The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God
Understanding the psychology of religious seduction and spiritual abuse.
As a child growing up I was starkly aware of the Ten Commandments and the awful penalty for violating them. During my grammar school years we were not yet attending the Radio Church of God, but one of the Armstrongs was on our radio at least once a day and our house was littered with dozens of booklets and issues of The Plain Truth.
Note: One of my pet peeves about the COGs is âselective obedienceâ. We are familiar with arguments that mandate keeping the Ten Commandments, Holy Days, Dietary Laws, Tithing, etc. But for the Laws the COGs donât choose to demand, their arguments used to show they are no longer required are not unlike than those used by mainstream churches for not keeping any of them.
Prefacing lists of false prophecies of HWA and other WCG luminaries, one may find a quote from Deuteronomy about ignoring false prophets. Deuteronomy 13 gets a bit more serious simply calling him a false prophet, decreeing prophets who lead followers to other gods or away from the Torah are to be stoned.
Weâve heard the line âdonât think Iâve come to abolish the Lawâ. A few lines after that statement in Matthew comes a warning about setting aside âthe least of these commandsâ. From my time in the WCG, Iâve always been lead to believe it means the Ten Commandments, and âthe leastâ is explained away somehow as we understood the commandments were all equal. But to a Jew, âthese commandsâ would be all the commands in the Torah, and for some, the Oral Law (âTraditions of the Eldersâ) as well. Jewish teaching says the âleast commandâ in the Torah is not taking a mother bird with her young (Deut. 22:6)
Dr Hoeh, Prophet Thiel and Apostle Pack have all written articles in which they argue which commands of the Torah they think no longer need to be kept.
Dr Hoehâs 1957 Good News article (appended to Dr Thielâs piece) mainly categorizes laws in the Torah as âCivilâ and âSpiritualâ. According to Dr Hoeh, the âCivilâ laws were âdone awayâ, with the exception of the ones that were kept â tithing, Holy Days, unclean meats, etc. Categorizing laws as âCivilâ, âMoralâ, âRitualâ, âHealthâ, etc, goes back to Augustine; of course Dr Hoeh wouldnât want to tell us that.
Dr Thielâs tome gets into more details, including a critique on the list of 613 commandments. 613 Commandments? Yes, Jewish sages, reading the Torah and summarizing ways to obey it derived 613 Commandments â thatâs the Ten Commandments and 603 others. (This is all part of the âwritten Lawâ; the Oral Law is another story.) Some of these commands, he reasoned, were still applicable, some were no longer applicable, and some didnât make sense to him (such as reciting the Shema and Grace after meals.) Wearing tzitzis (tassels) is out (although it was commanded for âall generationsâ) but not wearing linen/wool together is in; being ceremonially unclean is out, but not eating unclean meat is in.
The RCG article, which didnât have a by-line, looked like a cleaned-up (read plagiarized) version of Bobâs piece. My apologies to the writer if he is no longer under Mr Packâs employ.
Dr Hoehâs article said âOnly God can change lawsâ. Dr Thiel explains (in a convoluted way) that God isnât to be disobeyed but some of the laws are no longer applicable â so, it appears heâs saying some laws can set aside⌠On Bobâs to do list is to go through the 613 commands and make a judgment call on each, but for now, he says we can get by on his general guidelines.
Since God never put the changes in writing, I guess it was up to Herman, Bob and Dave to figure it which laws to obey and which laws we can ignore. Good thing for them stoning was put aside as part of the âCivil lawâ.
And one more thing…
Someone always brings up sacrifices. There are some laws that canât be kept and donât need to be argued away. There is no Temple, there is no Levitical priesthood, and so no sacrifices or offerings â and no tithing. To keep tithing, but not sacrifices, twisting part of the book of Hebrews is used transfer tithing from the Levites to Melchizedek (who is in Heaven, so the money goes to their church.)
But didnât the Apostles remove the requirement for circumcision? They changed it from physical to spiritual? Thatâs another story. If the Apostles did what many think they did, then it was okay when Apostle Joe Tkatch Sr decreed that since HWA said the dietary laws were Health laws, then there is nothing spiritually wrong with eating unclean meat. (A cartoon in Ambassador Report took this to its logical extreme.)
And, if the Apostles did what many think they did, they would have been stoned too…
