1963 (Postscript)

Published in 1963, The Inside Story of the World Tomorrow Broadcast never again saw the light of day. No revisions, no reprints, no updates down the decades. That's probably understandable given the changes that quickly dated it. But Inside Story wasn't merely dignified by a slide into obscurity, it was officially withdrawn and the membership was commanded to throw away their copies. Don Billingsley certainly chucked his. On his COG-FF website he has posted a warning to the unwary.

It seems some people didn't get the memo.

It's a fate that, if Don has it right, was reserved for quite a number of other publications.

• Modern Dating (Garner Ted Armstrong, 1969). Really bad advice by a dude who certainly hadn't practiced what he preached.
• Divorce and Remarriage (1953). The justification for the unyielding doctrine that split families apart, but was later revoked.
• Marriage and Divorce. More of the same from 1973.
• The Plain Truth about Child Rearing (Garner Ted Armstrong, 1970 edition). A truly horrid approach to raising kids. (PDF here)
• The Real Jesus (Garner Ted Armstrong, 1972). Jesus recrafted to fit the WCG's paradigm. Later bloated out into Ted's first full length book and released just before he was booted out of his father's church for good. (PDF here)

Alas, these publications survived unto this very day. Herb may have imagined he had prophetic insight, but he didn't forsee the Internet. The embarrassingly inaccurate The Proof of the Bible (1958) was a special case as it was enormously popular. It was supposed to be killed off and all stock destroyed in 1972 but was allowed to quietly fade into oblivion instead. That story was covered in some detail in Ambassador Report. (It appears that this was yet another example of plagiarism with Herb basically rewriting a 1933 Seventh-day Adventist publication called Prophecy Speaks by Earle Albert Rowell. )

The reason these titles are still with us is the devotion of an enduring Armstrong remnant who believe they are still relevant, or perhaps they're just on a nostalgia trip. The reason many of us appreciate their efforts is a bit different, the documentation of a system that would rather not be remembered "warts and all".

Douglas Becker has thoughtfully transferred Inside Story into flipping book format, and it's already (fast work!) available. You either love or loathe this format and, in general, I'm decidedly on the 'loathe' side, but in this case, due to the smaller size of the pages, it works really well, giving the genuine booklet 'feel'. 

1963 (Part 3)

Moving right along...

Let's take a peek at the Herbaceous office back in 1963.

Nice.

"Now, at last, new executive offices have been completed for Mr. Armstrong and his son. They are very beautiful and modern - and afford a stunning view of the city of Pasadena with the Sierra Madre Mountains in the background... On the south end of the roof - just outside the main offices - is a terrace and sun-deck arrangement for sunning, visiting in the fresh air and table tennis. Many of you readers will be interested to learn that Mr. Armstrong is an avid athletic fan of many sports, but has found that table tennis - combined with much walking - suits his schedule and requirements to keep him in good physical condition for doing God's Work."

Herb was a ping-pong aficionado?

Even by today's standards, this was pretty swank. Not sure where the drinks cabinet was, but you can bet there was one. Rod assures us that Herb's office was bigger than Ted's, so all was right in the world.

Rod also assures us that the radio studio was where "Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Ted Armstrong spend many hours of labor in a grueling responsibility."

"First of all, let me say that there are many hours of preparation put into each broadcast! BUT - these hours are not necessarily put in just before or right at the time of making the broadcast. Rather, these are hours spent in earnest, personal prayer - fervent Bible study and meditation - the constant study of world news, and conditions, and alert thinking about how God's Word and the prophetic revelation of the Bible really affect and apply to the lives of us all in this twentieth century."

Translation: they winged it.

It's a great source for historical perspective. As the years went by the executive offices got bigger and the Bullgeschichte machine more outrageous, but the basic ingredients were all there in spades back in 1963.

You can download your own copy of Rod's "Inside Story" here.

1963 (Part 2)

Rod Meredith's references to Garner Ted Armstrong in Inside Story are intriguing.

"Later, God struck down Mr. Armstrong's two sons, Richard David and Garner Ted, and brought them to repentance and conversion. This is more significant than it may seem, because for many years it looked as if they might never be converted - but only continue to regard this as "Dad's religion."

Naughty boys.

"Garner Ted Armstrong surrendered to God and was changed by Him so completely that it amazed those of us here that had known him."

