Self-Deception

Herbert Armstrong was the master of self-deception. Not only that, but he trained us all to be adept at self-deception. And self-deception is exactly why people stay with the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia.

Watch this TEDx Event Presentation by Dr. Cortney S. Warren in her talk, “Honest Lies: The Psychology of Self-Deception”:

At the core, we lie to ourselves because we don’t have enough psychological strength to admit the truth and deal with the consequences that will follow. That said, understanding our self-deception is the most effective way to live a fulfilling life. For when we admit what we really are, we have the opportunity to change.

There are core strategies which we use to practice self-deception:

  1. Denial: Refusing to believe something is true, even though it is;
  2. Rationalization: Creating a reason to excuse ourselves;
  3. Projection: Taking an undesirable aspect of ourselves and ascribing it to someone else;
  4. Cognitive Distortions: Irrational ways in which we think;
  5. Polarizing Thinking: Thinking in extremes;
  6. Emotional Reasoning: Thinking that our feelings accurately reflect reality;
  7. Overgeneralization: Taking a single negative event as an infinite spiral of defeat.

From an existential perspective, we deceive ourselves to avoid the ‘Givens’ of life, the fundamental realities of “being human” that we must face:

  1. Death — we’re all going to die;
  2. Ultimate Aloneness — we were born as a single person housed in a solitary physical body;
  3. Meaninglessness — our lives are inherently meaningless unless we give them meaning;
  4. Freedom — we are responsible for ourselves because we have the freedom of choice.

To avoid these realities, we frequently lie to ourselves:

  • Deferring responsibility for choices;
  • Believing in ‘specialness’ so that there is a unique protection from harm;
  • Compromising to meet cultural norms.

Self-deception leads to massive amounts of pain and regret. To avoid being honest, we frequently make choices with harmful consequences to ourselves and others — we may use drugs, alcohol, eat, shop, gamble, steal, lie, leave people or pass our emotional baggage down to those we love the most. Or, we may choose not to change even when we are miserable or causing profound harm to those around us. Looking back at life with regret is incredibly painful, because you can’t change your choices in the past.

When we don’t take full responsibility for who we are, we hurt ourselves and everyone around us.

The way to change is:

  1. self-awareness — become observers of ourselves;
  2. examine the contribution to the conflict in our lives;
  3. admit to insecurity and confront the choice.

Not changing when confronted with the truth is a choice. Although we cannot control the many circumstances we encounter in life, we are responsible for our reactions to all of them.

Confronting our self-deception is a lifelong journey. We change and the world offers us new opportunities to understand ourselves. There is always more to learn.

It is now time for those who embrace the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia to be honest with themselves.

Isolation
Isolation

Here are just a few of the truths Armstrongists need to face:

Herbert Armstrong was not an apostle;

Herbert Armstrong was a false prophet;

Herbert Armstrong committed incest with his daughter for ten years at the beginning of his ministry and, therefore,

Herbert Armstrong was not actually converted, and,

Herbert Armstrong was never qualified to be a minister;

Herbert Armstrong is dead;

Herbert Armstrong knowingly allowed his son, Garner Ted Armstrong, to be second in command as the top evangelist, even though GTA was an adulterer, alcoholic boozer and a gambler;

There is no place of safety and there never will be (and Petra is an absolutely terrible place to try to survive);

British Israelism, as the key to prophecy, has been thoroughly debunked and no prophecy based on it will come true… ever — it’s extra Biblical;

The True History of The True Church was nothing of the kind, plagiarized from Ellen G. White and thoroughly, provably wrong, particularly about Waldensians supposedly keeping the Sabbath and Holydays (they considered themselves to be good Catholics);

The leaders of the major sects of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia have proved themselves inept and to be false prophets;

Jesus isn’t returning in your life time;

There may be tribulation, but the Great Tribulation won’t happen in your life time;

The Bible commands “from such turn away”;

There is no such thing as a Christian narcissist;

