"The
Mad Monk and The Putrid Prophet"
Herbert W. Armstrong
Compared to Gregory Rasputin
By: The Watcher
Sources for Rasputin:
"Rasputin" - biography by Brian Moynihan;,
"Nicholas and Alexandria" by Robert K.
Massie
"A People's Tragedy" - recent definitive
history of the Russian revolution by Orlando Figes.
Sources for Herbert:
"Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web" by David
Robinson;
"Armstrongism: Religion or Rip-Off" by
Marion McNair
Editions of "The Ambassador Report" compiled
by John Trechak.
The extraordinarily revealing published court
documents relating to the divorce action brought
against Herbert Armstrong by his second wife Ramona.
And the voluminous, unintentionally revealing writings
of the prolific, foul old fraud himself.
1) Rasputin was not mad.
Herbert must have been, if he believed only one percent
of what he preached about, himself.
2) Rasputin was never a monk, and never
claimed to be. Herbert certainly never acted like a
monk.
3) Rasputin only made a few prophecies in
his career, but they all came true. Herbert made
literally hundreds and every one of them was false. (All
this documented in our sister presentation on Ed 's
site: "Herbie: The False Prophet")
4) Rasputin was wildly promiscuous, but
never raped anyone. Herbert raped his own daughter.
5) Rasputin, only had sex with consenting
adult ladies. Herbert, for 10 years, and by his
admission according to numerous witnesses and her own
later testimony, committed incest with his own daughter
Dorothy.
6) Rasputin, never bathed, always stank, had
greasy hair and his beard was filled with food stains,
but women found him irresistible. Herbert, was
exceptionally vain about his personal appearance and
spent scores of thousands of dollars tithed by his duped
followers on his own suits, but women all his life found
him loathsome.
7) Rasputin's wife knew all about his
infidelities but took them in her stride and repeatedly
boasted, "My husband is too much man for any one
woman." Herbert's first wife Loma appears to have
been too stupid to ever have realized that her husband
was committing incest with their daughter.
8) Rasputin loved his wife and only spoke
about her in the most glowing terms. Herbert repeatedly
claimed according to numerous witnesses that his first
wife Loma was frigid in bed and claimed this as an
excuse for carrying out incest with their daughter.
9) Rasputin literally did return from the
dead - twice. In 1916 he was murdered by Russian
aristocrats led by Prince Yusupov. First, they filled
him with cyanide poison and then shot him repeatedly.
Then, when they were discussing what to do with the
body, it got up and started chasing them. Then, they
repeatedly shot him and then clubbed him to death and
threw his body into the ice-filled River Neva. But later
forensic examination showed he was still alive and
managed to get to the surface before finally succumbing.
By contrast, every year on Jan. 16, the anniversary of
herbert's death, some of his truest believers would
assemble every year by his graveside in the hope that
THIS would be THE YEAR when all the skeptics would be
confounded. So far, no such luck, but perhaps the
Pasadena Star News, The Ambassador Report or some
public-spirited citizens can be on hand next time to
record the occasion.
10) Rasputin was proud of coming from
peasant stock and loved the poor peasants of Russia.
Herbert loathed the ordinary rural people who were the
backbone of his support and privately repeatedly
referred to them as drones. He often in his 1950s and
1960s sermons screamed at them that they were
"hicks."
11) Rasputin was suspected of being a member
of the Khlysty sect, which taught that the more you
sinned, the more you needed God's forgiveness and the
more you repented so the closer you ended up to God.
Therefore it was better to sin a lot - and often - in
the first place. An interesting theology. Herbert by
contrast taught sin was evil but expanded the definition
ludicrously to deny his followers everything from
medical treatment by doctors, nurses and medicines to
college education to touching single members of the
opposite sex on dates. Needless to say, unlike Rasputin,
he never practiced what he preached himself. And since
he never showed the slightest sign of repenting of any
of his own deeds to the day he died at the age of 94, he
couldn't even have qualified for membership in the
Khlysty, let alone any kind of mainstream Christianity.
Rasputin would have thrown him out as unclean and of too
low a moral standard to associate with.
12) Rasputin never had any need for
artificial sexual aids. (According to some eyewitnesses,
he had a huge wart on his penis which drove his partners
wild. I am not making this up, see the work by Figes,
the acclaimed Cambridge University historian). Herbert,
by his own admission and the observation of many
witnesses, regularly used a "dildo"or
artificial penis prosthetic to boost his performance.
13) Rasputin worked hard for a decade to
ease the burdens of taxes and oppression on ordinary
Russian peasants. Herbert crippled 100,000+ families or
more with his endless greedy financial demands.
