When Prophecy Failed, The Churches Began: How 1844 Reached Herbert Armstrong

The Millerite movement of the 1830s and 1840s was not a denomination. It was an interdenominational millennial revival that formed during the Second Great Awakening, then shattered after a failed date for the Second Coming. From that wreckage came several distinct families of churches. Some kept Sunday and traditional views of the soul. Some adopted the Saturday Sabbath. Some spiritualized the return of Christ. Some later produced new prophetic systems of their own. Seventh-day Adventists, the Church of God (Seventh Day), the Bible Student movement that became Jehovah's Witnesses, and the later Worldwide Church of God of Herbert W. Armstrong all stand, at different distances, in that lineage. Joseph Smith's Latter-day Saint movement was not a child of Millerism, but it grew in the same burned-over religious climate and offered a competing millennial program. 

William Miller and the Logic of 1843-1844

William Miller (1782-1849) was a farmer and Baptist lay preacher from Low Hampton, New York. A veteran of the War of 1812, he passed through a period of deism before returning to the Bible with the determination of a man who wanted chronology rather than mystery. His key text was Daniel 8:14: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Using the day-for-a-year principle common among Protestant historicists, he dated the starting point to Artaxerxes' decree of 457 B.C. and concluded that the 2,300 years ended "about the year 1843." In his mind the "sanctuary" was the earth, to be cleansed by fire at Christ's visible return. 

Miller began preaching publicly in 1831. He was not, at first, a date-setter in the sensational sense. He spoke of a window rather than a day. Under pressure from a swelling movement, he later narrowed the period to the Jewish year running from March 21, 1843, to March 21, 1844. When that year passed, he admitted disappointment but still insisted the advent was near. A further Karaite-calendar date in April 1844 also failed. The movement did not collapse, because Millerism was more than a calendar. It was a premillennial protest against the dominant postmillennial optimism of American Protestantism-the belief that missions, revivals, and reform would gradually usher in the kingdom. 

Millerites expected a sudden, catastrophic coming. Estimates of adherents at the peak range from 50,000 to more than 100,000, with a much larger penumbra of hearers. They came from Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Christian Connection churches. The movement was never meant to be a new church. It was a warning inside existing churches. That is why its later children look so different from one another: they inherited a prophetic method and an advent hope, not a finished ecclesiastical constitution. 

Joshua V. Himes: Publicist of the Midnight Cry

Miller supplied the exegesis. Joshua Vaughan Himes (1805-1895) supplied the megaphone. Himes was pastor of Boston's Chardon Street Chapel, a Christian Connection minister, and already a reformer with abolitionist connections. After hearing Miller in 1839 he became convinced and asked the blunt question that launched a national campaign: if Miller really believed this, why was the warning not going everywhere? Himes then did what few rural preachers could do. He organized.

In March 1840 he launched Signs of the Times in Boston, the first major Millerite paper, later followed by New York's Midnight Cry. He published editions of Miller's lectures, hundreds of tracts, and the famous 1842 prophetic chart designed by Charles Fitch and Apollos Hale. He arranged general conferences beginning in Boston in October 1840, booked lecture tours into the great eastern cities and as far west as Cincinnati, and commissioned what was then one of the largest canvas tents in the United States. Camp meetings, lithographs, reading rooms, and a network of agents turned a regional curiosity into a mass media event. Historians have called it an unprecedented religious publicity campaign for its time. 

Himes never wanted a new sect. After 1844 he spent decades trying to hold Adventists together, then helped shape the Sunday-keeping bodies that emerged from the Albany Conference. Late in life he drifted away from organized Adventism after factional fighting and personal strain. His historical importance remains: without Himes, Miller would likely have remained a New England itinerant. With Himes, Millerism became a national crisis of expectation. 

The Seventh-Month Movement and the Great Disappointment

The spring of 1844 was already a disappointment. Then, at an Exeter, New Hampshire, camp meeting in August 1844, Samuel S. Snow preached what became known as the "true midnight cry" or seventh-month message. Linking Daniel 8:14 to the typology of the Day of Atonement, and using a Karaite reckoning of the tenth day of the seventh month, he fixed October 22, 1844, as the day Christ would come. Miller and Himes accepted the date only late and reluctantly. Many ordinary believers embraced it with total seriousness. Some neglected harvests. Some settled affairs. Some waited together through the night. 

October 22 ended like any other day. Hiram Edson's later recollection captured the mood: "Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before." The episode entered history as the Great Disappointment. Popular caricatures of Millerites in white robes on rooftops were exaggerated, but the emotional and social cost was real. Believers had been expelled from churches, mocked in the press, and left without a date to organize their lives around. Miller himself lived until 1849, still expecting the advent soon, but his public authority was broken. 

The movement then fractured along three rough lines. Some spiritualized the event and said Christ had come invisibly or that the kingdom was already inward. Some concluded the chronology was wrong and looked for new dates or simply for nearness without dates. A smaller group said the date was right but the event was wrong: something of cosmic importance had occurred, but not on earth. That last path led to Seventh-day Adventism. 

Albany, the Evangelical Adventists, and the American Millennial Association

In April 1845, Miller, Himes, Josiah Litch, Sylvester Bliss, and others convened the Mutual Conference of Adventists in Albany, New York. About sixty delegates tried to define "the original advent faith," reject fanaticism, and keep evangelism open rather than accept a "shut door" that closed probation for the world. They produced a ten-point statement that kept premillennial advent hope but dropped specific dating. They also rejected emerging Sabbatarian claims and claims of special illumination. The Albany body became the institutional trunk of Sunday-keeping Adventism. 

From that trunk came the group later called Evangelical Adventists. In 1858 they organized the American Millennial Association in Boston, associated with the Advent Herald (later Messiah's Herald). They were distinctive among Adventist heirs in holding to the conscious state of the dead and eternal punishment of the wicked-positions closer to Miller's own Baptist inheritance than to the conditional immortality that many other Adventists adopted from George Storrs and related teachers. They formed state conferences and tried to remain a respectable evangelical Adventist body. They did not last. Younger members drifted into other churches; by the early twentieth century the denomination had virtually disappeared from the census of religious bodies. Their importance is genealogical: they show that the "main line" of Millerism after Albany was not Seventh-day Adventism, but a Sunday, immortal-soul Adventism that eventually evaporated. 

Another Albany descendant, organized more firmly in 1860, became the Advent Christian Church. It kept Sunday worship, rejected Ellen White's visions, and commonly taught conditional immortality. It survives in modest numbers. A related Life and Advent Union, associated with Storrs, later merged into that stream. These groups matter because they preserved Miller's advent emphasis while discarding both Sabbatarianism and the 1844 sanctuary reinterpretation. 

Seventh-day Adventists: Date Right, Event Wrong

The Sabbatarian remnant took a different road. On October 23, 1844, Hiram Edson reported a conviction, while crossing a field near Port Gibson, New York, that the sanctuary to be cleansed was in heaven, not on earth. Christ had entered the Most Holy Place to begin a final work of atonement. That idea, developed with O. R. L. Crosier and others, became the doctrine of the heavenly sanctuary and, later, investigative judgment. Rachel Oakes Preston, a Seventh Day Baptist, introduced the Saturday Sabbath to Adventists at Washington, New Hampshire. Joseph Bates, James White, and Ellen Harmon (later Ellen G. White) fused Sabbath, sanctuary, and continuing advent hope. Ellen White's visions gave the small group cohesion after 1844. The name Seventh-day Adventist was adopted in 1860; the General Conference was organized in 1863. 

