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The World Tomorrow

It must have been sometime around 1970 when I first heard The World Tomorrow broadcast with Garner Ted Armstrong. I would subsequently listen to it on the drive home after teaching my night school class. I had never heard about the “divided kingdom” or the 10 Lost Tribes and I was greatly intrigued by the idea that the people of Israel might actually have migrated to Europe, Britain, and America, and that Bible prophecy might pertain to present-day geo-politics.

My longstanding interest in history was further stimulated by these assertions but my energies at that time were preoccupied with my young family and academic career. It was a few years later, after a personal crisis and divorce that I began to look more deeply into all aspects of my life, including the spiritual. I had already a few years earlier put aside my belief in Catholic teachings but had not made the effort to supplant that faith with anything else.

It was with some trepidation that I began to read the Bible, something that the Church did not encourage. I quickly discovered why. There was much in the Bible that contradicted Catholic doctrine and practice, and it became obvious that the institutional objective was to keep “the faithful” in line and dependent upon the clergy. One case in point: Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven (Matt. 23:9 KJV). And, of course, Catholic priests insist on being called, “father.”

I also, about that time, took a subscription to the Plain Truth magazine, which I looked forward to reading each month. I found most of the articles on geopolitics and current affairs to be well researched and quite insightful, which helped me to gain a more realistic worldview. I also made it a point to listen more regularly to the World Tomorrow broadcasts, which, following Garner Ted’s banishment had been taken over by Herbert Armstrong. I was rather dismayed to see the chaos and disintegration that followed Herbert Armstrong’s death, but there was a lot going on in my life at the time, and I had never involved myself with the Worldwide Church of God organization, so it simply passed out of my life.

A little less than two years ago, while waiting in my doctor’s office, I happened to notice a magazine that bore a peculiar resemblance to the old Plain Truth. I discovered that the Philadelphia Trumpet, under Gerald Flurry, is now being published by an organization that calls itself the “Philadelphia Church of God,” which looks to be a reincarnation of the Herbert Armstrong enterprise. I’ve been subscribing to the new PT for a little more than a year now and I must credit it with being similarly informative and insightful, despite some obvious political biases and blind spots.

It is clear that humanity is currently confronted with a multi-dimensional crisis—it is at once economic, financial, environmental, political, and social. A recent issue of Philadelphia Trumpet highlighted this in a lead article titled, The Upside-Down World (by Joel Hilliker). I can surely agree that the World is “upside-down” but that author’s assessment of underlying causes has the ring of  typical “Christian conservatism.” Like so many of that ilk, it rails against liberal social norms but overlooks the gross inequities inherent in our political economy. I cannot recall ever seeing, either in the old PT or the new PT, any mention of usury or the debt-trap, and very little about social injustice, gross economic inequities, or state-sanctioned corporate privilege that enables the few to dominate the many.

Over the past several years, I’ve made a careful study of the structures of the money and banking system and discovered that there are serious flaws inherent in the way money is created and allocated. This has profound implications for all of us. As Thomas H. Greco puts it:

Money is a topic that few people understand. Sure, we use it every day and it seems familiar; but like water to the fish, we take it for granted and seldom give its role any notice. Yet the quality of the water that the fish inhabit is crucial in determining the quality of their existence. If the water happens to be polluted, the fish sicken and die. Likewise, money is a primary element of the modern economy that we inhabit. The quality of the money we use determines, to a great extent, the quality of our lives. (Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender. Chelsea Green, 2001)

Did you ever wonder why both the Bible (Old Testament and New) and the Koran make such a big issue about the practice of usury, or why it was so severely punished under Canon law for hundreds of years? Well, it turns out that the compounding of interest (usury) demands exponential growth, in this case the exponential growth of debt. All questions of equity aside, it is clear that in a finite world nothing can grow exponentially forever. Growth must at some point either level off, or there will be a catastrophic collapse. This is often seen with insect and animal populations. When they grow at an accelerating rate they inevitably overrun their habitats and exhaust their food supplies. So too, the amount of debt in the world must soon exceed the ability of the real economy to bear it.