Armstrongism is a religion of physical rituals, not of spiritual content;

If you are an alcoholic, you must stop drinking or you will not just die badly, you may seriously injure and kill others;

If you are diabetic, you cannot drink alcohol;

If you are diabetic, you need to manage your condition because it’s not just going to ‘go away’;

Anointing for your chronic diseases will not make them go away;

There is not and never was any such thing as ‘second tithe’;

If you are a farmer and you try to keep the seventh year land Sabbath, you will either go broke, have to borrow money or lose your land because you simply won’t get double income in your sixth year because, just like the Feasts, the land Sabbath was given only to ancient Israelites in the land of Israel — the land ‘the Lord gaveth thee’ — under the Old Covenant only — a physical covenant for a physical people devoid of the Holy Spirit given promises of physical prosperity only;

The United States and British Commonwealth are not lost tribes of Israel, and, more importantly, none of the doom, devastation, destruction is going to occur because of their supposed sins against an ancient religion which was never given to them;

Your ministers are in it for the money and the ego trip — they are totally selfish and don’t really care about you;

Your ministers and leaders know nothing of morals and ethics;

Your ministers are terrible at counseling;

Your ministers are liars;

Your ministers don’t actually know how the Bible was put together, or if they do, they are lying about it;

You still can’t put new wine in old wineskins, even though that’s what Armstrongism is all about;

You don’t really know what other members of your sect really believe, even though you think you’ve known them for decades;

There is no loyalty — you can incur someone’s wrath and be disfellowshipped at any time;

Your family isn’t really safe;

You are wasting your money;

You are wasting your time;

You don’t really believe in science, you believe in magic;

By allowing someone else to define right and wrong for you, you’ve become a sociopath with a flexible adapted conscience;

No one is exactly what they seem;

It’s all quite insane.

Once you get through and eliminate these lies of your self-deception, you will still have a long way to go.

The only way to be free of your self-delusion is to stop feeding it by severing contact with those in the cult who are holding your mind hostage.

Image

Michael

Michael stood alone in the middle of the foyer of the Seattle Masonic Hall, people swirling around and past him without interacting with him, a solitary island in the midst of a sea of people. I noticed he was new and that apparently, no one was interested in getting to know him. It made me feel sad. I went over and introduced myself to him and began learning about him. Over the next few weeks and months, I had him over to dinner with my family several times and we even went and worked out together at the gym. I learned about this “good guy” and he had a lot of depth that most people would not expect.

Michael shared with me his story about how he entered into the Marines at the age of 30. It was a matter of honor that his mates referred to him as “the Old Man” because they respected the fact that he stayed in there with them even though they were mostly a decade younger than he. He wanted to be a Marine. His father was a Marine.

Before the Passover I had broken my toes and at the Passover Service it was Michael who was to wash my feet. He looked me in the eye and said, “I ain’t gonna mess with no broken toes,” whereupon he washed my one foot without the broken toes. I washed his feet.

It was during the Days of Unleavened Bread that he showed up in our apartment complex in the parking lot. My wife and I looked at each other in dismay at him on the heavy duty motorcycle he had ridden on. He was all excited about it. He was a sincere believer who was going to take his brother out in the woods and talk to him about his new faith. We didn’t say anything and hoped for the best.

It was shortly after this that we learned that he was on his way on his motorcycle to prepare to go out to the woods when he got clipped on his head with the mirror of a semi. It removed the top of his head and he ended up in a coma in the hospital. His face had not been affected so it looked like he was in a peaceful sleep.

Each day for nearly 40 days, I would go down to the hospital after work in the afternoon and would sit with him and talk to him because I had heard that those in a coma often heard those talking to him. I would describe the Spring afternoon and the sun shining. At the last, I was not able to get to the hospital and he had changed doctors. He died shortly afterward from the trauma. I believe it was about 40 days.

What I did not know is that Michael had shared our friendship with his family: His dad, mom, sisters and brothers. I was the only one from the church in to see him at the hospital. I had talked with his family when they were there and we got to know one another as best strangers could under such circumstances.

