The COGwatcher's Monthly

One of the highlights of any serious COGwatcher's month is the release of the latest Journal. Frankly, I can't imagine how anyone could keep up the state of play in the wider church community without it.

The June 30 issue is now out - or at the very least in the post. Included this month:

* Details on Ron Dart's new Holy day book, The Thread. Some of us once hung on every word that Ron delivered from his Tyler CGI pulpit, and he is a masterful public speaker. But author? Ron sounds much better, in my experience, than the content justifies. But you can punch the details into Amazon if you're still curious. I think I'll pass.

* Somebody called Jeff Maehr has written an article all about conspiracy, world government and "Israel's birthright." Keep a strong paper bag handy if you decide to read this one.

* Steve Collins has written a piece on not playing inter-COG one-upmanship. At least, that seems to be the thrust of his argument. Hey, fair is fair, the guy has a real point - unlike his stuff on BI. But be warned, the article is dripping with End Time prognostication.

* Then there's an article by Norm Edwards promoting COG7's Spring Vale Academy, "the only Sabbatarian boarding high school in the U.S.A. not affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventists."

* The passing of Richard Nickels and Rob Elliot are noted in the Notes & Quotes section.

You can get subscription info from www.thejournal.org, and you can download the front and back pages at www.thejournal.org/issues/issue111/jf063006.pdf

Wazzup in Flurryland?

Gerald Flurry was a minor figure in pre-Tkach WCG, but the first post-HWA player to gather his phylacteries about himself and set up a competing franchise: the Philadelphia Church of God.

Of course he hasn't been the last. Rod followed with the Global Church of God, then David Hulme surfed the tsunami of discontent to emerge as frontman for the United Church of God. Both groups quickly overtook the Flurry operation in terms of members and (more significantly) tithe generation.

But Global has gone, sacrificed on the altar of Baal's ego. Despite a messy end, Rod created the LCG as a new vehicle fit for his high calling and quickly lapped Gerry again! UCG lost David Hulme and is still trying to get the leadership formula right, yet it's remained the largest of the Armstrong movements (despite bits falling off with amazing regularity.)

Gerald Flurry, however, is still at the helm of his Oklahoma operation. The big question is, who will eventually climb into his throne - Dennis Leap or son Stephen? Place your bets!

Flurry's PCG is among the most secretive of the splinters, right up there with David Hulme's COG-AIC. But wouldn't you just love to be privy to what the Six Pack Prophet is actually saying to his ministerial clones!

Wonder no longer. Courtesy of ex-member Robert Kuhne The Pastor General's Report - including recent 2006 issues - is online for your delectation. http://www.pcog.info/PGR%20Thumbnails/index.html

Ain't the Internet a wonderful thing!

The Packatollah

Back in the 1970s, when I was still a keen young WCG member studying at Teachers College, I came across a great kid's picture book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day. I've been meaning to improvise on the title and write an entry called Dave Pack and his Huge, Immense, Gargantuan, Very Big Work.

Thankfully, Gary Scott has spared me the bother with a telling commentary on XCG dealing with the Packatollah's obsession with size. It seems the Titan is really a wiener, flatulent ego notwithstanding.

There's been some debate about the value of exposing preachers like Pack in the media, and I'm sure there would be a long line of people eager to talk about their experience. Unfortunately, any publicity is good publicity and Pack should be starved of it. The only people who know about his obscure little organization are those with a prior commitment to Armstrongism, and even this little band largely ignores his inane boasting. Those who do take him seriously are an aging, dwindling bunch. Neither he nor his work will endure.

Pack is merely a legend in his own mind, as Gary clearly demonstrates.

A plea to Rod

Dear Dr Meredith

It has come to my attention that there has been a grievous oversight in God's true church, and I know that you will be keen to correct it immediately once you have been made aware of the situation. Bob Thiel has still not been ordained!

As you know, Dr Meredith, Mr Thiel is actually DOCTOR Thiel. In fact he has TWO doctorates, one in Naturopathy. This is surely equivalent to a theological degree, as I recollect all those bylines in the 1960s Plain Truth by your uncle "Dr C. Paul Meredith" - and HE was just a vet!

Bob also has a legitimate PhD from an obscure but accredited university. This is a major accomplishment, especially for someone who demonstrates limited grammatical and proof reading skills. I mean, how many double doctors does God's Philadelphian Work have at its disposal? This man is a treasure!

Plus, Dr Thiel has labored as a church host for years, and gives learned sermonettes on subjects like Marcion. Again, Dr Meredith, I wonder how many of the leading evangelists in God's Work would even know who Marcion was? Yet here is Bob providing this high quality edification for the lucky brethren in southern San Luis Obispo County.

