Future World Administrators: The Law Division

Reading this article, Preparing for Rulership by J. Charles Ogwyn,  feels like flipping through the strangest recruitment pamphlet you've ever seen-welcome to the Davidic School of Future World Government. 

Not everyone gets in. 

The curriculum? The law. 

The hands-on training? Your entire life. 

Job placement? That's reserved for a select few in a corner of the Churches of God. 

Jesus? He's conveniently listed as King, which makes sense, because someone needs to sit on the throne while the fresh batch of administrators walks the world through ancient statutes.

There's a running joke where the New Covenant keeps returning their application, stamped with "wrong job description." Want to apply? The listing says: "Rulers. Must love the law. Christ experience a plus."

"God has chosen each of us individually," says the brochure. But in this context, it's not a wild celebration of grace-a Father who loves the undeserving. Here, it means a small, informed group who think they've been picked to be the future world's teachers of the law. Everyone else in the faith? Well, they can just be grateful for their baptism-as long as they know not to expect a leadership gig.

There's a lot of bravado packed into a tradition that's spent years splitting over dates, forms of government, or who gets to wear the legacy crown. If the nations are banking on a united legal faculty from here, they should probably keep their options open.

Let's talk Moses. He said, "I can't speak." God just said, "I'll be with you." The article, though, hears a modern pitch about "leaning into your calling"-cut from the same cloth as your average TED Talk, more branding than burning bush.

What kind of king does God actually want? The article lines up Saul and David and nails the first bit: God cares about your heart, not your LinkedIn photo. But then it fumbles: "So, better start shaping a David-like heart by treating the Mosaic code as your professional development plan." The New Testament already filled that blank in. God's ideal king isn't a more devout David with a perfect performance review and a calendar bursting with feast days. God chose David's Son. The one who kept the law, took its curse, and then finished the job for good. Paul says it straight: "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." That shreds the whole brochure. If salvation and standing with God still somehow depend on outperforming the rest at law-keeping, then Christ died to set up just another apprentice program.

Sure, the old covenant had a kind of glory. But Hebrews just calls it "obsolete." The tablets of stone were death's ministry, but the Spirit's ministry blows past it. Every time the old covenant gets read without Christ in view, a veil drops. Only Christ lifts it. David loved the law he had, but the law was pointing to someone else.

Faithfulness, trust, time spent with God, zeal, humility, correction-all of that still matters. But the focus has shifted. Faithfulness isn't about quietly keeping sheep and food laws anymore. It means not drifting away from Christ's finished work and back toward ticking old boxes. The tutor's time ended when the heir showed up.

Trust in God? Still everything. Difference now is, in the New Covenant, that trust lands on something specific-a risen Lord who's already handed down the only verdict that matters. It doesn't mean training for your future spot in a world government.

Spending time with God makes the same divide but on different terms: David meditated on the law because that's the only light he had. We have the Light Himself. The article's proposal? Step backwards into the shadows, digest the code all over again, and hope we come out better. Jesus had a word for that: "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have life, but they point to Me, and you won't come to Me."

Zeal still counts-Saul's fizzled, David's danced, Paul's was intimidating on any résumé. Paul tossed his zeal in the loss pile, though. Zeal that never comes face to face with the Son is just busywork in religious packaging.

Humility? It still looks like David heading back to the sheepfold, not like a church group declaring they've been specially prepped to outrank the entire spectrum of Christianity as the Millennium's law faculty. Revelation 5 isn't an exclusive mailing list. It's a celebration-every tribe, all bought by the Lamb, made into a kingdom and priests. Royal priesthood isn't a jump up the ladder. It's an identity won with blood.

Even the response to correction still splits Saul from David. The most urgent correction now is Galatians 2:18-if we rebuild what Christ tore down, we prove we're transgressors all over again. Turning the law into the end-all, be-all constitution for the future, with Jesus reduced to law enforcement? That's a rebuild. Real confession is, "We confused the signpost with the destination."

The future, honestly, is incredible. But organizing it like a flow chart isn't the gospel. Yes, God's people will reign. Yes, the world can't limp on as it is. But the hope for the nations isn't that some law-trained inner circle finally gets their day. The hope is that the Lamb is on the throne, and His sacrifice unlocked something entirely new.

Rulers in the Kingdom aren't different because they passed an advanced Mosaic law course. They're different because they're one with a King who washed feet, bore sin, and fills hearts with the Spirit. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death. That's not a footnote. That's the headline.

