trust

September 22, 2012May 21, 2022

Sacrifice

Herbert Armstrong was certainly a proponent of sacrifice.

Perhaps it is because he read the Scripture in Romans 12:1

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

Many of us are familiar with the ministers standing up at the Feast seven times in a year just before the offering is to be taken:

Give until it hurts!

The expectation has always been from the beginning that we all give our all to “The Work” because God demands it of us and that the Apostle (sometimes with another title with the word ‘General’ in it) is the one to whom we give the money in God’s (or Jesus’) Name. If the children of your family need to be sacrificed, who are you to question the needs of God’s Work? You need to give your effort to The Work. Something has to give somewhere, so if you are short time, you take it from your family; if you are short money, take it from your family. Your needs to even survive pale to insignificance to saving this world. You must bribe God for your salvation, but even more, you need to give everything you have for spreading the Gospel to prove that you love the Leader set here by God / Jesus. If you starve, so much the better: Consider yourself a martyr; if your family starves, they are martyrs too.

But it goes so far beyond money: It is also time, expertise, labor and any other free resource that can be exploited and enslaved — it doesn’t belong to you, it is for the Apostle (Evangelist, Prophet, …’General’).

There is a problem, however: Some of you are Laodiceans and hold back a part, like Ananias and Sapphira!

Many of today’s End Time Apostles / Prophets have called you on this. David Pack, Ronald Weinland, Gerald Flurry, to name a few, are not pleased with half-hearted participation! They demand more! For example, some of them, like David Pack insist that you gouge your unconverted spouse for the money. You should leave your inheritance of real property to the church and not your worthless family who will just waste it on such things as having a place to live, clothes to wear and food to eat. The Work needs a new campus! You need to give to that building fund! The Work needs a new studio for TV and Internet work! The Work needs an extra million dollars this year (and the UCG isn’t the only one) to preach the gospel in Islam Countries, like Saudi Arabia! You must sacrifice. This is all explained by The Supreme Commander of The Supreme Cult. Please note that there are Five Tithes on your income before you even get one penny before taxes!

Note what the leaders have said in the past, like what Garner Ted Armstrong said that we give to God (well, not actually, we give to some guy in an expensive suit) and that is where our responsibility ends: After that, it’s God’s responsibility — He will take care of it and we need not worry our little heads about whether or not The End Time Apostle uses the money frivolously! Or maybe we are supposed to check up on it — there seem to be different readings on accountability.

Nevertheless, we are to GIVE, freely, thankfully, because God just loves a cheerful giver! No grumbling. Just because those leaders in your church have taken everything away from you and have all the good stuff you want and even more than you could have imagined, doesn’t mean that you have to ruin it all by having an ATTITUDE! Heavens no! Some day, if you have just the right faith and you have done absolutely everything you should do quite perfectly and you have the right attitude and wait in patience, willing to suffer loss quietly, then you certain just might have a glorious inheritance! Maybe! You could inherit the Kingdom. No promises though, since you have to give to just the RIGHT cult! See, if David Pack and the Restored Church of God is the absolutely only place of salvation and you are in the Living Church of God with Roderick Meredith (should he live so long), you lose big time. You have to be in exactly the right cult to make this work! You can’t just join any old church and be sure of salvation. On the other hand, if Gerald Flurry with his Philadelphia Church of God (the name sounds right!) and you are with James Russell in the Church of God in Truth, you will be sure out of luck! You may be bowing down to the Meredithites instead of the Russellites! God is definitely a respecter of persons! You need to get it right or repent and then get it right!

God looks at your attitude, which, at the moment is a pretty awkward position. You need to be on the straight path with the narrow gate or else you are on the broad road to perdition with a whole lot of company. It’s all rigged, of course, since all of the Armstrongists are wrong at the core, so you can’t possibly pick the right one!

As the decades roll by, realities crop up and the First Love of sacrificing all you have gets to be not just tedious, but progressively more difficult: You don’t have enough money to cover your expenses; you don’t have enough vacation to cover all the Feasts; you don’t have enough time to give; you don’t have enough energy for yet another cult function.