This was not a simple continuation of Miller's system. Albany Adventists had rejected both the Sabbath and claims of prophetic illumination. The Sabbatarians insisted they were the true heirs because they kept Miller's historicist method and the significance of 1844, while correcting the nature of the event. Over time, they became by far the largest Millerite descendant, adding health reform, education, and a global mission structure that Miller never imagined. They also inherited the movement's apocalyptic intensity and its suspicion that most of Christendom had failed the advent test. 

Church of God (Seventh Day): Sabbatarians Without Ellen White

Not all Sabbath-keeping Adventists accepted Ellen White. Gilbert Cranmer (1814-1903), a former Methodist and Christian Connection preacher who had been a Millerite by 1843, accepted the Sabbath in 1852 through Joseph Bates but later rejected the Whites' authority. In 1858 his Michigan group separated from the circle around James and Ellen White. Independent Iowa Sabbatarians joined them. The Hope of Israel, begun in 1863 and later The Bible Advocate, spread the message. A General Conference of the Church of God was organized in 1884; the body later took the name Church of God (Seventh Day), often abbreviated COG7. 

COG7 shared with Seventh-day Adventists the Saturday Sabbath, conditional immortality or related non-traditional views of the dead, and advent expectation. It rejected the investigative judgment as formulated by the Whites, rejected Ellen White as a prophetic authority, and generally held a more congregational, Bible-only ethos-"my Bible and only my Bible," in Cranmer's slogan. The church later split (notably in 1933 between Denver and Salem conferences). It remained small compared with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but it became the immediate institutional ancestor of Armstrongism. 

Jehovah's Witnesses: A Later Adventist Mutation

Jehovah's Witnesses are not Seventh-day Adventists, and they do not claim Miller as founder. Their path is nonetheless Adventist. Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916), raised Presbyterian then Congregational, lost confidence in hellfire and election, then recovered faith after hearing Adventist preaching, especially Jonas Wendell, around 1868-1870. He studied with Second Adventists such as George Stetson and absorbed the conditionalist teachings of George Storrs. In 1876 he partnered with Nelson H. Barbour, a former Millerite editor of Herald of the Morning. Barbour taught that Christ had returned invisibly in 1874 and that the "Gentile Times" would end in 1914. 

This was Millerism revised rather than abandoned. The historicist year-day method remained. Failed visible dates were reinterpreted as invisible events. After splitting with Barbour, Russell launched Zion's Watch Tower in 1879 and built the Bible Student movement through books and tracts. After Russell's death in 1916, Joseph F. Rutherford centralized the organization; the name Jehovah's Witnesses was adopted in 1931. Distinctive Witness teachings-no immortal soul, no hellfire, rejection of the Trinity, an invisible presence of Christ, and a succession of revised end-time dates-grew from this Adventist-restorationist soil, not from Geneva or Rome. Britannica and standard histories of Adventism therefore list the Witnesses among the successful modern groups that emerged, at one or two removes, from the Millerite crisis. 

Armstrongism: COG7, Radio, and the God Family

Herbert W. Armstrong (1892-1986) entered the story through the Church of God (Seventh Day). In the mid-1920s his wife Loma accepted the Sabbath under the influence of Oregon COG7 members. Armstrong's own study led him to Saturday observance, rejection of mainstream holidays he considered pagan, and a fiercely biblicist, anti-traditional posture. He was ordained in the Oregon Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day) in 1931 and wrote for The Bible Advocate. He then added doctrines COG7 did not officially require, especially British-Israelism (the idea that western nations descend from the lost tribes of Israel) and mandatory observance of the annual festivals of Leviticus 23. Credentials were withdrawn. In 1934 he began the Radio Church of God and The Plain Truth. The broadcast later became The World Tomorrow; the church was renamed the Worldwide Church of God in 1968. 

Armstrongism is therefore a grandchild of Millerism through the Sabbatarian Adventist line that refused Ellen White. It kept the seventh-day Sabbath, advent urgency, dietary concerns, and a sense of belonging to a remnant church. It added festival law, British-Israel identity, a strong hierarchical ministry, and a distinctive doctrine of God.

That doctrine is the point of sharpest departure from historic Christianity and even from most other Adventists. Armstrong taught that God is a family, not a closed Trinity of three coequal persons. At present, he said, the God family consists of two beings: the Father and the Word who became Jesus Christ. God's purpose in creating humanity is to reproduce Himself. Converted people are begotten as children of God and, at the resurrection, are to be born into that family as literal spirit-composed sons of God-"God as God is God," in the language his magazines used, while still insisting that the Father remains supreme and that no one becomes the Father or replaces Christ. Critics called this a form of deification or a God-family pluralism. Armstrong presented it as the central "mystery of the ages": man was made in God's image so that God might expand His own kind. After Armstrong's death in 1986, the Worldwide Church of God repudiated most of these teachings and moved toward evangelical Protestantism. Dozens of splinter groups preserved the older Armstrong system. 

Joseph Smith in the Same Millennial Weather

Joseph Smith (1805-1844) was not a Millerite, and Millerites generally regarded Mormonism as a rival delusion. Himes published material attacking it. The two movements nevertheless occupied the same American moment: New York's burned-over district, distrust of established churches, hunger for restoration, and expectation that history was reaching its climax. Early Mormonism was intensely millenarian. It gathered a people to build Zion as a place of refuge before the end. Smith used some of the same long-range prophetic arithmetic circulating in the culture, including 2,520-year calculations, but he rejected Miller's 1843-1844 dates. He said Christ would not come in 1844, nor within forty years, and pointed instead toward a later horizon around 1890-1891 as the earliest plausible season-itself a speculation that also failed.

The comparison is useful because it shows what Millerism was and was not. Both Smith and Miller claimed to recover neglected biblical truth against a corrupt Christendom. Both produced communities organized around imminent judgment. Mormonism built a new scripture, priesthood, and gathering place. Millerism began as a protest inside existing churches and only later generated denominations. Where Armstrong later taught that humans will enter the God family as God is God, Latter-day Saint theology developed its own exaltation teaching-that the faithful may become like God. The resemblance is analogical and cultural, not a direct line from Smith to Armstrong. Both reflect a nineteenth-century American willingness to take biblical language about children of God, heirs, and divine image with a literalism that older Protestant confessions refused. 

How the Family Tree Actually Runs

A clean genealogy would look like this:

Miller's historicist advent preaching, amplified by Himes, created a mass movement that failed on October 22, 1844.

The Albany Conference conserved a Sunday, near-advent, anti-fanatic Adventism. 

From it came the Evangelical Adventists / American Millennial Association (now gone) and the Advent Christian Church (still small).

A Sabbatarian minority reinterpreted 1844 as a heavenly event and accepted Ellen White. That became the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Another Sabbatarian minority accepted the Sabbath and advent hope but refused White's prophetic role. That became the Church of God (Seventh Day).

Second Adventist preachers and papers of the post-1844 world-Wendell, Storrs, Barbour-shaped Charles Taze Russell. His Bible Students, reorganized under Rutherford, became Jehovah's Witnesses.

From COG7, Herbert Armstrong built the Radio / Worldwide Church of God. After 1986, "Armstrongism" survived mainly in offshoot Churches of God.

