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.

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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

CG7-D: Still Alive Enough to Annoy the One True Philadelphia Franchise

COGwriter Exclusive

And to the angel of the church in Sardis write—which, after careful study of the mail routes of Roman Asia and my own departure from Charlotte, I have determined is Denver.

These things says he who has the seven Spirits of God, the seven stars, and a very full hard drive of sermons about both: I know your works. You have a name that you are alive. You have congregations. You have an International Ministerial Congress. You have this irritating habit of still existing in 2026. But you are dead. I have run the numbers in the back office, and death is the only diagnosis that keeps my era chart from wrinkling.

Be watchful. Strengthen the things which remain. By which I mean: restore church eras, restore my reading of Revelation 13, restore the annual holy days as a loyalty test, and for heaven’s sake stop acting as if the New Covenant already arrived without a forwarding address in Grover Beach.

I have not found your works perfect before God. I have, however, found them imperfect before me, which in the present administration is the same filing cabinet.

Remember therefore how you have received and heard. You received the Sabbath. You heard the gospel. Then you committed the unpardonable administrative sin: you did not conclude that 1933 was the hinge of Revelation 3. Herbert walked out. History, being a gentleman, walked out with him. What remained behind was Sardis, a name, a letterhead, and—this is important—too many members to be spiritually impressive.

Therefore, if you will not watch my prophetic timetable, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you, because you keep insisting large stretches of Revelation already happened in Europe and are not waiting for a newsletter.

You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments. I have met two former presidents and found them almost tolerable. The rest of you praised Luther in a magazine and are therefore on the garment-defilement list until further notice. Martin Luther was never a Christian. I have the quotes. I also have the part where a CG7 writer said something nice about justification by faith, which is how the ecumenical beast gets into a Sabbath-keeping office: first a paragraph about Wittenberg, next you are buying and selling with the mark.

He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments. He who remains in Denver shall be connected to error. The Apostle Paul said the Day would not overtake brethren as a thief. Paul had not met a church that declined to put “Philadelphia remnant” on the org chart. CG7-D says so much prophecy is past that it will be overtaken in the dark. I say so much of my own biography is prophecy that the lights never go out in here.

CG7-D has claimed that its size proves it is not Sardis. At one point the home page spoke of hundreds of thousands. That is the wrong kind of fruit. When they are large, they are connecting the nations to error. When I report thousands, mostly far from the zip code of the leather chair, that is the fullness of the Gentiles and the open door no man can shut. Different ledger. Do not confuse the columns.

They do not keep the feast days as I keep the feast days. They gave seven reasons. I answered all seven, which is what one does when the Creator’s calendar has been waiting for a blog. Genesis 1:14 says moed. I have Strong’s. Case closed, except for the part where the New Covenant writers called those days a shadow and then failed to appoint me as the substance. An oversight. We are correcting it in real time.

They have become open on doctrine. Open doctrine is how liberals enter a church. Closed doctrine is how a corporation sole becomes the continuation of apostolic Christianity. If this sounds like a double standard, you may be Laodicean. Laodiceans hear double standards as if they were lukewarm. Philadelphians hear them as government.

Whaid Rose wrote that we still need Luther. We do not. We need another Reformation the way Sardis needs another nickname. Luther mistranslated “faith alone,” said unspeakable things about Jews, and is therefore disqualified from ever being mentioned by a man in Colorado who is not me. I, on the other hand, may quote anyone from Polycarp to a footnote in my own book, because succession is a hallway that ends at this microphone.

CG7 will not know when the Great Tribulation begins until it is too late. I will know, because I have already assigned the churches their grades. Sardis: dead, but still publishing. Laodicea: everyone I left. Philadelphia: the little flock that found my website. Ephesus through Thyatira: already handled in previous sermons. Please keep up.

Jesus said, “Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die.” I have strengthened the things which remain. They remain here. They remain on the era chart. They remain in the claim that no other group in recent history fits Sardis more perfectly than the one Armstrong walked away from, which is the sort of coincidence history never tires of arranging for the man who needs it.

