Issue
Nine - June 21, 2002
Armstrong-influenced cult leader
convicted: The Associated Press carried the story
of Jacques Robidoux's conviction far beyond a Massachusetts
courtroom this week. Although the case has had major
coverage, few realized that The Body, the cult
which Robidoux belongs to, is an offshoot of sorts from the
Worldwide Church of God, and that sect founder Roland
Robidoux, Jacques's father, was once a deacon in the
WCG.
Jacques
Robidoux (pictured) was convicted of first-degree murder
and sentenced to life in prison without parole. His infant
son, Samuel, died in 1999, within three days of his first
birthday. Robidoux claimed his sister had received a vision
from God telling the couple to stop feeding the baby solid
food.
The Body (also known as
the Attleboro Sect), like the WCG of past years, rejects
modern medicine and government. Robidoux believed Samuel's
misery was a test from Satan, and was expecting a
miracle.
Samuel's mother, Karen
Robidoux faces trial later in the year on charges of
second-degree murder. Jacques' sister faces trial as an
accessory.
From the February 6 MD
Update:
The Attleboro
Sect: The name
Robidoux sometimes still surfaces when WCG splinter
groups are discussed. Roland Robidoux left the Worldwide
Church of God in 1976. Over the years it has transformed
into a bizarre mind-control cult.
Driving to Mass
in North Attleboro one Sunday morning in the early
1970s, Joseph Roland Robidoux, a door-to-door salesman
and lifelong Catholic, turned on his car radio and
unknowingly changed his life.
Crackling over
the AM band came a message from Herbert W. Armstrong's
Radio Church of God, beckoning listeners to worship in
his church, the one true religion, where believers
actually lived what they preached.
That was the
beginning, Robidoux would tell his children years later
- a glorious example of how everything happens for a
reason. It would take years for the full transformation
to take place, before he would isolate his family and
followers to the point that they burned photo albums,
shunned eyeglasses, stopped cutting their hair, and
relied exclusively on prayer for everything from
healing the sick to bringing gasoline for empty tanks.
It would be decades before the sect he created to reach
a higher ground would crash in a tangle of murder
charges, before two of his grandsons were dead,
including one who allegedly starved to death three days
before his first birthday...
Unlike more recent
splinter groups, the Attleboro sect (also known as "the
Body") makes no effort to attract new members, and has
sunk below the "radar level" of most WCG watchers.
Despite this the group is still around, and is widely
regarded as extremely dangerous. Those interested might
like to check out... the material on
The Apologetics Index.
Combined
Pentecost services:
WCG's Pasadena congregation wasn't the only one to break
the mold for Pentecost 2002. The Australian WN
reports:
Invercargill and
Hamilton, New Zealand, brethren joined in combined
services with other denominations for Pentecost this
year... In Hamilton, all the churches that use the
Fairfield Baptist Church (which we use on Saturdays)
met together...
MD writer Gavin Rumney
is a former member of both congregations, and recollects
that Invercargill was (and still is) probably the smallest
of the WCG's preaching outposts in New Zealand, having only
6 adult members during his time there (it may also be the
most Southerly - there's little but ocean between
Invercargill and Antarctica.)
Unlike Pasadena,
however, it seems the Kiwi members knew that Pentecost,
calculated by either the standard Christian formula or the
COG way, falls on a Sunday rather than a
Saturday.
Question Time
with Den: From the WCG Pasadena church
notices:
"Church Meeting
on June 15 - We invite everyone to join us for a Question
and Answer Congregational Meeting on June 15, at 12:15
p.m. in the Sanctuary. We encourage questions and
discussion regarding the vision, mission, ministry
opportunities and challenges for our congregation. Please
feel free to write your questions down and submit them to
your pastor today or throughout the
week."
The announcement led to
some interesting discussion on the JLF forum.
WRITE DOWN your
questions and submit them, eh? I'm torn between two
thoughts on this:
1> Better to
write down the question and submit it somewhat
anonymously, so the Pastor doesn't come to
deordain/disfellowship you. Or....
2> Why not
have an open forum where people can speak publicly? If
lay Catholics could do it in Dallas, without fear of
retribution....
(Given WCG
history, and what reportedly is happening in Pasadena
now, option 1 might be best for all.)
Another contributor
wrote:
I have very close
friends still in the WCG and their pastor WILL NOT ALLOW
anonymous questions, questionnaires and such... I was
fully involved with the "new" WCG and knew the way the
wind was blowing on that one. Forget hard questions
especially in a public forum. That was considered at
least stirring the pot and at most
divisive.
