Change at the Worldwide Church of God
On
May 7, 1997, the Worldwide Church of God (WWCG) was voted into
membership by the National Association of Evangelicals. Eighteen months
earlier, their leader, Joseph Tkach, Sr., the successor of Herbert W.
Armstrong, had publicly repudiated the necessity of Sabbathkeeping and
obedience to the Law of God. There
are lessons here for those in our own denomination, in view of the fact
that our own denomination is, in books and publications, openly
repudiating the Bible Sabbath and obedience to God’s law as being
involved in the plan by which we are saved. When
Herbert W. Armstrong died in 1986 at the age of 92, Plain Truth
editor, Greg Albrecht, recalls standing by his grave at the funeral,
wondering what would happen to the church. “He
is dead now,” Albrecht said, “and that began a giant upheaval in my
worldview.” So
powerful had been Armstrong’s influence, that, for a short time
after his death, some of his followers kept vigil by his gravestone,
expecting to see angels come down, resurrect him, and escort him to
heaven. Joseph
Tkach, Sr. had been handpicked, by Armstrong, to take over the
leadership. He quickly gathered about him a small group of men who were
as willing as he was to make changes. One
by one, they discarded earlier teachings. At first, they worked slowly.
Articles hinting at changes began to appear. New pastors were appointed,
who had been trained by teachers willing to follow different paths than
those blazed by Armstrong. Books
by Armstrong began going out of print. His picture came down from where
it had hung in WWCG churches and schools. Leaders,
teachers, and pastors were discovering the books of outside theologians.
Pluralism was in; historic beliefs were old-fashioned. In
just nine years, from 1986 to 1995, the denomination had been nearly
remodeled into a new image. But,
with each step away from the historic beliefs, members left and formed
independent groups. Some united in larger splinter groups. All
this sounds so much like what we are going through. Then
came the final blow: Tkach, Sr., came out openly in the Plain Truth
and denied the necessity of Sabbathkeeping as having anything to do with
salvation. He
wrote that Christians were now living under “the new covenant,” and
no longer needed to obey the law of God. When Joseph Tkach, Sr., died in 1995, his son, Joseph Tkach, Jr., was made president—and continued the same modernist stance, on down to the present time. Yes,
1995 was indeed the bombshell year for WWCG. Large numbers of believers
forsook the denomination. Church headquarters went into a crisis mode,
but refused to reverse itself. Leaders refused to turn back. They
adamantly pressed forward in their objective. But what was it? The
people in the pews who were leaving could not understand what was
happening. However, lax members who had hankered more for the world
loved it. Now they could obtain divorces more easily and still retain
their church membership. They could get a job on the Bible Sabbath and
not be kicked out. People were free to live without being hampered by
any Biblical rules. They were saved by grace! Like
many in our own denomination, the more worldly WWCG members loved the
opportunities for loose living, they no longer had to bother with
enabling grace; they only wanted forgiving grace. Sin
as you like, they were told. Heaven is your home. You were saved on the
cross by Christ, and all you need to do is verbally accept it. You do
not even need to pay tithe anymore. Does
all this sound familiar? It ought to. Our denomination has been
following a parallel course for a far longer time than the Tkachs. When
those faithful to historic positions were told they need no longer obey
God’s law, pay tithe, or keep the Bible Sabbath, droves left the
church. Today much of the
30-acre Pasadena church headquarters is empty. A security guard and
receptionist are the only people visible on the massive first floor of
the administration hall. Other buildings are shuttered, and the great
reflecting pools outside Ambassador Auditorium are dry. All
three universities are closed, the television programs have been
discontinued, and the monthly circulation of Plain Truth
magazine, which once was free to 8 million, is now a paid 125,000. Annual
income has dropped from $200 million to $50 million, and membership has
plunged almost in half. Dixon
Cartwright, publisher of The Journal, an independent publication
which keeps close tabs on the various Churches of God, says that three
major breakaway denominations have formed (one is called the Global
Church of God), and the number of informal splinter groups
throughout the world numbers over a thousand. Sound
familiar? We may be looking at our own future. There are leaders in our
denomination who are as determined today to take us out into ecumenical
Protestantism and Pentecostalism, as were the Tkachs and their
associates. Finally,
on May 7, 1997, the
WWCG was voted into membership by the National Association of
Evangelicals. This was an astounding event, coming only eleven years
