From where I’ve been sitting – with cool breezes, sunny blue skies and mountain greenery – I’d say Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction for an early spring in 2016 was correct. Now I don’t live in western Pennsylvania, so your call may be different.
Even so, Phil’s accuracy rating is given as 39%. (Several websites quote this figure; for example, see Livescience.com). Speaking as a one-day wonder has-been in the WxChallenge (a weather forecasting competition) I’d say Phil’s score as a general forecaster is not very good. But, in his position as (to quote a character in Ground Hog Day) “seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators” he’s going well. Certainly Phil the Punxsutawney Prophet scores higher than the Des Moines Doomsayer, HWA.
In the pages the Painful Truth, some 300 false prophecies of HWA and his minions are listed. And that doesn’t include those of prophecies of splinter leaders who followed in his wake. But – how many of his predictions actually have come to pass?
In the words of HWA’s grandson, he was touted as an insightful prophetic wonder. From memory, I think he was credited with about three or four good calls. To begin with, the USA never had a direct military conflict with Russia. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, and limit that to the now defunct USSR, and give him a point.
Germany reunited. Well, the majority of it was, but if HWA’s WWII prophecies had come to pass, Germany wouldn’t have any need to reunite. But, give him another point.
Trouble in the Middle East – ignoring his early claim that the modern nation of Israel wasn’t going to happen, give another point. And give him a bonus point for the “prophecy” of the Six-Day War, which he wasn’t expecting to happen in 1967. And let’s ignore the Radio Jerusalem contract.
So we’ll give HWA four points for the accuracy of his undated predictions. Out of 300, that makes his accuracy rating less than 2%. Maybe he was better than that, but nowhere near Phil’s score.
Of course, Phil makes specific weather predictions. In the standard repertoire of titles in the splinters, one may find a booklet, article or sermon with a title like God Controls the Weather. The tone used by different COGs varies from God using weather favors or disasters for specific reasons, to God micromanaging the climate down to every drop of rain that falls (whether a flower grows or not).
The best splinter “predictions” for weather events – apart from generalized future events – have been in hindsight: why things occurred. So we are told Katrina hit New Orleans because it was a wicked city, drought in California was because legalizing same-sex marriage, and so on. And I’m not going near the different takes on Global Climate Change. They seem to forget that prophets such as Elijah warmed specifically what would happen before it happened.
So perhaps God actually has Phil’s ear – he made a prediction that came to pass, and not an excuse for something that already happened.
Matching the questions to the answers may be problematic!
Within the context of 1971 when it was written, the WCG was living in its last days.
Everything about it is provably false.
Your worries are just beginning!
Only if you spent much of it involved with Herbert Armstrong
That's really rich, coming from the Worldwide Church of God!
Uh... Hello! This coming from Herbert Armstrong?
He had a $5 Million divorce!
Really???!!!
Written in 1971, the answer appears to be no!
Financial conversions are not covered! Sorry!
If you are talking about religious conversion, well, be aware that in the WCG nothing changed for the better!
R.I.P.
WCG
If you are wondering, Herbert Armstrong was against serving in the military.
Unfortunately, if you were a conscientious objector, the last place you wanted to be was serving out your I-W program at Big Sandy, Texas for the WCG! The hypocrisy was horrendous and men were persecuted and abused for their religious beliefs by the religion that taught them!
The WCG never did either.
Is this a choice or are they the same??!!
Which doesn't exist any more!
Yes... no... and NO!
Totally wasted in the WCG!
Lost at last!
Gotten totally wrong!
Still missing: Gone AWOL because of Herbert Armstrong
As opposed to the decline of the WCG
And not one word about teens and cell phones!
The truth is that if it's serious, you should go see a doctor!
Should be titled: The Proof of the Old Testament Using Fulfilled Prophecies (some of which failed). Talk about not living up to its promises!
Garner Ted Armstrong
- Gambler
- Adulterer
- Boozing Alcoholic
- Serial Rapist
Yup! He knew Jesus!
