Tag: Barbarism

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War!

WW III 2012 Armstrongist Church of God Style
World War III, 2012: Armstrongist Church of God Style

The Armstrongist Churches of God are not war-like tribes — they are warring tribes, at war with one another, to the point that they not only don’t look Christian or necessarily godly, they look downright barbaric and uncivilized, as though they are waiting for civilization to catch up to them some time in the future — a future which will never come.

One of the many occurrences of the evidence of the constant battles of the war of ascendancy is the schism within the United Church of God, an International Association (UCGaIA), which resulted in the formation of the Church of God, Worldwide Association (CoGWA). The split wasn’t even about doctrine. It seemed to be about governance, but from the outside view away from the intimate internal dealings of the Church Administration, no one can be really certain why the split occurred.

Now, if it were a matter of Christian Soldiers fighting the war in the good fight against Satan and this world, that would be one thing, but it isn’t that at all: They are battling against each other in a manifestation of the works of the flesh.

The Apostle James in his epistle wrote:

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?

That’s part of it: The founders and leaders of this ancient religion of the War gods certainly is based on the lust for salary and retirement, along with the lust for power and narcissistic fulfillment by pathetic idolatrous narcissistic source borderline personality types hanging on every word of delusional pronouncements of the promises of future godhood and false prophecies of a short work, ended by a mythical Great Tribulation. People lust after that. It is emotionally satisfying.

But there is convincing evidence that that is not all of it: It’s just a part of the puzzle.

Why are the Armstrongist Churches of God at war — with one another?

Some of the explanation may lie in the fact that their religion does not appeal to even a miniscule segment of fresh blood out there in the world any more. The time of the cold war is past and the threat of nuclear holocaust just isn’t an inducement like it used to be. No, in these days of technological wonders of advancement beyond the wildest imagination of three decades ago, the world has changed so significantly that the old inducements for new membership just won’t cut it. As a result, with the severe entropy restricting the options and opportunities for a continued flow of money into the sub cults, the only solution is to resort to cannibalizing the remaining sheople amongst the various 700+ splinters, offering each one a “better deal” to sweeten the pot for preserving the life style to which the leadership of each cult would like to become accustomed. And make no mistake, this is ranchers quibbling about the branding on their livestock.

However, there seems to be a much deeper and sinister motivation lying behind the constant war going on, wherein there is no peace, and indeed, cannot be, as in the words of Isaiah:

For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper. Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.

The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.

They are, in short, the very flower of the example of humanity.

The cults have inherited the warlike nature of Herbert Armstrong who fought and railed against everything from the Catholic Church to the Church of God Seventh Day (as being Sardis). The world was of Satan and he was the conquering hero to usher in the golden age of the War to come which was to bring ultimate peace after there was no one left who had any energy left to fight him — or at least that was the vision that he created. He created an environment geared to war from the very beginning, rebelling against society and science so he could have his own way. He often turned against his own employees in a fit of rage. His temper was legendary. He left a legacy of anger and war, and who of those guards he personally trained in his Ambassador College Prison Experiment could rise above the overwhelming tsunami of the West Point of God’s Work?

Science and genetic research has revealed interesting developments of late, with the discovery of the so-called “Warrior Gene”, DARRP-32 TC / TT variant allele of damaged chromosomes. Not only is there a basis for the reality of continuing chaotic strife for those with this sort of genetics, but there are tests for it — even to the point that Dr. Phil uses the test on his show to identify the cause of family disruptions by those with this damaged genetics: It’s built in.

It should be pointed out that this particular form of anger has no real evolutionary advantage: It will not promote the continuing life of the Armstrongist Churches of God, but will hasten their demise in an ever increasing downward spiral of entropy where the resources become ever less available.

Given the history of Herbert Armstrong and the history of such people as Roderick Meredith, whose pride is rooted in winning a Golden Gloves Championship in his teenage years, it is not difficult at all to believe that the War amongst the various Churches of God are spearheaded by the leadership who just can’t help themselves to engage in endless battles.

