Sheldon Monson: Pulled a Bob Thiel and Now Demands Zero Criticism

 

When Sheldon Monson, in a fit of rebellion and backstabbing, left the Living Church of God to form his own group, it seemed perfectly fine to him to disregard respect for Roderick Meredith (and later Gerald Weston) along with any criticism directed at him. So he goes and pulls a Bob Thiel, launching his own organization—the Church of God Assembly—while drawing away as many members as he can persuade (or, some would say, con) into following him.

Then, lo and behold, two of his highly placed men turned their backs on him, and he was not happy. Suddenly his followers needed to be reminded—via a staff writer in the April–June issue of A Good Report—that they must submit to the ministry at every level and must never criticize their leaders. Doing so, the piece insists, is nothing less than rebellion against God!

The irony is almost too rich to ignore. The very man who once found it acceptable to break ranks, question authority, and lead a significant portion of the flock out of LCG now oversees a publication that hammers home the classic Armstrongist refrain of top-down church government: absolute submission, zero criticism, and the equation of questioning human leaders with opposing God Himself. What was once framed as necessary faithfulness or standing for truth when he was the one departing is recast as satanic rebellion the moment the shoe is on the other foot and his own subordinates walk away.

This pattern is painfully familiar across the Churches of God landscape. Leaders frequently invoke the language of divine hierarchy and “God’s government” only after they have secured their own position. Criticism is tolerated—or even celebrated—when it justifies a split; it becomes anathema the moment it threatens the new structure. The April–June A Good Report article simply continues that long tradition, admonishing the rank-and-file to keep quiet, stay in line, and treat every level of the ministry as beyond reproach, all while the group’s own founding story is one of open break with the previous hierarchy.In short: rebellion is fine when you’re the one rebelling. Once you’re in charge, it’s suddenly an unforgivable sin against God.

Sheldon Monson - Living Proof Old Traditions Never Die - Raising Godly Kids the Armstrong Way—Just Mind the Soft Spots

It was only four days ago that we posted Samuel Martin’s letter on the use of corporal punishment, some of it rooted in old Worldwide Church of God beliefs. People rushed in to insist that the old abusive styles of punishment were relics—no longer practiced in “the church” today. How reassuring. 

A reader has now pointed out Sheldon Monson’s piece in the April-June issue of A Good Report (Church of God Assembly, a Living Church of God splinter). In it, the classic Armstrongist advice reappears for raising “godly” children: corporal punishment is fine, just don’t slap the face or hit near the vital organs.

This is the same worn-out material Garner Ted Armstrong and Roderick Meredith peddled for decades. Spare the face, spare the kidneys, but by all means apply the rod (or hand, or switch) elsewhere. After all, Proverbs is clear, the child’s heart is full of foolishness, and nothing says godly parenting like carefully calibrated physical pain—delivered, of course, in love and never in anger. 

Modern child-development research, changing legal standards in many places, and simple observations about trauma and aggression can all take a back seat. The old playbook still works if you just avoid the head and the soft spots.

Armstrongism’s child-rearing tradition never really retired; it just splintered, rebranded, and kept the fine print. Monson’s group continues the lineage, and A Good Report is happy to pass along the refined technique: hit them, but do it “properly.” 

Four days after Martin’s critique, the same old instructions surface again. Coincidence? Or just the unbroken habit of treating carefully limited violence as a biblical parenting essential?

Assyria Is Coming! (Brought to You by the Same Crackpot Who Has Been Wrong About Everything Else)

Bob Thiel has once again climbed into the prophetic costume trunk and emerged as Hosea. Not the actual 8th-century BC prophet who lived and spoke to a specific people in a specific historical crisis, but a modern cosplay version complete with British-Israelism decoder ring, concentration-camp warnings, and the solemn assurance that the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand are about to be hauled off as slaves to serve the Europeans. The performance is so familiar it could be scheduled on the calendar right next to the memorial he notes for July 31.

The core move never changes. Take a book written to the northern kingdom of Israel in the decades before the Assyrian conquest of 722 BC. Re-label the ancient tribes with modern English-speaking nations (Manasseh = USA, Ephraim = the rest of the Anglo-Saxon club, Judah = the modern state of Israel). Re-label ancient Assyria as Germany or a German-led Europe. Then announce that the original prophecy is really about us, right now, and that only those who accept this particular mapping will understand when to flee. The rest of the Bible is then pressed into service as supporting scenery: Daniel 11, Leviticus 26, Amos, Isaiah, and a Catholic medieval prediction for good measure. The result is a detailed future in which invading armies set up camps, Anglo-Saxons are shipped to Europe as forced labor, cities burn, and the “Philadelphia remnant” has already escaped because they alone possessed the secret decoder.

This is not exegesis. It is national identity cosplay dressed up as prophecy. British Israelism has been dismantled by genetics, linguistics, archaeology, and simple historical literacy for generations. The Anglo-Saxon peoples are not the lost tribes of Israel. The northern kingdom was carried into Assyrian exile in the 8th century BC; that is the historical fulfillment of the core warnings in Hosea. The book is not a coded map of 21st-century NATO alliances or EU policy. Treating it as such requires the same elastic imagination that once turned the Soviet Union into the King of the North and then quietly swapped in whoever was currently convenient.

