Herbert W. Armstrong’s Prophetic Record – The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God

A Sampling of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Prophetic Record

This list is primarily a chronological version of the “Herbert Armstrong’s 209 False Prophecies” prepared by “The Watcher” at the Painful Truth website and includes other failed predictions from Pamela Dewey’s “Field Guide to the Wild World of Religion”

Deuteronomy 18:22 When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

1930’s

PT February 1934, page 3 – we may be absolutely certain that we are in, and for about three years have been passing through, this great world-wide tribulation…. We have seen that the “day of His wrath” is the “Day of the Lord,” which is a day of DESTRUCTION. WHO will be able to stand it? Will YOU, brother, sister? You can’t escape it. It is just as CERTAIN as are all these other events which have happened right on schedule.
1934 PT: “Christ will return in 1936″
PT June 1934: On Page 3, HWA drew a chronological chart of End-Time events. He labeled the year 1936 as the end of the time of tribulation and “the End of the Age.”
1934/35 PT: Mussolini will be world dictator
PT March 1938, p.8: Mussolini and the Pope will hatch up an idea between [them] of setting up a world headquarters at Jerusalem—and so Mussolini’s armies will enter Palestine (Dan. 11:41), and eventually will capture just half of the city of Jerusalem! (Zech 14:2)
PT January 1939, p. 4: Mussolini will fight Christ!
PT August 1939, p.6 Once war is resumed, it must continue on thru the great Tribulation, the heavenly signs, the plagues of the Day of the Lord, and to the second coming of Christ, at the last battle, at Armageddon!… But this you may know! This war will be ended by Christ’s return! And war may start within six weeks! We are just that near Christ’s coming!
1939 PT: “Hitler will give his power to Mussolini”
1939 PT: “Franco will give his power to Mussolini” – note: stayed in power for 30 years after Mussolini died
1939 PT: “Ethiopia & Libya will join USSR in WW2″ – note: they were conquered from Italy by Britain within 2 years
1939-40 PT: “Mussolini will conquer Egypt & Palestine” – note: Dec 1940 30K British troops capture 250K Italian troops

1940’s

April/May 1940 PT: “Today England is a dictatorship as absolutely as that of Hitler or Mussolini”
1940 PT: “Christ will come after 3.5 years of tribulation in October 43″
Dec 1940 PT: Britain will be conquered by Nazis
Dec 1940 PT: Turkey will turn traitor to Britain; it stayed neutral
PT: May/June 1941: Herbert W. Armstrong – “Hitler now emerges as the “BEAST” of Revelation!”
PT: May/June 1941: Herbert W. Armstrong ” – “Bible prophecy … shows the Roman Axis forces will take Egypt, Suez, Palestine – even Gibraltar.”
Four false prophecies in one sentence. The Nazi-Italian army of Gen. Erwin Rommel in North Africa never took Egypt, Suez or Palestine. It was virtually annihilated by the British Eighth Army under Gen. Bernard Montgomery at the battle of Alamein in November 1942. The British rock fortress of Gibraltar was never even threatened by the Italians or the Germans. Herbert’s prophecies looked most likely to happen in the summer of 1942 when Rommel’s Afrika Korps, having advanced nearly 1,000 miles, was only around 100 miles from Alexandria. Then Montgomery smashed them.
PT: May/June 1941: Herbert W. Armstrong: “Britain will go down.”
Amazingly, as soon as he had printed these words, Britain started to go UP. The German battleship Bismarck was sunk in May 1941 ending the most serious threat to Britain’s Atlantic convoy lifeline. On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the year-long blitz on Britain’s cities ended as the Luftwaffe was switched to the new Eastern Front.
PT Sept/October 1941: “Plain Truth readers know world events before they occur.”
PT Sept/October 1941: “Hitler MUST BE THE VICTOR in his present Russian invasion!” Two months after that was written, on Dec. 6, 1941, the first great Red Army counter-attack rolls Hitler’s Wehrmacht back from the suburbs of Moscow. Advance Panzer officers could even see the Kremlin in the viewfinders of their tanks.
PT Sept/October 1941: “A settlement will be reached, giving Hitler the supplies and resources he must have and undoubtedly part of Western Siberia.”
No settlement between Hitler and Stalin was ever reached, in large part to the flood of American supplies to Russia under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program, which Herbert then and later endlessly belittled.
PT Sept/October 1941: Same sentence. Herbert was wrong about even the finest and most obscure details. Hitler never got the oil and mineral wealth of the Soviet Union. His main effort to do so was never directed at Siberia anyway but at the far richer and more accessible oil territories of the Caspian Basin, but he diverted his drive there to subdue Soviet resistance at Stalingrad and suffered catastrophic defeat. Far from Hitler winning the resources of Siberia by his drive on Russia, it was the 50 tough Siberian divisions of the Soviet army which were transported 3,000 miles who threw his Army Group Center back from the gates of Moscow in December 1941.
PT Sept/October 1941 “The Red Army is unable to attack him as Hitler turns his wrecking machine to the British Isles, the United States and Palestine (Herbert).”

Apart from a bombardment by V1 flying bombs in the second half of 1944, Hitler never again had the chance to turn his wrecking machine on Britain.

The United States never suffered a single fatal casualty on its land territory through the whole of World War II from German Nazi actions, while an estimate 80 million people died as a result of the war worldwide.

There was very little air attack on Palestine, then a British-ruled territory and not a single death from land attack during World War II.

