"My friends, in the 58 years that I have been carefully watching world affairs, I have never before been so sobered! I have never before seen such a broad pattern of events begin to come together to clearly indicate that the prophesied Great Tribulation will soon be upon us!"
So writes the Spanker in a November 8 letter to Tomorrow's World subscribers, a copy of which was passed on to me today. Nothing new here. 58 years of crying wolf and getting it wrong. But wait...
"... I now alert all of you to "Ten Terrors" now facing the United States and our British-descended allies."
New truth brethren! But all of you Irish folk, people of Scandinavian descent, Maori, Chinese and others can relax. It seems Spanky thinks you're peripheral - second class observers in the great drama of the ages.
But what about these "Ten Terrors"? Here they are:
I. Increasing Drought, Floods, Fires and Earthquakes!
(yawn)
II. The Growing Power of Islam!
(well, I guess that's a nice change to the growing power of Germany or the EU.)
III. Over 12 Million Illegal Aliens!
(uh, wasn't America built on the sweat of illegal aliens... just ask the Native American folk about those pesky, land-grabbing Pilgrims.)
IV. China on the March!
(another exclamation mark, another failure to mention the Assyrian hordes pouring out of Frankfurt am Main. Do you think Spanky has forgotten the Fourth Reich?)
V. Russia a Growing Threat!
(Russia?)
VI. America Is the "Most Hated" Nation!
(honestly, I think America comes a distant third after a couple of more obvious candidates. I mean no New Zealander is bothered much by a country that doesn't beat us in Rugby... but even if it was true, the US could instantly reverse the trend by canning all those awful reality TV shows exported around the world, and sending Benny Hinn back to wherever he comes from.)
VII. The United States Dollar Heads DOWNWARD!
(excuse me, but when was the greenback declared sacred? But even here, when Rod Almighty has the chance finally to do some serious euro-bashing, he muddies the water by also referring to the Chinese yuan, the British pound [!!!!] and "many other currencies.")
VIII. The Growing Power of "Gay Activists!"
(does this dude read history? Does he know anything about classical Greece? Now that might be a worry... oh but wait: "as I have stated and will prove in an upcoming article in Tomorrow's World magazine, hundreds of respected doctors, psychoanalysts and scientists acknowledge that people are not "born that way."" Do you reckon he's dusting off the 1960s "Queer Men" article?)
IX. Disease Epidemics Coming Soon!
(hey, I have a cough right now!)
X. Our SINS Will Bring Us Down!
"My friends, will we really wake up? ... We are trying to warn America and our British-descended brethren of what lies just ahead."
So if your name is Patel or Singh, slumber on.
Two thoughts: (1) despite all the palaver about sticking to Armstrong's Philadelphian truths, Meredith is clearly de-emphasizing the Assyrian captivity schlock. Shock horror - could Chuckie Bryce and the Packatollah be the genuine voices of the Philadelphia Era after all, and Rod a mere waterer-down of prophetic truth?
The second is just how downright racist, jingoistic and insular the Meredith gospel is.
23 comments:
If he lasts another two years--just two more mere years--he will have been dead wrong about everything for 60 years! That's gotta be some kind of a record!
Mark Lax
This seems to fit with our current zeitgeist (spirit of the times). Everywhere you turn somebody is preaching doom & gloom, from global warming (the new religion of the environmentalists) to global cooling (the old religion of the environmentalists). And the news media, as with hucksters like Meredith, play right along.
"Bad news sells best!" as newspaper reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) said in the classic movie The Big Carnival.
The following is an excerpt from my unpublished essay "Reflections on the Worldwide Church of God - 1972 In prophecy! God's Practical Joke?
See 7th bullet below.
Essay Excerpt:
I thought I would share the “genre of the times” with a small sample of the statements made by the Church leading up to the final climax with the 1972 German attack on America. In retrospect, when I read my old sermon notes and the old co-worker letters, I have to ask myself, “Does God play practical jokes on people?” It was always customary in the Worldwide Church of God to begin church services with prayer. When the
deacons and elders gave the opening prayers and asked God’s inspiration on the sermon
and to bless the Work, was God’s answering to those prayers some of these words:
• “All signs in the world show that time is getting very VERY SHORT”. (August 29, 1971 Herbert W. Armstrong Co-worker letter).
• “I will never again say that Christ couldn’t come tonight” (October 21, 1970 Mount Pocono Last Great Day, Garner Ted Armstrong sermon).
