The other "Watch"

Ambassador Watch and Twenty-first Century Watch. Not to be confused.

The latter is the quarterly rag produced by the remnants of the Holy Family, the Armstrongs; namely Mark, grandson of Herb and son of Ted.

The Living Armstrongism blog describes the MA style as "venomous, misanthropic invective". I completely agree. MA's writing drips with bitterness and stereotyping. It's hard to imagine anything less likely to reflect the sermon on the mount. It's a loveless message that owes more to nationalistic exceptionalism and loathing of progressive views than anything you'd identify with the teachings of Jesus.

When it comes to political invective, this Watch leaves little to the imagination. MA and his colleagues just spew it forth. If CGI is the slightly brighter side of Armstrongism, ICG - the gloriously misnamed Intercontinental Church of God (which seems to be a pet poodle sect tied to Mark Armstrong's Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association) is a bilious cul de sac.

TFCW has an editorial policy wrapped up in misanthropic and shallow readings of Bible passages. In the latest issue:

• MA has a hernia over "the Green solution to terror". Hint: Green isn't a good word in the Armstrong vocabulary.
• James Ricks provides a Bible Study (??) on the perils of socialism. How seriously you take a guy who thinks Karl Marx is spelled Carl Marx I'm not sure.
• Michael Armstrong (another member of the Holy Family?) postures as an expert on Venezuela. 
• Garner Ted Armstrong is exhumed once again with an article on heaven.
• MA is back to fire spitballs at the pope over his willingness to engage in dialogue with an Islamic leader.
• The other features seem to be lifted from various politically agreeable sources.

Then there's a selection of wheedling letters from like-minded souls.

Dear Mr. Armstrong,
Praise God for your grandfather, your Dad, and you! The USA needs more of your kind. Thank you so much for this information. I agree one hundred percent!

I can think of only one reason to download this drivel... simply to keep one's disgust fresh.

Welcome "elite intellectuals"

"The idea that the western nations on earth today came from the descendants of the sons of Jacob whose name God changed to Israel is something that the elite intellectuals not only deny, but condemn." 

Mark Armstrong.


Mark Armstrong, son of Ted and grandson of Herb, is an amazingly insightful commentator, as we all know. Somewhere, in an alternate universe, he's sitting in the big chair in an undemolished Hall of Administration, presiding over an unreconstructed Worldwide Church of God. That's the universe where Ted managed to oust Stan Rader and sideline Rod Meredith before the effluent valve blew in 1978. I imagine Mark, in that parallel reality, is ably backed up by the head of the Ambassador College theology department, Professor Robert Thiel, PhD., ThD. Joe Tkach is one of the deacons who hands out bulletin sheets for Auditorium AM services.

But back to Earth 1. Here Mark is holed up in East Texas, glowering out at the world from his ludicrously named 'intercontinental' bunker. It's a threatening world out there, what with people rabbiting on about global warming (what nonsense!), extending health care to those previously unable to afford it (socialism!) and the shameful travesty of a "black president". That's without even mentioning those nasty homosexuals (which Mark does, again, and again and again) who should, in any right and decent society, be tarred and feathered before being railroaded off to a gulag in Alaska.

But, here's the clincher, and I know we all will find this hard to grasp brethren: there are "elite intellectuals" out there who don't believe in BI! It gets worse (another exclamation mark needed)! These people actually condemn BI! They think it's (gasp!) racist!

No, I wouldn't make this stuff up (except for the alternate timeline of course, but then again, who knows?) Mark has once again risked rupturing his spleen in his latest Trump-friendly missive to the Intercontinentalites... hmm, maybe it would be more grammatical to say "missive to the incontinent". Whatever.

Of course, you have to discount all those articles in the Plain Truth that seemed to point to human-influenced weather calamities. And probably best to ignore those stories about Ted and his zipper problems (let alone the mention of a young Ted cruising the streets of LA for a 'manly encounter' - as recounted in Broadway to Armageddon). The important thing here, brethren, is that Mark has unknowingly identified many AW readers as "elite intellectuals".

I wonder if we can apply for a signed certificate...

Political neutrality, Armstrong style

Two excerpts from Mark Armstrong's March 11 Weekly Update.

We're not about to try to tell anyone who to vote for or who not to. We can only pray to God for the peace and safety of the United States in a time where vicious enemies have been strengthened and we've been systematically invaded by people with no respect for our traditions or laws. Thanks to the weak and/or intentionally wrongheaded "leadership" of recent years, many of them will actually be voting in the upcoming elections! Maybe you saw the caucus from the environs of Minneapolis, Minnesota a couple of weeks ago where the entire meeting was conducted in a Somali dialect. That can be only one of many examples of this type of thing going on all across the United States, in some language other than English. It's an outrage.