PT Sept/October 1941 Herbert’s repeated predictions that Hitler and Mussolini would also conquer Syria, Jordan and the rest of the Middle East during World War II. Far from being attacked, Palestine was the base from which the British reconquered Syria and Iraq with minimum casualties.
PT Sept/October 1941: “Hitler will emerge from this Russian campaign stronger than ever.”Hitler emerged from his Russian campaign dead, with his bodies burned to cinders after being doused in gasoline as the victorious Red Army sacked his capital city Berlin. The invasion of Russia was Hitler’s biggest mistake. Maybe he did it because he’d been reading the Plain Truth too.
PT September/October 1941Our God is now about to punish… if our stiff-necked and rebellious people go on defying… trusting only in material and military defense… We shall be invaded, CONQUERED, uprooted from our homes and transplanted to other lands across the seas—ruled over as slaves.
1942 PT: Rommel will conquer Jerusalem & Egypt with help of German army coming through Caucasus and southern Russia; note – more than 1 million German/axis troops destroyed in Stalingrad, August 1942 – Feb 1943; British eighth army destroys Rommel’s army at Alamein Nov 1942 & then advances 1000 miles across Africa
1944 PT: “we have made but the slightest dent in Jap defenses in the Pacific & at the present rate, it will take us about 20 years” to defeat them
?: before June 1944 HWA appears to have predicted on radio the D-Day landings would fail
January 23, 1945 co-worker letter: Where are we, now, in the prophetic unfolding of God’s PLAN? We are already IN the very crisis at the close of this age, spoken of by Daniel the prophet. We are in that period portrayed by the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—of the Book of Revelation. Jesus explained these in His Olivet prophecy (Mat. 24). The false prophets representing a false, counterfeit Christ, have appeared. We are now in the midst of the final age-end WORLD-WAR—nation against nation; kingdom against kingdom! We are in the beginning of the famine and pestilence to follow in the wake of world-war!
July 1945: although Germany is destroyed Japan will develop atomic bomb to destroy America; note – US atomic bomb already tested in Los Alamos, key components manufactured in Washington state north of HWA in Oregon; August 1945 2 US a-bombs dropped on Japan to end war
1946/47: there will be no Jewish state in Palestine; reasoning: since Britain & America are really Israel Palestine must be kept for them in the Millennium
Coworker Letter December 1947 : YOU, dear Co-Worker, are not going to be permitted to enjoy your home, your freedom, your present privileges and pursuits, many more years. Just a few more years—perhaps six or seven—perhaps twelve or fifteen—and a re-united Fascist-Nazi Europe will STRIKE—America’s great cities will be blown out of existence in one night without warning… I tell you, ON THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS CHRIST, IT IS COMING! Many of you NOW, are in financial condition to DO A LOT MORE than you are doing for GOD’S CAUSE—to help me get out this Message over the air, and in print—to help me train and prepare talented, able, consecrated young men and women for THEIR part in soon carrying this vital message to THE ENTIRE WORLD—into EVERY NATION!
In 1947-48, predicted that the violence in Palestine would result in Jerusalem becoming an international city run by the Pope. It didn’t. Jordan controlled East Jerusalem for 19 years, the state of Israel for the quarter of a century since1948/49 PT: Germany will become nuclear superpower within five years; note – instead Soviet Union does in 1949 A-Bomb, 1953 H-Bomb
Repeatedly predicted through the 1940s through 1960s that control of Jerusalem would be a “stumbling block” to the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Not so. It proved one of the most powerful forces keeping them united.
Note: From 1927-47, 27 of HWA’s major documented prophecies were already proven wrong. This may explain why he had to flee Oregon for California

.1950’s

Early 1950s, HWA predicted in the PT that a native Egyptian would never rule Egypt. In 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser took power. Herbert responded by claiming that Nasser was a light-skinned Arab and not a real Egyptian. In 1970, Nasser died and was replaced by Anwar Sadat, a black native Egyptian from southern Egypt
Repeatedly predicted from the 1950s on that “within 3 to 5 years” Jerusalem would become an internationalized city. 1994, Israel remains in full control.
Claimed in 1950s and 1960s that Britain would plead with Franz Josef Strauss and Germany to “rescue” it from ruin. Strauss died in 1988. Britain was riding higher under Margaret Thatcher than it had for 40 years.
Throughout the 1950s and 60s, HWA repeatedly prophesied that “within 3 to 5 years” the bumper grain crops of the U.S. Midwest would “certainly” vanish. The “certain” date this would happen by was 1972. Instead, 1972 saw record surpluses which were sold to Russia to avert famine there.
1955 PT by Hoeh: “within 20 years this nation will be toppled by worst drought in its history” – note: 1975 US had one of greatest grain surpluses and sold it to Soviets
March 1950 PT: On the United Europe: “Definitely Britain will not be in it.” 1973-Britain joins the European Community; 1991-EC becomes the European Union following Treaty of Maastricht. Britain remains a member to this day.
March 1950 PT: “One third of our people will die from starvation … – and in the next FEW YEARS!” Is 64 years just “a FEW YEARS!”?
March 1950 PT: “Most certainly it is easily possible the thing (United Europe) will be fully developed and ready to strike in seven years! Yes, time is running out on us.” 1957 -Six nation European Economic Community is in fact founded by the Treaty of Rome. Only one problem: it remains after 41 years entirely democratic and pro-American, and far from bankrupting the United States, has regularly imported more from us by far than it sells to us.
August 1950 PT: Article entitled “Hitler Did Not Die” – “Thus it has been proved conclusively and beyond doubt that Hitler did not die – his body was not there – HE HAD ESCAPED.” 1947 – British Prof. Hugh Trevor-Roper, a British army intelligence officer in Berlin in 1945, publishes “The Death of Hitler.” It is an international bestseller documenting the evidence Hitler died in the bunker.. 1996-97-Opened former Soviet secret archives reveal that Stalin had the burnt remains of Hitler’s body transported to Moscow. Soviet forensic checks confirmed they were Hitler’s remains. Dental records among others were perfect fit. Russian historians now believe Stalin deliberately wanted to sow confusion and fear with the possibility that Hitler was still alive, but only few like HWA fell for it.
August 1950 PT – “The next Pope will be a miracle worker, a supposed proof that God is using him to order and pacify the world!” 1958-62 – The next pope was Pope John XXIII. He never claimed to be a miracle worker and never tried to organize or pacify the world.
1953 PT by Hoeh: “Kremlin plans for 20 year in Korea” – Eisenhower settled war within one month
HWA – 1953 “Middle East in Prophecy” article predicts Russia and China will never split but will remain united until Christ’s coming. They split in 1958 and remained bitter enemies for more than 30 years. China never again fell under Moscow’s leadership.
1953 PT: HWA predicted that the anti-Communist rising in East Berlin would lead directly to a restored Nazi Germany. The rising was crushed. 40 years later, no Nazis have ever taken power in Germany.
May 1954 PT: One of Herbert’s writers, surname Kenneth Hermann writes with HWA’s hands-on approval: “The idea of men climbing around on the outside of their space suits clad in pressurized suits is fantastic in the light of these facts.” 1961-Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes first man in space. 1965- Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes first human being to walk in space. Hermann sure was no rocket scientist.
January 1955 PT: hoeh: “We face a national catastrophe by 1975.. . we will be totally consumed and carried away captive to other nations as slaves within twenty years.” No.
first half of 1950’s PT: Christ would return in 1957
April 1956 PT by Hoeh: “Disease epidemics threaten US in 2 years”
Middle East in Prophecy” 1950s article and reprint by HWA, “China will NOT be a major independent world power, but will always follow Russia’s lead “

The 1958 Sino-Soviet split between the Soviet Union and China invalidated this wildly wrong and sweeping assumption. Warm relations were not restored for more than 30 years until after Boris Yeltsin became president of Russia. Today, the two powers are strong allies again, but their roles have been reversed, something Herbert and his heirs never dreamed of. China is by far the dominant and growing partner while Russia’s future grip on Siberia and northeast Asia looks increasingly shaky.

Gerald Waterhouse was predicting as late as the mid-1980s that China would come back under Russia’s leadership to be part of the Asian Hoards that would eventually attack Big, Bad Europe.

Russia’s population in 1998 – 148 million and falling; China’s population – 1,300 million and rising – fast.

China has averaged 7 and 8 percent growth rates in gross domestic product over a 20-year period. Since the collapse of communism at the end of 1991, Russia’s economy has imploded and production has fallen by 40 percent, and it wasn’t much to begin with. That is virtually TWICE the shrinkage in GDP that the United States experienced in the Great Depression. And unlike 1930s America, Russia has no significant recovery in sight. Finally, since 1991, six million Chinese have settled in Russian Siberia. The whole of Siberia AND all of Russia east of the Urals Mountains only has a COMBINED Russian population of 33 million.

