Let’s be honest: Samuel Kitchen’s latest outburst isn’t theology. It’s a hostage negotiation with God over a dead corpse.
According to Kitchen, the Worldwide Church of God (the actual corporation) must still exist as a living, breathing organization. Why? Because Revelation 3:10 and 12:13-17 supposedly require it. If the old WCG isn’t around to be protected in a literal “place of safety” for 3½ years, then Jesus Christ is a liar. That’s not faith. That’s putting God in a headlock and saying, “Fulfill my preferred end-times fan-fiction or else your reputation is toast.”
The problem is simple history: the Worldwide Church of God was dissolved and transformed decades ago. After Herbert W. Armstrong died in 1986, the organization under new leadership abandoned most of the distinctive Armstrong doctrines and eventually became Grace Communion International. The original entity no longer exists. The various splinter groups that formed afterward (UCG, LCG, PCG, etc.) all claim to be the “true continuation” while accusing each other of being Laodicean sellouts. Kitchen’s solution to this inconvenient reality? Declare that the spiritual “organism” is still the old organization, that anyone who left is demon-infested, and that using archives or websites to study old teachings is basically spiritual adultery. It’s a remarkably efficient way to keep people terrified of independent thought.
Kitchen warns that when people leave “the Church,” they become empty houses that demons immediately move into. They start twisting Scripture, rejecting truth, and — horror of horrors — thinking for themselves using old booklets and websites.
This is classic high-control group rhetoric. It turns normal Christian freedom into a horror movie. Under this logic, reading an old Herbert Armstrong article without a current minister’s permission is the spiritual equivalent of leaving your front door wide open with a “Demons Welcome” sign.
Meanwhile, the New Covenant quietly offers something far less dramatic: the Holy Spirit is given directly to believers. No headquarters stamp required. No fear that opening an old PDF will summon dark forces. Just grace, truth, and direct access to God through Christ.
Kitchen insists Jesus built one Church and that every splinter group is man-made while the original WCG was purely divine. This is convenient amnesia. Every single splinter group says the exact same thing about all the others. They all trace their legitimacy back to the same man and the same organization. The New Testament, however, never describes the Church as a single centralized corporation that must remain under one human lineage to stay valid. It describes believers in various cities, local elders, and unity based on the gospel — not on loyalty to a 20th-century American religious franchise.
The idea that God’s entire end-time plan hinges on whether a particular religious corporation from the 1930s–1980s still has the same name and structure on paper is… creative, to put it mildly.
The part that clearly bothers Kitchen most is the existence of archives, websites, and even AI tools that let people access old WCG teachings without current ministerial oversight. He calls this “robbing God” and accuses those who provide the material of being Antichrist.
Why the rage? Because once people can read the material, compare it to Scripture, and decide for themselves, the spell of total organizational dependence starts to break. Fear loses its grip when people realize they can study without permission.
The New Covenant is actually quite rude to this kind of control. It suggests that the law is now written on hearts, that believers have direct access to God, and that maturity comes from the Spirit — not from staying inside the correct membership list.
Kitchen’s entire argument boils down to this:
God can only protect His people and keep His promises if the exact religious organization I like is still functioning the way it did in 1985. If you disagree, you’re calling Jesus a liar and probably housing demons.
The New Covenant offers a refreshingly different deal:
Christ is sufficient.
The Church is His body — not a particular corporate charter. Protection and relationship with God don’t require you to keep a dead organization on life support or live in constant fear that reading an old booklet will get you demonically evicted.
You can leave a human organization without leaving Christ.
You can study new teachings without demons moving in.
And you can believe Jesus without demanding that He keep a 20th-century religious corporation alive just to make one man’s prophecy timeline work.
That might sound terrifying to someone invested in the old system. To everyone else, it sounds like freedom.
4 comments:
I hold a view which I am sure most who view this site would disagree with but I will share it anyway. I think the idea of successive church eras which the WCG taught in the past is correct. However I don’t believe we were ever the Philadelphia era .
I saw no evidence of brotherly love in this church. I think a more accurate description as to who we truly are is Sardis. The letter address a dead church which GCI certainly now is and rebuke is given to the church for their colloidal loss of knowledge “ remember from where you have been taught’
The church era before us fits Thyatira perfectly if you consider that the SDA may also be Gods church . They have done some incredible works with huge growth but they had a problem with their prophetess who taught things in that church which were not right. They have done CoG 7th day were also part of that era which did not hold to Adventist doctrine.
If I am right a Philadelphia church will come out of Sardis but in Gods time not man’s. Everything which Herbert Armstrong will need to be looked at again. Time will telll of I am right
Before 1968, the Worldwide Church of God corporation did not exist. Before then, HWA used a different corporate organization called the Radio Church of God. Was HWA being a Satan-inspired rebel by abandoning his previous Radio Church of God corporation? If so, that would actually explain a lot.
What you say is true, 11:13. Sam has co-opted the wrong name. There was a lot of disunity and evil which came into play about the time the new name (Worldwide). was applied.
All these wannabe leaders and their man-made constructs, developed to substantiate themselves with a back-story! Everybody must have their little slice of the Armstrong pie! We even have our crybabies whose created backstories are not strong enough to secure so much as a few Armstrong crumbs!
Hey, Sam! Call Gene Simmons! I understand that he knows all about breathing fire!
Thank you for sharing. Yes I disagree. There are no church eras. Like British Israelism, it is a myth and not backed by scripture. A teaching of deeply flawed mortal men. That this movement has split into hundreds of different group’s, organisations is witness enough to us all. The Gamaliel effect in play here.
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