Why Different Races: Crackpot Bob Takes Another Lap Around Herbert’s Favorite Rabbit Hole

God's most highly favored prophet had these words of wisdom today in an article where he talks about race. Never in my life have I read anything as astounding as this! God truly worked miracles when he created Crackpot Bob's brain. This dude is supercharged with intelligence!

• Many people live in countries where their race dominates. They learn various lessons.
• Some people live in countries where their race is highly discriminated against. They learn various lessons.
• Some people live in countries more accepting of multiple races. They learn various lessons.
• And there are variations among those scenarios, which partially result in learning various lessons.

On September 28, 2026, while the Churches of God were at the Feast sites and while most of the planet was busy being a planet, Crackpot Bob of the improperly named "Continuing" Church of God published "Why different races, different hair colors, etc.?" It is not new. It is the same "Mystery of Race" lecture he has been giving for years, now re-upholstered for the Feast of Tabernacles season like a motel bedspread that has seen one too many self-appointed prophets.

The argument, boiled down until the bones show, is this:

• Evolution is a lie because a suntan is not heritable and Jeremiah 13:23 says a Cushite cannot change his skin.
• All humans come from Adam, Eve, and then Noah's three sons and their conveniently color-coded wives.
• Cush means "black." Some of Phut's kids are also black. Ambassador College said so in 1968, and 1968 Ambassador College is still the gold standard of physical anthropology if your laboratory is a Pasadena basement and your peer reviewers are already dead.
• No race is spiritually superior. Salvation is for everybody. Variety exists so that in the Kingdom we can all love each other more creatively. Different heights, hair colors, and melanin levels are God's way of assigning unique homework before eternity.

It is the theological equivalent of saying "I'm not racist, I have a Black friend who will be in the first resurrection too, just not from the same tribe that got the birthright."

Armstrongism did not invent racial taxonomy. It inherited it when it co-opted British-Israelism - the 19th-century parlor game that decided the lost tribes of Israel packed up after the Assyrian conquest, wandered around Europe, and eventually became the British, the Americans, the Canadians, the Australians, and whoever else needed a prophetic participation trophy. Herbert W. Armstrong turned that parlor game into a multimedia empire.

Old Worldwide Church of God teaching held that God "does not want the different races to mix socially or to intermarry." Social mixing starts in school, they warned. Ambassador College was late and reluctant to admit Black students. Congregations were often de facto segregated. Black members in Chicago and elsewhere recalled being told, as children, that whites sat at the top of a biblically ordained hierarchy and that even heaven would keep the seating chart. Herbert himself wrote that Jesus had to be of "the original pure racial strain, even as Noah was." "Perfect in his generations" was read as a genetics certificate. Our minister in Dayton mentioned many times that when the millennium started, everyone would go back to their ethnic nation of origin, which meant blacks would return to Africa and ethnic South Americans would return to South America, and Asians back to Asia.

None of this required shouting slurs. It only required a prophecy chart that mapped physical blessings onto specific modern nations and then treated everyone else as supporting cast. You can love the extras and still write the script so that Ephraim and Manasseh keep the best lines.

Crackpot Bobl has spent years insisting he is not that. He is "predominantly Gentile" himself, he says. Salvation is not a racial issue. He is not Christian Identity. He just happens to still publish an entire book called Lost Tribes and Prophecies that assigns the English-speaking world the starring role in end-time catastrophe and, later, in the Millennium's administrative class. He still quotes the 1968 Ambassador College race booklet as if it were a primary source instead of a period piece. He still needs Cush to mean black so the Table of Nations can do the work that genetics and archaeology refuse to do.

The spiritual-equality paragraphs are the insurance policy. The tribal identification is the product.

Today's article performs the familiar two-step:

• Deny evolution with a verse about skin color that was never written as a genetics paper.
• Affirm that God likes variety the way a collector likes different stamps - then immediately sort the stamps back into Shem, Ham, and Japheth drawers.

"You cannot change your race," Crackpot Bob writes, as if anyone in 2026 were trying to file an amendment. The sentence is doing pastoral work. It reassures readers who grew up being told that certain unions were "against God's law of kinds" that the old categories still have divine backing, even if the pastor now adds a disclaimer about the Kingdom being a big, loving potluck.

