The Exclamation Mark Church of God!

05 Oct 2019 - Kieren Underwood

Attention Conservation Notice: A rant about a cult leader who you don’t know, advising you about his horrible books which you haven’t read. Note that this was written for a very specific audience and assumes too much knowledge for the average reader.

"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind." - Terry Pratchett

"Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose." - Elmore Leonard

For a man claiming to be inspired by God, Gerald Flurry’s book sure are boring as hell.Gerald Flurry is the “Pastor General” of the Philadelphia Church of God (PCG), a cult I grew up in.¹ To paraphrase a quote I can’t quite remember exactly, “God tells us he called the weak and base, but do they have to be banal as well?”

As a child growing up in the PCG, I always had a feeling Flurry was a bad writer. I loved reading. But not his books. I don’t agree with other Christian writers like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, but at least they’re interesting.

The years I spent at Herbert W. Armstrong College were probably the tipping point. I’d be sitting in my study chair, 6:00am and still groggy, trying to fit in the compulsory hour of Bible study (also known as: “Flurry’s New Booklet” study). Then, bam—“This world will go through the most horrible suffering it has ever known!!”–smack–“The Laodiceans are going to have to face God’s wrath!”—boom—“Joseph Tkatch Jr. is literally Satan!”—crack—“I am the new Elisha, bitches!!” Wait… I thought this book was about Daniel?

Not only would you have to sit through book-long rants against people you’d never met and the ever-immanent threat of The Worst Suffering Ever, you’d have to see it repeated in italics, all-caps, and then the most formidable format of all: the double size all-caps italics with multiple exclamation points.

So I got to thinking the other day: just how many exclamation marks does Flurry really use?

Elmore Leonard, an author whose credibility comes from the fact that people read his books without the threat of the Lake of Fire, tells us to use no more than “two or three per 100,000 words of prose.” Since most of Flurry’s books are less than 50,000 words, we should be looking at one or two exclamation marks per book.

I went straight to the first eBook on theTrumpet.com—January 16: God’s Miracle Day.This is perhaps the most culty book the PCG has published. Since Herbert W. Armstrong, the cult’s founder, died on January 16, Flurry has said this day has been imbued with special meaning … you know, just like Christians do with Jesus and Easter. God apparently makes sure “big events” happen on this day, although sometimes he gets the timing wrong by a day or so. (Nevermind that!) Since the Law of Truly Large Numbers tells us that with a large enough sample size, it possible to come across just about anything, it’s no surprise that, given every event that happens in a year, you can find something that looks important enough on a specific day.² A quick search revealed 130 exclamation marks. Oops. At a mere 9072 words, this works out, according to Leonard, as an exclamation mark ratio roughly 716 times too large. It also makes for an “exclamation mark to sentence” ratio of 0.23—every fourth sentence has one.

I couldn’t help myself, so I did the other books as well. Here are the results:

Flurry tops out near a 0.25 “exclamation mark to sentence” ratio. Take out chapter headings and external quotations I’m pretty sure Flurry could hit the 1-in-3 ratio, and then you could be in for a real nice reading rhythm. Calm-Calm-Shout! Calm-Calm-Shout! Just as you’re about to fall asleep, you’d be hit with another exclamation mark wake-up call! No sleep for you!

Some of the books which hit the high end of the ratio aren’t ones you’d expect. John’s Gospel—The Love of God tops the list with 24.7 percent of sentences ending with exclamation marks. God loves you—but he’s really angry about it. The Epistle of James is second, with 23.7 percent, and taking third spot is The New Throne of David, which, of course, was unofficially ghost-written by Joel Hilliker. I wonder if he had to go through and add in extra exclamation marks just to give it an authentic Flurry vibe.

I also wondered whether Flurry has been getting angrier over the years. So I sorted the books by publication date:

With the exception of Jordan and God’s Church in Prophecy, Flurry seems to have become slightly angrier. From 1992-2000, Flurry sat at a 13.2 percent exclamation mark rate. Then, from 2001-2019, he took off, averaging 19.0 percent exclamation mark usage.

On a final note, Brian Davis’ The Administration of the Spirit, and Wayne Turgeon’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have exclamation mark rates of 10.0 percent and 12.3 percent, respectively. Armstrong started the tradition, and PCG ministers are continuing it. There you have it—real, definitive proof of Apostolic Succession. Except it’s not inspiration, it’s just tone of voice.