It has long been maintained, in Church theology, that the Church of God is totally separate and distinct from “The Great Whore of Babylon” (Hislop’s Roman Catholic Church) and “all her harlot daughters”, the variegated Protestant offshoots that came about after the separation of Britain from Rome. Also the separation of Alexandria, but it is not Eastern Orthodoxy which I wish to address in this post.

The purple hymnal, as the “How This Hymnal Came to be” page (the one in the book, not the one on this site) tells us :

Having no hymnal of our own I was forced to use one of the somewhat thin paperback Protestant song books. The elderly Bible scholar said, “It is just as sinful to sing a lie as to tell one.” I had to agree. For some time I realized that many of the standard hymnals contained songs that were unscriptural.

As has been made clear through the pages of this site,  Armstrong’s version of  ”scriptural” hymns took on a very different meaning to the professing Christian hymns of the day. We were singing “songs inspired by God’s words”, we were told, and did not bend knee to “The Great Whore of Babylon and all her harlot daughters”, by singing the songs of the pagans.

The truth is somewhat different than the parallel reality we were presented with. For all the insistence that our hymns were THE hymns of “the one true church of god”, it has subsequently come out that many of them were actually cribbed from a clearly Protestant source, but “The Old Scottish Psalter” was probably OK, since they were “of the tribe of Ephraim”, after all. (Therefore, not REALLY “harlot daughters”.)

Some recent reading has led me to discover a particular Protestant hymn called the “Benedicite”, apparently beloved of both Catholics and Anglicans, for many centuries. Originally in Latin, the English translation from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer is as follows:

O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Heavens, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Waters that be above the Firmament, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O all ye Powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Sun and Moon, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Stars of Heaven, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Fire and Heat, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Nights and Days, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Light and Darkness, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O let the Earth bless the Lord : yea, let it praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Mountains and Hills, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O all ye Green Things upon the Earth, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Wells, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Whales, and all that move in the Waters, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O all ye Fowls of the Air, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Children of Men, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O let Israel bless the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O ye holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

O Ananias, Azarias and Misael, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.

4. It is still true: Church of God members are not allowed to read any critical websites. It is still an offense punishable by disfellowshipment and/or marking. However, once a hardcore Church of God member gets on the internet, they will spend weeks and months reading everything they can.

5. It is still true: Church of God members do not know the basic facts of their own church. They believe the PR and ignore the stories of sexual deviance. Church of God members tend not to interact with the worldly or to minimize interactions.

6. Church of God members live in a highly censored false reality system where the sense of group and loyalty is extraordinarily strong. The distortion of reality in a Church of God group is incredibly hard for a non-believer to fathom.

Here’s the original.

Any questions?

Merry/Happy Christmas, Xmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, Happy Winter Solstice (so mote it be), and to all a good night.

See you in 2010! (Sorry Weinland!)

Portions of this post have been reprinted from I Survived Armstrongism.

This post is a reprint from I Survived Armstrongism.

OK so a “first Christmas” should, by all rights, involve pictures of a toddler ripping apart mountains of paper under a tree with lights and tinsel and mountains of stuff. Right?

My first Christmas, not so much.

I was born in 1976. “My first Christmas” was in 1996. Two years after Senior’s sermon from the mount. We had started skipping Saturdays (but we were still keeping the Sabbath) in ‘95, and our attendance was more off, than on, by the time 1996 rolled around.

I don’t remember the exact date, but it had to have been before Atonement, because I don’t remember having to starve myself that year. Or maybe I did. Most Atonements just blended into one another, through the years. It was around Thanksgiving anyway, but definitely before the Feast, because I don’t even remember us talking about attending that year. Or there even being discussions from the pulpit as to the usual pre-Feast ramp-ups. Then again, our attendance was so spotty, we probably missed it anyway.

We had the following discussion.

Converted parent: “Do you want to keep going to church?”

Me: “There’s not really much point anymore, is there?”

The unconverted parent, as always, said nothing.

That was it. That was the extent of the conversation, and that was our “exit”. We quit going after that, and no more was said about it. Cut-and-dried, very clean break, I’m sure that’s what my parents thought.

We spent that Hallowe’en hiding from the kiddies, as we usually did, although there was no Feast that year, at least not one that we attended, and we didn’t do Thanksgiving either I think, at least not a dinner where we invited others as per usual.

(All of the people in the church that we knew, were dropped like hot potatoes, with the exception of one or two people, of which the family’s contact with them was sharply curtailed. I don’t know what went on behind-the-scenes, and whether this was a conscious choice on my parents’ or the church members’ parts, or if that’s just how it all fell out.)

Then all Hell broke loose.

