Armstrongism's Longest Running Ministry To Its Members: You Are Too Stupid To Know How To Dress Appropriately, So Let Us Tell You

 

Living Church of God is once again telling grown adults what to wear to church and what kind of swimsuit will not scandalize the Millennium. Coats, collared shirts, ties, and nice slacks for men. For women: no form-fitting clothes, no high hemlines, no cleavage, no bare shoulders, no backless dresses, no crop-tops. At the pool or beach: cover the midsection, ladies. Men: no Speedos unless a European pool forces the issue. After all, you are future kings and priests. You must discern between what is appropriate and what is not.

Just not, apparently, without a memo. 

This is not a new burst of pastoral concern. It is a seasonal ritual. LCG has been issuing nearly the same Feast fashion briefing for years - 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and now again - as if the flock keeps forgetting how fabric works between Atonement and Opening Night. 

Armstrongism did not invent modest dress. It did invent the idea that converted adults cannot be trusted to figure it out.

Herbert W. Armstrong did not merely prefer a jacket. In May 1979 he asked, in print, whether some members might be kept out of the Kingdom of God because they showed up in jeans, overalls, or tennis shoes. "THIS IS SERIOUS!" he wrote. Church was coming into the very presence of God. He had pressed his own suit on an ironing board when he owned one pair of shoes with holes in the soles. The rest of you could at least try. 

The system that followed treated clothing as a sacrament of submission. Women were not to wear pants except for sports. Skirts had to reach the knee. Hair had to cover the nape of the neck. Makeup was banned, then allowed, then banned again because Satan had supposedly used lipstick to knock the church off track. It's always the women at fault, not the narcissistic toupee-wearing ministers. Men were not to let sideburns drop below mid-ear or comb hair over the forehead. Toupees were out unless you were a minister or evangelist. If a poor new member arrived without a tie, one could be issued at the door - salvation by accessory. Ministers counseled members on cars, jobs, mates, and, in some eras, what was permitted in the marriage bed. Clothing was simply the most visible leash. 

The makeup saga remains the masterpiece. In 1955 the church "ruled." In 1974 the rule loosened. In 1981 Armstrong announced that Satan had used cosmetics to derail the work, and women were to wash their faces. Headquarters church reportedly complied the very next Sabbath. Some women later admitted they took it off for services and put it back on for the world - a small, human act of sanity that was treated as double-mindedness. The Bride of Christ, Armstrong warned, would not rise to meet Jesus with painted faces. The returning Christ, one gathers, has strong opinions about Maybelline. 

None of this was ever just about taste. It was about who gets to decide that you are serious. "God looks on the heart" is always the continuing mantra. Then comes the verse about hemlines. The proof-texts do honest work in other contexts - 1 Timothy 2, Matthew 22's wedding garment, "come out from among them." In Armstrongist hands, they become a standing implication: left alone, you will dress like the world, offend your neighbor, and possibly forfeit a throne. The ministry will discern for you. You will be grateful.

The swimwear paragraph is the tell. Adults who have tithed, kept the Sabbath, avoided shrimp, and scheduled vacation around Leviticus 23 are still assumed unable to distinguish a swimsuit from a statement. Love God. Love neighbor. Therefore, no Speedo, unless France insists. Cover the midsection. As future kings and priests, you must learn to tell holy from profane - starting with the difference between a tankini and a bikini, as defined this year in Charlotte.

There is a word for a religion that produces people it will not let pick their own clothes. It is not "discipleship." It is childcare with extra tithes.

The tragedy is not that someone prefers a tie on the High Days. Plenty of people dress up for things they consider sacred. The tragedy is the unblinking assumption, decade after decade, splinter after splinter, that the members are the last people on earth who can be trusted with a mirror. Herbert pressed his suit. His successors press the same point: you are almost royalty. You are almost priests. You are almost ready to judge the world.

Just not the swimwear aisle.

Not without help.

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Appropriate Dress for Feast Services
While God looks on the heart, dress and outward decorum are also important (Matthew 22:8-14), and it's good to review basic principles for attire at Feast services. For men in most Western countries, coats, collared shirts, ties, and nice slacks are considered appropriate on special occasions. This may vary somewhat in tropical climates. For ladies, 1 Timothy 2:9-10 explains that dress should be "modest apparel, with propriety and moderation." Form-fitting clothing, high hemlines, necklines showing cleavage, bare shoulders, backless dresses, crop-tops, and the like are not appropriate for Church services. Our challenge as disciples of Jesus Christ is to be separate from this world and be lights to it (2 Corinthians 6:17; Matthew 5:14-16). This is especially true as we gather to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles together, multiplying our examples and reflecting the Church as a group.

What About the Pool or Beach?
Swimwear at the Feast of Tabernacles should be modest and in good taste. We are to be guided by the two great commandments-to love God and love our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39)-so as not to offend God or our neighbor in our attire at the Feast. Accordingly, ladies' swimwear at the Feast should be modest and cover the midsection, and men should not wear Speedo-type suits unless pool facility rules specifically require them, as is the case in some European countries. As future kings and priests, we have a responsibility to discern between what is appropriate and what is not-and to live accordingly (Ezekiel 22:26).