A somewhat back-handed compliment, and not entirely truthful (see chapter 6 of Marion McNair's book or the feature articles in the 1977 magazine edition of Ambassador Report). Ted was way off the rails, but now Rod generously deigns to give him the seal of approval. The passage smacks of a pat on the head by someone who regards himself as Ted's superior. The truth seems to be that while GTA was increasingly the voice of The World Tomorrow, had his by-line appear regularly in church publications with the nice office and the title of executive vice president, he was largely frozen out of the decision-making process, a situation that lasted from 1958 through till 1971. Rod - with the smaller office and less exalted title - was the more influential of the two by far.

Whatever else you can say about Rod, he was always ambitious. It's not hard to imagine that he was flummoxed at being pushed aside in the line of authority - on paper at least - by the upstart sons. Could there be some kind of subtext in Rod's encomium to Ted? Consider Rod's choice of words when describing GTA's office. "The decor of the room exhibits definitely masculine tones" (caption no. 2) and "Certain decorative features of his office reflect a definite masculine personality." (p.26, emphasis in original).

What is that all about? Nobody else is so described in the booklet.

"Mr. Ted Armstrong - as many of you may know - has an unusually wide range of interests and abilities in various sports and outdoor activities. When time permits, he is an excellent hunter, fisherman, and plays a fair amount of basketball, handball, golf and other sports." (p.27)

Which is all true. But no mention of Ted's skill in painting or his undoubted musical talent. Rod seems to be stressing Ted's macho nature, the masculine sportsman. It's almost as though Rod is trying to be reassuring. What's going on here? Given his predilections as a casonova, this hardly seems the buildup he needs.

To be continued.

1963 (Part 1)

I'm old enough to remember 1963, sort of. I was still in single digits back then and had never heard of Herbert Armstrong. It turns out that an out-of-town uncle was a PT subscriber at the time. He must have been one of the first in New Zealand. But of that I was blissfully ignorant, more interested in comics than much of anything else.

In 1963 the church put together a booklet for PT subscribers. You could call it a brag book. It was largely written by Rod Meredith and rejoiced in the title The Inside Story of the World Tomorrow Broadcast. It wasn't much of an "inside story" but it was pretty effective as PR by early nineteen sixties standards. I knew about the publication, but it had long since been withdrawn by the time I became interested. Reading it now is a bit like stepping into a time machine and peering back beyond the crises that exploded in the 1970s and defined my own experience. 1963 predates both the recently demolished Hall of Administration and the Ambassador Auditorium, the "peaceable kingdom" church seal had only just been adopted, Loma was in the land of the living and the Pasadena campus was still a comparatively small operation.

Meredith was, of course, just a young man, and Herb was at the height of his powers. The good and the great at "HQ" included such luminaries as Benjamin Rea, C. Paul Meredith (Rod's uncle), Raymond Cole, Jack Elliot, Charles Dorothy, Jon Hill, Al Portune, James Gott (husband of Beverly, Herb's daughter), Charles Hunting and Wayne Cole. Raised, praised and subsequently erased from institutional memory. The elder Meredith was always referred to as "Dr.", which looked impressive as a PT by-line, but in fact, his qualification was (I'm sure someone will correct me if I misremember) as a veterinarian.

Somebody decided that this booklet would be lavishly illustrated with photographs. Black and white of course, after all, this is 1963. There's "the majestic Italian Gardens", Ambassador Hall, the "elegant faculty dining room" and suchlike. Even a shot of some rather pokey "prayer booths". But what really caught my eye were the offices of Herb and Ted.

To be continued.

Is there a Christian Sabbath?

Many years ago the WCG published a booklet with the title "Which Day is the Christian Sabbath?"

Wrong question. Why? It just assumes there is such a thing as a Christian Sabbath, and once you've conceded that it's all downhill; off into the proof texts. When it comes to a Saturday/Sunday shootout, based on duelling with Bible texts alone, the Sabbatarians can make a very good case.

The problem is that there's a degree of dishonesty in this approach. One false trail is to assume that there is such a thing as a Christian Sabbath. Another is to imply that Christians who attend services on Sunday are doing so under the illusion that they're keeping the Sabbath command.

The idea that Sunday was the Christian Sabbath first occurred in 17th century England under the baneful influence of Calvinism and Presbyterianism. This was the genesis of Sunday Sabbatarianism and advocacy groups like the Lord's Day Observance Society. The early Adventists were seeded with these same Reformed assumptions. Most non-Calvinist churches teach that there is no divinely appointed day of rest required of Christians. It hasn't helped that Christians have occasionally referred to Sunday as their Sabbath either. This was simply appropriating a biblical term, not adopting a commandment which they regarded as abrogated.

Why Sunday then? Tradition and convenience. If pressed, they'll talk about a Sunday resurrection, but that's not a command, it's a precedent and a sanction. There's no concept in their theology of an obligatory pre-set twenty-four hour period of sacred time. Christians, under this view, sanctify time by worship, regardless of the day. Time isn't "pre-sanctified". It's an important distinction and one that most Saturday Sabbatarians seem totally unaware of.