Each step added or subtracted a doctrine: Sabbath or Sunday; visible or invisible advent; immortal soul or soul sleep; Trinity or binitarian/unitarian God; a prophetess or no prophetess; 1844 as heavenly judgment, 1874 as invisible presence, 1914 as the end of Gentile times, or an imminent kingdom to be announced by radio. The family resemblance is the conviction that mainstream churches had lost the plot of prophecy and that a remnant must restore it before the end. 

Conclusion

William Miller was not a charlatan in the ordinary sense. He was a sincere historicist who treated Daniel as a coded timetable and the New Testament advent hope as an event that could be scheduled. Joshua Himes proved that modern publicity can turn a private calculation into a public destiny. 

The Great Disappointment then did what failed dates usually do: it did not simply refute a prediction. It forced believers to choose among denial, revision, spiritualization, and new revelation.

That is why Armstrongism can be called a distant child of Millerism without making Miller responsible for Armstrong's God-family doctrine. The inheritance is a method and a mood: the Bible as a last-days codebook, the churches as Babylon or at least asleep, time as a line that can be measured, and salvation as entrance into a coming government of God. Seventh-day Adventists solved 1844 by moving the event to heaven. Jehovah's Witnesses solved later failed dates by making Christ's coming invisible. COG7 kept Sabbath and Scripture while refusing a modern prophet. 

Armstrong took that Sabbatarian remnant and radicalized both law and ontology, teaching that the goal of human life is not merely to see God but to become God as God is, members of an expanding divine family.

Joseph Smith's parallel career in the same decades underlines the American pattern. In a culture that had disestablished churches and democratized interpretation, millennial certainty became a form of authority. When the day passed, and Jesus did not appear in the clouds, the energy did not vanish. It institutionalized. Some institutions grew into global churches. Some dwindled into footnotes. All of them illustrate a hard lesson of religious history: a movement organized around a date can survive the date only by changing what the date meant. The children of 1844 have been arguing about that meaning ever since.

Silent Pilgrim

Former WCG Member Named One of 100 Most Influential People In Art

Time Magazine has a new article up about influential people in art, and Amy Sherald, a former WCG member, is named as one of them. We featured her here in an article on July 19, 2019. 

Former Church of God Member Is Michelle Obama's Official Portraitist

Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art

Successful artists are the product of their gifts, but as Sherald proves, they are also products of what they lacked. Sherald grew up in a home that followed the teachings of the Worldwide Church of God, which did not celebrate, among other things, birthdays, Halloween, movies, most dancing, and TV. Her home kept a Sabbath on Saturdays. Not that Sherald minded. “For me as a child who was self-conscious and introverted, I would choose to stay in and draw rather than go outside,” she says. “It was like a safe way to play that was not with other people.” Her father, a dentist, was diagnosed with Parkinson's when she was 7. She would often just sit with him. “When you have a parent that doesn't communicate well and they're also going through something they want to hide from you, it kind of opens up another way of learning about emotion and communication.”

Vogue Magazine article

Amy Sherald, Michelle Obama’s Portraitist, Readies her New York Debut

Crackpot Bob Discovers Frankenmice and Manpigs and Immediately Needs a Nap and a Tithe Increase

Crackpot Bob has once again located a scientific paper, clutched his pearls so hard they filed a restraining order, and declared the end times officially upgraded. This week's horror is "Frankenmice" and the ever-reliable "manpigs." A Stanford team grew cortical organoids from human stem cells and transplanted them into newborn mice whose own cortex had been genetically prevented from developing. The human tissue survived, expanded, made connections, and even produced some rare cell types that are hard to study any other way. The mice remained mice. They did not start quoting Shakespeare, demand voting rights, open a law firm, or start a splinter church. They just sat there being useful models for autism, schizophrenia, cerebral palsy, and frontotemporal dementia. 

Crackpot Bob read the Daily Mail headline "Rise of the Frankenmice!" and apparently stopped there. Suddenly we have "human brain tissues that are part mice," inventors of evil things, lack of natural affection, and a solemn reminder that we must sigh and cry over abominations so God can put a mark on our foreheads. He even dusted off the old half-human, half-pig video because nothing says "I am a serious Bible teacher" like recycling 2010s chimera panic. The research is explicitly not creating miniature human brains. The scientists said so. Crackpot Bob heard "half-human BRAINS" and his prophecy engine started smoking. 

This is not theology. This is content creation to keep his gullible followers whipped up in a constant state of frenzy. Fear is the product. A new "abomination" every few weeks keeps the audience anxious, dependent, and conveniently in need of the one man who is brave enough to "cry aloud and spare not" while sitting in a leather chair in front of a glowing Earth poster. The formula is reliable: take a real (if ethically debated) scientific advance, strip away the purpose and the caveats, slap on Romans 1 and Ezekiel 9, and announce that people who do not share your particular flavor of end-times anxiety have "a form of godliness but deny its power."

New Covenant Christians do not have to swallow this hogwash. The New Covenant is not a never-ending purity-code update service. Jesus did not die so that we could spend our days ranking lab mice on an abomination scale. The old "do not mix kinds" rules were about agriculture and cloth, not 21st-century organoid research aimed at understanding diseases that actually destroy families. God is not sitting in heaven clutching His copy of Mystery of the Ages because someone grew human cortical cells in a mouse so they might one day help a child with epilepsy. The "spirit in man" is not leaking out through a pipette. A mouse with a lot of human cortical tissue is still a mouse. It does not possess a human soul, a human conscience, or a human capacity for covenant with God. Pretending otherwise is just typical COG mythology.

Crackpot Bob's real objection is not ethical nuance. It is that science keeps doing things without first asking him whether they fit his last-days timeline. Knowledge increases (Daniel 12:4). That is not a bug. It is the verse. Some of that knowledge will be used foolishly. Some of it will be used to reduce suffering. Pretending every advance is an "invention of evil things" is how you keep people looking at you instead of looking at Christ. The New Covenant already told us where to look. We do not need a new monster-of-the-week to stay faithful.

The mice are not coming for your salvation. The manpigs are not forming a union or a competing splinter church. Crackpot Bob, however, will almost certainly find the next "abomination" before the organoids finish maturing. That is his actual business model. You are allowed to mock

Prepping for Petra: Armstrongism's Frequent-Flyer Program for the Faithful

God's most highly favored Crackpot Prophet popped his ecclesiastical, self-righteous cork the other day about preppers who prepare for end-time events or natural disasters when the infrastructure breaks down after some calamity. Freeze-dried foods and other prepping foods in giant containers were a black market economy in Pasadena for many years in the 70's and early 80's. It was one of the typical COG pyramid schemes that enriched those above you in the chain of sales while you killed yourself selling products and never got anything but an empty wallet.

For decades, Armstrongism sold a very specific vacation package. Not Hawaii. Not the Feast site with the better buffet. Petra, Jordan: the rose-red city half as old as time, and, if the ministers were to be believed, the only zip code God would honor once the bombs started falling and the Germans invaded the United States. One minister in my church area said that we would be kicked out of the country and forced to fly on DC-10's and 727's which had a string of deadly crashes. They would force us on those planes, hoping they would crash before we got to Jordan. COG ministers could always be found to be such amazing agents of comfort and joy. 

