Herbert W. Armstrong’s theology never settled for mere eternal life or a quiet spot in heaven. No, Armstrongism promised something far more extravagant: God is a Family of two (for now), and faithful humans who jump through the right hoops will be “born” as literal spirit gods of the same divine species. These newly minted deities will then inherit the universe itself—ruling it, beautifying it, and busily terraforming barren planets for all eternity. The Promised Land given to ancient Israel? A quaint little prototype for the real prize: galaxies upon galaxies of cosmic development projects.
Ronald Weinland, leader of the minuscule Church of God Preparing for the Kingdom of God, struck out on his own in 1998, later announcing himself a prophet, apostle, and (with his wife) one of the two witless witnesses of Revelation. His prophetic résumé from the Bob Thiel School of Prophecy is a masterclass in missed appointments: the end was supposed to arrive around 2008, then May 2012, then May 2013, then June 2019. In between failed forecasts, a federal jury in 2012 convicted him on five counts of tax evasion for underreporting income, diverting church funds to personal use, and hiding a Swiss bank account. He served 42 months and has been free since roughly 2016. Undeterred, he keeps writing.
In July 2026, Weinland dropped Chapter 11 of his latest series—“PHASE THREE: GOD’S FAMILY IN AN ERA OF INFINITY”—complete with a companion piece titled “The Inheritance Awaiting God’s Family.” The text is pure Armstrongist greatest hits. The physical universe, we are told, was never an end in itself. Those billions of galaxies and trillions of solar systems have sat largely barren for “billions upon trillions of years” for one very good reason: the spirit beings destined to fill them, build within them, and beautify them had not yet arrived. Earth’s six-day makeover and the garden-tending assignment given to Adam and Eve were only a “very meager beginning.” Once the Family is complete, the real work begins—solar system by solar system, galaxy by galaxy—creating, improving, and enjoying perfect relationships for infinite time. Everlasting life is nice, but the true inheritance is the entire cosmos as a personal renovation project. It sounds majestic until one does the arithmetic.
Roughly 117 billion human beings have ever lived. The observable universe contains something on the order of 10²⁴ to 10²⁵ planets, with potentially habitable ones stretching into the sextillions. Assign every person who has ever drawn breath to a single world, and you still leave the overwhelming majority of the cosmos empty and unused. Armstrongism’s ready answer is that spirit-composed gods will simply create more life over infinite time and keep expanding outward. How convenient. The universe, it seems, has been politely waiting 13.8 billion years for a relative handful of overcomers to show up with their divine hard hats and landscaping tools. One can almost hear the galaxies muttering, “Finally—someone who knows how to dress and keep a solar system.”
Then there is the family-logistics problem. If these newly deified humans are to populate planets with their descendants or relatives, where exactly does one draw the line? How many generations back must be included before the entire human race collapses into one gigantic, hopelessly interrelated clan that somehow has to fit on a single rock? At some point the celestial personnel office will have to announce, “Sorry, third cousins twice removed, you’re shipping out to that frozen moon on the edge of the Andromeda galaxy—have fun with the in-laws.” The doctrine’s solution is that earthly kinship dissolves once everyone becomes part of the one God Family. Biological family trees are transcended. Problem solved—by declaration. Scripture, of course, never bothers to describe this administrative miracle, any more than it describes resurrected saints personally seeding life on exoplanets.
These are not nitpicking details. They expose the teaching for what it is: an imaginative speculative fantasy draped over a few biblical phrases about sonship, inheritance, and creation’s longing. Armstrong took legitimate themes and inflated them into a detailed future of cosmic public works for which there is neither textual blueprint nor coherent logistics. Weinland’s latest installment adds nothing new; it simply repackages the old dream in the language of “phases” and “infinity,” delivered by a man whose track record on predicting the future is roughly as reliable as a weather forecast issued by a broken barometer.
