Raising the Ruins (6 page)

Of course, Mr. Armstrong would have responded to those criticisms thunderously, by pointing to the
RANK IGNORANCE
about God within scholarly circles. Critics may scoff at Mr. Armstrong’s supposed lack of scholarship, but hundreds of thousands—including a great many world leaders Mr. Armstrong visited—would have considered Herbert Armstrong a Bible scholar and expert educator. Look at the fruits: Perhaps thousands of pamphlets, articles and letters, hundreds of booklets and seven books. Thousands of sermons. He produced and delivered 1,500 radio programs and nearly 200 television programs. He developed the curriculum for three colleges—giving what must have been thousands of class lectures himself. Objective observers, even if they disagree with his theology, would at least give him credit for all that he produced.

Compare that with Tkach Sr.’s exploits, even counting his fabricated academic record. Before taking over in 1986, he hardly ever wrote or spoke publicly. According to Aaron Dean, Mr. Armstrong actually took comfort in Tkach’s average intellectual capacities, believing it would make him more prone to rely on the Advisory Council.
²³
After becoming pastor general, Tkach’s own son even admitted that his “dad was not known as a theologian.”
²⁴
Tkach’s former boss, Roderick Meredith, evaluated Mr. Armstrong’s successor more bluntly, saying he “did not speak well and I didn’t realize how little he understood the doctrines.”
²⁵

In light of Tkach’s sketchy educational background, it’s astonishing how often Tkach Jr. and Feazell have found occasion to ridicule
Mr. Armstrong’s
lack of scholarship. But if Mr. Armstrong was uneducated, where would that leave Joseph Tkach?

The Real Church Historian

In a 2002 deposition, we pointed Tkach Jr. to the statement about Mr. Armstrong’s lack of seminary training and disciplined study of church history and then asked, “Could the same thing be said of your father?”
²⁶
That question caught the younger Tkach completely off guard.

“No,” he stammered, “not as precisely as that, no.”
²⁷
According to Tkach, his father spent more time studying church history than Mr. Armstrong. He later said that Mr. Armstrong “read mostly on philosophy,”
²⁸
as if Joe Jr., who was born the same year Mr. Armstrong turned 59, knows everything the founder of the church
read
. When he spoke and wrote, Mr. Armstrong did, at times, refer to the written works that had made an impression on him. But how Tkach Jr. took these many comments to mean he read mostly philosophy, I’ll never know.

In his
Autobiography,
Mr. Armstrong discussed his earliest plunge into the study of church history. His wife had challenged him to prove the biblical truth on the question of the Sabbath. In response to her challenge, he “spent a solid six months of virtual night-and-day, seven-day-a-week study and research” trying to prove that Sunday was God’s day of worship. “I even studied Greek sufficiently to run down every possible questionable text in the original Greek.”
²⁹
He used Robertson’s
Grammar of the Greek New Testament
. He also relied upon a number of other commentaries and Greek and Hebrew lexicons. He delved into several encyclopedias—Britannica, Americana, as well as the Jewish and Catholic encyclopedias.

“I read Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
especially his chapter 15 dealing with the religious history of the first four hundred years after Christ,” Mr. Armstrong wrote.
“I left no stone unturned.”
³⁰

From that alone, you get the impression he read quite a lot more than just philosophy.

In
Mystery of the Ages
,
Mr. Armstrong wrote, “Scholars and church historians recognize that events in the early Christian Church between a.d. 50 and 150 can only be seen in vague outline—as if obscured by a thick mist.”
³¹
To support his conclusions, Mr. Armstrong relied upon the noted English scholar Samuel G. Green in his
Handbook of Church History.
He quoted from William Fitzgerald’s
Lectures on Ecclesiastical History,
William McGlothlin’s
The Course of Christian History
and Philip Schaff’s
History of the Christian Church.

In his booklets
The Plain Truth About Easter
and
The Plain Truth About Christmas,
Mr. Armstrong relied on Alexander Hislop’s
The Two Babylons.