But wait, Dr Meredith, there is more! Dr Thiel has his own website which provided vital information to the world in the wake of the Wisconsin shootings. For example, Dr Thiel correctly pointed out that it was inappropriate for outsiders to put up crosses as a sign of respect for those slain because crosses are pagan. This brave, principled stand was widely commented on!

And now Bob Thiel has expanded his wonderful website to include historical information on the Church of God in New Testament times and the first centuries. Already the fine scholarship he demonstrates has left Papists like Jared Olar (who is also counted among the anti-COG demonaics at XCG) speechless (other than making relevant critiques and citing facts in rebuttal.) Just take a look at the superb article Bob provides on Polycarp: again - who else even knows who Polycarp was (apart from Jared Olar - and being a Catholic he clearly doesn't count!)

Dr Meredith, please bear with me just a little longer while I mention Dr Thiel's excellent articles which have appeared not only in the church members' magazine, but even in The Journal, where they witness against the Laodicean subscribers who would otherwise have only been exposed to Brian Knowles, Dave Havir and other highly questionable sources.

So it was with shock, SHOCK, that I read Bob's recent disclaimer on his website: "I have not been ordained as a deacon or an elder."

I would personally like to recommend Dr Thiel for ordination as he is so clearly qualified - overqualified even - to be a minister in your great End Time Work to restore Apostolic Christianity. His gift for tact and respect when commenting on other Churches of God especially qualifies him to develop fraternal ties with those separated brethren in the United Church of God. I know that you will act expeditiously to bring him into the highest levels of ministry in the LCG.

With deep sincerity
GR

Vision Casting with PG Joe

The latest Together (the replacement for the Worldwide News) includes the following informal job description for Pastor General Joseph Tkach:

"President Joseph Tkach oversees the spiritual and business affairs of the denomination, providing denomination-wide leadership and vision casting and fulfilling the many administrative duties required for national and international incorporation and registration.

"Dr. Tkach speaks regularly at church leadership conferences and meetings around the world, keeps current on theological and social issues, and represents the church at the various Christian organizations in which it holds membership..."
Vision casting? Keeping current? In other words, Joe doesn't do much. The position is, one might conjecture, a sinecure: very nice if you can manage it. The hagiography, part of a glowing report on the sect's new facility in Glendora, is written by Mike Morrison.

Mike fails to mention that PG Joe has an undisclosed salary, has never been elected to his position, runs a rubber-stamp board (making it almost impossible to replace him) and has overseen the continuing and irreversible disintegration of the church. Joe is, in other words, the Fidel Castro of the Evangelical gulag.

The stark nature of the WCG's continuing autocratic rule is plastered over by claims of "episcopal governance" (an outright misrepresentation) and sickly evangelical rhetoric. Apparently most people haven't been fooled: those with get-up-and-go have simply got up and gone. Sadly, too many into the waiting arms of the Armstrong warlords: Meredith, Flurry and their ilk.

How then does Joe justify his role or the perks of his office? Clearly he has been less than demonstrably competent. In recent months he even seems to have lost the support of Greg Albrecht, once an obsequious apologist, now steering "his" Plain Truth ministry in new directions and freezing out Joe and the WCG. And then there's the issue of the name change that changed back again. The church doesn't seem to be exactly in a safe pair of hands.

The reality is that Joe is unlikely to ever do the right thing and either step aside or (the better option) reform the administration by creating representative leadership. Sitting back in that big comfy chair, it's more than likely he'll be there till they wheel him out. If he can't do the deed, those remaining can still do the next best thing: cut their financial support and start looking for a healthy alternative.

The COGs and racism

At a time when the churlish, drunken rantings of Mel Gibson have hit the headlines, the spectre of anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head on XCG with comments by a former WCG member. The moderator, Gary Scott, has responded with a clear statement that expresses his disgust at the sentiments.

Gary has it right. Anti-Semitism, like any other form of racism and ethnic prejudice, is contemptible: especially so among people who claim to bask in the love of God.

Anti-Semitism has always existed in a precarious balance with philo-Semitism in the Armstrong sects. John Trechak reportedly pleaded with David Robinson to remove openly anti-Jewish passages from his book, Herbert Armstrong’s Tangled Web. Robinson eventually agreed. Robinson saw Stanley Rader as the “Jewish threat” to the church, a view that Garner Ted Armstrong may have exploited. Whether Rader was the Rasputin figure he was made out to be is beside the point: whatever issues surrounded him, they had everything to do with personal ethics and nothing to do with his Jewish heritage.

