What Meredith knows about Atheists

The aged Presiding Evangelist awoke with a new question buzzing between his gray temples. It was clearly a visionary experience, for when was the last time he had stumbled upon a new question? 1953?

Moving with remarkable rapidity for one so advanced in years, he grabbed a sharp yellow pencil with shaking hands and wrote the question down on the back of the draft co-worker letter he had been working on the night before:

"Why Atheists?"

Not "why atheism?", which might seem the more logical title, but "why atheists?" Clearly this was a case of divine inspiration. The Eternal Himself had appeared to His servant in a dream of Danielic proportions and planted this very question. If only he could remember the dream itself! Perhaps the great God needed to keep his faithful servant humble. Humility, the Presiding Evangelist mused, is no easy thing, but I do my best.

Over the next several days the number three person in the Government of God (under, of course, God the Father and Jesus Christ) pondered deeply on the new question. Long decades of sinless living provided him with keen insight and soon he was penning the profound truth - soon to be published for all the world to see in the March-April issue of Tomorrow's World.

Why atheists? How plain the truth actually is! Atheists have been deceived by the theory of evolution into ignoring the undeniable proof of Bible prophecy!

And if anyone knew about Bible prophecy it was the presiding evangelist.

Perhaps without realizing it, today's atheists basically "hide their heads in the sand" and simply ignore the awesome prophecies of the great God, as recorded in His inspired word! Yet they are not being fully honest intellectually, unless they admit into their minds the knowledge of the great God of creation, and how He has intervened in the past and even now is intervening in human affairs!
(Emphasis in original)

Naturally, it would be problematic to list any or all of those awesome prophecies: it was unlikely, but there's always a smart-ass who insists on checking them out in Eerdmans Commentary or some such "intellectual" reference work, and that would cause problems. If they were tithing as they ought to there shouldn't be a problem - they simply couldn't afford a copy, but nothing could be guaranteed in these Laodicean End Times. Best to keep it general - a quote from Isaiah 46 in the NKJV about "declaring the end from the beginning" should do the trick - and then he could move on to swat a few more dead flies: the six-day creationist types who willfully ignore the gap theory share in the blame for atheists. The question of suffering is checkmated by the concept of free will. False Christianity has muddied the waters...

The presiding evangelist sat back in his leather swivel chair and paused. The new question was answered. It was another inspired article - almost (a little thrill ran down his spine) God-breathed... but one must be humble, and he whispered the word to himself again: almost!

DCM - a different COG ministry...

Here's a link to a COG ministry that breaks the mold.

No dire warnings about impending doom and gloom.

No nonsense about Anglos being Israelites.

No thinly veiled conservative political pontifications parading as insightful inside-track news commentary.

It may be that Wes White believes all or some of the above - don't know and don't particularly care. But Dynamic Christian Ministries - operated by Wes, wife Nancy and Jared Weese - substitutes puppet shows for ponderous preachments, so who can complain?

Wes is also the author of a Dan Brown-style novel, Clan of Lilith - obviously a long-time independent thinker.

Did I mention the blog?

It's nice to occasionally prove the "anti-COG" fulminations of Dr Thiel wrong by giving some positive coverage to intra-COG developments. Examples are admittedly few and far between, so it's a pleasure to acknowledge them when possible.

COGs Online

It's been awhile since AW last looked at how the Internet was being used by COG sects and ministries. The following "top ten" list is based on Alexa rankings earlier this week.

1. Ronnie Weinland's the-end.com. Depressing! This guy's temporary "success" is like rat poison for the less screwy COGs. Ranked in the 108k band. If that sounds low, consider that the Southern Baptist official website only manages 283k!

2. I think I'm getting a headache. In at 119k is the Pack cult (thercg.org)

3. Okay, so there aren't too many GN fans here, but in this company the GN is positively balanced and rational: 127k.

4. In at 138k, it's Joe & Co: wcg.org

5. Grab a barf bag. Pack takes out no. 5 with his realtruth website. 141k.

6. The numerically biggest COG group - ucg.org manages to rank in the 160k band

7. A round of applause for amateur night: biblestudy.org (222k)

8. Gerry Flurry's trumpet toots in at 248k, just inside the top quarter million.

9. Hulme's vision.org - 252k.

10. Spanky and the team in Charlotte bring up the caboose at 342k with tomorrowsworld, slightly ahead of UCG's beyondtoday (358k) but well behind those Southern Baptists!