OK so Hallowe’en came and went as per usual, and suddenly the converted parent was bringing home stacks (literally stacks) of CDs of Christmas music. Which the now-formerly-converted parent proceeded to play at full volume, 24/7, practically round the clock.

I said nothing, but it really drove me nuts. I think that was the intent anyway, as I was continuing to “keep” the Sabbath at this point, even though we were no longer attending services: I wouldn’t watch TV on Friday nights after sunset, although I had progressed from reading only the Bible, to reading the newspaper and/or magazines.

(Reading other books, and watching TV, “on the Sabbath” would not become comfortable for me, for another year or so after that.)

We never discussed this while it was happening, the formerly-converted parent and I. The unconverted parent, as usual, said nothing.

The Christmas carols were bad enough. Then there was some talk about decorating the house. I admit it, I pretty much went ballistic. “Just because we don’t believe in the church anymore, doesn’t mean we have to jump right into doing as the world does!”

(Yes, I actually said that, and it’s hard to believe looking back on it now, how far I have come since then. Or how much I had to conquer, all by myself, to do so.)

Decorating the house was never discussed after that. Obviously, a tree was ABSOLUTELY out of the question. Actually, now that I think about it, the formerly-unconverted parent did make mention of a few small decorations here or there, bows or something, I forget what it was. I don’t remember saying anything, but it must have been the look on my face that did it, because the subject was dropped, and never brought up again.

The Christmas carols continued on, at full blast, and remember that this was post-Hallowe’en when it started. Any wonder I can’t stand Christmas music to this day. It just sets my teeth on edge. On the end of it, I felt like a prisoner of war undergoing auditory torture, and I was more than relieved when it finally ended. (A week after New Year’s, if you can believe that.)

We were in the mall, the formerly-unconverted parent and I, shortly after all this began, and I suddenly found myself being unceremoniously marched into the local Hallmark.

Me: What are you doing?

Formerly-Unconverted Parent: Buying Christmas cards.

Me: !!!!

Formerly-Unconverted Parent: Go pick out cards for your grandparents.

(This was an order, it was by no means a suggestion, or a “maybe you’d like to”. It was, in no uncertain terms, a direct command.)

Me: Forget it!

Formerly-Unconverted Parent: You are going to buy cards to send to your grandparents this year!

Me: No way!

Formerly-Unconverted Parent: Stop making a scene!

Me: I’m not the one making a scene! Why would I pick out Christmas cards? We don’t keep Christmas!

Formerly-Unconverted Parent: Shut up! Keep your voice down and go pick out cards!

I walked out of the store at that point and sat down on a bench outside. There was no way I was doing that. There was just no way. Twenty years of my life, of never having bought nor received “Christmas cards”, and now all of a sudden, I absolutely HAD TO buy Christmas cards? Really?

Christmas cards. It seems so inconsequential now, and I laugh at my poor deluded little self back then. But to me, at that time, it seemed like the end of the world. Only there was nothing to cling to. Except my books of course, and science fiction, but I’ve discussed that elsewhere.

By the way, I’ve already started looking around for cards this year, so I’ve definitely managed to nip that particular phobia in the bud, twelve years later.

The incident at the mall was, predictably, never discussed. Are you sensing a theme here?

Then the parents decided they were going to go out and look at the Christmas lights on the houses. I of course did not want to go. But right or wrong, I was going, and there was nothing I could say against it.

Bear in mind that I always used to close my eyes or look away from the Christmas lights every year prior to this, if we happened to be out driving at night, because they were “pagan”. Fine, I thought, I’ll sit in the backseat, and I just won’t look. Won’t be a problem. Let’s just go and get this over with.

Wouldn’t you know it, the formerly-converted parent had bought Christmas CDs for the car. That part of the torture never ended. Anyway. Here we went, driving around, and all of a sudden my parents were ooh-ing and ahhhh-ing over all the beautiful lights.

Trust me, I felt like I was in a live-action version of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers. Needless to say, I didn’t respond.

Parent: “Look at that one!”

Me: …..

Parent: “Are you looking?”

Me: ……

Parent (starting to get pissed off now): “Look at the lights Aggie!”

So I looked. It’s not like I could see much of anything through the tears anyway.

Parent: “Are you looking?!”

Me (kind of choked up): “Yes, fine, I’m looking, I’m looking, OK?!”

The poor witless bastards, they just turned the music up louder, and kept driving around. As if that damned music would suddenly make everything OK.

(Yes, I can laugh about this now, but I’m a little bit teary, I will admit.)

Oh, the tale goes on, brethren, and it only gets worse. Our annual movie day was cancelled that year, something I always looked forward to, in favour of going to the house of “worldly” people we barely knew, in order that we might “keep Christmas”.