after the death of Herbert W. Armstrong, who once castigated the
Catholic Church as the Babylonian whore of Revelation, whose daughters
were the Protestant churches. David Briggs, of the Associate Press, said it this way: “How great a change is this? You can’t compare it to the Mormons’ decision to give up polygamy to assimilate with American culture. Instead, it would be more like the Mormons suddenly becoming Baptists!” (Associated Press release, June 22, 1997.) Eighteen months earlier, their leader, Joseph Tkach, Sr., had publicly repudiated the necessity of Sabbathkeeping and obedience to the Law of God. —Only eighteen months to make a complete changeover! Just think how fast changes will be made when the National Sunday Law is enacted, and you—and our leaders—could share prison cells for keeping the Bible Sabbath! Changes will be made in the blink of an eye when that time comes. We can be thankful that Ellen White’s books are all out-of-copyright, and anyone can now print them. Gerald Flurry, of Edmond, Oklahoma, pastor of an offshoot WWCG church which remains with Armstrong’s earlier positions, has reprinted Armstrong’s 1985 book, Mystery of the Ages. But, in February of this year, the WWCG filed a copyright lawsuit to forbid Flurry from distributing it! They do not want the public to learn or accept the historic beliefs of the denomination. Similar persecution could come to Advent believers. Spirit of Prophecy books have already been burned in some areas. We live in momentous times. Read the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy as though your eternal life depended on it. For it does. Only a small stone
marker, tucked in a nondescript corner of the Mountain View Cemetery in
Altadena, California, denotes the burial place of the writer/speaker who
used radio and television to build an international church, complete
with three universities and a magnificent 50-acre headquarters in
California. But other men came in afterward;
and, in eleven years, they effectively abolished all that he had done. Herbert
Armstrong’s teachings are far different than ours. His came from human
reasoning; ours came from the God of heaven. But
there were similarities, just as the members of the Worldwide Church of
God were led away by modernists from obedience, by faith in Christ, to
the Ten Commandments; so our people can be led away also. Yet
it would be of interest to know more about the background of
Armstrong’s denomination. Here is a brief, and surprising, overview: That
same year, his wife told him she found that the Bible said people should
keep the commandments of God. This was a startlingly new thought to
Herbert. The
very idea that his wife would have such “religious fanaticism” and
keep the Bible Sabbath was intolerable to him. His words describe him as
a man who was proud and very sure of his astute abilities: “I thought I could not tolerate such humiliation . . Why, what would my friends say? What would former business acquaintances think!”—H.W.A., Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong, Vol. 1, 1967, 282. “ ‘I will give you just one more chance, before we separate and get a divorce,’ I said. ‘I don’t know just where it is, but I know all these churches can’t be wrong! I know it’s in the Bible that we are to keep Sunday! I’ll give you this one more chance, before you break up our home. I won’t tolerate fanaticism! I’ll make you this proposition: I have an analytical mind. I’ve been trained in research into business problems, getting the facts and analyzing them. Now I’ll make a complete and thorough research into the Bible. I’ll find where the Bible commands us to observe Sunday. I’ll prove it to you out of the Bible! Will you give up this fanaticism when I prove it?’ ”—Op. cit., 284. After
convincing himself of the Bible Sabbath, in 1927 he asked a Baptist
preacher to baptize him “into Christ.” The next year, he joined a
Missouri offshoot of the Adventist Church, which he abandoned awhile
later after quarreling with them over a leadership position. (More on
this later, when we discuss doctrine.) Armstrong
began writing and preaching. In June 1931 in Eugene, Oregon, he held his
first evangelistic campaign. Still
living in Eugene, he founded Plain Truth magazine in February
1934. At first, it was a mimeographed bulletin. The previous month, he
started a radio broadcast. Originally called the Radio Church of God,
it was later to be renamed The World Tomorrow. The
movement grew slowly until 1946, when Armstrong launched an intense
radio and traveling campaign to increase membership. Touring around, he
baptized listeners into his church. Herbert
Armstrong had great confidence in his ability to devise new, correct
interpretations of religion. It was only matched by his self-confidence
in promoting whatever he believed in. According to Herbert, He was
God’s gift to mankind: “Jesus
chose Paul, who was highly educated, for spreading the Gospel to the
Gentiles. He later raised up Peter Waldo, a successful businessman, to
keep His truth alive during the Middle Ages. In these last days . .
