Ambassador Watch

04 December. THE VILE LIES WCG ENCOURAGED, MEREDITH LETTER REAPPRAISED, ANOTHER SELF-PUBLISHED BOOK, THE JOY OF SEP, MAILBAG

More from Hinson: Further information from DP on the William Hinson book Broadway to Armageddon. Regarding health and medical problems:

Revisiting the Meredith remarks on Hoeh: In our last upload we quoted comments by LCG's Rod Meredith which seemed to damn Herman Hoeh with faint praise. These remarks were quoted exactly as they appeared on Bob Thiel's COGwriter site. We omitted Thiel's own comments, which reinforced that impression. Bob wrote:

Since then we've had a chance to view Meredith's full letter, and feel Thiel's spiel was less than fair to the tone of the document. In fact Meredith's letter is surprisingly generous in spirit, and Bob's quote appears both unrepresentative and misleading. The Meredith letter contains some interesting reminisces, and is probably a genuine effort at a tribute. You can judge for yourself - the letter is now available online.

Another self-published masterpiece: Erasmus reportedly said: "When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." There are some of us who can definitely identify with those priorities. But then, there are some books that should probably never be inflicted on any unsuspecting reader. Take David Ben-Ariel's Beyond Babylon for example. Ben-Ariel (an adopted name) is a former WCG member whose current affiliation is unknown, but his enthusiasm for the apocalyptic genre is boundless. His literary efforts have been ratcheted up a notch with this new book - a contrast to spam mail (with which AW has often been blessed). Due out in January at $19.95, we can only advise that it won't be on the AW library shelves any time soon.

Ted's "pecker tour": The following comments were provided by Robert Williams of Portland, Oregon.

For those of us whose Latin lies somewhere between rusty and non-existent, simil justus et peccator means (loosely) "both saint and sinner".

Weekly Mailbag

More on Herman Hoeh: (1) Thought I'd throw my $0.02 in on Dr. Hoeh. My first exposure to him was as a freshman assigned to an "Ambassador club" where he was the director. I had never met him before, or knew who he was.

One evening, I had a speech, but had forgotten about the assignment, and I was the third speaker. While the first two spoke, I jotted down some notes on a napkin, and then got up and gave my speech.

Dr. Hoeh, in evaluating my speech, commented on how well prepared I was. Sitting next to me was Larry Gott (grandson of HWA) who had to fight hard to not choke or burst out laughing, as he saw what I had done.

Bill Hohmann

(2) At the Feast of Tabernacles in Cape Town in 1975, Dr Hoeh stood up and put on his spectacles, and looked at us with the words, "I've never seen Cape Colored people before". I sat with him and discussed his surname (means High), his Compendium, people in Tonga and Fiji, and his sermon that was about Adam not being given a law because God had taught him through personal example, e.g., the Sabbath rest on the seventh day.

I think he was influenced by the Buddhist approach in his latter years. I remember him saying that the Buddhists ask questions we don't even think of. Certainly, when one looks at the approach of the different religions, when a man is found with an arrow in his shoulder, the Buddhist will focus on removing it, while the Christian will obsess about who fired it and how it was made. Hence, Buddhists don't worry about creation and a creator.

Henri

(3) I remember asking Dr. Hoeh one time about governance. I used the example of the American colonists who rebelled against their British ruler and how their example had long been praised in WCG. He replied that if he had been alive in 1776 he would have gone to Canada and would not have joined the revolutionaries. So, even though I disagreed with him on this subject, he appeared to me to be consistent in his position, and that is definitely a mark of integrity. A sad loss -- I hope Mrs. Hoeh will be OK -- but what a peaceful way to go.

RK

The Hinson story: (1) Normally I have tried to avoid responding to the negative post concerning people who are not there to even defend themselves but this I could not let slide. I know Bill Swanson and I have a different story to tell about him.

I was taken away from my parents when I was four years of age because of neglect and abuse. My siblings and I spent the next ten years in foster care, (the lesser of two evils.) When I turned fourteen, I located my parents. After a few months my twin brother and I were returned to my parents by the courts. This is when I learned about God’s truth, through my mother who was attending WCG at the time. Bill Swanson was our pastor.