Armstrong himself was a strong supporter of Israel, and even today the rhetoric in COG publications such as Flurry’s Philadelphia Trumpet amounts to knee-jerk endorsement of militant Israeli policy. But the very basis of Armstrong prophetic teaching, British Israelism, is by its very nature grounded in a variety of racism that proclaimed the primacy of white, English speaking nations. No one expresses this with less sophistication than Roderick Meredith with his constant references to “our English speaking peoples.” British Israelism is the ultimate insult to Jews, appropriating their identity in a fictional history that relegates them to bit players while Anglo Saxons become the new, true stars of Bible history and prophecy.

Catholicism and Lutheranism in particular have unenviable records of bigotry toward Jews, both to the religion and the people. It is to their credit that much of this has been swept aside in wake of the holocaust. It’s ironic then that some “Hebrew roots” groups – especially those with WCG connections – seem to have made little or no progress. Even when positive statements abound, the price is a vitriolic contempt for Arabic people. Contempt toward Palestinians or Lebanese (many of whom are not Muslim but Christian) is every bit as vile as anti-Semitism. A gospel that embraces all people without distinction still sadly seems very far removed from the public proclamation of the Churches of God.

Birth of an Apostle?

114 years ago tomorrow, July 31 1892, Herbert W. Armstrong was born in Des Moines. Not a man to encourage the celebration of birthdays, he nonetheless - unlike the children of his later followers - had the pleasure of receiving a 9th birthday party his mother organized, a photograph of which remained with the man-who-would-be-apostle throughout his life.

Like John Brown, Herb Armstrong's body lies a-mouldering in its grave. A man who built a religion and recruited his family into key positions (brother Dwight, son-in-law Vern Mattson, son Garner Ted), there remains only a shadow of the church he built and an absence of his descendants among its adherents.

Devotees of Armstrongism will scarcely mark this day, any more than they mark their own birth dates, but for those of us who've moved beyond his baneful influence (around 80% of the membership just over a decade ago) it's a chance to pause and consider the man, his motivations and his impact.

His impact on the world, or even the religious world was minimal. He barely makes the footnotes in reference works. But his impact in our lives was of another order.

As for his motivations, that's a complex question. Did he really believe what he preached? If not, how do you understand the attitude to medical intervention following his son Dick's fatal car crash? If he did, how do you explain his convenient rewriting of church doctrine to allow the marriage to divorcee Ramona? Perhaps he ended up convincing himself of his own fictions. As David Robinson observed, the web is so tangled it is almost impossible to peer beyond it.

While it is certain that Herbert Armstrong's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, it's less certain that his soul goes marching on. Perhaps its appropriate that for each one of his imitators in 2006, the followers of Pack, Meredith, Flurry and a gaggle of other wannabes, there are so many more who have reintegrated into a life unconnected with Herbert's grandiose vision.

And that, I think, is a cause for optimism.

Who wrote 2 Peter?

John Ross Schroeder is up to bat on the canonical question in the latest Good News. And JR has a nifty new argument to offer in an article called Is the New Testament a Fraud?.

Let me begin by putting my cards on the table. The New Testament is an amazing collection of documents from the first century. It uniquely chronicles the diverse faith and testimony of those who first took on the name Christian. It is a source of inspiration to people of faith today, as in the past, and many of us have heard the voice of God speaking through its text. But why should anyone believe - let alone promote - nonsense in order to make it into something it's not.

- These are the founding documents of the faith, not objective history.

- These are documents that deserve great respect, but not idolatrous worship.

- These are documents that point beyond themselves in all their fallibility to something beyond words and opinion. They do not point to themselves.

- These are documents written by time-bound human beings attempting to express their experience of Jesus, the living Christ, the power of the Spirit and the unconditional grace of God. These documents are not honored by telling porkies about them in an effort to inflate their reputation.

Back to JR and the canon. Mr Schroeder suggests that both Peter and Paul contributed to the canonization of the New Testament - the gathering of these documents together as recognized scripture for the church. In part his argument revolves around 2 Peter 1: 12-15.

12 Therefore I intend to keep on reminding you of these things, though you know them already and are established in the truth that has come to you. 13 I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to refresh your memory, 14 since I know that my death will come soon, as indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me. 15 And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.

That last verse, according to Schroeder, indicates that Peter is taking steps to create the canon. But there's a problem. Peter didn't write 2 Peter.

Richard Bauckham writes in the HarperCollins Bible Commentary: 2 Peter belongs not only to the literary genre of the letter, but also to that of "testament"... In Jewish usage the testament was a fictional genre... It is therefore likely that 2 Peter is also a pseudonymous work, attributed to Peter after his death... These literary considerations and the probable date of 2 Peter... make authorship by Peter himself very improbable.

