February 5, 2025 • 78 mins
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In Ep.50: "All Going to Burn," we sit down with Seth Forrestier, a former fourth-generation member of the Worldwide Church of God and its offshoots. Seth shares his experiences growing up in these high-control groups, including the Living Church of God, and the deep fear-based teachings that shaped his life. He opens up about the moment he began questioning it all and his journey toward breaking free.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for updates, and support the podcast on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee to help us continue sharing these important stories!
#TrueCrimePodcast #CultSurvivor #ReligiousTrauma #ExposingCults #FaithDeconstruction #CultStories #SpiritualAbuse #ChurchAbuse #LifeAfterCult #BreakingFree #SurvivorStory #TrueStoryPodcast #PodcastRecommendations #HealingJourney #CultAwareness #ExposingTheTruth #CourageToLeave #ManipulationAndControl #ApplePodcasts #SpotifyPodcast
In Ep.50: "All Going to Burn," we sit down with Seth Forrestier, a former fourth-generation member of the Worldwide Church of God and its offshoots. Seth shares his experiences growing up in these high-control groups, including the Living Church of God, and the deep fear-based teachings that shaped his life. He opens up about the moment he began questioning it all and his journey toward breaking free.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for updates, and support the podcast on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee to help us continue sharing these important stories!
#TrueCrimePodcast #CultSurvivor #ReligiousTrauma #ExposingCults #FaithDeconstruction #CultStories #SpiritualAbuse #ChurchAbuse #LifeAfterCult #BreakingFree #SurvivorStory #TrueStoryPodcast #PodcastRecommendations #HealingJourney #CultAwareness #ExposingTheTruth #CourageToLeave #ManipulationAndControl #ApplePodcasts #SpotifyPodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The world tomorrow, The Worldwide Church of God presents Robert
w Armstrong and I am here to bring you the truth.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
He's speaking through me the Lord. Let me experience what
it is to be a new bride.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You know, I'm not worried about what I'm about to say,
though it may be graphic. We're coming to the Lord
and if you can take it.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Beyond the veil is the chamber.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
That's the wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Cult Next Tour podcast.
I am Maddie Lasser, as always, joined by my sister
Ashley Teeter. Before we get started with today's episode, want
to remind everyone to follow us on our socials so Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, threads,
post a lot of good stuff there, reels and other
posts and things and announcements. Also want to do our
(01:00):
Double Portion Club shout outs Chase and Shanda, Heather Bartlett
and Carla thank you all for supporting the podcast. Speaking
of supporting the podcast, if you would like to sign
up on our Patreon, you can get ad free episodes
to all paid members. So it's five books a month
to support the podcast and listen to ad free episodes,
or you can upgrade it to ten dollars a month
(01:21):
get those ad free episodes and the double portion club
shout out. I will also send you a holographic Cult
Nextdoor sticker. I think we posted that on our Instagram.
I should probably do that again to remind everyone.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I have it on my car, and other people put
it on their water bottle and computer and other stuff.
It's a pretty cool little sticker of the door logo
that we have. We're not gonna do a review today
just for the sake of time, so we can jump
into today's episode.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
But if you.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Want to have a five star review read potentially on
the podcast, go and leave us one if you haven't
already on Apple or Spotify or wherever it is that
you listen now for today's episode. I was sick and
I wasn't able to take part in these episodes. Unfortunately,
I was dying, but I'm not anymore so to my enemies,
better luck next time, Try try again, okay, because I
(02:15):
can't be taken down. But anyway, I'm halfway back. As
you can probably hear in my voice. But Ashley tell
us about our guest Seth and kind of a little
bit of the background of him before we jump into
today's episode.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
Yeah, so while you were at home actively dying, I
was interviewing Seth. He is a fourth generation Living Church
of God member, and I guess I should back that
up because Living Church of God. We've talked about this
before on the podcast, and I know that it gets
(02:50):
confusion confusing if you haven't actually been in these groups.
But it all started with the Worldwide Church of God
led by Herbert w Armstrong, and then the church split
and there were lots of splinter groups, but there were
two main groups, the United Church of God and the
(03:10):
Global Church of God. And then there was another split
within Global and that became the Living Church of God.
And the Living Church of God and the United Church
of God are the two largest splinter groups today that
came out of the Worldwide Church of God. And so
Seth's family has been in the Worldwide Church of God
(03:34):
and its offshoots for four generations. And I will say that,
you know, I've been out for quite a while from
the Living Church of God, but I feel like everyone
in the Living Church of God knows Seth's family, and
(03:55):
so almost like they are synonymous with the in Church
of God in my mind, or they were, And so
whenever Seth reached out back shortly after we started the podcast,
I was absolutely shocked that he had left, and so
(04:16):
I really wanted to hear his story. And I know
that we have listeners that are part of this group
or was part of this group, and so I think
this will be really interesting for them and for anybody
else listening as well that's just interested in how these
splinter groups operate. I think that will be the next
(04:36):
two to three episodes. And we just sat down and
we had like probably a three and a half hour conversation,
and it was really really interesting. He's been out for
a few years now, and so I think this is
really the first time that he's talked about it in
(04:58):
this way, kind of in a sequential way of like
how everything went down. Yeah, I just hope everyone enjoys
this conversation.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I thought it was an interesting conversation and some parallels
were also just interesting to kind of see more of
that like og worldwide flavor that I didn't experience as much.
So without further ado let's listen to Ashley and Seth
in part one.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
I haven't been able to talk to anyone on the
podcast yet who grew up in Worldwide like I did.
And you know, I'm so much older than Maddie. He
didn't even experience Worldwide. Really, you know, a dad started,
Dad started his own group when you know, Matt was
(05:49):
like four or something. I don't watch four or five.
And so obviously, like our dad's entire foundation for his
belief system is based on Herbert Armstrong's beliefs and his
you know, fundamentals. But but like, this is really interesting
(06:10):
for me to talk to someone who has that same
background in Worldwide.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I'm guessing you're a little bit older than me, probably, yeah,
five or six years. Yeah, obviously I wasn't. I was
born in eighty nine, so Armstrong had been dead for
three years. But yeah, we stayed in all the probably
third most Armstrong groups, right. Yeah, you had PCG that
(06:43):
you know, could take the flag on that and then
later on RCG, but there was there's not a whole
lot more Armstrong than living turned out to.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
Be, that's right. I mean, Roderick C. Meredith was you know,
super close to Armstrong. And they kind of came up together.
I think they were close in age, weren't they.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, it was almost a father's son kind of relationship.
But Arcium was one of those people who sounds so bad,
but he was a very good tool. And there's if
(07:27):
you go back through the history, there's a whole lot
of animosity early on as Arcium wanted to beat more
mm hmmm, but as Armstrong got older, it's like, oh,
this is the guy that I need. Yeah, very very
(07:49):
interesting history. I spent probably well probably three years just
deep diving into everything I could get my hands on.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Yeah. Same.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
None of it was flattery, no.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
None of it. So did your parents did they join
worldwide through hearing him on the radio or how did
that Steven come about?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I'm actually third generation on both sides.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, So my patnal grandparents joined let's see the early seventies,
and my maternal grandparents all the way back in the
(08:40):
late sixties. So I was very very much born into it.
I think my dad. I don't think my dad ever
had a Christmas or anything that was and then my
mom the same. I mean there was nothing but that. Yeah,
(09:03):
nothing else existed, and all four of my grandparents independently
didn't have particularly good childhoods. They made a lot of
bad decisions that got them in a lot of trouble.
And I think from the few stories that I've gotten,
(09:31):
it was it was the order that kind of brought
them in, just things having a place and things having
a reason. And in this structure, it's you know, all
those self help economists, they work because if you start
from nothing, any sort of structure will kind of get
(09:52):
your life in order and works good for you. Yeah.
And the church that offers order and purpose and structure
and rigidity, and in a lot of ways, the hierarchy
that a lot of people just feel like they need
someone to tell them what to do. And they may
(10:13):
not use those exact words, but that's what they want.
They want to not be responsible for their mistakes.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Right, I mean, in a certain sense, it makes life
a little bit less complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
It does.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
You're just following, you're following the formula.
Speaker 6 (10:33):
Yeah, and if it doesn't go wrong, if it doesn't
go right, the failure is baked into the to the
structure like it's expected.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
And so there's a there's a way out there. You
can pray harder, you can fast more you can, you
can repent harder you can, you can go, serve more,
you can do all these things, and then there's always
that that devil to blame for.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Everything. It sounds really rude to like label people as
you know, wanting to escape responsibility, and I doubt anyone
would use those words, but that's I think that's a
major part of why people joined.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Yeah, I would say so. I mean that that resonates
with me, not I mean when you have to figure
everything out for yourself and there is suddenly no clear
reason why you're experiencing hardship or tribulation as we always
(11:39):
called it, then it leaves you in a really vulnerable
and scary state because at least you know when you're
in the church and things are going wrong, it's like
you said, it's expected. Yes, we're supposed to We're God's people,
we are supposed to be going through really difficult times.
This is preparing us for something else. And then if
(12:01):
you don't have that, then it's like, what is this for?
Why is this happening to me?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, there's a I just finished Terry Pratchett book a
couple of days ago, and he's got the character death
that meets everyone whenever they died, and he's got this
kind of scenario when someone dies, the afterlife is what
(12:27):
you believe it to be. And so this very religious
person dies and he gets there and he's faced with
the desert and he freaks out because there's he has
to make decisions now. He hasn't He's just done what
(12:47):
was supposed to have been done. He doesn't believe anything
coming out. For me and Tabby, the first couple of
years were like, what do we do now? Our friends
were picked for us, Our social events were picked for us.
(13:07):
Are our calendar was picked for us, vacations were picked
for us, the types of entertainment, what we did, who
we did it with. And then all of a sudden,
you've got to control all that stuff now, And that's very,
very daunting.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
It is. Yeah, So, how did what prompted you to
even start to question the Living Church of God?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, let's see, I kind of have to start at
the beginning and kind of explain myself, okay a little
bit to get to that point. So obviously, third generation,
both sides, my parents were really really heavily involved in everything.
(13:56):
So I was the church sound guy and video guy forever.
That's what I did, and then I did a lot
of other work party related things like that. I was
very into service and I always wanted to be a minister.
(14:20):
There's various reasons for that. But I did everything I
possibly could to climb that ladder, and the more I
would try to climb up that ladder, the more resistance
(14:42):
I would get. And the resistance was always not what
I expected. I expected resistance against social climbing, and I
never tried to social climb. I wanted to have the
job of doing what I've liked to do. I wanted
the job of service. I wanted to be associated with.
(15:04):
The pushback that I got was no, you can't do that,
which that always confused me.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
And was that from your local ministry or regional?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yes, that was local and regional. Because my family was
so involved. We were We weren't very high up socially,
but we were connected to lots and lots of ministry
and organization because my mom started the summer camp program
for the preteens and we did the sound and video.