When A Church of God Leader Discovers Restraint—Right After Decades of the Opposite

The Living Church of God has never met a late-summer earthquake, fire, flood, or terrorist anniversary it couldn't convert into proof that Satan is personally offended by the Feast of Trumpets and the Feast of Tabernacles. For decades the formula has been reliable: scan the news as Tishri approaches, find something awful, declare it a spiritual assault designed to "deflect" attention from God's master plan, then collect the offerings while the brethren sit in a pleasant state of dread. Bigger body count, better sermon. The bigger the tragedy, the more it gets milked for "end-time events." Armstrongism has always loved this particular flavor of weather-as-theology.

That is why Gerald Weston's latest paragraph lands with such comic timing. After years of the same organization treating every cluster of misfortune as Satan's festival-season sabotage, Weston now writes:

The Feast of Trumpets is almost here. Interestingly, the Holy Day begins on the evening of September 11 this year-the 25th anniversary of those infamous terrorist attacks that took place on United States soil. I mention this because the Holy Days have often seen unusual events occur, though we should be careful not to make too much of what may be only an interesting coincidence. What is certain is that Trumpets will be followed in short order by Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day. Spectacular events will take place when each of these days become reality, and that is not idle speculation. May God speed those days!

Ah. Caution. Suddenly. After the church spent decades doing exactly the thing he now advises against.

It is almost as if someone noticed that living in a permanent state of "the end is this Feast cycle" has side effects. One of those side effects sat in a Living Church of God congregation in 2005. Terry Ratzmann had been listening to Roderick Meredith's trademark sermons about death, destruction, and how little time remained. The man lost all hope. Then he opened fire. Eight people died, including the shooter. The organization treated it as an isolated tragedy rather than an indictment of a preaching style that treats despair as a spiritual discipline.

Fear is useful. Fear keeps people watching the telecast, sending in the co-worker letter checks, and staying inside the one true remnant that alone understands why the latest hurricane is actually about Tabernacles. A congregation that is slightly terrified tithes more reliably than a congregation that is merely informed. Weston knows this history; he inherited it. The "we should be careful not to make too much of it" line is therefore not a sudden conversion to epistemic humility. It is a limited-time disclaimer issued while still reminding everyone that spectacular events will occur when these days become reality-and that is definitely not idle speculation.

So the machine continues, just with a new warning label. Satan is still the convenient author of whatever happens in September. The Holy Days are still the interpretive key that turns random suffering into prophetic confirmation. The only change is that the Presiding Evangelist has added a sentence that lets him claim he never really meant the previous forty years of "I told you so."

The Feast of Trumpets begins the evening of September 11, 2026. Something terrible will almost certainly happen somewhere in the world that week, because something terrible happens somewhere every week. When it does, watch how quickly the caution evaporates and the old script returns. The coincidence will once again become evidence. The evidence will once again become urgency. And the urgency will once again be good for the budget.

May God speed those days, indeed. The overhead isn't going to pay itself.

God Is Going To Use One Man Exclusively To Warn The COG's When It Is Time To Flee!

The Secret Has Been Revealed. Surprise: It Is Bob.

Genuflect at his feet now so that you may be saved!

Stand in awe and gaze upon his magnificence!

Never in the long, splintered, spreadsheet-of-splits history of the Church of God movement have so many people been so confidently wrong about so many verses while one man in a beige suit, under a glowing planet, surrounded by books to make you think he is educated, has been so willing to announce that the problem is everyone else.

Crackpot Bob has surveyed the Churches of God in 2026 and discovered a warehouse of blaspheming idiots. Their crime is not adultery, not covering up African scandals, not inventing credentials, not turning dreams into résumés. Their crime is refusing to admit that the Great Tribulation begins at Daniel 11:39 and not 11:40. One verse. That is the whole priesthood. Miss it, and you do not get the wilderness reservation. You get Revelation 12:17, which is the biblical term for you should have listened to Bob.

Other groups, we are told, will not know the Tribulation has started until it has started. Bob's group will know in advance. Because Bob knows. Because God tells prophets. God speaks directly to Bob. Because Amos 3:7-8 is not a verse so much as a vacancy Bob filled before anyone else checked the listing.

A lion has roared. Who will not fear?

The Lord God has spoken. Who can but prophesy?

Bob can. Bob does. Bob has a website about it.

While many believe all COGs are the same, there is only one that best represents the Philadelphian remnant. There is one that has restored the most truth. There is one that has had the most Divine confirmations. These are not boasts. They are measurements taken with a ruler Bob brought from home. Truth restored: whatever he posted last. Confirmations: dreams, an anointing he will not stop narrating, and a certificate that reads SELF AWARDED because heaven, apparently, was busy.

Then the funnel narrows, as it always does.

God will use one man to issue the decree to flee.

The most faithful should gather first.

Would that man not be in the church with the best prophetic understandings?

If you have not already done so, should you not support the work of that church?

That is not theology. That is a sales script.