1956 onward after Suez: Britain will never win another war
1956 onward after Suez: Britain will never regain sea gates she lost; note – 1982 Falkland Islands commanding South Atlantic regained
1956 PT: Britain will collapse into famine & anarchy within 3-5 years
HWA, 1956 PT: “Who will bury who?” Predicts that communism in Russia will outlive the United States. It didn’t. It collapsed in 1991.
HWA and Hoeh in 1956 PTs: Predicted Otto Von Habsburg would take over Hungary after the 1956 Hungarian revolution. The revolution was crushed. 38 years later, Otto is still waiting.
Also repeatedly predicted Otto would return as emperor of Austria. Again, it never happened.
April 1956 PT: Herman Hoeh: “PLAGUES coming – and, according to this prophetic warning, in about two years from now.” This from the man who later said, “If you believe everything we say, you’re not thinking.” How true.
Same issue, same “scholar.”: “We have about reached our population peak, despite the guesses of our political and industrial planners.” U. S. population in 1956, 180 million. U.S. population in 1998, 270 million, an increase of 90 million, or 50 percent.
Same issue, same “scholar” – “Many of you will remember that over three years ago we told you of the strong indication that the last half of this – God’s – Work of spreading the Gospel of the Kingdom of God to all the world would probably end in 1972.” They couldn’t even get their own activities straight. In fact, after the fiasco of the end that didn’t come in 1972, Herbert revised his definition of what spreading the gospel meant to buy his way into brief meetings with leaders around the world. Curiously, many of them got toppled from office or even murdered (like President Allende of Chile) within a month of meeting him. The accepted worldwide line on that: “Satan is removing these men before they can act on God’s message.” No one remarked that this interpretation made Satan out to be more powerful than God.
Same issue, still Hoeh: “This SEVEN YEARS of national trouble take us – if the dates which appear so definitely indicated by these prophecies are correct – from 1965 to 1972!” Wrong again.
Same issue, same author: “The sword of Communism and of the revived fascism in Central and Southern Europe will begin (by 1965) to bring us to our knees.” No revived fascism in south or central Europe in 1965, nor over the next 30 years. As for communism, after Leonid Brezhnev became Soviet leader in 1964, nuclear tensions with the West dramatically eased. By 1972, Brezhnev, with Nixon, had inaugurated the era of superpower detente, at the very time Herbert and Herman had for so long claimed America would be destroyed.
Same issue, still hoeh: “In another 10 years for fear of Communist terrorism it won’t be safe to live in Asia or Africa.” 1975-U.S. forces were finally driven out of Vietnam and Indochina, but U.S. military bases remained secure everywhere else in Asia. The only part of the world in those years where American civilians faced a real threat of personal terrorism was the Arab Middle East; Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia were fine.
Same issue, same hoeh, still in 1956: Refers to “the coming Fascist-religious revival of Europe that will conquer us within a prophetically indicated 17 years.” 1973 – President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger proclaim “Year of Europe”. European Community expands to include Britain and Ireland among others. Needless to say, no fascism, no conquest. The challenge to the United States comes from the Arab and other oil producing nations who quadruple the price of oil, crippling European economic growth”
August 1957 PT: Roderick Meredith: “at the conclusion of the drought and floods we are now just beginning to suffer this nation is going to be punished by horrifying DISEASE EPIDEMICS – plagues.” When? He approvingly cites a 1956 Plain Truth title: ‘Disease Epidemics Threaten USA in Two Years!” Clearly, 1958 was meant. Meredith continued, “In addition to those warnings …we will soon find that hoof-and-mouth disease will spread COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL!” .
Same article, Meredith: “After 1965 we are destined to run into increased trouble with the Gentile nation. America and Britain will begin to suffer from trade embargoes imposed by the Brown and Oriental races and by the coming German-dominated ‘United States of Europe.’ …We will begin to experience the pangs of starvation and of scarcity of goods.” 1965-73 – Not only no trade embargoes or shortages of goods in America and Britain, but the greatest material prosperity in history for both countries. Far from imposing any trade embargo on dealing with the United States, East Asia began its modern industrial “miracle” with booming exports to America precisely during those years. Even when an economic embargo DID rock Britain and America eventually, it took Herbert and his disciples completely by surprise. It came from the Arab oil producers and Iran in 1973-74.
November, 1956, p. 3 (Hoeh): … millions of Christians in the United States and Britain will be MARTYRED—and that within the next 16 years!”
October 1958 PT: hoeh, writes article entitled “U.S. and Britain and Nazi UNDERGROUND Behind Arab Crisis.” In fact, it was Arabs who were behind “the Arab crisis.” In the 40 years since then, Nazism has never been a significant ideology in the Arab world. Instead, the crises in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq in 1958 were fueled by a wave of Arab socialism, still reflected 40 years later in the Ba’athist Arab Socialist ideologies of Syria and Iraq. And they were backed by the Soviet Union. 40 years on, Russia remains a significant ally to those nations. Herbert and Hermann’s fevered predictions that Israel and other countries would eventually be “overthrown” by German or Catholic European invasion have never happened or come close to looking as if they would ever happen.
Plain Truths and radio broadcasts: 1947-57: Germany will develop super-V2 rockets to destroy America’s cities. Instead, when the long-feared intercontinental ballistic missile was finally developed in 1957, the first nation to do so was – of course – not Germany at all, nor even the United States, for that matter, but the Soviet Union.
. France, from 1950s, will never again play a major or heroic role in the world. Instead, the Fifth Republic from 1959 restored French political power.
Germany, in prophecies from the 1950s on, will become the dominant military power and the one major nuclear power of Western Europe. Instead, from the late 1950s, France fulfilled both those roles, and still holds them 35 years later.
From 1950s onwards, predicted that France would never win another war. Instead, French paratroops smashed the Libyan army in Chad in 1986-87.
Predicted that Germany would dominate the European Community from the 1958 founding of the Common Market. Instead, France dominated all the main institutions of the Community and retains this control 36 years later.
1957 PT: predicts the Treaty of Rome creating European Common Market will lead to Catholic/Nazi dictatorship by 1962
1959 PT: “Doom for US within 10-15 years”
1959 PT by Hoeh: “Red China plans spring invasion of India”
Coworker Letter 2/13/59 : Today we are in the SEVENTH YEAR of our SECOND 19-year TIME-CYCLE which God has allotted for this MASS-PROCLAIMING of THIS MESSAGE FROM GOD! If God does not cut the time short, we may have another 12 years to complete this GREAT COMMISSION.

BUT—speaking of this terrible world-chaos now INTENSIFYING rapidly, Jesus said man would develop to the place where he would WIPE ALL LIFE FROM THE EARTH, U N L E S S God Almighty intervenes with supernatural power to CUT SHORT these days. And, said Jesus (Matt 24:22), “For the ELECT’S SAKE, those days SHALL BE CUT SHORT!”