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

He who has a different ear is in the other era.

Do not write in. The mantle already moved

Dave Pack: A Masterclass in Unsealing the Book of Daniel

 

David C. Pack of The Restored Church of God has been claiming to unseal the book of Daniel since 2015. This embarrassing supercut illustrates the absurdity of the prophetic doctrines of The Restored Church of God. 

Featuring clips from 2017 to 2025, the Book of Daniel has been allegedly unsealed multiple times by the Pastor General. This is not all of them. According to RCG, unsealing the Book of Daniel is a process. Not an event. This is one of the reasons why error is so pervasive, and David C. Pack will never be right.

ExRCG Website

Is the COG Pulpit a Place for Ministers to Air Their Pet Theories, Conjectures, Political Opinions or Restored Insights?

A review of Nathan Albright's paper on: The Importance of Teaching What the Bible Says from the Pulpit and Avoiding Personal Speculation as an Abuse of the Power of the Pulpit

The white paper argues that the pulpit is a stewardship of already-given revelation, not a license for the minister’s theories, conjectures, political opinions, or “restored” insights presented as if they carry the same weight as Scripture. Authority is derivative and contingent on fidelity to the text. When that line is crossed, the office becomes self-promotion, personality cult, and spiritual coercion. That framework sits in sharp tension with classic Armstrongism on both church government and the New Covenant. 

Armstrongism’s view of the minister and the hierarchy

Herbert W. Armstrong taught that God restored “the government of God” in the church through him. That government is pyramidal and top-down: Father → Christ → apostle (Armstrong himself) → evangelists → pastors → elders. All authority flows downward; members do not vote doctrine or choose leaders. The apostle (and, by extension, the ministry under him) received the keys to bind and loose. Doctrine came through the apostle; lower ranks taught what headquarters authorized. Questioning official teaching was frequently treated as rebellion against Christ, not merely disagreement with a man. Armstrong presented himself as the end-time apostle through whom lost truths were restored after centuries of apostasy. His writings and verbal judgments functioned as the authorized interpretation. Local ministers were expected to preach the approved package. The congregation’s role was largely to “pay, pray, stay, and obey.” This is the opposite of the paper’s insistence that the preacher is a steward, not a proprietor, and that hearers must be trained to distinguish what the text actually says from what a minister imagines. The paper’s warnings map almost one-to-one onto documented patterns:

• Personality displacing the text (“cult of personality”).
• Opinion sanctified as revelation (“binding and loosing” used to settle extra-biblical or speculative matters).
• Coercive spiritual control (members’ decisions on marriage, health, employment, and even private Bible study were sometimes subordinated to ministerial judgment).
• Lack of real downward or peer accountability at the top.

Armstrong did say “don’t believe me—believe the Bible.” In practice, the institutional structure made an independent conclusion that contradicted headquarters costly. That is precisely the abuse the paper describes.

The New Covenant tension

Armstrongism taught that the Old Covenant is ended, but the New Covenant has not yet been fully ratified (it is completed at the marriage supper / Christ’s return). In the meantime, Christians live under its terms: the law written on the heart by the Spirit, yet the Sabbath, annual holy days, tithing, clean-and-unclean meats, and other “spiritual” statutes remain binding. Salvation is by grace, but God “will not save anyone He cannot govern.” The ministry exists to teach and enforce that government. 

Jeremiah 31 / Hebrews 8, however, describe a covenant in which “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” and “no longer shall each one teach his neighbor.” The paper’s call for congregational biblical literacy, transparency about uncertain interpretations, and the congregation as a safeguard against pulpit abuse sits far closer to that New Covenant description than Armstrongism’s mediating hierarchy does. In the paper the Spirit and the public text are sufficient; the minister’s job is to read, give the sense, and apply—not to stand as the indispensable decoder of “restored truth.”

Armstrongism effectively keeps a strong teaching-and-governing priesthood in place while claiming the New Covenant is already operative in part. The paper treats that arrangement as an Old-Covenant-style mediation that the New Covenant was meant to relativize.