Notice the furniture. Scripture is quoted. A verse dispute is promoted to a sorting hat. The remnant is identified. The remnant is given the most truth. The remnant is decorated with the most confirmations. A single man is required to blow the flee-whistle. Then, with the innocence of a man who has only just noticed the coincidence, we are asked whether that man would not, naturally, be the one already sitting in the leather chair, already talking to the microphone, already asking you to gather.

It is a closed loop with a PayPal button.

Armstrongism has produced a graveyard of men who discovered they were Elijah, Elisha, a witness, Joshua, Zerubbabel, or the last Philadelphian on earth who still understood church government. Bob's contribution is not the claim. It is the filing system. Dreams. Double portions. Confirmations. Restored details. A running inventory of why every other group is Laodicean and therefore doomed to miss the bus. The decree to flee is always coming. The gathering is always now. The man who will issue the decree is never, even once, somebody else.

If you stay in another group you are not merely mistaken. You are on the path that ends outside the place of safety, watching the protected ones leave, then enjoying the leftover wrath like a man who picked the wrong verse and the wrong website. That is the product. Fear first. Affiliation second. Support the work third.

The lack of humility is glaring. He does not say, "I am the most important man in the Churches of God today." He merely arranges Amos, Daniel, Zephaniah, and Revelation so that no other conclusion will sit in the chair. One church. One remnant. One set of confirmations. One decree. One man. If you have not already done so, should you not support the work?

Yes, Bob. We heard you. The lion roared. The secret was revealed. The secret was that the secret-revealer would also be taking questions, tithes, and credit.

And behind the chair, as the World Books stand at attention and the Earth glows like a nightclub in the rapture district, the older consultant leans in to make sure the bones and the calendar still agree. The decree is a serious document. It helps to have a second opinion looking over your shoulder.

Gather together. The most faithful always do.

The rest can argue about verse 40 until the wilderness is full and the stamp is dry. 

The word of God teaches: 

 

7 Surely the Lord God does nothing,

Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.

8 A lion has roared!

Who will not fear?

The Lord God has spoken!

Who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:7-8)

Related to point 7 in the list, unless other COG groups will accept that the Great Tribulation begins with Daniel 11:39 and not 11:40, they will NOT know when the Great Tribulation will begin until after it starts. Therefore, those with them will not have possibly fled to a place of protection in the wilderness as taught in Revelation 12:14-16 for 3 1/2 years-but instead will be subject to the devil's wrath per Revelation 12:17.

While many believe that all COGs are the same, there is only one that best represents the Philadelphian remnant 

There is one church that has restored the most truth 

There has been one church that has had the most Divine confirmations 

God will use one man to issue the decree to flee, and the most faithful are told to be gathered together before that happens per Zephaniah 2:1-3.

Would that man not be in the church with the best prophetic understandings?

If you have not already done so, should you not gather together and support the work of that church?

Jesus Christ Personally Appointed Me. You Dare Not Question My Office!

You Have Zero Say Over Me

Jesus Christ Personally Appointed Me

A Field Guide to the Oldest Trick in the Hierarchical Flowchart of Armstrongism

Every generation of Armstrongism produces a man who discovers, to his own astonishment, that Jesus Christ has personally dropped him into office. Herbert W. Armstrong discovered it in the 1930s. A long line of successors discovered it after 1986, usually within weeks of printing letterhead. Samuel Kitchen has now discovered it in Keosauqua, Iowa.

The pitch is always the same, and Kitchen recites it with the confidence of a man who has memorized the owner's manual:

Christ builds His Church. Christ chooses the officers. Christ set this man in the body as it pleased Him. Therefore you have zero say over Herbert Armstrong. You have zero say over Samuel Kitchen. Challenge the appointment and you are are questioning man who washes windows. You are denying that Jesus knows how to run a church. You are insulting the King of Kings. Send me more money, NOW!

It is a beautiful system. The claim is unfalsifiable, the critic is already a blasphemer, and the collection plate is a sacrament. If this is not the most convenient theology ever invented by a man who would like to be left alone with other people's conscience and other people's money, the competition is not even close.

Kitchen writes that he did not choose this profession. He was added by Jesus Christ. Most know that is blasphemy. He assures us it is true. He would not be here otherwise. Christ can remove him just as quickly - a modest footnote that somehow never quite arrives.

Notice the magic trick. Ordinary Christians are told to test the spirits, to weigh fruit, to act like Bereans. The specially appointed man is exempt from the exam because the exam itself is rebellion against the Examiner. You may not ask how we know Christ did the adding, because asking is proof you do not see Christ as Head. The circle closes. The throne is comfortable. The beige office wall does the rest.

Armstrong used the same lock. He was God's end-time apostle. The church was the Philadelphia era. Leaving it was leaving Christ. After he died, the corporation he built walked off in several directions, each new captain announcing that Christ had not jumped ship - He had merely transferred the wheelhouse to this address. Kitchen's innovation is to insist the original vessel never sank; it merely became an unincorporated spiritual organism whose earthly mailbox happens to be in Iowa, and whose remaining visible officer happens to be him.

