Did you ever stop to think about just how much control the Churches of God ministry has attempted to exert upon your life?
Have you ever stopped to ponder the extent of their will upon your lives?
How did this happen? How is it that we could have allowed men to convince us that they had that kind of authority over us? What was it that allowed us to lower our guard, to lay down on the floor, assume the fetal position, and allow these men to trample on us, to kick us, to beat us, to rob us, and to dictate to us - and take it for year after year after year?
What was it that made us believe that they were our adult parental units - who told us exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it, where to do it, and why we should do it? How is it that we rationalized such thinking as actually the right way to live?
It is a hard thought to really invest time in thinking about without some degree of self-deprecation. One of the things that is stressed in cult deprogramming is to avoid the trap of negative thinking that cults - and abusers - trap you in. So, let's just jot down many of the things that convinced us that they had authority over our lives.
1) We believed they were who they said they were.
2) We believed what they said would happen, will happen.
3) We believed that Herbert Armstrong was divinely inspired and appointed.
4) We believed that because Herbert Armstrong was divinely inspired and appointed, then those who he ordained were also divinely inspired and appointed.
5) We believed that because those who were ordained were also divinely inspired and appointed, then their words were as good as from God Himself.
6) We believed that the judgements that the ministry handed down were bound in Heaven, therefore, they had to be right, even if we knew they were not.
7) We believed they knew what they were talking about - in bible knowledge, in counseling, in marriage, in child rearing, in life.
8) We believed in the reality they wrote for us.
It all came down to one word - belief. We believed what they said. We believed what they taught. We believed in the power they told us they had. We believed their explanations, we believed their arguments, we believed everything they handed down to us - the how's, the why's - and the authority behind every decision they made. We believed it all.
There is a lot to be said concerning the power of belief. Belief affects every single part of your life - your mood, your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations, your abilities, your successes, and your failures. Belief affects your fears, your anxieties, your insecurities, your doubts, and your thinking in every way. When we were convinced that what they were saying was true, we believed.
We believed every prophecy, speculation, prediction, and fantasy they ever said or published. We believed in the method of biblical understanding - bible reading - that they handed down. We believed in the master plan of salvation they taught us. We believed their dilution of the Gospel of Christ. And we believed in how they magnified the power of Satan. We believed what they said about what defines the world, what defines idolatry, what defines paganism, evil, worship, and churches. We believed that we had to give up the rights of adulthood - our political, marital, relationship, family, financial, social, and employment decisions - to the total control of our minister parents. And because we believed this - this belief became real. What was once just the vision of Herbert Armstrong and a few other men turned into an alternate reality of - for those affected - gigantic, life-changing proportions - and for those not affected, an invisible part of the world we all live in with absolutely no power or authority. We believed.
This power of belief - this power of delusion, which is what it was - was a chain of bondage that wrapped tightly around us, tightening it's grip with every sermon, with every counsel, with every interaction, with every bound friendship, relationship, doctrine and dogma. What they said for us, is what it was. And because of this, we gave up who we were for their lies, for their scams, for their pocketbooks, and for their lives of luxury.
We know for an absolute fact now that our belief was wholly and absolutely incorrect. British Israelism has been thoroughly and scientifically refuted in irrefutable analysis. Herbert's "world tomorrow" which was guaranteed to come in the 20th century did not. The church that "no man could shut down" was shut down by one man. The Worldwide Church of God as it was is no more. None of us were supposed to be here right now. Right now, we were supposed to be with Christ on this earth, cleaning up the tribulation, well into the first 40 years of "The World Tomorrow". We would have 30-40 year-olds who only knew life in this Millennium, with tame tigers and lions, spirit beings judging and disciplining, and lots of fountains and floral gardens everywhere under crystal clear skies - all singing "Praise Ye The Lordo" and "Holy Mighty Majesty". This is what we believed.
And yet the one thing we were supposed to BELIEVE, we did not.
That God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that WHOSOEVER believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For everything we believed, the one thing we did not, could not, and would not believe was the Gospel of Jesus Christ - who He was, what He did, and what He accomplished. And everything the Gospels said was true, which we as a church denied, denied, and denied again.
Because if we had believed that - we would never have believed anything else that has been proven to be lies.
There is much truth to the words of the old song:
On Christ the Solid Rock I stand,
all other ground is sinking sand.
And because we didn't believe the one thing we should have believed - it all sank.