As we've said numerous times before, Western civilization is under attack. Not only from the Muslim hordes and their murderous religion, but by its own leaders. It has shaped up in Europe, and to a lesser degree in the United States, that if you're not on board in support of "multiculturalism," socialist redistribution and the idiotic theory of man-made global warming, you are dangerous. Rejection of that philosophy is taking hold across Europe and leading inexorably toward political upheaval. 

Yup, no clues there about which way Mark leans.

Is this the Worst COG Magazine?

Stuck away in my files are the two earliest issues of Twentieth Century Watch, the preview issue and vol. 1, no. 1. (May/June 1980). It was supposed to become a credible rival to The Plain Truth. The publisher is listed as the Church of God, International, and the staff box includes names like Brian Knowles, Ronald Dart, David Antion, Mark Kellner, James McBride and, naturally, members of the holy family; GTA (Editor-in-Chief), Mark (News Bureau), Matthew (Graphics) and David (Photography).

At some stage, Ted apparently wised up and the ownership of the magazine was transferred to the Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association, a separate entity. When Ted was finally booted from CGI, the magazine went with him. These days the title is Twenty-first Century Watch, and it's still churned out four times a year under the direction of Mark Armstrong. Any attempt at balance seems to have been abandoned long ago, and the strident right-wing rhetoric more than matches the extremes of The Philadelphia Trumpet. Mark Armstrong clearly wears his politics on his sleeve and feels that bilious venting is somehow his religious duty.

Politically skewed articles in this issue concern the Iran deal, the Black Lives Matter movement, the 'myth' of the moderate Moslem and climate change. No surprises there. More conventional articles deal with the Sabbath (regurgitated from an old Ted Armstrong article) and Bible Study.

The circulation isn't stated, presumably this magazine has a very limited influence compared to those of the larger COGs. The amateur nature of operations at the GTAEA is indicated by the back page on the PDF where someone simply took a heavy black marker to a mailing label.

The PDF is available to download

The Angry Armstrong

Why is Mark Armstrong, widely overlooked scion of the Armstrong dynasty, so angry? His February 19 letter to members and supporters is a near-apoplectic Tea Party rant.

We've got a president whose greatest accomplishments are to bolster the worst regimes on earth, at great danger to our national security and that of our allies.  Any hope of a collapse in the brutal, abusive regime in Iran can be forgotten on account of the nuclear "deal" struck by the president and his haughty Secretary of State.  Iran is already drawing on the hundred billion dollars that was frozen by sanctions, exporting oil and working trade deals all over Europe.  They've got hidden nuclear installations the UN's IAEA has never toured, and satellite photos seem to show an area believed to be used for testing to have been razed and completely paved over. 

Despite the ridiculous one-sided "deal," Iran remains belligerent toward America and routinely threatens Israel with annihilation.  All the while they are violating the "terms" of the arrangement, knowing that our president will not do anything to pull the plug on one of the only things he can point to as an "accomplishment." Iran is also going to great pains to conduct all their business in other currencies, avoiding use of the U. S. dollar in their transactions.  It is a trend that seems to have gained traction in the Far East as well.  China has reportedly begun to conduct much of its business in other currencies, cutting the dollar out of most of its transactions.  

Meanwhile our anti-American president is busy boosting the communist regime of the Castros in Cuba, agreeing to a swarm of international flights to and from Havana in addition to setting up a U. S. embassy there and allowing one of theirs in Washington D.C.  What's the meaning of that?  To help the Cuban people, as he's claimed?  None of this is going to help the Cuban people!  Their government controls everything, there is no private enterprise or ownership, and dissent is met with long prison sentences under the most deplorable of conditions.  How will Obama's friendship change any of that?  How will it change for the Iranian people?

Our anti-American president is the biggest supporter of "gay" nonsense to ever come along.  Even the Clintons didn't stoop to these depths until recently.  Or at least Bill didn't, near as we can tell.  But that's a whole other can of worms.

That's just a sample. Read the whole incontinent tirade here (but do it before Friday when his next screed replaces it).

Last I heard, Mark was not an ordained minister of his father's last (and least) sect, the Intercontinental Church of God, but being of the anointed bloodline he seems to act like the owner-operator. I guess he pays himself accordingly.

Not good for your blood pressure, Mark. You're so far along the "grumpy old git" continuum that you're in imminent danger of falling off the edge. "Our anti-American president"? You're entitled to your WND wingnut views, of course, but whatever happened to 'respect for the office' and the democratic will of the people? And those derogatives; "homo" and "tranny" at the end of your epistle (at first I thought you were referring to old-fashioned radios) are not signs of a class act. Loutish is the term that springs to mind.

