Raising the Ruins (18 page)

The only indication Mr. Armstrong ever gave about revising
Mystery
was the possibility of
adding
another chapter. Yet Tkach Jr. took that to mean “Mr. Armstrong realized that
Mystery of the Ages
had errors in it.”
¹⁷

In David Hunsberger’s response to
Malachi’s Message,
he also brought up the subject of
Mystery
and the sophomore address. He wrote, “Mr. Armstrong realized that
Mystery of the Ages
had errors in it. Even when he personally distributed it to the sophomore class, he told the students that a new edition would need to be written. “
¹⁸
Again, there is a huge difference between
adding another chapter
and wanting to rewrite the book because of major flaws.

Notice another excerpt from a letter Tkach Jr. wrote in early 1992:

Mr. Tkach spent literally hundreds of hours in personal talks with Mr. Armstrong during the last months of his life. Mr. Armstrong was well aware of a number of errors in his book and other doctrinal changes and corrections that needed to be made. He
personally
told Mr. Tkach to study into several of these matters.
¹⁹

Now put yourself in the position of a
WCG
member sitting in that church between 1986 and the early 1990s. First, Tkachism made all kinds of changes, but told the membership there were no changes. Then, in the early 1990s, they admitted there were changes, but insisted that Mr. Armstrong was behind them. In the case of
Mystery of the Ages
,
they said Mr. Armstrong had wanted to “update” the book anyway. Then, later, they said Mr. Armstrong was well aware of all the “errors” in
Mystery
.

Judging by the evolving story coming from
WCG
officials, you can see why Mr. Tkach couldn’t quite get the story straight during his November 1992 sermon. But the extensively written historical record speaks for itself. There is no way an honest observer, looking at all the facts, could say that Mr. Armstrong wanted to re-write
Mystery of the Ages
because of errors, let alone that it was “riddled” with them. Yet, that is exactly what church officials tried to convince the membership between 1990 and 1992.

Coming Clean

Skeptics in the
WCG
were finally convinced that the changes were for real in late 1994, but not because of a courageous sermon by Tkach Sr. No—they were convinced because that was the year
the Tkaches finally came clean
.

That same year, Tkachism also fessed up on the
Mystery of the Ages
rewrite. Joe Jr. wrote in September, “Certainly Mr. Armstrong would have withdrawn and rewritten his book
Mystery of the Ages
had he been aware
of the errors it contained.”
²⁰
But I thought he
was
aware of the errors? Didn’t they have it on tape where Mr. Armstrong admitted it was “riddled with errors”?

Tkach Jr. continued, “[Mr. Armstrong] did announce to students that he was going to rewrite the first chapter and make it chapter 2 [actually, he indicated that he would
move
chapter 1 to chapter 2,
not
rewrite chapter 1] while writing a completely new chapter 1. He never accomplished this goal, however, due to his illness.”
²¹
It’s not 100 percent accurate, but it is certainly much closer to the truth than what he said between 1990 and 1992.

By the time Joe Jr. wrote his book in 1997, their deceptive spin had come full circle. He wrote that Mr. Armstrong considered
Mystery of the Ages
his “crowning achievement”;
²²
“his opus magnum.”
²³
No mention of Mr. Armstrong being aware of all the errors—or even that he wanted it to be rewritten. Instead, Tkach Jr. spun the 1997 version of the story this way: “Herbert Armstrong considered the book
Mystery of the Ages
to be the great work of his life, the greatest book since the Bible.”
²⁴
As for the “deathbed” conversations Mr. Armstrong supposedly had with Mr. Tkach? Joe Jr. explains,

Not long before he died, Herbert Armstrong told my dad that
some things
in the church needed to be changed. He didn’t make a list of the changes he had in mind, he simply said that “things needed to be changed.”

What things might he have intended? W
E CAN NEVER BE SURE
—with one notable exception. Near the end of his life, Mr. Armstrong said that our stance on divine healing needed change.
²⁵

That’s not what he said in 1991—how Mr. Armstrong supposedly commissioned his father to look into the “very changes we have made.” In 1992, Tkach Sr. said he was anxious to get a tape recorder because of the lengthy list of changes Mr. Armstrong wanted made. Instead, Tkach had to work from memory. And many of the changes made several years after Mr. Armstrong died, so said Mr. Tkach, sprung from those deathbed conversations. According to Tkach Sr., they just popped into his head as Mr. Armstrong told him they would.

That was
then
. Now, however, we can
never be sure
what Mr. Armstrong meant when he said some things needed to be changed.

Sophomore Address

Let’s consider one last point with respect to Mr. Armstrong’s address before the sophomores. In the early 1990s, the Tkaches referred to this address as proof that Mr. Armstrong knew about the “errors” in the book. Notice what Mr. Tkach Jr. wrote in a letter, March 16, 1992:

Mr. Armstrong realized that
Mystery of the Ages
had errors in it. Even when he personally distributed it to the sophomore class, he told the students that a new edition would need to be written. His exact words were: “
I won’t say it is inspired in the sense of the Bible. It’s not perfect.
Then when we come to prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and when we come to the New Testament books, God inspired them. They are the infallible words of God. I don’t make any such claim for this book [
Mystery of the Ages
]
whatsoever. I think in a way God inspired it, but not in the sense that it is the Word of God.
I fully expect that within a year there will be a second edition, that some improvements will be made in this book.”

Regretfully Mr. Armstrong did not live to produce a revised edition.
²⁶

Mr. Tkach Jr. referred to these “exact words” in several letters he wrote to church members around that time. David Hunsberger also referred to this quote in his 1991
Worldwide News
article.
²⁷
The problem with this quote is that it is a distortion of what Mr. Armstrong actually said.