Does that mean we have far LESS than the remaining 12 years of our allotted two 19-year time cycles? lT MAY! LET ME TELL YOU, IT IS LATER THAN WE THINK!

through 1950’s: man would never get into space; note – April 1961 Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin
HWA 1950s article, often reprinted called: “World War III: There is a way of escape” There may be. But not through following him.
From 1950s onward, HWA and Hoeh: King Hussein of Jordan will grant the WWCG a tribulation-time “place of safety” at Petra. 1994, King Hussein is dying of colon cancer. Extreme Islamic fundamentalists are threatening to topple his dynasty and seize Jordan.
PT and Radio programs Throughout the 1950s and 1960s – HWA -The European Commission in Brussels, Belgium which runs the united Europe will become a super-efficient , computerized tyranny that will keep track of every individual by a number, the “Mark of the Beast”, which will be stamped on every individual.
HWA – Plain Truths of the 1940s and 1950s – The Pope who would follow Pope Pius XII, who died in 1958, would mercilessly crush all dissent and slaughter millions of Protestants in a new Holocaust which would dwarf the Nazi crimes of World War II. Actually, the pope who succeeded Pius XII as head of the Roman Catholic Church was John XXIII, who – far from slaughtering Protestants or stirring up hatred against them – summoned the Vatican Two Council and inaugurated a new, unparalleled era of dialogue, tolerance and mutual cooperation between the Catholic and Protestant churches.

[Comments: How many Jewish lives from the Holocaust did HWA, the self-proclaimed “friend” of the Jewish people, save? Did Herbert ever go out of his way, much less risk his life, to save a single innocent from danger in his life? How courageous and outspoken was Herbert on the great moral American social issue of HIS day, the struggle for Civil Rights in the 1950s and 1960s? In fact, he and “Doctor” Herman Hoeh repeatedly taught through the 1950s that Dr. Martin Luther King was just a communist dupe whose movement would destroy the United States from within and prepare the way for the final Nazi-Catholic European conquest.

A good question for all: Who is inspired by real Christianity and who by Satan?

Those who, regardless of the details of their creed , believe the teachings of the new testament, try to do good in the world, work to protect and rescue the sick, the innocent and the threatened, and who try to build bridges of love and understanding to those who believe differently from themselves?

B) Or, those who believe that 99.999 percent of all the Christians alive today are helpless puppets of Satan and should be avoid (and considered inferior)?]

1960’s

Early 1960’s PT: man will never walk on the moon
1961 PT: HWA prophesied that the Berlin crisis would lead to the collapse of America and the rise of a united Nazi Germany. Instead, the strong U.S. response to the Berlin crisis confirmed U.S. leadership in Europe for more than 30 years, Germany remained divided for almost 30 years, and when it united, it did so as a democratic, American ally.
Warned in 1960 that if John F Kennedy was elected president, the Pope would have a crucial foothold to seize power in America. Again, empty fantasy.
PT July 1962: “Do these heads of state know that a whole third of the Bible is prophecy -m and that about 90 percent of that lies bare in advance world events that will occur within the next ten to fifteen years from now?” 90% of Bible prophecy was not fulfilled by 1975.
July 1962 PT: Herman Hoeh “Russia and China Will Not Split!” …. “So Russia and China are to remain allies!” Actually, the Sino-Soviet split between the Soviet Union and China happened publicly in front of the whole world in 1958. Four years later, hoeh had still missed it.
PT, January 1963: Herbert W. Armstrong – “Possibly not more than seven years from now – America suddenly will wake up to the gigantic THREAT that shall be rising, or even then have arisen, in Europe. ….” The 1970s proved to be one of the most peaceful, stable decades in 20th century European history. There was economic recession and belt-tightening from rising Arab oil prices, but no major political dislocations in either east or west. Pro-American sentiments recovered after a surge of popular hostility over Vietnam in the 1960s.
PT, March 1963 – Herbert W. Armstrong – ” … the present movement of events, together with the prophecies, strongly indicate that the BIG CRISIS – the threatened invasion – will not come about until 1972 . De Gaulle will be too old by that time. THAT IS ONE REASON HE IS HURRYING” to unite Europe and keep Britain out.
In fact, De Gaulle, the greatest French leader in peacetime in nearly 400 years since King Henry IV, resigned from office after losing a plebiscite vote in 1969 and died peacefully a year later. He never wavered from democratic values and freedoms.
“Herbert rather endearingly clung to his conviction that Hitler was alive and well and living in Antarctica (while worldwide “moderates” or “realists” wrote only that Adolf might be in Argentina). And, similarly here, he appears to have had a brief but blinding “revelation” that President Charles De Gaulle was “the BEAST.”
PT, June 1963 – Roderick Meredith “Protestant leader credited the Roman priests of Europe as being ‘the minds behind the (European Common) Market’, the real planners of this coming Holy Roman Empire which is prophesied to arise in Europe and CONQUER America and Britain within the next 10 to 12 years … It is later than you think.” 34 years on from that remark, Meredith continues to sound off on such subjects, still without humility, without shame. In fact, the true “Minds behind” the European Community after World War II were Robert Schumann, Jean Monnet and – most of all – Winston Churchill, whom Herbert had already predicted years before would be conquered by Hitler.
PT August 1963 Ron Kelly, “The prophet Jeremiah looked down into our time today – at what will take place in America and Britain within the next 10 to 15 years.”
PT August 1963. Meredith proclaims Jerusalem will remain a divided city between Israeli and Arab states until it is taken into captivity. “HALF the city is taken into captivity – yet the other half is not killed or taken away! So Jerusalem is now READY for his prophecy to be fulfilled. It is already a divided city. The stage is set!”
Less than four years later, far from losing Jerusalem, Israel conquered the other half of it and still retains control at this moment of writing 31 years later. Not only were the Israelis not taken into captivity or driven out, they didn’t do that to the Arabs either. The Palestinian Arab population of Jerusalem is at the time of writing more than double what it was at the time of the Israeli conquest.
PT, October 1963: “ALL HUMAN LIFE will be blasted out of existence by nuclear warfare and other means of mass destruction – perhaps not more than twelve or fifteen years from now!” Actually, the years 1975-78, which he so specifically singled out here, were the high-water mark of U.S. Soviet detente. They saw the negotiating of the two SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation) treaties and ratification of SALT I and the signing of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which greatly eased East-West tensions in Europe and encouraged the emergence of human rights movement in the Soviet bloc.
PT, January 1964: HWA prophesied very explicitly that the coming year “shall increase drought and upheavals in the WEATHER pattern…the trend in general will continue until – probably by 1971 or 1972 – it will become an acute disaster, especially to the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia.” In fact for each of those countries, 1964 was one of the most economically prosperous in their entire histories till then.
PT, March 1964: hoeh, “We face a national catastrophe before 1975! …(God) will let our own lusts cause such drought, floods, pestilences and famines that we will be totally consumed and carried away captive to other nations as slaves within probably eight or ten years.” [Comment: Herbert in his time, and today Hoeh, Dankenbring, Meredith, McNair and the rest of them, really ought to pray that God is extremely merciful when they are judged for their unrepentant lifetimes of claiming to speak in God’s name when He made it repeatedly clear by the outcome of events that He never sanctioned or “called” ANY of them.]
Nov 30, 1963, coworkers letter: “we have only eight years to finish the Work”;
Nov 22, 1963, coworkers letter: “in eight years all of our ministers will be silenced” – religious persecution on WWCG
March 1963 by Hogberg in first article in PT: worst weather in a decade means start of famine cycle
1964 Coworkers letter: “only 7 years before H-bomb warfare breaks out”
June 27, 1964, Hoeh: “Christ’s apostles failed in not starting school like AC”
PT, July 1964: Herman hoeh sets another date: “Universal Prosperity in Fifteen Years!” … “In less than fifteen years all nations are going to live in a Utopia! They will be forced to learn the ways of peace and prosperity!” In 1980 admittedly the United States did elect Republican President Ronald Reagan who, along with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher forced the principles of sound currency and free markets with minimum government investment on the industrialized world. But strangely enough this wasn’t what Hoeh had in mind.
1960s Plain Truths and radio broadcasts. HWA REPEATEDLY SAID “NO American astronaut will return from the Moon ALIVE!” In fact, of course, NO American astronaut returned from the Moon DEAD! Nine American Apollo missions carrying 27 astronauts orbited the Moon between December 1968 and December 1972 and 12 of them actually walked on the surface of the Moon. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE 27 Americans returned to Earth without even a scratch, including the three who survived the explosion that wrecked the Apollo 13 spacecraft before it even reached the Moon!
PT, February 1965: Roderick Meredith – “Dozens of prophesied events indicate that this final revival of the Roman Empire in Europe -and its bestial persecution of multitudes of Bible-believing Christians – will take place within the next seven to ten years of YOUR LIFE!” Yet another false prophecy. In fact, the years 1967-70 saw the Catholic Church charity organization Caritas make far greater and more successful relief efforts to save hundreds of thousands of starving children (hundreds of thousands died anyway) in the Nigerian Civil War than all other groups combined. The 1966 Medellin accords opened a new era of respect and support for human rights in the Catholic Church throughout Latin America.
In numerous Plain Truth editorials and other articles through the late 1960s, HWA repeatedly predicted that Pope Paul would raise the Catholic Church to a level of world power and confidence that it had never experienced in history.
Plain Truth articles by Herbert, Raymond McNair and others in the 1960s: The German army will be called in to SAVE the state of Israel from the grievous wounds inflicted on it, presumably in defeat by the Arab armies. In the middle and late 1970s, it was the ISRAELI army that SAVED Germany! German democracy was being threatened, not by neo-Nazis, as Herbert had for so long predicted, but by the ruthless, highly competent extreme-communist terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Red Army Faction.
1965 PT: by 1969 Britain will be helpless & impoverished seeking help from Germany
May 1965 PT: “Hitler will be falsely resurrected by the Pope”
Feb 1965: by Meredith: “documented proof Hitler did not die in his bunker”
Dec 1965, HWA in co-workers letter: “We are in the grand smash climax – only 6 years left.”
1960s PTs: All the soil of the U.S. Midwestern “Breadbasket” states will erode by 1972, leading to famine. Instead, Midwest soil erosion was largely reversed in the 1980s by an excellent Reagan administration Department of Agriculture program to plant trees and takes other anti-erosion measures in the region.
1960s PTs: The new wheat and plant strains of the high-yield “Green revolution” will cause more famine, not less. The opposite happened. Food yields in Asia, Africa and Latin America soared over the next 20 years and outstripped population growth.
1966 PT by Dale Schurter: prepare for famine in US within 3-5 years; note – hundreds of WWCG farmer members bankrupted following his teaching that fertilizer was sinful
1966 sermon by Meredith: within three years by 1969 society will have collapses in America; millions will flee into cities
July 5, 1967, coworkers letter by HWA: “the Jews will demolish the Dome on the Rock”
1965 PT by Meredith: “trade embargo by European Common Market will ruin Britain and US”
1962 PT by HWA: “There is no boom in sight” – note: US was at beginning of biggest boom in history of the world
1960’s PT repeatedly claimed 1972 would be the year of Christ’s coming
after 1969: HWA claimed it would be 1975
1965 PT: east Jerusalem would remain in Gentile hands until Christ’s coming; note: less than 2 years later Israelis conquered it
PT, March 1966: Charles Dorothy: “Hitler escaped, probably to Argentina.”
PT, “The Day of the Eternal … is going to strike between 5 to 10 years from now!”
1967 Passover HWA speaking at Bricket Wood, England: within the year Jordan would conquer west Jerusalem from Israel; note: within six weeks Israel conquered West Jerusalem from Jordan
Passover 1967 HWA at Bricket Wood – The European Beast power will rise by 1982 at the very latest since that comprises the ending of the 2,520 year “Time of the Gentiles” referred to in Luke 21:24, which began with the fall of Babylon.

