Alton Billingsley’s Perfect Prophetic Batting Average: Still .000 and a New Covenant That Arrives Fashionably Late

The Church of God Faithful Flock (CGFF), based in the Modesto-Valley Springs-Lodi area of California, is a small post-Worldwide Church of God splinter. It claims to be the only group that remained true to Herbert W. Armstrong's restored teachings. Of course he does! Every songle COG splinter group claims the same thing. Alton B. "Don" Billingsley has led it since its founding. A World War II infantry veteran, Billingsley joined the Radio/Worldwide Church of God in 1953 and worked at Ambassador College, where one of his jobs was chauffeur. He was later ordained an elder, but left the WCG orbit after the Tkach changes. 

Before starting CGFF, he briefly associated with the United Church of God and David Hulme's group. The group runs cog-ff.com and a YouTube channel, and publishes magazines and booklets promoting HWA materials, online Sabbath services, and the claim that HWA was the end-time Elijah who restored all things. Like Crackpot Bob's organization, it is tiny and has produced repeated failed prophecies. Its record sits alongside Crackpot Bob's own failures.

Like many tiny COG groups, CGFF operates as a remnant church and claims to be the authentic Philadelphia-era body, preserving Armstrong's doctrines with "no departures." Billingsley, however, has spent years making specific public prophecies that never came true. Some earlier writings predicted that Hillary Clinton would become president and, in certain versions, be executed around 2023. A statement from around 2021, that we posted here on  Banned included:

• A famine begins near Passover 2023 and lasts 3½ years across America, Britain, and the "Israelite" nations.
• In 2024, the devil releases "Assyria-Germany" from the bottomless pit, leading to the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire.
• America and related nations face severe famine, pestilence-with COVID mutating into the black plague-and widespread destruction, particularly in 2026. Nuclear warfare follows.
• Around 2029, Jesus Christ stands on the earth.

Recent commentary still points to 2026 as a catastrophic year for America and Britain, sometimes linking the date to the 9th of Av / Tisha B'Av and predicting the end of those nations in their present form. Other versions place the Day of the Lord, or similar end-time events, somewhere in the latter half of 2028. Armstrongite circles have seen this pattern before: elaborate timelines miss their marks, then get revised or quietly abandoned when nothing happens. Deuteronomy 18:22 remains plain on the point-if a prediction fails, the Lord did not speak it.

Billingsley also argues that the New Covenant will not begin until Christ returns and that, during the Millennium, it will focus entirely on the law-specifically, the Ten Commandments. That claim reflects a classic Armstrongite delay tactic: it keeps the church under continuing law-keeping requirements while deferring the New Covenant's full benefits and character to the Millennium. Biblically, the position cannot stand.

Scripture presents Christ's first coming as the beginning of the New Covenant; His blood sealed it, and believers now live under it:

At the Last Supper, Jesus said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:20; cf. Matthew 26:28, 1 Corinthians 11:25). 

He spoke of a covenant already established through his blood-not a promise postponed until the Second Coming.

Hebrews 8-10 treats the New Covenant as something already in force. Christ mediates this superior covenant (Hebrews 8:6), while the old one has become obsolete and is close to disappearing (Hebrews 8:13). God now writes his laws on believers' hearts and minds (Hebrews 8:10; 10:16, quoting Jeremiah 31), no longer remembers their sins, and grants them direct access through Jesus' blood (Hebrews 10:19-22). The writer is addressing believers in the present, not describing a future millennial administration.

2 Corinthians 3 sets the old covenant's ministry-its letter engraved on stone, which kills-against the new covenant's ministry of the Spirit, which already gives life and liberty. Paul and his coworkers are already "ministers of a new covenant" (2 Corinthians 3:6).

The Spirit is the deposit guaranteeing what is to come (2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:13-14). Through the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, believers have been freed from sin's law and death (Romans 8:2).

The New Covenant is not a future reboot of the Mosaic order, with the Ten Commandments once again at its center after Christ returns. Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 speak of a new heart, a new spirit, and change written within God's people. According to the New Testament, those promises are fulfilled during the church age through the indwelling Spirit; they are not held over for the Millennium. Galatians and Romans state plainly that believers no longer live under the law as a system of justification or covenant administration (Galatians 3:23-25; 5:18; Romans 6:14; 7:6). The law functioned as a tutor who pointed people to Christ, but that role ended when faith came. Its moral substance did not disappear-love fulfills the law (Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14). What now governs the covenant is Christ, His finished work, and the Spirit-not a renewed return to stone tablets.

Saying that the New Covenant must wait for Christ's return leaves people living under the Old Covenant's system of performance and fear, as though genuine transformation and freedom belong to some later time. That claim also diminishes what believers already possess: justification by faith, the indwelling Spirit, and the better promises now in effect. Much of Hebrews argues the opposite-that Christ has already established something superior. Moving that reality to the Second Coming turns the epistle's argument on its head.

Billingsley's failed timelines and delayed-covenant theology follow the wider Armstrongite pattern: prophetic urgency keeps being reset, while a legalistic framework rejects the plain teaching that the New Covenant has already begun through the risen Christ and rests on grace and the Spirit, not on some future law-centered regime. The scriptures cited above leave little room for claiming that the New Covenant has yet to begin.

Silent Pilgrim