14) Rasputin worked hard to bring economic
relief to some of the poorest most economically
miserable people on earth under the great oppressive
system of the Russian Empire. Herbert inflicted utterly
needless hardship and destitution on scores of thousands
of people in the most prosperous, most tolerant and most
free society in the history of the world.
15) Rasputin correctly prophesied that the
Russian Imperial family would retain power and be safe
as long as he was alive and close to them. After Herbert
met many world leaders such as President Pinochet of
Chile, President Sadat of Egypt, Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi of India, the Shah of Iran, President Ferdinand
Marcos of the Philippines and the Emperor Haile Selassie
of Ethiopia, they were either murdered or ignominiously
deposed or both.
16) Rasputin gave his followers and friends
immense wealth. Herbert impoverished his followers and
supporters in order to amass immense wealth himself.
17) Rasputin saved the lives of probably
hundreds of children, including the Tsarevich, the young
heir to the throne of Russia, who had hemophilia.
Herbert sentenced hundreds, possibly thousands of young
children to needless deaths by convincing their parents
it was evil and worthy of eternal damnation to go to
doctors and use modern medicines, though he always used
them himself.
18) Rasputin really did have extraordinary
healing powers, which he believed came from God and
which he never used for any personal gain whatsoever.
Herbert had no such powers but claimed them through
Jesus Christ for his church. There is no evidence of any
miraculous healings whatsoever compared to Rasputin.
Nevertheless, Herbert and his ministers had no
hesitation ever in accusing Rasputin of being a tool of
the devil while claiming they were doing God's work,
even while they were claiming healing powers and gifts
they didn't have and impoverishing their followers in
the process. So, readers, who really WERE the servants
of Satan? By their works, you can know them all right.
19) Rasputin was personally incorruptible.
He gave money away as fast he was given it. Herbert's
greed made Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos look like Mother
Teresa by comparison.
20) Rasputin could have had his pick of all
the gold and jewel-encrusted Faberge eggs in the
Imperial Winter's palace, but was never interested in a
single one of them. Herbert spent literal millions of
dollars to buy for himself Faberge eggs and other
useless, tastelessly gaudy and monstrously expensive
"trinkets' from Harrods store of London with the
tithe money scores of thousands sacrificed and sweated
to send him.
21) Rasputin never even bothered to buy any
special property for himself. He lived modestly with his
family in a rented apartment. Herbert lived in the lap
of ludicrous luxury on the Ambassador College campus in
Pasadena, Texas and England.
22) Rasputin traveled privately on public
Russian trains without any bodyguards or particular
fuss. Herbert insisted on having his own multi million
dollar executive luxury private jets.
23) Rasputin was fearless in insulting and
condemning the wealthy and the powerful nobility of
Russia for not using their huge wealth to ease the
sufferings of the poor. That was the main reason they
hated him so much. Herbert cravenly flattered and licked
the ass of the mighty and powerful he craved audience
with and never dared to mention the very name of Jesus
Christ to virtually all of them as repeated video and
taped evidence and the testimony of scores of
eyewitnesses confirms.
24) Rasputin's daughter Maria loved him and
wrote a book of memoirs in which she was convinced that
all the allegations of drunken orgies must be lies
because he was such a sweet, loving guy at home.
Herbert's daughter Dorothy testified in legal documents
that he had repeatedly committed incest with her until
she was bought off by literally millions of dollars. (In
this respect, at least, she was her father's daughter).
25) Rasputin in his teachings, whatever the
Khlysty sect rumors, remained entirely loyal to and
supportive of the Russian Orthodox Christian Church and
its traditional teachings. Herbert was guilty of
repeated heresy even against the obscure little Church
of God Seventh Day offshoot he angled his way into the
1920s and 1930s, insisting their immediately adopt all
the bizarre and crackpot "new truths" he was
repeatedly coming up with.
26) Rasputin not only was never a monk, he
never claimed to be any kind of priest or minister. His
preferred title was "Starets" or "holy
man." Herbert let himself be proclaimed as apostle
and prophet, and claimed virtually all the main figures
in the Bible were just prototypes to prepare the way for
him.
27) Although Rasputin had a genuine,
extraordinary healing gift, he never withheld it from
anyone who had sought regular medical health and never
taught going to a doctor was wrong in any way. He never
preached against getting regular medical attention in
any way. In all of this, he was entirely consistent with
the record of the Gospels and book of Acts about the
teaching of Jesus and the Apostles, including Paul.
Herbert, who had no healing gift at all, ranted, raved
and filled his followers with terror about going to any
doctor.