(15:40):
At one point I was the only person who knew
how to live stream, so but we were really involved
in the service stuff. But I was allowed to serve
where I was allowed to serve, But it turns out
that was necessary there, and that came out when I
got trouble with much later that I was. I was
(16:04):
supposed to have been put out at one point and
my local pastor, my local pastor actually said, no, I
can't put this guy out. He's the only one who
can do our sound video. He needs to stay. So
I was in trouble, but not put out because of
that anyway. I say that because there was. I've always
(16:30):
felt tension in the in the organization that I never
could progress anywhere. So because of that, I've always been critical,
not not in the I don't know, making comments everywhere
(16:53):
about it, but I always look underneath things and look
behind things and try to figure out why things are connected.
And on the way to the feast, one year, I
heard a minister say something that was just absolutely contrary
to scripture.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Just like.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Just backwards, like I opened my Bible right there. You
just said the opposite of what this says, and that
I had never experienced that before.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
Do you remember what it was?
Speaker 1 (17:28):
It was. I've gone back and forth about whether or
not it was correct now, but he made the case
that the apostles didn't have all the truth, that we
have more truth than they did. And he made it
(17:50):
so that he made the statement to Buttress, we're going
to do things now that we haven't done before.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
Oh that sounds familiar.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, And that just it was like wait a minute
and wait. When he said that, that kind of started.
I just went into like low gear Bible study. I
just started looking into things. The next feast, me and
(18:23):
a couple other guys were we spent the whole feast.
I think we're in Hawaii. Friend of ours had this
kind of flat roof balcony and the three of us
like sat there every night during the feast, just going
over doctrines about what was being taught and what was
not being taught, and what the Bible said and what
(18:44):
we thought it meant.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Which I will point out is the issue that I
took with Roderick Meredith is when he wrote in a
newsletter that went out to everyone that that scripture when
two or three are gathered in my name, you know
I'm in their midst. He said that doesn't apply to brethren.
It only applies to ordained ministers. So you were definitely
(19:09):
outside the lines.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
On that we were we were, Yeah, we were definitely
bucking some rules there. Multiple times throughout my life we've
been in trouble for having Bible studies at the house
or things like that.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
If you just take that and just look at that
out of the whole context of everything, how outrageously ridiculous
is that you would think they would encourage, you know,
people to read their Bibles and study their Bibles. But
there's that fear that what if, what if you see
what's really behind you're masked.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
That's you know, we used to always get upset by it,
but never could see it from thirty thousand feet like right,
And since since being out of it, it is it's
beyond humorous. It's just insane. And but that at the time,
(20:13):
it was just at the time, it was just I
don't know, something like prophetic the falling away was happening
or something, or you know, this was just a bad minister.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
And oh gosh, you just I haven't thought about that
term and so long, the great falling Away.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
It's just a.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
Great way to explain away people who see things for
what they are and leave.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Well, that the the biggest, the biggest thing in my
leaving was exactly that. I'm sure you heard that. You
know the term the great falling away or the Great
Rebellion of the seventies or right, Okay, So I had
(21:04):
known about this rebellion for all my life. And one
of the things that the church was really good slash
bad about was they never mentioned names. So you never
it was John left. You know, his name's not John,
(21:25):
but you know whatever it's like. So we didn't know
My generation didn't know any worldwide Church of God or
even global Church of God history because there were no names.
But we knew about this event. And I came across
the website that has like two dozen of those ministers
(21:48):
that left wrote resignation letters and they're online and there's
not a rebellious word in any of those letters that
just these really heartfelt please for Can you can you
listen to this problem? I can't do this. This is
(22:08):
a crisis of conscience. There's one I I'm trying to
remember who it was. I'll probably get the name wrong
if I try to say it, but he's like, sir,
you've been to my house and had dinner with this.
I've been to your house. Why why aren't you listening?
Like yeah, and I read through all those letters, I
(22:31):
was like, well, at the time, that was the exact
same thing that I was going through trying to trying
to figure out why everything was against me. And it's like, okay, well,
if these guys were labeled rebellious and rebellious to the
point that people in worldwide were sent to the parking lots,
(22:57):
when these other guys would preach to down license plates
of other church members to make sure they could get
put out from listening to these other members, Okay, well
this is nothing new, and that kind of backed my
perspective out a little bit to where I could question
(23:20):
some bigger things.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
But yeah, I think I probably stumbled upon the exact
same websites that you're referring to. There's so much documentation
from ministry and people in positions of authority, deacons, elders. Yeah,
it's and I agree with you, it was not. These
(23:45):
are not rebellious like you know in your face people.
These are people who are pleading because it seems like
they really did care and really believed what they were saying.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That was when when COVID hit so much just kind
of came to a head. I was very very much
into the theology. I very very much believed it, and
when COVID hit, it became a pair that most of
(24:21):
the people and especially most of the ministry didn't believe
the same way that I did. That was a very
very painful thing to see because at one point I
got in trouble for having a blog and I wrote
(24:45):
this post on my blog where I'm a big gun
guy and I owned a gun business at the time,
and I wrote this post about self defense and how
it really it's to scripture. And I took the old
(25:06):
Worldwide paper on it, which most of the most of
the Armstrong Church is still just copy paste that that letter,
and I refuted a lot of things that were in it.
There was there's a few things I think Ernest Martin
wrote that paper and he just completely makes up some
(25:29):
terms that don't exist, and so I refuted them in
this paper, and I got in a whole whole lot
of trouble. I get a call from my pastor and
he says, you need to go meet me at the
local elder's house tomorrow. It's not good. You're you're in trouble.
(25:52):
I said, what's this about? Well, you know, he wrote
this article online and you're preaching, and we got to
have this meeting. So I show up with my Bible
and he said, you don't need that, and I was
(26:18):
really taking it back and I said, well why not.
He's like, he said, we're not going to refute you.
You're just in trouble. So we sit down and we
have this long meeting. And the gist of it is
(26:40):
that I had caused several dozen phone calls to headquarters,
to the letter Answering department, asking why this made sense
and their position didn't make sense. And I was in
trouble because I quote caused them a lot of trouble
(27:06):
answering questions.
Speaker 5 (27:09):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And I was supposed to be put out at that meeting,
and I my pastor very kind of clumsy guy and
not good at secrets. And he showed me the director
Church Administration director's letter to him saying that I needed
to be put out. But yeah, that it became clear
(27:33):
that I was. I was very concerned about the truth
in the theology, and the organization was not. It had
nothing to do It had nothing to do with the theology.
It was just the control. And I was rocking the boat.
(27:54):
And I was literally told I said well, you know,
I disagree with the paper, and they kept saying, well,
have you read our papers? Yeah, I was refuting your paper.
It's quoted in here. Obviously you haven't read mine. I said,
what am I supposed to do when I disagree? And
(28:19):
my pastor said, well, you can ask me questions, but
not all the time. I have more important things to
do than to answer people's questions.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I said, well, what am I supposed to do now?
And he said, well, just don't talk to anyone and
don't say anything. We just want this to blow over.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
So yeah, that was very, very very interesting experience. Interesting
is a horrible work right there, because that was a
lot of that was just, you know, grown men crying
into a pillowed horrible experience. Though that was it wasn't
funny at the time.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
Well, of course, it's just the tactics are just it's
so predictable. Don't talk to anyone, and don't ask too
many questions like they really want to say, don't ask
any You're just supposed to accept and trust and stop
looking into it for yourself. It is. I always thought
how weird it was that Herbert Armstrong's big catchphrase was
(29:29):
don't believe me, believe your Bible. And my dad used
that so much, like in you know, like in defense
of Armstrong, like well, obviously it's he wants us to
prove it, but that is just a ruse, that is
not real.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, I've I've had some very very strong run ins
with that phrase, and it's it's still being use today.
But other groups. I heard one and maybe two years
ago the pastor said you no, don't don't believe me,
(30:09):
but believe your Bible. Mister Armstrong just said, you know,
he said that, but now if we go over here
in Mystery of the Ages, we can see that he wrote.
But like it was just like what might you just
do that? Like that's that's not the same thing.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
Yeah, so that was in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Everything is going to take a little while to recall
dates on, so that would have been twenty nineteen, okay.
And then yeah, so that that meeting and getting in
trouble for the blog and everything, that was nineteen okay.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
I've got a quick question. Did they have you shut
the blog down?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Mm hmm, yeah, and I did. I think on Blogger
you can suspend a blog without deleting it. They're sorry,
they call it something like that. And I did that.
That was that was a very painful thing to do,
(31:26):
and I brought it back later after everything was done.
But so that was nineteen and then then my mom
died the next year and and she died, which that's
a whole different story, but my family just like exploded
(31:50):
into a million pieces.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
And so that's like the glue that held everyone together.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, way more. We all we all knew she us,
but we didn't know to what extent she was. And boy, yeah,
I don't want to I don't want to share most
of that, but it was that was a very very
rough time. And then COVID hit well we're not even
(32:21):
through and like that was five years ago now, and
I don't I think I'm still kind of technically in
repression there. So I hadn't mourn through any of that,
just went straight into COVID and uh so LCG decided
(32:42):
to not sing to wear masks. They they will deny this,
but they stopped anointing in person and just started sending
anointed clubs out. They just suspended all kinds of stuff
and the.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
For our listeners, let me just say what an anointed
cloth is, because I'm not sure that we've ever talked
about that. But so if you if you got sick
in the Worldwide Church of God, you could request an anointing,
an anointed cloth, or you could request a visit from
a pastor who would have an anointed cloth, which was
(33:24):
basically a cloth with olive oil correct on it, which
they would place on your head and pray and then
like God was supposed to then work his magic and
heal you.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
And the.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Reasoning was the scripture that says strips of Paul's garments
were good for healing.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
Yeah, they mailed these out to people. Like, it's just
the thought of.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
That, looking back on it, for an organization and for
theology that is so anti magic. That's an amulet, you know,
it's just very interesting. But for COVID, everything just got suspended.
(34:14):
No one was allowed to come to the church hall.
We all had to stream, which is where I came in.
I had to be there at the church hall with
like eight other dudes or I forget whatever the was it,
six people, whatever the limit was that could be together
under Texas executive order. We have that many people there
(34:34):
to stream. And at one point during this our pastor
had Greg Abbott's like executive order up saying this is
why we're doing this, And it's just like, where's the
whole being persecuted if you're just going to listen to
(34:55):
every whim.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
And also, you know, they always would say, you know,
God would be protecting the feast sites and yeah, you know,
And so I do find that like it kind of
reveals there there's definitely a lot of doubt about whether
God actually had your back or not.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah. I mean I couldn't even begin to count how
many times I heard ministers over my life say, you know,
some of us are gonna be put in jail for yes,
having services and it's like, no, no, you're not, Like
you're not even gonna get a citation.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
Oh my gosh. I so remember growing up with that
and being so afraid of that. Yeah, that's you're just
bracing yourself like you're gonna go through these awful times.
