boys. The leading women (ones who had no position) in the church went all the way to Pasadena and had no response, so they “watched” the man, particularly on holy days. Ironically, I did not know it at the time, but the man was the Sabbath school teacher for my own son. Universally, the Armstrongist churches have followed the corporate policies of covering up crime, not fixing it.

United is interestingly different. As a church corporate, the other state incorporated Armstrongist churches could learn a great deal from them. They are progressive, and while they adopt the worst of the corporate model and implement it badly [and I’m the one that gave them the corporate stuff from Weyerhaeuser, which they adopted], they are brilliantly, devilishly clever about it. They learn from reading forums like this to use ever new methodologies to cover up crimes committed by their ministers and members. What they do is NOT solve the problem. What they DO is to bribe the victim! Remember the stalker? They seduced the couple being stalked by giving them a bribe. It sort of solves the problem without solving the problem, but it makes it much more palatable for the victims to continue to bask in the warmth of the church corporate cesspool without retarding the laps the ministry and administration are doing in it.

It would be nice if we never hear another incident of a 70 old elder fondling a sixteen year old girl in front of people of the congregation, for example. They are perfectly comfortable to remain secure in their church corporate. I would remind everyone that a corporation is an “It” — a thing. It has no empathy. It is amoral. It exists for no particularly good reason except to exist. It does everything it can as a non person to continue its existence. The end justifies the means. If it takes murder, rape, incest, theft, lies, deceptions, so be it. If you are doing a good work, doing evil to keep it going is a must. The only rule is, DON’T GET CAUGHT at it.

Scripture speaks of the leopard, how it can it cannot change its spots. The Armstrongists don’t seem to be able to change, but it isn’t mere spots. It’s more like stripes — and not the stripes by which we are healed, either. It’s like stripes on a skunk.

If we consider that the Armstrongist community is the ultimate in church corporate, it follows that they are not for us. Anyone who is not for us is against us. Anyone who is against us is our enemy.

While the leaders of the Armstrongist community may be our enemies, to each other, they are more than enemies: They are competitors. Any Armstrongist champions out there looking for some sort of confederation of the various clan sects of the different flavors of Armstrongism can just forget it. If they have made the lower than dirt peasants of their fiefdoms their enemies from the start, it is certain that they will never give up their own power and freedom to their competitors. Any fantasies to the contrary should be treated by a competent mental health professional.

It is important to know that if you don’t have money and you aren’t well connected and don’t have any power, and if you are a truth seeker, the Armstrongist churches of God will declare war on you and your children for generations to come, for as long as the Armstrongist community lasts.

One wonders what they expect to win.

In the late 1960s, I often went up to the city on the weekends to stay with my brother at his boarding house. He had grown up during a paranoid era of the cold war and was always seeking an avenging hero which could show that the majority was wrong and, more importantly, empower him with the promise that some day he could be in charge to right the evils of the world. He wasn’t exactly a religious hobbyist, but he was definitely seeking — not a higher power — but someone or something with superior power. As some of you know, he finally found and settled in on Armstrongism and eventually it killed him: In pain, alone, in fear, abandoned, betrayed.

After his death, people from the WCG came by his apartment as my mother was wrapping up his affairs. You might think that they came to express their condolences and relate how Bruce improved their lives. If you thought that, you would be wrong. They came by and wanted his stuff: His precious stones he polished himself, his telescope, his cameras he built himself, his electronic gear. It was like they had some sort of entitlement. Later, two church boys, who had joined the military, had the gall to come by our folk’s home to stay over on the way to the Feast. My folks put them up and fed them because they claimed to know Bruce. My mother showed me the letter from Haffely, the minister, who admitted that Bruce had called him for help when he was having the heart attack, but the minister just advised him to go to the hospital emergency room. My brother’s trusting delusion that the church would take care of him when he was in trouble killed him.

It didn’t end with his death. My mother received a letter from Pasadena after Bruce’s death from the massive cardiac infarction. The good folks at Pasadena were certain that my brother had left them absolutely everything in his will: Tens of thousands of dollars, and they wanted it. They demanded that my folks produce his will they were certain my mother was hiding, because everything of his was theirs now. Of course, they had no rights at all to his small fortune built up from his industriousness, conservatism and use of his technological skills, but they were certain our family was hiding something that would prove that their selfish arrogant avarice was well founded. They took advantage of his generosity in life and were determined to take everything that was left after his death. My mother showed me the letter. It was really pretty nasty and vile. I have concluded that though my brother may have been delusional, but the scoundrels at Pasadena always knew precisely what they were. It occurs that the Churches of God have declared war on my family nearly 50 years ago and I’m just now waking up to the fact that they are still at war with us. Interesting.