Then, once we made it to Jordan, the Jordanians would welcome us with open arms because God had stopped all military action happening in countries around them from reaching Jordan because of his special people who were to arrive there. The Jordanians were to be spared because we were soooooooooooo special. Then God, with a snap of his godly fingers, would instantly turn every cave into a well-furnished home with proper flooring, electricity, air conditioning, furniture, fully stocked pantries, clothing for everyone, and individual libraries in each cave that had all of Herbert Armstrong's books and articles in it. After all, we needed to memorize that material in order to teach the remaining sinful scum left over after the worldwide annihilation had ended.

Anyway, as Crackpot Bob likes to say, in the 1960s and early 1970s, members were told to keep "Petra bags" by the door-passports, Bibles, cash, good walking shoes, clean underwear, maybe a change of clothes-because the flight to the Place of Safety might come with the suddenness of a fire drill and the logistics of an airline that had not published a schedule. The 1972 date came and went. The 1975 Wonderful World Tomorrow did not arrive on time. Herbert Armstrong himself eventually snapped at the flock to get their minds off Petra, which is the prophetic equivalent of a travel agent refunding your ticket after selling you the destination for twenty years. The bags, however, never quite left the hallway.

Enter Crackpot Bob, scolding American "preppers" for stuffing 50-pound bug-out bags with tuna, flashlights, and a hand-crank radio while Grandma and the kid with the inhaler are somehow expected to yomp into the wilderness like Navy SEALs. Fair point, as far as it goes. Most families are not a National Geographic expedition. Then, without breaking stride, he explains that real prepping is scriptural: watch, pray, qualify as a Philadelphian, and wait to be whisked to a wilderness hideout that is not Montana, not Canada, and-wouldn't you know it-may well be in the general neighborhood of Petra. 

Crackpot Bob's system is the same two-class ticket Armstrongism has punched since the Radio Church of God days. Revelation 12 is read as an airline seating chart. One group-the "Philadelphian remnant," which in practice means the people who accept his particular restoration of Armstrong's mantle-gets eagle wings and a wilderness meal plan for three and a half years. The other group, conveniently labeled Laodicean, gets Satan, persecution, and the privilege of learning the hard way. This is a remarkably useful doctrine if you happen to be the man who decides which congregation is Philadelphia this decade. It turns church loyalty into a survival strategy. Miss the right split, and your bug-out bag is just luggage for the Beast.

He is not even coy about the geography. No American state is the place. No Canadian province. The candidate list still tilts toward Jordanian rock, Sela, Moab, caves, and the same Isaiah 16 / Revelation 12 collage Herman Hoeh was assembling in The Good News while members were packing those bags. Crackpot Bob hedges-Petra may be it, it might be nearby, don't be dogmatic-which is the traditional Armstrongist weather report: 90 percent chance of Petra, 10 percent chance of "God knows," 100 percent chance you should keep listening to this work.

Mocking suburban preppers for unrealistic fitness standards while maintaining a theology in which ordinary families must one day flee, wander between countries, and hole up in a desert tourist site is not "prepping for reality." It is prepping for a sermon on fear.

A Christian under the New Covenant is not a member of a travel club whose safety depends on guessing the correct Nabataean ruin. Christ's promise is not "keep your passport current and join the right era of the church." It is that nothing-tribulation included-can separate the believer from the love of God in Him. The church's vocation in hard times is witness, endurance, and love of neighbor, not a three-and-a-half-year cave internship while the rest of the Body is written off as lukewarm.

The texts Armstrongism tapes together do not require a UNESCO World Heritage Site. "Wilderness" in Revelation is the Bible's old language for God sustaining a people who cannot sustain themselves-manna, not a packing list. Jesus' warnings about flight in Judea were spoken to people who could see armies around Jerusalem, not to families in Pasadena waiting for a prophet to announce the charter flight. Luke 21:36 is about wakefulness and prayer, not about qualifying for the only lifeboat in a sea of "Laodicean" Christians.

Fear is a cheap catechism. It keeps people scanning headlines, rating other churches, and treating tomorrow's newspaper as a boarding announcement. It also happens to be excellent for holding a small religious brand together after the original 1972 departure time was missed and the original apostle is long gone.

God's Apostle and Chief Overseer Has Died!

 

The Ambassador-Apostle Who Couldn't Outrun a Foot Burn: 

Kenneth D. Jackson Sr. and the Endless Armstrongite Assembly Line 

of False Prophets

There have been conversations about this guy for more than a decade. (We reported about him here on Banned in 2014.) Apostle, Chief Overseer, Grand Chief of State, Permanent Minister of Ecclesiastical, Indigenous & International Law & Justice, Special Attorney, International CEO, Traditional Medicine physician, Inventor, and-when the mood struck-His Excellency Ambassador Kenneth D. Jackson Sr. 

Jackson was a former Worldwide Church of God member. In the grand tradition of Armstrongism, yet another man who decided he had special insight from his "god," a wooden seal of authority, and a divine mandate to wear a crown while Africans supposedly paraded him like royalty. 

A young guy who grew up in the group said Jackson claimed he had been on Herbert W. Armstrong's security detail. People who actually spent time around Pasadena and HWA's home never saw him there. Later comments from people who attended the Macon congregation in the old days were even clearer: he was a regular member who led prayers and songs. The HWA bodyguard story was one more elaborate lie. He looked familiar the way a lot of mid-level WCG faces look familiar-because they all sat through the same sermons about church eras and the one true remnant. Then they went off and started their own. 

The group he built was called Sovereign Church of 'ELOHIYM International (SCEI-1BLOOD). They kept the Sabbath, the holy days, the British-Israel flavor, the tithe-until-your-kids-have-no-inheritance model, and the conviction that everyone else was in a false church. Classic splinter DNA. Jackson taught that before HWA died, he was entrusted with one of three official WCG "seals of authority." One stayed with Armstrong, one went to Joseph Tkach, and the third-conveniently-went to him as part of God's plan to raise up the seventh and final era after Tkach inevitably apostasized. During a two-day history sermon, he produced a wooden seal. A high-level member later found a second, half-finished, damaged seal of the same wood and design sitting in the office where the "official" one had been kept. It looked exactly like a first attempt at forging the thing. The finished seal vanished after it was handed to JoAnne Jackson with a strong hint that silence would be wise. By now it has almost certainly been destroyed or buried. That single prop told you everything you needed to know about the rest of his résumé. 

Until around 2003, the sermons were still recognizable Bible studies. Coats and ties. Actual scripture. Then Jackson took a trip to Sierra Leone. The rice farms in the Bo District produced enough of a spectacle that locals staged parades and brought gifts. Adoration has a way of going to a certain kind of man's head. He came back wearing royal clothing, gold, diamonds, and a crown he had constructed for himself. Sabbath services turned into rambling recitals of his exploits, visions, prophetic powers, and ecclesiastical titles. He rarely opened the Bible anymore. Why bother when Elohiym was downloading new testimony directly into the Apostle? The church name changed from International Church of God's Elect to Sovereign Church of 'ELOHIYM International. 1BLOOD International was registered as the outreach NGO that would save West Africa with seed rice and micro-socialism under the single living Apostle who had succeeded Herbert Armstrong. 