The purpose of racial difference, we are told, is so that people learn different lessons in this life and can therefore contribute unique flavors of love later. It is a charming thought until you remember the institution that produced it once taught that some of those "lessons" included knowing your place in a hierarchy that just happened to look like the American 1950s.

Armstrongism has always been better at announcing that racism is over than at noticing the architecture it left standing. Thiel's version is the polite remodel: same floor plan, new paint, a plaque that says "All Welcome" next to the genealogy chart that still has the good parking spots reserved.

The piece is not really about hair color. Hair color is the decoy. The real subject is continuity. A tiny church that claims to be the Philadelphian remnant cannot admit that one of its founders' central interpretive keys - the physical identification of modern nations with ancient tribes - was a racialized 19th-century hobby horse that caused real harm to real people in the pews. So the lecture returns, year after year, like a relative who will not stop bringing the same casserole.

Critics have been calling this out for decades. Former members, Black and white, have described the quiet ranking, the intermarriage panic, the Millennium as a place where the nations stay in their lanes. Crackpot Bob's response is always the same: those people are scoffers, the Bible is clear, and anyway he has a video.

The video is 22 minutes long. It asks whether one race is superior and answers no. It does not ask why a church that spent fifty years acting as if some nations were prophetically more important than others still needs a 1968 booklet to explain why some people have darker skin.

Armstrongism's racial problem was never only the occasional ugly sentence. It was the system that made ancestry destiny, then called the destiny "prophecy," then called the prophecy "love." Crackpot Bob has sanded the edges. He has not replaced the machine.

The latest post is not a breakthrough. It is a man standing on a stack of his predecessor's books, pointing at the same wall chart, and announcing that variety is beautiful - as long as you remember which branch of the family tree you came from, and which blessings were promised to which branch, and which branch is currently being punished for forgetting the Sabbath.

Some things, as Jeremiah might have said if he had a blog, a Cushite cannot change. And neither, apparently, can a church.

Why Are So Many COG Leaders and Members Who Claim 1st Century Christianity Tend To Be Such Abusive Bullies?

Anyone who has attended a COG for any extended period of time has come face to face with bully ministers, elders, deacons, deaconesses, ministers' wives, and regular members. There are several reasons for this appalling behavior. 

• The corrupt teaching of church government, top-down control
• The complete lack of confidentiality when members counsel with ministers
• Ministers' wives who gossip about members' problems
• Ordaining incompetent and/or unworthy men
• That church members are somehow more special than the rest of humanity, especially other Christians
• The complete inability for restoration if a person had "sinned" due to gossip

I am sure many more reasons can also be listed here (add to comments).

I think the main problem arises from the "proper" church government that all of the splinter churches use as a distinctive mark for pretending they are practicing 1st-century Christianity- which, incidentally, is not a single COG group's practice. There has never been a COG that has practiced 1st-century Christianity. Not one single group, and especially those that crow that they do. They are liars to claim they do so.

It is easy to do research on 1st-century believers and how the church operated. While they were Christ followers, they were still Jewish. That is why so many COG groups pretend to be Jewish, in name only.

First-century Christianity, we are solemnly informed by various Armstrongist groups, has been faithfully restored. The Sabbath is kept. The holy days are observed. The "true gospel" of the coming Kingdom is preached. And, most importantly, the government of God is once again operating on earth through a single, specially chosen human channel at the top of a very tidy pyramid.

How convenient that the primitive church of Acts just happened to look like a mid-20th-century media ministry with headquarters, ranks, and an apostle who needed to be obeyed in matters ranging from makeup to medicine.

First-century Christianity emphasized local, relational communities with servant-oriented leadership, voluntary mutual care, and a restoration-focused process for discipline-not centralized control over members' personal lives.

Armstrongism claimed to restore "true" primitive Christianity through Sabbath-keeping, holy days, and other distinctive doctrines, but its top-down "government of God," extensive lifestyle rules, and fear-based discipline produced patterns of control that do not match the New Testament or earliest extra-biblical sources. This became fertile breeding ground for bullies.

In Jerusalem after Pentecost, believers shared possessions voluntarily so that there was not a needy person among them. Property remained theirs to keep or give; Ananias and Sapphira were judged for lying, not for failing to surrender everything. Deacons were appointed when widows were neglected. People ate together in homes. Later letters assume collections for the poor, not a mandatory multi-tithe system flowing upward to support an expanding headquarters and an apostle's lifestyle. The Didache told communities to appoint humble bishops and deacons who were "not lovers of money," to reconcile before gathering, and to test itinerant apostles: don't let them stay too long or solicit cash. When have you ever seen a humble COG leader? 