The concentration-camp-and-slavery flourish is pure escalation. Hosea does speak of judgment, exile, and hard labor. It does not describe modern industrial slavery under European administration, nor does it require modern readers to invent logistical details about who will staff the camps and which English-speaking populations will be sorted into which rail cars. That level of specificity is supplied by the interpreter, not the text. Once you have already decided that “Assyria” equals contemporary Germany and “Ephraim” equals the UK and its cousins, the rest of the horror story writes itself. The same method can, and historically has, produced any number of failed dates and shifting villains.

Under the New Covenant, the entire apparatus is unnecessary. The New Covenant is not a refined version of national covenant curses aimed at physical descendants of Jacob. It is the fulfillment of the promise that God would write His law on hearts, forgive sins, and create one new people in Christ drawn from every nation. The categories that matter are not Manasseh, Ephraim, and Assyria. They are in Christ or outside of Christ. Judgment is real; so is the call to repentance. But that judgment is not a tribal score-settling based on 19th-century speculative Anglo-Saxon ethnography. Believers are not required to track which modern army might one day fulfill an 8th-century BC oracle against Samaria in order to know whether they are safe. Safety is found in the finished work of the Son of God, not in correctly identifying the end-time identity of the lost tribes and then fleeing to the appointed place of safety before the King of the North’s trains start rolling.

Hosea’s final verse still stands: “Who is wise? Let him understand these things.” Wisdom in this case includes recognizing when an ancient prophetic book is being used as a delivery system for modern fear and self-appointed authority. The Crackpot Prophet can keep the costume. The rest of us are free to leave the stage.

The Great Mantle Cage Match: Armstrongism’s Endless Fight Over Who Gets to Wear the Imaginary Cape

Armstrongism has always had a soft spot for theater. Not the good kind—the kind where grown men in suits convince themselves (and as many others as possible) that God runs a divine relay race, and the baton must be handed off in unbroken succession from one “true church era” to the next. Somewhere along the line this baton became a “mantle.” After 1986 the mantle was supposedly dropped, recovered, contested, re-stitched, and fought over like a championship belt in a particularly sad independent wrestling circuit. By 1989 and the years that followed, a rotating cast of self-appointed successors were all insisting that they alone now wore it. The resulting spectacle has been equal parts tragic and ridiculous.

Herbert W. Armstrong taught that the seven churches of Revelation 2–3 were not seven contemporaneous congregations in Asia Minor, but successive eras of the one true church stretching across two thousand years. Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and finally Laodicea. The “Philadelphia era,” he claimed, was the one God raised up through him in the twentieth century. When he died, the story goes, the mantle of authority and truth had to pass to someone else. A continuous, identifiable organizational line was required; otherwise the “true church” would have ceased to exist.

This is not how the New Testament describes the church. It is, however, how Armstrongism has always preferred to operate: hierarchical, exclusive, and obsessed with proving institutional continuity. The problem is that the entire framework collapses under the weight of its own assumptions.

Revelation’s letters were written to real first-century churches facing real first-century problems. Turning them into a coded timeline of successive eras requires an interpretive method that would make even the most creative dispensationalist blush. There is no biblical command that a single visible organization must survive unbroken from the apostles to the present day carrying a special “mantle.” The early church itself was messy, multi-centered, and frequently divided. Paul did not hand Timothy a cape and declare him the next era’s apostle. The idea that God requires a continuous corporate franchise with a designated CEO is pure institutional mythology.

After Armstrong’s death the Worldwide Church of God under Joseph Tkach began dismantling core doctrines. That left a vacuum, and nature (and narcissism) abhors a vacuum. Beginning in the late 1980s and accelerating through the 1990s, a parade of men stepped forward to claim the mantle. Gerald Flurry founded the Philadelphia Church of God in 1989 and declared that Malachi’s Message was the new revelation, proving he was the rightful heir. David Pack later built his own empire around the claim that he alone understood the true prophetic sequence and that Christ would return to Wadsworth, Ohio. Bob Thiel eventually decided that the previous claimants were insufficiently prophetic and that he, complete with self-granted titles and African “work,” now carried the authentic succession. Others—Brisby, Weinland, Cox, Kitchen, and a rotating supporting cast—have all insisted at various times that the mantle rests on their shoulders.

What followed was not a dignified transfer of spiritual authority. It was a decades-long food fight over who gets to sit in the big chair and collect the tithes. Each claimant has produced books, sermons, and websites proving that every other claimant is Laodicean, deceived, or worse. The “one true church” has splintered into dozens of competing true churches, each with its own prophet, its own timeline, and its own exclusive claim to the mantle. The absurdity is almost self-parodying: if the mantle is so vital to God’s plan, why does the Almighty keep losing track of who is wearing it?

The succession doctrine is stupid on multiple levels.

First, it is historically false. There is no unbroken line of pure doctrine from the first century through the Middle Ages into the twentieth. The Church of God (Seventh Day) that Armstrong left was itself a relatively recent American Adventist offshoot. Armstrong did not restore an ancient continuous church; he founded a new religious movement that borrowed selectively from earlier Sabbatarian groups and then declared itself the exclusive remnant. Pretending otherwise requires rewriting history.