Everything you suffer isn't a leadership practicum. It's the Father shaping you into the image of His Son. That image doesn't need a Future Administrator badge. It needs the cross front and center, with the law finally in its right place: fulfilled, not sitting on the throne.

The pamphlet/article pushes a code. The New Covenant introduces a King. Only one is still hiring.

Prophet Bob vs. the Thermometer: El Niño Is Forming. Bob's Patience With This Blog Is Not

God's most favorite self-appointed crackpot prophet, Bob Thiel, has once again detected the unmistakable scent of the Last Days in a weather report. Europe had a hot summer. California is hot because an El Niño is forming. Therefore, the Fourth Angel is warming up his bowl; then that nasty scoffer website Banned by HWA  fulfilled 2 Peter 3, and anyone who points out that weather still happens is walking according to their own lusts.

This is the same raving lunatic who has been announcing the beginning of sorrows since at least 2009. Every flood, every drought, every slightly-above-average August is further confirmation that he, and he alone, is reading the fine print on God's climate policy. When Banned by HWA dares to note that heatwaves also occurred in 2003, 2019, and pretty much every year someone needed a headline, Bob clutches his leather-bound Bible and cries "scoffers!" as if Peter wrote that chapter specifically about a blog that makes fun of him.

Let's apply a little New Covenant thinking, since Crackpot Bob still quotes Deuteronomy 28 like the ink is still wet and the audience is still ancient Israel. Under the Old Covenant, God threatened bronze skies and iron earth if the people didn't keep the statutes. Under the New Covenant, Jesus said the Father "sends rain on the just and the unjust." Weather is no longer a divine performance review for whether you kept the Feast of Tabernacles or avoided pork. It is weather. Sometimes it is El Niño. Sometimes it is climate change. Sometimes it is just July and August. None of these require a 14-minute video titled "Prophetic Scoffers and Earthquakes" in which Crackpot Bob reminds everyone that he was mocked. Oh, the humanity!!!!!!!!!

Crackpot Bob's actual grievance is never the theology. It is that Banned keeps noticing when he does the same routine: take a real event, bolt it onto Mark 13:8, declare it a warning from God, then act wounded when people laugh. The laughter is the persecution. The blog post is the fulfillment of prophecy. The fact that his predictions have the same broken track record as his spiritual daddy, Rod Meredith, is never mentioned. Longsuffering, you see. The Lord is not slack. He's just waiting for Bob to finish another article about how hot it is.

The pattern is now so reliable you could set your air conditioner by it:

• Something meteorological occurs.
• Bob posts scriptures + old Worldwide Church of God quotes + a reminder that he called it in 2009.
• Banned by HWA says, in so many words, "weather exists."
• Bob writes 2,000 words about scoffers in the last days and how they willfully forget the Flood.
• Repeat next heatwave.

At no point does it occur to him that a prophet who needs a new "I was mocked" post every summer might not be the watchman on the wall so much as the guy who keeps yelling "fire" every time the oven preheats.

The world is hot. Crackpot Bob is hotter. And the only thing melting faster than the glaciers is his composure whenever someone refuses to treat his weather commentary as inspired.

September 11 and the Churches of God

It is hard to believe that 25 years have passed since the World Trade Center was attacked by Islamic extremist vermin. Today, in 2026, an entire generation knows very little about that horrendous day. The entire world stopped and watched. Some in Gaza cheered and celebrated. Europeans were shocked. Commercial air travel evaporated within hours. Inbound international flights were diverted to Canadian airports, where citizens of small towns opened their homes, schools, and churches to care for thousands of stranded travelers.

The only known Church of God member working in the World Trade Center that morning was Adrienne Johnson of the United Church of God. She worked on the 37th floor of one of the towers and escaped safely with coworkers. The United Church of God issued a statement the next day confirming that all its members were accounted for and expressing horror at the loss of life.

Here on the West Coast, Pasadena shut down and the streets were empty. I remember the Ambassador College campus and the surrounding area being totally quiet. At noon I went to Circuit City to buy a portable radio with an earpiece so I could follow the news while I worked. Authorities were anticipating a possible attack on downtown Los Angeles, so much of the city effectively shut down.

Three of the four hijacked flights-American 11, United 175, and American 77-had been scheduled to fly to Los Angeles International Airport. That is why so many of the passengers were heading to Southern California, and why LAX and downtown high-rises were placed on high alert and partially evacuated that morning as a precaution.

Al-Qaeda had considered West Coast targets in earlier planning. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed originally proposed a larger operation striking landmarks on both coasts, including the Library Tower (now the U.S. Bank Tower) in downtown Los Angeles. Osama bin Laden scaled the plan back to the East Coast for September 11. A later "second-wave" plot to fly a plane into the same Los Angeles tower was discussed after 9/11 but was disrupted in 2002 before it could be carried out.