Because Michael was a Marine as was his father, he was given a funeral with full honors with Marines in dress uniforms giving the gun salute with rifles.

Afterward, I prepared an obituary for the Worldwide News. I learned that I had to give it to the minister. It was a paragraph and told part of his story of being in the Marine Corps.

It turns out that I gave it to Dennis Luker after services on the Sabbath. He told me that he had met the family and when they told him about me, he said to them, “Oh, he’s so quiet!”. This produced laughter from Michael’s family and they instantly knew that Dennis Luker knew neither Michael nor me. He was attempting to cash in on an opportunity by pretending to be someone and something he wasn’t and got caught at it.

Eventually, the obituary made it to the Worldwide News. It was a sentence long. It was a brief sentence at that. Michael _____ died…. That was about it. Name, no rank, no serial number. It was crisply impersonally efficient.

During my brief discussion with Dennis Luker, he did something odd: He stroked my stomach as if it were a bowling ball. It was weird and creepy. Very weird and creepy. Very very weird and creepy. I just stood there and allowed him to do it. After all, this was God’s Evangelist of the Worldwide Church of God — the very Work of God. Many of us had been conditioned to be subjected to authority without question — to accept what was truly unacceptable, because the Very God of the Universe would support them even if they were wrong.

I vaguely felt as if I had been raped.

The important thing here is for the alpha male Corporate Executive to assert his superior dominance over an underling to maintain Corporate Order and insure the proper image for the Corporate Executive in the hierarchy of the Corporate “monkey tree” where all the executives are striving to be “top banana”.

The Magic Lantern

Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers by Robert Jackall covers the ground occupied by the Armstrongist Worldwide Church of God and their Church Corporate spinoffs — not specifically, but in practice, since all the participants follow the same thinking and practices of those in the Corporate 200. Chapter 7, The Magic Lantern, covers the aspects of image creation for the purposes of public relations:

The need for symbolic dexterity, particularly the ability to fashion, quickly and readily, appropriate legitimations for what must be done, intensifies as one ascends the corporate ladder. Since the success of large commercial bureaucracies depends to a great extent on the goodwill of the consuming public, ambitious managers recognize that great organizational premiums are placed on the ability to explain expedient action convincingly. Public opinion, of course, constitutes one of the only effective checks on the bureaucratic impulse to translate all moral issues into practical concerns. Managers not only face the highly specific and usually ideological standpoints of one or another “special-interest” group but, even more fearsome, the vague, ill-formed diffuse, highly volatile, and often irrational public opinion that is both the target of special-interest groups and the lifeblood of the news media. Those imbued with the bureaucratic ethos thus make every effort to mold public opinion to allow the continued uninterrupted operation of business. Moreover, since public opinion inevitably affects to some extent managers’ own conceptions of their work and of themselves, public goodwill, even that which managers themselves create, becomes an important part of managers’ own valued self-images. In this sense, both moral issues and social identities become issues of public relations.

Dennis Luker had been in the Corporate World before his induction into the Church Corporate and had obviously learned the lesson of being a triumph of image over substance. An examination of his Master’s Thesis yielded a window into this world, confined by the strictures of the lessons of being a Regional Pastor: It was not anything like the Master’s Thesis next to it on the shelf, Dr. C. Paul Meredith’s Satan’s Great Deception, which could be described as having intense spiritual content, but instead dealt with the purely physical aspects of deciding whether or not a visiting minister was to stay in the home of the Regional Pastor or at a motel nearby and making sure that the car was washed before sunset on Friday. People forget the mechanisms driving the engine of the Armstrongist Churches of God are the tactics of modern corporations, not the “Spirit led” assemblies of Christian ministers, disciples and apostles of the distant past: It’s business. Businesses are for the purpose of making a profit. To do this, the end justifies the means — the end being making profit, both in money and membership (used as a tool to sustain the ego of the narcissistic leader(s)).