The Levitical Cosplay

The proof-texts are a tour of the old administration. Malachi's corrupt priests. Hosea's rejected priesthood. The covenant of Levi. God setting members in the body. All of it marshaled to prove that a third-generation member with a website and a tithe authorization letter is standing in the same office as the men Christ personally called by the sea of Galilee.

This is where the New Covenant becomes inconvenient, so it is treated like a rumor.

Hebrews does not whisper. The Levitical priesthood is obsolete. The old covenant is aging and ready to vanish. There is one High Priest, and He does not subcontract the job to a man who will declare your departure an act of forsaking Christ. The veil was torn. Access is not routed through Pasadena, then through whatever remnant still has the trademark in its head, then through a PO Box in Fairfield.

Peter calls the whole church a royal priesthood. John says the anointing teaches you and you do not need a handler to stand between you and the truth. Paul says there is one mediator. Jesus says call no man father in the sense Kitchen is demanding - the sense that disagreement with the office is disagreement with heaven.

Kitchen quotes Matthew 23:12 about the proud being abased, then constructs a theology in which he cannot be questioned without the questioner being abased by God. The irony is so thick you could tithe on it.

What This Thinking Does to People

This is not a quirky personality. It is a control technology.

Once "Christ appointed me" is accepted, every ordinary Christian protection dies.

Criticism becomes apostasy. You are not evaluating a sermon. You are lifting your hand against the Lord's anointed. Kitchen says it in italics: if you want to challenge the man Christ chose and ordained, go ahead - you are denying Christ. That sentence is not discipleship. It is a muzzle.

Exit becomes damnation. The people who left the old Worldwide Church of God "had to FORSAKE CHRIST in order to leave." Jesus, we are told, never jumped ship. The vultures came. The body remains. Translation: the institution is Christ, so leaving the institution is leaving Christ. That is how you keep families in a system after the prophecies fail, the campus is sold, and the founder is dead. Fear does the pastoral work the gospel was supposed to do.

Money becomes obedience. Tithes belong in the storehouse. The storehouse is wherever the appointed man says it is. An elder's letter, a Malachi citation, and suddenly Iowa is Jerusalem. Question the address and you are not a steward. You are a covenant-breaker. Armstrongism already perfected this: first tithe, second tithe, third tithe, offerings, and the quiet implication that God is watching the envelope. Kitchen did not invent the machine. He just found a working model in the attic and plugged it back in.

The flock becomes a prop. "Some sought to do good. Some felt they could do better. Some did it for security. Some wanted to get paid." Every motive for leaving except Kitchen's own is rotten fruit from the wrong tree. His motive is divine placement. Theirs is careerism, fear, and the tree of knowledge. How convenient that the one man who stayed - or rather, who reconstituted the brand in his living room - is the one man whose heart Christ can read without remainder.

This is spiritual abuse with a proof-text garnish. It trains people to distrust their own reading of Scripture, to treat unease as rebellion, and to confuse loyalty to a personality with loyalty to Jesus. It is the same software that ran in Pasadena when ministers were transferred like furniture and members were disfellowshipped for asking the wrong question. The offices are smaller now. The doctrine of untouchability survived the downsizing.

The Armstrong Inheritance He Actually Received

Kitchen wants the parallel to Armstrong. Fine. Let us grant it.

Armstrong claimed a unique restoration, a unique apostleship, a church outside of which the rest of Christianity was deception. He built a hierarchy that answered upward and never sideways. He made "government of God" mean "government of this man." He was wrong about 1972, wrong about 1975, wrong about British-Israelism as prophecy, and spectacularly wrong about being the indispensable pipe between heaven and the membership. The organization he called the one true church later repudiated the core of his system and renamed itself. The splinters have spent forty years fighting each other for the furniture.

That is the inheritance. Not the Auditorium. Not the literature, but the method.

"Christ did not jump ship" is what every captain says after the hull is on the bottom. "You have zero say over me" is what every unaccountable man says when the New Testament keeps talking about elders in the plural, about testing, about not lording it over the flock. "I was added by Jesus Christ" is a sentence that should make a Christian nervous, because the men who need to announce it are rarely the men who are living it.

The New Covenant does not need a replica Armstrong. It already has a Head. He does not require a press secretary in Iowa to protect Him from questions. He is not so fragile that a former member leaving a 20th-century corporation counts as His abandonment. He tore the veil on purpose. The project of sewing it back together and charging admission is not restoration. It is a hustle with hymnals.

If Christ wanted a church no man could dispute, He picked an odd way to say so. He left us the apostles' writings instead of an unbroken chain of Iowa appointments. He left us a priesthood of believers instead of a storehouse manager. He left us a warning that many would come in His name. He left us fruit as the test, not letterhead.

A man who must announce that you have zero say over him has already told you the most important fact about the arrangement. It is not about Christ being Head. It is about the headroom he requires.

Christ can appoint servants. He does it all the time. The ones He actually appoints tend to look like servants. They can be questioned. They can be wrong. They do not confuse their mailbox with the temple. They do not treat the New Covenant like a scheduling conflict. And they do not stand in a rented office, under auditorium print, and inform the household of God that disagreement is blasphemy.

That last part is not faith. It is a man protecting a throne he built out of someone else's leadership, then daring you to touch it.