Any members who are still delusional about the opportunity for the path to peace, need to heed the words of II Timothy 3: “From such turn away”. Proverbs 22:24-25 add to the wisdom:

Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.

But then, Armstrongists never have been very careful to follow “The Word of God”, otherwise, they would not have followed Joseph Tkach. The Ambassador Report tells of the anger management challenges of Dr. Tkach with his first wife, Jill. The temper of Senior is legendary and there is at least one account where he yelled at an innocent woman in his office for five hours straight, doing great emotional damage to her. There are much more recent examples of the fury of Armstrongist leaders in the churches of God today because it is a continuing problem which will not abate.

So let the Armstrongist founders and leaders take the test.

We already know what they will find.

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VIP Trust

One Person, no matter who he or she is, is a very small part of a population. Why are some individuals given so much artificially  created importance? It’s not artificial, you may say. People need  leaders, and it’s perfectly natural that the leader of a large group will be very important to the welfare of the group and will  bear a disproportionate share of the burden for maintaining that welfare. In at least one sense it certainly is natural.

The way humans treat their leaders–and the way some of them become  leaders–is at heart pretty much the same as the hierarchical social structures of, say, baboons or chimpanzees. Males fight one another with the hope of becoming “alpha male;” those who don’t win are subservient to him, and females are subservient to all of them, with finer degrees of hierarchy of their own. The differences between how baboons do it and how we do it are more in details than in the essence.

That’s not surprising. All of us–baboons, chimps, humans–are primates, with common evolutionary roots both biologically and culturally. Our social systems look like modified versions of theirs because they are modified versions of theirs. And it works pretty well, for baboon troops. Their hierarchies, for all the conflicts they entail, probably do serve the group’s long-term welfare by preventing more extensive conflicts that would likely arise if nobody were imposing some order, and presenting a united front to external threats.

Dr. Stanley Schmidt, Editorial: “VIPs”; Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2012.

In one fell swoop, Dr. Stanley Schmidt just described the sociological world of Herbert Armstrong in the Worldwide Church of God: A strongly hierarchical structure with him at the top over a group of primates, acting every bit like baboons.

Generally speaking, as civilization matures, the evolution is toward the individual having freedoms in a venue where it is recognized that, for the most part, there is an equality among the people and there isn’t one particular super human to become the supreme autocratic leader. This assumes that each member of the citizenry take ownership to maintain order and act responsibly. It would appear that autocracies based in a stong hierarchical structure are regressions negating our social evolution, obliterating the hope of pursuing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by the singular individual.

It has become painfully obvious that Herbert Armstrong imposed order to present a united front to external and internal threats: It is obvious, because with his death, the conflicts have increased 700 fold and are certainly doing nothing to serve the group’s long term welfare. Even though Herbert Armstrong was one small fat short man, he rallied others to him as the “alpha male” to gain control of the group.

During his time, Roderick Meredith, Gerald Flurry, David Pack, Dennis Luker, Ronald Weinland, were all the losers and became subservient to him, with the females subservient to all of them, with finer degrees of hierarchy of their own. No real intelligence was needed: It’s pretty much social genetics, making the victims mere pawns in the evolutionary scheme of things, in yet another minor league cult. And yes, there are many more groups and larger groups of “baboons”, but what has happened in Armstrongism is instructive in the understanding of how locked into a system primates can be. In reality, Herbert Armstrong had absolutely no worth as either a person, an apostle or a false prophet, but he was in charge, and darn it all, we were going to believe and follow him, no matter what, without much thought put into it, following, as it were, our animal passions.