It's also why most Christians, other than blue-stocking Presbyterians of the old school, have no qualms of conscience about visiting the mall on Sunday afternoon or going to a cafe or watching the big game. The hour of worship is special, but not the whole twenty-four hour period.

So it's appropriate to reframe the question. Is there a Christian Sabbath? A Jewish Sabbath, yes. A Saturday tradition in parts of the early church? Yes. Beyond that, if you want to argue for a Christian Sabbath - whether Saturday or Sunday - you have to do a lot better than leaping straight in with the 'Which Day?' proof texts.

Yesterday's Wonderful World Tomorrow... tickets expired

The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and Herbert will be God's right-hand man.

The Wonderful World Tomorrow: What It Will Be Like went through several editions. My 'favourite' is the original 96-page version which rolled off the presses way back in 1966. It begins...

Where will YOU be, ten years from now? You can know what is going to happen. In this booklet you are going to take an astonished glimpse into this world as it will be - in just ten or fifteen short years.

Astonished indeed, as a little mathematics demonstrates. 1966 plus ten brings us to 1976. Add on that 5-year safety margin and you're at 1981. Bear in mind that you'll need to subtract three and a half years for the Great Tribulation. Clearly time was of the essence.

It's GOING TO SOUND INCREDIBLE to you - yet it is SURE! This advance news of Tomorrow is accurate! It is as CERTAIN as the rising of tomorrow's sun! 

Incredible is understating it. That was fifty years ago.

The other interesting thing about the 1966 version is that it bears two names as joint authors, both Herbert W. Armstrong and his then anointed heir Garner Ted Armstrong.

Subsequent editions, beginning in 1973, airbrushed out the date-setting. Date setting? Who, us? And Ted quickly disappeared from the credits never to reappear.  In 1979 Everest House released a hardback version, and by 1982 it was back in booklet form, revised with a new cover.

(In 1999 Scott Lupo, a former member, wrote a paper entitled The Wonderful World Tomorrow: Herbert W. Armstrong's Vision of Life After the Apocalypse. It was subsequently published in the Journal of Millennial Studies, and is still available.)

But, of course, imitations were bound to follow. To mention just one, The World Ahead: What Will It Be Like? by the ever-original Roderick C. Meredith in 2008.

I'd venture to say that in 1970 Roger Whittaker had a better handle on the 'world tomorrow' than Herb, Ted and Rod put together.

Everybody talks about a new world in the morning
New world in the morning so they say
Now, I, myself don't talk about a new world in the morning
New world in the morning, that's today
And I can feel a new tomorrow comin' on
And I don't know why I have to make a song
Now everybody talks about a new world in the morning
New world in the morning takes so long
I met a man who had a dream he'd had since he was twenty
I met that man when he was eighty-one He said too many
folks just stand and wait until the mornin',
Don't they know tomorrow never comes
And he would feel a new tomorrow coming on
And when he'd smile his eyes would twinkle up in thought
Now, everybody talks about a new world in the morning
New world in the morning takes so long
And I can feel a new tomorrow coming on
And I don't know why I have to make a song
Now, everybody talks about a new world in the morning
New world in the morning takes so long.

More perceptive by far, you could whistle or hum along, and he didn't need 96 pages to say it.

BI and the demonisation of Germany

The Armstrong version of British Israelism incorporated more than a jingoism based on the hopeful fiction that America and Britain were the favourite sons of prophecy, the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim respectively. There was a devious pretender in the European bloodline. The French might be Reuben and the Dutch Zebulon, lesser tribes but Israelites nonetheless. However, the Germans were decidedly non-Israelite, descended from the warlike ancient Assyrians and predestined to rise once again to enslave their neighbours. In other words, the bad guys.

All of this is nonsense of course, but Armstrong confidently taught it - whipping up a fear of the End Times - and many of his followers still continue in that delusion. It might have been a crowd pleaser in the wake of two world wars, but times have changed. Most COGs now relegate the German connection to the deeper waters of prophecy, still trotting out the proof texts when required, but preferring not to talk about it too openly. Not so the Modesto-based Church of God EIM and its leading spokesman Steven LeBlanc.

LeBlanc has swallowed the BI myth hook, line and sinker and regurgitated the anti-German claims in a booklet called Germany & Prophecy.

Over more than fifty pages LeBlanc pounds home his message. We have been very, very naughty. God is very, very angry. God (who obviously lacks much imagination in choosing such a brutal strategy) is going to send the nasty Germans to punish us. You have been warned.