Second, it is theologically bankrupt. It confuses the invisible church—the body of all who are in Christ—with a visible corporation complete with letterhead, payroll, and hierarchical titles. The New Testament never requires believers to locate the one true organizational franchise in order to be part of the true church. It requires faith in Christ.

Third, it produces exactly the fruit one would expect from a false system: endless schism, personality cults, failed date-setting, financial exploitation, and the suppression of dissent. Every new “mantle-bearer” eventually faces the same problem: the prophecies do not land, the “work” does not grow as advertised, and the next ambitious underling begins eyeing the cape. The cycle repeats.

Even if one granted every historical and prophetic claim Armstrongism makes, the mantle would still be irrelevant under the New Covenant.

The New Covenant is not administered by a succession of human “apostles” or “prophets” who inherit organizational authority. It is administered by the risen Christ through the Spirit. The old covenant had a visible priesthood, a temple, and a system of mediators. The New Covenant has one Mediator. The veil is torn. Access is direct. The Spirit is poured out on all flesh—sons and daughters, young and old—not restricted to a clerical class that claims exclusive succession rights.

There is no biblical office of “end-time apostle” who must pass a mantle so that the true church can continue. There is the ongoing work of the Spirit building the body of Christ wherever people repent and believe the gospel. The idea that God needs a continuous corporate entity with a designated human figurehead in order to preserve truth is a denial of the sufficiency of Christ and the Spirit. It is old-covenant thinking dressed up in twentieth-century organizational clothes.

The New Covenant church does not need a mantle. It needs the Head. It does not need a succession chart proving institutional purity. It needs the gospel. It does not need men fighting over who gets to wear the imaginary cape. It needs people who have actually encountered the living Christ and are being transformed by grace.

Armstrongism’s mantle wars are the predictable result of a system that elevated organizational continuity and hierarchical authority above the plain teaching of the New Testament. The men still fighting over the cape in 2026 are simply the latest actors in a long-running farce. The tragedy is that real people continue to be drawn into the performance, convinced that finding the correct mantle-wearer is the same thing as finding Christ.

It is not. Under the New Covenant the search is already over. The only One who ever needed to wear the mantle already does—and He is not taking applications for successors.

Lecturing the Sheep on Humility While the Shepherds Build Empires

The Importance of Working Together… Just Not at the Top

Doug Winnail of the Living Church of God recently offered the membership another gentle pastoral reminder:

We are to be humble; live in harmony; be patient; avoid being haughty, conceited, or ambitious; and be willing to yield… Proverbs 13:10 reminds us that pride is a major cause of contention… Are you developing these skills?

Beautiful words. Truly. One can almost hear the soft strains of “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” playing in the background while the faithful nod solemnly and resolve to try harder.

And yet.

For more than nine decades, the ministry of Armstrongism has treated humility the way a cat treats a bathtub. They preach it. They demand it. They weaponize it against the membership. They simply never practice it.

Herbert W. Armstrong did not build an empire of servant-leaders. He built a top-down, hierarchical machine in which the man at the top was “God’s Apostle,” the ministers were his extensions, and the membership existed primarily to tithe, obey, and stay quiet. Questioning a decision was “rebellion.” Suggesting a better way was “ambition.” Leaving was “apostasy.” The entire system was engineered so that humility flowed only one direction: downward.

When the old Worldwide Church of God finally imploded in the mid 1990s, the same men who had spent decades demanding that members “yield” and “live in harmony” immediately began carving out their own little kingdoms. These narcissistic and bitter men went on to form numerous splinter groups. Global, United, Living, Philadelphia, Restored, Continuing, Church of God a Worldwide Association—each new letterhead required a new headquarters, a new magazine, a new Feast circuit, and a new claim that this particular group was the one true remnant. Not a single one of the splinter leaders did this with a humble servant leader attitude. The same scriptures Winnail now quotes were suddenly reinterpreted to mean “unity… as long as it is under my authority.”

Pride, it turns out, is only a problem when the people in the pews display it.

Look at the historical record without the rose-colored glasses. Ministers in the old WCG routinely exercised the kind of control that would make a medieval bishop blush. Members were told whom they could marry, what medical treatments they could accept, how much they had to give, and which thoughts were acceptable. “Government from the top down” was not a slogan; it was a lifestyle. The servant-leader ideal of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet was transformed into the minister washing his hands of any responsibility for the wreckage he left behind.

The post-1986 era simply made the pattern more obvious. Leaders who once sat at the same conference tables, broke bread together at church potlucks, and shared in the broken body of Christ at the Passover now refuse to share a stage. They compete for the same aging membership base while solemnly warning their people against “division.” They lecture about avoiding haughtiness while carefully protecting titles, salaries, and the right to decide who is Laodicean this week. They quote Paul calling others “fellow workers” and then treat every other COG group as a rival corporation.

And when the rank-and-file finally grow tired of the endless splitting, the endless failed prophecies, and the endless demands for more money and more loyalty, the same men who created the chaos turn around and solemnly remind everyone that pride is the real problem. The solution, of course, is never for the men at the top to yield an inch of control or admit they might have been wrong. The solution is always for the membership to become more humble.