And then you find out where the money has been going.

And it gets to be ever more difficult to justify your sacrifice.

Laodocean!

That’s what your cult leader accuses you of. He makes you feel guilty. He tells you that holding back is a sin of selfishness. He implies that you don’t have gratitude toward God who gave you everything! He threatens you by saying that you will not continue to receive God’s blessings (not that you’ve been noticing them lately). He then tells you that if you don’t give, you will be under a curse.

This is known in some circles as extortion.

In some limited legal circles it is considered a crime.

Certainly, in the case of Ronald Weinland and his silent witness wife, it was considered a crime by the Internal Revenue Service that they didn’t pay Income Tax on $3.5 million of undeclared personal income from member monetary sacrifice. Weinland spent the money on luxury BMWs for himself, his daughter and his son. He went to Las Vegas to an expensive hotel to hold his ministerial conference. Laura had expensive jewelry designed for her to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is the sacrifice that the members of his church made for him: Personal luxury living, having nothing to do with “Preaching the Gospel” whatever that might mean. In this case, the Gospel was in the form of books written to predict what was to happen in 2008, which never did, making him an obvious false prophet. No matter, his cult followers continue to sacrifice for him. Heck, the widow lady across the street attending his church got a lien on her house to pay for his $300,000 bail money. You just can’t sacrifice enough for your leader.

Herbert Armstrong was wont to do the same thing, back in the day. The Kessler Letter refers to the incidents where Herbert Armstrong routinely grabbed $50,000 personal spending money before each trip. The Ambassador Report mentions the trip to Monaco where he rented a yacht for his family to sail around the Mediterranean. If this were done today and it came to the attention of the Internal Revenue Service, it is likely the Justice Department would have had Herbert Armstrong convicted of felony Income Tax Evasion too. We’ll never know. The internal mechanisms for cover up at the time were too sophisticated for anyone to actually get caught.

Others of the Armstrong cults have other various means to absorb all that their members can sacrifice. Currently, the United Church of God, an International Association, is promoting their “million dollar faith initiative” to extract an extra $1 million this year not in the budget to go preach the gospel to Islam nations. It won’t have any real impact in preaching the “gospel” (of British Israelism) to the Arabs, but it does wonders for member’s morale!

Davy Pack is having a high time building a multi-million dollar campus in Wadsworth, Ohio these days. The members are encouraged to sacrifice as much as they have, as much as they can wheedle from their spouse and in the happy fortune that member with money dies, Davy is to get the inheritance money (don’t leave it to the kids — not providing for your own cult makes you worse than an infidel).

Who knows how much money Gerald Flurry still owes on Ambassador College out there in the wilds of Oklahoma. It’s millions for sure. Members should sacrifice to be able to make payments. Perhaps one day after Gerald Flurry dies, the campus will be sold, just as Ambassador College in Pasadena was, with buildings being razed for some commercial enterprise, although none of us can think of what sort of enterprise would want property out in Oklahoma unless oil was discovered underground.

With over 700 subcults from which to choose, those people with borderline personality have a cornucopia of a plethora of unworthy causes to make their sacrifice, to pretty much engage in practices guaranteed to reduce their quality of life for a very long time to come.

The point of all of this is not to point out that the Armstrongists are charlatans and thieves — they are that — it is to uncover something much more sinister.

In The Last Days, we examined the disturbing chaotic immorality embedded within Armstrongism. Even though the venue seemed benign, behind the scenes lay an horrific hypocrisy of unacceptable cover ups perpetrated within the Armstrongist Community: Armstrongism is rife with moral ambiguity which systematically destroys people and families within the cult environment.

There can be no claim for self-righteous right-wing pandering pseudo Republicans (who don’t vote or supposedly participate in governmental involvements — even to refusing jury duty, let alone military service) to say that they are for God’s Law and support Law and Order. The truth be told, and we’ve told the Painful Truth over and over — that the founders, leaders, administrators and ministers live a privileged life above and apart from the masses where crimes are committed and covered up, immorality abounds and everyone seems to have lost their moral compass, if, indeed, they ever had one. There can be no real trust and there is absolutely no justice. This self-absorbed community of ego, power, privilege and money built on the sacrifice of those treated with contempt has absolutely no socially redeeming qualities.

