Your Salvation Is Entirely In My Hands. Return To The WCG, Give Me Your Money and Then You Will Be Saved!

Samuel Kitchen has discovered a gospel the apostles somehow missed: you are saved by returning your wallet to the Worldwide Church of God, and if you do not, Satan gets your children and you lose your salvation. Remember, boys and girls, salvation is only available through Samuel!!!!!! Salvation is only a COG thing.

Samuel introduces a new warning to those still refusing to join him. If they do not return their children will die, an when they die, that has the potential to prohibit a new COG congregation from forming, or even growing.

That is not a paraphrase. It is the offer. After draping himself in Jeremiah 15:19-21, Zechariah 3, Malachi 3:11, and Revelation 12, he lands the plane: obey the command to bring tithes and offerings to the Worldwide Church of God "in a RETURN," or you will not endure. You will be delivered to Satan the devourer. He will devour you and your children. Congregations included. Then, with the straight face of every collection-plate prophet since the invention of the green offering envelope, he adds that he is not here to hurt you. He is here so you can be spared.

A man who threatens to hand your children to the devil if you will not fund his rebuilt House of God is not sparing anybody. It is only about himself.

Jeremiah 15 was not a franchise agreement. The Lord was speaking to Jeremiah, personally, about a ministry already under way: 

...if you return, I will bring you again, and you will stand before me; if you separate the precious from the vile, you will be as my mouth. 

Kitchen reads that as a boarding pass to Petra. Verse 19 becomes Zechariah 3, which becomes the rebuke of "Satan the devourer," which becomes the earth swallowing the armies that chase "the Church," which becomes - by a leap that would embarrass a circus acrobat - your duty to mail support to a reconstituted Worldwide Church of God. The brass wall is no longer a promise to a weeping prophet. It is a membership perk. The place of safety is no longer a metaphor, or even the old Armstrong cave tour. It is the reward for coming home to the right letterhead.

That is not exposition. That is a man inserting himself into a text that never heard of him.

The New Covenant has already named the house, and it is not in Pasadena. Christ is the temple. His people are the living stones. The veil is ripped in half and is down. The once-for-all offering has been made, and the writer of Hebrews did not leave a footnote for a 2026 capital campaign. Paul told the Galatians that if righteousness came by the law, Christ died for nothing. He did not add, "unless the law in question is a tithe earmarked for the right splinter." Salvation in the apostolic preaching is by grace, through faith, not of works, so that no prophet can boast that he spared you. Kitchen's version cannot survive that sentence. In his mouth, returning saves. Not returning means you will not endure. The verb has been moved. Christ is no longer the one who saves. The return to Sammy is.

Haggai is drafted for the same job. Those who say it is not time to rebuild the house are wasting money on "false churches," enriching Babylon, and risking being buried as ashes while the pound and the talent are snatched away. Your house, your desires, the ordinary life you were given, are trash next to what God is offering, and what God is offering turns out to be funding his work. Mark 8:38 is then waved like a warrant. Be ashamed of me and my words, says Jesus, and the Son of Man will be ashamed of you. Kitchen hears his own fundraising pitch in that verse. Romans 9:33, which is about believing on Christ the stumbling stone, is recruited as moral cover for a man who is not ashamed of his king. The stumble, in context, is the stumble of refusing the scheme. Believe on the return, and you shall not be ashamed. Decline the return, and the devourer is already measuring the children.

This is the blasphemy, and it should be named as such. It puts a human organization in the office of Christ. It makes an Old Covenant levy, wrenched out of Israel's land system and Malachi's temple, into the condition of enduring to the end. It takes the finished work and staples an invoice to it. And it does the cruelest thing a religious man can do with a pulpit: it aims the threat downward, at the sons and daughters of people who will not salute his letterhead. "I am not here to hurt you" is the sentence abusers use when the threat is the product. The hurt is the sermon. The spare-you is the close.

New Covenant Christians do not owe Samuel Kitchen a return. They do not owe the Worldwide Church of God a tithe in order to be hid from Satan. They are not sentenced to the Great Tribulation by the absence of their name on his donor list, and neither are their children. The gospel is not "consider your ways and rebuild my house, or the devil gets the family." The gospel is that the Son has already stood before the Father, already silenced the accuser, already delivered his people out of the hand of the terrible, and he did not subcontract the transaction to a man rebuilding a brand.

Kitchen says he is not ashamed of his God, his King, and his brother. Fine. The question is whether he is ashamed to let that King finish a sentence without a collection plate. A Christ who cannot save unless you return to the Worldwide Church of God is not the Christ of the apostles. He is a tenant in someone else's building, and the rent is due.

Sam's own words:

"Therefore thus saith the Lord, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.

"And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord.