Here, HWA combined many more stolen ideas, false assumptions, questionable scholarship and mutually conflicting ideas than usual…

First, the crucial prophecy attributed to Jesus in Luke 21 nowhere refers to the fall of Babylon, it discusses the period of time Jerusalem, not Babylon, would be trodden under by the nations.

Second, there is no reference anywhere in this passage – or anywhere else in the Bible – to ANY 2,520 year period.

Third, the whole idea of 2,520 time periods comes from INTERPRETING the “seven times” repeated in the Leviticus 26 prophecy as seven “prophetic years” of 360 days each, as this as the length of a year in the Five Books of Moses.

Fourth, there isn’t a single reference to Babylon – or Jerusalem for that matter – in the Leviticus 26 prophecy.

Fifth, the whole idea that the “seven times” in Leviticus 26 can be interpreted this way at all was only cooked up by American fundamentalists during the Second Awakening movement in the 1820s and 1830s.

Sixth, if the Luke prophecy is a real one, and if it does refer to the Jewish people as it appears to, then the obvious dates it would apply to would be:
Either the establishment of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, or the Israeli capture of the Old City of Jerusalem in June 1967, returning it do Jewish rule for the first time since the Roman conquest by General Pompey in 63 BC.

Seventh, BOTH these dates of intensely dramatic world events occurred during the height of Herbert’s “ministry” but he missed both. As documented above, he had repeatedly prophesied that BOTH the establishment of an independent Jewish state in 1948 AND the Israeli liberation of the ancient Jewish capital in 1967 would NEVER happen.

HWA speaking at the Ambassador College Bricket Wood campus in Hertfordshire, England at Passover, 1967 – less than six weeks before the Israeli conquest of East Jerusalem – prophesied that BEFORE THE YEAR WAS OUT, the army of King Hussein of JORDAN, would capture WEST Jerusalem from Israel! Ooops.

Nevertheless, in the decade that followed, this false Passover prophecy of Bricket Wood in 1967 was repeatedly and admiringly referred to by Worldwide ministers as a “true” prophecy.

They said – correctly – that Herbert had predicted that Jerusalem would be reunified in war by the end of the year. They only left out that he had ALSO predicted that the city would be captured BY the very nation that in fact lost it, and that it would be captured by the very nation that in fact won it!

