Armstrongism
Place your bets: You could win BIG!
Armstrongism is all about gambling. It is a terrible addiction. Armstrongists are betting every day that the world as we know it will come to an end in their lifetime. The end of the age is coming; the Great Tribulation is coming; death, destruction, devastation, disease is coming. And it is a delight to them: For they will escape while the rest of the world suffers!
Armstrongists have faith to believe in lies, fantasies and delusions because they have been told by religious nuts from the very beginning who were supremely confident in their insanity. The proponents of Armstrongism held such strong psychosis that they visualized things which would and could never be.
People believe because they have a blood lust. They want to be empowered. It is covetousness to want to be empowered with the secret knowledge that things are going to go their way.
Like every addicted gambler, an Armstrongist believes that each bet they place will make them a winner. Every news article persuades them that they were right all along to believe in their cult leader god. Every newscast is filled with potential winnings which match their belief system. It must be true because they believe it is true.
Every tragedy that occurs fuels the belief that the Armstrongist was right all along: Armstrongists revel in the negativity of all things gone wrong because it is proof that their belief system works.
Armstrongism is a cult religious belief system based upon Herbert Armstrong who rebelled against the Church of God Seventh Day in the 1930s to form his own new religion under the banner of The Radio Church of God which later became the Worldwide Church of God. Armstrongism isn't just a belief system, it is a narcissistic way of life condescending those who are held in contempt because of the belief they are inferior because of their race and status with the religion founded by Herbert Armstrong.
Key to Armstrongism is the opinion upon which Herbert Armstrong obsessed early on: British Israelism. Because of this thoroughly discredited belief system, Herbert Armstrong began predicting the fall of the United States because of the impending Great Tribulation of Revelation because the United States was committing sin and because as Herbert Armstrong taught, the United States was one of the lost tribes of Israel, Manasseh. Armed with these strong delusions, Herbert Armstrong began teaching that the Great Tribulation followed by the return of Jesus Christ would occur in our life times -- all the way back to the 1930s.
Herbert Armstrong kept gambling on the dates, from a year in the 1930s to the prediction made in 1943 that the United States and Britain would fall before the end of World War II, to the predictions of 1975 in Prophecy first published in 1952. Herbert Armstrong commissioned other gamblers among his ministers to toss the dice for decades. In 1964, an evangelist in the Radio Church of God, David Jon Hill, told a group in Seattle, "I tell you now as a minister of Jesus Christ that within 10 years there will not be a tree standing in the Pacific Northwest". It should be noted that it wasn't in the cards.
While many Armstrongist apologists contend that Herbert Armstrong was not a Prophet, but "an end time Apostle", the truth is that he was a false prophet who signed his predictions "In Jesus' name". This means that he was using the authority of God for his presumptive prognostications which had no viability -- one of the biggest gambles of all.
The Radio Church of God transmogrified into the Worldwide Church of God, retaining all the trappings of gamblers predicting the future of a bear market: The world was going to hell in a handbasket, particularly the United States, and Armstrongists were busily selling handbaskets, or, more particularly, selling a place of safety where people could go to avoid the Great Tribulation, if only they dedicated 30% of their gross income and generous offerings to support a profligate Casino in Pasadena California flying under the radar in the guise of a benign looking church.
For those who attended the church institution of higher learning, Ambassador College, the gamble often became a nightmare. Garner Ted Armstrong, the son of Herbert Armstrong and #2 honcho in the Worldwide Church of God was known to date rape Ambassador College coeds. He also had a gambling addiction where he took the Church Corporate jet to fly to Reno, Nevada to gamble in the casinos along with boozing it up on membership tithes and offerings, often dedicated to helping the fatherless and the widow. One might say that he went gambling and gamboling.
The curiosity was the mindset of the people who hung on to the Worldwide Church of God and still followed Herbert Armstrong after 1975 -- members who had been hearing the predictions of the Great Tribulation, the place of safety and the return of Jesus Christ. They gambled too: Some sold their houses, others took out loans, all in an effort to support "the final gun lap of the Work". This shared delusion was unreasonable, since the time to flee was 1972, a time at which, a massive building program to expand the Ambassador College campuses began.