The various Armstrongite Churches of God, of course, wasted no time slotting the attacks into the prophecy charts they had been updating since the 1930s. By September 12 the United Church of God had issued a pastoral letter of genuine shock and grief, then immediately noted that all their members were safe. Other splinters (Living Church of God, Philadelphia Church of God, etc.) followed the same script: horror, prayers, then the inevitable Leviticus 26 citation. "I will even appoint terror over you... I will break the pride of your power." 

According to Armstrongite mythology, America is modern Manasseh, one of the lost tribes, so of course God would use terrorists to humble the pride of His favorite (if currently very disobedient) nation. Gerald Flurry of the Philadelphia Church of God was particularly pleased; he had already declared in May 2001 that the world had entered its "last hour," and 9/11 arrived right on cue to prove he was paying attention. Sermons and articles for years afterward treated the attacks as both a divine warning and further evidence that only their particular remnant was delivering the real end-time message. They also liked to point out that the death toll "could have been much worse," which in Armstrongite theology is usually presented as God's mercy rather than, say, the fact that the hijackers only had four planes. 

By this time the Worldwide Church of God had already abandoned most of Herbert Armstrong's distinctive doctrines by 2001, so the prophetic heavy lifting fell to the competing successor groups, each of which remained convinced it alone understood why the towers fell. It was an orgy of melodramatic end times malarkey from the splinters, and today, in 2026, the competing COG groups will put out articles marking this as the start of America's decline that they so vitally need and wish for. They so desperately need to be proven right. 

Malachi 3:10, Iowa Edition: Bring the Whole Tithe Into the Barn: The Storehouse Is Open. The Squeegee Is in the Closet.

 

For sixteen years, Samuel W. Kitchen would not touch the tithe. Not a dime. Not a widow's mite. Not even a spiritually significant Amazon gift card. He labored with his own fingers, as Isaiah apparently requires, and he did this because he believed a man cannot handle the holy tenth without proper authorization from Jesus Christ.

Then last year Christ worked through an ordained elder in the Philippines who was between COG church-hopping jobs at the time, who issued the missing paperwork directly channeled from Christ himself. The windows of heaven opened. The windows of Iowa, regrettably, did not.

Kitchen's latest pastoral update explains the situation with the calm of a man who has just discovered that declining personal revenue and rising ecclesiastical privilege are the same miracle wearing two hats. 

"This last year, since receiving authorization from Jesus Christ, my personal labors has been shrinking," he writes, "but at the same time God has replaced it with tithes and offerings from the Church!"

One can almost hear the squeegee hit the bucket.

He is careful to insist this is not panhandling. Panhandling is when a man asks strangers for money because work dried up. This is different. This is when a man asks followers for money because work dried up and a verse in Zechariah now points at his household. The distinction is doctrinal. Also postal. Checks may be sent to P.O. Box 126, Fairfield, Iowa, in the name of Support Services of the Worldwide Church of God, or simply to Samuel Kitchen, who is not making himself anything.

For sixteen-plus years he denied himself the tithe. Christ dispatched Jonathan Dicen, an elder who authorized the collection of Tithes and Offerings in the USA and then, in a plot twist worthy of the Book of Acts, took another position with another COG and severed the connection. Does a departing co-signer void the note? Kitchen has thought about this. No. Otherwise, marriages would be null, ordinations would be null, and more importantly, the P.O. box would be empty.

He is not ordained by any man. He is merely authorized to receive the money that ordained men receive. The difference will be explained after the deposit clears.

Kitchen's credentials are otherwise airtight. In 1991 his father held him up like Hannah with Samuel, which in Iowa is how one applies for end-time employment. Nineteen years later - a complete time cycle, naturally - the work came online. A demon-possessed woman once shrieked at his father in a Wisconsin Dells restaurant. Gerald Waterhouse once implied a special job. Kitchen originally assumed Dad was one of the Two Witnesses. He now realizes Satan was after the children the whole time, which is convenient, because the children are the ones with the website.

Zechariah 6 involves his family. Josiah-Hen is the household where the tithes go so Joshua may be plucked from the fire and given crowns, which is the completion of the Philadelphia era, which is to say please stop funding the other groups. Those groups exist, Kitchen explains, because the devil does not want you protected. He wants you dead. The practical application is that your first tenth should not go to them.