Where the paper and Armstrongism overlap—and where they cannot

Both sides can quote 2 Timothy 4:2, Nehemiah 8:8, and “it is written.” Both claim to reject speculation. The disagreement is over who decides what the text actually says and how much extra-biblical material (British-Israel identifications, successive church-era schemes, detailed prophetic timetables, binding administrative rulings) may be presented from the pulpit as if it were the plain teaching of Scripture.

The paper’s principles—textual control of the sermon, admission of uncertainty, doctrinal consistency checked against the whole canon, and accountability structures that include the congregation—would have constrained the very mechanism Armstrongism used to establish and maintain its distinctive doctrines. A minister who treated Armstrong’s unique restorations as non-negotiable revelation would, by the paper’s standard, be guilty of the malpractice it condemns.

Conversely, remaining Armstrongist groups would likely reply that the paper itself is a Protestant-leaning document that underestimates the New Testament offices and the need for unified government to prevent “every man doing what is right in his own eyes.” They would argue that their hierarchy is the biblical pattern and that dropping it produced the doctrinal collapse they saw after 1986.

The paper does not leave much room for that reply. It locates authority in the public, inspectable text rather than in a living office that claims to restore or bind what the text left implicit. That is a New Covenant move: the Word is no longer locked behind a specialized caste. Whether one accepts Armstrong’s restorations or not, the paper’s logic treats the elevation of any minister’s interpretive system into binding revelation as the very distortion it exists to prevent.

Conclusion: When “New Revelation” Becomes the Oldest Abuse

The principles set forth in this paper are not abstract. They are a measuring line. Apply them to the pulpits of Bob Thiel, David Pack, and Gerald Flurry, and the verdict is unambiguous.

Each of these men has taken the sacred trust of the pulpit and converted it into a private franchise for ongoing revelation. They do not merely explain Scripture; they present themselves as the indispensable conduit through which God is now speaking things previously hidden or insufficiently understood. That is precisely the substitution of personal theory for biblical exposition that this paper condemns. It is opinion masquerading as revelation. It is the preacher becoming proprietor rather than steward.

Gerald Flurry has declared himself “That Prophet,” the last voice before Messiah, the conduit for revelation drawn from the major and minor prophets, Lamentations, Daniel, and Revelation. He has described hearing a voice that delivered new understanding about a “new throne of David.” The congregation is expected to receive these claims as the unfolding of God’s government, not as one man’s reading. That is the cult of personality this paper warned against, dressed in prophetic titles. 

David Pack has claimed the offices of apostle and Elijah, then walked some of the claims back only to rebuild them under new language. For more than a decade his “Greatest Untold Story” series has reset dates for the Kingdom, the 1335 days, and Christ’s return—dates that have failed again and again. When the words do not come to pass, the explanation is always that the brethren misunderstood the timing or that “inspired preaching” is not the same as prophecy. Deuteronomy 18:22 does not grant that loophole. A man who repeatedly speaks in God’s name about events that do not occur is not a misunderstood steward. He is a false prophet. The pulpit becomes a mechanism of perpetual crisis and dependence. That is spiritual coercion. 

Bob Thiel has constructed a prophetic résumé out of dreams, a “double-portion” anointing he interprets as the passing of the mantle, and the assertion that the Continuing Church of God uniquely displays the signs of Acts 2:17–18. Those who do not recognize his office risk missing protection in the hour of trial. The paper’s call for transparency of interpretation—admitting uncertainty rather than disguising it as revelation—is ignored. The minister’s private experiences become the new canon that the flock must accept. 

All three men operate inside the Armstrongist assumption that God still funnels binding truth through a single hierarchical office. They have simply placed themselves at the apex. In doing so they invert the New Covenant itself. Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 describe a covenant in which the law is written on hearts and “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” These leaders insist the opposite: the brethren cannot fully know until the man at the top decodes the next installment. That is not government of God. It is the older priesthood of mediators standing between the people and the finished Word.