This creates a new virtual world which is nowhere near the one the rank and file live in. Robert Jackall explains:

In fact, bureaucratic contexts typically bring together men and women who initially have little in common with each other except the impersonal frameworks of their organizations. Indeed, the enduring genius of the organization form is that it allows individuals to retain bewilderingly diverse private motives and meanings for action as long as they adhere publicly to agreed-upon rules. Even the personal relationships that men and women in bureaucracies do subsequently fashion together are, for the most part, governed by the explicit or implicit organizational rules, procedures, and protocol. As a result, bureaucratic work causes people to bracket, while at work, the moralities that they might hold outside the workplace or that they might adhere to privately and to follow instead of the prevailing morality of their organizations situation. As a former vice-president of a large firm says: “What is right in the corporation is not what is right in a man’s home or in his church. What is right in the corporation is what they guy above you wants from you. That’s what morality is in the corporation.”

This explains well why Roderick Meredith and Dennis Luker tolerated the behavior of Garner Ted Armstrong without saying one word or leaving: They were loyal to the corporation and their morality revolved around what Herbert Armstrong wanted from them. A good part of that was the image making part of the coverups to insure that the Corporation continued and prospered. In this world, what mattered was not the good of the members, but the good of those in the “middle management” and above, specified by rank. Dennis Luker would favor those in congregations who were wealthy — especially those were millionaires. His own children, in fact, married the children of a millionaire in his congregation. He could be close “friends” who could further his agenda, pursuing his career in the Armstrongist Churches of God along with the salary and the hoped for retirement it would bring. In fact, many have commented about his sermons over the years filled with his concerns about this very topic. Many times, those who were “different” or “lowly” may not have had such favor in his eyes, but he was able to maintain a calm demeanor which belied his true feelings, making it seem that he was personable and a concerned pastor.

Moral Mazes includes a comments from executives relevant to truth:

Everyone out there is constructing reality. We and our clients have perceptions too. Who is telling the truth? Is there anyone out there who has the time and inclination to sit down and truly evaluate the many situations.

That’s a good question, especially considering “The Present Truth” of many of the leaders of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong.

Truth? What is truth? I don’t know anyone in this business who talks about the “truth”.

That’s actually true: Perceptions are transformed so people believe they have the truth. Anyone who has seen the many “prognostications” of Herbert Armstrong and others should eventually come to the conclusion that they don’t have anything even close to what we could call “truth”. There is no reason to trust such people. They have proved their lack of integrity.

It should be noted that the chapter after The Magic Lantern is Invitations to Jeopardy.

In the end, we should all observe the aphorism of G’Kar in Babylon 5: “Let me pass on to you the one thing I’ve learned about this place. No one here is exactly what he appears.”

In fact, in the world of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong, nothing is exactly as it appears, including the smarmy image of those who portray a deeply caring persona.

Anyway, those who are wise will make it quite irrelevant by leaving the entirely dysfunctional environment where there is no real benefit to sacrifice resources and sanity to the Corporate Executive image makers conducting little more than a PR campaign for ego and money: It’s not worth it.

For those of you in the process of leaving the Cult of Herbert Armstrong, a piece of advice: Set boundaries.

Calendar

The Church of God Seventh Day is right! Herbert Armstrong got it wrong!

Herbert Armstrong declared many times:

The Sabbath stands or falls with the Feasts.

It’s strange, because the Church of God Seventh Day just doesn’t seem to think so. Here is what they say:

The Church of God (Seventh Day) teaches that Christians are not obligated to observe the feast days, the annual Hebrew holy days of Leviticus 23. Here are seven reasons for this position:

  • The annual holy days were part of the Levitical law of the old covenant and were intimately linked to its system of animal sacrifices.
    The annual holy days were neither Creation ordinances nor included among the Ten Commandments, but they belong to a portion of law that may be called ceremonial.
  • The annual holy days were commanded to the nation of Israel when it departed from Egypt and were to be observed where the Lord placed His name: Jerusalem.
  • The annual holy days have an agricultural framework, inextricably tied to the land, crops, and climate of ancient Palestine.
  • The annual holy days were observed according to an ancient (Hebrew) calendar that is impossible to decipher from Scripture.
  • The purpose of the annual holy days was for the Hebrew nation to celebrate its own history and to anticipate the greater salvation that would come through Messiah.
  • Observance of the annual holy days often casts a shadow on the final work of redemption and grace that was accomplished by Christ on the cross.