Isaiah 17:7-8 is pressed into service as a business plan. Do not look to the altars. Do not look to the work of the ministry. Do not look to your own labors. Do not respect what your fingers have made. Look to God. God, in this rendering, looks a great deal like a small online fellowship that just decided it needs an office. Kitchen's trips were personally funded until God wanted square footage. God also wanted him to stop respecting the work of his own fingers at approximately the same moment those fingers were bringing in less work.

This is called faith.

The operation remains "small" and "very weak" compared with Herbert W. Armstrong, a comparison Kitchen loves to make.  A response is building. Phone calls have come in from around the nation. He gets nervous imagining growth. God will provide what he needs to handle it. What he needs, at present, is for the Church to stand up in Jerusalem by standing up at the mailbox in Iowa.

People have asked the obvious question: if you can handle the tithe, are you ordained? Kitchen's answer is a masterpiece of remnant logic. No man ordained him. Therefore, he must already be ordained, because otherwise he would not have authority to handle the tithe, which he now has, which proves the ordination he does not claim. The Oregon Conference laid hands on Armstrong as a sign they recognized what Christ had already done. Perhaps the remnant can do the same by recognizing Kitchen. Perhaps he is going off the deep end. He allows the possibility for one sentence, then returns to the fruit test. Either he is a wicked tree or a good tree. The good tree accepts checks.

He has undergone severe health trials this year to get the point strengthened in his own mind. The point is: stop looking at side work. Start looking at the storehouse. The storehouse is his. The tares are everyone still sending money to the other ninety-nine continuations of the one true church. When tribulation hits, golden oil will flow. Until then, oil is expensive and so is an office.

Armstrong, Kitchen reminds the flock, was not ordained by a Sardis minister either. Christ ordained him. The church merely caught up. Kitchen is offering the same courtesy. You may lay hands on the arrangement by laying a tenth on the envelope. You may also ignore him and be laughed to scorn in the wrong direction. He is willing to be kicked for the elect's sake. The elect, if they are paying attention, will notice the kicking goes a lot easier when someone else is covering rent.

For over sixteen years the family received no tithes to fund this work. He himself labored to provide personal funding, because he believed in authorization. Now he has authorization. Now he is viewed as wicked. The timing is unfortunate only if you are still looking at the work of his fingers. God says don't. God says look to Him. Him, in the current fiscal year, has a building fund, a website, AI-assisted hymn demos, and a growing sense that the Philadelphia era cannot finish itself on window money.

Bring the tithes into the storehouse. Try Him now in this. See if He will not open the windows of heaven. The other windows have already been washed.

In Jesus Christ's name, and in the name of whoever is still holding the letter from the Philippines.

How curiosity saved me from a doomsday cult | Gabrielle Steele | TEDxAirlie

 

What if the opposite of certainty isn’t doubt, but curiosity? Gabrielle Steele reflects on her 21 years inside an apocalyptic cult and how unquestioned beliefs can quietly shape identity, morality, and belonging. Through her personal story and research, she shows how curiosity disrupts inherited certainty and becomes a pathway back to empathy, responsibility, and freedom. 

Gabrielle Steele grew up in a cult — and lived to laugh about it. Now a clinical trials project manager with a master’s in Exercise Physiology, she blends science and satire to explore how we form and fiercely defend our beliefs — in cults, politics, and corporate culture alike. 

Through humor, resilience, and sharp insight, Gabrielle challenges audiences to question their certainties and trade judgment for curiosity. When she’s not speaking or writing, she’s mentoring others, riding her bike, and raising two sons — approaching life, like a long ride, with endurance, humility, and a little mischief. 

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Thankful for the Truth Nobody Else Is Allowed to Understand

Armstrongism has always sold itself as the last unlocked room in the house of Christianity. Everyone else had the furniture. Only Herbert W. Armstrong, we were told, had the key. "The Truth" was not merely the gospel. It was a restored package: Sabbath from Friday sunset, annual holy days, meats, tithes, God as a Family, British-Israel identity, sequential church eras, and one visible organization still obedient enough to qualify as the Church Christ actually built.

That claim was exclusive by design. If God hid the meaning of Scripture from historic Christianity and then handed the decoder ring to one twentieth-century broadcaster, then gratitude becomes a membership perk. You thank God not only for Christ, but for being among the few who can see. Satan, conveniently, has blinded everyone else-Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, and, after 1986, every Church of God that did not follow your particular evangelist out the door.

