Ah, Big Sandy, Texas—once a bustling mecca for the faithful throngs of the Worldwide Church of God. Picture it in its glory days: thousands of church members, wide-eyed college students from Ambassador College, and a whole ecosystem built around Herbert W. Armstrong’s prophetic empire. Sabbaths hummed with activity, Feast sites overflowed, and the air crackled with certainty that this was the one true remnant church, the Philadelphia era holding the line against the Laodicean hordes.
Fast-forward through the great implosion of the Worldwide Church of God. Doctrinal earthquakes, leadership scandals, splinter groups multiplying like rabbits on steroids, and poof—most of the crowd evaporated. The grand campus dreams shrank, the student body dwindled to a shadow, and the once-vibrant religious boomtown settled into a quiet, somewhat awkward afterlife. Yet, in true Armstrongist fashion, a stubborn remnant clings on. Scattered across the piney woods and red dirt roads of this modest East Texas town, a handful of true believers still shuffle into services at various Church of God franchises—each one claiming the purest slice of Armstrong’s doctrinal pie.
Here’s the kicker that had Facebook buzzing:
In a town with a population you could probably fit into a decent-sized Walmart on a slow Saturday, there are ten churches. Ten. Several of them proudly flying the COG flag in its myriad flavors—Living Church of God, United Church of God, Church of God (whatever the latest acronym is this week), and all the other boutique offshoots. You’d think a place with that kind of spiritual density would be rolling out the welcome mat, flinging open the doors, and shouting “Come on in, sinners and seekers alike!”
But no. These aren’t your average Sunday-morning Protestant setups. These are the real churches. The ones who know they’re the tiny flock, the elect, the ones who actually get it. And getting it, apparently, requires industrial-grade paranoia.
While the “harlot daughters of Babylon”—those sloppy, gate-unlocked churches filled with so-called Christians—casually leave their sanctuaries accessible like some kind of spiritual free clinic, the COG congregations in Big Sandy have gone full fortress mode. Padlocks. On the gates. Heavy, serious, “do not enter” padlocks. Because nothing says “We have the truth that will save the world” quite like making sure the world can’t actually get within spitting distance of your folding chairs and potluck tables.
This isn’t a new development. Armstrongism has always been marinated in fear. From the very beginning, the movement treated outsiders like potential carriers of doctrinal Ebola. Every Sabbath service had its designated bouncers: stern deacons and burly “strong men” stationed at the entrances like ecclesiastical Secret Service. Their sacred mission? Keep out the unwashed masses from those false churches. God forbid some confused Baptist or curious Pentecostal wander in without having first devoured Mystery of the Ages, The United States and Britain in Prophecy, or one of the other poorly ghostwritten booklets that served as theological visas.
Imagine the horror: a visitor showing up without proper indoctrination! They might ask awkward questions. They might notice the contradictions. They might—worst of all—disagree. Better to lock the gate, station the guards, and preach another sermon about how everyone else is deceived by Satan while the true saints huddle inside, congratulating themselves on their exclusivity.
The padlocks of Big Sandy aren’t just hardware; they’re theology made visible. They scream, “We are so special, so targeted by the devil, so dangerously correct that we must physically barricade ourselves from human contact.” Other churches see their buildings as community resources. COG groups see theirs as bunkers. One group fears declining attendance and tries outreach. The other fears increasing attendance—from the wrong people—and doubles down on the deadbolts.
It’s almost comical in its self-defeating irony. A movement that once dreamed of ruling the world during the Millennium now struggles to let people past a chain-link fence on a random Saturday. The remnant in Big Sandy sits behind their locks, singing the same hymns, studying the same prophetic charts, and wondering why their numbers keep shrinking—never once considering that maybe, just maybe, the padlocks are part of the problem.
After all, when your primary evangelism strategy is “keep them out until they’ve read the approved literature,” you’re not exactly positioned for explosive growth. You’re positioned for a very secure, very small, very lonely echo chamber. Complete with padlocks.
Welcome to Big Sandy, folks.
Population: modest.
Churches: surprisingly many.
Open hearts: strictly by appointment only.
If you joined the original WCG or its splinters, the deal was: give us your tithe money plus offerings, and in exchange we'll strip you of all your rights and treat you like naughty children. Now why didn't that formula work?
ReplyDeleteThe bible makes it clear that some people are allowed in church. But nobody takes the bible seriously. It is all pretense.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting aspect to all of this is, given Armstrongism in which we were schooled to believe that "all these churches can't be right", the logical expectation would have been that "time would tell" regarding the splinters. That is to say that the true splinter would eventually emerge, and it would become very obvious via God's blessings which splinter that was. The super blessed one would not only be heir to the doctrines, but would also replicate the 30% annual growth in number of members and income, have the correct version of Armstrong's prophetic hook, and inherit the powerful voice necessary to get out the endtimes message. It would be undeniable, and sheer logic would dictate that everyone would unite behind it. Instead, all of these mercurial little splinters have languished in the doldrums, the same being true of those who actually accepted the corrections instituted by God's alleged "new" Apostle, Mr. Joseph W. Tkach!