28) Rasputin never preached or taught any
hatred, contempt or distrust for any other Christian
church, sect or group. He never condemned a single soul
to death or hell for believing some different Christian
creed. Herbert insisted that all the Christians of every
stripe who had every lived were doomed to be burned in
the Lake of Fire unless they accepted his, Herbert's
authority unconditionally as, Herbert repeatedly
claimed, that was the one and only way to reach Christ
was through him. (If you think this is an exaggeration
in any way, go and chase up copies of the Worldwide News
articles of 1978 and 1979 by Herbert himself on
"God's Principles of Church Government." They
were even published with diagrams in which the only way
to Christ is through Herbert as the one and only
end-time apostle of the one true church. Ready to speak
out on THAT, Joe Tkach (Little Joe) Jnr? Still waiting.
Can't hear you.)
29) Rasputin opposed racial discrimination
and race hate against oppressed minorities such as Jews
and Muslims. This was a courageous and unpopular
position to take amid the racial hatreds of the Russian
Empire at that time. Herbert never raised a word of
protest against racial segregation but repeatedly
denounced Dr. Martin Luther King and the entire
non-violent Civil Rights movement. To the day he died,
he banned any kind of interracial marriage in the
Worldwide Church of God.
30) Rasputin never presumed to compare
himself to Biblical figure in either the Old or New
Testaments. He would have regarded it as blasphemous.
Herbert, with his cheerleaders Herman Hoeh and Gerald
Waterhouse (literally "House of Piss" or
"Gerald Water-Closet" after all, "God
CALLS people WHAT THEY ARE!!!!! Doesn't He????)
regularly, indeed monotonously, compared himself to
Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Ezekiel, Malachi and
many others, always to the discredit of the Biblical
originals.
31) Rasputin liked to sleep with ladies,
both married and single. But he never tried to break up
any marriages. Herbert, with his diabolical teaching
that all divorces were invalid and that all first
marriages were binding on to death, was directly
responsible for breaking up certainly hundreds and
probably thousands of happy marriages.
32) Rasputin faced assassination attempts
that were always by jealous lovers he had either dumped
or scorned. In 1914 he was stabbed by a woman who was
jealous because he had dropped her. Prince Yusupov's
motive for murdering Rasputin was jealousy at Rasputin's
refusal to have a homosexual affair with him. Rasputin
may have been a sex-crazed slob, but he had surprisingly
conventional, albeit enormous, sexual tastes. Prince
Yusupov, who lived another half century, was a
flamboyant cross-dressing transvestite. Herbert was in
terror from at least 2 reported death threats. The first
was when his son-in-law Vern, Dorothy's husband,
discovered he was still committing incest with her and
threatened to shoot him. The second was when a
grief-stricken father was talked out of shooting him by
church officials after his two children had died through
lack of medical attention because he followed herbert's
false teachings.
33) Rasputin correctly predicted his own
death, saying he would be murdered by either peasants or
imperial aristocrats related to the Tsar. Herbert
blasphemously claimed he would live forever without
death, being taken to the Place of Safety in Petra and
being changed into a God Being when Jesus came back to
earth.
34) Both Rasputin and Herbert celebrated the
date of January 7 every year. Rasputin did so because it
is the date of Christmas, the birthdate of Jesus,
according to the traditional Eastern Orthodox Christian
calendar which is almost two weeks behind the Gregorian
calendar followed by both virtually all Protestant
denominations and the Catholic Church in the West.
Herbert screamed abuse at any celebration of Christmas,
especially at the idea of any people giving gifts of
love and affection to each other instead of to him to
buy more monkey-gland sexual injections, artificial
penis enhancers or Faberge jewel-encrusted eggs. He
celebrated January 7 because he claimed historic dates
in his life always came then. The old fool was too
abysmally ignorant from Jan. 7, 1934, when he claimed
his regular "World Tomorrow" radio broadcast
began, to his death 52 years later, to ever realize the
date he glorified was also the date of Christmas to 300
million Christians around the world.
35) Rasputin never tried to create his own
church. Herbert insisted on founding his and then
claimed every other Christian in the world who rejected
his authority was doomed to be destroyed in hell fire.
36) Rasputin only hypnotized a handful of
people including the Empress, or Tsarina, Alexandra.
Herbert successfully hypnotized more than 100,000 people
over 40 years to impoverish themselves and give him all
their money.
37) Rasputin, a peasant by background, was a
sensible shrewd farmer who gave simple worthwhile advice
on how to work the land. Herbert who had never dirtied
his hands with farming all his life and despised those
who did in the 1960s preached hysterically against any
use of nitrate fertilizer. Thousands of poor dupes who
believed him and went cold turkey on their use of
nitrates immediately ruined their land and were ruined
for life.
