Herbert Armstrong's booklets always emphasized all these wonderful blessings and happiness we'd achieve if we obeyed. He also told of the curses for disobedience. Plus, if we had the Holy Spirit and disobeyed, we would have not only curses, but the Tribulation to look forward to and perhaps even the Lake of Fire!

If a member wasn't achieving these blessings, then we felt they were disobedient in some area of their life. I wonder now how many "true" personal accounts in the Good News, Plain Truth and Worldwide News¹ were just fabricated stories. When I stop to think about it, I wonder how many of us felt we were really blessed and how much we overlooked that which was going on in our own lives at home.

If you had a problem in the cult, you covered it up because you were supposed to be "happy," and living the "abundant life" by following all these principles and laws that HWA taught us. How much damage was done to people's conscience by hiding things and sneaking around instead of just admitting they had a problem with something? How many people (especially the heads of households) finally gave up on sending in their full tithes because they couldn't see that they were being blessed? How much misery and problems did this cause in a household with a mate that fervently believed in the "blessings and curses"? And did some even begin to feel that "disobedient" mate was doomed to the Lake of Fire since they stopped "obeying"? Does this kind of bondage look like the fruit of the Spirit that produces true and lasting blessings?

And where was the blessings from members that were supposed to have true love when another member was poor, or sick, or depressed? Very few even cared. Most felt the person was "under a curse" from disobedience. Once when I was in the hospital getting tested for an unknown disorder, no one from the "church" came to visit. The only response I received was a letter from a "friend" asking me what in the world got into me to make such a decision? Afterwards when the minister came to our house, he said he "wasn't aware" that I was in the hospital, but Satan likes to make us think we're really ill when go into a hospital! In other words, that was the wrong place for me to be.

Sometimes it's only the first few years that appear to be "the best." Perhaps this is because it takes awhile for the misery to seep in--and also given the fact that we were expecting Christ to return by 1975. I'm not sure now if I knew what "best" meant, but the "blessings" HWA talked about never transpired.²

By D. W.
Exit & Support Network™

Footnotes:

¹ In February 2005, The Worldwide News in the United States was changed to WCG Today. In May 2006 it was changed to Together.

² One identifying trait of deceptive, exploitive groups is that they never deliver what they promise.

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