Touch it. The veil is still torn. Hebrews is still in the book. And no amount of "you have zero say" will turn a self-authenticating office into the government of God.

It will only turn the government of God into the government of a man who cannot bear to be one.

People Don’t Trust Organized Religion Anymore, Reports Church Currently on Its Third Letterhead

In light of a recent poll revealing that only 36 percent of Americans have “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in organized religion, the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, has decided the public needs a lecture. 

From them. 

About trust.

One would hope that institutions claiming to represent Jesus Christ would be among the most respectable bodies on earth. One would also hope that a fellowship whose corporate history looks like a custody battle would develop a sense of timing. Hope, as Gallup keeps reminding us, is not data.

Until 1985, church and organized religion topped Gallup’s confidence survey. Then people started counting the bodies, the bank accounts, and the press releases. The original article is not wrong about the usual suspects: televangelists, cover-ups, leaders who preach holiness and practice something with a better expense account. It is only incomplete. It leaves out the quieter specialty of certain Churches of God: discovering, every decade or so, that last year’s “faithful remnant” has become this year’s problem.

After Herbert W. Armstrong died, the Worldwide Church of God changed its doctrines. Men who had spent years telling members this was God’s government on earth suddenly discovered it was an apostasy. In 1995 they formed the United Church of God so the truth could be preserved without all that unfortunate new Protestantism. Fifteen years later, a large group of those same men discovered that UCG’s leadership, governance, and “direction” were also intolerable. On December 23, 2010, they incorporated again. New name. Same certainty. Fresh stationery.

That wasn't a sex scandal. It is something drier and, in its way, more instructive: a talent for leaving, then explaining that this departure was the spiritual one. The first exit was doctrine. The second was “fundamental disagreements” and the “conduct and direction of its leadership.” In plain English: the brethren were still the brethren until the vote went the wrong way.

The article quotes Jesus on hypocrites — “whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones.” A bold choice. The tomb keeps getting a new coat of paint and a new acronym. WCG. UCG. COGWA. The bones travel well.

It then performs the expected piety pivot. Don’t just blame “organized religion.” Examine yourself. Is your life organized according to God’s Word? If Gallup could survey God, would He have confidence that you represent Him?

Wonderful questions. They would sting more if they were not being asked by an editor who helped run one version of the church, then helped launch the sequel when the first sequel disappointed. Clyde Kilough was not a bystander in this genealogy. He was management. The survey God might conduct is not only of private prayer lives. It might include how often the same men have told the same people that this organization is the one that finally got government right.

What the piece wants, it says, is not a human-led revival of churches but a Christ-led transformation of each individual. A moving conclusion. It would be more moving if the people delivering it had not already demonstrated that “the body of Christ” can be reincorporated whenever the council meeting goes badly.

Americans lack confidence in organized religion for many reasons, some of them ugly and some of them earned. A church that split from a church that split from a church, then published an essay about everyone else’s credibility problem, is not a mystery of the age. It is the punchline arriving late, in a suit, with a scripture.

If Gallup ever adds a category for “organizations that lecture the public on trust after leaving their last organization,” the numbers will not surprise anyone who has kept the old directories.

Only then, we are told, can true Christianity take its rightful place of spiritual leadership in the world.

==============================================================

In light of a recent poll revealing that only 36 percent of Americans have “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in organized religion, it’s time for something different. 

 

One would hope that institutions claiming to represent Jesus Christ would be among the most respectable bodies on earth. Yet a 2025 Gallup Poll revealed that only 36 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in church or organized religion. This continues a 50-year slide, with no signs the downhill trend will reverse. 

 

I suspect similar trends exist elsewhere, particularly in the Western, Judeo-Christian world. 

 

An embarrassing lack of confidence 

 

Until 1985 the church and organized religion rated highest among the institutions in Gallup’s annual “Confidence in Institutions” survey. But since then, it has slipped to sixth place, behind small business, the military, science, the police and higher education. 

 

Actually, the entire survey should dishearten Americans. What does it say about a nation when the large majority of its citizens lack faith in the institutions that guide and govern them? The presidency, banks, public school system, Supreme Court, criminal justice system, big business and television news fare even worse, and Congress ranks last with only 10 percent! 

 

But those institutions are different from religion—none of them claim to represent God. Why are the religious institutions suffering this embarrassing loss of respectability? 

 

One major reason is the string of horrific sins and scandals—from televangelists’ sexual escapades to priests’ molestation of children to the corruption of church cover-ups—that have devastated people’s trust, support, belief and faith. Religious leaders are supposed to help us rise above—not descend into—the worst weaknesses of human nature! 

 

Jesus’ harsh words for hypocrites 

 

There’s nothing new under the sun, though. Jesus aimed His harshest words at the religious leaders who acted very pious but were, as He called them, hypocrites, “whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones” (Matthew 23:27). Their religious practices were highly organized, but their spiritual lives were chaotic. 

 

And long before Jesus’ time, God’s prophets repeatedly emphasized that while each person was culpable for the sins destroying Israel, much of the blame lay at the doorstep of the religious leaders. The Bible abounds with warnings about the damage done, including loss of credibility, when church leaders do not live up to the standards they preach. 