BI believers loudly proclaim that their pet doctrine isn't racist, oh my goodness no. Reading through LeBlanc's booklet you might think otherwise. The racism here isn't however based on colour, it's based on a wretched misrepresentation of national origins.

The Biblical genealogy shows the ancestor of the great majority of Germans and Austrians (modern-day descendants of the Assyrians) is Asshur, the grandson of Noah through Shem (Genesis 10:22). The Assyrian Empire developed from the city-state of Assur (named for Asshur, a son of Shem – one of Noah’s three sons – see Genesis 10:1, 22). Asshur was a brother of Arphaxad, an ancestor of Abraham, who was the father of the Hebrews (Genesis 11:10–26). Most of the ancient Assyrians eventually moved westward from the Bible lands into Europe. (p.44)

Once you accept that, you can then co-opt ancient biblical passages as prophecies which, by clicking your heels together and wishing hard, can be applied to today.

The Bible states that God will use the end-time German-led Beast power as a “rod” to punish the United States, Britain, and much of northwestern Europe.

I'm glad he left New Zealand and Australia out of it. Mind you, I think that was probably just an oversight.

Anciently, God used Assyria as “the rod of (His) anger” to conquer and deport the rebellious house of Israel in 721 B.C (II Kings 17:6). Later, God used Babylon as His tool to conquer the sinful house of Judah and to take them captive (Jeremiah 20:4). These punishments serve as types of the end-time punishments that will fall upon the United States and Britain. Notice the prophecy in Hosea 11:5: “…But the Assyrian shall be his king because they refused to repent.” Hosea 9:3 reveals that Britain will actually be conquered by Germany and taken into captivity before Christ returns. (p.52)

I'm not sure exactly where those multiple millions of captive people would be taken to. Germany has enough logistical difficulty just taking in refugees from Syria at the moment. But why let that spoil LeBlanc's turgid fantasy?

Yet BI is still a doctrinal distinctive in most of the COGs, firmly attached to a colourful but totally wrong-headed reading of prophecy. Can you think of one such group (exempting GCI and CoG7) which isn't still invested in this nightmare eschatology?

The problem for LeBlanc - along with every other COG that holds to the Beast Power German invasion scenario - is that it's just not credible. Not on any level, genetic, biblical, historical or realpolitik. More than that, it's laughable.

It's a ticket to oblivion.

Man's Awesome Destiny - a response to Ian Boyne

Ian Boyne is one of the most approachable and thoughtful advocates for Armstrongism today (he refers to it Reformed Armstrongism). I really appreciate his willingness to engage those of us who are of a more jaundiced disposition, something which is in my experience extremely rare. Even when the language on this side of the fence gets overly strident, Ian seems to maintain his composure. He serves in one of the more benign COGs, the Church of God International, a movement with which I was once briefly associated myself "in the high and far-off times". Moreover, Ian is widely read in a way that is quite exceptional for COG ministers.

Ian recently issued something of a challenge. The gist of it was - and I hope I'm getting this right - that the shining thread that inspires the followers of Herbert Armstrong today isn't BI, but the concept of human destiny in the family of God. Here we find purpose and direction for our lives.

"[Herbert Armstrong] taught the glorious truth not found in any New Covenant church that all saved human beings of ALL RACES would become, equally, God beings after the millennium and the Great White Throne judgment. If you want to see a robust defense of that doctrine, I invite you to read my short booklet online Man's Awesome Destiny... It was published by CGI [and it] does not regurgitate HWA's Why Were You Born. I would be gleeful if Byker Bob, Gavin or Gary would read and critique it. I would be over the moon!"

The booklet can be found in PDF format here. I don't intend to go through it in detail, so doubt Ian will get all the way to the moon on this trip, but am happy to offer a few comments. I confess that it was this WCG teaching, certainly not BI, that appealed most to my teenage self, a real contrast to the rather dry trinitarianism that was drummed in during Lutheran confirmation classes (using a text with the magnificent title Catechetical Helps).

Right at the outset let's put the idea of theosis on the table. "Theosis is the understanding that human beings can have real union with God, and so become like God to such a degree that we participate in the divine nature" (Mark Shuttleworth). This is an entirely legitimate understanding of human destiny for those in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. You could argue that Armstrong adopted this position, then ran off with it adding in his own unique spin, but I think it's more likely that he simply adapted parts of Mormon doctrine. But regardless, the idea that humans can become divine isn't in itself such a big issue.