The paper stated that to speculate beyond revelation is not creative theology—it is spiritual malpractice. These three have gone further. They have made the malpractice official doctrine. They have trained congregations to treat their evolving interpretations, failed predictions, and self-referential titles as the voice of God. That is deception of the brethren. It is an abuse of the very hierarchy they claim to represent. It is the pulpit used as a power structure rather than a sacred trust.

The remedy remains what this paper first declared: return the pulpit to what Scripture actually says. No new apostle, no end-time Elijah, no “That Prophet,” no dream-validated office is required for the church to hear God. The Word is already given. The Spirit already writes it on hearts. Any man who stands in the pulpit and says otherwise—who makes himself the necessary conduit—has ceased to be a steward and has become a liar. The call is not to a different personality at the top. The call is back to the text, to humility, and to the freedom the New Covenant already purchased.

Silent Pilgrim

Bob Thiel, Despite The Law Being Weak and Useless, Still Claims Christians Are Required To Tithe

Bob Thiel is back with his repeat article where he gets all prissy about Banned claiming tithing is no longer commanded. The fact still remains, tithing is not a New Covenant command. Bob Thiel and the improperly named "continuing" Church of God still continue to lie that it is because he still erroneously believes large parts of the Mosaic system are still binding on New Covenant Christians. That is the Armstrongist package. It is not what the apostles taught the churches.

Tithing as a required tenth (and sometimes two or three tenths) was Israel’s covenant tax for Levites, festivals, and the poor. The New Testament replaces that system with generous, voluntary, Spirit-prompted giving. Jesus did not install a Christian tithe. Paul never commanded one. The early churches did not practice one as law.

What Thiel actually teaches

Thiel’s CCOG statement of beliefs and his long article Tithing Questions and Some Answers are explicit. Tithes belong to God (Leviticus 27:30). Faithful Christians follow Jesus’ words in Matthew 23:23. Because the priesthood changed, tithes now go to “those representing Christ’s ministry” (Hebrews 7). They teach first tithe for the work, second tithe for feast travel and food, and third tithe in years 3 and 6 of a seven-year cycle for the poor. They apply Malachi 3:8–10 to Christians: withholding tithes is robbing God. They argue tithing predates Moses (Abraham and Jacob), so it cannot be “just Mosaic.” They insist it applies to all increase—wages, not only farm produce.

That is consistent Armstrongism. Herbert W. Armstrong treated tithing as a living financial law. After the old Worldwide Church of God abandoned those teachings, remnant groups kept them. Thiel presents CCOG as the place the “most faithful” should send the money.

The arguments sound biblical until you put them in covenant context.

What tithing actually was

Under Moses, Israel was a theocratic nation with a landless priestly tribe. Tithes supported Levites (Numbers 18), funded pilgrimage feasts (Deuteronomy 14:22–27), and every third year helped Levites, sojourners, orphans, and widows (Deuteronomy 14:28–29). Combined, the system was closer to 20–23% in some years than a neat 10%. It was tied to the land, the temple, and the Levitical order.

Abraham’s tenth to Melchizedek (Genesis 14) was a one-time gift from war spoils, not a standing tax on income. Jacob’s tenth (Genesis 28) was a vow. Neither is a law that binds the church. If “Abraham did it before Sinai” makes tithing a creation ordinance, the same logic would keep circumcision—which Abraham also practiced, and which the apostles explicitly refused to impose on Gentile believers (Acts 15; Galatians 5).
Jesus and Matthew 23:23

This is what Thiel imagines as his strongest-looking verse. Jesus tells Pharisees they tithe mint, dill, and cumin but neglect justice, mercy, and faithfulness: “These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”

He was speaking to Jews still under the Mosaic covenant, before the cross. In the same discourse, He talks about the temple, oaths, and other law-keeping. He Himself was “born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). He also told a healed leper to offer the gift Moses commanded (Matthew 8:4). No serious reader treats that as a standing command for Christians to bring animals to a temple that no longer exists.