Despite the fact
that some have said it is a NEW, OPEN WCG where you can
speak you mind and question things ... guess
again.
This isn't second
hand information I can speak from first hand experience
and the experiencees of the many friends and contacts I
have there.
So how did the meeting
go? We'd love to hear from anyone who
attended.
A Flurry
Testimonial: An ex-member recently posted the
following letter to the Flurry Yahoo group.
For 10 years I
sat in services hearing about how the PCG was the only
way to God and that any rebel that left would go in to
the tribulation and possibly the lake of fire. Our
local minister came right over when my husband called
saying he needed to speak to him about some things.
The minister had no answers for any of our questions and
actually agreed with a lot of our concerns. At that
time my husband told the minister that he just wanted to
sit home for awhile so he could figure out what he wanted
to do. He wanted an open door to go back to the
PCG. That is the way we left it. It has been
over 6 months ago and we have not had one call or contact
from any PCG members outside of our family (who avoid us
as much as possible). Our family members got
sympathy cards from our PCG friends after we left - you
would have thought we died. If they truly believe
we are going into the tribulation and the lake of fire
and if they truly love us wouldn't they make every effort
to help us understand our questions? We had the
exact same experience when we quit the
WCG.
In addition to
that, I have seen several young women with small children
die in the WCG/PCG because they refused medical
treatment. Is that loving to leave a child
motherless? I have known several PCG/WCG
acquaintances to commit suicide, some of them could have
been helped through proper counseling and/or
medication. The PCG/WCG taught if you had problems
it was your fault because you were not doing something
right. I heard Flurry say that those people who
question him being "That Prophet" just do not know
God. Is that loving for a church to put all that
blame and guilt on the church members and not take any
responsibility?
I grew up in the
WCG having nightmares of the tribulation, feeling I
wasn't worthy of God's love, fearful, thinking I would
never grow to be an adult, get married, have a family,
have a job. Fearful if I got sick I would die
because I didn't have enough faith and I wouldn't be
taken to a doctor. Is it loving to make a child,
who has no concept of God, sit through sermons preached
to adults about the horrors of the tribulation and that
they had better straighten up or they wouldn't make it in
to God's Kingdom. I was one of those children
sitting through the HWA years of getting the church back
on track. People who come in to the WCG/PCG as
adults already have preconceived ideas about God but it
is a different experience for a child who has no ideas
about God. I feel so bad for the children growing
up in the PCG because I know that they are suffering the
same as I did.
Of course, I can
only speak for myself but by talking to others who grew
up in the WCG I don't think my experiences are
unique. I find myself, now middle aged, still
struggling with the scars of growing up in the WCG and my
10 adult years in the PCG. There is no love in the
PCG and there wasn't any in the WCG. The
reason I know is because I lived through it and after all
these years I finally do know what love is and I didn't
learn about it at church.
Flurry's Pet
Rock, Part 2: From a posting on The
Painful Truth board this week.
Even though June
is halfway over, we finally got the Royal Vision May/June
issue.
The greetings
page from Flurry is about how they found the "prayer
rock" that HWA used when he first started his campaigns.
It was located on some farm, and the owner let them have
it. Flurry is besides himself with excitement over
getting this rock and the fact that HWA prayed over it
all those years ago. They plan to display the rock at
their college to "remind all of us of the power of prayer
to our spiritual Rock!"
Flurry - "It is
the most inspiring story in this end
time."
Get outta
here!
Herb's Word of
Prophecy: While George Orwell wrote
1984, it was Herbert W. Armstrong who leapt ahead
by 9 years to pen the uncanny prophetic masterpiece
1975 in Prophecy.
YOUR own future is
laid bare, now, in prophecy! The curtain of the
future is drawn back.
Prophecies that were
closed and sealed tight now stand REVEALED. This
mystifying, neglected third of the Bible now becomes
plain. Mysteries of God, never before understood, now
become crystal-clear. God's own time for this revealing
has come. The KEYS that locked the future have been
found.
But what is actually
going to happen is not what the world
expects!
Maybe
so. But it certainly wasn't what Herb was expecting
either! The Great Tribulation didn't arrive in 1972
and Christ didn't return on his mission to break the
kneecaps of the recalcitrant ("every knee SHALL bow!") in
1975. But weren't those illustrations (by WCG Elder and Mad
magazine artist Basil Wolverton) something else! The
caption to the one above (click on the thumbnail)
reads:
During the coming
famines and disease epidemics, and during the Great
Tribulation, with its fiendish tortures, people will die
so rapidly that mass burials will take place. Here you
see thousands of bodies being buried in a
ravine.
