Samuel Kitchen has issued another urgent fatwa from the front lines of Armstrongist anxiety. Half the Church was supposedly destined to quit the Sabbath (Aaron Dean heard it from Herbert himself-and then gave out Aaron's phone number and said to call him). The faithful remnant (now numbering between 5-10 people) is the true Philadelphia Candlestick still burning inside the Worldwide Church of God, which is not a human organization but a "spiritual organism." Anyone who starts another group is polluting the temple whose foundation HWA already laid. Love God more by staying put; love the leavers less. Exit the other churches. Pour everything into the approved channel. Listen to HWA so Christ's voice gets louder. Otherwise your crown is being stolen, your bags have holes, and Satan's smooth-speech system is winning. It's a familiar sermon. It is also the exact opposite of the New Covenant. Kitchen's entire case collapses the moment you stop treating Herbert Armstrong as an untouchable apostle whose organizational shell is the ongoing spiritual temple. The Church is the body of Christ. Christ is the head. Believers are members. Paul did not write that there is one body, one Spirit, one faith, one baptism-and one true candlestick that must remain inside the corporate structure HWA built in the twentieth century. The foundation is the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ Himself as the cornerstone. Kitchen's move is the classic one: redefine "the Church" as "the people who still agree with me and my preferred leader," then brand everyone else an apostate for refusing the redefinition. That is how you keep people inside Sabbath-keeping, tithing, and hierarchical control long after the New Testament declared the law's role as tutor finished. The authority Kitchen wants to rest on HWA does not hold. The 1975 prophecy failed. Later date-setting and place-of-safety claims failed. A second-hand recollection that "half the Church would quit the Sabbath" does not become binding revelation just because Aaron Dean remembers hearing it. The scattered groups Kitchen condemns are what happens when a legalistic organization fractures. They are not proof that the "Philadelphia elect" must now reassemble under his particular banner. The New Covenant does not require anyone to keep the Sabbath as a covenantal obligation, tithe to a specific ministry, or remain inside any post-HWA entity in order to be "spiritually organized." Believers are free. That freedom is not compromise. It is the point. Kitchen's love language is especially revealing. True love for God, he says, means staying put and pouring everything into the approved channel, while following people who leave is loving them more than Christ. That is inverted. Loving God under the New Covenant means resting in the finished work of Christ, not performing the old-covenant calendar and financial obligations as proof of loyalty. The people who walked away from Armstrongist groups did not "start loving Jesus less." Many of them discovered that the real Jesus is not the one who needs an exclusive twentieth-century foundation laid by HWA before He can return to His own spiritual temple. The temple is already the people of God. It does not get polluted because someone starts a new congregation or simply reads Galatians and stops worrying about which corporate name still holds the candlestick. The fear tactics are standard issue: crowns being stolen, voices growing weaker, families destroyed, bags with holes, Satan's system of smooth speech. All of it is designed to make ordinary believers feel that exiting the system equals spiritual death. New Covenant Christians do not have to manage that anxiety. They are not under the Sinai administration. They are not required to "speak the same thing" HWA taught in order for Christ's voice to grow louder. They already have the Spirit, the Scriptures, and direct access to the Head. Kitchen's demand that people exit every other group and reorganize their households around his vision of the continuing WCG is not humility before Christ. It is another round of the "one true church" claim that has produced the very fragmentation he now decries. No New Covenant Christian needs to lose sleep over Kitchen's apostasy alarm. The real departure is the one that adds HWA's foundation, Sabbath-keeping as identity, and exclusive organizational loyalty to the gospel of grace. Those who have left that system are not polluting a temple. They are refusing to treat a human movement as if it were the temple. Christ is sufficient. The rest is optional religious infrastructure-and optional is exactly what the New Covenant makes it
No comments:
Post a Comment