This is not servant leadership. This is managed authoritarianism dressed up in Sabbath-keeping language.

Jesus defined greatness as the willingness to become the servant of all. Armstrongism defined greatness as the willingness to demand that others become the servants of the organization. One of these approaches produces the fruit of the Spirit. The other produces a landscape littered with broken families, disillusioned members, and dozens of competing groups each convinced that God is uniquely working through them.

So when Doug Winnail asks the membership, “Are you developing these skills?” the honest answer from anyone who has watched the last forty years of Armstrongist history is simple:

We have watched the ministry model the opposite of those skills for generations. Perhaps it is time the teachers started taking their own medicine.

Until then, the weekly calls for humility will continue to ring hollow—because the people who most need to hear them are the ones holding the microphones.

A Thoughtful Review of Samuel Martin’s July 2026 Newsletter on Corporal Punishment and Christian Communities

Samuel Martin’s recent newsletter from the New Foundation for Biblical Research is less a simple advocacy piece and more a strategic brief: a clear-eyed attempt to equip human-rights and children’s-rights practitioners with the cultural and theological literacy needed to engage the very people most resistant to abandoning corporal punishment of children. Drawing on personal experience inside a high-control fundamentalist environment, Martin argues that purely scientific or secular arguments routinely fail with devout Christians because they never touch the deeper systems of authority, belonging, and biblical interpretation that sustain the practice. The letter is patient, respectful, and practically oriented. It is also, for anyone familiar with Armstrongism, immediately recognizable.

Martin opens by naming the gulf between the two communities. One side works from empirical data on child development and harm; the other works from faith, Scripture, and submission to spiritual authority. He refuses the easy contempt that sometimes appears on the activist side (“God-botherers,” “Bible-bashers,” “Baptist Taliban”). Instead he insists that influence requires understanding the internal logic of the people one hopes to persuade. Christians who spank are not generally sadists; many genuinely believe they are obeying God, protecting their children’s souls, and remaining faithful to their church. Asking them to stop spanking can feel, to them, like asking them to abandon God. That is the first and largest barrier.

He then maps the interlocking controls that make change so difficult. Pastors and church leaders claim spiritual authority (Hebrews 13:17) and expect submission. Members are told not to forsake assembling together. Financial support is framed as obedience or even as refraining from “robbing God” (Malachi 3:8). Marriage and child-rearing fall under the same umbrella of divine instruction mediated by the church. In environments that present themselves as the true Church of God, dissent is not merely disagreement; it is rebellion against God Himself. Martin notes that the denomination of his childhood featured a “Pastor General” who exercised near-absolute control—language and structure that will ring familiar to anyone who lived through the Worldwide Church of God under Herbert W. Armstrong.

Within that framework, corporal punishment is presented not as one parenting tool among others but as a biblical mandate. Hebrews 12:6–11 is read as teaching that true chastening is “grievous,” not joyous. The “rod” passages are treated as straightforward commands. Positive or gentle parenting approaches are often dismissed as worldly, soft, or even anti-biblical. Martin quotes a pastor who insisted that spanking must continue “until the child’s will is broken” and until the tears are of submission rather than anger. He also cites the historical Puritan tradition that framed children as stubborn and rebellious and the parental task as conquest. These teachings do not merely permit hitting; they sacralize it.

The practical consequence, Martin observes, is that many parents continue the practice even when their own experience suggests it is counterproductive. One mother he quotes had been told by her pastor that she would be sinning if she stopped spanking—even if the civil law changed. That is the depth of the control. Scientific studies or secular children’s-rights arguments are easily dismissed as the product of “godless scientists.” The only way through, Martin insists, is to meet people inside their own authoritative texts and show that the traditional reading is shallow or mistaken.

Here the letter turns constructive. Martin points to his own 2002 book, Thy Rod and Thy Staff, They Comfort Me, which he still offers free of charge. The book is deliberately exhaustive—hundreds of biblical texts, scholarly commentaries, and Jewish interpretive perspectives that many Christians never encounter. By removing the financial barrier and by arguing from Scripture rather than against it, the work has, by his account, helped thousands of parents abandon corporal punishment while remaining within their faith. The strategy is not to demand that people leave Christianity; it is to demonstrate that the Bible itself does not require the violence they have been taught is mandatory.

The letter’s greatest strength is its sociological honesty. Martin does not romanticize the communities he describes, nor does he pathologize ordinary believers. He simply describes the mechanisms of control—time, money, marriage, child-rearing, and the fear of falling outside the true Church—and explains why external pressure so often hardens resistance. For anyone who has watched Armstrongist groups enforce “godly” child-rearing standards, the analysis lands with particular force. The same hierarchical language, the same use of Malachi 3 and Hebrews 13, the same framing of dissent as spiritual danger, and the same sacralization of physical discipline were standard fare in the Worldwide Church of God and remain so in many of its splinters. Martin’s father, Ernest L. Martin, was himself a prominent WCG theologian who eventually left; the son’s perspective is therefore both insider and critical.