 

If Gallup could survey God 

 

It’s easy then—and not entirely undeserved—to blame church leaders or “organized religion,” as some like to label it. But whether we are leaders, followers or outside observers, we have to take care not to look only at others. God also commands each of us to dig deeply within to examine our own hearts. 

 

So here’s a twist on “organized religion” in the form of questions we need to ask ourselves and honestly answer: 

 

1. Is my—or my church’s—belief system truly organized according to God’s Word?

2. Is my personal life and behavior truly organized according to God’s Word?

Or ask it this way: If Gallup could survey God, would He say He has a great deal of confidence that I truly represent Him and His way of life?

What we really need is not a human-led revival of churches, but a Christ-led character transformation of each individual. One where we will be, as Paul described in Romans 12:2, “transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Only then can true Christianity begin to take its rightful place of spiritual leadership in the world.

Clyde Kilough

Editor

Why Church Eras Are Not A New Covenant Doctrine

Bob Thiel is back once again, attempting to smear COG7 and the work they do as the dead Sardis era. That's pretty rich considering COG7 is growing in members while every single "true remnant" Armstrongist COG is dying a slow, agonizing death, splintered into hundreds of little groups.

Thiel’s argument only works if you first accept a 20th-century Armstrongist map of church history, then treat that map as if Jesus wrote it. Under the New Covenant, that map is not required, not implied, and not how the letters in Revelation actually function.

What Thiel is actually claiming

The article he wrote is not a neutral history of the Church of God (Seventh Day). It is an identity brief. The load-bearing claim is: Revelation 2–3 is a timetable of successive “eras.”
COG7 is the leftover “Sardis era”: a name that it lives, but it is dead.

Thiel's "proof" is that it rejects church-era historiography, does not treat the annual holy days as binding, is relatively preterist on much of Revelation, and is therefore unwatchful.

He therefore claims most of its hundreds of thousands of members are being “connected to error” and will be overtaken “as a thief.” Imagine that, an Armstrongist COG leader claiming others are "connected to error". Bob has not looked in his mirror lately.

He restated the same scheme as recently as 2025: Sardis dominant c. 1600–1933, “but some are still in it”; Philadelphia dominant c. 1933–1986, “but some few faithful are still in it.”

Notice the date that does all the work: 1933. That is not a date Jesus gave. It is the year Herbert Armstrong broke with the Church of God (Seventh Day). The “era” doctrine is then used to baptize that organizational split as prophecy.

Why church eras are not a New Covenant doctrine

1. The letters were written to seven living churches at the same time

John is told to send the same book to seven congregations on a known Roman mail circuit in western Asia Minor (Revelation 1:11). In the opening vision, Christ walks among seven lampstands at once (1:12–13, 20). The refrain at the end of every letter is not “hear what the Spirit says to your era.” It is:

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

That is contemporaneous and corporate, not sequential and exclusive. A historicist overlay can be imposed on the text. It is not read out of it. Even conservative commentators who like a broad historical application usually treat the letters as types of churches that can coexist, not as a franchise timeline with one “true” corporation per century.

Several letters assume Christ’s coming is relevant to that congregation (Revelation 2:25; 3:3, 11). That sits badly with a scheme in which Sardis “ended” in 1933 and Philadelphia “ended” in 1986.

2. The New Covenant does not run on “mantles” and era headquarters

Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 describe the New Covenant this way: the law written on hearts, sins remembered no more, and “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” The mediating structure is Christ, not a human apostle who assigns your congregation a Revelation nickname.

Paul’s church is one body with many members (1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 4). It is not a relay race in which COG7 is dead because it did not accept British-Israelism, a 19-year time-cycle chart, and Armstrong’s 1933 restart. “Philadelphia” in Revelation 3 is a local church commended for keeping Christ’s word with little strength. It is not a trademark that passed from Eugene, Oregon, to Pasadena, then to Charlotte, then to Grover Beach.

Once you drop the era machine, Thiel’s central sentence collapses:

No other group throughout recent history fits Jesus’ description of the Sardis church more than CG7-D.

That is only “obvious” if you already decided that Revelation 3:1–6 is a dossier on Denver.

3. The scheme is self-serving and unstable

Armstrong borrowed a Protestant historicist habit (Scofield, Larkin, and others also sliced church history into seven ages) and then customized the dates so that his departure from COG7 became the Philadelphia dawn. Different historicists use different dates. That alone should warn you that you are looking at a homiletical grid, not an exegetical necessity.

Thiel himself cannot keep the scheme clean. He needs Sardis to be “over” so COG7 can be the dead church, and he needs Sardis remnants to still exist so he can keep scolding them in 2026. He needs Philadelphia to have been 1933–1986, and he needs a Philadelphian remnant that is, conveniently, his Continuing Church of God. Every other Armstrongist split does the same trick in the opposite direction. After 1986 the movement became a demolition derby of “we kept the mantle / you became Laodicean.”  That is not New Covenant discernment. It is succession politics with proof texts. Proof texting his the only way Armstrongism can exist.