1967 Edition of “The United States and the British Commonwealth in Prophecy”.
“The events prophesied to strike the British and American peoples in the next four to seven years are SURE! … These colossal world events, shrinking the first two world wars into insignificance, WILL COME, on schedule.”
Total U.S. dead in Vietnam War, 55,000. U.S. combat dead in World War II, over half a million. Soviet dead in World War II, 27 million. Apart from Vietnam, during the years Herbert prophesied of catastrophe: The longest domestic economic boom in U.S. history continued and was followed by a serious recession, but nothing remotely comparable to any of the Boom-or-Bust cycles before the Great Depression. The United States lands human beings on the Moon.
Britain joins the European Community, but retains both her prosperity and her freedom.
Israel is taken by surprise in Arab attacks in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but wins the war after throwing back Egypt and Syria. Total Israeli dead, 3,000, out of 3 million: heavy, but much less than the 10,000 out of 500,000 in its 1948 War of Independence.
PT: January 1967: Hogberg – “There WILL be an end to strife and struggle among men and nations. And in less than 10 years!” Did strife and struggle among men and nations end by 1977? Wrong as usual.
Repeated Plain Truths throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Former German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss will unite Germany and make it the leader of the European Union.
Strauss died in 1988, two and a half years after Herbert. It seemed that German unification could not take place until both of them were dead and happily out of the way. The collapse of communism in East Germany began in August 1989, less than a year after Strauss’s death. Neither he, nor Otto von Hapsburg, nor -for that matter- the pope – had anything to do with it… (Which leads to the thought, did Franz Josef Strauss die crying out “Armstrong, you old fool! You lied to me! I NEVER became chancellor of Germany.”?)
1960s – Predicted Russia and China would mend their split. They never did.
1960s and 70s: The fall of Vietnam to communism will be followed by the fall of the rest of Asia. It wasn’t.
Repeated 1950s and 60s HWA theme: Whenever Britain loses a ‘sea-gate’ it never gets it back. 1982 Falklands War, Britain regains the Falklands ‘sea-gate’ from Argentina.
late 1960’s: by mid 1970’s Britain will have lost all sea gates; note – by 1992 Britain still holds Gibraltar, bases on Cyprus, Hong Kong, Ascension, Mauritius, and other places
1960’s through early 1970’s coworkers letters: Prince Charles will become king of England & become the wicked prince prophesied in book of Isaiah
HWA throughout the 1950s and 1960s: When Germany becomes united, it will immediately turn on America, arm to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and make the whole world tremble. Instead, German unification was followed by Germany remaining an ally of America in the NATO alliance and Germany remained democratic and became less bold on the world stage, not more.
Repeatedly predicted through the 1960s that the Germany army would “rescue” the state of Israel from destruction. Again, it never happened. U.S. military aid saved Israel in 1973 war and helped defend it in the 1991 Gulf war.
1967 PT: The Israelis will make a deal with the Vatican to build a Third Temple by 1972. Again, it never happened.
Turkey will prevent the United States Sixth Fleet from fleeing from Nazi European air attacks and will stab America and Britain in the back. It will later be destroyed for this treachery. – Plain Truth articles by Hoeh, Herbert and Meredith in the 1960s. It never happened, of course. Just as Turkey never joined Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in World War II, despite all of Herbert’s confident predictions than it would. This claim, repeated in one form or another by Herbert for more than 40 years, was based on Herbert and Hoeh’s “scholarly” conclusion that Turkey was Edom of the Bible. As usual, there is absolutely no real evidence at all to support this conclusion.
NO life will be discovered on Mars. In 1997, the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) announced that a meteorite identified as being from Mars that was found in Antarctica contains unmistakable indications of organic life.

1970’s

1950’s/60’s/70’s PT: US will never win another war; note – 1982 Grenada; 1989 Panama; 1991 Iraq, then rated 4th largest army in the world, destroyed in 40 days
through 1960’s/70’s until 1978 in coworkers letters: he & GTA will be two witnesses Zerubbabel and Joshua
1957-72: Britain will never join European Common Market; note – 1973 Britain joined European Common Market
1973 onwards: Britain will leave European Community; note – after 41 years Britain is still in community
1974 PT: US will prove unwilling & unable to go to war to protect world oil supplies from Persian Gulf; note 1991 Gulf War proved them wrong
1974 PT HWA: After Nixon’s resignation, the United States will never again lead the world or be effective in war.
1970’s: Germany will make a deal with the Soviets to take over Eastern Europe; note – 1989-91 US negotiates Soviet withdrawal from EE
1960s-70s PTs: The United States will never be able to reverse the tide of communism in the world.
1960s -1975 PTs: HWA and Garner Ted Armstrong – Radical Arab threat to the oil fields will lead Germany and Japan to rearm because America could not protect them. In the 1991 Gulf War, the opposite happened.
HWA in Plain Truth and radio broadcasts from 1947 to 1972.”Germany will arm to the teeth and terrorize the world as soon as it reunites” . Actually, Germany reunited in 1990, joined the U.S.-led North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) and promptly began to SLASH its military expenditures, which had never been high in the first place. NOT A SINGLE SENIOR OFFICER in the old communist, anti-Western East German People’s Army was allowed to serve in the new united German Bundeswehr, or Federal German Army.
1930-1972 HWA “A KEY to understanding END-TIME prophecy is the fact that God arranged Biblical events as a TYPE for this END TIME” –
Tomorrow’s World” magazine in February 1972. Herbert stated “It has never been our intention to SET DATES!” (capital letters and exclamation mark in the original)

The New Testament repeatedly teaches us that GOD is the father of TRUTH and SATAN is the father of LIES. In that case, which of the two of them was Herbert’s spiritual father?? This lie is SO outrageous and SO blatant that even Hitler, Goebbels and Josef Stalin would have been impressed.

For 38 years, from 1934 to 1972, Herbert had deceived and harmed thousands of people by terrifying them into following him in order to escape destruction and torture at the hands of the Nazis and their supposed successors, and his entire “ministry” FROM THE FRONT PAGE OF THE VERY FIRST ISSUE OF THE PLAIN TRUTH” “had been based on repeated patterns of false prophecy TO WHICH EXACT DATES HAD ALWAYS BEEN SET – within, at the very broadest margin “three to five years from the present.”

And yet here he is, claiming that all those 38 years of setting dates “NEVER HAPPENED (or was ‘seemed to happen’!!!!”

“Tomorrow’s World” editorial of February 1972, HWA claims “In our zeal, we used “possibles” and “probably’s” and even appeared to set dates we really didn’t intend to set.”

Is this, then, an admission, that HWA knew all along that Jesus wasn’t coming back in 1936, as he had claimed in 1934, or in 1943, or in 1975, or in any of the other dates in between we have documented earlier in this list? He obviously made many, many bold claims… But now is acknowledging that he never really believed them

Tomorrow’s World” editorial of February 1972, HWA also that, in the previous 40 years of his ministry, the subject of prophecy, of the coming hideous dooms on Britain and America, of the supposed evils of the Catholic Church, and the dates he set for the coming of Jesus were all matters “of MOST MINOR consequence.

Question: Did HWA present all of these predictions as minor things over that 40 year period as minor? Or were they of the most upmost importance thereby justifying the repeated, supreme sacrifices of his followers that he demanded?