There are limits. The letter is written from within a Christian frame and is most persuasive to those already committed to biblical authority. Readers who reject the authority of Scripture altogether will find the internal critique less compelling. Martin also focuses primarily on the American and English-speaking fundamentalist landscape; the dynamics in other cultural contexts may differ. And while he is careful to treat people with dignity, the very intensity of the control systems he describes can leave outsiders wondering how much genuine freedom of conscience remains inside some of these groups.

Nevertheless, the newsletter succeeds on its own terms. It is a clear-eyed map of the terrain that children’s-rights advocates must navigate if they hope to reach the parents who most need new tools. It refuses both contempt and naïveté. And it models the very approach it recommends: engage the sacred texts seriously, remove unnecessary barriers, and offer an alternative reading that allows people to keep their faith while abandoning a practice that harms children.

For those of us who once lived inside systems that treated “breaking the will” as a spiritual duty, Martin’s letter is both familiar and clarifying. It explains why the teaching was so hard to question at the time, and it points toward a more careful, textually grounded way of reading the same Bible that was once used to justify the rod. That is a useful contribution—measured, experienced, and still urgently relevant.

Silent Pilgrim

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Human Rights and Children’s Rights Practitioners Need to Understand This about Christians if They are ever Going to Get Anywhere with Convincing Them To Abandon Corporal Punishment of Children

A Newsletter from the New Foundation for Biblical Research

July 2026

In my first book, in the introduction, I mentioned that I wanted my book to be a bridge between the Christian community and the Human Rights/Children’s Rights communities.

These two groups are so far apart in how they relate to each other. One works on the basis of science and the other works on the basis of faith.

I remember one activist who I knew who referred to Christians who believed in corporal punishment as “God botherers.” This activist had such a frustrating experience with these people that they were just considered a “bother”, which if you live in Commonwealth countries, you will know that this means these people are a big problem and are very frustrating to deal with. In the UK, they are also called “Bible Bashers” (my sister who lived in England for many years used to use this term often when we talked). We have also heard of the terms “Fundies”, “Holy Rollers”, “Bible Thumpers” and in some countries “Clappers” or “Wowsers.”

It is important though that we all remember that all people must be treated with respect and dignity, even those we disagree with. What is important is that these dear people may hold views that we disagree with, we still need to look at things from their point of view if we hope to understand them and possibly influence them to think something different especially when we are talking about something which has a very huge influence on society like the corporal punishment of children.

There is also a pretty dark side to some of this. One of my friends had a blog, which is still online titled “The Baptist Taliban.” Many people have a basic understanding of who the Taliban are. They are an Islamic fundamentalist group who now are the leaders in Afghanistan, known for their rigid fundamentalist teachings, which many looking at characterize as brutal. What my friend’s blog chronicles are her experiences with various churches who operate as Christians, but their tactics practically resemble the behavior of the Taliban. In other words, they behave like a type of Christian extremists. Yet, many of these Christians do not consider themselves extremists at all. On the contrary, they consider what they are doing to be correct, true and reflecting the Bible and its teachings. In fact, anyone who is not doing what they are doing is considered to be out of step with God and in some cases anti-Christian. Some Christian groups go even farther and characterize anyone who does something different than what they are doing as being in “Babylon” or not being close to the true God and His teachings.

It is important to understand in countries like the USA, where according to some estimates, the number of different Christian denominations in existence exceeds 33,000, you are going to find a very wide variety of Christian behaviors and a very diverse way of looking at and interpreting the Bible. These churches are all different and differ from each other in one or a hundred ways, but almost all of them have the same holy book: The Holy Bible.
Honestly, many academics and people working in the children’s rights community have seemingly few real practical strategies to engage with Christians who believe in corporal punishment. The only problem is, though, that these Christians are the most ardent supporters of corporal punishment of children so if you are working to stop that behavior among all people, it seems you must have an approach of how to engage this target group. This is especially so important because there are so many fundamentalist Christians living all over the world and they all respect and use the Bible in their daily lives. This is very important because all children deserve to grow up in peace and this includes children whose families are Christians including the most fundamentalist sects of Christianity.

In addition, in an environment where financial resources are finite, does it not make the most sense to try to influence those who are strongest supporters of the practice of corporal punishment?

For people who engage the issue of corporal punishment of children with the view to having an open mind to change often means that they are not going to give up their faith. They would rather keep spanking their children and stay within their faith community than to give up spanking and abandon their religious beliefs.

So, scientific oriented advocates for children need to be willing to meet Christians where they are because overall they are not going to abandon their faith.

The Barriers To Changing Christian Minds About Corporal Punishment of Children

Many barriers exist within Christian society that encourage them to continue using corporal punishment on their children. To break down these barriers, one must approach the matter from inside the faith community. Attempting to engage them using science is generally not going produce good results. In fact, many religious leaders point to scientific arguments against spanking children as false teachings put forward by godless scientists who do not know the first thing about God and His Word.

The first barrier that anyone working with Christians is going to have to realize and accept is the simple fact that Christians have people in their faith communities who have taken on positions of leadership and authority in and over the lives of believers. These are pastors or other church leaders, and these individuals often place themselves in a type of spiritual authority over people who are members of their congregations.