By this point, I was so worn down, I just went along with it. Go along to get along, and maybe you’ll get out of this alive yet, I was thinking to myself. Although things didn’t look good on that front, that particular year. When the question of “spending Christmas at X’s house” was brought up, I just shrugged, and said, “Whatever.”

Normally when we went downtown to see a movie Christmas Day, the city was deserted. It was always with a “aren’t we special that we’re not caught up in the pagan holiday mess” attitude that we went through the empty, snow-covered streets with. This year, however, we were going out of the house with the express purpose of keeping a pagan holiday.

Talk about Hallowe’en. I was more spooked during the course of that hour-long commute on Christmas Day in 1996, than if all the hounds of Hell had suddenly materialized at my feet and were drooling blood.

I really, honestly, truly felt like the atmosphere was filled with demons, and that there was nothing I could do to escape them. The houses were shut up, everything was closed, no one was moving. It was a ghost town. Literally. And I swear to you, I could feel the ghosts, pressing in on me. “Satan’s demons”, who had “won”.

Then we pulled up to the house of the people we barely knew. Fortunately, they weren’t the all-out-decorations-whole-nine-yards type. So we walked up to the house, and we walked in, took off our boots and coats and hats, said our hellos.

Then they paraded the three of us in, in front of the Christmas tree, and we just stood there. No one said anything. Then somebody said something about the weather, and the awkward moment passed. It wasn’t the last awkward moment we would have that day. Bear in mind, we really didn’t know these people, at this point. They didn’t really know us, either, nor did they have any idea of what kind of closed, high-demand religious group we had come out of.

Then we sat down to the meal. Christmas tablecloth, fine china, Christmas crackers on the plates, they did go the whole nine yards for that. They didn’t say a prayer before the meal. That was the first meal I had ever eaten in my life, at which there was no prayer said before it. I felt like I was going to be sick, and I did not want to eat. But they piled my plate high, and eat I did. I’m sure the food was wonderful, but I thought at the time that I was going to be poisoned by God, for my terrible apostasy, so I don’t remember if the food was any good or not.

Anyway, we got through the meal, but the family we were visiting was looking at us like we were freaks. They probably didn’t know what to think. We were freaks, in retrospect, or at least I was.

Then came the Christmas crackers, and they had to explain what they were, and what we did with them. I remember the only comment being made was the formerly-unconverted parent saying something like “we didn’t have these when I was a kid”. So, pop the cracker, and you get a prize and a hat. A plastic prize, and a tissue-paper crown. That tissue paper crown is the key part right there.

I looked around, at that table full of people, all wearing tissue paper crowns, and all I could think was, “I gave up the Kingdom of God for this?” Here we were, the formerly-converted parent and I, wearing tissue-paper crowns, when we were supposed to have had crowns of gold and many-coloured jewels, waiting for us in a Kingdom that would now never come.

It sounds so stupid in retrospect, doesn’t it? At the time, it seemed like my own personal Apocalypse. All the colours were washed-out, nothing looked right. Everything seemed muffled, muted, as if it was all unreal. I don’t remember the rest of the dinner, but I do remember driving back through the ghost-city when we left. It had started snowing, hard and fast and thick, and everything was heading for a whiteout.

I remember looking out the window of the car, at the blank white world in front of me, and I remember, I remember, making the conscious choice, to forget the previous twenty years of my life. The blank white world around me became the blank white world that I stepped into, after that day. Everything was erased, like information from a hard drive. It was the only thing I could think of to do, in order to survive, in the alien world that I had suddenly found myself thrown into, head-first.

That was my first Christmas.

Following on from J’s post, this post is a reprint from I Survived Armstrongism.

The YES lessons often talked about “taking a time machine into the past” of the bible stories, so that we might “unlock the vital understanding of prophecy”. Today, on I Survived Armstrongism, I propose a time machine into a past that didn’t get nearly as much play, as did “the major prophecies of the minor prophets.”

The following account is just fuzzy enough on the identities and the locations, that I am hopeful everyone who was once a child of the church, will be able to see themselves, or some part of their childhood, in what follows.

Part 2

A chill wind curls around your legs, and blows your homemade knit scarf into your eyes, as the old used car sputters and protests its way to the curb. Your father drives up to the end of the long line of yellow school buses, where screaming, teasing, fighting children pile onto the buses in groups. You stand alone in front of the small school, until the whining car finally pulls up to the curb, and you get in. The handle on the passenger side door sticks, so you have to jiggle it just so, otherwise it will never come open. But there are no seatbelts in the back, and you get the whole backseat to yourself, for now. You lean against the worn PVC, careful not to get your multiple layers of clothes caught in any of the larger cracks. You settle back against the seat, and adjust the threadbare cap on your head. The yarn is getting looser and looser, and it barely keeps you warm. Your ears haven’t defrosted since late September. Through the warped glass of the windshield, you see the children of this world swarming onto the many buses.