Dr. Schmidt continues:

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

People need leaders, you may say again, and I must agree at least in part: Some people need leaders most of the time, and perhaps most do under some circumstances. We’re sometimes told that  people tend to be either leaders or followers, and in my experience many do tend to lean more toward one or the other–the in the complex hierarchies of our present societies, many people play both roles in different subgroups. And I don’t buy the idea that everybody has a natural preference for one or the other. Personally I don’t like to do any more of either than necessary. I prefer to work as independently as possible as much of the time as possible, and it’s how I usually work best.

Now, in the realm of religion, particularly Christianity, one would think that there would be more individuality: According to Scripture, when Christ died, the veil to the Holy of Holies was ripped down the middle, and symbolically, was a metaphor that the people no longer needed the High Priest as the leader to go directly to God the Father. One would think. It was to be a new world with the Old Covenant done away and a New Covenant written, so that there was no more hierarchy to get to God. The good news of the gospel is that your sins separating you from your God were covered and you had redemption. This was now a higher plane above, not just above the primates, but mankind itself. Old habits die hard. And there are a lot of successful con men out there, ready and able to recapture people as livestock to live off of them, promoting the very vision of the 1972 Princeton Prison Experiment, replete with the Warden Superintendant, guards and prisoners, reducing the supposedly spiritual plane back to the animal level: Herbert Armstrong invoked in us a regression to the primal.

Dr. Schmidt adds:

It’s also prudent for a large organization to have mechanisms built into it to ensure that its smooth functioning is not too dependent on which individual is currently doing whatever executive duties need to be done. That’s where most of them fall down. It’s nice to have a competent, well-liked and respected leader in those cases where you need a leader at all. If you’re lucky enought to have one, it’s naturally a sad thing to lose him or her–just as it’s a sad thing to lose any competent, well-liked and respected person. If that loss is a violent one, the perpetrator is a crimnal and needs to be dealt with as such. But it’s not the end of the world, whether violent or not, and reacting to it as if it were is likely to do far more harm than good. Wouldn’t it be better to have a social structure strong and resilient enough to deal appropriately and propotionately with both the loss and the crime, and meanwhile make the necessary adjustment to go on with the rest of its business in a reasonably normal fashion?

In the case of cults, no. Cults are cults because they focus on one man (or woman or a small cadre of “leaders”) to excess. It’s best to let them die. Now it should not have escaped any of you what the lesson here is: While it is true that Herbert Armstrong was a “success” in the sense that he got all he wanted out of life, he was a failure in providing a lasting legacy because people were entirely focused on him. In the aftermath of his death, there has been a vacuum left. Those familiar with science knows the old adage that nature abhors a vacuum.

Unfortunately, the “alpha males” rushing in to fill the void, simply can’t fill it. Armstrongism is a spectacular failure with sociopathic nutjobs popping up nearly weekly like mushrooms on the lawn after a rainy day. The final words of Dr. Schmidt in his editorial should give us all pause, even if taken out of context:

And if that happens, our reaction to any problem with it is likely to be as extreme and destructive as with any of its human predecessors.

So those now involved with Armstrongism — particularly now that we have the robust example of Ronald Weinland, the prophet that failed — have a clear choice: Make your own choices and be responsible for them or pursue social evolutionary regression to follow the baboon alpha male leader.

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Wrecked Family. Part II

May 21, 2011
– Elderly Mother Missing After Former World Wide Church of God Member Brother Uproots Her From Nursing Home and Philadelphia Church of God Sister Influences Her.

Yet another serious blow to my family — My former WWCOG member & brother, who wrecked our family by joining WWCOG in the earlier 70s, (He claims to have left the cult several years ago), took advantage of growing tensions between me and my 85-year-old mother over my PCOG sister, and I believe uprooted my mother from a nursing home in PA near us, and transplanted her to TX, where he lives. I also suspect my PCOG sister, referenced in the tragic story posted on this website regarding how she ruined my niece’s future, influenced and encouraged my mother to leave us. If so, he has done this without my knowledge. I found out my mother was missing from a former neighbor who tried to get in contact with my mother. Her phone line in the nursing home has been disconnected.