"And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible."(verses 18-21)

That is ultimately the Church going into the place of safety. Verse 19, refers to what is described in Zechariah 3, Joshua STANDING before the LORD. That is the place in time when the Lord rebukes Satan the DEVOURER(Mal. 3:11), and the earth swallows up the armies that chase after the Church.(Rev. 12:13-17)

But those who are obeying God, and the command to bring tithes and offerings to the Worldwide Church of God, in a RETURN, are fearing God and trembling at His Word, and are not sitting with the mockers in these cog groups!

IN RETURNING YOU SHALL BE SAVED! Because by not returning YOU WILL NOT ENDURE! You will be delivered to Satan the Devil, and HE WILL DEVOUR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN! You are not only sentencing YOU to the Great Tribulation but also your children, and that can mean congregations for the ministry!

SO it is something you should consider. CONSIDER YOUR WAYS. I AM NOT HEAR TO HURT YOU! I am hear to declare you the Word of God, and for you to be SPARED!!!!!

Haggai 1 talks about a people who says IT IS NOT TIME TO RETURN to rebuild the House of God. You wasted a lot of time and money for these false churches and babylon is being enriched by it! But you don't even want to do what must be done for God's house, that you think to just bury and do nothing?

Will the Worldwide Church of God be buried, or will you be buried as ASHES? That pound and talent will be taken away if you don't do something with it! IT WAS GIVEN for you to give to to God and DO HIS WORK! You having a fancy house, or everything you ever could desire in your heart, IS TRASH compared to what God is offering!

Mark 8:38

"Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

Romans 9:33

"As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed."

I AM NOT ASHAMED OF MY GOD, MY KING AND BROTHER...JESUS CHRIST! That si why I am standing here, to speak HIS WORD and to REJOICE IN HIS WORD!

In Jesus' name,

Samuel W Kitchen

Prima Thiel: Bob Thiel Puts His Law Above Paul, Then Blames Luther for Adding a Word

Bob Thiel's current article on Martin Luther is not a history lesson. It is a law-keeping brief. The target is not Wittenberg in 1522. The target is anyone who believes Paul meant what he wrote: a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Strip away the footnotes and the Catholic quotations, and what remains is the old Armstrongist move. Discredit the Reformers, borrow a Roman Catholic stick to beat them with, then smuggle Sabbaths, holy days, and tithes back in as the real gospel. The New Covenant is the thing he cannot stand. Luther is only the prop.

Thiel's showpiece is Romans 3:28. Paul wrote that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Luther's German Bible reads that a man is justified without the works of the law, through faith alone. The word allein is not in the Greek. Thiel treats that as a confession of fraud, then quotes Luther's blunt line that he knew the word was not there and would have it so.

Luther said that. He said it in the Open Letter on Translating in 1530, and he said it with contempt for critics who could count letters and could not read a sentence. His point was German idiom. When German affirms one thing and denies another, it often supplies allein so the denial lands. "The farmer brings grain and no money" is weaker, in his ear, than "the farmer brings grain alone and no money." He was translating χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου, "apart from works of the law," into speech a Saxon could hear. He was not inventing a doctrine the verse did not already carry.

The exclusive force is Paul's. Romans 3:21-28, Romans 4:4-5, Galatians 2:16, Galatians 3:10-14, and Ephesians 2:8-9 all say the same thing: the ground of justification is not the sinner's law-keeping. Faith receives a righteousness that is not its own. Adding "alone" in German made that exclusion audible. It did not create it. Catholic translators and commentators have long conceded that Paul's contrast is exclusive even when they reject the Protestant system built on it. Thiel needs the inserted adverb to be the whole doctrine, because if the doctrine is already in χωρὶς, his article collapses.

Calling this Marcionism is a smear, not an argument. Marcion threw out the Old Testament and rewrote Luke. Luther translated the Old Testament, preached it, and held that the law still kills and still guides. Those are not the same project.

The other crowd-pleaser is the August 1, 1521 letter from the Wartburg to Philip Melanchthon. Thiel cuts it down to a license: sin boldly, even fornication or murder a thousand times a day, and faith will cover it. Then he drops Hebrews 10:26-27 on the table as if Luther had never read it. "Sin boldly" was a letter to a scrupulous friend.

Read the paragraph he will not quote. Luther tells Melanchthon to preach real mercy, not imaginary mercy. God does not save imaginary sinners. Be a sinner and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger. This life is not the place where justice dwells. No sin can separate us from the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Do you think that Lamb paid a small price?

That is pastoral hyperbole to a man eaten by scruples, written in Latin, in private. It is the same move as Paul in Romans 5:20: where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. It is not an invitation to kill the neighbors. Luther spent the rest of his career insisting that faith that does not produce works is dead, and that the Christian is bound to the neighbor. Antinomian license was not his program. Thiel's excerpt is the excerpt Catholic polemicists have used since the sixteenth century. He borrowed it because it serves the same purpose for him that it served for them: make grace sound like permission, then sell law as the cure.