Moreover, if we accept the somewhat skewed view of Charles Darwin with evolution being “the survival of the fittest”, we have a dead end religious evolution in which the dinosaurs left over from the devastating mass extinction event of the death of Herbert Armstrong are slowly dying off, having not adapted well to the world around them, attempting to do the same useless things they have always done without realizing that they will never get anywhere near the same results with a depleted environment long subjected to entropy. The rule is to change and adapt, or you die. They are not changing or adapting. They don’t even repent of the evil and wicked they do as a matter of course.

Note this letter to the Exit and Support Network entitled, “Nothing Less Than Hoodlums and Gangsters (February 12, 2012):

Much thanks for your work. The fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 were very disturbing for me as I “unbelievably” came to learn that the WWCG and its splinter groups are nothing less than hoodlums and gangsters. This is sad but what is more sad for me is that I knew Jesus as my Lord and Savior and this knowledge was diminished gradually as a result of all the indoctrinations of The Restored Church of God headed by David C. Pack.

I am repulsed that these men, in these splinters, continue in the shadow of Herbert Armstrong. Yet, I am more confused and saddened that their members don’t see what seems so obvious–that they are caught up in a religious cult where they sacrifice the God-given gift of their intellect. And for what? I have spent much time deliberating why these so called ministers and “apostles” would continue as they do. I could take the easy road and say that they themselves are/have been deceived by HWA. But, nay, not all! Surely they have “a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof: from such turn away.” (II Tim. 3:5).

I remember asking one of the members why is it that Mr. Pack has such a nice and large home and nice vehicles. The member said to me, “he has to because no one will follow or listen to him if he does not have them. You know how people are.” I could not believe my ears because if David Pack truly believes that he is God’s appointed then surely he would not depend upon his worldly possessions to entice new membership. But then again, that’s what their business is all about–to attract, allure, persuade… Tragic.

Surely, these men have not a clue as to what it really is to present their bodies a living sacrifice and that they be not conformed to this world and the ways of this world. (Romans 12:1-2)

Finally, I have just read the critique of Mystery of the Ages, chapter two. All I can is gangsters, gangsters!!

I pray that you all be increased with right knowledge and wisdom from above. Thank you again.

With my warmest regards, –Impacted by Restored Church of God

Those of us at The Painful Truth approve this message.

So those of you who are still addicted to making sacrifice for Armstrongist cults, understand that your efforts are futile: The leaders will waste your money, you will live a diminished life and, in the end, there will be nothing left to show for it.

Meanwhile, you will find that with being surrounded so long with immorality under the covers, you will eventually be so warped that you cannot even determine right from wrong.

And that is the real sacrifice you have made.

April 30, 2012August 16, 2022

“Trust”
Who do you trust? Do you trust your Armstrongist minister? Should you trust your Armstrongist minister?

Douglas Becker

Who do you trust?

Do you trust your Armstrongist minister?

Should you trust your Armstrongist minister?

The answer to the last two questions is “No!” and “No!”.

Let me tell you why.

Now it may be that your Armstrongist minister in whatever ACoG you may be attending might be totally sincere. Perhaps he is very nice. Maybe he is even helpful at times. But in the scheme of things, is that enough?

We live today in May, 2012, on the cusp of yet another meltdown of the membership of an Armstrongist Cult, as the target date of the false prophet for Christ’s returns comes at Pentecost and goes, without so much as a whimper of a hint of a whisper of the event taking place. Ronald Weinland has set up the dupes of his little cult for yet another “Great Disappointment” to rival the one of 1844. No, Jesus isn’t returning, the Great Tribulation won’t have happened, there is no Beast Power over the 10 nations of Europe and there isn’t any possible that the Two ~~Witlesses~~ Witnesses will die in Jerusalem after prophecying there for 3.5 years and be resurrected in 3.5 days after which Christ will take a near pass and spirit them away to heaven for the Great Bridal Shower.