This is not just theoretical; we can see it playing out right now. As the chart shows, even TotalUSDebt-300x256as late as 1965, total debt for all sectors in the United States was a relatively small one trillion dollars, or 1.5 time total economic output (GDP). By 2007 that had grown to more than $50 trillion or 3.5 times GDP, and George Soros, the billionaire financier and speculator is predicting that debt will soon reach 5 times GDP.

If you want to understand how the money system operates and the root causes of economic depressions, inflation, and so much of the violent conflict in the world, you should study Greco’s websites, http://beyondmoney.net/ and http://reinventingmoney.com/. You should also view Paul Grignon’s animated video Money as Debt (http://paulgrignon.netfirms.com/MoneyasDebt/index2.htm) which is available on DVD or on YouTube , (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8).

More about this in the next installment–Santos

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What do I know, and how do I know it?

A couple weeks ago I noticed an announcement in the local weekly newspaper about an upcoming lecture that had the provocative title, God on Trial, which was scheduled for the following Sunday morning, a time when the majority of Americans would be attending services at one church or another. I was intrigued and made a note to attend.

When I arrived at the lobby of the auditorium, I found myself amongst a throng of people who were engaged in lively conversation. It turned out they were members of the sponsoring organization that calls itself the Center for Inquiry (http://www.centerforinquiry.net/ ), which I had not heard of before. Rather than try to butt into the conversations, I proceeded on into the auditorium and found myself an aisle seat with a good view of the lectern.

What followed was a thoroughly fascinating presentation by a man named Richard W. Morris, who went on at length about his experiences as a lawyer, prosecutor, professor, aviator, skeptic, and, as he eventually revealed, novelist. His lecture was largely based on his latest novel by the same title. As I told him during the Q&A session, what he had said was quite enough to convince me to buy his book.

I left with an autographed copy of God on Trial, (http://www.godontrial.ws/) which I found to be thoroughly engaging, and finished reading within a few days. Like most popular novels these days, it is filled with plenty of juicy sex, intrigue, deception and murder, but a great deal of history, philosophy, and logic besides. That’s the kind of story I like, one that is not only suspenseful and entertaining, but one that I can learn something from. The novel recounts many of the atrocities that have been perpetrated down through the ages in the name of one religion or another, particularly those of Christianity, like the “Holy Inquisition” and the various “witch trials,” and it highlights many of the discrepancies and contradictions that exist within the Bible.

The plot line centers on a blasphemy trial in which “the State must first prove the existence of God in court, using the standard Rules of Evidence.” A major sub-plot describes the corruption, debauchery and financial shenanigans that go on within a major religious organization that bears a striking resemblance to several well-know groups.

Throughout the book, David, the protagonist and the defendant in the trial, who also happens to be a Ph.D. candidate and teacher of philosophy at the local university, keeps repeating the question to his students: “What do I know, and how do I know it?” Quite a legitimate question, I think, and one that I have given much consideration over the years. In my youth I was taught that we can come to knowledge either (1) through our senses and rational processes, or (2) through “Divine revelation.”

Philosophers get into some pretty deep debates about the nature of “reality” and “consciousness,” but I won’t even try to go there. It seems quite evident that what we experience through our senses leads us to learn, to know, and to understand as we process information through our rational mind. It’s this “Divine revelation” that causes so much controversy and strife. Is it truly a way of knowing? If so, where does it come from? Is that what we call “God?”