Now those unlucky souls
who never got to read this timeless classic can indulge
themselves with
an online version, the complete 1956 first edition
along with Basil's bizarre pictures of doom.
New Alumni
Forums: The Ambassador Planet Alumni board
is apparently to close. Two new boards have been
established to fill its shoes. One,
Ambassador University Alumni on MSN, seems to have
attracted some support. A new Delphi Forum has also been
created by the pseudonymous ACUJOE called
ambassador.edu.
Joe in
denial: If Joe Tkach is to be believed, MD's
Dateline Pasadena has it all wrong. And not only
Dateline; even The Journal. Here's what Joe had to
say when a JLF forum member forwarded Dateline's report on
the de-ordination of a Pasadena employee:
Just a brief note
to say that there is no need to forward these to me.
Almost always, the information contains inaccuracies and
distortions. I do appreciate that you want to keep me in
the loop, so to speak, about such items in circulation.
Nevertheless, such speculative musings are of no benefit
to me. A few brief examples of inaccuracies in this
message: Earl Reese has not been called into my office.
Members are not flocking in droves to Glendora. Neil
Earle's congregation is not the fastest growing in
California. Such statements will appear to be sensational
to some people who read them, but they are simply untrue.
There are other misstatements, but I just wanted to share
that these are extremely speculative and they are woven
together based upon a few factual
events.
The funny thing is that
Dateline Pasadena has an unparalleled track record for
accuracy. For example: while Joe's underlings were denying
that the Legacy contract had expired (something that is
easily to document), DP clearly called the events as they
actually were. Later, when the chronology emerged, it was
the WCG which had egg on its face. Inaccuracies and
distortions were aplently (along with downright lies.) But
they weren't coming from Dateline Pasadena.
|
A question
for Joe:
"Is there ANY
church body, other than those like Scientology on
the cultic fringe, which does a less
satisfactory job by those criteria than
Worldwide?"
|
But wait, there's more.
It isn't just MD that publishes "TOTALLY inaccurate"
material, according to Joe. The JLF correspondent
continues:
Yesterday I
received one other email reply from a salaried field
minister who... let me know he had a chat with Joe Tkach
about the Don Mears sex scandal and Joe assured him that
the article by The Journal was TOTALLY inaccurate, and
they both had a good laugh over the whole
thing.
A good
laugh?
Imagine a church where
the actions of the administrators are transparent. A church
where the leaders are accountable. Imagine a church press
that publishes according to ethical standards of
journalism, asking the hard questions and dealing with
issues honestly. Imagine a church where the members can
debate issues without fear, and are actually encouraged to
participate. A church where a minister can't simply get rid
of people who want answers by disfellowshipping them.
Imagine a church that publishes full financial records. A
church where loyalty isn't measured by naivete and a hushed
mouth. A church where the stakeholders have the same
natural rights as their leaders.
Is there ANY church
body, other than those like Scientology on the cultic
fringe, which does a less satisfactory job by those
criteria that Worldwide?
Until WCG moves to
become the kind of church described, there will continue to
be a desperate need for people like Dateline Pasadena and
websites like The Missing Dimension. Occasionally (very
occasionally) there might be a wrong call. Hardly
surprising given the circumstances. If Joe doesn't like
that, then he knows what he must do.
Bernie's
Placeholder Plan: The
following story comes from Pasadena Weekly. Dateline
Pasadena comments: Notice the last few paragraphs.
The plan on requiring WCG to redo the Environmental Impact
Report and the Tree Report which is going to lead to huge
amounts of money being dished out.
Starting
Over
Even if it wasn't supposed to be taken seriously,
Worldwide Church of God's plan for 1,940 units on the
Ambassador College project has some
rattled.
Erica
Zeitlin
A new Ambassador Project entitlement application from
property owner Worldwide Church of God has startled and
puzzled some because of its reported plans to build an
even denser residential project than was proposed by the
now-departed developer Legacy partners.
Church officials last
week submitted the application to Pasadena City Hall,
including a plan to build 1,940 homes, or 200-plus more
than the Legacy firm ultimately dared to propose.
The church almost simultaneously expressed a desire for
friendly community relations and dialogue.
"We look forward to a
constructive dialogue with residents and city officials
to assure the best project for everybody," said Bernard
Schnippert, the church's director of finance and
planning, in a press release.
But for some who view
the notion of 1,940 homes as a negations non-starter at
best, the church has a curious strategy for harboring
good will.