Hebrews 10:26-27 does not say what he needs it to say. Willful sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, in that chapter, is apostasy from the sacrifice of Christ back to a system that cannot save. It is trampling the Son of God and treating the blood of the covenant as common. It is not "you missed a Sabbath" or "you did not send a tithe to Wadsworth or Arroyo Grande." Using it as a club against justification by faith is the oldest confusion in this argument: mixing the ground of acceptance with the fruit of a new life.

James is not the trump card he thinks it is. Thiel is right that Luther spoke harshly of James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation, and that the 1522 preface called James an epistle of straw beside John, Paul, and 1 Peter. He is wrong about what that proves.

Luther did not cut James out of the Bible. He printed it, argued with it, and said he would not stop anyone else from ranking it higher. The "straw" line was dropped from the general preface after 1537. His complaint was that James, as he read it, did not preach Christ with the clarity of Romans. That was a bad judgment. It was not a secret amendment of the canon, and it is not a reason to hand the New Testament back to a sabbath-keeping sect.

James 2:24 is the verse he wants: a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. Paul and James are not answering the same question. Paul asks what justifies the ungodly before God. His answer is faith in Christ, apart from works of the law. James asks what kind of faith is real when someone claims to have it and will not lift a finger for a brother. His answer is that dead faith does not justify anybody, because it is not faith. Abraham is in both arguments. Paul cites Genesis 15: the ungodly man is counted righteous when he believes. James cites Genesis 22: the man who believed is shown to have believed when he acts. One is the root. The other is the fruit. Thiel needs them to be rivals so he can discard Paul whenever Paul will not support food laws and holy days.

The early church did not resolve this by putting Moses back in charge of Gentiles. Acts 15 already refused that settlement.

The Matthew 3:2 claim, that Luther changed "repent" to "mend," is contested even in Thiel's own paragraph, and he admits he does not know enough German to judge it. The Acts 19:18 claim comes from the same Catholic source, Patrick O'Hare's The Facts About Luther. So does most of the file. Thiel then cites Herman Bernard Kramer, a Roman Catholic priest, to the effect that Protestant Bible translations were deceit and hypocrisy.

That is an extraordinary witness for a man who thinks the Roman church is Babylon. He will take Rome's word when Rome is useful against Luther, and drop it the moment Rome speaks about Sunday, the Trinity, or the mass. This is not suspicion of tradition. It is shopping.

On Luke 10:28 and Matthew 19, Luther's irony is not a denial that Jesus said "do this and live." It is a reading of what happens when a lawyer asks how to inherit eternal life and is handed the law. The law answers the question it was asked. It also exposes the man who asked it. The rich ruler in Matthew 19 walks away. The lawyer in Luke 10 is told to go and do likewise after a story that destroys his boundary around "neighbor." Jesus is not offering commandment-keeping as a competing plan of salvation beside the cross. He is shutting the mouth of self-righteousness. Paul says the same thing in Romans 3:19-20. Thiel reads every "do this" as a COG membership requirement.

The most revealing section is not about Luther at all. Thiel says John 1:14 and Philippians 2:6-7 show that Jesus emptied himself of his divinity on earth, otherwise he could not have been tempted. That is not Luther's error. That is Thiel's.

Philippians 2:7 says he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and being found in human likeness. The text says what the emptying consisted of: he took, he humbled himself, he became obedient to death. It does not say he ceased to be God. John 1:14 says the Word became flesh. It does not say the Word stopped being the Word. Hebrews 4:15 says he was tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin. A truly human nature can be tempted. It does not require the Son to park his deity outside Bethlehem.

Historic Christian confession, from the early centuries through Chalcedon, is that he is fully God and fully man in one person. The kenosis theory Thiel is selling, that the Son stripped himself of divinity, leaves you with a savior who is not God during the very years the gospel happened. Luther's incarnational language was an attempt to protect the opposite claim. Thiel uses a quarrel about a German verb to smuggle in a Christology the church rejected long before Ambassador College existed.

The article ends with the claim that no early Christian practiced anything like modern Protestantism. As a description of sixteenth-century institutions, that is trivial. As a doctrinal claim, it is a trick. The question is not whether Polycarp kept a Sunday school roster. The question is whether Gentiles were justified by faith in Christ or by taking on the law of Moses.

