Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)
Samuel Kitchen has a new article that says, “Jesus Christ made it VERY CLEAR!” that the two commandments above require the observance of everything in the Old Covenant. This is a textbook example of taking the words Jesus spoke about love and immediately burying them under the very system Christ came to fulfill and replace. He quotes Matthew 22:37-40 (the two greatest commandments) and 1 John 2:3-6, then pivots straight back to “THE TEN COMMANDMENTS,” the Sabbath, “all things pertaining to worship,” and the familiar claim that anyone who doesn’t see it his way is either a liar or demon-prodded.
This is Herbert W. Armstrong’s legalistic version dressed up in New Testament language. Let’s pick it apart with actual New Covenant understanding — the one where grace doesn’t just *help* you keep the old rules better, but fundamentally changes the relationship.
Kitchen is correct that Jesus summed up the Law and the Prophets in love for God and love for neighbor. That’s not in dispute. The dispute is what happens *after* that summation.
In the New Covenant, those two commandments are not a new-and-improved checklist that still requires you to keep the entire Mosaic code (or HWA’s particular interpretation of it) to prove you’re “really” loving God. They are the *fulfillment*. Paul says it plainly: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). And “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8).
Jesus didn’t say, “On these two hang the Ten, so go back and obsess over the Sabbath and holy days exactly as interpreted by 20th-century American restorationists.” He said on these two hang *all* the Law and the Prophets. Then He went and *fulfilled* them perfectly in our place and inaugurated a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6).
The New Testament repeatedly treats the old covenant law — including its Sabbath regulations — as a shadow that pointed to Christ (Colossians 2:16-17). The real Sabbath rest is entered by faith in His finished work (Hebrews 4:9-10). Christians have liberty regarding days and foods (Romans 14:5-6; Galatians 4:10-11). The early church didn’t fracture over which day was “the right one” to worship; they met when they could and the unity was in Christ, not the calendar.
“Sin Is the Transgression of the Law” — But Which Law, and for Whom?
Kitchen leans on 1 John 3:4. Fine. But context matters. In John’s letters, the “commandments” that define genuine Christianity are repeatedly boiled down to **believing in Jesus Christ and loving one another** (see especially 1 John 3:23: “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us”).
“Walking as He walked” (1 John 2:6) does not mean replicating first-century Jewish Sabbath observance. It means walking in love, truth, and mercy — the very things Jesus demonstrated when the Pharisees accused Him of breaking the Sabbath to heal people. He was Lord of the Sabbath, not its slave.
The rich young ruler passage (Matthew 19) is another favorite proof-text in these circles. Jesus meets the man on his own terms (old covenant), exposes that he hasn’t actually kept the commandments from the heart (covetousness), and then calls him to follow *Him*. The point is not “keep the Ten perfectly and you’re in.” The point is that no one does — that’s why we need a Savior.
Kitchen proclaims: “There Is Only ONE WAY TO WORSHIP GOD!” — Yes, and it’s not what he thinks
Kitchen insists that differing churches and denominations prove people have “gotten away from the law of God” and are worshipping “in their own ways.” The irony is thick: the very movement he represents has produced dozens of competing “one true church” splinters, all claiming the same lock on truth while excommunicating each other over fine points of administration, prophecy, or which leader is the real “Zerubbabel.”
The New Testament answer to “how do we worship?” is not a return to old covenant forms. It is “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24) — through the finished work of Christ, by the power of the Spirit, with hearts transformed. The “one way” is Jesus Himself (John 14:6), not correct observance of the letter.
The claim that disagreement equals “spiritual attack” inspired by demons is the classic move of high-control groups. It shuts down conversation and protects the system. Many who left the Worldwide Church of God (or its descendants) didn’t do it because they wanted to “get away from God’s commandments.” They did it because they discovered the system had mixed genuine biblical truth with legalism, failed prophecies, authoritarian control, and a gospel that was too small.
“You Knew Better” — The guilt trip that never dies
This line is especially rich: people who were “added to the Worldwide Church of God, and fell away… knew better, or ought to have known better.”
Many of us were there. What we “knew better” included a package deal that contained both truths and serious errors — British Israelism (scientifically and biblically untenable), date-setting that repeatedly failed, heavy tithing demands, and a view of the Christian life that often felt more like qualifying for the kingdom through law-keeping than resting in Christ’s finished work.
Leaving that system was not falling away from grace. For many, it was the first time they actually experienced it.
Kitchen compares warning people to a family intervening when someone spirals into drugs. The analogy would land better if the “drug” in question wasn’t actually the freedom Christ purchased and the “sobriety” being enforced wasn’t a return to the tutor we graduated from (Galatians 3:24-25).
Loving warning is real. But when the warning is “get back under the law or you’re a liar and the truth is not in you,” it stops being love and becomes spiritual manipulation. Jesus warned the Pharisees precisely because they loaded people with heavy burdens while ignoring the weightier matters (Matthew 23:23). The same warning applies today.
Samuel Kitchen’s article quotes the right verses from Jesus and John but arrives at the wrong conclusion because it reads them through Herbert Armstrong’s legalistic restorationism rather than the New Covenant realities those verses were written to support.
The New Covenant is not “the old law plus better attitudes.” It is a fundamentally better arrangement (Hebrews 8:6) in which God writes His law on hearts and minds (Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10), the Spirit empowers what the letter could only demand, and there is therefore now **no condemnation** for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).