They have a veil over their eyes, you think. You don’t feel so bad anymore, for the way they teased you, today. They just don’t understand God’s plan, and they won’t, until the Kingdom comes back. Soon, soon, the Kingdom will come, as the ministers told you from the pulpit, at the last Feast. It wasn’t very long ago, but it seems like a lifetime and worlds away. You went where it was warm, and sunny, and there were beaches and tourist attractions and thousands and thousands of people, and lots of other kids just like you. Everyone around you was blessed with God’s truth, as you lived the way everyone will be living, when the Kingdom comes. You miss the Feast, and can’t wait till next year, a long time away.

Your father drives faster and faster, but you feel safe, cocooned in the backseat. You are surrounded by your favourite blanket and pillow, and the ubiquitous pile of books. A pile of shrink-wrapped Plain Truth magazines is crammed into the corner of the driver’s-side back door; the wind still howls mercilessly through, whenever your father makes a sharp turn. The pile gets replaced every month with a new one, and when there is no pile of magazines stuffed into the hole in the door, you curl up in your blanket and pillow and shiver, during the winter and fall.

Your pillow is a brown stuffed bullfrog; the stuffed Kermit you had hugged with a stranglehold at K-Mart was taken from you, and replaced with a large, bean-filled bullfrog. The bullfrog is bigger than the Kermit was, and more huggable, anyway. You still take the pillow everywhere you go, except to church and to school. The blanket is a hand-me-down quilt, made by one of the elderly women in the church. It has a worn and faded Table of Nations, executed in beautiful sampler script, barely visible under the grime and dust of its pre-weekly washing. You clutch the blanket, even though you are warm, because you know soon you will be too old to take it to services, and spread it on the floor between the seats. Soon you will have to sit up in your seat and take notes, like the older children and adults. You pick listlessly through the books on the floor, but the winter daylight is fading fast. Your father drives faster; will he make it home in time? You hold your breath, screw up your eyes, and begin to pray. Just in case he doesn’t.

“Two minutes to spare,” your father says. Then he sighs. You hope his watch isn’t slow, like it was last week. You get out, clutching a frozen carob bar you found wedged into the backseat. You will take it inside to thaw out, you think, and hide it in your sock drawer, under your socks. Not that you have to hide it. Your parents know you stash your carob bars, snack-sized bags of trail mix, and in-shell peanuts there. If it was chocolate bars, or candy made from refined white sugar, you would be in trouble. You know that you wouldn’t like that garbage anyway. You toss the carob bar into the drawer under your socks, and quickly change out of your school clothes. Then you head for the small kitchen in your small house, where wonderful smells are beginning to drift out.

Your mother greets you with two homemade oatmeal cookies with carob chips, and a small glass of unpasteurized goat’s milk. You sit at the coffee table in the living room. If it was spring or summer, or even early fall, the black-and-white television would be tuned, with the rotary tuner, to the channel with the early news. There is no TV after dark, on the Sabbath. In the winter, dark comes too early, in the dreariest part of the year. You flip idly through your completed YES lesson as you munch on your snack, trying to make the two cookies last until dinner-time.

You will have to turn the lesson in, tomorrow, and hope that you have gotten everything right. Last Sabbath, one of the children was rebuked for using the wrong colours for Adam and Eve in the garden. Peach, or sometimes it is called flesh, in the big boxes of exotically-named crayons the minister’s kids all have, is the right colour to colour in the skin of the people in the YES lessons. You knew that, and you didn’t even have to be told. The memory work is what other kids your age are afraid of, but you’ve always had a really good memory. You try not to be proud of it. You close your eyes, and recite the verses from Genesis that you have memorized. The memory work on the back of the Bible Lesson is the books of the Old Testament; you know those backwards and forwards. The verses from Genesis are extra work that the deaconess teaching the class has assigned.

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

Then your mother calls you to wash your hands for dinner. You sit at the kitchen table with your clean hands folded neatly together as your father says the prayer.

“Heavenly Father, we thank You for having this good and plentiful food to eat, on this Your Sabbath evening. We praise You for Your wisdom and Your goodness, for providing for us, Your chosen people. We ask that You have mercy on the deceived of the world, whose children may not have enough to eat, who are surrounded by famine, and wars and rumours of wars, until such time as they are resurrected into the everlasting peace of Your returned Kingdom. We ask that You bless Your Sabbath day tomorrow, and help us in our weakness and our sin, to keep it holy to You. In the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.” You and your mother echo the last word.