The claims grew as fast as the titles. Millions of followers. Vast orphanages. Hospitals where the unlicensed "traditional medicine physician" performed hernia surgeries and then lectured patients about demons. Ambassador-at-Large for The Gambia. Knight of Malta. Bloodline nobility. Venture capitalists from three states and five countries lining up at the Ramada Plaza in Macon-except the raw footage shows him walking into an empty room, greeting an imaginary audience, and filming a scripted interview with Iyel Bey, a longtime member posing as an independent journalist. The entire shoot lasted about ten minutes. 

Former members were less impressed. One young man who grew up in it said the millions were actually thousands, and that more than half of them were abandoned by the church. The orphanages and outreaches were not legitimate. Families tithed until the biological children had nothing left and the "church family" came first. A mother in her sixties had nothing to show for decades of giving; when the father died, the kids paid for the funeral. Jackson's son Smoke ran the Macon operation. People who still liked the family would not speak ill of them even while watching the damage. That is how these groups keep going. 

There were darker notes. In 2013, a member, Andres Rivera-Fuentes, was arrested in Twiggs County, Georgia, after allegations involving a minor in the church; he reportedly admitted the acts. Children were described as being padlocked into trailers at night at one compound. Armed guards. Jackson told congregations that checking his words against the Bible was what only a fool would do, because Paul had no more authority than he did and Elohiym had already confirmed him through healings and interventions. He compared himself to Moses. The charisma was real. So was the demand that members stop thinking. 

This is the Armstrongite production line. Herbert Armstrong claimed unique restoration of truth and apostolic authority. After he died, the church fractured into scores of self-righteous and self-appointed men who each decided they were the next one: Flurry, Pack, Weinland, Thiel, Meredith, and the rest. Jackson simply added a crown, an African rice narrative, and the word Elohiym spelled with an apostrophe. Same playbook. Same one-true-church claim. Same financial extraction. Same allergy to verification. Same habit of declaring critics agents of Satan. He even managed to sound like Buffalo Bill "Ysrael" Hawkins of the House of Yahweh-another man who took Armstrong's framework and ran it into even stranger territory.

Jackson spent his later years in West Africa. In September 2026, family sources confirmed he had died from health complications after a chemical burn to his foot. The man who received direct visions from the Most High, who wore a crown on the Sabbath, who told people not to check the Bible because he was the authority, was taken out by a burn on his foot. Leadership passed to his son, Bishop Kenneth D. "Smoke" Jackson Jr. His wife, JoAnne, had already predeceased him. The compound on Sgoda Road in the Macon area was described by a nearby observer as run-down while the organization continued collecting thousands a month. He was never HWA's security. He was never given a seal of authority. He was never an ambassador appointed by any government that would admit it. He was one more product of a movement that teaches ambitious men they can declare themselves apostles, collect the tithe, and wait for the world to notice. The world mostly didn't. A chemical burn did. The rest of the Armstrongite remnant will keep producing the next one. They always do.

Hat tip to SCEI-1 Blood Cult Watch

Also see: 

The COG's Biggest Chief Overseer; Apostle; Grand Chief of State; Permanent Minister of Ecclesiastical, Indigenous & International Law & Justice; Special Attorney; International CEO; Traditional Medicine physician; Inventor

Dave Pack News Flash: The Kingdom Will NOT Come on Atonement

News Flash: The Kingdom Will NOT Come on Atonement

David C. Pack of The Restored Church of God dissolved nine weeks of preaching by announcing that it is impossible for the Kingdom of God to arrive on the Day of Atonement. The long, slow crawl that began on July 11, 2026, with “The Greatest Untold Story! (Part 640),” just got longer and slower.

It is time once again for everyone in RCG who still bothers to take notes to tear out all their pages from Parts 640, 641, 642, 643, 644, 645, 646, 647, and 648. You may now file them into the usual pile.

The Kingdom of God Will NOT Arrive on Atonement.
Not This Year. Not Any Year.

During "The Greatest Untold Story! (Part 649)" given on September 12, 2026, the Pastor General admitted that "no man knows the day and the hour" (again) but still tried to persuade members that his new theory can hold water: The Kingdom of God will arrive a few days before or after the Day of Atonement...or maybe a few days before or after the Feast of Tabernacles.

Considering that Atonement begins tonight at sunset, does anyone want to take bets on whether this will pan out for him?

Part 649 – September 12, 2026
@ 04:20 How is a Day of Atonement start possible in light of these things? I could have listed more. It’s difficult, I dare say, impossible to see how.

@ 07:15 But it could tarry a little bit. Well, Atonement can’t do that. Neither can the Feast of Tabernacles. So, we got a problem with either one of those dates.

@ 1:09:15 I thought I knew the Day of Atonement. And I did. I but I never saw it in the context that you're forced to when you're coming up to it and trying to figure out how in the world would you start the Kingdom on the Day of Atonement? …Does the Kingdom come one or maybe two days before the Day of Atonement?

@ 1:39:55 So I'm just telling you, brethren, I I my hands are off of the date.

@ 1:42:47 So I I I'm willing to believe I don't know the day or the hour. I just know it cannot be Atonement.And I don't see how it's Tabernacles.

David C. Pack insisted on clinging to his legitimacy by spending 110 minutes dragging the brethren of The Restored Church of God through a series of vague possibilities. None of which will prove to be correct.

The Pastor General is painfully unaware of how embarrassing he is when he makes ridiculous comments in front of the entire church. He was very proud of himself for not setting a date even though he admitted he did not know.

If he knew, he would have said it.

At the very end of Part 649, Dave admitted to something that he should have been ashamed of.

@ 1:51:29 We don't know. I didn't give you a date. And you know what gives me great joy? Oh, is that gonna frustrate our enemies.

David C. Pack has already set 145 failed dates since 2013, including Atonement 2026.

He is the only one who is frustrated.

Marc Cebrian

News Flash: The Kingdom Will NOT Come on Atonement

Once for All: How Hebrews Ends the Day of Atonement

The Day of Atonement is here and various COG groups fast this day beleiving it is still required, but it is not a New Covenant command. The New Covenant does not demand fasting on this specific day or treat it as a binding annual ritual. Armstrongist groups continue the practice because it is central to their identity as keepers of "God's festivals," and in high-control settings it functions as one element of a larger legalistic system of required observances, financial demands, and loyalty tests.

Old Covenant ritual vs. New Covenant fulfillment

The Day of Atonement is detailed in Leviticus 16 and 23:26-32. It involved the high priest entering the Holy of Holies once a year with blood, two goats (one sacrificed, one sent away as the scapegoat), and the command to "afflict your souls," which later Jewish practice understood as a complete fast. It was the most solemn day of the Mosaic calendar. 

The New Testament treats this as a shadow fulfilled in Christ. Hebrews 9-10 is explicit: the annual ritual could never take away sins; Christ entered the true heavenly sanctuary once for all with His own blood and sat down, ending the need for repeated offerings. "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin" (Hebrews 10:18). The tearing of the temple veil at Jesus' death further signals the end of restricted access that the Day of Atonement ritual represented. 

Colossians 2:16-17 groups festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths together as "a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." The consistent mainstream Christian reading is that these calendar observances are no longer binding. Romans 14 and Galatians 4:8-11 likewise warn against making days a matter of obligation or judgment. 

Acts 27:9 mentions "the Fast" only as a seasonal time marker for dangerous sailing weather. Luke uses a well-known Jewish term for dating; it does not constitute a command that Gentile or Jewish Christians must keep the day. The early church fasted for specific purposes (commissioning workers, appointing elders), not as an annual atonement ritual.