At a practical level, I concluded long ago that most (if not ALL) religion is a racket. There has never been any shortage of people—priests, rabbis, ministers, imams, etc.—who claim to have had a Divine revelation, and/or who claim to speak for God – “Thus saith the LORD….,” etc. Some of these, no doubt, believe what they preach, but what is the foundation for their beliefs? What we “think” we know about these things is largely determined by an accident of birth. If I had been born into a Muslim or Jewish family I would have been instilled with a different set of beliefs. As it happened, it’s been my Roman Catholic indoctrination I’ve had to overcome. Having been the product of 17 years of Catholic schools, it’s something close to “miraculous” that I ever succeeded. Maybe it was my personal “Divine revelation” that did it. — Santos

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Chaos

The noisy brain is well known concept among mental health professionals. Dr. John Ratey expanded on that concept in his book, Shadow Syndromes. Autism can lead to a condition where most of the brain generates an electrical storm when someone touches those who have it. Schizophrenia causes overload from too much mental noise. Teens with ADHD notice when they are on Ritalin that the noise level drops. One son told her mother when he got back from school after taking Ritalin, “Mom, it’s so quiet!”. Mentally ill people generally have noisy brains from a genetic predisposition. Often stress can set in motion a psychotic break when a person can no longer tolerate the noise aggravated by stress.

At the second Hope and Recovery Conference I attended, my wife and I were sitting at a table during lunch with a young woman working in the mental health profession. I had realized from my experience with those who were mentally ill that the standard mental illnesses, such as Bipolar Disease, Schizophrenia and Psychosis involve distorted perception. The young woman said she always knew it: It made sense. She was very unhappy when she couldn’t demonstrate that she had ever thought it about it before.

That’s the trick, you know: People say things others immediately recognize as an aphorism, and they believe that they have always believed it. This is, of course, distorted perception.

Distorted perception certainly seems to be implicated in a noisy brain. Moreover, as the “noise level” in the brain increases, the person usually becomes dysfunctional.

Organizations often seem to be victimized by distorted perception resulting in a high noise level which leads to a completely dysfunctional environment. Communications break down from the noise, there is a lack of standards, there is no auditing of results or ongoing processes; in fact, there can be no measurement of any kind of metrics, since nobody seems to know what the immediate and long term goals are.

Armstrongists have a firm belief that they know where they are going: The Kingdom of God! Armstrongists know how to get there: Keep the Ten Commandments — along with a whole lot of other stuff they can’t prove that’s required. Armstrongists know the future because they have the only roadmap on the face of the earth — the one created for them by Herbert Armstrong. To tell an Armstrongist that he or she does not have a clue will only end up their telling you that you have “A root of bitterness” — a self fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.

What the Armstrongists don’t seem to understand is how utterly pathetic and directionless they are. They got that way because of the very common structure found universally among those with noisy brains:

  1. Lack of planning
  2. Lack of commitment
  3. Lack of communications
  4. Autocratic control
  5. Arbitrary change in direction
  6. Noisy brains [a tautology here!]
  7. Unrestricted flow of ideas
  8. Lack of discipline
  9. No documentation

Armstrongist community leaders are infamous for these traits.

It can’t be healthy.

Anyone going back through the history of postings in The Painful Truth should begin to get a pattern of the scenario that results from the noisy brain. For example, one man working at Ambassador College noted to his superiors that there were patterns to income. What a concept — that there were reasons for the ebb and flow of money, and, if they noted, analyzed and graphed the waning and waxing of the dollars, associated with various events during the year — such as feast offerings — the administration should be able to plan. He was rebuffed, of course. No planning required. Just have faith in God: He will provide. Of course, Proverbs does advise us to be diligent to know the state of our flocks and herds, but Armstrongists don’t actually use Scripture for a practical guide in their lives. They are fools: They only listen to what they want to hear.

That is why, when you point out that British Israelism is a lie and Herbert Armstrong was a false prophet — 1975 never happened — they bluster about how we should respect Herbert Armstrong because he brought us the truth. The truth?! Wait! What?! Hey, hey now. Let’s face it: He just made stuff up. Mostly. Or robbed other people’s ideas and pretended they were his. Two weeks ago I talked with a minister of the Church of God Seven Day. He brought up the fact that Herbert Armstrong plagiarized material from their booklets and then the Worldwide Church of God sued the Church of God Seventh Day. It didn’t get far when the CoG7 produced the booklet they wrote in the 1930s from some file in a basement somewhere. But that’s the danger from all that noise, you see: They make big mistakes because of the delusions from their distorted perceptions. This isn’t to say that the Armstrongist community leaders are mentally ill. It’s more complicated than that. They are also often criminals.