Instead of supporting me in stopping my PCOG sister from hoodwinking my mother for all these years, my former WWCOG member brother made every effort to exploit a crack opening between me and my mother, he being well-versed in deceiving, as a former HWA devotee, and a family-wrecker (His son has two illegitimate daughters, one of which has a Muslim first name). He learned HWA’s techniques well. It wasn’t enough that he took advantage of the rift, and moved my mother to TX. Before leaving, he and/or my mother somehow made my wife and I out to be the bad daughter-in-law and son for trying to help my niece (who wanted to split from PCOG) and for refusing to be pacifists regarding PCOG, WWCOG and HWA. Several neighbors, co-workers, all relatives, and former friends snub us. The relatives who no longer speak to us include my homosexual cousin whose former partner ran for some city government position and was caught soliciting an undercover vice squad officer. Made the newspapers of course. The other relative had an abortion. They are passing judgment on us. Typical.

Before my mother went missing, over the last few months, I had cut down on the number of calls, visits, and emails to her because she would never address the issues I raised regarding my sister taking advantage of herself and the alleged abuse of my niece via PCOG and her PCOG parents. Indirectly, my mother supported PCOG by sending my PCOG sister money for birthdays and letting her use her credit card when she visited. My mother refused to pressure my sister to compensate my wife the $2000 she spent on protecting our niece after her parents abandoned her to the streets for refusing to participate in PCOG. When we took my niece to visit my mother at the nursing home to tell her what had happened to her while in PCOG, my mother just sat there, stony-faced, and insisted she (my niece) belonged back with her PCOG parents despite all troubles they and PCOG had caused her.

My mother yelled at me the last time I saw her, upset as she was, that we had given my niece shelter over the summer when she had no where else to go. My mother ended by saying that it was wrong of me to have blocked her (my mother) from going to TX a year ago (which wasn’t true), and that as soon as she got better (she had a colostomy) she was going to TX. This, I took, as a veiled threat for me to keep quiet about PCOG, WWCOG, and how their vile influence was destroying us as a family.

Backtracking a bit, it was a little over a year ago when my cousin and her husband left us a nasty voice message containing outright slander and defamation of character statements alluding to us mistreating my mother (It is my understand their son is in a cult, the Seventh Day Adventists?). I played the tape for my former WWCOG brother. He never called this relative to straighten out the slander. His WWCOG wife wouldn’t even listen to the tape. I played the tape for my mother. She called my cousin to tell her she had gotten it awrong, but my mother remained in contact with this relative. Someone influenced my cousin to leave such a nasty message, thus I backed off from visiting my mother, while I tried to figure out who was defaming us. Around this time, my mother started thinking about moving to TX, either on her own, or I suspected with my former WWCOG brother and PCOG sister’s prodding. At the very least, they certainly didn’t’ discourage her. A few months later, I spoke with my former WWCOG brother asking him if everything was OK with my mother. He said “yes.” Less than a week later, he calls to announce his son had another illegitimate child (my wife and I don’t have children, so I believe this was a dig), and that our mother was moving to TX, and “whether I had any questions.” I was upset because I feared for my mother’s safety, her having anything to do with my deceiver and former WWCOG member brother who split apart the family. My wife spoke with my mother, and said I was upset. My mother changed her plans, and stayed. I got back in contact with my mother, overlooking this incident, and my wife visited her almost everyday at the nursing home. I called and visited her too, as before. My wife helped her with figuring out how to manage her colostomy bag. My mother gave the nurses credit for this, not my wife.

It all really fell apart when my niece came last summer, fleeing from PCOG and er PCOG parents. That’s when the family imploded. My mother yelled at me for no justifiable reason. I backed off visiting her, as my visits were obviously upsetting her, and she continued to support my PCOG sister. My wife, being unable to understand why my mother defends a dangerous cult, and is hostile toward us, when it was us who have helped her, not taking advantage of her. My wife and I don’t understand why, after my niece told her what had happened to her via PCOG, my mother insists on burying her head in the sand. My mother places her age and health condition front and center as a reason to avoid confronting my sister and former WWCOG brother and their membership in a dangerous cult, choosing instead to tell relatives, and whoever, that it is my wife and I who are wrong.