You're gonna be persecuted in ways you can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
In the two thousand and eight crash, I was, I
was dating my wife and you know, we're just teenagers
and everything crashed. Hearing the feast and I just remember
every you know, we're going to be back to Horse
and Buggy in a couple of weeks, you know, and
(36:08):
everything everything's going down there was so terrifying.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
Oh my gosh, I don't even remember what it was
like then in the church. That's funny, Horse and Buggy.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I don't get Yeah, well, we get to all of
this COVID stuff and a split starts happening in LCG
and well, I at the time, I'd liked the two
ministers that go split off, and I've got turmoil going
(36:45):
on everywhere, and we Taby and I drove out one
Holy Day to go hear this other minister speak. We
didn't tell anyone that we were going out there, and someone,
(37:07):
someone in our congregation saw a picture of our van
in a picture of this meeting and then told the
pastor that we were at this meeting.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
So someone was doing like reconnaissance work. Yes, all right,
I mean just it's driving by, like just see.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Looking through pictures, trying to see.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
Who was there and snitch.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Well, yes, and they did, and we I'm trying to
think which this would have been, I guess trumpets. We
went and visited, and we didn't want to join this
other church for a few different reasons. But they were
the only church that was like meeting in person, and
(37:51):
so we're like, all right, well we'll go over here. Anyway,
all this happens, we get in trouble. It's in between
a tonement in the feast. Now I'm the head video
sound guy. We've already obviously booked all of our housing
(38:14):
and all this kind of stuff, and I get a
call from a high up minister who's in charge of
that feast side, who was like adopted grandpa status, like
very very close minister, and we get put out, like
(38:35):
what is that five days before the feast?
Speaker 6 (38:38):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And the grounds for us being put out was that,
oh cloten, he said, I can't trust that you're not
going to run sound for me, and then go back
into your room and listen to Sheldon Munson speak. Yeah,
(39:01):
we lost all of our ties that year. We had
we had not like we had. We had already spent
everything getting ready to go to the feast and go.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
So wait, Sheldon, I know Sheldon and Joe Matte so
he is one of the ones that left.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, yeah, and he started.
Speaker 5 (39:22):
I don't know if I knew that, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
But it was wild because we we we got put
out for basically joining another church, and we had gotten
no such thing. We didn't even want to join this
other church. Uh. And then so following that feast, I'm
(39:53):
hanging out with some other friends there probably probably some
mutual friends between the two of us, and they showed
me this guy was still a minister, and he shows
me a letter where we're all marked, so no one
is allowed to talk to us, no one is allowed
to be you know, to have us to their house
(40:14):
or anything. And the letter said, because it's so many people,
we don't want to publicly write a letter of marking,
but every they need to be treated from the pastors down,
they need to be treated as such.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
Do you think that was because of your family's standing.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
We got NLCG that that marking was because we were
lumped in with the four hundred ish people that had
left to go to this oupsode.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
Oh okay, I see, I see.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:47):
You don't want to draw attention that like this huge
group of people.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yes, yeah, in this particular case, it was. It was
four hundred of all of the sound men and the
people that run the care camps and the people that
serve and the people that own the property. And it
was it was four hundred of the very important people
to the organization. So yeah, So over the next couple
(41:16):
of weeks, basically we literally lost about ninety percent of
our friends. People that we had literally grown up with
from the time we were four or five years old,
wouldn't have anything to do with do with us anymore.
(41:39):
And it's still don't.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
Did you try reaching out to any of these people?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
So obviously this is a really truncated, you know, recollection
of everything, but it was we we set out invitations
and called in in every thing for a good year
and a half after that. And it was bad enough
(42:07):
that my wife was actually called to be uninvited from
a baby shower by her best friend.
Speaker 5 (42:18):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Uh painful, it was. It was horrible.
Speaker 5 (42:26):
And I mean why, I mean, you know why. But
I'm wondering if they vocalized that.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I'm trying to think if anyone has said anything. No
one has really said anything along those lines. Most of
the people, most of the people that the ones that
hurt the most, just stopped communicating.
Speaker 5 (42:57):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
So that that was rough. A lot of people just
kind of I don't know, snubbed would be a good word.
It's yeah, and then there is where team from.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
So right, and it's it is an unsaid thing, like
you know, if you are kicked out of the church
or if you choose to leave, things will not be
the same with the people that you were friends with.
I mean that for me, most people just stopped communicating.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Right. Well, one of the things that hurt the most
is that some of our closest friends, they had left
the church before, and we never stopped being their friends.
(43:57):
Like we we hung out with them, I worked with
the we did stuff together while they were out of
the church, and then when they came back, we were
still there and we didn't treat them any different. You know.
We stood in some weddings for people that like there
was a whole lot of animosity towards certain people getting
(44:17):
married because you know, their backgrounds and whatever, and we
stood in the weddings and like, we supported these people's
and then then all of a sudden, they're just gone.
I had I had to I had to redefine what
(44:41):
what I thought friend meant after that, Like, yeah, and
I did a couple of days kind of meditative study
over just what friendship was and had to reevaluate because
that was earth shattering. H My kids, My kids took
(45:05):
that part really really hard. I've got six kids and
they were fourth generation and they were friends with a
bunch of fourth generation and all of their friends disappeared. Yeah,
Now we were We were very, very open with all
(45:32):
of the kids through all of it, and I'm glad
we did that. And they they have since recovered from it,
and even down to the youngest ones, they can articulate
what happened and their thoughts about it. They're certainly not
happy about it, but they can they can grasp what's
(45:56):
going on. Then you know, the content like this podcast.
We talked to them about content like this all the time,
so they're not they're not ignorant of that kind of thing.
But that was really really rough. It took it took
a good two years just to kind of make new friends. Yeah,
(46:22):
and we had to make new friends from whole cloth,
and that was very we For one, we had never
really I'd been in business all my life, so I
knew how to talk to people, how to meet people,
but we had no experience making friends outside of the church.
(46:47):
There was no need to You weren't you didn't want
to be unequally yoked, you know, and so we didn't
do that kind of thing. So that took a long
time to kind of learn how to be a human,
a social human.
Speaker 5 (47:05):
Yes, I feel that too, because when I left LCG,
I realized there wasn't one person in my town that
I could call and say, do you want to have coffee?
Not one like, no one to pick up the phone
and call. I mean, it was just it was kind
(47:26):
of a devastating realization to find myself on an island
and then it's like, I have to go and try
to figure this out, and I've literally never done this before.
Sure I had some friends in school, because I did
go to the public school system, but you know, those
are friendships that are a little bit similar to being
(47:48):
in the church. You're you're all in the same place
at the same time, you know.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, yeah, it was it was very, very painful, and
it's it was kind of humiliating in a lot of
ways to be a grown person realizing that you don't
have any friends. We were both Paby and I were
both like, we've always been really really social people, and
(48:14):
you know, growing up in the church, I traveled a
lot and I served at all the camps and all
this kind of things. So I always considered myself to
have lots of friends. I could go to any state
and stay at someone's howist, and have a conversation. I
knew people everywhere and regularly traveled to see different people
in every state. And then all of that was gone
(48:39):
for for a reason that had nothing to do with
what I thought our friendship was. Right, and then you know,
the realization that oh no, these weren't actually friendships. This
is these are acquaintances, these these are co workers, these
(49:03):
are these are just people that I regularly associate with.
That was that was a very very difficult thing. And
then having to deal with that at the same time
is like losing a family member and then like family
(49:25):
needing a lot of help to get back together.
Speaker 5 (49:28):
That was.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
That was a rough time.
Speaker 5 (49:31):
Yeah, and you're not only navigating your own crises of
like you know, with the friendship that you're talking about,
you're watching your wife feel that same rejection, and then
you're also trying to walk your children through all of that.
I just can't imagine how hard that was, because it's
so much to deal with that once.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Well, after kind of all the id and really after
the smoke cleared. We started like through twenty one, on
twenty one, twenty two, and twenty three, we kind of
church hopped around, you know, tried to hold on to
(50:17):
as much as anything as we could. And I was
in a pretty decent position. I'd played in a band
for years and years that had had played all the
different church functions around. And we're in East Texas and
(50:38):
there's probably one hundred plus splinter groups from armstrongsm that
are still left around this area just because the college
was here.
Speaker 5 (50:48):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
And so I knew a lot of these other people.
I didn't know them very well, but I was acquainted
with a bunch of them. So we started kind of
church shopping around and just visiting different places.
Speaker 5 (51:05):
At this point, did you still believe in the basic doctrines?
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Yes, very much so and very much so, and so
we were shopping around. I was much more I was
much more liberal obviously than than Armstrong is improper, but
but I still believe basically all of this, all of
(51:30):
the same things. So we we shopped around while and
we found that there was that corrupt hierarchy was just
almost everywhere. Uh, And we we shopped until we found
one that didn't seem to have that. And we started
(51:53):
going to church at this place and they let me
speak there, which was really nice.
Speaker 5 (52:01):
Don't you get the feeling that they were each splinter
group was essentially trying to recreate the original.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
And that's the church that we were accused of basically joining.
I jokingly call it Living two point zero. It's, you know,
the the minister that got put out got put out
for saying, you're not I'm going to actually use names here,
(52:38):
just not defamatory or anything, but Sheldon Munson told Gerald
Weston basically, you're not being mister armstrong enough to lead
the church. You're not meeting and you're not doing all
these things. We're going to go back and do this. Well,
then he starts his church and then his brother complains
(53:01):
to him that he's not being armstrong enough, and so
he puts his own brother out, like and it's the same,
it's the same thing, like.
Speaker 5 (53:11):
A Russian stacking doll.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Yeah, and it's like, Gus, this is this is horrible,
Like it's it's it's literally the same thing over and
over again. And we settled on Church of God International,
which is a kind of a remnant of garner Ted
(53:38):
and they kind of they don't have near the hierarchy
structure the same way. They're much more liberal about things.
We had a really good time over there, wonderful people,
but I didn't want to be locked in to a church,
(53:59):
like even believe me everything. I did not want to
be in another church. And see, g you, I was great,
and you don't have to you don't have to join,
you don't have to be a part of it. You
can still. You can come here, you can speak, you
can talk with this, we'll talk with you, we'll do
all of these things. It was wonderful for that. And
then one Sabbath, I'm about to give the sermon and
(54:22):
I'm just going over my notes and I see the
date on the top corner of the page and realize
that I had been going to this church for a
hundred sabbaths. And I was like, nope, I that something
just completely broke in my head and I was I
(54:44):
can't do this, but all right, yeah, it'll suck you in.
Speaker 5 (54:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's that it's familiar, and that
familiarity feel safe in a sense, so I think it's yeah,
I understand.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
I didn't like I didn't like the fact that I
hadn't noticed just how much I had gotten back into it.
Like I was serving a lot there. And I'm not
trying to say that any of that is community or
service or any of those things are bad. But you know,
(55:34):
you get bit by a snake a few times, and
then you start staying away from holes in the ground.
Uh yeah, And since then, you know that that last
sermon that I gave over there took me a long
time to write. I'm I'm very very in tune with rules.
(56:05):
I like rules, and I like propriety. And that last
sermon that I gave there took a long time to
write because I had to come up with something that
I thought was appropriate for both my conscience, yeah, and theirs.