Ian's booklet delves into apologetics quite quickly, discussing "the Anthropic Principle" (I'm not sure why he capitalises it). The idea is that everything in the universe is purpose-built for life. It's an expansion of "the Goldilocks principle" (that planet earth is designed to be "just right" for humanity). Ian states, "The evidence for it is simply overwhelming." Not so overwhelming, though, that it isn't highly contested. The relevance of this to the core argument Ian is proposing seems a bit tangential to me. I guess the reason for introducing it into the discussion is to demonstrate that a wonderful human destiny is indicated by intelligent design. I'm of the opinion that there is a certain circularity to this line of thinking, but what do I know? If you're interested, there's a much smarter discussion of the anthropic principle than I could ever offer over at the University of Oregon website.

Ian loses me, though, when he makes an impassioned call for his readers to drop to their knees: "Could you please, at this point, stop reading and pray... Conviction of truth comes through the Holy Spirit... Pray now for God's divine guidance on this subject." Well, okay, but I don't think this necessarily bolsters his case. We all know people who pray an awful lot but still believe all kinds of nonsense.

For some of us the statement "If Jesus is not God, then man cannot be God" rather ruins the argument. WCG always had a very mixed Christology, reaching a crescendo of confusion with Ted Armstrong's The Real Jesus, and I'd personally want to step away from any full-blown binitarianism. I'm not saying that Ian is wrong, only that this logic only works from a certain perspective. Former Ambassador College faculty member Sir Anthony Buzzard plays the game equally well and confidently arrives at a type of biblical unitarianism (see for example The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound, co-authored with former WCG evangelist Charles Hunting) .

Ian rolls out a selection of texts to bolster his case, as you'd expect. I note that he includes 1 Peter ("In 1 Peter 5:10 we have the unmistakable words from the pen of inspiration") and Colossians. The trouble is that Colossians is not counted among the authentic letters of Paul, nor 1 Peter regarded as from the hand of Peter. At best they form a second line of defense in any credible academic discussion. During my studies, I remember being assigned a very thick textbook on the Ephesian church (Paul Trebilco's The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius) in which the author studiously avoided using the book of Ephesians because of its contested authorship. Curated proof texts of this sort are inadequate to a serious discourse, something I expect Ian would agree with in discussing the Buzzard and Hunting book. I like the fact that Ian includes a short discussion of 'weak texts' which don't support the weight of the argument.

To summarise, Man's Awesome Destiny is an interesting and in some respects quite original defense of the God Family doctrine. Ian distances himself from the more extreme statements, but I'm of the view that he weakens his argument at several points exactly where he seeks to strengthen it. If we were discussing a non-trinitarian understanding of theosis, one not intermixed with extraneous elements and rhetorical flourishes, then I might be prepared to concede a point here and there.

You can judge the merits of Ian's booklet for yourself. As for me, I suspect that the real meaning of life lies in the meaning we bring to life.


(Update: clarification added in the paragraph about 1 Peter).

"The Most Significant Book of this Century"

British Israelism is surreal in and of itself, but the hard sell, the 'talking up' that accompanies it is, well, just bizarre. Former ad man Herbert Armstrong pulled out all the stops. He took an almost forgotten 60-year-old book and essentially rewrote it, without a word of credit, republishing it as his own. What he added were a series of over-the-top claims and predictions. Those claims were meant seriously and were taken seriously by his followers. It's incredible that some people even now still think he was essentially right.

This article was written several years ago but has not appeared here before.

***

It seemed every time Herbert Armstrong wrote a book, he lauded it as the most important ever written. The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy, issued in 1967 and later retitled The United States and Britain in Prophecy, ran true to form. Plagiarized from a turn of the century British-Israel classic, J.H.Allen's Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright, this volume contained some brash predictions.

To put it in its context, in 1967 Armstrong was anticipating the "Great Tribulation" just around the corner. 1972 was to be the beginning of the end. 1975 was the anticipated year of Christ's return. This little bit of date setting was the result of, among other things, his teaching on something he called "19-year time cycles". Simply put, he was convinced God had given him two 19 year periods to preach a warning message before history came crashing to a close. This was a distinctive Armstrong doctrine, unlike the tortured logic he used to "prove" that the United States was actually the tribe of Manasseh and Britain the tribe of Ephraim (he simply lifted those elements straight out of Allen's book). But 19-year time cycles? That was a uniquely Armstrong flourish.

Herbert Armstrong would later attempt to dig his way out of accountability for his "prediction addiction", claiming he never set dates and was just overly enthusiastic. But the embarrassing statements in the 1967 edition were there for all to see. Needless to say, the offending bits were laundered out of subsequent editions.

Here then are some choice bits from the introductory sections of that volume.