People gambled on Herbert Armstrong and lost.
It is also the case that people did not learn their lesson. Since the time of the "great disappointment", Armstrongists have had their illustrious leader die on them in 1986 without a single prediction he made coming to pass within his lifetime.
The sick gambling addiction continued after the death of Herbert Armstrong with hundreds of splinters making continuing predictions of death and mayhem hoping to ca$h in on the previous incarnation of Armstrongism. Some of the smaller groups even still play Herbert Armstrong audio tapes for services during the weekly Sabbath and occasionally the tapes even contain references to some the long ago failed prophecies.
There is a saying that the house always wins. Normally, the house collects approximately 5% of the bets.
The House of Armstrong collected over 10% and 20%, depending on the year. No one really ever won and got the money back. Herbert Armstrong managed to go through $2 billion to $4 billion dollars at his casino and those who bet have nothing to show for it.
Indeed, the house of Armstrong won.
The Apocalypse Gambling Addiction is just like a regular gambling addiction: It has social consequences for community and family as well as personal. People pour resources into the gamble, hoping to win big. They think they are about to win when some great natural disaster or tragedy strikes, but then things reset themselves and everyone goes on. Nevertheless, as people think they see a win in the sudden death play off they think it will pan out and put even more resources into the gambling addiction.
The children are the ones who lose the most. They are confused because their parents are telling them something different from what they are experiencing. It screws up the kids something fierce. They think they are going to have toys and pet tigers in the wonderful world tomorrow. They even sing, "It won't be long now", but, unfortunately it is and not even on the horizon. The parents make their children sacrifice: The children often don't have adequate clothes or medical care because the parents are selfishly gambling their resources away.
As children become teenagers, they begin to see that something is critically wrong with their parents and their lives are not working. The sacrifices they have made to support their parents' habit have left them socially bereft, poor and without the things the other children have as a matter of course.
Material things are not the only thing missing for them. They miss their parents because their parents are off with the gambling group for another rousing fix. So while the parents should spend time with their children, the children are alone in a created social vacuum. They become alienated from their parents. While they may not become gambling addicts themselves, they have a distorted view of what parenthood should be and go on to screw up their children.
The gambling addiction screws up families for multiple lifetimes stretching across multiple generations.
One
of the worst examples of the failure of Armstrongist prediction
gambling addiction is that of Ron Weinland who predicted the
beginning of the end of all things beginning in April 19, 2008. He
even wrote two books outlining the beginning of the Great
Tribulation, his becoming one of the two witnesses and the eventual
return of Jesus Christ. He declared that if all these things didn't
happen, then he would be counted as a false prophet. All sorts of
interesting events were to occur from April 2008 to... oh... June?
July? No later than August.
In 2008, there was to be no Feast of Tabernacles in the Fall. Pentecost was iffy, although plans continue, since the First Trumpet did not bring the burning of one-third of the trees and the all the grass being burned black. The hydrogen bombs were to fall on United States Port Cities within 60 to 90 days from the April 2008 date.
The sad thing is that his little congregation followed him with rapt attention, hanging on every word, believing him to the bitter end, as he flew off to Jerusalem to be one of the two witnesses.
For those who are Christians believing in Scripture, this is a major Commandment Breaker: Idolatry. People have put Herbert Armstrong on a pedestal as if he were the golden calf god leading the Israelites into the promised land of the place of safety as Old Testament Christians. They have believed that if only they give themselves wholeheartedly to those they perceive to be God's anointed in era, God will reward them with a position in the Kingdom of God. They put Herbert Armstrong and their current worshipful master before God, Jesus Christ, the Bible and good sense. Time after time, they roll the dice, turn the cards, place their bets on the Roulette Wheel, pull the lever of the slot machines -- all the things long connected with the occult -- hoping that they will be winners. Each and every time they are disappointed and their lives become worse and worse. They don't live the more abundantly life promised by Jesus because they really don't have their Savior first in their lives.
In all the betting they do, the Armstrongists might as well take their crystal balls, drill holes in them and go bowling, because they've turned black: The answer is unclear; try again.
And the sad thing is... they do.