There are two choices:

1) HWA was either sincere and very wrong in the past and was then lying about his convictions in 1972, or

2) HWA was insincere all along.

Either way, HWA proved by his own words that he was dishonest about a very significant issue that impacted thousands of people or rather than show humility, his response was…

“Emphatically, if we — in our dedicated enthusiastic ZEAL to get God’s WARNING of the end of mankind’s world before this sick, sick world — DO, even though we intend not to, appear to set a date, I FEEL I DO NOT NEED TO APOLOGIZE! No one but the enemies of ALL GOOD will accuse!” [Also, the January 2012 World Tomorrow editorial]

Really? If an individual complains about dishonesty from a preacher, is he “an enemy of ALL GOOD?”

Exaggerations and false sincerity are often strong indications that an individual is not being honest with their audience.

Remember, HWA was also was personally profiting from this doomsday prophecy approach all along.

In his autobiography, he made it clear that always had wanted to become an important and wealthy man. He was driven and built a corporation that helped him be successful in both areas. He was certainly wealthy and was considered quite important to those that put their faith in him.

It is for God judge whether he actually achieved a measure of true success.

“ 1978 co-worker letter. HWA predicted that the next pope (who turned out to be John Paul II) would very rapidly united Europe. He didn’t.
April/May 1978 Worldwide News: HWA teaches you can only come to Christ through him through government structure: cut yourself off from Christ if you disobey HWA
1979 PT by Hogberg: Panama Canal Treaty means US has forever lost control of canal; note – 1989 US invades Panama, kicks out anti-American dictator Noriega
HWA, Garner Ted Armstrong, Hogberg etc. al through the 1970s: Defeat for America in Vietnam will be followed by more Vietnams in Central America. It wasn’t.
Herbert: “Babylon will never be rebuilt”. A centerpiece claim from his “Proof of the Bible” booklet. In fact, the Iraqi government started to rebuild the ruins of ancient Babylon in 1978. In 1982, during the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who came to power in 1979, massively expanded that project. It has since become one of the biggest, most ambitious archaeological reconstruction projects in history. “Babylon” in both Old and New Testament prophecy always means Rome.
This is -arguably – the case in the Book of Revelation. But even there, the “Rome” in question would not be the Catholic Christian Church. That identification would have been meaningless to any of the readers of the book of Revelation for 200 years after it was written. Rather, the term would have referred to the pagan Roman Empire of the time which had fitfully slaughtered Christians under such emperors as Nero and Domitian. But even then, IF the book of Revelation is in fact intended as a prophetic vision of the far future, there is no reason why the site of ancient Babylon itself was meant. And if the book of Revelation’s symbols are meant to be compatible with those of the Old Testament (Remember Herbert’s repeated “teaching” – “The Bible interprets the Bible”), then “Babylon” in Revelation MUST mean the ancient city in Iraq. And even Herbert accepted that the “Babylon” of the prophets really WAS Babylon. He took its destruction in “The Proof of the Bible” AS a ‘proof’ of the Bible. But if Babylon WAS ‘Babylon’ then it could NOT be ROME as well.
Herbert – The once great city of Sidon in southern Lebanon will remain a miserable little village, again in “The Proof of the Bible.” In fact, while not a major metropolis, it is an extremely large town and regional center which has quadrupled in size since Herbert made his claim.
Herbert – When Europe finally unites, it will either be fascist, or become so virtually instantaneously. – Repeatedly claimed over decades. Whether one dates from the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which founded the European Economic Community, then of six nations, or the 1991 Treaty of Maastricht which created the current European Union, the EU has been the largest, longest lasting, most popular and most stable DEMOCRATIC political system in European history.
HWA repeatedly predicted that Iraq would be a weak, unimportant nation at the “End Time” and that it would be conquered by Germany and Europe.

[Comments: First, Iraq under Saddam Hussein built up the fourth largest army on earth and seized fabulously oil-rich Kuwait, giving it a stranglehold on world energy resources. It took a 700,000-man army led by the main superpower on earth to drive it out and even then Saddam’s regime survived.

Second, far from Germany and Europe swallowing Iraq, the nations of the Western European Union, led by Germany and – especially – France, have bent over backwards to get Saddam sweet in order to ensure smooth running oil supplies and get expensive industrial contracts from him. The French even built Saddam a nuclear reactor – the Osirak complex – until the Israeli Air Force knocked it out.

Third, Iraq through the 1990s has developed its own nuclear weapons program and has acquired the largest biological weapons reserves on earth. In striking contrast, NO Western European nation INCLUDING GERMANY has either nuclear or biological weapons. All these developments are the EXACT OPPPSITE of Herbert’s predictions over a 52-year period.

Fourth, Iraq never turned to Germany or the Nazis for support. Saddam was built up by the Soviet Union and has been a lifelong friend of Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov.

Fifth, far from befriending the Catholic Church, some Vatican experts on the Middle East privately believe that if Saddam ever got the chance to cut loose, he would probably slaughter Catholic Christians as well as other denominations.

Sixth, far from being conquered by Europe, by the spring of 1998 when this is being written, Saddam’s power had recovered sufficiently that his oil rich neighbors such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, not to mention Jordan and Egypt, were afraid of HIM.]

Iran was also predicted by Herbert to be weak and unimportant. He claimed it was doomed to be swallowed by Germany and Europe too.

[Comments: Since the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution, many of Herbert’s “sons” have retroactively tried to jump on the new significance of Iran, even claiming it will be their fabled “King of the South.”

In the book of Daniel, the “King of the South” clearly is applied to Egypt and only Egypt. Egypt is SOUTH and slightly west of Jerusalem and the land of Israel. Iran is DUE EAST of them! So, for that matter, is Iraq. So even if either, or both, of those nations becomes a mighty, anti-Western power in the years to come, those obsessively studied verses of Daniel 11 COULD NOT apply to them.

And, as is the case with Iraq, far from conquering Iran, France and Germany – especially France – are going out of the way to win its favor. Meanwhile Iran, far from looking to Germany, is building a strong alliance with Russia, something else Herbert failed to predict.]

HWA in mid-1970s newsletter: “Ministers who rebel against me and leave this organization are reduced to working with their hands” – an interesting comment on how he saw “the dignity of labor” – Instead, two of them, Art Makarow and Robert Kuhn, became millionaires. Another, Ernest Martin, became prosperous, successful and respected in the Biblical academic community.

