Worldwide Church of God: It Was God's Will

I remember hearing those two little words "God's will" many times in the thirty years I spent being mind-raped by Herbert W. Armstrong and his many minions in the evil, fraudulent cult of his The Worldwide Church of God. This was the ultimate way of consoling a true believer when all else fails. We were supposed to fall back on our faith in God, and trust in his infinite mercy and goodness. Today we still hear popular preachers mouthing this useless phrase, good gospel preachers like Jimmy Faker, Rex Humbug, Jimmy Braggart, Jerry Foulsmell, Pat Robber-son, and on and on ad nauseam. With a large helping of nauseam.

When I first got sucked into Pervie's grand cult, one of the big things was to go to the Feast of Tabernacles. Since Pervie had good marketing hype, his cult was growing in numbers about 30% a year, or so Pervie kept telling us. And that was one of his many proofs that we were in God's true church. Apparently if it had started out growing only 29% a year it would have been Satan's church. Anyway, we were constantly being urged to pray for our church leaders to find another Feast site each year because we kept growing so damned fast.

And our leaders kept on being guided by God's divine providence to just the right spot on earth where God had placed His name and wanted us to attend the Feast there. The leaders explained to us the process. I remember very clearly hearing several evangelist-ranked scammers tell us dumb sheep that God reveals His will to us by causing one door to close, another door opens, certain circumstances occur to force us to do such-and-such, and so on. In other words, we would pray and ask God to show us His will on subject X, then God would intervene and cause event Y to happen which meant that we now knew His will about subject X. God was leading us to see where He wanted us to have each new Feast site by causing circumstances to "work out" so that we were slowly forced to find the exact spot that God had in mind, the new location where God had placed His name.

This was a great load of horseshit, but I couldn't see it back in those mind-raped years. What this really means is that whatever the hell happens shows us what God's will is. "Door opens" and "door closes" means whatever happens. "Circumstances" means whatever happens. "Work out" means whatever happens. So no matter what happens, it is God's will.

Or maybe it was the will of some human high up in the organization who wanted the new Feast site to be built on some undeveloped property he had just bought for next to nothing. It could happen.

Now we have a good, pragmatic, working definition of God's will WHATEVER THE HELL HAPPENS. If whatever happens is good, then we should praise and thank God for something good, for a blessing, for letting it be His will to give us good things. If something bad happens, then that is God's will, too, because He must want us to go through a trial for our own spiritual growth, to learn patience, mercy, etc. In other words, everything that happens, whether good or bad, is God's will.

If someone's baby dies, that is God's will. If that same baby should survive childhood leukemia and grow up to become President, that is also God's will. If I am accosted on the street by a robber and then mugged, beaten, robbed, raped, and wounded then that is God's will. If that same stranger should befriend me, act pleasantly towards me, smile and say have a nice day, and give me one million dollars, then that is also God's will. If I waste all my family's finances through compulsive gambling and drag my loved ones through the sewer, that is God's will. If I am lucky and win the lottery, however, that is also God's will.

This passive acceptance of whatever happens in life as God's will is totally repulsive to me. It makes me so angry that I almost start to go insane thinking of the stupidity of it all. I definitely get enraged.

Speaking of insanity, it was also apparently God's will that Andrea Yates go insane and then murder her five children by drowning them in her bathtub in Houston. That was God's will because it happened.

Suppose I am accosted by that same robber. If I accept God's will for me and passively allow myself to be beaten and robbed, then that is God's will for me. But if I should use deadly force to defend myself, that would be God's will for the robber, too. If I should choose to strike him in the throat and crush his larynx, I could stand there and watch him fall down, unable to breathe, as his crushed larynx hemorrhages inside his throat, slowly filling his lungs with blood. Then in a few minutes he would drown in his own blood and die. That would also be God's will. And I would still have my money and not have been beaten and wounded. And the world would be a safer place with fewer robbers. God's will sounds pretty good to me now. Or maybe in this case what I choose to do would be my will rather than God's will. Hmmmmm... What an interesting concept!