True love for God and neighbor is the fruit of that relationship, not the entrance exam. The Sabbath rest remains — but it is entered by faith in Christ’s finished work, not by which day we mark on a calendar. Worship is no longer tied to specific locations, days, or rituals as covenant requirements. It is in spirit and truth, through the one Mediator.
The many churches and denominations are not primarily proof of rebellion against “the law.” They are evidence that the gospel is for real human beings who see through a glass darkly and still manage to love Jesus and one another imperfectly. Where the Spirit is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17).
To those who were taught the Armstrongist package and later walked away: You are not condemned. Many of you didn’t leave to escape God’s commandments — you left to finally obey the greatest ones without the added weight of a system that turned shadows into substance and grace into a footnote.
God does correct those He loves. Sometimes that correction sounds like: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).
That is the New Covenant. That is the love that actually fulfills the law. And that is the truth worth contending for — without needing to call everyone else liars or demon-inspired for refusing to pick up the hammer and start nailing extra stone tablets to the wall.
7 comments:
Kitchen’s reading of 1 John misses something very simple and very important.
As well pointed out when John speaks of “commandments,” he is not pointing believers back to the Sinai code. Armstrongism makes that incorrect assumption.
John himself actually defines God’s command very plainly: to believe in Jesus Christ and to love one another (1 John 3:23). That is the heart of the entire letter. “Walking as He walked” means living a life shaped by love, mercy, and truth - not reproducing first‑century Sabbath customs and so forth.
The same is true of the rich young ruler. Jesus wasn’t teaching salvation through law‑keeping; He was showing the man that the law cannot give life and that following Him is the only way. That Kitchen and others are unable to see that tells a lot about the powerful influences of the Armstrong system and the inability to read a text for what it says. .
People shaped by Armstrongism read these passages through the lens of law‑keeping because that is the system they were taught and need. But the New Testament consistently points us to something deeper and better: a new covenant where Christ has fulfilled the law, the Spirit writes God’s ways on our hearts - - the old code is not the true mark of God’s people - but they desperately want this to be so because the one true church is only to be found among sabbath 'keepers.'. ie themselves.
All the fear stuff seems so surreal to me, decades after the fact. The precept upon precept logic used to mute the fact that there was no specific New Covenant Sabbath command was always that "these things were being taught everywhere" like at Temple, and meeting places of the Jewish diaspora throughout gentile communities and were already so well known that it did not require reiteration in New Testament Scripture. OK, so why were some of the other commandments which were part of the love element specifically mentioned?
Today, Grace is taught in all mainstream Christian Churches. Herbert W. Armstrong had to tear that down and redefine grace as he cobbled together his system of "Old Covenant Christianity" for lack of better terms. We were not even taught the TGCOLs as being Jesus' commandments while we were church members. HWA's personality was based on harshness and anger. People had to be groomed and acquire a taste for what he taught and then attempt to respond with conjured up joy, as they lived the lives of tortured ascetics, funding his millionaire half a gospel messenger lifestyle. It was unnatural. Really sucks to think we fell for it back then, but some are still responding to the message of fear-based prophecy, even though that got blown fifty + years ago. It sticks just like the Ayatollah's tyranny. No regime-change possible in either case!
How come the new code doesn't stop you all from creating rude animation art depicting COG leaders with their eyes bugging out or appearing to have dangerously unhealthy countenance & high blood pressure?
Ten percent of one year's harvest every 3 years (3rd & 6th in a 7 year cycle) and stored up was enough for 2% of the population (Num 31:30) who received all the tithes (Num 18:21) and distributed as needed to the stranger/fatherless/widow (estimate 1.3% of the population - Deut 14:28-29; 26:12). There was no tithing for the poor who were to be attended to, cared for all the time (Deut 15:7-11).
The fixed times (Lev 23) are the 3 feasts (Ex 23:14-16 - Nisan 14-20 including a special feast on the 15th for that's the day Israel left Egypt), 8th "Sunday" after Nisan 14, Tishri 15:21), the weekly sabbath, and the annual sabbaths (Tishri 1, 10, and 22) which 3 sabbaths were not part of the Sinai covenant but added later ("under" the Levitical Priesthood? - Hebrews 7:11).
If you are worried about art then worry also about Jesus's words about those who mislead believers: “It would be better… to have a millstone hung around his neck and be drowned.” Jesus reserves His harshest warnings for those who harm the vulnerable placing burdens/teachings never intended.
Because that's what they deserve, 8:40! Obviously, you've become infected, or you would not be arising to defend them! They need to quit teaching false prophecy (you can't possibly deny that they are spreading it like spiritual manure!), repent of believing heresy, and quit calling everyone else either Laodicean or Christians falsely so-called!
Heretics and false teachers need to be rejected and reviled! That is God's way! Irenaeus set the example in the early days of Christianity by exposing Simon Magus as a false teacher, and destroying as many of Simon's writings as possible, and lambasting Simon and his Gnosticism in the now classic second century work Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies).
Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, who was in turn a disciple of the Apostle John. Oddly enough, HWA and Herman Hoeh revered Polycarp, but ignored the work of Irenaeus, deciding instead to credit Simon Magus with starting the Roman Catholic Church, and insisting that it was Simon Magus who was buried in a tomb at the Vatican, and not Simon Peter. WCG scholarship was devoted to pulling anything needed to support HWA's theories from rectal resources, as opposed to objectively reading available history, and considering actual fact. The gullible believed HWA rather than documented fact "because HWA was God's Apostle". That was the essence of "proving all things" Not any more!!!
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