Jesus chose a man amply trained in the advertising ad business fields to
shoulder the mission—HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG.”—H.W.A., quoted in
Paul N. Benware, Ambassadors of Armstrongism: An Analysis of the History
and Teachings of the Worldwide Church of God, 1975, 25 [emphasis
Armstrong’s]. Additional
quotations could be given, showing the strong element of egotism in the
man! Armstrong
specialized in radio. He later added on television. By the early 1980s,
he sponsored more radio broadcasts and television programs on more
stations than any other minor denomination in the world; in fact, more
than its five top competitors combined. Radio Luxembourg and other
stations beamed Armstrong’s messages all over Europe and behind the
Iron Curtain. Over
the years, Armstrong gained quite a following in the United States,
Canada, England, and in Europe. Because he taught Anglo-Israelism, he
became popular wherever people of English descent lived throughout the
world. Armstrong developed
a taste for private jet planes and meetings with world leaders. He
considered himself a senior statesman, and would fly to faraway places
and visit with the heads of nations. They were glad to visit with him
for a few hours, since he brought them expensive gifts (such as
Steuben-cut glassware), as well as giving them funds to help the poor in
their nation. Whether or not the money ever reached the poor was not
always known. Armstrong
started these “ambassador” trips, at the suggestion of Stanley
Rader, one of his associates. Gradually, more and more money was
siphoned into these activities. Millions of dollars in church funds were
diverted to this and to his celebrity concerts at an immense hall he
constructed in Pasadena. The denomination was nearing bankruptcy. This
led to a lawsuit filed in California by certain members in 1978, which,
in 1980, placed the church in receivership. He
also sponsored archaeological digs in various Near Eastern countries.
One of these was his well-publicized funding of Israeli excavations
around, and underneath, the site of the second Temple in Jerusalem. No
analysis would be complete without mentioning Garner Ted Armstrong.
Handsome and articulate, as a child he wanted to be a nightclub
performer. After high school, he joined the navy; but, in 1923, he
returned home to Dad. Four years later, at 27, Herbert had made his son
a regular speaker on the radio. But,
from 1960 onward, Garner was increasingly involved in adultery and Los
Vegas gambling. Repeatedly, the father censured or expelled him. Each
time he took him back in. In 1973, Armstrong named Garner his successor.
Regarding his known adultery, the father said, “Ted is divinely
called” and “above the Scripture” (H.W.A., quoted in W.C.
Martin, “Father, Son, and Mammon,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1980,
60). The
final break came in 1978, when Garner tried to seize control of the
organization while his father was ill. Herbert kicked him out for good. Armstrong
had always strictly forbidden divorce. But then, in 1977, he decided to
divorce his wife and marry a divorcée 45 years younger than himself. In
1982, he divorced his second wife. Finalized in 1984, he died less than
two years later at the age of 93. (webservant's note- there is some question whether his first wife was divorced by him or if she died prior to his remarriage.) What were Herbert
Armstrong’s teachings? He
started out well, for the Bible taught him that mankind should obey
God’s holy law, by faith in Christ. Unfortunately, Herbert was not
satisfied to remain with the “plain truth,” as given in God’s
Word. Gradually, he wandered off into various novelties. For
a time, Armstrong united with B.F. Snook and W.H. Brinkerhoff’s
organization. These were two apostate Seventh-day Adventist ministers
who started the infamous “Marian Party” in 1886. This is a
well-known offshoot in our own history. Hating Ellen White’s writings,
the two started a splinter group in Iowa.
In 1889, they centered their work in Stanbury, Missouri, and
called their company the Church of God (Adventist). What
a group to become involved with! Armstrong joined these Spirit of
Prophecy haters; but, after a stormy experience, he separated from them
in a dispute over who would be leader. Armstrong,
ever the consummate promoter, worked with a Mr. Duggar, in leading off a
sizeable number of Snook and Brinkerhoff followers into a new group,
which were called the Church of God (Seventh-day), Sometime
later, because of Armstrong’s positions on British Israelism, he
separated once again, this time calling his church the World Church
of God. Later still, he changed it to Worldwide Church of God. It
is for such reasons that, in a series of articles in the Bulletin of
the Ministerial Association of Seventh-day Adventist Ministers,
George Burnside wrote that “Mr. Armstrong is an offshoot of an
offshoot of an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.”