Apparently, keeping the Feasts is a point of view.

Some of you know Alan Knight, either personally, through his interview in The Journal or from his book, Primitive Christianity in Crisis. The last time we had lunch, we discussed the current controversy surrounding Robert Thiel, since Mr. Knight had several exchanges with him and after lunch, I asked him the question of what he thought of the Feasts, given that he is something of a scholar on early Christianity. His response was that “Scriptural support for keeping the Feasts is weak”.

One’s skepticism is certainly piqued with Chapter 17, “The Most Important Holy Day” in Showdown At Big Sandy: Youthful Creativity Confronts Bureaucratic Inertia at an Unconventional Bible College in East Texas by Greg Doudna, now available at Barnes and Noble on Nook (apparently, Dr. Doudna took my advice to put it in an ebook). While the WCG nattered on about the other Feasts, the Wave Sheaf Offering, picturing the acceptance of Jesus Christ by God the Father, would, one would think, be the most relevant to Christians, if we were to keep the Feasts, but sadly, no, no there is no observance. Just keep the Lord’s Supper on the wrong day, keep the “Passover” as the Night to Be Much Observed and totally miss that the Days of Unleavened Bread start on the evening of the Passover.

Now one would suppose that keeping the Feasts could be a blessing… but certainly not to hear sermons about Doomsday and the lie of British Israelism.

But perhaps the biggest problem of all is that Armstrongists don’t actually know when to keep the Feasts. If you are going to keep them when they don’t need to be kept at all, you should, by all means, get the dates right. But with the nine variants that the Armstrongist churches of God use now are every one of them wrong — objectively, observably, technically wrong. It is time for them to admit that the Church of God Seventh Day is right and the calendar is impossible to decipher from Scripture.

Having failed to understand the Hebrew Calendar at all, Herbert Armstrong did the really stupid thing and went to the Jews as THE “authority” on the topic. This is a totally wrong move. Think about it: The Apostles went to the Pharisees in the First Century to ask them to tell them when the Feasts were? There’s nothing like stupidly making yourself a martyr. Besides, who would they ask after 70 A.D., do pray tell? The Old Covenant (if people believe the Bible) ended at the Death of Jesus: The veil to the Holy of Holies was ripped apart — there was no more authority of the Sanhedrin. The Christians just don’t go to the Jews for spiritual knowledge, because in the view of the New Testament, they don’t have any. Nevertheless, Herbert Armstrong went to the Jews for their calendar because he made the very wrong assumption that they were the keepers of the oracles and were the experts in such things in perpetuity.

Just how wrong this is has been exposed scientifically: The calculated calendar by Hillel II, the last of the Sanhedrin, declared that the solar year is 365 days and 6 hours, based on the stellar advice of an astonomer friend. Unfortunately, the Universe is unforgiving in such things, and he had the year off by a surplus of 11 minutes and 14.4 seconds. That may not sound like much, but given the past 1,650 years+, the Hillel II calendar is 12 days, 21 hours 7 minutes and 12 seconds off, putting the calculated Spring Equinox around March 6th or March 7th (depending upon leap year). If this were to be continued about 21,000 more years or so, the Feast of Tabernacles would coincide with Christmas Vacation Week in December between December 25th and January 1st. This would mean that people would not have to ask for time off for their children to keep the Feast and Boeing Employees could go because they get the week off every year. So, in the scheme of things, it’s very convenient… maybe… some day.