And and I told some of the people there that
(56:27):
I was having this crisis, like you know, I'm going
to run out of things to say very soon. But
for those the two years that we were there, I
just I had not stopped researching stuff. One of the
(56:49):
things as a as a kid growing up in worldwide
and global and living I want to I want to
be too dogmatic about this, but we didn't read you
certainly didn't read anything about sociology or psychology or social
(57:15):
history or other denominations, or religious history or anything that
could contextualize what the church was. And I guess around
twenty two, late twenty two, I started. I just started reading,
(57:45):
and I was just finding all this very curious information
everywhere the world just kept getting bigger, and the church
just kept getting more and more defined. And then I
started reading about I had read Hwa's autobiography before, and
(58:08):
I started reading some religious history and I came across
these names like Charles tays Russell, and I started reading
what they were saying, and then kind of lining that
up in my head with Hwa's autobiography, where you know,
he loses his job because he's a bad salesman and
(58:30):
then spends a year being a bone at a library.
He was literally reading literature and copy pasting bits of
it together. And so I started going through like doctrines
and kind of tracing them back to their origin and
(58:51):
found it he was he was not so bad a
salesman after all. I read this one book on the
it's called Summer for the Gods on the famous Scopes
Trial with Williams William Jennings Brian when it started to
(59:12):
teach evolution in schools, and I'm listening to this book
and I'm putting dates together, and this picture started to emerge.
You know, in twenty sixteen when Trump was elected, it
(59:34):
was very obvious that what he had done was got
a bunch of people together, put his ear to the ground,
and listened to what people were saying, and then built
a campaign off of that. Hwa did the exact same thing.
There was you know, you had the Great Depression on
(59:56):
who had just trouble everywhere. You had Europe kind of
starting to bubble. You had evolution being taught, and the
religion was starting to be undermined a little bit, but
(01:00:16):
all of the middle class and below were still religious.
And what he did was grabbed a whole bunch. He
took all of the fundamentalism and put it all together
(01:00:41):
with and didn't pay much attention to the theology. And
this is something that's still a big problem, is there's
giant gaps in the theology. But he put all the
fundamentalism together, and the structure and the orderliness and the
Bible thumping, and the nuclear family and the hierarchy, the patriarchy,
(01:01:02):
and I don't have a problem with necessarily any of
those things. But he put all of those things together,
all of the buzzwords I've so growing up. Growing up,
we always heard ministers talk about their unconverted Methodist grandmothers
or whatever who taught them most of the Bible, and
how they were great but in the kingdom they're gonna
(01:01:23):
have to relearn everything. But they were good, and they
couldn't place them. And what h WNA did was just
he justified everyone's grandmothers and grandfathers and just made this
fundamentalism hodgepodge and it worked.
Speaker 5 (01:01:45):
And then he sold it as original though.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yes, yeah, and that's the thing you read through Armstrong's
work you never read about, you know, Russell, but that's
a giant source of copy paste material. And then as
I'm reading, I come across this thing, an event in
history that has a name that I had never even
heard of and is called the Great Disappointment. And all
(01:02:14):
of your fundamentalist religions that are apocalyptic kind of source
from this time in the late eighteen hundreds when Christ
was supposed to return and he literally just took all
of this left. It was, you know, fifty years kind
(01:02:36):
of in the past. So it was a lot of
people didn't necessarily know the theology, and he just took
all of that stuff and repackaged it again. And as
I started learning about other religions and other denominations more
specifically just other denominations, that the weirdness of armstrong Ism
(01:03:00):
started to make sense. It actually has a place where
it fits in and there's a reason where so different
than everyone else.
Speaker 5 (01:03:12):
That's part of the appeal. Yeah, you know, you have
something other people don't have.
Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Yeah, And fundamentalism appeals to people, right like we started
out with, you know that order structure rules. Especially. I
have a very very good close friend and he went
off and showed some wild oats in his early twenties,
and he talks about he came back because he had
(01:03:42):
just screwed his whole life up. And I think it's
so telling to the nature of the whole of the whole,
you know, organizations, that's what it's scored. It's the orders,
the structure. One of the most wild things was that
(01:04:02):
while during this kind of four year period, we had
some neighbors about six houses down and they were Pentecostal
and we were having them over. They had really nice
people and we're talking and they were kind of mentioned
(01:04:24):
some things that they were going through. They were going
through the exact same thing coming out of Pentecostalism, and
it was hilarious because they start using some terms. We're like, hey,
we use that term too. No, no, you don't. Well,
this guy, this guy really likes the cult podcasts and
(01:04:48):
he goes He comes in one day and he's like,
I just heard about your church in a podcast and
we're like what, and so well, that's kind of weird.
And he showed it to us and we're like, yeah,
we we know those people. And then a year later
(01:05:10):
he's like, I just heard about your church in another
podcast and it was yours, and I was like, we
were listening. Tabby and I were sitting sitting up in
bed one night and we had like one of the
season one podcasts on and you're talking and wait a minute,
you had mentioned Kurt at one point. We're like, wait
(01:05:33):
a minute, we know these people. Now. That's the only
reason I found And I didn't realize that we had
another connection, you know, through through you know, my adopted
brother and your son. But we found you through this
(01:05:53):
other guy who was coming up. And we still get
together all the time, and it's fascinating that as weird
as armstrong Ism is, there really are text book are
(01:06:18):
playbooks that colts follow, and they're so sprisingly similar. It
never ceases to amaze me how close they are, even
when the theology theoretically differs so much. Meat armstrong Ism
is not Unitarian, obviously, but everything's the same. Year before
(01:06:42):
last a manager at one of my supply houses died
and I went to his funeral and it turns out
he was a Mormon, and I didn't know that, and
I walk into the funeral service and it kind of
(01:07:02):
got the he begbis. It was the same thing. Everyone
acted the same way, they talked, the same way, they
control each other and manipulated each other the same way.
And that really started to weigh on me. This guy
was like thirty two years old when he died, had
(01:07:25):
two kids, he was estranged from his wife, and they
were Mormon, and they had been Oh what do you
call that confirmed or whatever?
Speaker 5 (01:07:33):
The temple?
Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Yeah, I forget what the term for that is. But anyway,
it was a big.
Speaker 5 (01:07:40):
Sealed is that what is?
Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Yeah? I think that's what it is. Well, we're at
his funeral and the family was just so miserable and guilty,
and that really started to weigh on me because the
guilt was really really recognizable where you know, where they're
(01:08:05):
at their son's funeral talking about is how bad his
poor an addiction was. Oh and and and everyone was
like super guilty over this and everything. And he had
died on a motorcycle, but he had the motorcycle because
his dad told him to get the motorcycle to help
him with his poor addiction, to have something else to do.
(01:08:26):
And it was just like it was this horrible scenario,
but it was so familiar all at the same time,
and it really hurt. It really started to hurt me
because I saw this guide that i'd I mean, he
(01:08:47):
was we were just acquaintances, but he was a nice
enough guy, but he was in this state, in this
state of constant guilt and misery. And it really struck
a nerve with me because all of my life I
(01:09:10):
had always been in that constant state of guilt and
misery where you can never be good enough and everything
is always wrong and it's you know, my wife and
I way, we take like a Big five personality test.
We ranked ninety eighth to ninety seventh percentile in neuroticism.
We're just.
Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
We're wired that way. But everything always had everything was
always bad.
Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
And that kind of renewed my interest in studying different denominations,
and then back to Armstrongism, and I kind of came
to a position where some of the fundamentals of armstrong Ism,
(01:10:05):
and consequently some of the fundamentals of Christianity I just
came to reject, one of those being the constant state
of guilt. I I can't, I can't bear to associate
with that. It's it's so heavy. I have so many
(01:10:28):
past acquaintances and current friends who they're just they're they're
carrying the world on their shoulders at all the time.
And it's not it's not it's not like Sisyphus with
you know, any sort of redeeming quality to it. It's
(01:10:52):
just misery, and it's constant misery and fear. I loathe
that fear.
Speaker 5 (01:11:01):
That's a really good analogy.
Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
That that funeral just really set that off for me.
Speaker 5 (01:11:10):
Because there's no relief, there is no.
Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
There isn't andy. I listened in my reading, I read
a lot of Alan Watts, and he had a quote
in one of his books referring to Western religion as
(01:11:35):
abdicating the present for the sake of the future. And
it occurred to me that in Armstrongism specifically, you do
not live in the present. The present is evil, this
present evil age.
Speaker 5 (01:11:56):
That present age.
Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
Yeah, and so you don't live in the present all
of the all of the sum total of the possible good,
all of the constituent parts of the good. Even though
they'll read scriptures about God, you know, you know, wanting
you to have presently a good life, everything has to
(01:12:22):
be in the future. That that feast in Hawaii where
we uh sat around and talked to religion, we had
a there was a minister there from the Caribbean and
he had been set down to South America, just some
of the South American islands, and there were all these
(01:12:47):
tribal people, several different languages, huge language barriers. There was
like one matriarch that he could translate to the rest
of these different tongues. And me and these two other guys,
we we went up to this to this minister and
(01:13:10):
we said, look, will pay to have literature translated. And
he said, well, we don't have anyone who can translate it.
I said, no, no, like there are people who can translate.
We'll just pay a service to translate. And said, oh, no,
(01:13:30):
you can't trust. You can't trust that. You know what
if they mess up the gospel or something, Well, well no,
And we said, okay, well what about this, Like we
have all of these young women in the church who
want to do something. What if we pay for let's
(01:13:54):
say a dozen women to take language courses. We'll pay
for all of their schooling to learn so that they
can translate. Is it no?
Speaker 4 (01:14:08):
And then we say, well, all right, if you could, if.
Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
You could guarantee that one prayer would be answered about this,
this new expansion into these islands, what would you have
us all pray? And he said that God would give
us the gift of tongues. And it's a it was
(01:14:44):
very frustrating at the time, but I should have expected
that because now is not the tongue, like the vault
that theology is not about now. There's no promises for now,
there's no you can't you can't do anything. Sermons all
(01:15:12):
my life about not going to college and get any
sort of education because when Christ returns, you're going to
proof have this new job and have all the expertise needed.
And it's like but yeah, right when we went to CGI,
(01:15:34):
gave a sermon, you know, about faith, and at that point,
I said, you know, faith isn't praying to move a mountain.
Faith is going by a bulldozer and moving the mountain.
And know that you're going to be able to move
the mountain if you have a bulldoze. And there's there's
(01:15:56):
none of that, because that's what they're there for.
Speaker 5 (01:16:02):
You wouldn't even really hear sermons about how to navigate parenthood.
And I mean, like occasionally someone's gonna maybe talk about
disciplining your kids. But you know, I I just remember.
Speaker 6 (01:16:14):
Practical prose, not yeah, it was it was always in
the in the negative.
Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Don't do this, don't do that, don't do absolutely.