All of the noise leads to chaos.

So many things in the Armstrongist community make no sense at all: UCG wanting to relocate near a Superfund Toxic Waste Site [now there’s a real failure to plan]. How about the front page of The Good News with that picture of the latest, greatest tool of God’s Work, the IBM Data Cell. It was back to the hard disk drives within the year because the product was a failure and not such Good News after all. The Armstrongists are terribly inconsistent. Sure, they keep the Sabbath. Then they go out and make their manservant and maidservant work for wages on it. That is not consistent with Nehemiah and Ezra. If you’re going to keep the Law of Scripture, then you need to use all the Old Testament Scriptures, if you expect to be an effective Old Testament Christian.

The folks who worked in the Data Processing Center at Ambassador College told me of the internal chaos in the Data Center there. They had to roll with the punches. One described how they had to stack chairs on top of tables and work there while a channel was cut in the cement in the floor. And you have to know, not all of those runs on the Sabbath were totally unattended, though most were.

People would be accepted for a job at Ambassador College, sell their homes, pack up, move clear across the United States, only to discover that their job with the church had disappeared on the way. This didn’t just happen once.

I remember well in the local church, a girl who had appendicitis. She could not get treatment from a doctor. She survived, but her health was never what it should have been. Just 10 years later, the church changed the doctrine so people could see doctors and “be healed” by them. The ministers were advised to hide the faith healing to prevent the church from being sued: Lie for the sake of the church.

The real indication of how chaotic the church really was, though, lies in the fact that Garner Ted Armstrong committed date rape against, by his own estimate by 1972, 200 coeds. In spite of the fact that his father knew about this [and even though he claimed he didn’t, he was still culpable — but, then, he really did know] and was an accessory after the fact. These were criminal acts. Herbert Armstrong covering it up was a criminal act. They should have all gone to prison. Roderick Meredith — that paragon of virtue [in the utterly ironic sense] — also knew about it, did some mental wringing of his hands, gritted his teeth, and preached sermons about keeping God’s Law. The men who attended AC and became ministers knowingly married the women who had been raped. Then they went on to allow themselves to be directed by the very man who had raped the women who had become their wives. This, in turn, resulted in a great deal of bitterness and years of anger for those ministers who compromised themselves by keeping quiet, saying and doing nothing, tolerating the intolerable, pretending to be good friends with GTA and Herbert Armstrong, all the while driving themselves to distraction with the noise of the dysfunctional environment leading to the utter chaos. Now some of them, at least, have a psychiatrist treating them for clinical depression. That is something of an irony, given the teaching of the original Radio Church of God.

The Armstrongist community makes no sense. Furthermore, they can’t prove that they can get you to the Kingdom of God. The leaders are of no worth, and, today, are struggling themselves to come up with a reason for their own being. There doesn’t seem to be much more than keeping their salary, trying to keep a cushy but dysfunctional job and getting retirement. That — and for some of those in the upper echelon of the so-called leadership, which is nothing of the sort — basking in the glow of people who worship them in their idolatrous admiration. Furthermore, even though they know all this, they won’t change a thing. They don’t to risk anything left of the Armstrongist Empire of which they may still have a piece.

It’s like the Keystone Cops and the Three Stooges trying to maintain the Winchester Mansion.

You really should ask yourself the question, just how can these people make my life better? They don’t seem to be doing a very good job of running their own lives. Why should we expect anything at all from them except noisy dysfunctional chaos?

The best peace you can have is moving as far away from the Armstrongist community as possible, for, if you keep drinking from the poisoned well, you will take on their chaos.