Of course, Alexa's rankings are based on a sample... and the lower they go the more subject to error. But for the top ten above the indicators are probably right on the money. You can check out your favorite/least favorite site's current status for yourself here.

Weinland Warns the World

A lot of folk have been winding up on this blog lately after tapping "Ronald Weinland" (or "Ron Weinland") into Google. If you're one of them - welcome!

To access past postings here on Ronnie Weinland, click the Weinland label at the bottom of this entry. If you haven't come across it yet, you might like to also check out the Weinland Watch blog (unrelated to AW).

The "short and skinny" on Weinland is that he has a past history with the Worldwide Church of God under Herbert W. Armstrong, and later the United Church of God. I imagine neither organization would want to know him these days, and he currently runs his very own designer sect. Armstrong was, and the UCG is, "Adventist" in the sense that the End of the Age is supposedly just around the corner, based on a misreading of passages in Daniel, Revelation, Matthew 24 and elsewhere. Armstrong also speculated about dates - though nothing as crass as Weinland - before getting his fingers burned (and ruining a lot of lives in the process). UCG isn't silly enough to set actual dates.

Weinland speaks well, and with considerable self assurance. But a bravura display of bravado means absolutely nothing, and you won't have to wait long to see egg splattered on this particular prophet's pasty pate: Weinland has proclaimed April 17 as the beginning of the Great Tribulation.

If you're interested in the sort of peripheral ideas he's on about - the Sabbath and other biblical doctrines - less toxic or off-the-wall versions can be found - such as the Church of God (Seventh Day).

The Weinland prophecies are set to crash and burn, providing sociologists of religion with an interesting case study in delusional stupidity. (In fact it wouldn't surprise me if some university grad students had been planted in Weinland-land in order to get up close to their research subject!) For the other Churches of God he's just an embarrassment, and for ex-members (like the people who frequent this blog) a painful reminder of just how loopy things could occasionally get.

Dante's Alphabet Soup

From Bill F. of Ekklesia fame. For the full effect, click to enlarge.

Talk about being in deep... shock.

The World Tomorrow meets the Easter Bunny

After a less than memorable week suffering from what in less PC times was called “Delhi Belly”, I woke this morning to a sun-drenched late Summer's day hopeful of a quiet “Good Friday” to aid recovery.

The Good Spirit apparently took pity on me and decided to lend a hand. Overnight some idiot had wiped out a major power pole on the main road, and there's nothing quite as conducive to a quiet day as the complete absence of electricity.

What to do? I pottered around for a while before deciding that there was obviously time to go back to yesterday's unopened Dominion Post and tackle the daily crossword. That accomplished, I flicked through the front sections with their usual excellent coverage of things I'd rather not know about, when my eye fell on the annual Easter homily from the Wellington Council of Churches.

Like everyone else I normally ignore this sort of seasonal fluff, but this case was an exception. The intro to the column begins: “Dennis Gordon, for the Council of Wellington Churches, writes about the significance of Easter.”

There's a photograph of an Orthodox processional, with crucifix aloft, then the headline: “Easter Means Life.”

Down the bottom is a little info on the writer: “Dr Dennis Gordon is an evolutionary biologist and a member of the British-based Society of Ordained Scientists.”
Which is all true and very impressive. But Dennis' potted bio omits the interesting fact that his ordination is as an elder in the Worldwide Church of God.

In fact, I remember sitting through several of Dennis' sermonettes (mumble) years ago. Dennis was by reputation, and clearly still is, a decent, gifted and honest man, if not a riveting speaker, though I've never had the chance to chat with him in person. Just last year he featured in the WCG church magazine Odyssey.

I'll admit to a moment of disorientation anyway. After all, here's a survivor of the Armstrong years, including the vicious anti-liberal “cultural revolution” of 1979 onward, who:

• Describes himself as an evolutionary biologist.
• Is spokesperson for a prominent ecumenical organisation.
• Delivers an Easter homily for the unwashed secular hordes, and
• Belongs to a church tradition that long lambasted “all of the above.”

So, what does Dennis have to say? I regret that the Dominion Post (New Zealand's best daily paper, with only feeble competition from the awful Auckland Herald) usually doesn't place this sort of thing on their website, so a few notes may be helpful.

• No Saints! It's “the first century apostle John” and “the apostle Paul,” which is my enduring preference too – very properly non-conformist.
• A predictable lineup of apologists on parade: C.S. Lewis and John Polkinghorne.
• An unconsciously apt (?) reference to Jekyll and Hyde.
• And a concluding paragraph worth quoting:

“Easter celebrates new life and rebirth, and the beauty of it is that we can get a foretaste of that in the here and now as we experience a turning around and a new outlook on life. The ultimate outcome will be a transformed planet (literally heaven on earth) – something that the rest of the organic creation looks forward to, in a manner of speaking, with great anticipation.”