Excerpts from his comments were played before the entire church at the Feast in 1985. The 20-minute video, which preceded Mr. Armstrong’s sermon, introduced
Mystery of the Ages
to the church. In the video, the announcer referred to the book as Mr. Armstrong’s “most important and significant work.” And to reflect this high level of importance spiritually, the announcer described how Mr. Armstrong wanted
Mystery of the Ages
to be of the finest quality physically—with the title embossed in gold lettering and the cover in royal purple. Four lengthy segments from the sophomore address were interspersed throughout the video. Here is the one uninterrupted clip Mr. Tkach quoted from so often in the early 1990s:

When the Bible speaks, that is God speaking, not a man. Now it’s true Moses wrote the first five books. But it wasn’t really Moses writing it. God was having him write it. And it was God writing it. But that was really inspired. And
then when we come to prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then when we come to the New Testament books, God inspired them. They are the infallible words of God. This book is not. I don’t make any such claim for this book whatsoever. But I think in a way God inspired it. But not in the sense that it is the Word of God
. It’s as God inspired Herbert Armstrong. And I tried to yield myself to Him. And I hope I was able to yield myself, if not 100 percent, 97, and 98, and 99 percent. The Bible is like a book that had been sort of cut up into about 2,000 or 3,000 pieces and you have to get them all put together in the right order or you can’t understand them. This book puts them together.
²⁸

Notice the italicized words in particular. Mr. Tkach Jr. does quote that correctly in his letter. But before it, he added, “
I won’t say it is inspired in the sense of the Bible. It’s not perfect”;
and after it he tacked on, “
I fully expect that within a year there will be a second edition, that some improvements will be made in this book.”
²⁹
(Notice his letter again, quoted above, to see where he added these comments.) These words
DO NOT APPEAR
in the video that played during the Feast in 1985. Nor do they appear on the
World Tomorrow
television program that also broadcast excerpts of Mr. Armstrong’s address.
³⁰

Now granted, the video the church produced for the Feast most likely did not include Mr. Armstrong’s entire speech. So it’s possible Mr. Armstrong could have made the statements Joe Jr. attributed to him. It’s also possible that Mr. Tkach invented the comments.

The key point, though, is this: For several years in the early 1990s, the Tkaches continually pointed to this sophomore address as proof that
Mystery of the Ages
was not perfect; that it was not inspired in the same way the Bible was; that it contained “errors”; that Mr. Armstrong knew it needed to be rewritten; and regrettably, he just never got that chance since he died soon after it was published. That much we know, based on the letters Tkach Jr. wrote during the early 1990s.

But notice how Mr. Tkach Jr. remembers that same sophomore address today:

When the book was published in 1985, Mr. Armstrong addressed a class at Ambassador College and handed out the book to sophomores and juniors, who were assigned to use it as a textbook. “This book is the greatest book since the Bible,” he said, “and it was
inspired just like the Bible.”
³¹

What a
SHOCKING
difference! As every member in the
WCG
should remember, when Mr. Armstrong spoke about the book’s importance, he said things like, “I candidly feel it
may be
the most important book since the Bible”
³²
or “Time
may
prove this to be the most important book written in almost 1,900 years.”
³³
He did not blast away with, “T
HIS BOOK IS THE GREATEST BOOK SINCE THE
B
IBLE
” and he certainly didn’t say it was “inspired just like the Bible”! The very address Joe Jr. is supposedly quoting disproves it! (Please read the quote from the video again and keep in mind that this was played
BEFORE THE WHOLE CHURCH
.) In his book, Mr. Tkach twists, distorts and even makes up material from that sophomore address to add color to his ever-changing story.

These examples illustrate how far Tkachism goes in order to mislead and deceive. How could Joseph Tkach Jr.’s memory of the sophomore address be so different between 1992 and 1997? Judging by Tkach’s writings, it’s as if Mr. Armstrong gave two different speeches.

Taking the Credit

The year after Joseph Tkach Jr. succeeded his father as pastor general of the Worldwide Church of God is when he issued his mea culpa in the church’s magazine, the
Plain Truth,
saying the church had been “judgmental and self-righteous.” They had “much to repent of and apologize for.”
³⁴

He actually apologized on behalf of Mr. Armstrong for his “flawed” teachings—some 10 years after Mr. Armstrong died! But why didn’t he mention that
Mr. Armstrong himself commissioned Joseph Tkach Sr. to make the very changes they made since 1986
? In fact, throughout the article of apology, Joe Jr. never even mentions Herbert Armstrong. Wouldn’t he at least want the
Plain Truth
readership to know that Mr. Armstrong was behind “all these changes”?

Tkach Jr.’s book,
Transformed by Truth,
according to a July/August 1997
Plain Truth
ad, details how “in 1995, only 10 years after Armstrong’s death, the
leadership of the
WCG
publicly renounced its unorthodox teachings and entered the evangelical mainstream.”
³⁵
In a 1997
Worldwide News,
Tkach Jr. quoted from
Charisma
magazine, which said, “The Worldwide Church of God has made a dramatic shift away from
heresy
since the death of its founder, Herbert W. Armstrong in 1986.”
³⁶

Now,
of course, Joseph Tkach Jr. and the leadership of the
WCG
heartily congratulate themselves for the
WCG
’s radical transformation.
If only they would have been so honest in accepting responsibility in the late 1980s and early 1990s
.

When Mr. Armstrong died, the Tkach administration had nothing but praise and adulation for him and for
Mystery of the Ages
. A few years later, after numerous changes in church policies and doctrines, the Tkaches denied there
were
any changes. They insisted that they were following right in the footsteps of Mr. Armstrong. Then, after the changes became obvious, they attributed them to what
Mr. Armstrong
supposedly said on his deathbed. Now, Joseph Tkach Jr. takes
full credit
for the transformation—even indirectly calling Mr. Armstrong a heretic!