World War II was God's will. How so? Because World War II happened, and whatever happens is God's will. 50 million people, mostly civilians, died during World War II, so God willed that they all die. It was also God's will for the World Trade Center to collapse and kill about 3,000 people. How so? Because it happened, that's why. Also it must be God's will for the United States of America to continue selling tanks, helicopters, and other sophisticated weapons to many other nations for them to use in brutally oppressing their own people if they want to. It is God's will for the United States to intervene anywhere it wants to on earth, since the powers that be are ordained of God, the USA is by definition the policeman of the whole earth in the New World Order, and we are only following God's will. Whatever will be, is God's will.

This ties in very nicely with the now-debunked British-Israel theory long espoused by Herbvert and his fellow bilkers until he died and church leaders started throwing away all the precious truth God had revealed only to him. One result of believing this historical, prophetic nonsense is that you become convinced that your country exists for the sole purpose of doing God's will. Then whatever your elected leaders do is God's will, no matter how questionable, illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, heinous, or genocidal. Check your mind in at the door when you enter the congregation, sit down, open up your mind, and receive your indoctrination for the day. The whole American nation is in a political cult even though they don't know it. Our noble experiment in liberty, the constitutional republic of the USA, the hope of the world, the golden door beside which Lady Liberty stands, is being massively mind-raped on a national scale by our own system, and few seem to notice. But that's OK, because it's God's will.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said the night before he was killed that he didn't fear any man, he just wanted to do God's will. Apparently it was God's will for King to be killed the next day. And it was also God's will for dozens of American cities to go up in flames with rioting for the next week after King died. All these things happened, so therefore they were God's will.

It is also apparently God's will for the average American to have a far better and more comfortable lifestyle than most all other people on the planet. Since I am an American and am really enjoying this comfort, I must say Thy will be done. God is great! Allahu akbar!

For some really inspiring examples of God's will, see the Painful Truth webpage on "ACTS OF GOD". My favorite one is the fiery disaster on the General Slocum steamship in New York City harbor about 100 years ago in which over 1,000 people died. (One reason why it is my favorite is because I submitted it to the editor.) But the main reason is because all 1,000 people who died a horrible death that day, and the many who committed suicide later over the loss of their loved ones, were Bible-believing Christians on their way to a Sunday picnic. Then God decided it was His will to let them all burn or drown to death on the very day when they were closest to God (a "Sabbath" day, according to non-Sabbatarian Christians, and also according to the WCG these days). Smooth move there, God. Nice "will" you had that day. Well, wasn't that special? Probably God wanted to let them all burn and drown because they were worshipping him on the wrong day of the week, and they were pagan. Too bad they weren't Worldwide Church of God members who knew the truth about the weekly Sabbath day. Then God would have intervened and saved them.

Since whatever happens is God's will, the only logical conclusion is that God's will is totally meaningless, and believing in God's will is a cosmic cop-out. Screw God's will. To hell with passivity. Resist! Think. Question authority. To hell with faith. Use the scientific method. Analyze. Conclude. But do not trust. Even the Bible told us that. The eunuch asked Paul "how can I understand the scriptures unless some man leads me?" And Solomon advised us to trust no man. So there we are in a hopeless box. Any human who wants to explain God or his will to us is NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

I have been a professional computer programmer for over 36 years. About 20 percent of all the program instructions I have ever written were put into those programs for the purpose of detecting errors and handling impossible or unusual situations. I have learned the hard way that no program will ever work correctly the first time. Whenever I do anything now, I try to make allowances for the unexpected, for things to go wrong. My profession has affected all my thinking. I plan for the worst, but hope for the best. And that goes with people, too. I hope other people act honorably, justly, lovingly, unselfishly, but I know they probably won't. And I know they will lie to me, try to use me, deceive me, manipulate me, and get me to accept something on faith.

Or another way to say that is Faith No More. Besides being a good outlook on life, it's also the name of a cool rock group.

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