Mr. Armstrong’s study of church history is also reflected in the many writings he produced on the subject. In
Mystery of the Ages
,
his longest chapter by far was titled “Mystery of the Church.” He also wrote an eight-part
Plain Truth
series in 1979 on the “Proofs of God’s True Church” and a 1984 booklet,
Where Is the True Church?
Included among his more than 1,500 radio broadcasts is an eight-part series on “The True Church.”

Add to that the comprehensive works of Mr. Armstrong’s
students:
Dr. Hoeh’s booklet
A True History of the True Church
and article “Amazing 2,000-Year History of the Church of God,” Dr. C. Paul Meredith’s book on the development of false Christianity,
Satan’s Great Deception,
and Ron Kelly’s thesis, “History of the Church of God.”

Tkach Jr. boasted that his dad “read books” about church history, some of which weren’t even published until after Mr. Armstrong died. Among the works Tkach Jr. cited were those of Methodist minister Justo Gonzalez.
³²

Mr. Armstrong studied Gibbon, Schaff, Fitzgerald, McGlothlin and Green and wrote extensively about the history of the church. Tkach Sr. studied Gonzalez and never wrote a thing about church history.

Of course, deep in his heart of hearts, Joe Jr. knows Mr. Armstrong’s extensive research and training, as well as his productive life, towers above his own father’s intellectual achievements. But the reason he raises the “uneducated” card in reference to Mr. Armstrong is because he
doesn’t agree
with Mr. Armstrong’s
explanation
of church history. Had he put it that way, at least it would have been honest. But to say that his dad studied church history and Mr. Armstrong didn’t—that he read mostly philosophy?

Every present and former member of the Worldwide Church of God should
know
that is a lie.

Disciplined Study

In the deposition quoted above, to support his father’s credentials as being superior to those of Mr. Armstrong, Tkach Jr. claimed that besides his father’s grasp of church history, Tkach Sr. went to Ambassador College. Our attorney then followed up with the question everyone on our side of the table almost blurted out: “Well, it would be sort of difficult to distinguish your father’s educational background from Mr. Armstrong’s wouldn’t it, to say that he attended a college that Mr. Armstrong created and supervised?”
³³

Unbelievably, Tkach responded, “Not at all. Because in the college milieu, there was disciplined study. Mr. Armstrong never had that.”

For the sake of argument, let’s suppose Mr. Tkach actually attended Ambassador College for three years as a full-time student and then graduated in 1969. Let’s assume he was an active participant in the “disciplined study” of Ambassador life. How does
that
—attending what Tkach Jr. now calls an “indoctrination camp”
³⁴
started by a heretic—qualify as disciplined study, while
establishing, teaching at
and
supervising
that same college does not?

Herbert Armstrong and J.H. Allen

In
Transformed by Truth,
Mr. Tkach Jr. wrote, “In fact, it is no secret that Herbert Armstrong’s
The United States and the British Commonwealth in Prophecy
was copied from a book titled
Judah’s Scepter and Joseph’s Birthright
by J.H. Allen.”
³⁵
He offers no support for this plagiarism charge. It’s just true because he says so—it’s “no secret”—
everyone
knows Mr. Armstrong “copied” it. But if you actually take the time to examine the two books, you will find that they are entirely different. Yes,
ENTIRELY
.

Just because both books discuss the modern identity of the lost 10 tribes of ancient Israel does not mean Mr. Armstrong “copied” Allen. If William Manchester and Martin Gilbert both write biographies about Winston Churchill, does that mean one plagiarized the other?

And it’s not like Mr. Armstrong tried to conceal the fact that he read Allen’s book when studying the subject of ancient Israel’s migration into Europe. He said, “It’s true that I had read one or two other writings and that book of J.H. Allen on the truth about the lost 10 tribes.”
³⁶
But it would be a “bald-faced lie” for anyone to say it was copied, Mr. Armstrong said.

“I examined this so-called Anglo-Israel theory,” he continued. “But I checked it very carefully with the Bible, and
I only believed what I saw in the Bible.
I didn’t believe and I threw out a lot of what they had.”
³⁷
Isn’t that the way any honest theologian would study a biblical commentary or history? If it squares with the truth of the Bible, then Mr. Armstrong was entitled to expound upon it just as much as any other theologian.