Hillel II was also off on what the moon transit time was by 6 millionths of a day every month being about .5184 seconds. This might not mean much month to month, but over the centuries until now, the Jewish Calendar is about 2.94 hours later in its expectation of the New Moon. This, under some circumstances can amount to one day.

It gets worse, though.

Hillel II set about to make sure that certain things didn’t happen in the Calendar, such as having the Day of Atonement on a Friday. However, documents from Jewish History show very clearly that the Day of Atonement did occasionally fall on a Friday during Christ’s time First Century A.D. and there were instructions on how to deal with it. This is important because no one can arbitrarily set the Passover in the First Century AD by a Calendar issued later in 359 A.D. by Hillel II. It is for this reason that the Armstrongists insist that Christ died in 31 A.D. to make their Festival timeline fit, when, in fact, they have it wrong and according to the self-correcting Hebrew Calendar at the time, would have made 30 A.D. the year that Jesus Christ would have been sacrificed to be put in the tomb in the evening of the Passover.

Things really get dicey from here. For one thing, the prophecy of Daniel 9 is impacted. For another, the Armstrongists don’t keep all the Feasts any year, even though, sometimes they keep a few of them on the day set forth by correct calendar computations, meaning that they can’t claim to be keeping God’s Law of the Old Covenant Correctly, and since, according to Herbert Armstrong, the Sabbath stands or falls on the Holydays, they are technically breaking the 4th Commandment, and hence, cannot have salvation.

Does your head hurt yet?

It’s no wonder that Armstrongist leaders doesn’t want to open this particular bag of snakes and convinces their membership it’s too complicated to understand and we all have to leave it to the “Authority” of the Jews: They couldn’t get the people together to keep the Feasts, which would reduce the effectiveness of the control Armstrongism has over the people and most of all, they would lose out on the money. That is a lot of powerful incentive to keep the people in confusion and delusion.

In actual fact, it isn’t that hard. After all, the ancient Israelites seem to have been able to calculate the Feasts, didn’t they?

I first learned about postponements in 2003, when the beautiful full moon was out on Thursday and the Feast of Tabernacles started on Saturday and a member called the minister and asked why and the minister said he didn’t know. At the Feast in Redmond, Oregon, I asked a minister about postponements and he lied to me and brushed me off saying, “I studied that once but I don’t remember”. He knew. He just didn’t want the answer. It would foul up Armstrongism and threaten his job.

In 2005 and 2006, my wife and I kept the “Passover” with Wayne Bedwell and his wife Carol in his home, along with the Edwards. Shirley Edwards was a delight and quite a woman. In the 1950s, when women weren’t supposed to do such things, she learned to fly, got her pilot’s license and flew to Cuba! My wife still has the picture of Shirley on the wall where she receives the silver prize in the Arizona Senior Olympics 50 yard swim at the age of 83 years old! Wayne Bedwell and I had an opportunity to discuss many things during our stay in the Tucson area, particularly his booklet, The Original Calendar for Our Day. He was an Engineer who once worked for NASA. I guess this calendar thing really is rocket science. He told me that he had travelled to New York to study in the very extensive Jewish section of the New York Public Library to learn how to calculate the calendar. He mentioned the fact that the First Century Jews did not use postponements and that the Day of Atonement could indeed fall on a Friday. He also noted that 30 A.D. was the only year where the Passover occurred on Wednesday night within years on either side: It could not be 31 A.D., 33 A.D., 29 A.D. or any other of the dates picked by others. It is also convenient, he explained, that from 30 A.D. to 70 A.D. there was a 40 year trial period for the Jews.