• “Our work could end in the first week of 1972” (October 16, 1970 Herbert W. Armstrong sermon Mount Pocono Feast of Tabernacles).
• “There is a great chance you will die in the next three years. When you die, be brave and die faithfully” (January 18, 1969 Fred K. sermon).
• “We must put the Work of God first before any physical thing. The work must come first. God will take the people who worked to a place of safety…You will not flee to Petra, you will be taken” (February 1, 1969 Ken W. sermon).
• “Mr. Armstrong stated at the ministerial conference that 1969 would be the year of preparation and 1970 would be the year of violence” (March 22, 1969 Harold J. sermon).
• “Another age will start within the next 3 to 5 years” (April 7, 1969 Roderick C. Meredith sermon, Special Bible Study).
• “This Church will go right into the World Tomorrow” (May 24, 1969 Ken W. Sermon).
• “There is only a certain time that Petra will be a place of safety…If we ever got hot in Petra, we could just pray for a cloud to cool us off” (June 7, 1969Ken W. sermon on Petra).
• “When we go to a place of safety, Mr. Armstrong will be about the same age as Moses when he led Israel out of Egypt”. (July 1, 1969 Bible Study).
• “The famine of God’s work is going to come in this decade… For 3 ½ years, we will go to a place of safety. This will happen in this decade” (March 7, 1970 Vince P. sermon).
• “Petra was given to the Church by God” (December 17, 1968 Bible Study conducted by Ken W and Tom W.)
End of Excerpt
Richard
Ten Sign We Don't Have to Worry About the Ten Signs:
1. When the church said, "Where is the Promise of his coming...." They were right 2000 years ago
2. When the Church 2000 years ago said, "Time is Short" They were wrong.
3. When Paul said, "those that have wives as if they had none.."
The men said "no problem."
4. When Peter said a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, the church said.."Aw man,you just made that up to excuse 'time is short'"
5. When Jesus of Revelation said, "To show unto my servants the things that must shortly come to pass..." He was just kidding.
6. When Jesus said he would be with them even unto the end of the Age, he meant the Age of Aries the Lamb as now Pices the Fish was starting and they would be fishers of men in the church age until the age of Aquarius started in 2012ish.
7. When the Bible says "know that the time has come, even at the door" they didn't mention the door was locked and even David didn't have the key.
8. "3-5 years and no more than 10" has now qualified as a type and not a reality.
9. Snow in the midwest, Pacific coast storms, earthquakes and Tsaunami in Indonesia and an occasional asteroid that wipes all life on the planet is happenstance and normal in the real world where humans aren't as inexpendible as one would think.
10. There are no more gun laps. All the bullets are gone.
D:D
If indeed the first century really was "the last days" (Acts 2:17; Heb. 1:2) and "the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15) and "the end of all things is at hand" (I Pet. 4:7) as the NT makes plain that it was, then what happened? Where is it? Was Jesus and the apostles all mistaken about in what generation it was to occur?
Yes, they were mistaken. They misinterpreted and misrepresented the Jewish scriptures and made wild claims.
The first "christians" were an obscure and hated sect of Judaism.
Constantine, looking for a religion to be the state religion of Rome, decided that christianity was the most benign of all the religions in the empire and so, made christianity the state religion.
Constantine turned out to be very mistaken about christianity being a benign religion. This was the beginning of the malignancy of Christendom that came very near to destroying the entire world and may do it yet.
The statement that the kingdom of God is at hand is somewhat metaphoric. It could apply to each individual, as opposed to in a general or global sense. Our time as humans is finite.
You also have to realize the context of much of the teaching in the New Testament. There were apocalyptic sects amongst the Jews of the day, and many apocalyptic messages floating around during the time of Jesus and the disciples. I suppose this portion of the message might have been geared to those folks.
The bottom line is that, due to past failures, nobody within the Armstrongite community has an iota of credibility where prophecy is concerned. You can almost know exactly what is not going to happen by listening to Meredith, Flurry, Pack, or any other who still persist with their teachings based on the theory of British Israelism, and attempting to relate it to the gospels or the book of Revelation. We already know these guys are false prophets (although they attempt to prove semantically that they are not prophets at all), so it becomes humorous and even tragic to read their words, or hear their broadcasts.
Anonymous said...
In retrospect, when I read my old sermon notes and the old co-worker letters, I have to ask myself, “Does God play practical jokes on people?”
You'd have to conclude "yes" if you are a devout Armstrongist.