"I was very
surprised," said Vince Farhat, president of the West
Pasadena Residents Association. "I haven't a clue
what the church was thinking."
Were that number
indeed built, the housing development would be the
densest in Pasadena history. Even Schnippert
himself implicitly acknowledged that the number is
unrealistic and described the proposal as merely a
placeholder for further discussion. "It has very
little practical meaning moving forward," he was quoted
as saying in the Star-News.
Legacy's less dense
proposal was essentially shot down by an influential
neighborhood association that felt even 1,727 homes was
too much for city traffic flow and manageability.
Legacy withdrew from the project in April and the whole
deal immediately fell apart.
So now why risk
provoking - rather than appeasing - critical partners as
the city starts over again?
"I really don't
know." Answered Farhat. "But I will say that I
don't think the church has done itself any favors.
The 1,900 figure is clearly outside of the bounds of what
is acceptable for neighbors."
Farhat, whose
residents group claims 4,400 households, would "just have
to assume" Schnippert views the application as a
placeholder. He added, "The WPRA is committed to working
with the church in developing the property and we're not
rushing to judgment until we see a specific
plan,"
The church has not
yet chosen a replacement developer or architect for the
48-acre project.
Councilman Steve
Madison, who represents the affluent West Pasadena area
in which the property is located, noted that the new
application would be just one piece of an overall deal
requiring eventual City Council approval.
Other big pieces: A
separate developer agreement and memorandum of
understanding to save the beloved Ambassador Auditorium
through a public financing plan and so-called "Community
Facilities District."
"I have no reason to
disbelieve Dr. Schnippert when he said that this is just
a placeholder," Madison said, "and that frankly it
doesn't have any bearing on what the ultimate proposal
would be."
But despite
everyone's apparent desire to a cooperative new start,
signs of trouble are already surfacing.
Farhat wants the city
not "merely to prepare an addendum" to the existing
environmental impact report - a holdover from Legacy
plans - "but to prepare a whole new environmental study,
and a new tree study."
The official city
status of Legacy's plans is "application withdrawn."
Therefore, he said, traffic and all other possible
environmental impacts need to be studied over from the
beginning. And that, presumably, would cost the
church big bucks.
Farhat said that the
existing studies "fail to account for intersections south
of California Boulevard, " when "clearly, any new
development is going to have traffic impacts all the way
to city limits."
Schnippert's own
assumptions are quite different. The church "will
build upon the supplemental environmental impact report
that was created for the project before Legacy left the
project team," he said
Dart in
Oz: CEM founder Ron Dart is heading Down Under in
August. He will be speaking in Brisbane on the weekend of
August 2 - 4 at what is described as a Christian Renewal
Conference. Also speaking will be Michael Linacre and David
Hill (not to be confused with onetime evangelist David Jon
Hill, this gentleman is an Australian Seventh Day Baptist
leader.) Details are available on
the CESA site.
CESA is also
co-sponsoring a
Feast of Tabernacles site in Queensland this
year.
Rodney Lain - A
tribute from Bill Ferguson:
It is with deep
sorrow that I must tell you that Rodney O. Lain took his
own life yesterday. Irma called my wife this
afternoon and informed her of the
news.
Rodney struggled
for several years with depression.
Rodney was the
brightest, most creative man I have ever met. He
was more than just a black guy who taught me what racism
does to people. He was my friend. He was my
brother. He was such a good friend I never even
thought of him in terms of race, but as a great and
gifted human being.
Now he is gone to
where there will be no more pain. No more
worries about seratonin levels. No more fears from being
abandoned as a child. No more racism. No more
pain from having his faith violated by his former
religion.
Dammit Rodney why
didn't you take your pills??
Pray for
Irma. She's got a rough week ahead. A funeral
date has not yet been set.
Bill Ferguson
PS: A special thanks to all his fans in the Apple
Computer world. There was nothing Rodney loved more
than Mac Computers and writing about them. He
always wanted to be the black Guy Kawasaki, he idolized
Steve Jobs, he made it as far as working in the Apple
Store in the Mall of America, and writing for several
web-zines. One thing is for certain, writing
and Mac's were his love in life.
William Ferguson,
ferguson@quango.net on
15/06/2002
Ed Mentell posted the
following item shortly after on the Painful Truth
forum.
Rodney was a
member of Ekklesia for all the time that I was on
it. I got to know him pretty well. He was persecuted by a
couple of ministers... because he wouldn't bow and scrape
before them. They lied about him and persecuted him.