There had been incidents long before this. Bruce was kind and generous. As a bachelor, he prepared dinner every Sabbath for different people in the church. He did his best to “serve” at church functions. He gave a lot of extra money to the church as he had occasion. For awhile, my brother was prosperous. He lost his job. He had a large apartment with several bedrooms. A man in the church moved in with his wife and children and mooched off of my brother for several months without providing one thing in return, ever. The man didn’t have a job and Bruce ended up supporting the whole family — a family which was not related to him. He was of the delusion that the church WAS his family.  He couldn’t get rid of them. When things got really bad and he was running out of money, he asked a deacon in the WCG for help. The deacon laughed at him to his face. Remember that this was after my brother had spent a year at Ambassador College. He got into the college by giving and loaning a considerable amount of money to the church. It turns out that Herbert Armstrong was impressed by men of power and / or money. If you had enough money, you could buy yourself into nearly anything in the WCG. I can guarantee that my brother would never have gotten into Ambassador College without his giving them tens of thousands of dollars, back in the early 1960s.

While I was a still a teen and before my brother entered into the RCG / WCG environment, those weekends with my brother were most illuminating. One Sunday, I was going to catch the Grayhound home and my brother’s landlady — a true believer and relgious hobbiest — asked me if I’d be interested in a talk some religious leader was giving in a room at the Davenport Hotel. I said, OK. What can I say, I was 17.

Here was this hefty but short 40 something professor-looking dude with a beard and glasses. As he gave his talk to about 20 or so people, it got stranger and stranger. He told us the world was hollow and people lived inside the mantle of the earth. They had flying saucers which flew out of the North Pole. His “proof” was colorful: “I can prove it,” he said. He protested that people [read that scientists] taught that the earth had a molten core. I remember his colorful demonstration: “Build a fire and put a wooden box over it,” he said; “What happens? The fire burns through the box! This proves the earth does not have a molten core — it is hollow! People live inside!”.

I had a background in science. At the age of 13, I built my own 24 volt regulated DC power supply. With relays I found in the city dump from the AT&T Radar relay TV station, I designed and soldered together a binary counter, replete with a panel of flashing lights. I read the book, Earth, Wind and Fire, to learn about how the earth was formed 4 billion years ago. I performed my own electronic and endless chemical experiments. I used home made hydrogen to fill lighter than air balloons [the part about tying thread to them, spooling the balloon up to the ceiling, lighting the thread and making the balloon go POOF! I will leave out!]. Anyway, here I was — my first real delusional cult leader confronting me.

After his presentation, he singled me out and stood between me and the door: “What did you think of my talk,” he said? I was a naive country farm boy with a penchant for science experimentation. I had found the arc light at school and put it together with the projection microscope for the first time in seven years when my other brothers last did it. My dad taught me welding at the Lincoln County Shop where he was foreman. I fixed the pendulum clock for grandmother. And here I was. And here he was. I thought of the volcanoes which blew up and which, incidentally, proved that the earth had a molten core. But this was an authority figure. What to do? What to do?

“It was interesting,” I said, and left, caught the bus and went home.

How, you might ask, is this relevant to Armstrongism? Well, you should take a look at Ralph Orr’s article over at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071217130140/http://www.wcg.org/lit/prophecy/anglo/howanglo.htm 

It is a wonderland of British Israelism, related false prophecies and Pyramidology. Herbert Armstrong was a nut case every bit as bad as the hollow earth core dude, but with more people impressed with his credibility. He sounded credible. His overweening positive manic approach evident in his enthusiasm for everything he did, including THE VERY WORK OF GOD, was persuasive. Today, it doesn’t look that credible, the empire has crashed and burned in disgrace and Herbert Armstrong is a mere footnote in a long list of delusional cultists.