(Burnside, a well-known powerful Australian evangelist in the 1950s and
1960s, was hounded out of the Adventist ministry in the 1980s for
opposing the new theology. He passed to his rest only a few years ago.) It
turns out that the neighbor lady, who initially revealed the great truth
about the law of God to Armstrong’s wife, was a Seventh-day Adventist.
Unfortunately, Herbert afterward got in with the wrong people, who
turned him against the Spirit of Prophecy. Yet
Armstrong’s theology paralleled ours in a number of ways: the
observance of the Seventh-day Sabbath, abstinence from certain articles
of food as unclean, and his denunciation of eternal punishment. He also
had a system of eschatology (last day events), yet quite different from
our own. But,
oh, what grotesque errors he came up with! Armstrong
taught that the blood of Christ only wipes away past sins, but our
obedience in our own strength to the law is what saves us. This, of
course, is radically different than historic Adventism. Like
Jehovahs’ Witnesses, he did not believe that Christ is eternally
divine, that the Holy Spirit has existence, or that Christ had a bodily
resurrection. Like
the Mormons, Armstrong taught that man can eventually become fully God. “Do you really grasp it? The purpose of your being alive is that finally you be born into the Kingdom of God, when you will actually be God, even as Jesus was and is God, and His Father, a different Person, also is God! You are setting out on a training to become creator—to become God!”—H.W.A., Why Were You Born? 22 [emphasis his]. Armstrong
taught Anglo-Israelism (also known as British-Israelism). This theory,
first taught by Richard Brothers (1757-1824), was the concept that the
“lost tribes of Israel,” which were taken captive over 2,500 years
ago by Assyria, managed to migrate to the British Isles! (Howard Rand,
the man who published in the early 1980s that Sabbathkeepers should be
killed, also espoused that error.) Imagining that they were more likely
to be saved, those of English descent (including many Americans) have
been flattered by this teaching into accepting it. The
largest of the groups promoting Anglo-Israelism was Armstrong’s
church. Armstrong maintained that the Jews are racially different than
Israel, those who are the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons. Here
is an example of his foolish reasoning: “Elizabeth II actually sits on the throne of King David of ISRAEL—and she is a direct descendant, continuing David’s dynasty—the VERY THRONE on which Christ shall sit after His return . . Elizabeth II was crowned ‘Queen of thy people Israel’ . . The throne upon which she was crowned [i.e. the ‘Stone of Scone,’ lodged in Westminster Abbey] is really the stone which Jacob used for a pillow, which he took with him when he departed from Bethel, and which later came under the care of Jeremiah the Prophet, who took it with him to England, where it became the Coronation Stone for the British (Davidic) dynasty.”—Plain Truth, June 1953. Scientific
analysis reveals that the Stone of Scone is “calcareous, a sandstone
of a reddish or purplish color, with heterogeneous pebbles and of
Scottish origin” (W.H. Smith, The Ten Tribes of Israel Never Lost,
91). Armstrong
also taught that all the Jewish feast days, new moons, and festivals
must be kept—or one would be lost. He also taught that one did not
receive the new birth until the moment of resurrection from the dead; at
which time (if he was a faithful follower of Armstrong, and only
Armstrong) he would become God in fullest essence of nature and ability. He
also taught a form of universalism: During the coming millennial reign
of Christ, the entire world would begin to be converted and everyone
would ultimately be saved. “As Lord of lords Christ will begin to convert and save the entire world during His reign . . all peoples will then come to know God. Their blindness and religious confusion will be removed and they will finally be converted. The resurrected saints will teach the people God’s way.”—Plain Truth, October 1959. Armstrong
also taught that Christ was merely a human who happened to be the first
one to achieve full perfection (H.W.A., Why Were You Born? 15). With such peculiar errors, a change surely was needed. Yet the correct doctrines (those that Armstrong first received, the Bible Sabbath and obedience to God’s law) were thrown out also. Those were the teachings he got from Adventists; not from his own speculations!
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