Whether this is right or wrong is irrelevant. This is the reality and anyone seeking to engage this community needs to take this matter into consideration. This does not happen for no reason.

Let us review a Bible text which can help anyone from outside this community understand better how it works. It is found in the book of Hebrews, chapter 13:17 quoting here the King James Version:

“Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.”

We can see in this passage, depending on how would interpret what it says, it says that pastors and church leaders have authority over those in their congregations and that those individuals are to “submit” themselves to this leadership. People watching “souls” are in fairly important positions.

This is not a minor issue. Some religious leaders exhibit a level of control over the members of their churches which can be almost absolute. The church that I grew up in was very much like this. The head of the denomination referred to himself as the “Pastor General” using a military kind of term and rest assured he ruled with absolute control of what was taking place in the entire church.

This control in some fundamentalist religious groups also extends from pastors to their wives, who then exhibit control over other women in their churches. See my earlier reference to the Baptist Taliban blog which discusses this at length. Pastors and their wives can behave exactly like dictators. This is particularly troubling in some churches who operate on a decentralized local autonomy model of church government. Local churches can make whatever rules they want and have absolute power to do that. This is particularly difficult where the higher ups in a denomination may take a position which is consider less conservative and straying away from the truth which local bodies then take it as their mission to follow the more correct path.
Look at this example from some who read my book and left this testimony concerning the issue of corporal punishment of children and the attitude that she experienced from her pastor, who told her that even if the law concerning spanking children was changed, she should ignore that law and continue to spank her child. This is the power that some religious leaders wield over their church members, even urging them to break the law. Note her direct testimony:
“"Hi, I stumbled upon the blog, Dulce de Leche, and Samuel Martin’s blog was mentioned as well as the offer of a book about the Scriptures and spanking – Thy Rod and Thy Staff, They Comfort Me.

I have been struggling with the whole spanking issue. I grew up being spanked, which did not harm me, as far as I can tell, but I also do not know that it benefitted me, seeing as my parents only punished doing wrong and failed to teach how to do right.

Now, with my own children (two 2-year olds) I see that when I spank them (because I was taught that’s what good parents do), it seems to exasperate them rather than discourage them from doing wrong. Though I have been very intentional in trying to teach them what they should do instead, the spanking seems to make them behave worse. When I stopped spanking them a few weeks ago, I saw major improvement in their behavior and attitudes, as well as in my own attitude.

A few years ago, I was told by my (former) pastor that even if spanking were made illegal, Christian parents should still spank their children because they are commanded to do it in Scripture (the “spare the rod, spoil the child verse”, which is, even to me clearly, not a command). He basically told us (my husband and I) that we would be sinning if we did not spank our children.

All this to say, spanking has not been sitting right with me, but I want to follow the Scriptures, whatever that may be. I believe God led me to this site at this time for a reason. I was looking for information on a completely different topic when I came upon this, but this is perfect timing considering where I am at in my parenting journey.”

https://samuelmartin.blogspot.com/.../twenty-two... - THIRD

It is also important to remember that in some countries like the USA, there is a separation of church and state and freedom of religion is guaranteed by the US Constitution. In addition, Americans have freedom of speech and are generally allowed to speak their minds on all issues. What this means is that religious leaders can say things like this and their speech is protected and their views are allowed and allowed in a sense of little or no government regulation due to the prevailing law of the land.

This is not a minor issue as I said earlier. Many religious leaders in many countries, but especially the USA point to this issue of corporal punishment and any opposition to it as evidence of interference of government or other entities in the freedom of Christians to practice their own religion. It is because of this (among other issues) that in the USA, the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) remains unratified to this day and the right of parents to administer corporal punishment is one of the key reasons in America why this UN convention still remains unratified while 196 other countries have ratified it. The USA remains the lone holdout and this concerns issues of parental rights (of which corporal punishment of children is a key one) and national sovereignty.

The second barrier is connected to the first. It involves that fact that Christians are normally told that they should be a part of a community and that they should attend church services where they will hear the message of God from the one designated by God to give them such teachings, who are the church leaders or pastors. Let us review a passage from the Bible which teaches this. What is important is that it is irrelevant what the meaning might be and to whom the passage is directed. If a pastor reads this passage in church, it can be used to teach that Christians need to go to church and that avoiding doing so could be interpreted as wrong and a sin.

“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”

So, Christians are told by religious leaders that they have to listen to their leaders and they need to attend church. So, they are told what to do and where to do it. They are also told how to do things.

The third barrier concerns the fact that individual Christians are required to support this system they are a part of in a financial way. This is often through a mechanism where Christians are told that they have to give 10% of their income to the church and this teaching has ramifications to it that religious leaders often accuse Christians who do not practice this procedure called tithing as stealing from God.

Look at Malachi 3:8 from the King James Version of the Bible:

“Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.”

Imagine going to church and being told that if you do not contribute at least 10% of your income to their church (often including additional “offerings”) in addition to tithes [the 10%], that you are a thief and guilty of stealing from God. This is the exact church environment I grew up in and is mirrored around the globe among many fundamentalist Christian churches. Many pastors use these texts in a very dogmatic ways and they can be used to pressure people into giving money to churches accusing them of stealing from God. That is a very uncomfortable place to be in for most people being told you are a thief and the one you are stealing from is God Himself.