J.H. Allen introduced his book by writing, “Although it is not generally known, it is nevertheless true that God made two covenants with Abraham .…”
³⁸
Compare that to the introductory statement in
The United States and Britain in Prophecy
:
“A staggering turn in world events is due to erupt in the next few years. It will involve violently the United States, Britain, Western Europe, the Middle East.”
³⁹
These opening remarks, like the titles for both books, highlight the
vast difference
between the two.

J.H. Allen organized his work into these three sections: 1) the birthright promise; 2) the scepter promise; and 3) the veil being lifted from the Abrahamic nations. The first two sections revolve around the promises God made to Abraham in Genesis 12 and how they played out in history. And to Allen’s credit, he tried to be honest with the Bible as compared with secular history.

The third section is also mostly historical and secular. And when Allen does venture into explaining the prophetic significance, he veers way off course.
⁴⁰

Mr. Armstrong’s book, on the other hand, is about a
PROPHESIED CAPTIVITY
to come upon our peoples unless we repent of our sins. That is the book’s central focus from beginning to end.

In expounding on these end-time prophecies, Mr. Armstrong devoted some space in the book, between chapters 3 and 8, to establish Israel’s present-day identity based upon Bible and secular history. These are crucial historical facts that must be explained for readers to understand the truth about end-time prophecy. J.H. Allen is to be credited for teaching the truth about some of these historical facts. But he certainly did not grasp the tremendous significance of this history as it relates to Bible prophecy.

And yet, that’s what
the last six chapters of Mr. Armstrong’s book
are devoted to—expounding upon the real significance of this history as it relates to end-time prophecy. In chapter 10, for instance, Mr. Armstrong wrote about how the birthright promises were withheld for 2,520 years. There is nothing like this in Allen’s book. Another chapter asks the question, “Why did Israel lose its identity?” J.H. Allen not only failed to answer that question, he never asked it. Then Mr. Armstrong concluded his book by discussing what is prophesied to happen to the American and British peoples in the very near future—a conclusion that is not only different, but at complete odds with J.H. Allen’s conclusions.

While it is true that Mr. Armstrong read
Judah’s Scepter and Joseph’s Birthright,
along with other books about the “Anglo-Israel” theory,
HE DID NOT COPY
those works. Joe Jr. made that dishonest claim without any supportive evidence whatsoever, simply because he dislikes Mr. Armstrong and doesn’t agree with the book that more than
6 million people
requested.

The Ghost Writers

On page 66 of his book, Tkach Jr. wrote,

When my dad did give a major sermon on doctrinal changes, he always read major portions of it, confirming in these people’s minds that he was a mere dupe of the “gang of four.” They circulated rumors that others were writing his articles for church publications and publishing them either without his knowledge or against his will.
⁴¹

And that’s true. I remember listening to a number of Mr. Tkach’s taped sermons from the late 1980s and early 1990s—I even reviewed a few videotaped sermons. He would read and read, and oftentimes trip over words. I also remember the rumors vividly:
Who prepared this for him? And why doesn’t he pull away from his notes?

Later on in the book, after referring to these “rumors,” Tkach Jr. wrote, “It didn’t seem to occur to people that if my dad didn’t like or agree with material Mike Feazell (who was his executive assistant and editorial advisor) or others
prepared for him,
he could have changed it or not used it at all.”
⁴²

Yes—in the very same book Tkach Jr. accuses Mr. Armstrong of copying J.H. Allen, he admits that his own father had his sermons
prepared for him.
Then he justifies that by saying his father
didn’t have to
use those pre-prepared sermons if he didn’t want to.

And it wasn’t just Tkach’s
sermons
that others prepared. Tkach Jr. continued, “My dad hired Mike Feazell to assist him, especially in
writing
and
theology,
and he could have fired him at any time. My dad spent hours every day with Mike, working out details of
letters, articles
and
sermons.”
⁴³
In 2002, Feazell admitted that as Mr. Tkach’s assistant, he was primarily “responsible for editing and drafting his written material.”
⁴⁴