The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God
Understanding the psychology of religious seduction and spiritual abuse.
The manipulative techniques Herbert Armstrong used to milk funds from the membership.
“Reports indicate that many have ācome inā to Godās Church in this manner: They have come to really SEE and KNOW that this is, truly, GODāS Church. They know there is terrible WORLD TROUBLE just ahead. They have heard how Godās Church is to be taken to a PLACE OF SAFETY.“
Continue reading “An Epistle from an Apostle?”
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!
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:
[jqeasytooltip tiptheme=”tipthemeflatdarklight” tipmaxwidth=”610″ tipicon=”fa fa-book” tipminmargin=”15″ tipposition=”tiptop” tipfollowcursor=”true” ][jqeasytooltipcontent]
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.