The fourth barrier concerns the issue of marriage. Many Christian denominations have certain rules around marriage and these teachings exhibit great control over the lives of individual believers.

The final barrier that we are going to address in this newsletter concerns corporal punishment of children. This is a teaching that is introduced by religious leaders with the design that parents are being instructed by religious leaders to follow the teachings of God about this matter. Anyone who does not use this practice on their children can be considered as being sinful or is someone often way out of step with the congregation who are being taught it religiously.

Numerous Bible texts are introduced to Christians that supposedly support this teaching.

We could go into other areas, but suffice it to say that it is fairly easy to see a system that controls your time, where you go and when, how you spend your money, who you marry and how you raise your children is one which exhibits major control over the lives of those taking part in it. You can also see how attempting to challenge this system for anyone who is a member can be very difficult.

If you are in an environment like this especially where the denomination that you are a part of considers itself the true church of God (like the one I grew up in), if you are not doing what you are told, you find yourself out of step with God Himself. That is a very uncomfortable place for most people to live and exist. So, many Christians go along with these teachings often against their own inner beliefs or intuitions. They also are told that any information contrary to church teachings is wrong and should be avoided.

This is the reality that anyone from outside of a Christian community must understand if they are going to engage with that community. Not taking this reality into consideration is going to leave the person seeking to engage the community concerning an issue about violence against children at a dis-advantage in trying to change the community or especially in trying to influence it in favor of non-violence.

Now that we have seen the overall situation and the circumstances in which Christians are living and operating, it is also essential for anyone trying to understand this community and influence it that when it comes to the matter of corporal punishment and correcting children, many Christians do not generally believe or are not taught about things like positive parenting, gentle parenting or positive discipline. In fact, these ideas are completely contrary to what many Christians are taught when it comes to rearing children. This may be hard to believe, but it an absolute fact.

Punishment, especially corporal punishment, does not have a gentle or a positive element to it at all. It is meant to hurt, to be painful and to be a negative experience. This is what we find exactly in the Bible and this is what Christians are often taught is the exact teaching of God. Note it here:

“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” (Hebrews 12:6-11 King James Version)

We can see in the very last verse of this passage the teaching which is passed on to Christians that “chastening” is not “joyous” (not positive), but “grievous” (painful and negative).

This is what Christians are taught and they are taught to hit their children because of this and other passages.

Discipline is not positive. It is negative, it hurts and it is meant to be painful or else it does not follow God’s rules. This is the plain and simple reality that many Christians live with and what they are taught by religious leaders. It is a pretty difficult picture that we are looking at concerning spanking.

I have the following quote about this matter in my book:

“For example, one pastor in his book on child rearing points out that: “The smacking (or spanking) should be administered firmly. It should be painful and it should last until the child’s will is broken. It should last until the child is crying, not tears of anger but tears of a broken will.” – my book can be downloaded free from www.biblechild.com – pg.99

Professor Tamar Morag discusses this in her excellent article: RELIGIOUS TRADITION AND THE CORPORAL PUNISHMENT OF CHILDREN:A COMPARISON OF THE AMERICAN AND ISRAELI LEGAL SYSTEMS - International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 25(3), (2011), 338–364 - doi:10.1093/lawfam/ebr018 - Advance Access Publication 22 September 2011

“Beginning with the English Puritans, Protestant groups played a role in developing a broad spectrum of parental guidebooks. As both Greven and Ellison point out, this literature stresses the parental duty to impose rigorous discipline, and the parents’ unquestionable responsibility for the salvation of their children’s souls. Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, considered one of the greatest 18th-century American theologian, said about parental discipline: ‘And let children obey their parents and yield to their instructions and submit to their orders as they would inherit a blessing and not a curse’.42 Greven analyses in his study how these religious approaches come to the fore in the language used in parental guidebooks and in Puritan theological writings describing the nature of children and the aims of education. He notes, for instance, the recurrent use of words such as ‘stubborn’ and ‘rebellious’ to describe children’s nature, and words such as ‘conquer’, ‘subdue’, ‘obedience’, and ‘repress’ to describe the parental role.43 A 1732 letter by Susanna Wesley to her son John offers an instance of this type of writing: ‘When a child is corrected it must be conquered, and this will be no hard matter to do’.” (pg.347)

Overcoming these barriers

This situation that many seeking to influence Christians who believe in administering corporal punishment to children is not an easy one. Thankfully, though, it is not an insurmountable one. Many Christians can be taught things that will allow them to overcome the barriers to personal change that they have learned throughout their lives and in their church communities.

To do this, you must come at this situation from their point of view.

The first thing that one must do is to show Christians that they have misunderstood this teaching. This is where books like the one I wrote (as well as others) have come along and had a strong influence to change Christians views about corporal punishment of children.

This was possible because I presented a strong academic case which when evaluated compared to the information that they were receiving from their religious leaders, they lost trust in their own religious leaders and embraced the ideas that I put forward in my book. (or others in some other books).