I ask to be removed as “executor” of my mother’s will. I said I wanted no part of being involved as her agent in transferring any money to PCOG through any money my sister might inherit. Cult experts advise never give money to any family member who is in a cult such as PCOG or WWCOG. My mother disregards this advice to the detriment of her grand-children’s future and to the integrity of our family.

I told my brother the correct way to handle the executor was to have a third party be executor of the will, not a family member. My brother refused to support me on this idea, and now is the executor of her will. My former WWCOG brother recently said he’d met a lot of “nice people” in WWCOG. We can only imagine his motivations of refusing to back the idea of assigning a third party, non-family member her estate executor.

My former WWCOG brother has smeared my efforts to support my mother and father all my life, when it was he and my sister who destroyed the family after he joined WWCOG. He never devoted his life in protecting his parents as I had, and therefore doesn’t believe I would. People accuse others of the crimes they themselves are guilty of. He took advantage of my mother’s growing confusion. Instead of clarifying reality, he and his WWCOG wife remain silent all throughout my struggles with my mother and PCOG sister duping my mother (She uses various health scares to gain my mother’s empathy).

My former WWCOG brother and PCOG sister make subtle, derogatory remarks about my deceased father, who objected to their membership in the WWCOG cult. My sister even posted derogatory poems on the internet about both her father (after he died) and mother. My father was a good man of character, wanting only the best for his children, and this is the way he was treated in life and after death?

My brother, after having never visited the family for but about 5 days a year since he joined WWCOG in the early 70s, (he called his parents less than a dozen times a year), exhibited greed when it came to emptying the contents of their house, in typical Armstrong fashion. He asked for half a train collection, ridiculing me for wanting to hold onto the collection, since it was me, not him, who as a youth, spent a lot of time with these trains building layouts, instead of holing myself up in my room listening to the likes of Gardner Ted Armstrong (Teddy the Fornicator), and incest committing Herbert Armstrong. He never once touched the train collection. It was with great effort that I had to convince my mother that giving him half the train collection was a mistake. She also wanted to give him half a book collection of classic books he’d never read, instead choosing to poke his nose in incest committing Herbert Armstrong’s “The Plain Truth,” “Mystery of the Ages,” and “End Times.”

When my mother had a colon resection about nine months ago, I rushed to the emergency room. I was just about to round the curtained-off area where she was when I heard her tell the emergency room people that she has family living nearby, but they (meaning my wife and I) don’t contact her. This is after my wife spent most of her lunch hours visiting my mother in the nursing home, helping her. My mother would rather throw us under the bus than have her former WWCOG son and PCOG member daughter exposed for destroying our family, among other transgressions.

So you can see by the example of our family’s history that the suffering, thanks to WWCOG and incest committing HWA, continues to escalate. These creeps and dangerous cults continue to destroy every shred that is left of our once hopeful and promising family.

Today, I’m not even sure where my mother is. My wife is very sick. She has to go to work every day in a lot of pain from a nerve problem that has caused frozen shoulder syndrome. I am told by a PCOG cult expert to be very careful, as some of its members could be “killers, ” as one “former member” has contacted us, claiming to offer help, but is elusive about who he is, and asked for our phone number twice. My wife and I live in fear of our lives while my relatives, former friends and some neighbors embark on a campaign of defamation of character, thanks to the misinformation or incomplete information my WWCOG brother, PCOG sister are probably spreading to throw smoke and mirrors over what they’ve done to destroy us. We want to know where my elderly mother is and whether she’s being abused, financially or otherwise. We want to know where my niece is and whether we can still help her pursue her dream of going to medical school.