1980’s

1956-1980 PT: Franz Josef Strauss will be the beast and the man of strife in the book of Hosea; note – Strauss never became leader of Germany, defeated by Helmut Schmidt in 1982, died 1988, great ally of US & Israel all his life
1950’s-80’s: European Community would become German dominated tyranny; note – 1992, after 35 years EC remains most democratic group in European history
1960’s-80’s: German unification will be immediately followed by Germany becoming fierce anti-American nuclear power; note – 1990 united Germany leaves Warsaw Pact and stays in NATO, US more popular than ever for support of unification
Communism in Russia will last in Russia until Christ comes back – Repeatedly written and preached by HWA through 1950s, 60s, 70s and early 80s. Instead, Communism collapsed in Russia in 1991.
Another repeated HWA prophecy from 1940s through into the 80s: German unification will lead to European political unity. The opposite happened. German unification in 1990 led to the collapse of the European monetary system 2 years later because Germany put funding reunification first above funding a European currency.
Another repeated prophecy: creation of a single integrated market in the European Community will immediately lead to immense wealth there and America collapsing into poverty. Instead, creation of the integrated market at the start of 1993 led to European unemployment levels running at twice America’s. While the U.S. economy recovered, Europe’s slumped into depression.
1982 Coworkers letter: (for those who claim he mellowed with the years) “I hope to arrange for the use of Petra as a possible refuge or place of safety during the Great Tribulation when I see King Hussein. Pray for this please.”
Gerald Waterhouse continually: if HWA died, God would destroy the world
1982 coworkers letter: expect Argentina to sink Britain’s royal navy in Falkland war; note – total victory for Britain in less than 2 months, Argentine airforce destroyed, Argentine dictator falls
1984: On his last visit to Jerusalem, HWA, realizing that Israeli leaders don’t take him seriously, rants and raves on his last visit there before an audience of diplomats “prophesying” ruin and destruction will come after him. He dies in January 1986. The decade which follows sees unprecedented prosperity and general peace for Israel and Jerusalem. Even the 1987 Palestinian uprising doesn’t dent Israeli control. Israel gets its inflation under control for the first time in 20 years and ends a painful 2-year war in Lebanon successfully immediately after Herbert’s curse. After Vietnam, Britain and America will forever lose the pride in their power. Instead, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher restored it. However briefly, that proved this “bold prophecy” false.
Predicted France would follow Germany’s lead and be part of the European power that would destroy Britain and America. Instead, in the mid-1980s, France rejoined American-led NATO alliance.
Predicted Germany would seize the oil of Saudi Arabia. It never happened.
Herbert’s repeated claims from the 1940s till the day he died. – The united Europe will be an economic powerhouse that will outstrip and impoverish Britain and America. EEC growth rates were spectacular from 1957 to 1973 in the six nation Common Market. But after that date, the more the Europe Community expanded in size, the slower its growth rates became, the more it lagged behind the United States and East Asia, and the higher its unemployment rates grew. For virtually all of the past decade, EU growth rates have been running far behind America’s, EU unemployment rates are double those of the United States, and per capita wealth is also far less and ever falling further behind. Also, while the United States continues to run enormous annual trade deficits with Japan and the East Asian nations, it prospers from a favorable balance of trade with the European Union.
Another repeatedly claim Catholic, “non-Israelite” European nations led by Germany would impoverish the United States and be able to buy economic control of the American economy. In fact, the two nations by the 1980s which controlled more of the American economy than any other were Britain and the Netherlands, both Protestant European nations which in Herbert’s interpretation – virtually totally stolen from Joseph Allen without any acknowledgement – are “Israelite.” The third largest overseas investor in the U.S. domestic economy is Japan. We should add here that, in the investment and wealth they bring into the country and the more prosperity they generate. Japanese car companies have revived Britain’s auto-making industry from total collapse in the 1970s to make it the second largest and the fastest growing in Europe.[Comment from 1990’s?]

Top commando and counter-intelligence experts from the Israeli army and secret service helped the democratic German government of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt set up GSG-9, an elite commando and counter-terrorist unit, which smashed the terror groups. In the decades since then, intelligence and security cooperation between Israel and Germany has remained close and mutually beneficial.

HWA 1940-1986 “Another KEY to understanding Biblical prophecy is that there are huge TIME GAPS, often thousands of years long, in the middle of Biblical verses between one event and the next.”

There is not the slightest hint of evidence for this claim ANYWHERE in the Bible itself. The verse of Isaiah always cited about “here a little, there a little” is very clearly NOT in the context of interpreting the Bible, but it is, instead, describing the child-like language Isaiah is being told to use to the people of his time. The Jewish commentators NEVER made ANY such claim about interpreting it.

HWA borrowed this concept. This “gap” theory was developed during the Second Awakening period in the 1820s and 1830s by self-taught American Protestant fundamentalists to try and make sense of hard (to them) Biblical passages. Herbert was particularly fond of applying this passage to the prophecies of Daniel, especially chapter 11. Now, no one has ever come up with a convincing, coherent interpretation of all of Daniel 11 that successfully served as a map to predict future events. Herbert offered interpretations of the kings of the North and South pushing at each other which “inspired” his ludicrous false prophecies about the course of World War II. When German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel failed to conquer Jerusalem for Hitler and Mussolini as Herbert had claimed he would, Herbert just transferred his label of “King of the North” to his imagined “Nazi-Catholic” Europe instead.

1940’s-1986 – Assyria is modern day Germany. – Found in “The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy.”

[Comments: This assertion, repeated for 40 years is still believed by those who still follow Gerald Flurry, Rod Meredith, and Dankenbring. But it is a classic example of the great neurologist Pavlov’s condition, and of Josef Goebbels principles of lies and propaganda. The bigger the lie, the longer and louder you shout it, then the MORE it will be BELIEVED!!!!

In fact, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO, REPEAT NO EVIDENCE AT ALL to link Germany with Assyria in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER! The only thing in the way of historical “evidence” that Herbert could even get his endlessly inventive and imaginative chief ideologist Herman “German” Hoeh to come up with was the typically Hoeh argument that the Hessians of Germany who sent mercenary soldiers to fight with Britain to crush American Independence in 1776 were descended from the Hittites, who were the neighbors of the Assyrians because Hess sounded a lot like Hitt-ite.

Now, there is absolutely NO historical, archaeological or mythical evidence, EVER, ANYWHERE, that the Germans were descended from the Assyrians. Nor is there ANY evidence that the ancestors of the Germans EVER lived ANYWHERE in the Middle East. There is NO linguistic connection between them either. Nor did ANY Germans EVER claim such descent.

In fact, the ONLY part of “US and BC in Prophecy” that is NOT LITERALLY STOLEN – paragraph by paragraph and sentence by sentence – from Joseph H. Allen’s “Joseph’s Birthright and Judah’s Scepter” is the bit Herbert stuck on to the end of it claiming that Germany was prophetically certain to destroy Britain and America BECAUSE they were the descendents OF the Assyrians.

Now, at this point, it is inevitable that will ask “Well, if the Germans weren’t the Assyrians, then who ARE the Assyrians??” ANSWER: “The Assyrians are the Assyrians. They exist. They still live in the north of Iraq where Assyria was located. ” There are only a few hundred thousand of them and Saddam Hussein has whipped them particularly savagely. But they are there. They claim the descent. Historical records support their claim. And so does the genetic and genealogical evidence.

The second question is: “If Assyria wasn’t Germany, then who else looks like fulfilling Bible prophecy? The answer to this is simple, these particular prophecies have ALREADY BEEN FULFILLED way back in 720-700 BC when the 10 northern tribes of Israel were conquered and deported by the Assyrians.

Tag: Herbert W. Armstrong’s Prophetic Record

Herbert W. Armstrong's Prophetic Record