Where the article itself goes wrong

Jesus seems to be warning Sardis to know its history, stop changing doctrine, and pay attention to prophecy

That is not what Revelation 3:1–6 says. Jesus says:

they have a reputation for life but are dead

wake up and strengthen what remains

their works are not complete

remember what they received and heard

hold fast and repent

if they will not watch, he will come as a thief

a few have not defiled their garments

Thiel translates that into: accept Armstrong’s church-history reconstruction, keep the holy days as Armstrong defined them, and adopt his futurist reading of Revelation 13 and 18. That is a massive smuggling operation. “Remember what you received and heard” in a first-century letter is not “restore the Radio Church of God package.” Then, and only then, will you be allowed to understand when it is time to flee to Petra, where those who make it there will be treated to 3 1/2 years of Thiel preaching.

Size as a weapon, then as a trophy

Thiel notes that COG7 once pointed to its size as evidence it was not Sardis, then replies that size only means it is connecting ~300,000 people to error.

COG7’s own current public figures are more modest and still large by Armstrongist-Church-of-God standards: about 14,000 members and 230+ congregations in the U.S. and Canada, and more than 200,000 affiliated through its International Ministerial Congress in 40+ countries.

Meanwhile, the old Worldwide Church of God shattered. The larger English-speaking Armstrongist bodies are now in the low tens of thousands at most; UCG’s recent attendance figures are in the neighborhood of 12–14,000. Thiel’s CCOG claims “thousands” worldwide and “fastest growing ex-WCG group,” heavily concentrated in Africa—claims that have been repeatedly contested on the ground.

Two things can be true at once: Institutional headcount is not the test of faithfulness.
A man who treats COG7’s size as proof of mass deception, while treating his own claimed growth as a fruit of Philadelphia, is not applying a consistent rule. He is keeping score.

Armstrongism did not “gloat into” a larger, more alive Philadelphia. It fragmented. COG7 did not vanish. That does not make Denver the one true church. It does make the 1933 “Sardis died / Philadelphia was born” story look like organizational mythology.

Holy days: disagreement is not “Sardis death”

Thiel spends a long stretch rebutting COG7’s seven reasons for not binding the annual festivals. Some of those rebuttals are fair as internal arguments among Sabbatarians (Genesis 1:14 and moed; 1 Corinthians 5:7–8; early Quartodeciman practice). Others are weaker:“Ceremonial” is not a magic word, but Colossians 2:16–17 really does call festival, new moon, and Sabbath a shadow, with the substance in Christ. That is a New Covenant text, not a “liberal slide.”

The agricultural setting is not a “red herring” if you claim the Leviticus 23 calendar is still legislated for Gentiles in Phoenix and Nairobi.

“The calendar can’t be reconstructed from Scripture alone” is a real problem if you are going to make festival observance a mark of the true church.

COG7’s historic stance is: Sabbath as creation/moral distinctive; annual feasts as old-covenant national liturgy fulfilled in Christ; Lord’s Supper / Passover retained. You can argue with that. You cannot pretend Jesus’ letter to Sardis is a voting guide on Leviticus 23. That is Armstrongism using Revelation as a club.

Prophecy: preterism is an error or a school; it is not the Sardis label

Thiel’s October 2025 follow-up is clearer than the older piece: he is angry that Robert Coulter and CG7-D read much of Revelation 13 and 18 as already played out in medieval church-state history. Fine—say you think they are wrong about the Beast. Many historic Protestants were partial preterists or historicists; many futurists disagree with Thiel’s specific Beast package too.

What he cannot do is equate “they do not watch for my prophetic sequence” with “they are the dead church of Revelation 3.” 1 Thessalonians 5 tells the brethren to stay awake. It does not create a Philadelphia office that alone knows the chart.

The Luther paragraph is a smear, not an argument

Whaid Rose praised Luther as a Reformation figure who recovered justification by faith. Thiel answers with Luther’s antisemitic tracts and concludes Rose is not among the “few names in Sardis who have not defiled their garments.”

That is guilt by historical association. You can reject Luther’s later viciousness—and should—without treating any appreciation of 1517 as “the ecumenical agenda” and proof of defilement. COG7 is not Lutheran. Citing Luther on sola fide is not the same as adopting the Diet of Worms as the church’s finest hour in every respect. Thiel needs the Protestant scare because his identity system requires COG7 to be a dying husk sliding toward Sunday and Christmas. Actual COG7 materials still call the Sabbath God’s will “from creation to Christ,” not an elective.

Drift happens in every tradition, including his. Using a magazine essay about Luther as Revelation 3 evidence is not exegesis.

“Fewer and fewer are likely to be true Christians”

That sentence is the tell. Once “true Christian” means “person who accepts our era chart, our holy days, and our prophecy,” the conclusion is guaranteed before the study starts. It is unfalsifiable gatekeeping.

The New Covenant alternative

If the New Covenant is in force now—and Hebrews says the first covenant is obsolete and vanishing—then the people of God are those in Christ, sealed by the Spirit, not those correctly tagged Sardis or Philadelphia.