Written by Roderick Meredith in 1955. He should have researched to find out how to prevent his diabetes.
Failed to include planning.
Would have helped for planning his succession....
Written in 1964: The truth really changed in a decade!
Fail! Fail! Fail! Fail! Fail!
We have proof the United States and British Commonwealth are not from Israel!
The WCG predicted by Revelation???!!
The author didn't have a clue!
Not any more: Doesn't exist!
The WCG sure knew how!
It's hard to pick one out of the 40 written!
It's more important to know what science can discover about the human mind poisoned by boozing alcoholics of Armstrongism!
Given the Waring tribes of Armstrongism, it would be interesting to know!
If only you stay away from Armstrongism, you'll have a much more awesome future, unless you define awesome as totally dysfunctional.
Oops!
Herbert Armstrong wrote a lot of booklets which made promises — actual and implied. When we go back through and review the booklets he and his staff wrote in the light of what has actually happened, it is clear that the great swelling promises and prognostications were profoundly empty. Looking back, the booklets now seem crassly hypocritical. The Radio Church of God, Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God never measured up to the very standards they set. The slide show includes only 39 of the booklets:
Answers from Genesis (1973)
Are We Living in the Last Days (1971)
A True History of the True Church (1959: ‘Dr.’ Herman Hoeh)
Ending Your Financial Worries (1959)
Has Time Been Lost? (1952)
Hippies, Hypocrisy and Happiness (1968)
How to Have a Happy Marriage
How to Understand Prophecy (1972)
Is this the End Time (1971)
Just What Do You Mean Conversion? (1972)
Life After Death (1973)
Military Service and War (1967)
Never Before Understood: Why Humanity Cannot Solve Its Evils (1981)
Pagan Holidays or God’s Holy Days? (1976)
Seven Proofs of God’s True Church (1974: Garner Ted Armstrong)
The Bible: Superstition or Authority? …and can you prove it? (1985)
The Incredible Human Potential (1978)
The Key to the Book of Revelation (1952)
The Mark of the Beast (1952)
The Middle East in Prophecy (1948)
The Missing Dimension in Sex (1964)
The Modern Romans (1971)
The Plain Truth about Child Rearing (1963)
The Plain Truth about Healing (1979)
The Proof of the Bible (1958)
The Real Jesus (1971: Garner Ted Armstrong)
The Seven Laws of Radiant Health (1955: Roderick Meredith)
The Seven Laws of Success (1961)
The Truth about Make-Up (1964)
The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy (1964)
The White Horse: False Religion (1976)
The Wonderful World Tomorrow: What Will It Be Like? (1973)
This is the Worldwide Church of God (1971)
To Kill a People (1971)
What Is the True Gospel (1955)
What Science Can’t Discover About the Human Mind (1978)
Why Were You Born? (1957)
World Peace: How Will It Come? (1978)
Your Awesome Future: How Religion Deceives You (1978)
[jqeasytooltip tiptheme=”tipthemewhite” tipicon=”fa fa-frown-o” tipposition=”tiptop” tipfollowcursor=”true” ][jqeasytooltipcontent]The absolutely most embarrassing prophecy ever![/jqeasytooltipcontent]1975 in Prophecy[/jqeasytooltip] (1956)
Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers, Twentieth Anniversary Edition
by Robert Jackal; Oxford University Press, Copyright 2010
Chapter 7: The Magic Lantern, page 185.