“How was school today?” Your mother asks. You sigh, and screw up your face. You don’t want to think about school on the Sabbath!

“Fine,” you answer, and take a big spoonful of the rich and warm lentil soup.

“What did you do?” Your father asks.

“We had a spelling test. I got a hundred,” you say.

“You did very well,” your father says. “You should always strive to do your very best. It is an honour to God,” he continues.

“Yes, Father,” you reply, with the appropriate tone of respect. You know that already, that was why you got a hundred on the test. Your mother and father lapse into adult conversation then, and you listen to their words, without really understanding them. You finish every drop of your delicious soup, and ask politely to be excused. The carob bar in your sock drawer should be thawed out by now, and there are two bags of trail mix besides.

You go to your room and shut the door. You kick off your slippers, and place them neatly at the end of your bed. You take a cassette tape album down from your bookshelf. Its says Worldwide Church of God Bible Hymnal on the front. You open it, select one of the cassettes at random, and put it into the small tape player sitting on your night-table. You keep the music low, so it’s not blasting, but loud enough for you to sing along quietly in a passable childish soprano.

” – He shall be a tree that grows; planted by the riverside.
Which in season yields its fruit, green its leaves abide.
All he does, prospers well. But the wicked are not so!
They are chaff before the wind, driven to and fro.”

You take the nicely-thawed carob bar out of your sock drawer, and open it up. Munching, you take your small black Bible, with “NKJV” stamped on the front, from its resting place in the drawer of your bedside table. You open it to Genesis 5, and begin to read.

“This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created. And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.”

You read through the genealogies, your lips moving unconsciously as you sound out the non-English names. Seth, Enosh, Cainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth. You know the rest of this story. You read the illustrated version in The Bible Story books, long before you ever got your small black Bible.

“Your first Bible of many, in a long and blessed life, God willing,” your father had said, when your parents had presented it to you with shining eyes on the last Feast of Trumpets. The tape is still playing in the background, and you sing along with it softly, as another of your favourite hymns begins to play.

“How excellent in all the earth, Lord our Lord is Thy name!
Who hast Thy glory far advanced Above the starry frame?
From mouths of babes and infants Lord, Strength by Thee is ordained.
So that Thy enemies be crushed, Thy vengeful foes restrained.”

There is a knock at the door, and you press “Stop” on the small tape player. Your mother comes in with a glass of water and five soda crackers, with organic raw pressed peanut butter on them. Your bedtime snack. Your mother sits with you while you eat, and you tell her all about Genesis 5 and the genealogies. She looks so proud of you, but you try not to feel any pride. A little leaven, leavens the whole lump, you think to yourself. She kisses you on the forehead, and takes the plate and glass with her as she gently closes the door and turns off the light. The mild yellow glow from the lamp on your bedside table throws sharply-contrasting shadows against your plain pastel-coloured walls. You put your Bible away, and throw the carob bar wrapper in the small wastebasket in one corner, and change into your pajamas. Then you go to the bathroom, to brush your teeth and wash your hands and face.

When you return, you take the pillow from the head of your bed, and place it on the floor. You kneel onto it, and wiggle around, so you don’t lose your balance. You close your eyes, fold your hands, and bow your head. Heavenly Father, you think, Thank you for Your precious Sabbath and please let me keep it without sin this week. Thank you for letting me get a hundred on the spelling test today. Thank You for Mummy and Daddy and thank You for all my friends who I will see at church tomorrow. Thank You for Your Church, and for choosing us to be Your people. Please help to heal all the sick people in the Church, and the elderly and babies too. Please let me make it to the Kingdom, and if I don’t, please let me be in the First Resurrection. That’s all I can think to say so thank you for hearing my prayer, Eternal God, in Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

You unclasp your hands, stand up, fluff up your pillow, and get in bed. You pull the covers up over your head, and tuck them around your feet. You remember what your father told you once, about there being one angel on each corner of your bed, each angel like a single, living flame. You drift to sleep with that image in your mind, feeling safe and hopeful.

You wake up in a cold sweat, having dreamt of your bed engulfed in flames. You dry your tears, roll over, and try to get back to sleep. At least you don’t scream in your sleep with the nightmares, the way some kids do. You don’t know if that’s better ot worse. You close your eyes.

Your father is waking you up. It’s still dark. You crawl out of bed, wrap your now-clean blanket around you (your mother managed to get it into the washing machine during the two minutes to spare she had after your father got home), and wander out to the living room. The only light is from the television set.