Within a month I understood why we were placed in foster care. My father beat up my mother all the time and he began to become violent to me. I was so stressed and did not know what to do so I went to Bill Swanson to talk to him about it. He was so upset that this was happening to me that he went to talk to my mother. He encouraged her to leave my dad and the church helped my mother, my twin brother and I move to another city. Bill Swanson advised my mother to stay away from my father for a year to give a chance to see the fruit and the change.

Well the church set us up in a home, and helped my mother pay the bill. Through the direction of Bill Swanson the church helped us get on our feet. For the first time I did not live in fear. But after a few months my father showed up and my mother took him in. She left the church and we moved back to the city that we left. My father was more violent and abusive than ever. Many nights I thought he would kill me or my mother. I finally at the age of 18, after a loaded gun was placed to my head, knew I had to get out. I left while he slept.

So for me, Bill Swanson tried so hard to help me and my family, he knew the dangers of my mother living with such an abusive man. He believed it so much that he had the church help us with money and a place to live. He regularly visited us to see how our family was doing. I will always be grateful for his help. It was at a time where ministers encouraged women to stay and work out the problem.

There are always two sides of the story. This is my side of the story and gratitude to Bill Swanson.

Janet Treadway

(2) I read the sickening account of this "minister" Bill Swanson's imperious and deadly edicts... The sad thing is that I am sure that there are more people like this man in the more ultra-conservative splinters of the XCGs. This is one of the reasons why I hope Ambassador Watch is around for a long, long, time. It is an effective tool on fighting evil.

Actually, there are many parts I agree on an article written by Shmuly Boteach on fighting evil, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/530225/posts ... [These people] must be vigorous challenged and be given swift and harsh intolerance for their perverse ideology and behavior. To roll over and play dead or to be a robotic doormat is even a greater evil which only empowers their devious interests.

Felix

(3) Another heartbreaking example of how a literalist interpretation of the Bible permits people to justify bigotry. It also illustrates how members lost their sense of personal agency, often with tragic results. Mr. Hinson’s copy of the 1969 letter to the ministry regarding how the church instructed ministers to throw all responsibility onto the member, despite the ministry’s having systematically brainwashed him/her, illustrates, to my thinking, the extreme cynicism of the WCG administration. This letter virtually instructs the ministry to lie, using “in-speak” to twist meaning and justify the deceit the ministers were told to practice. It can be viewed on the Graveyard Church of God website, which I believe is located on the Painful Truth website: www.herbertwarmstrong.com. The pressures on those who still had some ability to reason and act on their own were enormous, as Mr. Hinson’s account shows. A pox on all their houses.

Kathleen Kakacek

AW: Probably the same letter included in today's upload (above)

Robinson request: Hi, I would like to know a little more about David Robinson. I would like to know where he was born, when and a little about his life please. Thank you.

AW: Anyone able to provide a thumbnail biography?

Grabbe's Wisdom: Gavin, regarding your notice of Lester Grabbe's commentary on the Wisdom of Solomon, I thought I'd mention the series of articles on "the Apocrypha" that I and Doug Ward have written. (Doug wrote about I Maccabees, while I wrote the rest.) My article on Wisdom was the third in the series. There's nothing earth-shattering or revolutionary in these articles, of course, since the point was just to do a survey or a personal kind of book review with the purpose of introducing the books to those who had little or no familiarity with them.

Jared Olar

AW: A review Lester's very erudite and scholarly study is due to be posted on MD later this month, tentatively titled "Holy Synkrisis!"

Pork chop crusaderism? The people of God are a conservative people? Exclusively? Is God political? Does He support conservative candidates? Does “President Bush … advocate policies consistent with the principles of the Bible?” Well, I don’t think so and I can’t let these comments from a concealed identity pass without responding because this is so nuts.

So Bush is a “man of faith,” yet does Monsieur Énigma really agree with Bush’s brand of Christianity? Could they swap churches? Does Bush pray and study his Bible in a manner that this anonymuncule’s church would approve? Would they roll Easter eggs together or exchange Christmas gifts? Would he have his children baptized in Bush’s church? Would this unavowed person go to war for Bush or is he a conscientious objector? Does this bravely anonymous soul love his country enough to die for it if ordered to serve as an infantryman in Iraq or Syria or Iran? Would Bush condemn some of the No Name’s beliefs? Does the President keep the Sabbath and Holy Days? Does Bush agree with his views on heaven and hell? What about an afterlife? Would this innominate being eat pork chops with Bush?