[/jqeasytooltipcontent]Moral Mazes[/jqeasytooltip] aptly describes what is represented by this list of Armstrongist publications:
From the standpoint of public relations, the journalistic ideology closely resembles the social outlook of most college seniors — a vague but pious middle-class liberalism, a mildly critical stance toward their fathers in particular and authorities in general; a maudlin of championship of the poor and the underclass; and especially the doctrine of tolerance, open-mindedness, and balance. In fact, public relations people feel, the news media are also constructing reality. They are always looking for a “fresh” and exciting angle; they have an unerring instinct for the sentimental that expresses itself in a preference for “human interest” rather than substance; and they arrange facts in a way that purports to convey “truth,” but is in fact simply another story. In reality, news is entertainment. And, despite the public’s acceptance of journalistic ideologies, most of the public watch or read news not to be informed or to learn the “truth,” but precisely to be entertained. There is no intrinsic reason, therefore, why the constructions of reality by public relations specialists should be thought of as any different from those of any group in the business of telling stories to the public. Everyone is telling stories and everyone has a story to tell. Public relations men and women are simply storytellers with a purpose in the free market of ideas, advocates of a certain point of view in the court of public opinion. Since any notion of truth is irrelevant or refers to at best what is perceived, persuasion of various sorts becomes everything.
And there it is. Armstrongism isn’t about truth; it is simply about manipulating perceptions to evoke responses to their story telling. Herbert Armstrong was an ad copy writer, after all. As such, he lined up some facts, threw in some colorful descriptions and weaved his fictional stories. The booklets in the slides presentation above is representative of this magical world of the ‘magic lantern’, creating illusions illustrating imaginary constructs of perceived ‘reality’. There is neither truth nor reality in any of it. It is all fake.
Moreover, it isn’t just about Herbert Armstrong and his ‘public relations’ advertising hirelings, it is also about The Journal, which is exposed for what it is in the brief description given by Robert Jackal; to wit: the pursuit of a “fresh” and exciting angle with an unerring instinct for the sentimental that expresses itself in a preference for “human interest” rather than substance; and the facts are arranged in a way that purports to convey “truth,” but is in fact simply another story — in reality, it is merely infotainment. The editor reveals his true self when he speaks of the doctrine of tolerance, open-mindedness, and balance — while secretly harboring contempt for the “farmer theologians” who deign to advertise in its pages.
Moral Mazes has framed it and nailed it in the landscape of the church cult corporate of lies, deceits, conceits, fiction, fantasy — all parading as religious truth — which, if it be told, can be demonstrated as pure rubbish if you but stand back and look at the chaotic mess it represents.
Dr. James Milam, in his book, [jqeasytooltip tiptheme=”tipthemesquareyellow” tipmaxwidth=”100″ tipicon=”fa fa-book” tipminmargin=”15″ tipposition=”tiptop” tipfollowcursor=”true” ][jqeasytooltipcontent]Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.: Houston, Texas; 2013[/jqeasytooltipcontent]Ending the Drug Addiction Pandemic: Discovering the Liberating Truth[/jqeasytooltip], in Chapter 2: Core Evidence (page 17), says:
Within the big lie all of the component falsehoods have been carefully crafted to support each other in concealing the whole truth. To assemble the abundance of decisive scientific and clinical evidence comprising the biogenic paradigm it is necessary to identify, define, and disentangle each piece of the truth from the corresponding part of the shroud of disinformation that has so carefully hidden for so long. Surrounded by the support of the others each falsehood has become an inarguable given truth. It is therefor necessary to confront and discredit them one by one until the whole fabric of disinformation is disposed of.
He adds this sentence in Chapter 3: The Language of Denial (page 34):
The familiar comes to seem normal and every big lie develops its own familiar language of deception that conceals the truth while purporting to represent it.
In the end, Armstrongism promises the truth and fails to deliver. What it delivers instead is empty promises which can never be fulfilled.
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:
Denial: Refusing to believe something is true, even though it is;
Rationalization: Creating a reason to excuse ourselves;
Projection: Taking an undesirable aspect of ourselves and ascribing it to someone else;
Cognitive Distortions: Irrational ways in which we think;
Polarizing Thinking: Thinking in extremes;
Emotional Reasoning: Thinking that our feelings accurately reflect reality;
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:
Death — we’re all going to die;
Ultimate Aloneness — we were born as a single person housed in a solitary physical body;
Meaninglessness — our lives are inherently meaningless unless we give them meaning;
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:
self-awareness — become observers of ourselves;
examine the contribution to the conflict in our lives;
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
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.
Herbert Armstrong was not an apostle;