“Disasters. Sickness. Famine. War. And tragedy.  Life seems to be an unending battle against forces that threaten, hurt, and destroy. In spite of the great progress of the modern age, most of mankind is still trapped in an endless cycle of suffering, destruction, and death. If God loves us, and if He is all-powerful, why doesn’t He do something to help?”

The pictures that accompany the introduction are all-too-familiar, as they have been ripped from the headlines. The plane that crashed in Lockerbie. Chernobyl. Ethiopia. Missile tests.

A burst of light appears over a starfield, the “In Stereo Where Available” logo appearing and disappearing briefly, under the theme music. The globe of the Earth spins in and out of frame quickly, as the telecast logo appears.

“The Worldwide Church of God presents The World Tomorrow! Each week, this program gives a unique understanding of the meaning behind today’s world news, and the prophecies of the World Tomorrow. This week, on the World Tomorrow, Richard Ames.”

Mr. Ames turns towards the camera and speaks.

“Greetings, everyone……”

It is still too early in the morning, and you have not had enough sleep. You try to stay awake, but the harder you try, the worse it is. You barely register any of Mr. Ames’ sermon. You have a sense of seeing the respected evangelist of God’s Work as if in a stop-motion film. You wonder briefly if Satan is toying with your mind, then you wonder nothing else, as you snuggle deeper into your blanket, and curl up on the couch. Sleep overcomes you, and Mr. Ames’ voice carries over into your dreams, as you close your eyes.

You open your eyes. Sunshine is streaming in through the living room window. The TV is silent once again. Your mother has brought you two pieces of toast with real butter, and a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, from the organic oranges she bought at the farm market yesterday. You eat your toast and drink your juice, and then it is time to rush around and hurry to get ready for services.

You dress carefully, in your best Sabbath clothes, and look at yourself in the mirror, to make sure that you are your best and happiest Sabbath self.

The backseat of the car has an old linen bedsheet tucked into it, so the cracked rips in the vinyl won’t ruin your Sabbath clothes. You crawl into the back with your church bag, that has The Bible Story, your YES lesson for the week, and your Bible, and a brand-new notebook and pen. Your parents had presented the last two items to you, after you had emerged from your bedroom, shining and ready, to be a godly example. Your blanket is in the backseat with you, but it will not be coming into services today. Father had read 1 Corinthians 13:11 to you. “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” He had said that it was time for you to start taking notes, to sit up in a seat like the other children your age.

You watch the scenery for a while, then turn to the contents of your church bag, once the country gives way to the worldly urban sprawl, signifying you are on the outskirts of the city. After the usual stop for gas, and continuing on to the other end of the city, eventually you are there. Your father parks the car on the other side of the street, one street over from the building, around the back where the other members and the minister and deacons will not see. There are four other cars in similar condition parked there already. These families don’t come quite as far as yours does, so they are all inside already. You and your parents walk ten minutes until you get to the rented hall. You walk up to the doors, where two of the deacons are standing. One of them shakes your father’s hand, your mother’s hand, and finally shakes your hand. The other deacon marks your family name off on the attendance sheet. Once you have made it past the attendance-taker and the greeter, you enter the rented hall.

Flickering tube lights glare down from overhead. The musty-smelling auditorium has pockmarked hardwood, gone soft and spongy with age, that meets crumbling linoleum in the dingy hallway. Look down the hallway, and you see a building you will have a mental map of, for the rest of your natural life: The auditorium just here, but if you keep going down the hallway, on the other side, is the classroom where YES lessons are held. You duck into the room, and hand the deaconess your lesson. It will be marked and returned to you in class, after services. Keep walking down the hallway, and the mother’s room is next. Then the anointing room. The door to the mother’s room is still open, mothers carrying small children walking in with diaper bags and baby things. The door to the anointing room is closed. The bathrooms are just beyond this, with aged vending machines at the very end of the hallway, beneath a high, small window, that barely lets in the wintry daylight.

You return from handing in your YES lesson, and go back to your parents’ side. The three of you walk into the auditorium together. The noise is palpable, a wall of sound that lives and breathes and moves. Over 500 people, talking, walking around, some getting coffee or tea from the refreshments table at the back. The juice and cookies for the children will be handed out after services. At the front of the room, sits the dais with the lectern, that has the Ambassador College seal hung on the front. Two of the deacons are setting up the microphone.

Off to one side, another deacon is opening up the rolling cart that turns into a bookshelf; the church’s portable library. You head there first, but a cursory glance over the childrens’ titles does not show anything new this week. You rejoin your parents, and the three of you begin to walk around the room, clockwise. Your father stops and talks to people he knows, and so does your mother; eventually you find your friends, kids your own age, and the bunch of you troop off for parts unknown, always with the watchful eye of a deaconess somewhere around.