ReplyDeleteNot that claims to this mantle, this endtimes gatekeeper role, were not made! The expectations stated in paragraph one were known and shared, and the cast of characters varied from high-powered executives who actually were groomed by HWA, to local Spokesmens Club washouts who suddenly felt the twinge, claimed "callings", and created their own back stories to support their ministries. Thirty years into the program, the words of a first century sage, a wise man under whom Pharisees trained, one Gamaliel, have proven true of the Armstrong splinters. Though it briefly captured public attention, by every metric, Armstrongism's current moribund state has proven that it never was of God, but rather of men! There has been no such super-blessed splinter, nor will there be. Armstrongism has simply died a quiet death and is only known amongst little nostalgia groups whose aging leaders, contemporaries of the Rolling Stones, can still put on a tribute show, but are incapable of a full on revival.
Back at the dawn of the new millennium, one of my true friends from the Armstrong days told me that he wished he had seen the light when I did, and had left in 1975. Instead, he wasted (his terms) twenty more years of his life, years that he now wished he could have back. I really didn't know what to say, how to reply in an encouraging way that would make him feel better. But, I didn't need to. His ruminations were typical of an awakening to the fact that today is the first day of the rest of our lives. He got it fixed! The really great thing is that he's now had thirty plus years of freedom from the cult, and has fulfilled many of the good and edifying goals, dreams, and desires he had never thought possible. None of us had. We grew up with different expectations from our classmates at school. We "knew" we were never going to make thirty. The end was going to rob us of our lives. The closest I can come to the angst inherent in that is that it was like knowing that you have a terminal disease. Nice gospel, Bubba! And yet, incredibly, that was Herbie's solution to the bomb. In retrospect, it makes no sense at all! Live in years or decades of angst and mental enslavement rather than experiencing sudden death from a bomb or a couple years of ill treatment by Assyrian captors.
Thankfully, so many of the things birthed in simpler times were time and date stamped. That's just an alternative way of stating the Gamaliel principle. Armstrongism was one of them. Can I get an "Amen"?
BB
I left a few years after you did, BB. I had come to see that the system was deceptive, cultish, and often harsh - a place where the love of power seemed valued more than the pursuit of truth. I didn’t join another church afterwards, though I may attend occasionally.
DeleteI’ve often wondered why I joined in the first place, and the answer is a mix of idealism, insecurity, youth/vanity about “having the truth,” and the deception of a charismatic “apostle” and his inner circle of propaganda experts.
It’s good that you saw the light when you did, and I hope more who remain can eventually do the same.Best to you.
The super blessed one would not only be heir to the doctrines, but would also replicate the 30% annual growth in number of members and income
DeleteSorry, Byker, you've missed one important detail. The story most of them now tell is that we are in the Laodicean Era, which means that the one true church will NOT be the biggest one with the most income and growth. The biggest group will be Laodicean, and one of the small groups is the true Philadelphian remnant, and all the other small groups are either Laodicea or Sardis.
Amen!
DeleteLocks? On a church? Didn't the Tkaches & Feazell et al arrange copyright "locks" which prevented historians to examine HWA's yeas & nays in Mystery Of The Ages?
DeleteCan't the Big Sandy COG lock up for security if y'all give a pass to GCI locking up WCG records & literature after they changed over to mainstream?
And don't most of us ask our Grammas & our college nieces to bolt their door at night? Don't we use PINs to keep our online accounts safe? Don't we select to befriend visitors, or not, on our Facebook so that rogue trolls & moles won't papparazzi us into PTSD?
Wouldn't most of us prefer to live in a gated community during these new teen takeovers lately?
If you were a successful jeweler, wouldn't you want locks to keep out the smash 'n grab glass case breakings & robberies? Are the cute street-smart shoplifters/"boosters" rightly raising our cost of living, or not?
Do we remove the keys from the ignition when we park our car?
What's wrong with a lock on the door of any church, synagogue, or mosque?
Why is the COG in Big Sandy labeled paranoid if we all use locks?
There's going to be one person responding that they still live in a Siler City or Mayberry R.F.D. to this day where no one locks their door. But those serene hamlets, in a way, are also a "gated community"...
Yes, 4:41, I've certainly seen that idea expressed from time to time right here. It's about the only way they can explain the realities of what has transpired in the church, and still retain Armstrongism as a valid belief system. "We're the Philadelphia remnant, and everyone else is either Laodicean or Sardis."