Speaker 5 (01:16:23):
I just remember feeling like I cannot go to services
one more week and hear about how horrible everything is
and how everything is evil and falling apart, and how
any day now the great tribulation is going to start
and we're going to suffer for you know, all these
years before Christ returns, and and and I just thought,
(01:16:47):
you know, I'm like I'm a young mom, Like I like,
talk to me about the stuff that I'm dealing with
day in and day out, and help me figure out
how I can be you know, how I can have
more joy in my life and joy in motherhood and
in my marriage. And it just there was never ever
(01:17:09):
about that. So you hit the nail on the head.
Everything is about the future. It's never about the now.
They're not interested in solving problems.
Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
Yes, for anyone, that's a huge thing. The last sermon
that we got, well we were members of LCG, was
a headquarters sermon from Weston and he literally said, why
should we help the world now when they're all going
(01:17:44):
to burn? If you like this episode of The Cult
next Door, please leave us a positive review in rating
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and don't
forget to subscribe to be notified of new episodes.
The world tomorrow, The Worldwide Church of God presents Robert
w Armstrong and I am here to bring you the truth.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
No one else is telling you the things that God
is telling you through me.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
He's speaking through me the Lord. Let me experience what
it is to be a new bride.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You know, I'm not worried about what I'm about to say,
though it may be graphic. We're coming to the Lord
and if you can take it.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Beyond the veil is the chamber.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
That's the wedding chamber. The Lord told me that.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Cult Next Tour podcast.
I am Maddie Lasser, as always, joined by my sister
Ashley Teeter. Before we get started with today's episode, want
to remind everyone to follow us on our socials so Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, threads,
post a lot of good stuff there, reels and other
posts and things and announcements. Also want to do our
(01:00):
Double Portion Club shout outs Chase and Shanda, Heather Bartlett
and Carla thank you all for supporting the podcast. Speaking
of supporting the podcast, if you would like to sign
up on our Patreon, you can get ad free episodes
to all paid members. So it's five books a month
to support the podcast and listen to ad free episodes,
or you can upgrade it to ten dollars a month
(01:21):
get those ad free episodes and the double portion club
shout out. I will also send you a holographic Cult
Nextdoor sticker. I think we posted that on our Instagram.
I should probably do that again to remind everyone.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I have it on my car, and other people put
it on their water bottle and computer and other stuff.
It's a pretty cool little sticker of the door logo
that we have. We're not gonna do a review today
just for the sake of time, so we can jump
into today's episode.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
But if you.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Want to have a five star review read potentially on
the podcast, go and leave us one if you haven't
already on Apple or Spotify or wherever it is that
you listen now for today's episode. I was sick and
I wasn't able to take part in these episodes. Unfortunately,
I was dying, but I'm not anymore so to my enemies,
better luck next time, Try try again, okay, because I
(02:15):
can't be taken down. But anyway, I'm halfway back. As
you can probably hear in my voice. But Ashley tell
us about our guest Seth and kind of a little
bit of the background of him before we jump into
today's episode.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
Yeah, so while you were at home actively dying, I
was interviewing Seth. He is a fourth generation Living Church
of God member, and I guess I should back that
up because Living Church of God. We've talked about this
before on the podcast, and I know that it gets
(02:50):
confusion confusing if you haven't actually been in these groups.
But it all started with the Worldwide Church of God
led by Herbert w Armstrong, and then the church split
and there were lots of splinter groups, but there were
two main groups, the United Church of God and the
(03:10):
Global Church of God. And then there was another split
within Global and that became the Living Church of God.
And the Living Church of God and the United Church
of God are the two largest splinter groups today that
came out of the Worldwide Church of God. And so
Seth's family has been in the Worldwide Church of God
(03:34):
and its offshoots for four generations. And I will say that,
you know, I've been out for quite a while from
the Living Church of God, but I feel like everyone
in the Living Church of God knows Seth's family, and
(03:55):
so almost like they are synonymous with the in Church
of God in my mind, or they were, And so
whenever Seth reached out back shortly after we started the podcast,
I was absolutely shocked that he had left, and so
(04:16):
I really wanted to hear his story. And I know
that we have listeners that are part of this group
or was part of this group, and so I think
this will be really interesting for them and for anybody
else listening as well that's just interested in how these
splinter groups operate. I think that will be the next
(04:36):
two to three episodes. And we just sat down and
we had like probably a three and a half hour conversation,
and it was really really interesting. He's been out for
a few years now, and so I think this is
really the first time that he's talked about it in
(04:58):
this way, kind of in a sequential way of like
how everything went down. Yeah, I just hope everyone enjoys
this conversation.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I thought it was an interesting conversation and some parallels
were also just interesting to kind of see more of
that like og worldwide flavor that I didn't experience as much.
So without further ado let's listen to Ashley and Seth
in part one.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
I haven't been able to talk to anyone on the
podcast yet who grew up in Worldwide like I did.
And you know, I'm so much older than Maddie. He
didn't even experience Worldwide. Really, you know, a dad started,
Dad started his own group when you know, Matt was
(05:49):
like four or something. I don't watch four or five.
And so obviously, like our dad's entire foundation for his
belief system is based on Herbert Armstrong's beliefs and his
you know, fundamentals. But but like, this is really interesting
(06:10):
for me to talk to someone who has that same
background in Worldwide.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I'm guessing you're a little bit older than me, probably, yeah,
five or six years. Yeah, obviously I wasn't. I was
born in eighty nine, so Armstrong had been dead for
three years. But yeah, we stayed in all the probably
third most Armstrong groups, right. Yeah, you had PCG that
(06:43):
you know, could take the flag on that and then
later on RCG, but there was there's not a whole
lot more Armstrong than living turned out to.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
Be, that's right. I mean, Roderick C. Meredith was you know,
super close to Armstrong. And they kind of came up together.
I think they were close in age, weren't they.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, it was almost a father's son kind of relationship.
But Arcium was one of those people who sounds so bad,
but he was a very good tool. And there's if
(07:27):
you go back through the history, there's a whole lot
of animosity early on as Arcium wanted to beat more
mm hmmm, but as Armstrong got older, it's like, oh,
this is the guy that I need. Yeah, very very
(07:49):
interesting history. I spent probably well probably three years just
deep diving into everything I could get my hands on.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
Yeah. Same.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
None of it was flattery, no.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
None of it. So did your parents did they join
worldwide through hearing him on the radio or how did
that Steven come about?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I'm actually third generation on both sides.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, So my patnal grandparents joined let's see the early seventies,
and my maternal grandparents all the way back in the
(08:40):
late sixties. So I was very very much born into it.
I think my dad. I don't think my dad ever
had a Christmas or anything that was and then my
mom the same. I mean there was nothing but that. Yeah,
(09:03):
nothing else existed, and all four of my grandparents independently
didn't have particularly good childhoods. They made a lot of
bad decisions that got them in a lot of trouble.
And I think from the few stories that I've gotten,
(09:31):
it was it was the order that kind of brought
them in, just things having a place and things having
a reason. And in this structure, it's you know, all
those self help economists, they work because if you start
from nothing, any sort of structure will kind of get
(09:52):
your life in order and works good for you. Yeah.
And the church that offers order and purpose and structure
and rigidity, and in a lot of ways, the hierarchy
that a lot of people just feel like they need
someone to tell them what to do. And they may
(10:13):
not use those exact words, but that's what they want.
They want to not be responsible for their mistakes.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Right, I mean, in a certain sense, it makes life
a little bit less complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
It does.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
You're just following, you're following the formula.
Speaker 6 (10:33):
Yeah, and if it doesn't go wrong, if it doesn't
go right, the failure is baked into the to the
structure like it's expected.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
And so there's a there's a way out there. You
can pray harder, you can fast more you can, you
can repent harder you can, you can go, serve more,
you can do all these things, and then there's always
that that devil to blame for.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Everything. It sounds really rude to like label people as
you know, wanting to escape responsibility, and I doubt anyone
would use those words, but that's I think that's a
major part of why people joined.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Yeah, I would say so. I mean that that resonates
with me, not I mean when you have to figure
everything out for yourself and there is suddenly no clear
reason why you're experiencing hardship or tribulation as we always
(11:39):
called it, then it leaves you in a really vulnerable
and scary state because at least you know when you're
in the church and things are going wrong, it's like
you said, it's expected. Yes, we're supposed to We're God's people,
we are supposed to be going through really difficult times.
This is preparing us for something else. And then if
(12:01):
you don't have that, then it's like, what is this for?
Why is this happening to me?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, there's a I just finished Terry Pratchett book a
couple of days ago, and he's got the character death
that meets everyone whenever they died, and he's got this
kind of scenario when someone dies, the afterlife is what
(12:27):
you believe it to be. And so this very religious
person dies and he gets there and he's faced with
the desert and he freaks out because there's he has
to make decisions now. He hasn't He's just done what
(12:47):
was supposed to have been done. He doesn't believe anything
coming out. For me and Tabby, the first couple of
years were like, what do we do now? Our friends
were picked for us, Our social events were picked for us.
(13:07):
Are our calendar was picked for us, vacations were picked
for us, the types of entertainment, what we did, who
we did it with. And then all of a sudden,
you've got to control all that stuff now, And that's very,
very daunting.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
It is. Yeah, So, how did what prompted you to
even start to question the Living Church of God?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, let's see, I kind of have to start at
the beginning and kind of explain myself, okay a little
bit to get to that point. So obviously, third generation,
both sides, my parents were really really heavily involved in everything.
(13:56):
So I was the church sound guy and video guy forever.
That's what I did, and then I did a lot
of other work party related things like that. I was
very into service and I always wanted to be a minister.
(14:20):
There's various reasons for that. But I did everything I
possibly could to climb that ladder, and the more I
would try to climb up that ladder, the more resistance
(14:42):
I would get. And the resistance was always not what
I expected. I expected resistance against social climbing, and I
never tried to social climb. I wanted to have the
job of doing what I've liked to do. I wanted
the job of service. I wanted to be associated with.
(15:04):
The pushback that I got was no, you can't do that,
which that always confused me.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
And was that from your local ministry or regional?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yes, that was local and regional. Because my family was
so involved. We were We weren't very high up socially,
but we were connected to lots and lots of ministry
and organization because my mom started the summer camp program
for the preteens and we did the sound and video.
(15:40):
At one point I was the only person who knew
how to live stream, so but we were really involved
in the service stuff. But I was allowed to serve
where I was allowed to serve, But it turns out
that was necessary there, and that came out when I
got trouble with much later that I was. I was
(16:04):
supposed to have been put out at one point and
my local pastor, my local pastor actually said, no, I
can't put this guy out. He's the only one who
can do our sound video. He needs to stay. So
I was in trouble, but not put out because of
that anyway. I say that because there was. I've always
(16:30):
felt tension in the in the organization that I never
could progress anywhere. So because of that, I've always been critical,
not not in the I don't know, making comments everywhere
(16:53):
about it, but I always look underneath things and look
behind things and try to figure out why things are connected.
And on the way to the feast, one year, I
heard a minister say something that was just absolutely contrary
to scripture.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Just like.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Just backwards, like I opened my Bible right there. You
just said the opposite of what this says, and that
I had never experienced that before.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
Do you remember what it was?