Nameless challenged, “If any one of you doubts that God's people are conservative, I'd like to hear your best argument that secular liberalism can co-exist (sic) with the Biblical worldview.” This is an elliptical, reductio ad absurdum argument. And, it’s patently fascistic--does he really mean this? What does he really want to say?

Whether secular liberalism gets up and dances or it doesn’t with someone’s “Biblical worldview” will not prove “God’s people are conservative.” The argument lacks logical strength.

Anonymous makes a self-righteous assumption that “God’s people” have only a conservative Biblical Weltanschauung because a person can’t be both a liberal and a Christian (the term liberal Christianity being oxymoronic, of course). He thinks or has been told that people who believe they are Christian and liberal are not really Christians because they would have to believe in secular liberalism as he defines the term. Mr. Nameless has spent so much time isolated inside his circle of friends and ministers who think and speak and write like he does that he has lost his edge for critical thinking.

Nameless asks if liberalism can coexist with the Biblical worldview, but does he mean his American fundamentalist brand of religion when he says “the Biblical worldview?”

Once, Jesus was confronted by conservative religious leaders who looked for Him to condemn a women caught in adultery. Instead, He blew the sanctimonious away by forgiving her sins. It seems like Jesus was a liberal for at least one day. The word liberal is summed up by “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Liberalism, secular or otherwise, can do better than simply coexist with others; it can get along well with whatever Biblical worldviews because conceptually liberalism tolerates differences in thinking. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Bohemians, nihilists, numismatists, and nudists still have freedom to practice their beliefs.

Ironically, it seems that the authoritarian perspective advocated in anonymuncule’s “challenge” at best will only allow for a chilly coexistence with the rest of the world.

Former Senator Gary Hart wrote the following excerpts in the New York Times last month: “Liberals are not against religion. They are against hypocrisy, exclusion and judgmentalism. They resist the notion that one side or the other possesses "the truth" to the exclusion of others…

“There is also the disturbing tendency to insert theocratic principles into the vision of America's role in the world. There is evil in the world. Nowhere in our Constitution or founding documents is there support for the proposition that the United States was given a special dispensation to eliminate it…. Mr. Bush's venture into crusaderism frightened not only Muslims, it also frightened a very large number of Americans with a sense of their own history.

“The religions of Abraham all teach a sense of personal and collective humility. Whether Bush supporters care or not, people around the world now see America as arrogant, self-righteous and superior. These are not qualities of any traditional faith I am aware of.”

Robert M. Williams

Bruce buddy... The recent Internet article by Bruce Porteous (highlighted in the 27 November segment of AW) would be a rather odd perhaps even humorous read if it wasn’t so tragic. Bruce laments, “When I wrote at the beginning of the year, prior to the American and British invasion of Iraq, that the invasion would result in defeat and disaster, few believed me. Yet, as each day unfolds, this increasingly is becoming a reality.”

Bruce…Buddy…may I humbly suggest that the “reality” you spoke of stands in rather stark contrast to the ACTUAL situation in Iraq - at least when viewed with even a minimal amount of objectivity, and not through the fact-distorting lens of European, American and Islamic media, whose job is to sell copy and fuel various ideologies rather than actually report truth? Which “defeat and disaster” could you remotely point to since the war in Iraq commenced?

Recent operations that swept away Sunni and al Qaeda gunmen out of Fallujah, for example, left 53 American troops dead, as compared to inflicting over 3,000 enemy deaths. Islamic terrorists have suffered, and will continue to suffer, the overwhelming causalities in this one-sided war. Yet rarely is this rather important fact ever mentioned in media accounts. Liberal American (and especially Arab) media overly-focuses on specific coalition causalities, spinning such expected and rather underwhelming events into “disasters” for American forces on the evening news reports - while overlooking the overall reality in Iraq which tells a completely different story. Various Arab and al Qaeda “Freedom Fighters” were running like rabbits when confronted by American forces (which they and their leaders had boasted would turn Fallujah into a “graveyard of Americans”), and singing like birds (i.e., quickly revealing vital intelligence) when captured.

Of course, their leaders conveniently left town before the battle, leaving their gullible followers to suffer the glories of martyrdom - alone and abandoned. Insurgent forces “defending” Fallujah were killed or captured very quickly – and those who escaped are being ceaselessly hunted down.