Reproof was to be done "not in anger but in peace." Itinerant apostles and prophets were tested: they were not to stay long or solicit money. When have you ever seen correction or reproof done lovingly? Anger fills the hearts of the leaders and ministers who lash out at members for perceived faults. In Armstrongism, church leaders and most ministers are for life (though more and more tend to be retiring). The church leaders solicit money and remain in place until hell freezes over or they die.

Leadership in the New Testament was local and plural. Apostles appointed elders in churches. Those elders were to be gentle, hospitable, able to teach, not violent or greedy, and they were explicitly told not to lord it over the flock. By the time of 1 Clement, there is concern for orderly succession and not casually deposing appointed men, but nothing resembling one man in Pasadena (or Edmond, or Cincinnati, or Grover Beach, or Charlotte) directing every congregation's finances, dating rules, and medical decisions.

Jesus outlined a graduated process: private confrontation, then one or two witnesses, then the church; if unrepentant, treat the person as an outsider (Matthew 18:15-17). Paul applied this to grave, unrepentant immorality (1 Corinthians 5) and to factious people after two warnings (Titus 3:10). The stated goals were protection of the community, shame leading to repentance, and eventual restoration (2 Corinthians 2). Members were also told to test teachings (Acts 17:11) and to correct one another gently (Galatians 6:1). Excommunication existed, but it was not the first or default tool for disagreement with leaders.

The members' job is to submit to "the government of God" as represented by whoever currently occupies the top office. Humble service was apparently optional once the organizational chart was laminated. Once it was laminated, the bullies had a field day.

Armstrong taught that God governs the church through a pyramidal hierarchy. Armstrongism solved this inconvenience by discovering that God prefers a pyramid: Father → Christ → Apostle (Pastor General) → evangelists → pastors → elders → members. 

Question the hierarchy, the extra-biblical distinctives, or the apostle's unique role, and the process often jumped straight to disfellowshipping. Discipline in the first century followed a process: private conversation, then witnesses, then the church. The goal was restoration. Grave unrepentant immorality or persistent divisiveness could lead to treating someone as an outsider, with the hope they would be ashamed and return. Members were also told to test teachings and correct one another gently. Home inspections, family authoritarianism modeled on church structure, and a climate of fear around being "put out" became familiar features in many accounts. Restoration took a back seat to protecting the organization.

After Armstrong's death in 1986, the main Worldwide Church of God (now Grace Communion International) publicly repudiated many of these practices, including British Israelism, legalism as a test of fellowship, and the most extreme forms of one-man rule; a small number of leaders issued apologies for spiritual abuse. Numerous splinter groups (United Church of God, Philadelphia Church of God, Living Church of God, and others) retained core Armstrongist distinctives and hierarchical structures. Reports of high-control dynamics, financial pressure, and trauma among former members continue through support networks and published testimonies. The New Testament churches had real authority, moral standards, and expulsion for unrepentant sin. They did not, however, feature a single human leader claiming unique end-time apostolic restoration who regulated members' medical choices, family details, or private questioning under threat of being cut off from God. Early sources stress humility in leaders, voluntary generosity, local plurality of elders, and a process aimed at winning the person back. That combination is the clearest available picture of how first-century communities treated their members. Bullies did not exist.

Armstrongism's record of control is not an unfortunate implementation detail. It is the predictable result of grafting a top-down "government of God" onto a claim of primitive restoration. For those who still want to keep the Sabbath and holy days, those can be observed without turning the church into a pyramid with fear at the base and money flowing to the apex.

Bullies exist in Churches of God for a simple reason: the system was built to produce and protect them. Top-down "government of God" is not a minor administrative preference. It is the distinctive that many splinter groups still treat as proof they are practicing first-century Christianity. It is also the distinctive that no first-century church actually practiced. Once a man is placed above question because he occupies an office in a laminated pyramid, ordinary safeguards collapse. Confidentiality disappears. Ministers' wives and inner circles become rumor mills. Unworthy men get ordained because loyalty to headquarters matters more than character. Members are taught they are a special class, so outsiders-and even other Christians-do not count. Gossip then makes restoration almost impossible: the "sin" is no longer the original offense; it is the fact that everyone already knows the story.