Scot McKnight, writing in the Eerdmans Commentary notes that 2 Peter "was probably composed within two decades after his death. No book in the Bible had more difficulty establishing itself in the canon. As late as Eusebius (d. 371) some did not consider 2 Peter to be from the Apostle or part of the canon... doubts continued for centuries (e.g., Calvin and Luther)"

McKnight adds: There is clear evidence that 2 Peter is either dependent on Jude or on a later revision of a tradition used by the author of Jude and then by the author of 2 Peter... The letter probably emerges from a Hellenistic Jewish context, probably in Asia.

In his recent book "Peter, Paul, & Mary Magdalene" Bart Ehrman notes: whoever wrote 2 Peter, it was not Simon Peter the disciple of Jesus. Unlike 1 Peter, the letter of 2 Peter was not widely accepted, or even known, in the early church. The first time any author makes a definite reference to the book is around 220 CE, that is 150 years after it was allegedly written. It was finally admitted into the canon somewhat grudgingly, as church leaders of the later third and fourth centuries came to believe that it was written by Peter himself. But it almost certainly was not... As scholars have long recognized, much of the invective is borrowed, virtually wholesale, from another book that found its way into the New Testament, the epistle of Jude. This is one of the reasons for dating the letter itself somewhat later... it is dependent on another letter that appears to have been written near the end of the first century.

How ironic then that Mr Schroeder uses 2 Peter, a very late document, to "proof text" his view that the canon was created very early! The idea that our New Testament in its present form goes all the way back to the time of the apostles is wishful thinking at best, and dishonest at worst. The Good News understandably has an apologetic thrust, but good apologetics also requires being honest with and about the sources. Sadly, that doesn't happen very often in the unholy rush to protect the Bible from the facts.

Sabbath vs Sunday

The latest Journal carries copies of two ads that appeared in a local Big Sandy paper. The opening shot came from a fundamentalist fellowship keen score a few points. If you've read anything intelligent from either side of this discussion, you'll recognize the howlers (click on the image to view a larger copy).

You'd have to suspect that the good folk at New Life Church thought this would be a wonderful ministry to those poor, deluded Armstrongists in their midst. I don't know much if anything about the Big Sandy community (actually, the whole State of Texas is a complete mystery to me) but I'm guessing the WCG/ UCG/ CGI/ ICG/ CGBS groups are something of a local distinctive.

What's interesting is the quality of the argument. Pastor Billy falls back on "Joshua's Long Day" to "prove" his point. I doubt that particular objection would raise anything more than a guffaw from most literate readers, whether Sabbatarian or not.

The Sabbath issue is important enough to discuss openly, but this is hardly the way to raise it. A response the following week from the Church of God - Big Sandy (penned by Reg Killingley) provided a thoughtful and reasonable contrast.

Perhaps it's relevant here to put in a plug for Henry Sturcke's book, Encountering the Rest of God. Sturcke is a former WCG minister who has earned his doctor of theology at the University of Zurich with a disseration on Jesus and the Sabbath. I've got to admit that it's a little too academic to be coffee table material, but reverend gentlemen with pontifical tendencies like Pastor Billy could learn a lot if they bothered to persevere. And no, Joshua's Long Day doesn't get a mention!

But back to the ad. This is the level of debate that was going on in the 1930s when Herb was catching a few zzzzzzzzz's away from Loma in the public library. Wise up Billy, the world has moved on!

Also from the Journal letters section, joyous news that Geoffrey Neilson of South Africa has composed a new hymn in honor of "the 81st prophetic anniversary" of Herb's calling. To be sung to the catchy Dwight Armstrong tune “Lord, Teach Me That I May Know.”

God sent the end-time Elijah,
As promised to Israel’s Tribes,
After He identified
Where they’d all gone worldwide.

Elijah was the first to grasp
That the end time had begun;
He restored the first Truth and last
And every other one.

Elijah sowed God’s end-time crop,
Reached more hearts than all the
prophets,
Proclaiming the Kingdom of God;
His disciples still haven’t stopped.

After Elijah’s Restoration
Came the great Falling Away.
Hold fast, Philadelphians,
Never let God’s Truth slip again.

Beautiful, huh?

(The front and back pages of the May 31 Journal can be downloaded in PDF format at www.thejournal.org/issues/issue110/jf053106.pdf)

Painful Truth returns

The Painful Truth site is now back online after Ed Mentell Sr. returned to take on the project, though perhaps only temporarily. You can find it now at http://www.hwarmstrong.com/