The World Tomorrow meets the Easter Bunny!

I wonder if Dennis, all those years ago, could have possibly imagined himself promoting an ecumenical “Son-rise service” in the nation's capital. And I wonder whether, next time he steps up on behalf of the Wellington churches, he might like to share the identity of the church of his choice.

Incredibly it's 3.30 and the power is still out. While the laptop still has some battery juice I'm going to shut down and throw digestive caution to the winds: off to find a flat white and a suitably gooey chocolate egg. Happy Easter!

Dinner with Herb

I am NOT responsible for the following video. All credit goes to the person (whose identity I don't know) who found this classic propaganda clip and added a new music soundtrack. Revel in the splendor of the Herbal table, the godly elegance of the furnishings and the priggishness of the carefully selected student guests. But don't just view it here - click across to K-Scribe's splendid, elegant, godly (but decidedly unpriggish) website for more.

Actually, I think the original version, with Herb plonking a Chopin etude (?) would be every bit as Monty Pythonesque...

UCG - wazzup?

Another interesting tidbit slightly adapted from Bill L in the comments section. Received info today that UCG treasurer Tom Kirkpatrick has tendered his resignation. Apparently this happened in December but has not yet been announced to UCG personnel. It allegedly happened when the Regional Pastors were in Cincy for a meeting where for some reason TK went ballistic with the RPs or some of them at least. Jim Franks is believed to have intervened and offered apologies. This, according to the report, further angered TK so he resigned. And his resignation was accepted. It officially takes effect end of fiscal year in June. So in the meantime TK still comes in to the office and does his work. So I would suppose that makes for an awkward, tense situation in the HO.
Perhaps a good opportunity to also move this item (same source) from the sidebar. It seems a letter has been sent to the elders in UCG regarding Aaron Dean. What sin according to UCG did Aaron commit? He spoke to an outside audience... other than one sanctioned by UCG officials. He is understood to be prohibited from speaking ANYWHERE for the next several months. And the report that I received is that some of the folks he spoke with are considering attending or have attended UCG because of his talk with them. Oh how typical!! When will they learn to stop shooting themselves in the foot???

Are these reports accurate? If so (and this is the point of repeating them here) they paint a highly dysfunctional portrait of life under the Kilough regime. (Wasn't Clyde promising to do a "Nehemiah" when he ascended to the presidency?) If not, let's hear about it. Comments, corrections and clarifications are welcome.

Redefining Morality UCG Style

The latest glossy issue of The Good News is out, and feature writer John Ross Schroeder introduces the keynote article with classic Spanky-speak:

Today the major English-speaking nations watch as a storm of problems draws ever nearer, a storm created by hostile forces that blurred and weakened their sense of morality. Does the Bible indicate where we will go from here?

Stirring stuff. But what about the non-English speakers John? The French, German, Dutch, Danes, Irish, Chinese, Lebanese, Swahili? Oh, sorry, they're not nearly as significant are they? That's because they're not subsumed into the racist doctrine of British Israelism (UCG Edition). Maybe that's their good fortune; after all whoever heard of morality problems in Copenhagen or Amsterdam?

And of course the article concludes with an offer of the UCG publication The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy. That thing should carry a mental health warning.

But to return to John's rhetorical question: "Does the Bible indicate where we will go from here?"

Short answer: no. The Bible doesn't mention "the major English-speaking nations." The reason is pretty simple; there were no English-speaking nations back then.

Yeah, but what about prophecy? Some folk just salivate at the thought that the Bible set out a road-map for the future in the long-ago.

People like former UCG minister Ronnie Weinland. Need one say more?

Here's what one scholar has to say on that subject:

[M]any people today associate prophecy with predicting the future. It is true that the messages that prophets carried often did bear on things about to happen, but to think of their messages as predictions is to distort their character. Rather, what prophets typically did was announce God's verdict or judgment, to be carried out soon, if not right away. Indeed, one of the most characteristic sorts of messages that prophets brought had an altogether legal ring to it, in which first the offending party's sin was announced and then God's punishment... he was reporting on a decision that had already been made, announcing the sentence just passed on high. (James Kugel, How to Read the Bible, 440)

It flatters our vanity (and in the case of BI strokes our ethnocentrism) to imagine that the Bible lays out history in advance with guess who at its centre. Morality is a universal issue, and the kind of nonsense that confuses it with ignorant speculative fantasies is - to suggest something John may never have thought of - just plain immoral.