This is one of the reasons that I gave away my book for free. That in itself seeks to overcome a barrier, the financial one to secure a book, that I wanted to eliminate to help hesitant Christians who have been told over and over again that their pastors and church leaders are right and anyone who teaches something else should be ignored and definitely not read or ever studied.

My book presented a very comprehensive case. I really tried to put forward a “leave no stone unturned” approach. That is why I referenced 353 separate Bible texts, used so many different commentaries and opinions from learned scholars and also included Hebraic/Jewish perspectives that presented different points of view surrounding the Bible texts that Christians may not have known about. Many Christians were taught spanking using a very superficial approach to Bible teaching. My book is nothing of this kind of teaching at all. It is deep teaching, scholarly, studied and a comprehensive examination of a wide range of evidence to come to its conclusions about spanking.

When you take this kind of approach of coming with an open resource which is free for the reading with no obligation and no axe to grind, Christians can open their hearts to learn something new.

Thankfully I can say with much humility that since my book was released in 2002, 1000s of Christians have read it and made their decision to abandon corporal punishment. This is now documented with over 170 separate reviews from online forums, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Emails and online blogs.

For more information about this subject, please see my free e-book which can be downloaded from www.biblechild.com.

In closing, I would like to refer to one review that a friend from Australia gave me recently which referred to this text as important in her work of convincing Christians to rethink corporal punishment. It is the one which I included in the open page of the book as a key text to help orient us towards the truth of God.

“Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” - Romans 12:17-21

Samuel Martin
New Foundation for Biblical Research
P O Box 21543
Jerusalem Israel
www.biblechild.com
Email: info@biblechild.com

"Do you understand what you are reading?" — Acts 8:30

© Samuel Martin 2026

For more on the biblical case against corporal punishment, see my six books at https://www.amazon.com/.../Samuel.../author/B00HP94ZZA... or visit www.biblechild.com to download my first book free.

If you're struggling with these issues, you're not alone. Email me at info@biblechild.com - I've corresponded with parents working through this, and I'm here to help.

Germany Rearms for Russia. Crackpot Bob Rearms His Prophecy Boner for World War III Against the USA

Well, look who just had another prophetic orgasm.

Crackpot Bob, the self-appointed prophet of the improperly named "Continuing" Church of God and full-time professional Germany-watcher, has once again discovered that Europe is spending money on its own military. And just like every single time this has happened for the last seventy years, Bob has decided this can only mean one thing: Germany is secretly gearing up to blitzkrieg the United States, conquer Canada and England, and set up concentration camps for the modern-day “tribes of Israel”.

Because of course it is.

Never mind that Germany is frantically trying to build a military that can actually deter Russia after years of watching Ukraine get turned into a meat grinder. Never mind that German leaders are openly saying they need to be “war-ready by 2029” because Moscow is the threat. Never mind that the entire current buildup is a direct response to Russian aggression and the very real possibility that the United States might not be as eager to bankroll Europe’s defense forever.

None of that matters to Bob. In his carefully curated prophetic fever dream, every new German tank, every increase in the defense budget, every European leader who says “we need to be able to defend ourselves” is secretly code for “We can’t wait to invade the United States and put the descendants of Manasseh in camps.”

This is not analysis. This is a fetish.

Armstrongism has been running this exact script since Herbert W. Armstrong was still alive and predicting the Great Tribulation would hit between 1972 and 1975. Germany was always going to rise, lead a United States of Europe, and destroy America and Britain. The only thing that ever changed was the date. The prophecy failed. Then it failed again. Then it failed some more. And yet the same men (and their spiritual grandchildren) keep dusting it off every time Europe buys a new rifle.

Bob has simply inherited the family business of failed prophecy and turned it into a full-time lifestyle. He watches European defense news the way some men watch adult films. A German general says the Bundeswehr needs more troops? Bob starts quivering. The EU talks about strategic autonomy? Bob reaches for his Bible and his tissues. Donald Trump pressures NATO countries to spend more on their own defense? Bob declares that Trump is unknowingly raising up the Beast so it can destroy the very nation Trump is trying to strengthen.

It’s almost touching in its pure, undiluted delusion.

The actual news is straightforward. Germany is rearming because Russia is a hostile nuclear power that has already invaded a neighboring country and is rebuilding its military at a rapid pace. European leaders are admitting what has been obvious for years: they can no longer assume the United States will indefinitely underwrite their security. That is not the rise of the King of the North. That is basic national self-interest after decades of free-riding.

But basic national self-interest does not get Crackpot Bob out of bed in the morning. Only the thrilling possibility that Germany might one day put Americans in camps does that.

So once again we are treated to the same tired parade of scriptures ripped out of context, the same Lamentations passage about “friends becoming enemies,” the same Daniel 11 fantasy in which modern Germany is somehow both the ancient King of the North and the final Beast power that will conquer the United States. The same prophecy that has been “almost here” for longer than most of Bob’s readers have been alive.

Germany is arming itself against Russia. Bob is arming himself against reality.

And somewhere in Arroyo Grande, the crackpot prophet is smiling that strange little smile, convinced that this time—this time for sure—the tanks are finally coming for the United States.

He can hardly wait.