But they trust him!

If we knew the answer to why, we could know a lot more about the Universe.

In business accounting, there is something called “Goodwill”. Goodwill is an accounting concept meaning the value of an entity over and above the value of its assets. The term was originally used in accounting to express the intangible but quantifiable “prudent value” of an ongoing business beyond its assets, resulting perhaps because the reputation the firm enjoyed with its clients. This is important in the sale of a business when the sale price is above and beyond the actual tangible assets of the corporation and is used in the accounting ledgers to represent the gap as a firm dollar value.

Like it or not (we don’t), the branding of Herbert Armstrong is a monetary asset advantage which trades on the principle of “Goodwill”: The religious product thus branded has earned the trust of a small cadre of consumers, not unlike that of Amazon.com (which has a much larger cadre of loyal consumers). To them, the Goodwill has been earned over the decades (for no particularly good reason, as we shall see), and anyone who trades on the trust in the religious product automagically inherits the Goodwill.

There are limits, of course.

Some of the customers are rather picky over which particular branding they select: For some it is United, others, the LCG, CoGWa, CoGBS or a whole host of alphabet soup Armstrongist communities. They become loyal to the sub brand they have selected. It’s sort of like which washing detergent a person chooses. You tend to stick with it because it works for you: Whiter, brighter, whatever. The choices aren’t, in this case, particularly rational. It is based on emotions and feelings. It is based on how the leader impresses and how you might fit in with the rest of the crowd. In extreme cases, like the PCG, RCG, CCG, PKG, it makes no sense at all: It’s just how you feel about it.

Objectively speaking, there are a lot of problems, challenges and consequences to choosing emotion over logic and it can lead to a lot of ugly results down the road. The future is not always what it seems to be, particularly in the Armstrongist Churches of God, where no one is exactly what they seem to be. Sacrificing resources for the hope of some big score at the end may feel good, but in the end, it is all a con game whose end game is that they lie to you and then take your money. It wouldn’t be so bad if they just lied to you (no matter how sincere they might be), if they didn’t take your money, but you trust them and they do take your money. In fact, in the final analysis, it is the love of money (mostly in the form of salary and retirement), along with ego-stroking narcissistic self-agrandizement, which is a root of all evil there in the ACoG groups. The hidden agenda never becomes public until it is too late for most folks.

There are three major things wrong with Armstrongism: British Israelism is a fraud and it leads to false prophecies by false prophets; church history is a provably concocted fraud (plagiarized from Ellen G. White) and the entire religion is based on rebellious heresy. No one in Armstrongism wants to look at the facts because it just doesn’t feel right to them. Besides, they are afraid of what is behind the curtain — it may show them that they have been wasting their time in fear, false hope and a sense of well-being through associating with people they think of like mind (the WCG / GCI certainly proved how wrong that concept was), achieving a level of comfort participating in what can be termed “Old Testament Christianity” under Old Covenant Laws. To think of giving up would be unthinkable.

But it gets worse.

The narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, many of whom came from Ambassador College, have the background to grant them credibility to gain that all-important Goodwill trust they need to prey upon duped fools. It is a world of golden opportunity which is difficult for the covetously minded idolators to resist as they plunge in to embrace the con for their own gain.

Trust.

In the case of the Preaching the Kingdom of God (PKG, also known as the “Pathetic Kook Group”), the experience they are going through is a consumate betrayal by a man plying contemptuous fraud. Ronald Weinland’s little collection of sheople will find themselves sheared, especially after going to trial for Felony Income Tax Evasion Fraud when the Great Disappointment is past. People are maxing out their credit cards, doing foolish things with their careers and their associations and choosing a path of self-destruction because it is inconceivable that God would let anything happen to them: After all, aren’t they faithful to God by following His Apostle Prophet?

It is a tragedy, of course, but it serves a useful purpose in the scheme of things. Think for a moment: Is Ronald Weinland that far from someone like Roderick Meredith who, himself, has been a false prophet for fifty years? Are any of the false prophet apostle leaders within Armstrongism really that far from what PKG portrays? They all have the same basic doctrines. Maybe they don’t say that specifically Jesus Christ is returning next Tuesday, but it is the very same spirit of deception working within them.