Paul already answered it, under apostolic fire, in Galatians. If righteousness comes through the law, Christ died for nothing. The Jerusalem council already refused to put that yoke on Gentile disciples. The New Covenant texts already say the law was a tutor until Christ, that the first covenant is obsolete, and that the Spirit, not the letter, marks the people of God. Thiel's system cannot survive those sentences, so Luther has to be a forger, James has to cancel Paul, and grace has to be redefined as empowered law-keeping.

Luther was a flawed man. His tongue was violent. His judgment on James was poor. His later writing on the Jews is indefensible. None of that puts allein into the Greek, and none of it puts the Sinai covenant back on the conscience of the person who has been crucified with Christ. Thiel is not defending the Bible against a reckless translator. He is defending a works-righteous sect against the apostle who said the law was never given to justify. The New Covenant is the offense. Luther is just the name on the warrant

 

The Purification Ended in January. Somebody Forgot to Tell the Corpse

The forty-year egg timer already went off. Nobody got up to turn it off.

Samuel Kitchen has published another dispatch from the COG mortuary waiting room. Since January 1986, he says, the Worldwide Church of God has been in a forty-year purification. A ten-year judgment ran from 1985 to 1995. A new phase opened in 1991, the start of a nineteen-year time-cycle. Another nineteen-year cycle began in 2010. Victor Kubik slipped a Regional Pastor hypodermic needle into headquarters in 1993 so heretical doctrine could be injected. The ministers left in droves. The splinters are potter's vessels that cannot hold the golden oil. Ezekiel 9 is marking foreheads. Jeremiah 15 is Samuel's family sitting alone. Christ, we are told, is still head of the corporation, going after the little lambs the wolves led away, so that none could be lost.

January 1986 plus forty years is January 2026. It is now October. The purification window has been shut for nine months. The cadaver did not sit up. The golden oil did not resume. The Auditorium did not refill. What remains is a man with a org. chart, a handful of female patient listeners, and a corpse he refuses to bury.

That is the whole show. The rest is just his stationery.

Start with the clock, because the clock is the sermon. Nineteen-year cycles. Ten-year judgments. Forty-year purifications. None of this is in the New Covenant. Paul does not give the churches a headquarters calendar. He gives them a finished cross. "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us... nailing it to his cross." The believers in Corinth were not waiting on a Regional Pastor structure Herbert Armstrong had abolished and Victor Kubik had revived. They were waiting on nothing. Christ had already done the work. The Spirit had already been given. The body was already alive, and it was never a Pasadena corporation that could be vacated, filtered, or put on a forty-year colon cleanse.

Kitchen's history is office politics with a prophecy label stuck on the folder. A charismatic man designs an administrative layer. Another man accepts it. A bloc forms. People leave. That is every COG splinter that has ever had metal folding chairs. Calling it a heresy that "slipped in unawares," twice in the 1970s and once in 1993, does not make it Ezekiel. It makes it a org chart. Armstrong abolished one version under what he called apostolic authority. Kubik brought another version back. Tkach Sr. signed it. The field ministry later walked. None of that is the Devil deceiving lambs away from the one true headquarters. It is men doing what men do when the founder dies and the letterhead is still warm. Christ was never the CEO of that letterhead. He is head of the body, and the body is not a membership roll that can be "led away" by a regional pastor and then recovered by the son of a rebellious man who kept reminding people of the old lectures.

The texts are doing all the heavy lifting, and they are doing it for somebody else. Ezekiel 9 is a vision of judgment on Jerusalem, a mark on those who sigh over the abominations in the house. It is not a forty-year secret audit of Radio Church of God alumni. Jeremiah 15 is the prophet eating the words and sitting apart from the mockers under the hand of God. It is not a warrant for a rebellious father and his household to declare every other group a mockers' assembly and then wait to be made God's mouth. Malachi 3 tells the sons of Jacob to return to the Lord. Isaiah 30 tells a rebellious people that returning and rest would have saved them, and they would not. Kitchen reads all of it as a status report on his own magnificence. The vessels broke. The oil will not stay in them regardless of how much oil Sam pretends to pour in them.

What believers are actually longing for is simpler, and it does not require a time-cycle. They are for Christ. They are for the neighbors in front of them. They are for the finished forgiveness that does not come with a booklet, a holy day, and a headquarters address. They are not for reconstructing the Worldwide Church of God, which is dead, gone, and not coming back, no matter how many nineteen-year overlays are laid on the tombstone. A church that can be purified by a calendar, vacated by its ministers, and re-injected by an administrative needle was never the body. It was a membership organization with a radio program. The New Covenant does not resurrect those. It does not need them. The people who left it, and the people who stayed and later left the leftovers, were not lambs stolen from Christ's only pen. They were ordinary Christians and ex-Christians sorting out a system that had already told them the system was the faith.