God may be good, but he's gonna let Satan fool you (God's a lot like Hilary Clinton and Carl Rove - he uses proxies to do the dirty work) with really close copies to the TRUTH!
He wants to see if you'll deviate one iota from Herbert W. Armstrong's revelation during six months of intensive Bible study to prove his wife Loma wrong!
If you blow it, God simply goes POW, right in the kisser Alice! Wait that's Ralph Cramden not God...
Stingerski said...
This seems to fit with our current zeitgeist (spirit of the times). Everywhere you turn somebody is preaching doom & gloom, from global warming (the new religion of the environmentalists) to global cooling (the old religion of the environmentalists). And the news media, as with hucksters like Meredith, play right along.
Perhaps a read of the book The Shock Doctrine might prove useful. When you are always fearful, when you are always thrown off keel, its hard for you to think rationally.
Its a form of mind control. We've seen a lot of it in post 9/11 America. The rest of the world is no where near as fearful as America is these days.
Palestine. Benny Hinn is a Palestinian refugee.
But we know what RCM's words of alarm are all about. This is the Armstrongite technique to get people "spun up" so that zeal will be re-ignited, obedience will be rigorously dutiful and more money will flow in.
Such statements are more of an index of how bad things are going inside of RCM's organization than in the world.
I do believe that things in the world are bad but Armstrongites have always tried to ride the crest of that wave by linking it into prophecy in order to get heightened ecclesiastical control and material riches.
The recent documentary I saw on the Armstrongite offshot of "The House of Yahweh" down in texas had a segment on a woman whose family wanted her to leave. Her reaction was that "It is so close to the end of the age, I better just stay here." An example of using prophecy to control.
-- Neo
Yes,brethren send in those tithes to Rod: his liquor cabinet needs replenishing, and he will have a shocking season if you fail to act
now.
Woe,doom and destruction to the unbeliever.
We have noted that Rod is now paying more attention to China than his old favourite Assyria.
He could be having a bet both ways,though.
Seamus
LCG has a new booklet coming out:
"IslamoChinassyria in Prophecy..Who Knew!"
Not correct Cirky, since most of the misinformation comes from Constatine himself, but the following is false:
"Constantine, looking for a religion to be the state religion of Rome, decided that christianity was the most benign of all the religions in the empire and so, made christianity the state religion."
Constantine was actually born and raised a Christian. It was his father that converted. Most of Constantine's legion were members of the Mythras sect.
But Constantine is the one who made of the lie about his own conversion. It is a ripping yarn at that. What he seems to have really contributed is a formal smooshing of the legends of Mythras and Christ together. Not that they were all that far apart to begin with.
Mark Lax
Spanky has about as much credibility on revealing the future as a faker gazing into a crystal ball, a palm reader, or an astrologer divining horoscopes.
He is some spiritual seer, reading the revelation with his x-ray glasses seeing future things with such spiritual accuracy no one else can possibly see, except the Divine Mr. M.
My magic Eight ball has been more accurate in predicting future events than any COG profit.
who is this?
www.mtcogsm.com
Anonymous said...
who is this?
www.mtcogsm.com
Whoever it is, they have the worst web page formating that I have seen in years.
It'd help tremendously if they just had paragraph breaks.
The spankster has been wrong so often it is laughable. Just read his articles from the 1950's and 1960's. He seems to be trying the same old scare tactics, just updating them with the newest current events. When will the spanksterites ever learn that spanky is a false profit too?!
I really don't care who this www.mtcogsm.com is.
have you read any of the stuff on this site? Who ever is behind this seems to be on track with truth from the bible. sure is different!
yeah, maybe odd--but unique--ugly on the outside is sometimes pretty on the inside!
Anyone here ever hear of this theory of the lost ten tribes?
http://members.aol.com/pashtuns/losttribes.html
what happened to the Romney post???
"I really don't care who this www.mtcogsm.com is.
have you read any of the stuff on this site? Who ever is behind this seems to be on track with truth from the bible. sure is different!"
Uh-huh. Look, why don't you just advertise your site instead of pretending to be an anynomous poster? Pretty transparent.
Paul
This topic goes along with another similar topic being discussed on the Worldwide Church of God Alumni forum.
Hopefully this link will post.
http://p069.ezboard.com/Dave-Pack-establishes-a-new-low/fworldwidechurchofgodalumniforumfrm16.showMessage?topicID=591.topic
Post a Comment