That is not an accident. It is what happens when servant language is kept in the sermon and lordship is kept in the structure. The New Testament told elders not to lord it over the flock. Armstrongism told the flock that resisting the man at the top was resisting God. Reproof was supposed to be done not in anger but in peace. In practice, anger, public humiliation, and the threat of being put out became tools of control. First-century discipline had a process and a goal: win the person back. Armstrongist discipline too often had a different goal: protect the organization and the office. Question the hierarchy and the process skipped Matthew 18 and went straight to exile. Friends were told to shun. Leaving was sold as leaving God.

The New Covenant does not authorize this.

Christ is the head of the church-not an apostle in Pasadena, Grover Beach, Edmond, Charlotte, or anywhere else. There is one mediator between God and humanity. Every believer is a priest. The Spirit was poured out on all flesh, not reserved for a ministerial caste. Leaders exist to equip the saints, not to own their consciences, their doctors, their marriages, or their friendships. Jesus explicitly rejected the Gentile model of lording it over others and told His followers the greatest must be a servant of all. Paul told the Galatians to stand firm in the freedom for which Christ set them free and not submit again to a yoke of slavery. The Bereans were commended for checking even an apostle against Scripture. Galatians 6:1 says to restore the one caught in a trespass gently, watching yourselves. None of that describes a system in which a handful of men can end your fellowship, isolate you from friends, and call it the government of God.

Members have allowed this because the doctrine trained them to. Fear of being "put out" was made larger than fear of enabling harm. Tithes kept flowing because withholding them was framed as stealing from God rather than refusing to fund unaccountable power. Silence was called humility. Endurance of abuse was called loyalty. That bargain is not faithfulness to the New Covenant. It is surrender of the very freedom the New Covenant created.

No Church of God group today practices first-century Christianity. Keeping the Sabbath and the holy days does not require a pyramid, three tithes traveling upward, home inspections, medical control, or a climate of fear. Those are later Armstrongite inventions wearing primitive clothing. The earliest communities were local, relational, and restoration-minded. Their leaders were to be tested, humble, and not lovers of money. Their members were expected to examine teaching and correct one another without a headquarters veto.

Members no longer have to pretend otherwise. Stop treating office as immunity. Stop confusing one man's authority with Christ's. Stop letting gossip replace the Matthew 18 process. Stop funding structures that punish questions and then claim to be the church Jesus built. If a leader will not be accountable, he is not exercising New Covenant ministry; he is exercising control. The New Covenant already named the alternative: one Head, many priests, servant leadership, gentle restoration, and freedom that no bully is entitled to revoke.

Based upon this Exit and Support Network letter on COG bullies:

Beware of Anyone in Authority in These Offshoot Churches:
September 3, 2026
Deacons and deaconess were hypocrites in my church area. A new couple came to me complaining about our deaconess. She organized camping in a wilderness area and the couple found it hard to cope camping with five young children. When the mother told the deaconess about her difficulties, she replied, “You have to practice for the place of safety!” I realized then that she had an unhealthy obsession with the place of safety.
So I told the couple what happened to me about two years before the couple started to attending services. The deaconess had organized another camping trip to another wilderness area from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. This particular spot was very popular with trail bikes so on Sabbath morning they roared up and down the steep hill next to the camping site. The deaconess was very unhappy with the “heathens” disturbing the peace on the Sabbath day. So I told that couple with the five children that the deaconess complained all weekend and they never went camping with her again. This happened 50 years ago so we are still waiting to go to the place of safety. 

 

As time marches on, it shows what I believed in was all nonsense. From the first day I met her I always thought she was very strange. Many years later she had to be put in an intensive care facility because she had dementia. 

 

My WCG church area had two deacons and both were proud bullies. I watched one deacon for years wash only the local ministers feet at Passover until that minister transferred to another area. Over the years I grew a healthy dislike for ordained people in my area. 

 

One by one when each of them died I never went to their funerals and it was a great relief to never see them again. 

 

If you are thinking of attending any of the WCG offshoot churches, beware of anyone who is in authority, they will make your life a misery. I still have trouble trusting other people because of my experience in WCG. –B. S.