Plagiarism is a long, well-established practice with Armstrongists and the calendar presented by Wayne Bedwell was no exception. It is true that Ted Phillips of the Church of God Modesto used his calendar for the Feasts with full attribution. However, James Russell over at the Church of God In Truth did not acknowledge the source, particularly when he changed the assessment for the occurrence of the new moon: To wit, to change the beginning of a new moon from the time that the earth,  moon and sun were in conjunction, all nicely lined up, to the very first moment Jerusalem time, when the moon went down before the sun did. Another cult leader set the time differently by insisting that the Sabbath didn’t begin at sunset, but at nautical twilight. The differences could mean a full day’s difference. Nevertheless, this wasn’t anywhere near as bad as when the official Jewish Calendar was one full month off from the non postponed one. One should note that there are those who insist that the new moon really begins with the crescent of the moon, usually two days later than the real true lunar new moon. While it is completely silly in practice, there is a rationale to it because of yet another problem.

In 2008, when I met Paul Woods at the Feast of Tabernacles in Fruitland, Washington, hosted by his church, the Seventh Day Church of God of Caldwell, Idaho, I discussed the calendar also, since he publishes the Hebrew Calendar through The Herald of Truth, of which he is editor and publisher. The Seventh Church of God is quite independent from Herbert Armstrong, and their particular group came from Gilbert G. Rupert and has been keeping the Feasts since 1919. In our discussion, he showed me from Exodus, that the Passover, beginning on the evening of the 14th day of the First Month is also the beginning of the Days of Unleavened Bread and that the Armstrongists have that all wrong as well — so at the very least, the Armstrongists always begin the Days of Unleavened Bread at least one day late. Paul Woods solves the inherent problem with the Feast of Tabernacles with one simple assumption: That, as he puts it, the moon rules the day. What that means that on the day of the new moon, the moon must have arisen either at sunrise or shortly before sunrise before that evening can be declared the beginning of the new moon. This means that there will be a very slight sliver of the moon visible, but not as great as those who, say, follow William Dankenbring’s assessment of the timing. This solves the very great problem that there is a full moon on the 15th of the month each time and every time, meaning that the Israelites would have had a full moon on the Night to Be Much Observed when they left Egypt and also the Feast of Tabernacles always, always, always begins in the light of the glorious full moon in the fall, with either the Harvest Moon or sometimes more rarely, the Hunter’s Moon.

So just exactly how does one find the First Month in all this? Go out and look for sprigs of springing up barley in the hills in Israel like Carl O’Beirn does? In all of this, you have to remember that the ancient Israelites were not carrying iPods, having reflecting telescopes and certainly didn’t have orbiting satellites they could use for JavaScript programs to calculate new moon conjunctions at midnight, when they couldn’t even see the moon. It is a “keep it simple, stupid” scenario which could be understood by those not in tune with calculus and geometry: Remember, observations, pen and papyrus only. They did know when the Spring Equinox was (before it was fouled up by Hillel II in 358 A.D.). Here is a simple formula from Paul Woods for figuring the Holy days:

1) Find the spring equinox;

2) Find the new moon nearest the spring equinox (either before or after);

3) Use Jerusalem time (The moon is new to the whole earth at one time);

4) The first night the moon has completely ruled (had authority) over the is counted as number one (1). This day is the Biblical new Year Day;

5) Count to the fourteenth (14th) day of that moon and you have the Passover Day. The Lord’s Supper Service is to be held the evening of the preceding day.

Say what!!??!!!

Yes, it’s true: If you are going to do it right, you need to read the New Testament (along with the Old) very, very carefully — the Lord’s Supper Service is to be held on the evening of the 13th Day of the First month and the Passover begins the Days of Unleavened Bread on the next evening.

Here’s how it works in 30 A.D.:

Tuesday evening, Jesus has his last supper with his disciples;

Wednesday, during the day, Jesus is crucified, dies and at sunset is in the tomb and sealed in just as the evening of the 14th begins the Passover;

Thursday, Christ is in the tomb;

Friday, Christ in the tomb;

Saturday, Christ is in the tomb, but at sunset, after three days in the tomb, he is resurrected and leaves the tomb; 50 days later he ascends into the heavens on Pentecost;

Sunday morning, Jesus ascends as the Wave Sheaf Offering.

From there, you are on your own.