The same but different

The journey many of us have experienced out of WCG is not all that different from those who've left other restrictive movements. A while back I read about a woman's struggle to leave the Exclusive Brethren, and my first reaction was "snap!"

But there do seem to be differences between the XCG gang and the rest - or is it just my narrow bias showing? Here's what I mean.

Name three splinters from Jehovah's Witnesses. (I can name just one off the top of my head.)

Name three splinters from Seventh-day Adventism. (No, COG7 doesn't count! I can name only two.)

Now name ten WCG splinters. No sweat! Only ten though? I can probably list twenty without coming up for breath...

Observation: Why is it that WCG has fractured so, well, prolifically? Surely there has to be a prize for this fecundity of asexual reproduction.

But wait, there's more.

Name a JW/SDA ex-member support site that looks anything like The Painful Truth? Or even an equivalent venting blog to AW? Name another group of sectarian "dissidents" that has produced anything remotely similar to the late John Trechak's brilliant Ambassador Report?

Observation: Ex-members of other groups usually leap online to push a doctrinal barrow. We have folk who do that of course - and with gusto - but as a group we also like to hang out and shoot spitballs for the sheer hell of it. The closest thing I can think of is recovering Scientologists.

Name a genuine biblical scholar - the sort with real qualifications - who has come out from the JWs? The Exclusive Brethren? Yet ex-WCG scholars include Lester Grabbe, James Tabor and the late Charles Dorothy, to name just three. Not bad for a sect that never grew much beyond 100k.

Observation: What explains that?

Now, finally, check out a Bible focussed website that runs those irritating "intelligent" Google ads and count up the representation from nutty WCG splinter ministries. Can anyone else even begin to compete?

Observation four: We may be tottering on the demographic cliff's edge, but it sure isn't for lack of exposure.

Just another disintegrating sect? Yep. But what factors explain the differences?

(On a truly depressing note, a check of Alexa web-rankings yesterday reveals that Weinland's the-end.com is currently the most viewed COG-related website, numbering 111,836 on the hit parade.)

Sabbatarian Patrick's Lutheran Charm

Jared Olar notes: I just noticed that this year Bob Thiel wasn't able to resist saying something about St. Patrick's Day. Back in March 2006 at Gary Scott's former XCG weblog, I shredded Bob Thiel's claims that St. Patrick was a proto-Armstrongist Sabbath-keeper, showing from St. Patrick's own words that he was a Trinitarian Catholic bishop (Google "Some Armstrongist Blarney" -- but you'll have to go to the cached pages). So the next year in March 2007, Bob Thiel "celebrated" St. Patrick's Day by complaining about St. Patrick being a pagan Trinitarian. But this year Bob is back to his previous pseudohistoricism -- St. Patrick and St. Columba and the Celtic Church in Scotland and Ireland were seventh-day Sabbatarians. (Don't be surprised if, as it was with his March 2007 anti-Patrick commentary, the historical sources he quotes -- well, actually he's just quoting another Armstrongist -- turn out to be misquotes and/or out-of-date scholarship.) Or maybe St. Patrick was a pagan Trinitarian Sabbath-keeper. . . .

One of Bob's sources (well, actually James McBride's sources, which Bob quotes) is interesting. James Moffatt is the guy behind the Moffatt Bible which bequeathed to us a peculiar fondness for calling God "the Eternal", and a top scholar in the creation of the 1952 Revised Standard Version. Is he misquoted?
One source James and Bob don't cite is Dugger & Dodd, where I first encountered the Sabbatarian Patrick legend (p.236) as a callow youth. Moffatt is naturally miles ahead of those "authorities", though I'm with Jared in agreeing that the whole thing seems totally shonky.

Also on the Patrick theme: The only official observance on the Lutheran liturgical calendar that diverges from Catholic/Anglican tradition is Reformation Sunday, and flicking through Evangelical Lutheran Worship I can confirm that March 17 indeed commemorates Patrick, missionary to Ireland. So where did the larrikins at Old Lutheran dredge up "Lutheran Charm Day"? There's got to be potential here for COGish adaptation of the church calendar... the possibilities are endless.

A favorite lie

Worth tracking down is the March 1 issue of New Scientist, with an enlightening article on those "missing links" our creationist brethren keep burbling on about.