So, Bruce, it seems that you - along with many other prophecy gurus of the COG – once again allowed your blind ideological expectations of the imminent downfall of “modern day Israel” affect your analysis of world events considerably more than simply allowing the actual facts speak for themselves.

Randy Martens

Devil worship? Check out John Kaminski's excellent 9/29/04 rant. This explains why so many of us were HARMed so STRONGly by [WCG]... I am trying to find an online machine-readable copy of Merritt's essay... Kaminski's piece has a good summary of it.

Bill Fairchild

AW: As fascinating as the recent political correspondence has been, the mailbag will be observing a recess on this subject for a while.

A Herbophilic Christmas:

Behold, he comes as a thief by night
From regions that border the North;
And some mourn his advent, eschewing delight,
Though gifts in abundance he surely brings forth.

A Bible for Christmas brings horror and shock,
A gift from the Devil no less,
It gets the self-righteous all running amuck
As something most evil the Lord should suppress.

Some strangeness of doctrine some people espouse
That would strait jacket each fellow man;
For their WAY is RIGHT which bad feelings arouse,
And most of them will MYOPICALLY scan

For they are the killjoys and sober of face
Who walk in mourning all day,
For Christmas is evil, a shocking disgrace,
And a feast of the devil for which man will pay.

They follow poor Herb of memory most dear
Who brought joy and smiles our way;
Piety they preached, they made it most clear
That for blessings all HERBAL you dearly must pay.

To be Herbophilic is to hand in the brain
And submit to his every word;
And his "truth revealed" causes pain,
Yet the faithful obey in ways most absurd.

For the Herbal seer said you give gifts to Christ
At this pagan time of the year:
And the entrapped and believing were fooled by this heist
And parted with millions for his lifestyle dear.

For many deceivers in the Lord's name will come
And of Herb we still are not sure;
It's all about MONEY from the blind and the dumb,
And lives were destroyed by the QUACK HERBAL CURE.

Now Santa is coming to mine and to yours,
So put the bull mastiff on guard;
Block up the chimney, lock windows and doors,
Ensure that all portals are nailed and barred.

And in our houses will bright shine the light
As we join the pagans in lust;
For LUKEWARM our state, pathetic our plight,
In Gods' mercy, not Gerry's we ever so trust.

"Seamus"

01 December. SICKENING ACCOUNT IN HINSON BOOK, HOEH SERVICE, SEAMUS' XMAS, CONCISE BECKER DICTIONARY OF COGISMS.

Hinson book: AW correspondent Dateline Pasadena (DP) has provided the following précis of William B. Hinson's long out-of-print book Broadway to Armageddon.

Hoeh memorial: The following item is adapted from a posting to the JLF board.

Perhaps predictably, though, one of Herman Hoeh's oldest colleagues, Roderick C. Meredith, just couldn't resist getting in a last dig in a statement republished on Bob Thiel's website:

Becker broadside: Many readers will be familiar with The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Now there's a COG improvisation on the theme, courtesy of Douglas Becker. Some selections.

That's only a taste... Douglas also has a couple of other new items on his website - one entitled Bananas, and another Rational Recovery.

The Book Shelf
Good as New	Dare to Think for Yourself	In the Beginning	When Jesus Became God	Wisdom of Solomon
A radical and rewarding retelling of the New Testament from Britain (the introductory comments come from the Archbishop of Canterbury). Translator John Henson has looked hard at the existing canon, and included the Gospel of Thomas while excluding Revelation and a number of highly dubious epistles. Refreshingly different! ****	Former campus employee Betty Brogaard, wife of a WCG pastor, knew Herbert Armstrong and GTA well. She tells her story of how things really were, and how she left Christianity behind and embraced a rationalist belief. (not rated)	The true story behind the King James Bible ***	The first "Christian" emperor, Constantine, and two preachers, Arius and the incredibly obnoxious Athanasius, were the chief players in the debate over the nature of Jesus. Wonderfully readable and very informative. *****	Lester Grabbe, one of the few AC faculty members who could genuinely be described as a scholar, has produced this commentary on the deuterocanonical book of Wisdom. Last we heard, Grabbe was teaching at the University of Hull in Britain. not rated
Our Rating System: (brain dead) (avoid) * (consider) ** (good stuff) *** (read it!)*
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