Back in the 1950s, a then young man, was interested in the Sabbath. He went searching. He had done his homework and studied the Bible. He went in to a meeting of the Radio Church of God. At the end, someone asked him, “What did you think of Herbert Armstrong?”. His reply, “You should ask me what I think of Jesus Christ!”. Now this guy was tall and heavy and fit. It took two deacons to literally pick him up and drop him off outside the door. He later went on to become a minister of the Seventh Day Church of God. I know his 85 year old widow, Marion, who told me the story.

Anyone with any shred of objectivity should tell any nut case, “Prove it”. I would be inclined to continue, “And just who died and left you God?”.

That anyone would fall for the preposterous psychotic delusions is testimony of where the generations led us all to. In the movie, Generation Zero, there are four basic steps posited which brought the current world economic crisis:

1. The crisis: World War II
2. The High: The easy prosperity of the 1950s
3. The Awakening: The 1960s Hippie Movement
4. The Unravelling: Spoiled entitled people leading to Financial Meltdown

In all of this, objectivity, data, facts, even science are all ignored. People don’t want logic. They don’t want science. They want what feels right and what feels good. Mothers who lived in want pampered their children and gave them everything they wanted and needed, instantly. Disposable diapers are an example of something both immediate and personal. Spoiled children grew up to become selfish entitled adults, leveraged by the explosion of technologies spearheaded by the space race. People awakened to self-awareness to protest perceived injustices. They insisted upon and got the opportunity to express their opinions: To have their say and go their way. During the Clinton Administration, the Clintons capitalized upon this with their Health Care Plan Summit. There was no solution at that time. But the stakeholders came together in Washington D.C. to discuss the issues. Once they were satisfied that they were all given an opportunity to be heard, they all went home, confident that the issue was taken care of without any commitment, involvement or effort from them.

This past couple of years, the chickens came home to roost — or vultures and velocerapters, more like. Psychopaths became bold, arrogant and downright pushy and got their agendas passed, plying the suspicious point of view to pressure the public. After all, it was what the people wanted. And the sociopaths of the business world pressed the advantage to empty the coffers, affecting generations to come. Meltdown has struck and is with us, but most of the Boomers and New Millenniest breed seem to think that meltdown is a good thing, sort of like cheese topping.

Dr. Phil has said, “Emotions got you into this and emotions will get you out of it”. That’s a lie. It can’t possibly be true. No, emotions got us into the problem and determination, discipline, logic and a lot of resources with a great deal of effort is the only way to get out of it — if it is even possible. Unfortunately, the modern generations are just plain lazy. They want the instant fix without the character to build to viable solutions [think The BP Oil Spill]. Like some rebellious teens who declare their independence by rebelling against authority, when they are in trouble, they cry out, “Mom, Dad, save me”.

In the July-August 2010 The Sabbath Sentinel is this interesting entry:

“I’m Spiritual, but not religious!”

In a recent CNN article writer John Blake examines the trend among young people who believe that they don’t need organized religion to have a life of faith.

However, James Martin, a Catholic priest, believes that this trend is essentially egotism. “Religion is hard,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just too much work. People don’t feel like it. I have better things to do with my time. It’s plain old laziness.”

But offer people something fun and easy like websites, blogs and tweets, and they’re all over it. Use those cell phones to send [mostly] and receive text messages. Try to put them to real work, and they’re outta here.

Likewise, if it feels right and sounds right, most people today just stop there and don’t look behind the scenes. They accept what is and get drawn into the most preposterous belief systems. The con man is adept in structuring everything to sound right to selfish egos, for example: You will be Kings and Priests in the Kingdom of God, if you DO THE WORK! Throw in some proof texting and there you go. The earth is hollow and people live inside. We can prove it.

In the same The Sabbath Sentinel is an article by Brian Knowles called Out of the Box — Defeating the “Religious Spirit”. Here is part of what he said:

Throughout history, there have always been obsessively religious fanatics who have wreaked havoc on the civilized parts of society. Instead of advancing mankind, or emancipating it, they have plunged it into dark ages of superstition, torture, unjust imprisonment, the illegal confiscation of property and untimely death….

