After 3½ Years of Tribulation, Bob and His Itty-Bitty Law-Enforcement Squad Will Finally Whip You Into Loving the Rules — No Elections Needed!

Herbert Armstrong’s “New Covenant”: Divine Dictatorship, Celestial Nepotism, and Why Bob Thiel Is Still Pretending It Makes Sense in 2026

God’s favorite crackpot is back. Bob Thiel, head of the tiny and improperly named "Continuing" Church of God splinter, has once again dusted off Herbert W. Armstrong’s dusty pamphlets to warn us that America (and the rest of the world, but mostly America) is about to endure 3½ years of hell so that, at the end of it, he and his microscopic band of law-enforcers can finally whip the survivors into shape. Then everyone will live happily ever after under “the New Covenant.”

Wait until you see what Armstrong actually called the New Covenant. It’s the kind of theological slop that makes you wonder why Armstrongism talks about it so rarely — because once you read it, the whole edifice starts looking like a cosmic HOA run by immortal busybodies who never got over being mocked due to Crackpot Bob's silly utterances.

Here’s Armstrong in his own words, from Tomorrow…What It Will Be Like (and repeated in Mystery of the Ages):

It will not be man’s government over man. Man has proven his utter incapability of ruling himself. 

It will be Divine Government — the Government of God. 

It will not be government from the bottom up. 

The people will have no votes. 

It will not be government of or by the people — but it will be government for the people. 

It will be government from the top (God Almighty) down.

There will be no election campaigns. No campaign fund-raising dinners. No dirty political campaigns…

No human will be given any government office. 

All in government service will then be Divine Spirit beings, in the Kingdom of God — the God Family.

All officials will be appointed — and by the Divine Christ, who reads and knows men’s hearts…

There will then be two kinds of beings on earth — humans, being ruled by those made divine. 

Some resurrected saints will rule over ten cities, some over five…

And then Herbert's definition of  the New Covenant:

What Is the New Covenant? 

In short, under the new Covenant which Christ is coming to usher in, what we shall see on earth is happiness, peace, abundance, and justice for all. Did you ever read just what this New Covenant will consist of? Did you suppose it will do away with God’s Law? Exactly the opposite. “For this is the covenant that Christ is coming to establish, you’ll read in Hebrews 8:10; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts…” 

 

When God’s Laws are in our hearts — when we love God’s ways, and in our hearts want to live by them, human nature will be put under subjection — people will want to live the Way that is the cause of peace, happiness, abundance, joyful well-being! 

 

But remember, the humans remaining on the earth after Christ’s return — ruled then by Christ and those resurrected or changed to immortality — will themselves still have human nature. They will be still unconverted. 

 

But Christ and the governing Kingdom of God, then set up as the Governing Family, will bring about the coming utopia by two basic courses of action. 

 

1) All crime, and organized rebellion will be put down by force — Divine supernatural force.

2) Christ will then set His hand to reeducate and to save or spiritually convert the world.

Let that sink in.

According to Armstrong, the New Covenant is not primarily about Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice, the indwelling Holy Spirit, or the forgiveness of sins through faith. No, no. It’s about setting up a post-apocalyptic theocracy where:

• Dead people who got the resurrection upgrade become your unelected, immortal bosses (along with true Philadelphian COG members).
• They “read your heart” like some kind of divine HR department with X-ray vision.
• You, the surviving mortal, still have the same sinful human nature Armstrong spent decades railing against.
• But don’t worry — the laws will be magically written on your heart so you’ll want to obey… while the immortals stand ready with “divine supernatural force” to crush any organized rebellion.

The continuation of the passage (which Thiel’s site also loves to quote) makes it even clearer: 

Christ and the saints will bring about utopia by two basic courses of action — (1) put down all crime and rebellion by divine force, and (2) re-educate everyone in God’s way. 

 

So the New Covenant, in this telling, is basically “We’ll beat the sin out of you until you love the rules.” Or, if that fails, the resurrected saints who rule over ten cities will handle it.

The actual New Covenant, as described in Jeremiah 31 and explained at length in Hebrews 8–10, is already in effect. It is not something Christ is “coming to establish” after a future tribulation. It was established by His blood on the cross. It is an internal transformation by the Holy Spirit for those who believe — not an external enforcement regime run by glorified humans lording it over unconverted mortals. The writer of Hebrews spends chapters showing how the New Covenant is superior precisely because it does not rely on the old system of external law and human (or even angelic) mediators in the same way.

Armstrong took a beautiful promise of heart-level change and turned it into a justification for a two-tier society: the immortal ruling class and the mortal peasant class who still need the rod of iron (Revelation 2:27, 12:5, 19:15) applied when necessary.

And he had the gall to call this the New Covenant.

Armstrong insists humans will still have human nature and be unconverted after Christ returns. Yet the New Covenant is supposedly writing God’s laws on their hearts so thoroughly that they’ll love righteousness.

If the laws are truly written on the heart by the Spirit, why do you still need immortal stormtroopers ready to use “divine supernatural force” against rebellion? If people still have unconverted human nature, how exactly are the laws “written in their hearts”? It’s theological whiplash. Armstrong wanted to keep his favorite doctrines (Sabbath, holy days, tithing, British-Israelism, the “government of God” hierarchy) while also claiming the New Covenant. So he just redefined the New Covenant as “the Millennium, but with extra law enforcement and resurrected middle managers.”

This is where it gets truly pathetic. Bob Thiel didn’t invent this stuff. He inherited a broken theological framework from a man who declared himself the end-time Elijah, built a personality cult, predicted the end of the world multiple times, and died in 1986 while his church promptly abandoned most of his distinctive teachings.

Instead of admitting that Armstrong’s eschatology was a house of cards built on proof-texting and British-Israel fan fiction, Thiel and his microscopic following treat every Armstrong pamphlet like holy writ. They repost this 1970s-era fever dream about immortal city-managers reading your heart and suppressing rebellion with supernatural force, and they call it “prophecy.”

It’s not prophecy. It’s nostalgia for a cult that promised its members they would be the ones ruling over ten cities while everyone else groveled. It’s the ultimate power fantasy dressed up in biblical language: “One day we will be the ones with all the authority and no one will be allowed to vote against us.”

The New Covenant was never about creating a permanent underclass of mortals ruled by an immortal elite. That’s just what happens when you let a radio preacher from the 1930s–80s rewrite the Bible to match his authoritarian personality and his followers’ desire to feel special.

So yes — it’s no wonder Armstrongism is “filled with ignorance on the topic.” 

They don’t talk much about the actual New Covenant because doing so would expose how thoroughly they’ve mangled it to preserve their own little theocratic daydream.

Bob Thiel can keep quoting the slop if he wants. The rest of us will stick with the version where the New Covenant is about grace, the Spirit, and a kingdom that doesn’t require resurrected bureaucrats to read your mind and decide whether you get to rule five cities or zero. 

That one actually sounds like good news. Armstrong’s version just sounds like hell.