That he gets away with this probably indicates the mentality of the folk who choose to remain with the ICG. Mark makes Rod Meredith look politically correct.

Chipper calls a Foul

And Horace begat Herbert, and Herbert begat Ted, and Ted begat Mark...

What would Great Granddaddy Armstrong, a moderate Quaker, have made of his son, grandson and great grandson's religious entrepreneurial skills? We'll never know.

But it seems Mark “Chip off the Old Block” Armstrong has some thoughts about his grandcestors. Here's what he wrote recently.

False prophets and dangerous “holy men” are emerging in greater frequency these days. And now as bad as it hurts to recognize it, for the deception falls closer to home, there are several church leaders who parade the likeness, or their purported previous connection to my Grandfather, Herbert W. Armstrong as justification to administer yet another type of theocracy and systematic brainwashing over their followers. Some have even claimed divine authority and taken divine titles upon themselves to demand absolute, unquestioning loyalty and obedience from their followers. This is, I believe, a very frightening and dangerous development. My Grandfather would never have approved of many of the things that have been said and done in his name.

It reminds me of the Jim Jones tragedy. Jones, who claimed direct communication with God, forced about one thousand followers to drink poisoned Cool Aid. It was a hideous disaster that should forever serve as a stark lesson.

You’ll also remember the terrible outcome of the David Koresh movement.

The prospect that my Grandfather’s legacy might be used to foster a cult of “man worship” is contrary to everything he stood for. It is contrary to everything we stand for, and contrary to what my Dad, Garner Ted Armstrong, taught. “Never check your brains at the door,” my Dad said many times. We are free moral agents with God’s Word as our guide. Any time someone begins to exalt himself above the Word of God, or twist scripture to elevate himself to the level of divine authority, you had better think twice. No, you’d better run!

If you look down through history, or look at the incredible corruption, treachery and bloodshed that has been perpetrated under the supposedly “divine authority” of those who claimed the “primacy,” it should be a chilling and lasting reminder.

As my Grandfather and my Dad faithfully taught the acknowledgement and honor only to Jesus Christ, so we still do the same today. My Dad’s book The Real Jesus has had a profound effect on most who have read it. That’s because it showed, from the Bible, that Jesus was a man’s man, contrary to the effeminate and strange way he has been portrayed by the mainstream “Christian” organizations. The truth, thankfully, is pretty plain and straightforward. The laws of God stand regardless of man’s attempts to change them, and regardless of any man’s, or organization’s attempt to enforce them. It is not up to man to make God’s judgments. It is not any man’s place to inflict punishments on anyone who fails to live up to God’s standards or some man’s interpretations of those standards, for that matter.

This organization, the Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association, will never engage in “authoritarian” pronouncements or make demands upon anyone. When I see the Armstrong name being used for such purposes it makes me sick. And I fear for people who had such great admiration for my Granddad, that they would give their minds over to someone who claims to speak for him.

The actual apostles, who were taught by Jesus Christ Himself, warned against men who would claim divine authority and said, as did the Apostle Paul in II Corinthians 1:24, that even the apostles themselves did not have “dominion” over the people’s faith, but were to be helpers of their joy. Look it up and read it yourself. It’s hard to find either much joy or any truth in the whacked-out pronouncements of today’s weird “holy men.”

We can be grateful that Chipper has publicly distanced himself from the tactics of Flurry et al. And there are some things in what he writes that many of us might utter an 'amen' to. Yet the fact remains that Grandpappy and Dad were ruthless manipulators par excellence. Mark's attempt to portray them as something else defies the facts. Is there any splinter group that doesn't require their members to “check your brains at the door”? Maybe I've missed something, but the Age of Enlightenment seems to have passed COGdom in a wide detour.

Mark Armstrong's assurances are welcome, but not particularly relevant. ICG is a blip on the landscape, a minor group which is irrelevant to most of Armstrong's inheritors. The politics of governance in ICG is hardly all sweetness and light either, the tiny group has been ravaged and torn under Chipper's own leadership; hardly the high moral ground.

(To suggest Ted's laughably facile book, The Real Jesus, had a "profound effect" is debatable, unless the effect was to misinform or misrepresent. The Armstrong Jesus was always a crude caricature, best suited for comic books rather than historiography.)

We all want to think well of our forebears, but reality can be cruel. While Mark Armstrong is still sponging a buck out of his father's reputation, it is scarcely credible when he summons a bowl of water to wash his hands in denial of the past.