Men, by and large, have declined the invitation to join up with Samuel. Even his own brothers have walked away from the nonsense. What gathers is a small ring of women willing to keep the flowers watered while the lecturer explains why every other group is apostate and why his own empty chairs are Jeremiah. Christ is not going through the groups with an inkhorn, marking the foreheads of people who sigh for the old booklets, so that none of the 1986 membership can be lost. He already finished the seeking. The ones who believe him are not in probate. They are free of the corporation, the needle, the oil ration, and the man who keeps announcing that the corpse is almost ready.

The church he is purifying is not seeking to be resurrected. It is dead. It is buried.

----------------------

Since January 1986, The Worldwide Church of God have been going through a FORTY YEAR PERIOD of purification.

In 1991, the work of God entered into a NEW PHASE. It was the start of a new 19 year time-cycle.

1985-1995, was a ten year period of JUDGEMENT.

September 1995 Joseph W Tkach Sr died.

In 1993, an IDEA was INTRODUCED to Joseph Tkach Sr, and this is included in the apostasy.

The IDEA was to establish a NEW Administrative Pastor structure, between Headquarters, and the field ministry.

Victory Kubik designed it, and hand picked the list of men than filled those "Regional Pastor" positions.

I want to make it clear again, this action was something that SLIPPED IN, and crept in unawares! It had slipped in twice before in the 1970's, and Mr. Armstrong finally caught it and ABOLISHED IT under apostolic authority!

But these men were going apostate, and decided it was good for the Worldwide Church of God, to reintroduce this "restructuring".

Victor Kubik said the sole purpose of this "Regional Pastor Structure" was for the "injection of doctrine".

As changes were approved, they would go out through this administrative needle, into every congregation of the Worldwide Church of God.

Now, Joseph W Tkach accepted this structure change, that was brought to him by his son Junior and Junior's assistant Victor Kubik. But it was really Victor Kubik's baby, as he went on to organize the UCG with it!

Tkach Jr. re-organized and went off into doing something else. He eventually became Grace Communion International. SO we know whose heart it really came out of! It was Victor Kubik who designed it, and who filled the roster, and then introduced it as a supplement to the Worldwide Church of God!

Earlier in 1994-95, he got into contact with those "Regional Pastors" using them as a power-bloc, and they wanted to break away from Joseph Tkach Sr "peacefully".

They did not desire to remain as the congregations of the Worldwide Church of God,

They wanted to pull away and do things better.

In order to do that, they had to leave the Church. They were actually getting fixated on MEN, and forgot that Jesus Christ was STILL HEAD of the Worldwide Church of God! They thought Jesus Christ wasn't fixing the problems they saw, (they couldn't wait until that September) and that it was up to them to LEAVE in order for the problems to be fixed!

But the course was being set forth, back in 1993, with this introduction of this new Regional Pastor structure by Victor Kubik. It was a HERESY, that got accepted by Joseph W Tkach Sr. It did exactly what Mr. Armstrong said such a structure would do! Start a power-block, that would be used to divide the Church!

If Tkach Sr, had said NO. What would we now see?

It was wrong. They had weighed the directive of the apostle, and chose to do the opposite, because they figured they could do better.

What happenned? MINISTERS vacated the Worldwide Church of God, and went and followed those who LED AWAY from the Worldwide Church of God.

It is an APOSTATE BRANCH, that has no connection to Jesus Christ, except...EXCEPT....for those inside who have come from the Worldwide Church of God who are obeying God with all their heart and mind, and do not know the Devil has deceived them and led them away from Christ! Jesus Christ will go after the little lamb who has been become prey for the wolves, and will work with them so they can be spared. That is what Christ has been doing these last forty years!

So none could be lost.

As the faithful remember what was taught, they have the chance to OBEY GOD and have that flow of the golden oil resume and strengthen in them!

So this is what we saw between 1995-2005. These different groups, have been litterally working hard to squeeze and restrict and discourage people from knowing what was taught, unless you pass through THEIR FILTER and worldview.

I saw local libraries decimated, and destroyed because the minister ordered it trashed.

And I saw members litterally starving spiritually to death! They were discouraged and were beginning to give up, and lose their crown, and their salvation. But My father reignited the Holy Spirit in them, by constant reminding!!! And as we faced troubles, we as a congregation began facing them together! And that is what we need today! Get to praying for each other, and opening up to our brethren so they can pray for us!

But i saw the flow of the golden oil rush through them, and it was like a light turned on! It SCARED that dissident group!

Around 2005 I began to share what i saw God doing through my father to others.

We were eventually asked to stay home! We were outcast.

Yes, Jesus Christ has been going through these groups, looking at the hearts of our people!

This fulfills the prophecy set forth in Ezekiel 9:3-4!

"And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer's inkhorn by his side;

"And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof."

This has been happening in the last FORTY YEARS!

Since 2010, a new PHASE or start of a 19 year time-cycle began.