You and your friends wander around in the hallway, and go from the auditorium to the hallway, to the YES classroom, and back again. You hang around the YOU kids for a bit, but what they have to say isn’t interesting to any of you, yet, so the group of you wander off again. Half of you end up petting the service dog of one of the members, and the other half depart for adventures unknown.

You never run, nor raise your voices; you walk sedately, and talk conversationally with each other. Save for the topics of conversation, which are age-appropriate, you are behaving exactly like the adults around you. It is only you and one other friend left now. As the two of you walk out into the hallway, you both spot the deaconess at the same time.

A hard, proud woman, she makes it her business to see that every child in the congregation knows his or her place. Believing fully in the Church’s doctrine that children have the spirit of man in them, a rebellious spirit, that must be broken, she sets out to willfully break the spirit of every child who crosses her path. The two of you lower your eyes and speak respectfully to her. Both of you are sincere, but she still glares at you with narrowed eyes.

A squalling infant catches her attention then, and she storms off, to tell the hapless mother that she needs to take the infant into the washroom and begin spanking. It’s never too early to start, you hear the deaconess say, and you shudder. Your parents tried to take her child-rearing advice, when you first moved here, but fortunately that didn’t last very long.

Tinkling piano music drifts out of the auditorium, and you hear the words you have heard for every Sabbath that you can remember.

“Brethren, if you will begin finding your seats, services will begin in five minutes.” The pianist keeps playing softly, a medley of the melodies from the purple hymnal that rests on every other perfectly-placed seat in the auditorium. Three hymns to start with, and one of the preaching elders is the song leader this week. He sings very badly, but it is to the glory of God so that’s OK.

“I know all the little children will want to loudly rejoice to God with this one. Please turn to page 1 in your hymnals, brethren. Blest and Happy is the Man.“

Services have officially begun.

“Blest and happy is the man!
Who  does never walk astray!
Nor with the ungodly men,
Stands in sinner’s way.

All he does, prospers well,
But the wicked are not so!
They are chaff before the wind,
Driven to and fro.

Ne’er in scorner’s chair he sits,
For he places his delight
In God’s law and meditates,
On it day and night.

All he does, prospers well,
But the wicked are not so!
They are chaff before the wind,
Driven to and fro.

He shall be a tree that grows,
Planted by the riverside.
Which in season yields its fruit,
Green its leaves abide.

All he does, prospers well,
But the wicked are not so!
They are chaff before the wind,
Driven to and fro.

Now that you are old enough to sit up in a seat, you are old enough to read your own hymnal. Your parents share one, and you took the one that was laid on the seat you are now standing in front of. The spine on the purple book you are holding is worn thin, and the corners are tattered, but the pages inside are still crisp and clean. You hold the book open with your still-chubby hands grasping the tops of the pages, and the words you knew long before you began to read them, flow easily from your tongue.

“Please turn to page 9 in your hymnals, “Declare His Works to All Nations.”

I will sing, O Most High,
Praises to Thy Name with my whole heart!
And proclaim Thy wonders,
I will rejoice and exult in Thee!
My foes fall at Thy sight,
For Thou has maintained my cause and my cry
God will judge, from His throne;
He shall remain forevermore!

God will rule, uprightly;
Judge the world in righteousness.
The oppressed, who seek Him,
He will to them a refuge be.
For the Lord will not forget
Those who put their trust and confidence in him.
To the Lord sing praises,
Declare his works to all nations!

God most High, in Zion dwells.
He will not forget His people.
They declare His great works;
And He will not forget their cry.
Rise, O Lord! Put them all in fear!
All the nations that forget that Thou art God.
Judge them Lord, before Thee;
Let the nations know they are but men.

“Please turn to page 21 in your hymnals, Our God is Good and Upright.”

Our God is good and upright, the way He’ll sinners show.
The meek in judgement He will guide, and make His paths to know.
The whole paths of the Lord are truth and mercy sure
To those who keep his covenant, and testimonies pure.

Now for Thine own name’s sake, O Lord, I Thee entreat,
To pardon mine iniquity, for it is very great.
What man is he that fears the Lord and doth him serve?
Him shall He teach of His own way; the way that he should choose.

His soul shall dwell at ease; and his posterity
Shall flourish still and of the earth inheritors shall be.
With those that fear Him is the secret of the Lord;
The knowledge of His Covenant, He will to them afford!

The preaching elder then calls one of the Spokesman’s Club members up for the opening prayer. Everyone bows their heads.