"Yet the idea still persists that the fossil record is too patchy to provide good evidence of evolution. One reason for this is the influence of creationism. Foremost among their tactics is to distort or ignore the evidence for evolution; a favourite lie is "there are no transitional fossils". This is manifestly untrue."

The good news (which will never make the pages of The Good News) is that recently palaeontologists have struck back. Among the case studies highlighted in New Scientist:

• Velvet worms (linking arthropods to nematode worms)
• Lancelets (invertebrates on the journey to vertebrates)
• Fishibians (first cousins to those fish that crawled out onto the land in the Devonian)
• Synapsids (not mammals and not reptiles either...)
• Ceratopsians ("Of all the lies about transitional fossils told by creationists, none are as egregious as the claim that there are no intermediate forms among the dinosaurs... One striking example is the horned dinosaurs, or ceratopsians.")
• Rhinos ("All horses, tapirs and rhinos can be traced back to a common ancestor in the late Paleocene of Asia...")
• Giraffes (In the Miocene they all had short necks!)
• Ichthyosaurs (Lizard fish of the Mesozoic)
• Pinnipeds (Sea lions, walruses and seals descended from primitive bears - and there's a beautiful transitional fossil to prove it. Enaliarctos looked like a seal, but had long toes and claws)
• Manatees (there's a 50-million year old fossil manatee with four legs with feet.)

"Creationists simply have no answer for such irrefutable evidence."

Which explains all those brain-dead articles in the GN.

Preach it brother!

And ain't it the truth!

Wear this T-shirt design to Sabbath services and I guarantee you'll get noticed.

I can just see Lussenheide being escorted out of the building

;-)

Confronting Racist Hooey

Attempting to engage Dr Hoeh in meaningful dialog could be a challenge. Dr Hoeh was, as Ron Kelly observes, well... Dr Hoeh.

Hoeh was the brainiac behind much of what passed for theology in the HWA years. His doctorate was, like Meredith's, a joke, but he carried the bearing of an absent-minded scholar nevertheless. (I've been told that in later years he tried to drop the doctor title, painfully aware that it was an unearned pretension.) According to some accounts, it was Hoeh who flattered Armstrong into the role of "apostle": a rush of blood to the head that turned a dimwitted speculation into vicious dogma.

But Hoeh, who could at times appear a generous and tolerant soul, is also credited with systematizing the arcane nonsense of British-Israelism into a rigid system that injected virulent racism into the church. An arrogant intellectual confection for dotty Englishmen became - at least for some WCG ministers and members - the key distinctive of their faith. The identification was so close that government officials in New Zealand counted anyone who responded "British-Israel" as their religion on census night as Worldwide Church of God!

But, wonder of wonders, in his dotage Herman Hoeh appeared to convert to a form of "evangelical" Christianity, and added his imprimatur to the reformist agenda of the Tkach cabal.

So where did that leave such semi-canonical tomes as A Compendium of World History?

Correspondence between a Native American member, trying to make some sense of the tortuous path away from discrimination, and the architect of classic Armstrong doctrine, Herman L. Hoeh, is newly uploaded to Greg Doudna's site.

On a different tangent, David Wise, a member of LCG, is having a hard time with his employer, the Firestone tyre company, which has dug its heels in over holy days. Details here.

For what its worth, any good employer, IMHO, should be more than willing to accommodate the religious sensibilities of any good employee.

Rehab time

Pastor General Joe Tkach today announced that he was de-disfellowshipping Garner Ted Armstrong.

"Ted was a seriously misunderstood figure in our history," the WCG President-for-Life announced in a media conference held in a Glendora phone box. "He anticipated many of the changes we have subsequently made, and we have much to learn from him."

"So he screwed around," stated Michael Feazell, a senior official of the church, "so what? Now we're all crypto-Calvinists we understand that a moral lapse can't separate the elect from their eternal inheritance. We want to focus on the positive role Mr Ted Armstrong made over many years."

In a ceremony at the Glendora offices of the church, scheduled for March 17, a tribute to GTA is due to be unveiled - the Garner Ted Armstrong Memorial Birdbath. A sculpture shows Mr Armstrong holding two dice and a copy of Penthouse.

And then, as 10 years olds write at the end of improbable stories about ninja space monsters, I woke up!

Only to discover this story in the Daily Mail. Dear lord, how will Jared Olar react!

Something to give Melvin Rhodes prophetic palpitations?