DeleteI have several problems with that line of thought. For one, none of them are getting out a noticeable warning, and there are very few people alive today outside of these groups who remember GTA, HWA, or The World Tomorrow Program or the warning they gave. Most of us here have acknowledged this, but apparently the leaders of the ACOGs convince their members that getting the message out is precisely where the bulk of their tithes go. Some refer to HWA's statements that there was a greater work yet to come, while others cite HWA proclamations that he had finished the work. The lack of or ineffectiveness of a work being done by any of them needs to be pondered by any group which calls itself the Philadelphia remnant (and which one doesn't?).
We need to hold their feet to the fire on this. Mixing up a couple metaphors, (appropriately), if a tree falls in Brooklyn, but nobody hears it, does that constitute a warning?
The nations and blessings from the Armstrong prophecy model have always been melting pots, and frankly most of us who reside in those melting pots are human melting pots ourselves. This was less true during HWA's era, (his message was almost credible then) but it is certainly true today that America has become Samaritanized. How could a great nation such as the USA with German dna being the most predominant be Manasseh? The lost ten tribes were never in reality lost. They were for the most part assimilated into Judah thousands of years ago. The Jews we might meet around the world today are the result of that tribal melting pot, and have also mixed it up with the Europeans, the Russians, the Moors, and just about everyone else around the world. The Lemba tribe of Africa, and some Ethiopians claim Israelite lineage. A message warning of punishment for Manasseh and Ephraim is simply no longer credible.
Where is the place of safety? A tourist attraction in the Middle East? If the restored truths, per HWA, and obedience were the reason for God to grant HWA understsnding of prophecy, what does it say about the so-called doctrines that neither HWA, nor the splinters have ever gotten prophecy right? Confound that dratted math, anyway!
The remnants are not Laodicean, Sardis, and especially not Philadelphian. They are simply people who based their lives on a clever scam by a pioneer of the advertising field, and the budding telecommunications industry, and they just can't cut it loose. Their think tanks continue to churn out reasons to believe, but these are becoming less and less convincing or credible as time passes by. The problem is that we read so many reports of ministerial abuse. If the church is the woman, or the bride, she's getting the crap beat out of her and is being robbed of her financial resources on a daily basis. She's being lied to, cheated on and enslaved. It's no longer about the carrot, but more about the stick. Nice fruits there, guys!
BB
Byker Bob
ReplyDeleteI had the same timeline as your friend, but I had no realization that something might be profoundly wrong in the Armstrong world until the early Nineties. For me, reading C.S. Lewis and the Bible Study on the Doctrine of God by Dr. Stavrinides and a book by David Albert were pivotal. But still in 1995, when confronted with the doctrine of the Trinity, I had heartburn. By 1996, I was over the "leaving" hump. But then I had to deal with my newfound Christianity. None of this was easy.
I spoke with David Albert one afternoon and complained about the loss of years to cultism in my life. How could this happen to me? He said something I have always remembered. He had made a transition to Christianity at that time. He said if it took all that he went through in order for him to be brought to Christianity then he had no regrets. From my view, by being an Armstrongist you were missing opportunities, but if you eventually become a Christian, your unfortunate years of Armstrongism helped gain you the greatest opportunity that the mind can conceive of. Like Paul said in Romans, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
Scout
Everyone in old WCG, whether they continued with Armstrongism or not, learned lots of valuable OT & NT stories comparable to what others in mainstream churches learned in Sunday school.
DeleteHere a little, there a little.(hear a little, they're a little). Or we're a little...a little bit better off if we don't despair.
Very nice. Any have a spouse who didn't see it the same way?
DeleteI spent two years in the WCG, then attended and graduated from AC in Pasadena after another two years. I wasn't in there long enough to grow old broke. The best part of my experience in the WCG was I met my future wife. We've spent 53 years (happy ones) together. It also helped us help others by teaching which includes the subjects of cults. I realize I'm among the more fortunate ones. In long enough to benefit, but not long enough to do terrible emotional and financial damage. About 20 years after leaving I visited the mostly closed down campus and met up with a contemporary. He stayed in the church and was on again, off again, employee of the church. Sad to say, he was in his mid 50's by then and probably didn't have a dime to his name. Others, I imagine, lost loved ones due to lack of medical care. I think of Rom. 8:28. God can bring good out of bad situations.
ReplyDeleteSo, what became of David Albert? His name is on my AC diploma, and I have his book, Difficult Scriptures, on my shelf. It was Ernest Martins' writing that helped nudge me out of the church.
ReplyDeleteI think David Albert retired & relaxed with some Herb Alpert.
ReplyDeleteSo who remembers - we are not divided like all the other Christian churches?
ReplyDelete