Speaker 1 (17:28):
It was. I've gone back and forth about whether or
not it was correct now, but he made the case
that the apostles didn't have all the truth, that we
have more truth than they did. And he made it
(17:50):
so that he made the statement to Buttress, we're going
to do things now that we haven't done before.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
Oh that sounds familiar.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, And that just it was like wait a minute
and wait. When he said that, that kind of started.
I just went into like low gear Bible study. I
just started looking into things. The next feast, me and
(18:23):
a couple other guys were we spent the whole feast.
I think we're in Hawaii. Friend of ours had this
kind of flat roof balcony and the three of us
like sat there every night during the feast, just going
over doctrines about what was being taught and what was
not being taught, and what the Bible said and what
(18:44):
we thought it meant.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Which I will point out is the issue that I
took with Roderick Meredith is when he wrote in a
newsletter that went out to everyone that that scripture when
two or three are gathered in my name, you know
I'm in their midst. He said that doesn't apply to brethren.
It only applies to ordained ministers. So you were definitely
(19:09):
outside the lines.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
On that we were we were, Yeah, we were definitely
bucking some rules there. Multiple times throughout my life we've
been in trouble for having Bible studies at the house
or things like that.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
If you just take that and just look at that
out of the whole context of everything, how outrageously ridiculous
is that you would think they would encourage, you know,
people to read their Bibles and study their Bibles. But
there's that fear that what if, what if you see
what's really behind you're masked.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
That's you know, we used to always get upset by it,
but never could see it from thirty thousand feet like right,
And since since being out of it, it is it's
beyond humorous. It's just insane. And but that at the time,
(20:13):
it was just at the time, it was just I
don't know, something like prophetic the falling away was happening
or something, or you know, this was just a bad minister.
Speaker 5 (20:27):
And oh gosh, you just I haven't thought about that
term and so long, the great falling Away.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
It's just a.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
Great way to explain away people who see things for
what they are and leave.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Well, that the the biggest, the biggest thing in my
leaving was exactly that. I'm sure you heard that. You
know the term the great falling away or the Great
Rebellion of the seventies or right, Okay, So I had
(21:04):
known about this rebellion for all my life. And one
of the things that the church was really good slash
bad about was they never mentioned names. So you never
it was John left. You know, his name's not John,
(21:25):
but you know whatever it's like. So we didn't know
My generation didn't know any worldwide Church of God or
even global Church of God history because there were no names.
But we knew about this event. And I came across
the website that has like two dozen of those ministers
(21:48):
that left wrote resignation letters and they're online and there's
not a rebellious word in any of those letters that
just these really heartfelt please for Can you can you
listen to this problem? I can't do this. This is
(22:08):
a crisis of conscience. There's one I I'm trying to
remember who it was. I'll probably get the name wrong
if I try to say it, but he's like, sir,
you've been to my house and had dinner with this.
I've been to your house. Why why aren't you listening?
Like yeah, and I read through all those letters, I
(22:31):
was like, well, at the time, that was the exact
same thing that I was going through trying to trying
to figure out why everything was against me. And it's like, okay, well,
if these guys were labeled rebellious and rebellious to the
point that people in worldwide were sent to the parking lots,
(22:57):
when these other guys would preach to down license plates
of other church members to make sure they could get
put out from listening to these other members, Okay, well
this is nothing new, and that kind of backed my
perspective out a little bit to where I could question
(23:20):
some bigger things.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
But yeah, I think I probably stumbled upon the exact
same websites that you're referring to. There's so much documentation
from ministry and people in positions of authority, deacons, elders. Yeah,
it's and I agree with you, it was not. These
(23:45):
are not rebellious like you know in your face people.
These are people who are pleading because it seems like
they really did care and really believed what they were saying.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That was when when COVID hit so much just kind
of came to a head. I was very very much
into the theology. I very very much believed it, and
when COVID hit, it became a pair that most of
(24:21):
the people and especially most of the ministry didn't believe
the same way that I did. That was a very
very painful thing to see because at one point I
got in trouble for having a blog and I wrote
(24:45):
this post on my blog where I'm a big gun
guy and I owned a gun business at the time,
and I wrote this post about self defense and how
it really it's to scripture. And I took the old
(25:06):
Worldwide paper on it, which most of the most of
the Armstrong Church is still just copy paste that that letter,
and I refuted a lot of things that were in it.
There was there's a few things I think Ernest Martin
wrote that paper and he just completely makes up some
(25:29):
terms that don't exist, and so I refuted them in
this paper, and I got in a whole whole lot
of trouble. I get a call from my pastor and
he says, you need to go meet me at the
local elder's house tomorrow. It's not good. You're you're in trouble.
(25:52):
I said, what's this about? Well, you know, he wrote
this article online and you're preaching, and we got to
have this meeting. So I show up with my Bible
and he said, you don't need that, and I was
(26:18):
really taking it back and I said, well why not.
He's like, he said, we're not going to refute you.
You're just in trouble. So we sit down and we
have this long meeting. And the gist of it is
(26:40):
that I had caused several dozen phone calls to headquarters,
to the letter Answering department, asking why this made sense
and their position didn't make sense. And I was in
trouble because I quote caused them a lot of trouble
(27:06):
answering questions.
Speaker 5 (27:09):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And I was supposed to be put out at that meeting,
and I my pastor very kind of clumsy guy and
not good at secrets. And he showed me the director
Church Administration director's letter to him saying that I needed
to be put out. But yeah, that it became clear
(27:33):
that I was. I was very concerned about the truth
in the theology, and the organization was not. It had
nothing to do It had nothing to do with the theology.
It was just the control. And I was rocking the boat.
(27:54):
And I was literally told I said well, you know,
I disagree with the paper, and they kept saying, well,
have you read our papers? Yeah, I was refuting your paper.
It's quoted in here. Obviously you haven't read mine. I said,
what am I supposed to do when I disagree? And
(28:19):
my pastor said, well, you can ask me questions, but
not all the time. I have more important things to
do than to answer people's questions.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I said, well, what am I supposed to do now?
And he said, well, just don't talk to anyone and
don't say anything. We just want this to blow over.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
So yeah, that was very, very very interesting experience. Interesting
is a horrible work right there, because that was a
lot of that was just, you know, grown men crying
into a pillowed horrible experience. Though that was it wasn't
funny at the time.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
Well, of course, it's just the tactics are just it's
so predictable. Don't talk to anyone, and don't ask too
many questions like they really want to say, don't ask
any You're just supposed to accept and trust and stop
looking into it for yourself. It is. I always thought
how weird it was that Herbert Armstrong's big catchphrase was
(29:29):
don't believe me, believe your Bible. And my dad used
that so much, like in you know, like in defense
of Armstrong, like well, obviously it's he wants us to
prove it, but that is just a ruse, that is
not real.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, I've I've had some very very strong run ins
with that phrase, and it's it's still being use today.
But other groups. I heard one and maybe two years
ago the pastor said you no, don't don't believe me,
(30:09):
but believe your Bible. Mister Armstrong just said, you know,
he said that, but now if we go over here
in Mystery of the Ages, we can see that he wrote.
But like it was just like what might you just
do that? Like that's that's not the same thing.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
Yeah, so that was in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Everything is going to take a little while to recall
dates on, so that would have been twenty nineteen, okay.
And then yeah, so that that meeting and getting in
trouble for the blog and everything, that was nineteen okay.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
I've got a quick question. Did they have you shut
the blog down?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Mm hmm, yeah, and I did. I think on Blogger
you can suspend a blog without deleting it. They're sorry,
they call it something like that. And I did that.
That was that was a very painful thing to do,
(31:26):
and I brought it back later after everything was done.
But so that was nineteen and then then my mom
died the next year and and she died, which that's
a whole different story, but my family just like exploded
(31:50):
into a million pieces.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
And so that's like the glue that held everyone together.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, way more. We all we all knew she us,
but we didn't know to what extent she was. And boy, yeah,
I don't want to I don't want to share most
of that, but it was that was a very very
rough time. And then COVID hit well we're not even
(32:21):
through and like that was five years ago now, and
I don't I think I'm still kind of technically in
repression there. So I hadn't mourn through any of that,
just went straight into COVID and uh so LCG decided
(32:42):
to not sing to wear masks. They they will deny this,
but they stopped anointing in person and just started sending
anointed clubs out. They just suspended all kinds of stuff
and the.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
For our listeners, let me just say what an anointed
cloth is, because I'm not sure that we've ever talked
about that. But so if you if you got sick
in the Worldwide Church of God, you could request an anointing,
an anointed cloth, or you could request a visit from
a pastor who would have an anointed cloth, which was
(33:24):
basically a cloth with olive oil correct on it, which
they would place on your head and pray and then
like God was supposed to then work his magic and
heal you.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
And the.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Reasoning was the scripture that says strips of Paul's garments
were good for healing.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
Yeah, they mailed these out to people. Like, it's just
the thought of.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
That, looking back on it, for an organization and for
theology that is so anti magic. That's an amulet, you know,
it's just very interesting. But for COVID, everything just got suspended.
(34:14):
No one was allowed to come to the church hall.
We all had to stream, which is where I came in.
I had to be there at the church hall with
like eight other dudes or I forget whatever the was it,
six people, whatever the limit was that could be together
under Texas executive order. We have that many people there
(34:34):
to stream. And at one point during this our pastor
had Greg Abbott's like executive order up saying this is
why we're doing this, And it's just like, where's the
whole being persecuted if you're just going to listen to
(34:55):
every whim.
Speaker 5 (34:57):
And also, you know, they always would say, you know,
God would be protecting the feast sites and yeah, you know,
And so I do find that like it kind of
reveals there there's definitely a lot of doubt about whether
God actually had your back or not.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah. I mean I couldn't even begin to count how
many times I heard ministers over my life say, you know,
some of us are gonna be put in jail for yes,
having services and it's like, no, no, you're not, Like
you're not even gonna get a citation.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
Oh my gosh. I so remember growing up with that
and being so afraid of that. Yeah, that's you're just
bracing yourself like you're gonna go through these awful times.
You're gonna be persecuted in ways you can't imagine.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
In the two thousand and eight crash, I was, I
was dating my wife and you know, we're just teenagers
and everything crashed. Hearing the feast and I just remember
every you know, we're going to be back to Horse
and Buggy in a couple of weeks, you know, and
(36:08):
everything everything's going down there was so terrifying.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
Oh my gosh, I don't even remember what it was
like then in the church. That's funny, Horse and Buggy.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I don't get Yeah, well, we get to all of
this COVID stuff and a split starts happening in LCG
and well, I at the time, I'd liked the two
ministers that go split off, and I've got turmoil going
(36:45):
on everywhere, and we Taby and I drove out one
Holy Day to go hear this other minister speak. We
didn't tell anyone that we were going out there, and someone,
(37:07):
someone in our congregation saw a picture of our van
in a picture of this meeting and then told the
pastor that we were at this meeting.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
So someone was doing like reconnaissance work. Yes, all right,
I mean just it's driving by, like just see.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Looking through pictures, trying to see.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
Who was there and snitch.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Well, yes, and they did, and we I'm trying to
think which this would have been, I guess trumpets. We
went and visited, and we didn't want to join this
other church for a few different reasons. But they were
the only church that was like meeting in person, and
(37:51):
so we're like, all right, well we'll go over here. Anyway,
all this happens, we get in trouble. It's in between
a tonement in the feast. Now I'm the head video
sound guy. We've already obviously booked all of our housing
(38:14):
and all this kind of stuff, and I get a
call from a high up minister who's in charge of
that feast side, who was like adopted grandpa status, like
very very close minister, and we get put out, like
(38:35):
what is that five days before the feast?