There is one church, not seven successive true denominations.

Revelation 2–3 is a pastoral X-ray of attitudes that can exist in any congregation: lost first love, faithful suffering, compromise, dead reputation, little strength that keeps the word, lukewarm self-satisfaction.

You do not need a 1933 corporate reboot for God to have a people.

“Watch” means moral and eschatological wakefulness, not subscription to one splinter’s newspaper.

Armstrongism mocked COG7 as Sardis while claiming the open door of Philadelphia. Forty years after Armstrong’s death, the heirs of that claim are small, split, and still excommunicating one another over who holds the mantle. Thiel’s latest articles are the same move: keep the era mythology, keep COG7 in the villain slot, and treat disagreement on festivals and futurism as spiritual death.

He can argue doctrine with COG7 on Sabbath practice, festivals, and Revelation. Those are real debates. What he cannot honestly do is promote those debates into Jesus’ verdict on a first-century church in Asia Minor, then use that verdict to explain why his group is the last faithful remnant in human history. That is not the New Covenant. That is a 21st-century Armstrongite succession myth proof-texted into oblivion.

Here is his letter article badmouthing COG7: CG7 member denounces Denver group's loss of doctrine

Division Trumps Unity: Nine Different COG's Will Be Keeping The Feast In Branson Missouri

Like a mighty army

Moves the Church of God:

Brothers, we are treading

Where the saints have trod;

We are not divided,

All one Body we—

One in hope and doctrine,

One in charity.

The Armstrongist version of the Feast of Tabernacles is quickly approaching. Families are making last-minute preparations: requests for time off from work and school are in, the car has had a tune-up, plane tickets bought, rental cars reserved. You remember the drill.

Then you arrive at your assigned Feast site. Eight days of millennial bliss follow as you meet as one united church. All one body we!

That was in the good old days, when the church was perfect and sinless. Now it is 2026, and the church is splintered into hundreds of competing groups, all trying to outdo the next. They have collectively refused Herbert Armstrong’s early (1952) admonition on how the Feast was supposed to be kept:

“We know now – God has shown us plainly and unmistakably – that we must have an adequate place of our own in this central location for the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread EVERY YEAR … The proper place for meetings of this kind is not an expensive brick or stone or concrete church building on a main corner of a city in all the traffic and noise of the world – but to get CLEAR AWAY FROM THE WORLD – out into God’s own open beautiful nature, utterly secluded from the world!” —Church of God News

That clearly must be why at least nine different Churches of God will be meeting in Branson, Missouri, this year—with one hotel even hosting two of them under the same roof. This should be the most opportune time in decades to show the world how unified the Churches of God really are.

Branson will soon be overrun by competing remnant groups carefully avoiding eye contact in hotel breakfast buffets. Imagine the Stone Castle Hotel with two different meeting rooms occupied by the faithful, super deacons posted at the doors doing member checks so nobody accidentally fellowships with the wrong flavor of the one true church. All one body we!

In the midst of this quagmire of unity, we have the Greatest Church of God to Ever Exist in Human History holding court. Crackpot Bob will be lecturing the faithful on how wrong they all are for being in other COG groups, and that their only remaining path to salvation rests, conveniently, in his hands.

So instead of being “utterly secluded from the world,” nine (or more) COG groups will be wallowing in the middle of a neon tourist trap that draws more than 10 million visitors a year and posts one of the highest property-crime rates in the country for a town its size. Nothing says millennial rest like larceny statistics, country-music dinner theaters, and badge-checked meeting rooms two hallways apart.

Bonus unity: United Church of God is already on a waitlist for Branson. Church of God International quietly swapped venues to the old Lawrence Welk / Hillside Hotel, because even the meeting rooms are splintering. Living Church of God is in town too. Same Strip. Same lakes. Same “we’re not divided” hymn. Different letterhead.

Brothers, we are treading

Where the saints have trod;

We are not divided,

All one Body we—

Branson Sept.25-Oct.2 [5] Venue : RecPlex

International Congregation of Yahweh Festival Info Visitor Info

Branson Sept.26-Oct.3 [2] Venue : Stone Castle Hotel

Church of God, Father’s Call Festival Info Visitor Info

Branson Sept.26-Oct.3 [2] Venue : Grand Plaza Hotel

Church of God International Festival Info Visitor Info

Branson Sept.26-Oct.3 [2] Venue : Ledgestone Country Club

Intercontinental Church of God Festival Info Visitor Info

Branson Sept.26-Oct.3 [2] Venue : The Village at Indian Point

Church of God Ministries International Festival Info Visitor Info

Branson Sept.26-Oct.3 [2] Venue : Yakov Smirnoff Theater

Church of God a Worldwide Association Festival Info Visitor Info

Branson Sept.26-Oct.3 [2] Venue : Thousand Hills Resort Hotel

Continuing Church of God Festival Info Visitor Info

Branson Sept.26-Oct.3 [2] Venue : Presley’s Country Jubilee

United Church of God Festival Info Visitor Info

Branson Sept.26-Oct.3 [2] Venue : Stone Castle Hotel

Christian Biblical Church of God Festival Info Visitor Info