 

Fasting under the New Covenant

Fasting appears in the New Testament as a voluntary discipline, not a mandated calendar event. Jesus assumes His followers will fast ("when you fast," Matthew 6:16-18) and predicts they will after He is taken away (Matthew 9:15), but He gives no required days, durations, or connection to the Day of Atonement. The only Torah-commanded fast was the Day of Atonement. Once that system is fulfilled, fasting is a matter of personal or congregational liberty for prayer and seeking God, not a requirement for atonement or covenant standing. 

Armstrongist groups (United Church of God, Living Church of God, Philadelphia Church of God, and others that retain Herbert W. Armstrong's teachings) disagree. They argue Leviticus 23 remains binding, the rituals of Leviticus 16 are fulfilled but the day itself is not, and Acts 27:9 proves the early church kept it. They treat the 24-hour complete fast as an enduring command that pictures both Christ's work and the future binding of Satan. 

How the practice functions in Armstrongism

Herbert W. Armstrong taught that true Christians must observe the seventh-day Sabbath and the annual holy days of Leviticus 23, including a full fast on Atonement as a precurser to the Feast of Tabernacles. These days were presented as pictures of God's plan of salvation and as tests of obedience. Failure to keep them marked someone as outside "God's church." This was paired with British Israelism, a hierarchical "government of God" through the ministry, rejection of the Trinity, and a multi-tithe system (first tithe to the church, second tithe for holy-day expenses and travel, third tithe every third year, plus extra offerings). The original Worldwide Church of God after Armstrong's 1986 death rejected these requirements and moved toward evangelical Protestantism (now Grace Communion International). Numerous splinter groups did not. In those groups the holy days, including Atonement, serve several practical functions:

They create a distinct identity separate from "apostate" mainstream Christianity.

They require time off work, travel to designated sites (especially the Feast of Tabernacles), and extra expense-reinforcing dependence on the organization.

The complete fast on Atonement is framed as humility and "afflicting the soul," which can be used to measure submission.

Combined with disfellowshipment threats, warnings about the unpardonable sin for questioning leadership, and the claim that only this remnant has the full truth, the observances become loyalty markers. 

Former members and critics have documented authoritarian structures, financial pressure, isolation from family who do not keep the days, and fear-based control. Not every congregation or individual minister operates the same way, and some members experience the days as meaningful worship. The pattern across many Armstrongist groups, however, is that required calendar observance plus exclusive claims plus top-down government produces high-demand religion rather than the liberty described in the New Testament. The New Covenant centers on Christ's finished work, the law written on the heart, and freedom from the ceremonial shadows. Treating an Old Covenant fast day as a continuing command for Christians reverses that order.

New Covenant Christians do not need to observe the Day of Atonement as a required practice. 

The annual ritual, including its commanded fast, belonged to the Old Covenant system that pointed forward to Christ. Once the reality arrived, the shadow no longer binds the people of God.

1. The New Covenant replaces the old sacrificial system. Jeremiah 31:31-34 promised a new covenant in which God would write His law on hearts and remember sins no more. Hebrews 8 quotes that promise and declares the first covenant obsolete. The Day of Atonement was the high point of the old system: one day each year the high priest entered the Most Holy Place with animal blood to cover the nation's sins. That covering was temporary and repeated. The New Covenant is built on a better priesthood, a better sacrifice, and a better promise. Christians live under the new arrangement, not the old one. 

2. Christ's single sacrifice ended the need for annual atonement. Hebrews 9-10 is the clearest New Testament commentary on the Day of Atonement. The high priest entered the earthly sanctuary every year "not without blood." Christ entered the true heavenly sanctuary once for all with His own blood and obtained eternal redemption. "He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Because forgiveness has been secured, "there is no longer any offering for sin." Repeating an atonement ritual would imply that Christ's work was incomplete. New Covenant Christians rest in a finished work, not an annual reenactment. 

3. The holy days were shadows; Christ is the substance. Colossians 2:16-17 groups festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths together and calls them "a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." The Day of Atonement pictured two things: the removal of guilt and the removal of the source of sin. Both are fulfilled in Jesus-the sacrifice and the scapegoat. Once the substance has come, insisting on the shadow as a requirement reverses the order of revelation. Believers are not to be judged regarding these days because the days themselves no longer function as covenant obligations. 

4. The New Testament never commands the church to keep the dayJesus observed the Mosaic calendar during His earthly ministry because He was born under the law. After His death and resurrection, the apostolic letters contain no instruction that Gentile or Jewish Christians must fast on the tenth day of the seventh month. Acts 27:9 mentions "the Fast" only as a calendar reference for the season. The early church fasted for specific ministry decisions, not as an annual atonement rite. The absence of any command is decisive: what God requires under the New Covenant He states plainly. He does not. 

5. Atonement is something Christ did, not something Christians repeat. Under the old covenant, the people "did" atonement by fasting, resting, and participating in the priestly ritual. Under the New Covenant, atonement is an accomplished fact. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Believers receive that reconciliation by faith; they do not re-perform it each autumn. To treat the Day of Atonement as a continuing duty is to treat Christ's once-for-all offering as insufficient. The proper New Covenant response is gratitude, repentance as a way of life, and confidence of access to God at any time-not a 24-hour fast on a particular calendar date.

6. Fasting remains a liberty, not a law. Jesus assumed His disciples would fast, and the early church did so on occasion. That practice is voluntary and situational. It is never tied in the New Testament to the Day of Atonement or presented as a requirement for remaining in covenant standing. New Covenant Christians may choose to fast on any day, including the traditional date of Yom Kippur, as a personal act of devotion. They are not required to do so, and they are not more spiritual for doing so. Compelling the fast turns a gift of grace into a work of law.

7. The result is freedom, not neglect of holiness. Refusing to keep the Day of Atonement as a command is not antinomianism. It is fidelity to the New Covenant. Holiness now flows from the Spirit writing God's moral will on the heart, from ongoing confession of sin, and from looking to the finished work of the cross. Christians remember Christ's atonement every time they take the Lord's Supper, preach the gospel, or live in the good of forgiveness. They do not need an annual ritual to make that atonement effective again.

The old covenant Day of Atonement was a gracious provision for its time. The New Covenant has something better: a High Priest who sat down because the work was done. New Covenant Christians therefore do not need to "do atonement." They receive it.

Silent Pilgrim

King David Would Be Proud: How Armstrongist Leaders Turned Biblical Scandal into a Leadership Perk

For among my people are found wicked men... their houses are full of deceit; 

therefore they have become great and rich; they have grown fat and sleek. 

Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not seek justice. 

They do not promote the case of the fatherless; 

they do not defend the just cause of the poor. 

 Jeremiah 5:26-28 [1, 2]

Armstrongism has always had a remarkable talent for finding Bible verses that apply strictly to the little people and generously to the men at the top. Few tools have been more useful than the "David Defense." When a high-ranking minister or evangelist gets caught in adultery, financial sleaze, or other heart-eating corruption, the response is almost liturgical: King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged Uriah's death, yet God still called him a man after His own heart and used him mightily. Therefore, who are you, the dumb sheeple, to criticize God's anointed servant? Only God can judge. Criticism is rebellion. Satan is using you. Sit down, pay your tithes, and stop touching the Lord's anointed.