Speaker 6 (38:38):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And the grounds for us being put out was that,
oh cloten, he said, I can't trust that you're not
going to run sound for me, and then go back
into your room and listen to Sheldon Munson speak. Yeah,
(39:01):
we lost all of our ties that year. We had
we had not like we had. We had already spent
everything getting ready to go to the feast and go.
Speaker 5 (39:13):
So wait, Sheldon, I know Sheldon and Joe Matte so
he is one of the ones that left.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, yeah, and he started.
Speaker 5 (39:22):
I don't know if I knew that, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
But it was wild because we we we got put
out for basically joining another church, and we had gotten
no such thing. We didn't even want to join this
other church. Uh. And then so following that feast, I'm
(39:53):
hanging out with some other friends there probably probably some
mutual friends between the two of us, and they showed
me this guy was still a minister, and he shows
me a letter where we're all marked, so no one
is allowed to talk to us, no one is allowed
to be you know, to have us to their house
(40:14):
or anything. And the letter said, because it's so many people,
we don't want to publicly write a letter of marking,
but every they need to be treated from the pastors down,
they need to be treated as such.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
Do you think that was because of your family's standing.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
We got NLCG that that marking was because we were
lumped in with the four hundred ish people that had
left to go to this oupsode.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
Oh okay, I see, I see.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:47):
You don't want to draw attention that like this huge
group of people.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yes, yeah, in this particular case, it was. It was
four hundred of all of the sound men and the
people that run the care camps and the people that
serve and the people that own the property. And it
was it was four hundred of the very important people
to the organization. So yeah, So over the next couple
(41:16):
of weeks, basically we literally lost about ninety percent of
our friends. People that we had literally grown up with
from the time we were four or five years old,
wouldn't have anything to do with do with us anymore.
(41:39):
And it's still don't.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
Did you try reaching out to any of these people?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
So obviously this is a really truncated, you know, recollection
of everything, but it was we we set out invitations
and called in in every thing for a good year
and a half after that. And it was bad enough
(42:07):
that my wife was actually called to be uninvited from
a baby shower by her best friend.
Speaker 5 (42:18):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Uh painful, it was. It was horrible.
Speaker 5 (42:26):
And I mean why, I mean, you know why. But
I'm wondering if they vocalized that.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I'm trying to think if anyone has said anything. No
one has really said anything along those lines. Most of
the people, most of the people that the ones that
hurt the most, just stopped communicating.
Speaker 5 (42:57):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
So that that was rough. A lot of people just
kind of I don't know, snubbed would be a good word.
It's yeah, and then there is where team from.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
So right, and it's it is an unsaid thing, like
you know, if you are kicked out of the church
or if you choose to leave, things will not be
the same with the people that you were friends with.
I mean that for me, most people just stopped communicating.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Right. Well, one of the things that hurt the most
is that some of our closest friends, they had left
the church before, and we never stopped being their friends.
(43:57):
Like we we hung out with them, I worked with
the we did stuff together while they were out of
the church, and then when they came back, we were
still there and we didn't treat them any different. You know.
We stood in some weddings for people that like there
was a whole lot of animosity towards certain people getting
(44:17):
married because you know, their backgrounds and whatever, and we
stood in the weddings and like, we supported these people's
and then then all of a sudden, they're just gone.
I had I had to I had to redefine what
(44:41):
what I thought friend meant after that, Like, yeah, and
I did a couple of days kind of meditative study
over just what friendship was and had to reevaluate because
that was earth shattering. H My kids, My kids took
(45:05):
that part really really hard. I've got six kids and
they were fourth generation and they were friends with a
bunch of fourth generation and all of their friends disappeared. Yeah,
Now we were We were very, very open with all
(45:32):
of the kids through all of it, and I'm glad
we did that. And they they have since recovered from it,
and even down to the youngest ones, they can articulate
what happened and their thoughts about it. They're certainly not
happy about it, but they can they can grasp what's
(45:56):
going on. Then you know, the content like this podcast.
We talked to them about content like this all the time,
so they're not they're not ignorant of that kind of thing.
But that was really really rough. It took it took
a good two years just to kind of make new friends. Yeah,
(46:22):
and we had to make new friends from whole cloth,
and that was very we For one, we had never
really I'd been in business all my life, so I
knew how to talk to people, how to meet people,
but we had no experience making friends outside of the church.
(46:47):
There was no need to You weren't you didn't want
to be unequally yoked, you know, and so we didn't
do that kind of thing. So that took a long
time to kind of learn how to be a human,
a social human.
Speaker 5 (47:05):
Yes, I feel that too, because when I left LCG,
I realized there wasn't one person in my town that
I could call and say, do you want to have coffee?
Not one like, no one to pick up the phone
and call. I mean, it was just it was kind
(47:26):
of a devastating realization to find myself on an island
and then it's like, I have to go and try
to figure this out, and I've literally never done this before.
Sure I had some friends in school, because I did
go to the public school system, but you know, those
are friendships that are a little bit similar to being
(47:48):
in the church. You're you're all in the same place
at the same time, you know.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, yeah, it was it was very, very painful, and
it's it was kind of humiliating in a lot of
ways to be a grown person realizing that you don't
have any friends. We were both Paby and I were
both like, we've always been really really social people, and
(48:14):
you know, growing up in the church, I traveled a
lot and I served at all the camps and all
this kind of things. So I always considered myself to
have lots of friends. I could go to any state
and stay at someone's howist, and have a conversation. I
knew people everywhere and regularly traveled to see different people
in every state. And then all of that was gone
(48:39):
for for a reason that had nothing to do with
what I thought our friendship was. Right, and then you know,
the realization that oh no, these weren't actually friendships. This
is these are acquaintances, these these are co workers, these
(49:03):
are these are just people that I regularly associate with.
That was that was a very very difficult thing. And
then having to deal with that at the same time
is like losing a family member and then like family
(49:25):
needing a lot of help to get back together.
Speaker 5 (49:28):
That was.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
That was a rough time.
Speaker 5 (49:31):
Yeah, and you're not only navigating your own crises of
like you know, with the friendship that you're talking about,
you're watching your wife feel that same rejection, and then
you're also trying to walk your children through all of that.
I just can't imagine how hard that was, because it's
so much to deal with that once.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Well, after kind of all the id and really after
the smoke cleared. We started like through twenty one, on
twenty one, twenty two, and twenty three, we kind of
church hopped around, you know, tried to hold on to
(50:17):
as much as anything as we could. And I was
in a pretty decent position. I'd played in a band
for years and years that had had played all the
different church functions around. And we're in East Texas and
(50:38):
there's probably one hundred plus splinter groups from armstrongsm that
are still left around this area just because the college
was here.
Speaker 5 (50:48):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
And so I knew a lot of these other people.
I didn't know them very well, but I was acquainted
with a bunch of them. So we started kind of
church shopping around and just visiting different places.
Speaker 5 (51:05):
At this point, did you still believe in the basic doctrines?
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Yes, very much so and very much so, and so
we were shopping around. I was much more I was
much more liberal obviously than than Armstrong is improper, but
but I still believe basically all of this, all of
(51:30):
the same things. So we we shopped around while and
we found that there was that corrupt hierarchy was just
almost everywhere. Uh, And we we shopped until we found
one that didn't seem to have that. And we started
(51:53):
going to church at this place and they let me
speak there, which was really nice.
Speaker 5 (52:01):
Don't you get the feeling that they were each splinter
group was essentially trying to recreate the original.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
And that's the church that we were accused of basically joining.
I jokingly call it Living two point zero. It's, you know,
the the minister that got put out got put out
for saying, you're not I'm going to actually use names here,
(52:38):
just not defamatory or anything, but Sheldon Munson told Gerald
Weston basically, you're not being mister armstrong enough to lead
the church. You're not meeting and you're not doing all
these things. We're going to go back and do this. Well,
then he starts his church and then his brother complains
(53:01):
to him that he's not being armstrong enough, and so
he puts his own brother out, like and it's the same,
it's the same thing, like.
Speaker 5 (53:11):
A Russian stacking doll.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Yeah, and it's like, Gus, this is this is horrible,
Like it's it's it's literally the same thing over and
over again. And we settled on Church of God International,
which is a kind of a remnant of garner Ted
(53:38):
and they kind of they don't have near the hierarchy
structure the same way. They're much more liberal about things.
We had a really good time over there, wonderful people,
but I didn't want to be locked in to a church,
(53:59):
like even believe me everything. I did not want to
be in another church. And see, g you, I was great,
and you don't have to you don't have to join,
you don't have to be a part of it. You
can still. You can come here, you can speak, you
can talk with this, we'll talk with you, we'll do
all of these things. It was wonderful for that. And
then one Sabbath, I'm about to give the sermon and
(54:22):
I'm just going over my notes and I see the
date on the top corner of the page and realize
that I had been going to this church for a
hundred sabbaths. And I was like, nope, I that something
just completely broke in my head and I was I
(54:44):
can't do this, but all right, yeah, it'll suck you in.
Speaker 5 (54:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's that it's familiar, and that
familiarity feel safe in a sense, so I think it's yeah,
I understand.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
I didn't like I didn't like the fact that I
hadn't noticed just how much I had gotten back into it.
Like I was serving a lot there. And I'm not
trying to say that any of that is community or
service or any of those things are bad. But you know,
(55:34):
you get bit by a snake a few times, and
then you start staying away from holes in the ground.
Uh yeah, And since then, you know that that last
sermon that I gave over there took me a long
time to write. I'm I'm very very in tune with rules.
(56:05):
I like rules, and I like propriety. And that last
sermon that I gave there took a long time to
write because I had to come up with something that
I thought was appropriate for both my conscience, yeah, and theirs.
And and I told some of the people there that
(56:27):
I was having this crisis, like you know, I'm going
to run out of things to say very soon. But
for those the two years that we were there, I
just I had not stopped researching stuff. One of the
(56:49):
things as a as a kid growing up in worldwide
and global and living I want to I want to
be too dogmatic about this, but we didn't read you
certainly didn't read anything about sociology or psychology or social
(57:15):
history or other denominations, or religious history or anything that
could contextualize what the church was. And I guess around
twenty two, late twenty two, I started. I just started reading,
(57:45):
and I was just finding all this very curious information
everywhere the world just kept getting bigger, and the church
just kept getting more and more defined. And then I
started reading about I had read Hwa's autobiography before, and
(58:08):
I started reading some religious history and I came across
these names like Charles tays Russell, and I started reading
what they were saying, and then kind of lining that
up in my head with Hwa's autobiography, where you know,
he loses his job because he's a bad salesman and
(58:30):
then spends a year being a bone at a library.