That’s as close as I think we can get: You may have different ideas, but they probably don’t work. One thing is clear: Herbert Armstrong was wrong about the calendar and most of the 700+ spit-offs are wrong as well. There are all sorts of excuses, the main one being, “We need to keep the brethren together”. It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? Wrong in the first place and wrong ever since. If the Jews didn’t get it right, what chance do you think Armstrongists had, when they went to the Jews for faulty advice?

Perhaps, and likely, this is all wasted effort: The question remains as to whether or not there is a requirement for Christians to keep the Feasts. The best evidence is that support for keeping the Feasts in the Bible is rather weak, if it exists at all. The Feasts, were, after all, a shadow of things to come, about half of which already have. As for keeping the Feast forever, it’s not going to happen, since, according to Revelation 22 there will be no sun or moon. So much for forever.

Get Your Fill of the Spirit
Get Your Fill of the Spirit

Moreover, there is no good Christian way to fund the Feasts given in the Bible, even if there might be a blessing in keeping them. There is no such thing as second tithe to keep the Feast. In Greg Doudna’s book, he points out that in 1975, the WCG very nearly cancelled the Feast to have everyone stay home so the church could get the money. You don’t really believe that the Armstrongist leaders are in sincerity and truth when they claim that the way to salvation is to keep the Feasts, do you, when they can propose cancelling them altogether? Besides, how much of a blessing is it to listen to sermons filled with false prophecies from false prophets about doomsday scenarios based on the ridiculous fully disproven British Israelism scrap? It’s no wonder the Church of God Seventh Day doesn’t keep them, even if we could figure out when they really are.

There is a lot that the Armstrongists don’t volunteer. It isn’t just that Herbert Armstrong had a cup of coffee and a donut on the Day of Atonement “to keep his strength up” before he gave the sermon; there is the matter of special dispensations that many members did not know: For example, those with health problems could skip fasting on the Day of Atonement — at first under doctor’s orders and approved by headquarters, and then later, anyone with diabetes had an automatic dispensation. There are all sorts of different various exceptions to the Sabbath and Feast Days, hidden away from the rank-and-file members, with special exceptions given, especially to those of the ministry (we are not forgetting that the ministers did not have to keep “second tithe” and “third tithe” because they were “spiritual Levites”. There’s nothing like corrupting a corrupt system adapted arbitrarily for whatever purpose someone wants and have it enforced by God and the Bible. It’s no wonder that the Prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 1:14-15,

Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

But then the record of Old Testament Scripture was that the Israelites didn’t keep the Feasts for centuries at a time and God didn’t seem to mind — it was the idolatry that got to Him: The same kind of idolatry the followers of Herbert Armstrong commit today. Some of those Armstrongist church history theorists insist that at least one era of the church had so many problems that they did not need to keep the Feasts — that God just looked the other way as yet another entitlement. The problem is that there is no such thing as church eras and what was that about Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever? Is that forever, as in thou shall keep the Feasts forever in your generations? If so, it never happened. Armstrongists paint God the Father as being so fickle, double minded and inconsistent that it’s hard to take anything they say seriously: There are explanations everywhere as to why they don’t do what is commanded in the Bible in the Old Covenant that after awhile, it becomes little more than confused mental mush. It’s no wonder they don’t understand the Calendar… not that it makes any difference, since they don’t really keep the Feasts anyway: Hey! It’s a church corporation type convention — HP, IBM, LINUX Expo, Promise Keepers. Go for it. If you can afford it. If not, don’t worry, since it apparently isn’t required anyway. And don’t forget to booze it up: Just remember that the word Symposium comes from the Greek word for “drinking party”. Maybe the Armstrongists should rename it to the Symposium of Tabernacles and be done with it.

If you do attend the Feast of Tabernacles, do insure that you go someplace with good reception so you can be connected to the world through the Internet and your cell phone: You wouldn’t want to miss out on anything that is going on — after all, the world could come to an end and you wouldn’t know it.

The Calendar is always an interesting exercise.

Let it not be an exercise in futility.