It is a beautiful system if you happen to be the one standing in the pulpit.

Herbert W. Armstrong himself laid the groundwork. In lengthy articles, he explained that even a "true minister of Jesus Christ" could "slip" into an "incident of adultery" under temptation. If the man later "repented," God would forgive him and the ministry could continue. The flock, of course, received no such elastic interpretation when their own marriages were declared invalid because of a previous union. Hundreds of families were torn apart by the church's rigid "bound for life" doctrine while the men enforcing it enjoyed a rather more flexible standard. 

The star pupil of this theology was Garner Ted Armstrong. For years the handsome, silver-tongued voice of The World Tomorrow carried on extensive extra-marital conquests-dozens, by some accounts hundreds-of women, including Ambassador College coeds, ministers' wives, and a long-term COG stewardess. Oh, and don't forget the casino workers in Lake Tahoe on the Nevada side, which he patronized when he stayed in the church owned chalet at Tahoe. When finally confronted in 1972, he admitted the pattern. Herbert temporarily disfellowshipped him, then brought him back because the broadcasts were too valuable. Later, after another ouster, Ted founded his own groups and kept going. In the 1990s a masseuse secretly videotaped him and sued, alleging assault. Ted's reported response during the encounters? He compared himself to King David. His work on earth was so important that God would overlook the transgressions. Classic David Defense, delivered while asking for "relief." 

The same pattern appeared among other evangelists. Ministers who knew about the hypocrisy were told to keep quiet. Members who asked questions were marked, disfellowshipped, or warned they were in danger of the unpardonable sin for judging God's government. "Causing people to lose confidence in their leaders is one of the most terrible things anyone could do," Garner Ted once wrote, "especially if those leaders happen to be God's very ordained servants." Convenient. 

After Herbert's death the Worldwide Church of God changed course and the empire shattered into dozens of competing "true churches." The David Defense traveled with the furniture. In the Philadelphia Church of God, Gerald Flurry declared himself "That Prophet." Loyalty to him became the test of faithfulness. Members were ordered to cut off family who stayed in other groups. Questioning the Pastor General is framed as rebellion against God's government. In the Restored Church of God, David Pack has claimed titles ranging from Elijah to apostle while setting date after failed date. Ex-members describe an environment of fear, information control, and the same old warning: do not judge God's man. Similar dynamics appear, to varying degrees, in the Living Church of God, with Bob Thiel, Gerald Flurry and other remnants. The one-man (or small-council) model Herbert perfected remains the operating system. Prestige shields the leader. Scandals become "Satan's attacks." Accountability is for the sheep. 

The theological sleight of hand is obvious once you stop being afraid. David was a unique covenant king in a theocratic monarchy, not the senior pastor of whatever Church of God that is currenlty lead by corrupt leaders. His sin produced catastrophic consequences for his family and kingdom. Forgiveness did not erase those consequences or automatically restore him to the same unqualified leadership. New Testament qualifications for overseers are explicit: above reproach, faithful to one wife, respectable, able to manage his own household. Armstrongism treated those verses as suggestions for the membership and optional extras for headquarters. 

The result was a culture in which ordinary members lived under microscopic scrutiny while the upper echelon enjoyed a gentlemen's agreement. Adultery, pedophila and emnbezelment, "ate at some of their hearts," yet the institution protected the eaters. Members were taught that judging the leaders was the real sin. The system still works the same way in 2026 wherever the old Armstrongist DNA remains strongest: hierarchical government, fear of "Laodicean" criticism, and the comforting knowledge that King David got away with it, so maybe the current apostle will too.

It is not complicated. It is simply the oldest trick in the authoritarian religious playbook, wrapped in extra Sabbath-keeping and British-Israelism. The Bible is full of warnings about shepherds who feed themselves instead of the flock. Armstrongism found a way to quote those warnings at the congregation while the shepherds quoted David at anyone who noticed the difference.

Dave Pack - David - Bathsheba - Cell Phones - Temptation - I might accidently take a peek, but so what, David did

 

exRestoredCOG

Crackpot Bob Special Edition: How to Predict the Exact Opposite of What Happens and Still Call It Fulfillment

I try not to get into politics on here because it is as batshit crazy as Armstrongism is, but this was just too delightful not to mess with. God's greatest gift to the Churches of God and humanity never saw this one coming!

Yesterday's announcement directly undercuts the framing in Crackpot Bob's August 1, 2026 COGwriter article. On September 18, 2026, President Trump announced an agreement with Denmark and Greenland that expands the U.S. military presence on the island, grants permanent access, basing, and overflight rights, allows additional bases as needed, and bars non-NATO adversaries (explicitly including China and Russia) from establishing bases, stationing troops, or making sensitive investments without U.S. approval. The arrangement is described as having no expiration, applying even if Greenland later becomes independent, and costing the United States nothing. Denmark and Greenland emphasize that it recognizes their sovereignty and the Greenlanders' right to self-determination; no territory is transferred. Formal signing is expected next week at the UN General Assembly. 

This is an update and tightening of the existing 1951 Defense of Greenland agreement, not annexation. Trump called it an "Infinite Life" deal giving the United States "permanent control over security and all other needs." Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic leaders described it as strengthening Arctic security while preserving the Kingdom's territorial integrity. Crackpot Bob's August article quoted Trump's prediction that Greenland would be "under U.S. control" by January 2029, highlighted Danish insistence that Greenland is not for sale, cited analysis that Washington's real goal was blocking EU/PESCO access, and pointed to polls showing European hostility after the threats. Crackpot Bob then interpreted the episode through Lamentations 1:1-2 and Revelation 17:12-13: Trump's "bully" rhetoric was turning NATO "friends" into future enemies, prompting Europe to take a new military interest in Greenland (troops already present, possible future bases) that could later be used against the United States. The piece treated annexation as both unlikely and strategically counterproductive for the prophetic scenario he favors.

The September deal is the opposite of that near-term picture. Denmark and Greenland chose to formalize and enlarge the American presence rather than pursue an independent European military footprint aimed at reducing U.S. influence. The United States obtained the security outcomes Crackpot Bob said Trump wanted-expanded bases and exclusion of China and Russia-through negotiated alliance terms at zero cost, without the sovereignty transfer Denmark had ruled out. European backlash exists and may continue on other issues, but this specific Greenland file closed with cooperation, not the rupture Crackpot Bob presented as already underway.

That gap between the August interpretation and the September outcome is typical of the pattern. Crackpot Bob regularly treats current events as confirmations of a fixed Armstrong-derived schema (the United States as a latter-day Israelite power whose "friends" become the European Beast that destroys it). When events do not unfold on the expected timetable or in the expected manner, the same texts are reapplied to the next headline. Deuteronomy 18:22 supplies the basic test: if a prophet speaks in the Lord's name and the thing does not happen, the word was spoken presumptuously. Vague or elastic "alignments" after the fact do not meet that standard.

The New Testament itself undercuts the premise that the church needs ongoing geopolitical prophets. Hebrews 1:1-2 states that God spoke in many ways through the prophets in former times, but "in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son." The apostolic writings treat the completed Scripture as sufficient (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Believers are told to test every spirit (1 John 4:1), weigh prophecy (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21; 1 Corinthians 14:29), and hold fast to the faith once delivered (Jude 3). None of that requires a 21st-century interpreter who maps presidential statements onto Lamentations in real time or claims special dreams and a unique remnant status.