Are You Embarrassed To Say You Follow Sam Kitchen?

Samuel Kitchen has issued a clarification about how important he is.

Supporting Jesus and supporting him are the same assignment. Hesitate, and you have already failed both.

If you won't lose everything for Samuel, you obviously hate Jesus

There is a sentence some people say when a self-appointed restorer of the Worldwide Church of God asks them to go public: "I hope my life doesn't get screwed up because of this."

According to Samuel, that sentence is not caution. It is cowardice. It is shame. It is proof you are ashamed of Jesus Christ, that your life is an idol, and that Jesus doesn't need you anyway. The tell is in the wording. He does not say you are ashamed of the gospel. He says you are ashamed when you do not want people to find out you are a supporter of his work. The two have been merged. Question the merger and you have questioned the Lord.

The pastoral program that follows is admirably simple. Stand up. Lose everything. This is not your time to shine; it is your time to serve God, which in practice means it is your time to be useful to him. Build character. Shoot the damn dogs. Speak in boldness. Die serving God if the heathen get difficult. Any pressure that makes you wonder whether attaching your name, job, family, or pets to this particular project is wise? Demonic. Absolutely terrible. They should be tolerable toward you. They are not, so the mature response is to die, secure your crown, and stop loving anyone more than God - which is to say, stop loving anyone more than the man equating himself with the assignment.

The idolatry charge is the cleanest part of the tantrum. If you will not let critics, employers, relatives, or basic pattern recognition outrank your public allegiance to him, those people are your idol. Get rid of the idol. What he does not mention is the scoreboard those idols keep consulting: the flipped switches that did not flip, the resurrections of Herbert's church that stayed dead, the titles that multiply faster than the fulfilled dates. Embarrassment, in that light, can look less like hatred of Christ and more like literacy.

And the dogs. "Shoot the damn dogs" is not a metaphor that improves on a second reading. It sits in the same paragraph as the demand that you die serving God and the complaint that the heathen are insufficiently tolerable. The man in the kingly robe, mouth open, fingers pointing at the you, is not asking whether you love Jesus. He is asking whether you are embarrassed to be associated with him, and he has already graded the quiz.

Are you embarrassed to support him? He says that embarrassment makes you a hater of Christ. The rest of us can hold a simpler theory. Some people are not ashamed of Jesus. They are ashamed of being drafted as free advertising for a man who thinks loyalty to his work and loyalty to the Lord are the same invoice, and who offers dog management and a crown as the receipt.

IF YOU EVER SAY "I hope my life doesn't get screwed up because of this" when you don't want people to find out you are a supporter of HIS WORK! You are a COWARD, and you are ashamed of Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ doesn't need you! And your life shouldn't be above serving God! If you are really as committed as YOU CLAIM.

You have to be willing to stand up and LOSE EVERYTHING to serve Jesus Christ! This isn't YOUR TIME TO SHINE. It is YOUR TIME TO SERVE GOD, and an opportunity to BUILD GOD'S CHARACTER! 

SO shoot the damn dogs, speak the truth in boldness, and don't let the heathen dominate YOU. Oh you may die? DIE serving God. What kind of pressure are others placing on you, that makes you feel like you will die if you STAND UP and do what God says? That's demonic! That is absolutely terrible! THEY SHOULD BE TOLERABLE TOWARDS YOU! But they hate you, and you want them to hate you? Or maybe you can shift responsibility off to Jesus Christ, and get them to hate HIM, and LOVE YOU? Then aren't you a hater of Christ? That is the path and doings of a COWARD, and someone who does not Love God! We ought to love God above all else. And not let those who HATE GOD dominate that love you have towards God! YOU CANNOT LOVE THEM MORE THAN GOD! That would mean they are your IDOL!! SO get rid of your idol! and secure your crown with Jesus Christ!

Operation Cookie - The Great Cookie Crisis of the PCG

or listen to song here on Rumble: The Great Cookie Crisis

PCG Ministry and the Cookie Comment

A personal account by Dan Moffett

 

Sometimes a small incident reveals why an organization feels controlling. For me, one of those incidents involved a few dozen cookies.

A couple of years after my wife died, I decided to take my two boys on a little vacation. The Southeastern region of the Philadelphia Church of God was holding a Fourth of July family campout, and I thought it would be a good opportunity for us to get away together.

After I signed up, the event coordinator emailed me a list of things to bring. One request was for a few dozen cookies.

I had recently lost a considerable amount of weight and had been dealing with health problems. With those concerns in mind, I suggested that cookies might not be the healthiest contribution and asked whether I could bring something else.

It seemed like a simple question about food for a family outing.

A few days later, however, I received a telephone call from my local minister, Aaron Eagle. As I remember the conversation, he told me not to bring up the cookie issue again.