The appeal is obvious. Who wouldn’t want to believe that ordinary human life is merely the apprenticeship for eternal godhood and endless creative projects free of selfishness, war, and human drama? The narrative flatters. It also collapses under the weight of scale, kinship, and the stubborn refusal of the Bible to endorse planet-by-planet real-estate development as the destiny of the saints. The universe is vast, ancient, and mostly empty. The claim that it has been holding its breath for a finite number of Church of God graduates to arrive and start the remodeling remains one of the more charmingly absurd promises in the crowded marketplace of religious grandiosity. Weinland and Armstrongism keep selling it. Buyers would be wise to inspect the fine print—and the arithmetic—before signing.
8 comments:
If nothing else, speculation like Weinland's gives us an insight into what the first couple of generations of Mormons went through as they fleshed out the implications of their own heterodox theological stance.
We all know that Weinland is a clown, so don't take anything I say as an endorsement of him or his ideas, which are not original but borrowed from others. That being said, what do we really know about "mere eternal life" or a "quiet spot in heaven"? The author of the post is quick to shoot down the ideas of others but offers none himself.
Why does the universe exist in the first place? For what purpose was it created? Romans 8:19 tells us God's perspective that the creation (all of it) waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. That it is subjected in hope, to be set free by the glory of the children of God. What does this mean? and whatever it does mean , are we going to dismiss it merely because Weinland or Armstrong might have speculated on it in some way? It's written here for our learning. Surely we can come up with something better than a real estate joke.
Since the post writer has no answers, his silence indirectly puts him in a position far more dangerous than Weinland, that being, he makes God look like an empty headed goof who happens to be what He says He isn't, the author of confusion. Judging God is not a good place to be!
Totally agree with you BP8. This perspective on the post is the most ridiculous thing I've read here. So because HWA taught it, then it's nonsense. Period. God created it, so based on Genesis 1, Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2, what He's created is for His spirit born children for ever. Why is that so hard to believe? Because HWA taught it? So ignorant...learn to appreciate simple truth...and for the record all you anti-Armstongites, I'm not an HWA wanna be. It's just like the Democrats now...no matter what president Trump does (and not a fan of him either) they hate him for it, even if it's good for the country. SMH...folks, you need to grow up...
Hopefully, all the Armstrongites will end up beautifying some huge gas giant of a planet, or down a black hole. Then all the normal, regular people can enjoy their eternal rewards in peace.
3:51 Name something the PDF president has done good so far?
Would you like to nail them to crosses on a path Nero style? How about upside down? What about setting up a concentration camp? Gas them and throw them in ovens ?
A bit extreme?
Well your hatred towards Sabbath Christians only wanting to worship God on the 7th Day Sabbath is exactly where history shows evil hatred begins.
Something that we must be aware of is that we have a finite, earthbound perspective. We are relative creatures for whom size means something. The Cosmos can be big or small. But God is not relative. God is absolute and size, a relative concept, is not a limitation.
So, we puzzle about why the Cosmos is so big when tomorrow God could throw it away like we throw away a sheet of paper. It is possible that the unimaginable size of the Cosmos is there only for the purpose of helping us see that God is absolute and unlimited whereas we a relative and limited.
Another issue is how Paul saw the Cosmos. Paul did not know about light-years, stars as great balls of luminous gas, galaxies and black holes. During his time, cosmology depicted a Three-tiered Universe in which the stars were lights in a solid, blue firmament. This also matches the cosmology of Genesis 1. And the earth was at the center of this picture. It is likely when Paul wrote, “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God,” he had principally in view the planet earth because he did not know that stars were distant suns with orbiting planets. Paul would have never conceived of HWA’s Unfinished Furniture idea.
On the other hand, we do not know how much Jesus told Paul about the creation. If Jesus gave Paul a lecture on astrophysics, it never showed up in writing in the NT. It is the error of anachronism to impose modern-day concepts on ancient history.
Scout
I'm not as much concerned about what ancient Paul thought about these things than what the ONE who inspired him thought about them, and we can read what HIS thoughts are in the Scripture (Romans 8, Hebrews 2). Since all we can do is speculate, why put limits on something we don't have to, because we detest some individual?
Whatever happens to the cosmos in the future, I will be content. But is the unfinished furniture idea a possibility? Absolutely! It makes more sense to me than a "guiet spot in heaven".
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