Christians who treat the Bible as the final authority therefore have no obligation to follow self-identified prophets whose predictions are repeatedly adjusted to fit the news cycle. The church's task remains proclaiming the gospel, obeying the commands already given, and exercising discernment-not tracking every Arctic basing agreement as proof that one man's reading of prophecy is being fulfilled. The September 18 deal is simply another data point showing why that particular reading does not deserve the attention Crackpot Bob demands for it.

Help Stop Satan From Violating The Mother Church: Christ's Official Cashier Has Spoken: Everyone Else Is Babylon, Send Checks to Iowa Immediately

 

This is a test. 

Time is short. 

He is angry. 

He is yelling...or at least tries to.

Samuel W. Kitchen, a third-generation Worldwide Church of God remnant from Iowa, has posted another urgent Sabbath-day video from a park in Manitoba and boy is he mad!!!!!!!!! 

In it he explains that every other Church of God group, the Catholics, Grace Communion International, Philadelphia Church of God, and basically anyone who did not immediately recognize him as the authorized collector of God's money is now "daughters of Babylon." The original WCG mother church has been "raped" by Satan and infiltrators. Fortunately, Christ has appointed Sam as His representative. Therefore the tithe that used to go to Pasadena now belongs in his PO Box. 

This is not new theology. It is the standard Armstrongist splinter playbook, now reduced to one guy with a YouTube channel, an AI music library, a letter of "authorization" from an elder who later took a job elsewhere, and a website insisting the unincorporated spiritual organism known as the Worldwide Church of God still exists and that Sam is its current cash register. 

The claims collapse under their own weight. Herbert Armstrong died in 1986. The church apostatized, rejected all of his teachings and is now known as Grace Communion International. Dozens of competing "true remnants" have appeared since, each declaring the others Laodicean, Jezebel's daughters, or worse. Sam simply picked the most convenient version: everyone else is compromised, therefore send the money here. The "letter of authorization" is not apostolic succession. It is one unemployed elder in the Phillipines stroking the ego of Sam by  writing a note so he can "legitimately" solicit funds. That is not how the New Testament describes support for ministry.

The "Satan is raping the mother church" language is theatrical even by Church of God standards. It turns a 40-year-old organizational breakup into a cosmic sexual assault that only Sam's PayPal can halt. The same tradition that once predicted the Great Tribulation for the 1970s, then the 1980s, then "this generation," now needs another emergency to keep the tithes flowing. Urgency plus exclusivity plus "God's representative" is the oldest fundraising formula in Armstronmgism. It works until people notice the representative lives in Iowa, films himself shouting at trees, and has no congregation larger than a comment section.

Tithing itself is treated as an unchanging law that happens to terminate at whichever man currently holds the PO Box. The New Testament never commands Christians to send 10 percent to a self-appointed restorer of a 20th-century American denomination. Paul collected offerings for poor saints in Jerusalem, not for a man insisting he alone preserved Herbert Armstrong's copyrights. When every other group is declared apostate the moment they stop mailing checks to you, the doctrine has become a loyalty test, not stewardship.

The video is wild; mouth open, hands clawing the air, face flushed with the particular fury of a man who believes the universe is ending and also that people owe him money. That combination has launched over 400 tiny irrelevant splinter groups. Most of them stay tiny as they implode into even smaller groups. The mother church will have to survive the alleged rape without the tithe from those particular audience.

If the test is whether people will keep sending money to whoever shouts the loudest about being the last faithful remnant, history already graded that exam. The answer is usually "until the next guy with a better camera and a new PO Box shows up."

If you actually follow Jesus under the New Covenant, you should not send Sam Kitchen a dime. The New Testament never told you to mail 10 percent to the last man still waving the old Worldwide Church of God letterhead while shouting that everyone else is Babylon. Tithing funded a Levitical priesthood that no longer exists. Jesus did not collect it that way. Paul told churches to give what they had decided in their hearts, cheerfully, not under compulsion, and not because some guy in a park declared himself Christ's official cashier. 

Sam's pitch is the opposite of that: urgency, exclusive remnant status, "the test begins now," Satan is raping the mother church, and the only approved storehouse happens to be his PO Box. That is not New Covenant generosity. That is a fundraising emergency dressed up as prophecy. A follower of Jesus is not required to subsidize one more self-appointed and self-absorbed restorer who has decided that disagreement equals apostasy and that disagreement can be cured with a check. Give to people who are actually poor, to work that is actually accountable, or to a local body you can see. Do not fund the guy whose entire argument is "everyone else is compromised, therefore pay me." That is how tiny Armstrongist personality cults stay alive. It is not how the New Covenant works.

=====================

I know this will give him views, but bloody hell, it is soooooooo worth watching!  It is only about 15 minutes and the longer the video goes the madder he gets. Yet, all of his bloviating blusters comes off as a comedy routine that you cannot take seriously. Nice people (and Samuel actually come across as a nice man) just cannot carry the weight of visible anger very well. You will see what I mean. He is NO Rod Meredith!

The Gospel of Perpetual Doom: Why Armstrongism Treats 'Fear Not' Like a Suggestion

Crackpot Bob has a new article that is so dripping with fear your computer monitor will get wet just reading it. AI biological viruses, disease, famines, earthquakes, biological weapons, chemical warfare, doomsday bug, the Black Death, botulinus, rice fungus, wheat rust and the pale horse of Revelation. All of that packed into one fear laden article.

Living in a constant state of fear is not scriptural. It is a control strategy with a body count measured in ruined sleep, strained marriages, and people who leave the group only after years of wondering whether questioning the latest pestilence update means they have the mark already. Bob Thiel and the broader Armstrong tradition have turned this into an art form. The latest exhibit is the familiar mash-up of AI-designed viruses, 1969 Plain Truth reprints about the "doomsday bug," Matthew 24, the fourth horseman, and a swift pivot to the mark of the beast because computers exist. The message is always the same: the world is one lab leak or language model away from fulfilling prophecy, and you should stay very, very alert (and loyal).

Fear works. It keeps members from asking why failed timelines never produce an apology, only a new chart. It makes leaving feel like walking into the tribulation without a raincoat. It is also what much of the wider culture does with climate, pandemics, elections, and now AI. The church version just baptizes it and schedules it around the Feast of Tabernacles.

This is not New Covenant Christianity. The New Testament does not run a 24-hour prophecy scare channel. "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7). "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). Jesus told people not to be anxious about tomorrow and left them peace, not a subscription to weekly pale-horse updates. The apostolic letters spend far more ink on how to live with one another than on decoding every new pathogen as the fourth seal. Armstrongism's operating system is closer to an Old Covenant plus British-Israel plus "the end is unusually nigh this decade" firmware update. That combination produces high-control environments where dissent looks like rebellion against God rather than a reasonable question about yet another recycled 1969 article.

Chronic fear is not free. It dysregulates the stress response, trains the brain to scan for threat, and correlates with anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, and difficulty trusting anyone outside the approved sources. When the approved sources are also the ones collecting the offerings and defining who is "Philadelphian" enough, the arrangement is not accidental. People stay because leaving feels cosmically dangerous. That is the point. The same dynamic appears in secular form whenever institutions discover that a frightened public is a compliant public. The church version simply adds eternal stakes and a leather-bound proof text.

Fear is the real gospel of Armstrongism.