38) Rasputin never asked for a penny from
the ordinary Russian people. Herbert bled dry every
ordinary American he could reach and dupe.
39) Rasputin dressed like a slob but was an
imposing figure of a man, broad shouldered and over six
feet tall with dark piercing eyes. Herbert who ranted
all the time about wimps and real manhood was less than
5 feet 7 inches tall, weighed 250 pounds for decades at
a time, had a breast-like wimpy chest and round
shoulders.
40) Rasputin strongly argued that world war
with Germany was avoidable and should be avoided. Had
his advice been taken, Russia would have been saved from
the catastrophes of World War I, the Russian Revolution,
the Russian Civil War and the mass starvation and Great
Terror exterminations under Josef Stalin. Herbert,
falsely claimed world war with Germany was inevitable
and that Britain and America would be totally destroyed
in it.
41) Rasputin tried to spare the Russian
people the horrors and terror of World War I. Herbert
put the British and American people in terror of his
totally false and fictitious predictions about World War
III.
42) Rasputin said the revolution that
imposed communism on Russia could and should be avoided.
Herbert falsely claimed that communism would survive
Britain and America and even survive beyond the Second
Coming of Christ. (See his "Middle East in
Prophecy" article and goofy interpretations of
Ezekiel 38 and 39.).
New on 5/24/98:
43) Rasputin's idea of a good time with his
friends was to get drunk in bars.
Herbert's idea of a good time was to talk about
masturbation, gross sexual acts and bowel movements at
dinner parties with teenage girl students at Ambassador
College. (Interesting "true" values being
recaptured there all right).
44) Rasputin took no money, titles, land or
jewels from the absolute monarchs of the largest and
oldest global empire in existence, even though they
would have given him anything.
Herbert was relentlessly greedy for every title,
honor, and fragment of fame or glory he could lay his
lustful little claws on.
45) Rasputin never preached against the
evils of education and he never claimed he was a
"doctor", teacher or "educator"
either.
Herbert ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands by
convincing them that all higher education was stupid,
useless, futile and evil. But that didn't stop him
buying and bribing every "honorary" Ph.D. or
other title for himself that he could. The Philippines
was a particularly favorite source for such goodies when
it was run by Ferdinand Marcos. He even rivaled Herbert
in his greed and incompetence and impoverished even more
people. No wonder Herbert adored him so much. In the
1970s, he wrote rapturous appreciations of Marcos's
greatness as cover stories in "The Plain
Truth."
46) Rasputin had an endless appetite for
regular sex.
Herbert had a relentless appetite for perverted sex.
47) Rasputin never showed any symptoms of
mental illness.
Herbert, by his own admission in his autobiography,
showed all the classic symptoms of extreme manic
depressive disease. He was also a sociopath, a
documented compulsive liar and suffered acute,
egomaniacal narcissistic disorders. And he was a
lifelong sufferer from an extreme case of Jerusalem
Syndrome the psychiatric disorder in which insecure,
unstable individuals believe they are prominent figures
in the Bible and that all of creation revolves around
their activities and (mis)adventures.
48) Rasputin was loyal to his country's
rulers to the day he died.
Herbert was filled with treasonous venom, contempt
and hate for most of his country's rulers. He especially
hated the three greatest presidents of this century:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D.
Eisenhower.
49) Rasputin was falsely accused of being a
German sympathizer and spy during World War I.
Herbert in the 1970s tried to flatter and fawn over
German politician Franz Josef Strauss precisely because
he was convinced that Strauss would become a neoNazi
dictator who would slaughter hundreds of millions of
Americans and Britons with nuclear weapons. There can,
therefore, be no doubt that Herbert would have licked
Hitler's ass personally if given the chance to do so.
50) Rasputin was a genuinely modest man.
In Herbert's case, he didn't know the meaning of the
word, did he?
51) Rasputin's death was followed by the
terrible catastrophe he had warned against and tried to
avert: the collapse of Imperial Russian Orthodox
Christian civilization and the cruel, untimely deaths of
scores of millions.
Herbert's death was followed by the easing and
lifting of many of the cruel and ludicrous burdens he
had inflicted on his followers. The American domestic
economy boomed; the United States recovered dramatically
against Japanese and European competition; communism
collapsed; Iraq was defeated; Israel defied the
Palestinian intifada; the U.S. competitive advantage
over Western Europe grew; and the Mets won their second
World Series.
52) To be continued ...
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