Bob's Ph.D

From Bob Thiel's latest upload:

While I normally do not post corrections here to what blog posters say about the Living Church of God or me, today I thought I would comment on two I noted yesterday from a particular ”author” at a site that seems to bash the COGs (and no, not Gavin Rumney’s site this time).

Well, there's another nail in my reputation. But more interesting is the fact that Bob doesn't name the site he's taken umbrage at. Curious.

Anyway, to be fair to Bob, he's entitled to set the record straight. Here's what he says (in part):

I do have a Ph.D. and it is from the Union Institute & University. And Union is regionally accredited (the highest accepted accrediting standard in the United States for universities and colleges). I also have a Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California (which, of course, is also regionally accredited). I never was a student at Ambassador College. So to post that my academic credentials are from there is false.

And now it's my turn to set the record straight. I'm not "anti-COG" as such. A quick perusal of the recent posting on COG7 demonstrates that (or at least I'd have thought so). Or a check on what I've written about people like Pam Dewey. No Bob, not so much anti-COG as highly selective. Anti-hierarchic? Yes. Anti-manipulation? I hope so! Anti-junk theology? Guilty as charged. Anti-BI? Indubitably. I'd rather put it positively though: pro-critical thinking, pro-accountability...

It's just my opinion of course, but LCG appears to be hierarchic, manipulative and theologically challenged. But everything is relative, and compared to some other sects the Meredith faction is all sweetness and light.

Perhaps Bob himself might be construed as "anti-COG" for his bashing of all COG communities - other than LCG.

Caught by the camera is Bob in the company of the illustrious Dr Meredith (who, unlike Bob, has a shonky doctorate from you-know-where).

STP

The year is 1978, and the world is a different place.

No reality TV shows like Survivor Guatemala or Top Chef for starters. Paris Hilton is a building. Oh for the good old days!

But in the pocket universe of COGdom, dire events are afoot.

Garner Ted Armstrong is about to be out-Machiavellied by Stan the Man. The women of the WCG are days away from being declared whores if they use lipstick. The recently divorced apostle is about to declare a doctrine of Petrine primacy - making himself a type of pope. Spanky Meredith is destined to blow a foo-foo valve at Wayne Cole on the stage of the Ambassador Auditorium (put up them dukes) to cries of "shame! shame!"

And the STP would rise and fall before many of us had even registered that it was there.

The STP?

It was officially the Systematic Theology Project, but there were plenty of unofficial designations, including Slide Toward Protestantism.

As far as I know it never got beyond its published "first draft" before the reactionary elements in the church, freshly blooded from deposing GTA, clubbed it into a bloodless pulp.

You may have thought till now that the only reappearance of this document would be in the third resurrection. But fear not, gentle reader. Lo, after these many years, the original STP is yours to download. Be advised, we're talking about a hefty PDF file of 400 odd pages here (some odder than others) - not a booklet.

Thanks Bill!

Of course, it's not exactly riveting reading. Former Auckland pastor Jack [the Boot] Croucher claimed he never read it because it put him to sleep. Not enough CAPS and exclamation marks (!!!!) I guess.

But still, this is a glimpse of the WCG as it might have been. And if events had turned out differently, who knows how all our lives might have been affected.

Read an earlier post on the STP here.

March 18 and the Weinland Wind-Up

Bob Thiel notes, over on his blog, that February is now past and there's precious little out there to corroborate the Weinland fantasies.

Which is very true, though I'd add that there's an equally impressive track record of disconfirmation for Dr. Roderick C. Spanky's "three to five years" routine which, it seems, he's been blathering on about since the 1950s. I guess Math isn't his strong suit.

Ronnie, however, committed the cardinal sin of not hedging any bets. The End is datable. In a perverse way it makes him less a slimeball than the greasy prevaricators who run the larger tithe-farming operations.

But, as Alfred E. Neuman is famous for saying: "What me worry?"

Bob reminds us that, according to Weinland, the dread 1290 days of prophecy begins March 18. (The 1335 days, as previously reported here, supposedly began February 2.)

So, do you think Ron is worried at the apparent inability of the Eternal to fulfill his part of the Doomsday bargain? It's certainly not a polite thing for He Whose Name Is Faithful and True to fail to turn up on time for his own apocalypse.

Do you think his tithe payers might be having second thoughts?

In that March 18 also marks my birthday, I shall be specially alert to the import of the date this year. In fact, I'll probably have to consult with Dennis Diehl as to whether this "coincidence" gives me an inside running on being one of the Two Witnesses.

Now if only I knew where to pick up a designer sackcloth shirt...