Finally in 1997 they even disfellowshipped him with
absolutely no mention of why they were doing it. All
loyal members were to shun him with absolutely no proof
at all as to his guilt in any matter.
Rodney was an
English teacher at a major college down south. He felt so
persecuted by these "ministers" that he quit his job
before the school year was even over and moved to
Minnesota. He stayed for a couple of nights at my house,
on the way to Minnesota.
Rodney had his
own website for a number of years, where he described
exactly what happened to him, to not only drive him out
of the church but also from the warm south to the cold
north. Unfortunately, I don't have any of that material.
If anyone does, I would like to post it for all to
see.
Rodney was a
bright, intelligent, caring young man. He wanted to
contribute to the good of the human race. This, in
contrast to those tares in the Worldwide Church of God
who only want to use people and make money and they will
step on you and destroy you, if you get in their
way.
A postscript:
The former pastor of the Macon, Georgia WCG, sent an email
to Bill Ferguson following news of Rodney's death. He
wrote:
Hi Bill.
Rodney and Irma were in the WCG congregation in
Macon, GA when I was pastor there; I'd like to convey my
condolences to Irma. Does she have an address or email?
Thank you. Mark Flynn
He probably wasn't
expecting the reaction he got. In part, Bill's reply
reads:
YOU SIR, are in
large part RESPONSIBLE for his death. BECAUSE OF YOU,
I spent two years of my life walking him out of
depression, getting him to seek medical help to stabilize
him. YOU SIR, betrayed his faith and confidence. YOU
BROKE RODNEY. AND AFTER YOU DID IT, you claimed to be
supporting the CHURCH! YOU SIR ARE A CONSUMING WOLF
WHO EATS HIS FLOCK.
If there is such
at thing as having blood on ones head in heaven, YOU SIR
HAVE HIS. But I suspect the God I know forgives
EVEN YOU. But your still gonna have to answer for
what you did!!!
Mark Tabladillo,
moderator of the JLF discussion board, also emailed Flynn.
Some of his comments:
Bill Ferguson
decided to share with me his recent response to you, and
like him, given the history you have had with Rodney
Lain, I don't feel it appropriate to share with you the
details about Irma's whereabouts, and I feel it would be
extremely offensive to the Lain family to have you
contact them or any of their close
friends.
You and I
probably have not spoken since you were in the Atlanta NW
congregation, where we were on several teams to recast
vision. I used that opportunity to observe you closely,
for I did not want to see Macon repeated in
Atlanta.
I want to take
this sad opportunity to give you a comparatively longer,
more measured response which will give you some context
as to why we are arriving at this
conclusion.
I had the chance
yesterday to dig out old email and found I had several
folders of personal email from Rodney, who first wrote to
me on 10 December 1995. As you remember from that time,
UCG-AIA had just launched, but even inside WCG, the
loyalties were not clear, and some pastors left even
after that time for Sabbatarian centered
congregations.
In December 1995,
Rodney shared with me his passion over racial
reconciliation issues. Being of a Latino/Filipino
background, I had some stories of my own, and WCG looks
somewhat different through the eyes of a cultural or
ethnic minority.
In 1996, Rodney
shared with at least a few dozen people the specific
problems he was having with you in Macon, and also shared
with us some specific stories... If you're asking
yourself in your mind, do they really know all about
that, the answer is yes. And if you're asking did Rodney
really share all that with dozens of people, and the
answer is yes.
You sinned in
Macon, you know it and we know it too, and now our
response is part of the consequences you have to bear.
Now, I sin every day, but the difference is whether what
I present as being in the name of Jesus Christ, or as an
authority of the church. Sin done by a pastor to a member
of the congregation is biblically considered to be very
serious in nature. I still have my original copy of
Rodney's resignation letter sent to you in July 1996. But
of course, what we know is not stated in that
letter.
Beyond the
Internet, I both met Rodney in person and spoke with him
several times on the phone. Bill knows Rodney better, and
their families were often frequent guests in each other's
homes, and Bill knows more personal information than I
do.
After all this connection, Rodney was disfellowshipped
from WCG in 1997...
My recommendation
is that you spend some time in prayer and fasting with
your wife examining again the specific impact you both
have had over many people. Because I have been
ministering to many spiritual abuse victims, I am
concerned that there are other Rodney Lains out there,
other people who have been negatively impacted by you in
the past, and who may similarly be going through other
depressive episodes. Right now, I recommend that you do
what you can to avert another tragedy. The way out is
through confession, repentance and
reconciliation...
Both letters have been
published in full on
The Painful Truth.