I was shocked. How had a question about bringing a healthier alternative become something requiring a minister’s warning?

If the event coordinator objected to my suggestion, he could have answered me directly. He could have explained the menu or simply said that cookies were what they needed. Instead, my understanding is that the matter traveled through the following chain:

• The event coordinator contacted his local minister.
• That minister contacted Craig Winters, the Southeastern regional director.
• Craig Winters contacted Cal Culpepper, the Northeastern regional director.
• Cal Culpepper contacted Aaron Eagle, my local minister.
• Aaron Eagle then called me and told me not to raise the matter again.

I was not present for those other conversations; this is my understanding of how the matter reached my minister. What I experienced directly was the email exchange and the subsequent warning from Aaron Eagle.

By that account, two ministers and two regional directors became involved over a comment about cookies.

What troubled me was the disproportionate response. I had asked whether I could contribute something healthier. Yet the response left me feeling that even an ordinary question could become a matter of ministerial scrutiny.

I had wanted a little vacation with my boys after losing their mother. Instead, this incident became another reason I felt controlled within the PCG.

To me, it illustrated an atmosphere in which a member could be made to feel that asking a reasonable question was stepping out of line.

Today, I am grateful to be free from that atmosphere. I can make ordinary decisions about my health, my family, and what I bring to a picnic without fearing a telephone call from a minister.

A question about cookies should have been answered with a conversation—not escalated into a warning.

The ACOG Identity

 

The ACOG Identity

Long ago, the teachings of Herbert Armstrong were incorporated into the personal identities of certain individuals all over the United States and English-speaking world. I know, because I was one of them! Moreover, I believe that this explains why we continue to see a small group of Armstrong’s followers divided amongst a plethora of splinter groups whose personal identities still reflect their exposure to Armstrong’s teachings.

These folks are immune to the personal testimonies of individuals who suffered mental anguish and personal loss within Armstrong’s now defunct Worldwide Church of God. Likewise, they are immune to the many scholarly and well-researched treatises which have discredited Armstrong’s teachings/theology. Why? I believe it is because Armstrong’s teachings were integrated so deeply into their psyches that they became part of their individual identities.

Although Psychology Today admits that identity is a very complex phenomenon, there are enough generalities to shed some light on what happened to these folks. In their article on identity, we read: “Identity encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships, and values that generate one’s sense of self. This amalgamation creates a steady sense of who one is over time, even as new facets are developed and incorporated into their identity.” (Psychology Today: Identity)

Herbert Armstrong claimed to have the answers to the questions which are typical of those in search of an identity – Questions like: Who am I? Does God exist? What does God want from me? What is my purpose? Is there something beyond this present life? Can I be one of God’s people? Armstrong claimed that God had revealed the answers to those questions to him, and that a person’s acceptance of those answers meant that God was calling that individual to him. Now, for someone who is searching for answers, that is pretty heady stuff! Armstrong told these folks that if they obeyed some of the precepts of Torah (like Sabbaths, Holy Days, clean and unclean meats, tithing), that they could be part of God’s one and only “TRUE” Church – one of the obedient of God. Of course, the flip side of that was that EVERYONE ELSE was NOT part of that group!

In other words, the folks who became a part of Armstrong’s group formed friendships/relationships with the other folks who had adopted his answers. Over time, their tithing, rituals, and eating habits became habitual and were internalized as an integral part of their individual identity. Likewise, over the same period, their memories became saturated with festival attendance and the experiences associated with Holy Day observances. Hence, we can see that their personal identity became so associated with the people and experiences of the Armstrong Churches of God that many of them simply could not imagine themselves outside of that tradition! They were so integrated into that system that they became part of it. For many of these folks, Armstrong’s teachings represented who they were – heart, body, and soul!

Indeed, Herbert had even convinced many of them to stop searching for answers – to stifle their intellectual and spiritual development. “You already have the answers,” he reasoned. “Why read or consider what anyone else has said or written about these things?” Moreover, Armstrong repeatedly warned them that they could “LOSE” the “truths” which had been gifted to them, and that doing so would condemn them to the Lake of Fire! Fear, ego, and personal identity kept them committed to Armstrongism; and NOTHING or NO ONE could “steal their crowns from them!”

Thus, as someone who was forced to form a new and independent identity, I understand why some folks continue to be impermeable to any appeal to come out of the cognitive dissonance that is Armstrongism. Unfortunately, for many of these folks, it is simply too much a part of who they are – It is an integral part of their identity as a person! In short, it is very hard to teach an old dog new tricks, but it is NOT impossible! Hence, it is incumbent upon all of us to follow the advice of the Apostle James: “Remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.” (James 5:20)

-       Loud Scouting Pilgrim

The Best Feast Ever, Again: The Oldest Liturgy in the Churches of God

The Feast of Tabernacles is over. The suitcases are in the trunk, one final check of the hotel room, and the brethren are rolling home on the interstate, enriched and euphoric, already rehearsing the praise they will say at church the next Sabbath.