“Heavenly Father, we thank You for this, Your blessed Sabbath day, and for the spiritual nourishment which we are about to receive as Your chosen people. We pray for the speaker today, that Your words will guide him to lead us in truth and glory to you, O Most High God. We thank You for the beautiful weather You have given us this day, and pray that we find favour in Your heart. Please remember those who cannot be with us today, because of sickness, and heal them speedily, if that be Your will. In gratitude, and with glory, we ask this of You in Your Son’s name, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Amen,” everyone answers, and you raise your head and sit down. You have to wriggle to get up in the chair, and your feet hang down. You cross your ankles, the way your parents told you to, so your legs won’t get sore, and to help you resist the temptation to swing your feet. The song leader names one of the other preaching elders to give the sermonette. You have never really paid attention before, but now you grip your pen and stare at your notebook. On the upper right, you put the date, and on the line below that, you put “Sermonette”. You put the preaching elder’s name beside that. You dutifully write down the topic he has announced he will be speaking on, and try not to be proud that you have spelled it correctly.

The sermonette today will be on 1 Corinthians 14: 34-35. You note that down, then juggle your notebook and Bible, and turn to the appropriate verse. ” Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.” The preaching elder is speaking on this in his sermonette because he was approached by a professing Christian at work this week. He tells the congregation how this woman sinned against the true Lord of Hosts, by being boastful and prideful, in the false church that she attended. He speaks about how the Church and your actions spread the Gospel to all the world, not the idol-worship and evangelizing, by the members of the daughter churches of the Great Whore of Babylon.

Then the pastor gets up to read the announcements. You note “Announcements” down in your notebook, and put the pastor’s name beside it. You note down the names that are being added to the prayer list, and realize you will have to start keeping one. Your generic “Please heal all the sick” will no longer be good enough.

The Bible Study this week is going to be on a new booklet released from Headquarters, and the pastor urges all heads of the household to attend, so that they may know how to adequately explain the new truth to their wives and children.

The news-stand committee will be meeting on Monday evening, at the pastor’s house. The women will have a prayer meeting at the house of one of the deacons on Tuesday. Thursday will be the fruit-selling program, and families with children who are being home-schooled, or who are not of school age yet, are encouraged to come out and raise funds.

Brethren are asked to help pray for the rental of an adequate facility for the spring Holy Days; it seems the pastor has not been able to find one yet. The new church calendar is  out for the following year, along with updated wallet cards, and please be sure to take the congregational calendar for the month as well. All the handouts are available at the refreshments table.

People are asked to please provide their telephone numbers to the minister’s wife, so that everyone can be added to the prayer telephone tree, should some calamity befall the Church. Especially now, with Mr. Armstrong so sick and in flagging  health.

Everyone is admonished to read the latest members’ and coworkers’ lertter, it contains vital information on the state of God’s Church.

Then the pastor calls the song leader up once again.

“Please turn to page 33 in your hymnals. Righteous Judge.”

Click over to Shadows of WCG: Next Generation, for a post that I could have written myself.

There are far too many good parts of the post for me to quote, without re-posting it in its entirety, but I will give you the passage that made me go “HELL, YES!”

Am I making excuses? Of course not. The intent of this post is to burn home to those reading this fact: The second generationers were the most indoctrinated, most impacted sponges of all of the Armstrong Empire. And when the Empire broke up in 1994 and 1995, the emotional stress of it, I am willing to bet, impacted second generationers the worst. Understand this: Their entire way of life since birth was shattered or changed. It is much like taking one gender and throwing that gender into the body of the opposite gender. You must adapt, learn, and change to your new circumstances – but in many ways, you will always be the you you always mentally were.

Click. Read.

We are the children of the church.

An earlier version of this post appeared on I Survived Armstrongism.

Given the continued whitewashing of Basil Wolverton’s indoctrination materials, for those who can’t stomach the thought of reading through the material again, below the cut I present 87 excerpts, from all six volumes of The Bible Story. Not quite as text-free as Mont’s little money-maker for GCI, one gets more of a sense of the context and thoroughness of the thought-reform engendered by these books, with the captions included. Something “The Wolverton Bible” conveniently left out. Possibly because it would have gotten a “hard R” rating, otherwise.

On books that were distributed to families with pre-school children.

Part 1.

An earlier version of this post first appeared on I Survived Armstrongism.

Given the continued whitewashing of Basil Wolverton’s indoctrination materials, for those who can’t stomach the thought of reading through the material again, below the cut I present 87 excerpts, from all six volumes of The Bible Story. Not quite as text-free as Mont’s little money-maker for GCI, one gets more of a sense of the context and thoroughness of the thought-reform engendered by these books, with the captions included. Something “The Wolverton Bible” conveniently left out. Possibly because it would have gotten a “hard R” rating, otherwise.

On books that were distributed to families with pre-school children.

Part 2 coming soon!