Free Raising the Ruins by Gerald Flurry

after Tkach was born.
    As far as why they wanted him to be a year older, it’s hard to say. With the correct date, he would have finished high school early, soon after his 17th birthday. So maybe they wanted him to be an 18-year-old graduate. In any event, he did finish high school in 1944. He graduated 155th in a class size of 349, from Tilden High School in south Chicago.
    The following year, in January 1945, he ran off and joined the Navy as a 17-year-old. So maybe they tried to make him 18 for that reason. But Tkach admitted to Plain Truth readers in 1986 that he ran away from home and was “under age” when he joined the Navy. 14
    It’s just an odd “fact” to lie about. But why they stuck with the 1926 birthday for the first several years of Mr. Tkach’s pastor generalship, when they could have gotten the correct date from his driver’s license, is inexplicable.
    Continuing with the timeline, according to Jeff Zhorne, Tkach served in the U.S. Navy during World War ii, from January 17, 1945, to July 22, 1946. 15 Mr. Tkach, however, wrote in the Worldwide News that he returned from the war to Chicago on December 21, 1945, which would have limited his service in the Navy to 11 months. 16
    From 1946 to 1950 is when the biography gets real sketchy. In reading what the WCG produced, you are left with the distinct impression that Mr. Tkach went to college during those four years. In “Passing the Baton,” for instance, it says that after Tkach received a naval certificate in “basic engineering” in 1945, he then returned home to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he studied industrial management. After that, he was hired by Hupp Aviation in 1950. 17
    Upon searching their archives, however, representatives at the Illinois Institute found no record of Joseph Tkach ever having attended there. His career at the Illinois Institute, apparently, was not unlike his “training” at Ambassador College. 18
    Lack of Scholarship
    Writing in 2002, Michael Feazell criticized Mr. Armstrong because he “had no seminary training and lacked any disciplined study of church history, biblical interpretation and original languages of Scripture.” 19 In his book, Feazell said that “Herbert Armstrong and scholarship did not mix well.” 20 As if it mixed well with Tkach . Feazell wrote, “Many of Armstrong’s doctrinal errors sprang directly from his ignorance of biblical scholarship and sound methods of biblical interpretation.” 21 In Transformed by Truth, Tkach Jr. criticized Mr. Armstrong for his lack of training in “hermeneutics, epistemology, or apologetics.” 22
    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.