 Brian goes on to give four keys to avoiding the religious spirit:

1. Is it idolatrous?
2. Does it tend to freedom or bondage?
3. What are the fruits?
4. Beware of isolation

Prove all things. What a concept. Which takes work. Unfortunately, people don’t want the truth, they just want to feel good — with as little effort as possible. People don’t really want science. Don’t confuse them with the facts. And, by the way, if you think that what his religious spirit is restricted to religion, be apprised that he is also talking about such things as secular ones, such as [but not restricted to], ardent environmentalists [AKA eco-terrorists], save-the-whales [yes, I am a bit overweight, but they don’t help me!], animal rights, Islamic terrorists [say, isn’t that religion?], neo-Nazis, left-wing socialists, health food fanatics, fanatical communists and other nut case groups.

 Once the scoundrels get entrenched it is almost impossible to get rid of them or their silly ideas. Think British Israelism. They pave the way to becoming ensconced by wrecking the credibility of legitimate authorities, among them scientists. When you hear someones philosophies and they try to convince you that scientists are wrong, beware. Of course scientists can be wrong. For example, those weather stations which “prove” global warming are in asphalt parking lots and next to the exhaust of air conditioners. The criteria is the same: Lax and lazy scientists are not to be trusted, particularly if your life depends upon it.

Nevertheless, it is possible to debunk most of the urban legends. Which falls faster? A bee-bee or a cannon ball. The scientific method proved they fall at equal rates at 32 feet per second per second by pushing them off the Leaning Tower of Pisa at the same time and their landing at the same time. Which is lighter, oil or water? OK then, why does the oil float on the water, then? These embedded belief systems taken for centuries with no examination is partly the responsibility of the generation of religionists and scientists of their time. I had a discussion with the chief scientist over lunch in the Weyerhaeuser cafeteria. He related to me the history of science from the perspective of the acceptance of new scientific discovery. Every generation rejected the truth until the next generation accepted it. Newton’s Law finally gave way to Einstein’s theories, but not without a lot of disagreement. The establishments wants the status quo and hates change.

Unfortunately, change oft comes with the abandonment of truth. Perhaps it is that Herbert Armstrong took some of the best of the Church of God Seventh Day [or not], but along the way he seriously corrupted and mangled it to become indistinguishable from psychotic delusions. Unfortunately, for the same reasons as given above, far too many people were convinced of his follies.

I should point out that children, as innocent victims of this nonsense, followed the same path as everyone takes when they are bound involuntarily by lies: They rebelled. Unfortunately, sometimes, rebellion does a lot of unintended collateral damage.

My heartburn is not with the ones who spread the delusions so much as those who absorb them and lap them up. What sort of people are they? What do they want? Are they so warped that they grasp at every hope that comes by? Are they so desperate that they grasp at straws? Why do they never seek beyond the veneer to find the real truth? This is all very disturbing that so many people get hooked up with fantasies, delusions, myths actively without delving into facts. Perhaps it is true that some people have a convincing “patter”, but now with all the knowledge out there about EVERYTHING, it is surprising that people will actually spend money and risk themselves and their families on flim-flam.

We should be grateful that Herbert Armstrong came along. He was among the first and largest of the cultists [in more ways than one] to deceive people with his admixture of raw facts and delusional fantasies. At least, when we were finished with him, we have been well positioned to apply the suspicious point of view to the rest of the narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths which come our way — even though it seems small comfort for the ruined lives for which he is responsible: We’ve learned Caveat Emptor the hard way, but we’ve learned it first and more thoroughly than others. It’s a lot harder to deceive us now, particularly with delusions.

Nevertheless, so many people never learn a thing: They may turn against all that Herbert Armstrong taught, but they turn back to delusions. Former cultists have a way of going back into the system of delusions when they put their trust into government figures who tell tall tales or other unbelievable stories. They look for their heroes, their saviours.

I am reminded of one of the worst cultmeisters of the Churches of God. The man was evil and oppressive. He played games. He was even exposed publicly through government records. When people had a chance and finally left him, what did they do? They took all of his nutty ideas and doctrines and created their own church group. It was all the same except for the leader they had ousted. Same doctrines. Same rules of governance. All the same people [who, by the way, don’t seem to have ever read the Book of Hebrews, or figured out that the writing of Islam are equivalent to New Testament Epistles]. It’s difficult to understand the mindset of people who insist on retaining nutty toxic delusions at all costs. One would think that they would want freedom from such things.

But now today, if you stand between me and the door, and ask me what I think, you can be pretty well assured that I will answer, “It was interesting”.

Next time in the Disappointment series: Infestation!