He was literally reading literature and copy pasting bits of
it together. And so I started going through like doctrines
and kind of tracing them back to their origin and
(58:51):
found it he was he was not so bad a
salesman after all. I read this one book on the
it's called Summer for the Gods on the famous Scopes
Trial with Williams William Jennings Brian when it started to
(59:12):
teach evolution in schools, and I'm listening to this book
and I'm putting dates together, and this picture started to emerge.
You know, in twenty sixteen when Trump was elected, it
(59:34):
was very obvious that what he had done was got
a bunch of people together, put his ear to the ground,
and listened to what people were saying, and then built
a campaign off of that. Hwa did the exact same thing.
There was you know, you had the Great Depression on
(59:56):
who had just trouble everywhere. You had Europe kind of
starting to bubble. You had evolution being taught, and the
religion was starting to be undermined a little bit, but
(01:00:16):
all of the middle class and below were still religious.
And what he did was grabbed a whole bunch. He
took all of the fundamentalism and put it all together
(01:00:41):
with and didn't pay much attention to the theology. And
this is something that's still a big problem, is there's
giant gaps in the theology. But he put all the
fundamentalism together, and the structure and the orderliness and the
Bible thumping, and the nuclear family and the hierarchy, the patriarchy,
(01:01:02):
and I don't have a problem with necessarily any of
those things. But he put all of those things together,
all of the buzzwords I've so growing up. Growing up,
we always heard ministers talk about their unconverted Methodist grandmothers
or whatever who taught them most of the Bible, and
how they were great but in the kingdom they're gonna
(01:01:23):
have to relearn everything. But they were good, and they
couldn't place them. And what h WNA did was just
he justified everyone's grandmothers and grandfathers and just made this
fundamentalism hodgepodge and it worked.
Speaker 5 (01:01:45):
And then he sold it as original though.
Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Yes, yeah, and that's the thing you read through Armstrong's
work you never read about, you know, Russell, but that's
a giant source of copy paste material. And then as
I'm reading, I come across this thing, an event in
history that has a name that I had never even
heard of and is called the Great Disappointment. And all
(01:02:14):
of your fundamentalist religions that are apocalyptic kind of source
from this time in the late eighteen hundreds when Christ
was supposed to return and he literally just took all
of this left. It was, you know, fifty years kind
(01:02:36):
of in the past. So it was a lot of
people didn't necessarily know the theology, and he just took
all of that stuff and repackaged it again. And as
I started learning about other religions and other denominations more
specifically just other denominations, that the weirdness of armstrong Ism
(01:03:00):
started to make sense. It actually has a place where
it fits in and there's a reason where so different
than everyone else.
Speaker 5 (01:03:12):
That's part of the appeal. Yeah, you know, you have
something other people don't have.
Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Yeah, And fundamentalism appeals to people, right like we started
out with, you know that order structure rules. Especially. I
have a very very good close friend and he went
off and showed some wild oats in his early twenties,
and he talks about he came back because he had
(01:03:42):
just screwed his whole life up. And I think it's
so telling to the nature of the whole of the whole,
you know, organizations, that's what it's scored. It's the orders,
the structure. One of the most wild things was that
(01:04:02):
while during this kind of four year period, we had
some neighbors about six houses down and they were Pentecostal
and we were having them over. They had really nice
people and we're talking and they were kind of mentioned
(01:04:24):
some things that they were going through. They were going
through the exact same thing coming out of Pentecostalism, and
it was hilarious because they start using some terms. We're like, hey,
we use that term too. No, no, you don't. Well,
this guy, this guy really likes the cult podcasts and
(01:04:48):
he goes He comes in one day and he's like,
I just heard about your church in a podcast and
we're like what, and so well, that's kind of weird.
And he showed it to us and we're like, yeah,
we we know those people. And then a year later
(01:05:10):
he's like, I just heard about your church in another
podcast and it was yours, and I was like, we
were listening. Tabby and I were sitting sitting up in
bed one night and we had like one of the
season one podcasts on and you're talking and wait a minute,
you had mentioned Kurt at one point. We're like, wait
(01:05:33):
a minute, we know these people. Now. That's the only
reason I found And I didn't realize that we had
another connection, you know, through through you know, my adopted
brother and your son. But we found you through this
(01:05:53):
other guy who was coming up. And we still get
together all the time, and it's fascinating that as weird
as armstrong Ism is, there really are text book are
(01:06:18):
playbooks that colts follow, and they're so sprisingly similar. It
never ceases to amaze me how close they are, even
when the theology theoretically differs so much. Meat armstrong Ism
is not Unitarian, obviously, but everything's the same. Year before
(01:06:42):
last a manager at one of my supply houses died
and I went to his funeral and it turns out
he was a Mormon, and I didn't know that, and
I walk into the funeral service and it kind of
(01:07:02):
got the he begbis. It was the same thing. Everyone
acted the same way, they talked, the same way, they
control each other and manipulated each other the same way.
And that really started to weigh on me. This guy
was like thirty two years old when he died, had
(01:07:25):
two kids, he was estranged from his wife, and they
were Mormon, and they had been Oh what do you
call that confirmed or whatever?
Speaker 5 (01:07:33):
The temple?
Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Yeah, I forget what the term for that is. But anyway,
it was a big.
Speaker 5 (01:07:40):
Sealed is that what is?
Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Yeah? I think that's what it is. Well, we're at
his funeral and the family was just so miserable and guilty,
and that really started to weigh on me because the
guilt was really really recognizable where you know, where they're
(01:08:05):
at their son's funeral talking about is how bad his
poor an addiction was. Oh and and and everyone was
like super guilty over this and everything. And he had
died on a motorcycle, but he had the motorcycle because
his dad told him to get the motorcycle to help
him with his poor addiction, to have something else to do.
(01:08:26):
And it was just like it was this horrible scenario,
but it was so familiar all at the same time,
and it really hurt. It really started to hurt me
because I saw this guide that i'd I mean, he
(01:08:47):
was we were just acquaintances, but he was a nice
enough guy, but he was in this state, in this
state of constant guilt and misery. And it really struck
a nerve with me because all of my life I
(01:09:10):
had always been in that constant state of guilt and
misery where you can never be good enough and everything
is always wrong and it's you know, my wife and
I way, we take like a Big five personality test.
We ranked ninety eighth to ninety seventh percentile in neuroticism.
We're just.
Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
We're wired that way. But everything always had everything was
always bad.
Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
And that kind of renewed my interest in studying different denominations,
and then back to Armstrongism, and I kind of came
to a position where some of the fundamentals of armstrong Ism,
(01:10:05):
and consequently some of the fundamentals of Christianity I just
came to reject, one of those being the constant state
of guilt. I I can't, I can't bear to associate
with that. It's it's so heavy. I have so many
(01:10:28):
past acquaintances and current friends who they're just they're they're
carrying the world on their shoulders at all the time.
And it's not it's not it's not like Sisyphus with
you know, any sort of redeeming quality to it. It's
(01:10:52):
just misery, and it's constant misery and fear. I loathe
that fear.
Speaker 5 (01:11:01):
That's a really good analogy.
Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
That that funeral just really set that off for me.
Speaker 5 (01:11:10):
Because there's no relief, there is no.
Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
There isn't andy. I listened in my reading, I read
a lot of Alan Watts, and he had a quote
in one of his books referring to Western religion as
(01:11:35):
abdicating the present for the sake of the future. And
it occurred to me that in Armstrongism specifically, you do
not live in the present. The present is evil, this
present evil age.
Speaker 5 (01:11:56):
That present age.
Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
Yeah, and so you don't live in the present all
of the all of the sum total of the possible good,
all of the constituent parts of the good. Even though
they'll read scriptures about God, you know, you know, wanting
you to have presently a good life, everything has to
(01:12:22):
be in the future. That that feast in Hawaii where
we uh sat around and talked to religion, we had
a there was a minister there from the Caribbean and
he had been set down to South America, just some
of the South American islands, and there were all these
(01:12:47):
tribal people, several different languages, huge language barriers. There was
like one matriarch that he could translate to the rest
of these different tongues. And me and these two other guys,
we we went up to this to this minister and
(01:13:10):
we said, look, will pay to have literature translated. And
he said, well, we don't have anyone who can translate it.
I said, no, no, like there are people who can translate.
We'll just pay a service to translate. And said, oh, no,
(01:13:30):
you can't trust. You can't trust that. You know what
if they mess up the gospel or something, Well, well no,
And we said, okay, well what about this, Like we
have all of these young women in the church who
want to do something. What if we pay for let's
(01:13:54):
say a dozen women to take language courses. We'll pay
for all of their schooling to learn so that they
can translate. Is it no?
Speaker 4 (01:14:08):
And then we say, well, all right, if you could, if.
Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
You could guarantee that one prayer would be answered about this,
this new expansion into these islands, what would you have
us all pray? And he said that God would give
us the gift of tongues. And it's a it was
(01:14:44):
very frustrating at the time, but I should have expected
that because now is not the tongue, like the vault
that theology is not about now. There's no promises for now,
there's no you can't you can't do anything. Sermons all
(01:15:12):
my life about not going to college and get any
sort of education because when Christ returns, you're going to
proof have this new job and have all the expertise needed.
And it's like but yeah, right when we went to CGI,
(01:15:34):
gave a sermon, you know, about faith, and at that point,
I said, you know, faith isn't praying to move a mountain.
Faith is going by a bulldozer and moving the mountain.
And know that you're going to be able to move
the mountain if you have a bulldoze. And there's there's
(01:15:56):
none of that, because that's what they're there for.
Speaker 5 (01:16:02):
You wouldn't even really hear sermons about how to navigate parenthood.
And I mean, like occasionally someone's gonna maybe talk about
disciplining your kids. But you know, I I just remember.
Speaker 6 (01:16:14):
Practical prose, not yeah, it was it was always in
the in the negative.
Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Don't do this, don't do that, don't do absolutely.
Speaker 5 (01:16:23):
I just remember feeling like I cannot go to services
one more week and hear about how horrible everything is
and how everything is evil and falling apart, and how
any day now the great tribulation is going to start
and we're going to suffer for you know, all these
years before Christ returns, and and and I just thought,
(01:16:47):
you know, I'm like I'm a young mom, Like I like,
talk to me about the stuff that I'm dealing with
day in and day out, and help me figure out
how I can be you know, how I can have
more joy in my life and joy in motherhood and
in my marriage. And it just there was never ever
(01:17:09):
about that. So you hit the nail on the head.
Everything is about the future. It's never about the now.
They're not interested in solving problems.
Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
Yes, for anyone, that's a huge thing. The last sermon
that we got, well we were members of LCG, was
a headquarters sermon from Weston and he literally said, why
should we help the world now when they're all going
(01:17:44):
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