L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology in the 1950s after a semi-successful career as a science fiction writer. He deliberately rebranded his alternative earth history into a religion and wrote about it in Dianetics, specifically targeting actors in Hollywood. It is pure fantastic fantasy, but people have bought into it, believing sincerely with all their being that this is it! This is the truth! When Armstrongists look at Scientology, they see a weird false religion that is so obvious that they wonder how anyone could ever be a part of it.

The answer, of course, is trust. It is that Goodwill.

Since this is so clear to the Armstrongists, perhaps it is time they stepped back and looked at themselves and their chosen religion. It too, is based on an alternative earth history which never happened and cannot happen. The future is simply not going to happen the way it was predicted by Herbert Armstrong. In fact, all of his prophecies failed in his lifetime. If you are skeptical, just ask a member of the PKG after May 27th, 2012 how well their trust worked for them. There will be reasoning and excuses even as they are proven yet again so very wrong.

All of Armstrongism is at risk because of Ronald Weinland. Even as Harold Camping did great damage to Christianity, so has Ronald Weinland done great damage to the followers of Herbert Armstrong. Furthermore, all Armstrongists should consider themselves nothing more than Sabbath keeping, Feast going Scientologists. It just isn’t going to work out. You are wasting your time. You are also wasting your money. Most of all, you are wasting your trust.

Trust.

Sometimes it is best not to just give it away: It needs to be earned.

April 28, 2012August 16, 2022

Just How Can We Trust Them?

How do you place your trust in men who seem to never do what is right?

Adrian

Trust: noun

1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.

2. confident expectation of something; hope.

3. confidence in the certainty of future payment for property or goods received; credit: to sell merchandise on trust.

4. a person on whom or thing on which one relies: God is my trust.

5. the condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.

Good question. How do you place your trust in men who seem to never do what is right? Men who serve the interest of themselves first and the interests of the member last?

Adrian from Australia wrote with these questions in mind.

- In a my 3^rd church service members were instructed to burn booklets published by the wcoa. 1975(72?) in prophesy was one of these. What type organization burns records of their teachings to cover their traces?
- The organization claimed to be inspired and led by an infallible God, but had policies on makeup and birthdays that constantly changed from one policy that was the opposite of the other. A contradiction indeed.
- The religion claimed the just shall live by faith, but then contradictorily claimed to be able to prove there is a god.
- The religion published books like the proof of the bible that was later withdrawn because of errors.
- The church claimed that everything was inspired by the ministers who promoted members to leadership roles only to find out later that the member claimed a false baptism.
- GTA was disfellowshiped, but was given around $200000/yr in 1970’s money and tithe payers money paid for this.
- The church claimed to be the church of brotherly love. My wife often said to me that if that’s what the church people are like then she didn’t want to be a part of the 1000 year reign with them. I agreed. I wondered how come my own family who I was told to reject as worldly, were always kind to us despite us not giving birthday presents to them and having Christmas etc. Despite the bible saying that if you see your brother in need and you do nothing about it how can God’s love dwell in a person. My physical family always helped us materially, church members didn’t ever. Of course I forgot about all that free advice about how bad you were from members, but I don’t think that qualifies as helpful. The bible says by their fruit you shall know them. It bothered me that they claimed to have brotherly love.
- Wearing second hand clothes from opportunity shops because the church took our money, and then being told by the ministry you are not blessed because you don’t have the material possession that they have.
- Being told to pay third tithe despite making yourself the key candidate for financial assistance.
- Reading scriptures in Galatians, Colossians for example, rereading Armstrong’s teachings of these verses and trying to convince myself what he said made sense. Never saying anything because you would be told you weren’t converted if you questioned anything.
- If you didn’t understand (blindly) everything then you weren’t converted.
- How members would rush to open the minister’s car door the rudely treat other members with disdain.
- That this is only the beginning of my list and there is so much more…that really bothers me.