They will not have to wait long for the official version from HQ. Within days the member letters and magazine articles will arrive, most of them drafted before the last speaker left the podium. This was the Best Feast Ever. Attendance was encouraging. The messages were powerful. The offerings brought in more money than ever. The brethren have never been more united, never more fired up, never more solidly behind the Work. Change the letterhead and the same paragraph will be issued by every headquarters that still owns a mailing list.

This is not a new enthusiasm. It is the oldest liturgy the Churches of God have.

In November 1953 the Good News announced the "Greatest Feast of Tabernacles in 1500 Years." About a thousand people had gathered. The preaching was better, the music was better, the spirit was better, and there was "no friction or opposition or lack of harmony." The article did note, with regret, that only about 650 stayed the whole eight days. God, it was explained, commands the entire Festival, not parts of it. The empty chairs were already being edited into a moral lesson.

By November 1960 Garner Ted Armstrong was telling readers it seemed impossible there could be a Feast better than 1959, "but the Feast this year really WAS the greatest ever." Seven thousand one hundred at Big Sandy. Attendance up 30 percent, exactly as Mr. Armstrong had expected. In October 1962 Roderick Meredith topped it: the greatest spiritual Feast in centuries, the best organized, the most joyous, "with the most POWERFUL sermons given so far in this era of God's Church." Fifteen thousand. Seven ordinations. The superlatives were already on a schedule.

Herbert Armstrong kept the tradition in his own hand. In October 1979 he reported that the Festival "seemed the BEST EVER," sermons and sermonettes exceptional, and closed by looking toward "another even greater Feast NEXT YEAR." A year later the Pastor General's Report ran a piece titled "WHY THE 1980 FEAST WAS THE GREATEST EVER," built from member letters about satellite hookups, unity, and "a return to the joyful camaraderie so characteristic of God's people." HWA himself wrote that reports from around the world showed it was "in reality the greatest Feast of Tabernacles in our time," that division and suspicion had vanished, and that the Church was "once again truly ONE Body of Christ." The sermons, he added, were somehow inspired to be the best ever.

Read those pieces in order and the formula is naked. Attendance must be a record, or at least "encouraging." The sermons must be the most powerful yet given in this era. The spirit must be the warmest. Friction must have vanished. Unity must be declared at the precise moment it most needs declaring. And next year must already be scheduled to surpass this one, so the claim never has to survive contact with the previous claim.

The splinters inherited this liturgy with the hymnals when they split off.

They no longer have Big Sandy or the Auditorium, no longer have Mt Pocono or the Dells Feast sites, no longer meet in Squaw Valley, Tucson or St Pete where 10's of thousands meet together in what WCG's PR Dept claimed made it "largest conclave on earth" which sounded plausible even to the bitter apostates. (The Mormons actually gather more people together in person and online than any other church when they hold General Conference.) 

Armstrongism still has the adjectives. Living Church of God closed its 2025 Feast report with the usual testimony harvest: love, unity, answered prayer, and a member in Florida who said every Feast "just seems to get better and better." United Church of God has published under the title "The Best Feast Ever" and has sermons explaining the old in-house abbreviation BFE FOT, Best Feast Ever, Feast of Tabernacles, on the theory that the best Feast is always the present one or the most recent one. That is not a recollection. It is a rule. The Feast is not allowed to have been ordinary.

What the letters never mention is the other half of the parking lot. The family that drove twelve hours and left after the second day. The empty rows in the afternoon session. The minister explaining why last year's timeline was almost right. The second-tithe argument in the restaurant. The quiet count of who still believes the date and who has stopped tithing on the gross. Those details are local. The official memory is national, and it is always triumphant.

By the time the first "Best Feast Ever" email hits the inbox, half the attendees are already back at work and the euphoria is thinning into an ordinary week. The other half will forward the letter to someone who did not go, as proof that the church is healthier than the chairs suggested. Next fall the same letter will be written again, the year updated, the adjectives reused.

It has to be. In a movement that has been announcing the greatest Feast in 1,500 years since 1953, a merely good Feast would be an admission. The myth is not about the eight days. It is about the Work. If the brethren have never been more united, then the splits did not count. If the sermons were the most powerful yet, then the failed dates in last year's sermons did not count. If this was the Best Feast Ever, then the Church is still the Church, and the drive home is not the beginning of another year of waiting.

The suitcase is in the trunk. The letter is already in the mail. Both of them say the same thing, and only one of them has to be believed.