Jesus fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17; Romans 10:4). After His death, the ceremonial and civic scaffolding of Israel’s covenant—priesthood, sacrifices, food laws as covenant markers, and the tithe that funded that system—does not transfer automatically to the multi-ethnic church.
Hebrews 7 does not re-enact the tithe

Armstrongists lean hard on Hebrews 7. Abraham tithed to Melchizedek; Levi, still “in Abraham’s loins,” paid tithes through him; therefore the greater priesthood (Christ’s) still receives tithes.

That is not the author’s point. Hebrews 7 argues that Melchizedek’s priesthood is superior to Levi’s, that Jesus is priest forever after that order, and that “when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well” (Hebrews 7:12). The next verses say the former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness (7:18–19). The whole letter is about the old covenant becoming obsolete (Hebrews 8:13). Using a historical illustration of Abraham’s gift to prove a mandatory 10% church tax reverses the argument.

Hebrews 7: 

 

14 For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah, and in regard to that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. 15 And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, 16 one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. 17 For it is declared:

You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.[a]

18 The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless19 (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.

If Hebrews 7 reimposed tithing, it is strange that the rest of the New Testament never tells a single congregation to do it.

What the apostles actually commanded

Paul organized a collection for poor saints in Jerusalem (1 Corinthians 16:1–2; 2 Corinthians 8–9). The principles are:

• Set something aside on the first day of the week, as one may prosper.
• Give according to what you have, not what you do not have.
• Give not reluctantly or under compulsion.
• God loves a cheerful giver.
• Sowing bountifully and sparingly have consequences.

He defends the right of gospel workers to be supported (1 Corinthians 9:13–14; 1 Timothy 5:17–18; Galatians 6:6). He never names a percentage. He never cites Malachi 3 as church law. He never instructs Gentiles to calculate first, second, and third tithes or to send festival money to a central feast site.

That silence is not an accident. If a 10% (or 23%) legal requirement remained, the man who fought circumcision so fiercely would have said so.

The New Covenant promise is the law written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34; Hebrews 8), not a recycled Levitical payroll. Believers are not under the law but under grace (Romans 6:14). That does not mean stinginess. It means the floor is no longer a tax bracket and the motive is no longer “or you are robbing God.”

History does not rescue the doctrine

The first-century church supported ministers and the poor by freewill gifts and shared possessions (Acts 2, 4; Didache). Second-century writers such as Irenaeus contrasted Jewish constraint with Christian liberty: Christians give freely, not the lesser portion. The Didascalia said Christians were not bound to tithes and firstfruits in the old way.

Mandatory ecclesiastical tithing as a fixed percentage enforceable by church (and later civil) law is a later development—clearly visible in sixth-century Western councils such as Mâcon (585), not in the apostolic age. Thiel’s claim that “the original catholic church” tithed as CCOG does overreads later practice back onto the New Testament.

Why the Armstrongist version is especially burdensome

Even among tithe-advocates, three full tithes is a minority reconstruction. Many scholars see overlapping descriptions of the same tithe used in different ways, not a stacked 20–23% annual levy plus feast travel. Binding that reconstruction on Christians, then directing it to one remnant organization as the storehouse, turns a disputed Old Testament administrative question into a test of loyalty.

Thiel notes he takes no salary. That is personally commendable and irrelevant to whether the law exists. A teacher can be unpaid and still be wrong about the covenant, which he consistently is.

What Christians are commanded to do

Give. Support those who labor in the word. Help the poor, especially the household of faith. Do it regularly, proportionally, secretly where possible, and cheerfully. For many people a tenth is a wise starting discipline. For some it is too little; for some in hardship it would be crushing. The New Testament refuses to freeze that into a statute with a curse attached.

Malachi 3 was a rebuke to post-exilic Judah for starving the temple system God had actually commanded them. Quoting it as if every paycheck that does not send 10% to Grover Beach is temple robbery is covenant confusion.

Tithing as Armstrongism defines it is not a New Covenant command. Generous giving is. The difference is not a loophole for greed. It is the difference between living under a fulfilled law and living as people who already belong to the One who owns everything—and who gave more than a tenth.