Living Church of God still writes in that voice. Douglas Winnail's Sabbath reflection asks members whether they are thankful for truths "hidden from the world," including a real God guiding history, a purpose for life, and Christ's return to restore all things. Fine sentences, as far as they go. Then comes the Armstrongist turn: the capacity to understand the plan of God is a gift God is "only giving to a few at this time." The rest of the planet, apparently including two millennia of Christians who somehow managed to preach Christ without Ambassador College or the Worldwide Church of God, remains under a special blackout.

It is a moving piety, until you notice that Bob Thiel, David Pack, Gerald Flurry, and Gerald Weston can all read the same paragraph and assume it describes their flock. Each man inherited the same grammar. Each insists his group is the one still proclaiming what no other group quite proclaims. The binders are identical. Only the letterhead changes.

Herbert Armstrong taught that other churches were not simply wrong on the calendar. They were a counterfeit. God had restored lost truths through him. The true church would be identifiable by Sabbath, holy days, the name "Church of God," hierarchical government, and a message about the coming Kingdom. After his death, when the old Worldwide Church of God dropped most of that package, the system did what exclusive systems always do. It shattered, and every shard claimed to be the original vase.

Pack's Restored Church of God says Christ's body is not divided into fellowships; it is one organization in full doctrinal agreement, and his is the restoration of the pre-1986 work. Flurry's Philadelphia Church of God says the apostasy was prophesied, Malachi's Message identified it, and Philadelphia continues in Edmond. Thiel's Continuing Church of God says the Philadelphia remnant can be documented by restored truths, early church history, and prophetic credentials the other groups lack. Weston's Living Church of God says it practices original first-century Christianity, restored through Armstrong and Meredith, and that members should thank God not only for being called into the truth but for being preserved in it.

The sarcasm writes itself, except the people in the pews are not a joke. They tithe, rearrange family calendars around holy days, and are taught that leaving the right corporation is spiritually dangerous. Meanwhile, the leaders treat one another as Laodicean, compromised, or simply not the Work. If "the Truth" were as self-evident as advertised, it would not need four incompatible copyright pages.

The deeper issue is not that these men believe Jesus will return. Plenty of Christians believe that. The issue is that they will not let the New Covenant be what the New Testament says it is.

Armstrong taught that the New Covenant is largely still ahead-a marriage covenant to be finalized at Christ's return-and that Christians now live between covenants, still bound to selected Mosaic requirements. Sabbath, meats, and holy days remain identity markers. The old covenant is "amplified," not administered into obsolescence. That maneuver lets a church quote Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 while still policing belonging with Sinai's sign-laws.

Exodus 31 is blunt: the Sabbath is the sign of the covenant with Israel. Colossians 2 is equally blunt: festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths are a shadow; the substance belongs to Christ. Hebrews 8 is blunter still: in speaking of a new covenant, God has made the first obsolete. Armstrongism keeps the shadow in the display case and postpones the substance until the Millennium, when it will be safer to admit the new covenant has actually arrived.

So "the Truth" becomes a backward glance. Correct day. Correct diet. Correct feast. Correct era nickname from Revelation 2-3, as if Jesus mailed seven letters to first-century congregations so that a California radio ministry could later assign you a prophetic ZIP code. The future kingdom is preached with real urgency. The present church is managed like a museum of Leviticus.

They will say they do not teach salvation by works. Armstrong said eternal life is a gift. The successor groups repeat it. Functionally, though, assurance, identity, and often fellowship are tied to the package and the organization that claims to guard it. Grace gets you in the brochure. The calendar keeps you in the directory.

In Scripture, truth is not a secret curriculum restored in 1933.

Truth is a person. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Knowing the truth is knowing Christ, not passing an exam on whether America is Manasseh.

The New Covenant is not waiting in a file cabinet until the Second Coming. Jesus said the cup is the new covenant in his blood. Paul called himself a minister of a new covenant, of the Spirit rather than the letter. Hebrews says Christ is already mediator of a better covenant, and that the first is aging and ready to vanish. One may debate how Israel's national promises reach their public fullness. One may not, with a straight face, use that debate to keep the church under Sinai's worship schedule.

The law is not thrown in the street. It is written on hearts. That is not "a few insiders finally decoded the holy days." It is the Spirit forming people into the likeness of Christ. The moral will of God remains. The Mosaic covenant as the terms of belonging does not.

The church is not one corporation with a successor evangelist. There is one body, and it is made of those united to Christ by the Spirit-not those who survived the correct 1990s split. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 1 to rebuke "I am of Paul, I am of Apollos." Armstrongism cites the same chapter to congratulate a remnant for having information the rest of the household of faith missed.

And the gospel is public. When Paul said the god of this age blinds minds, he was talking about the gospel of the glory of Christ, not about people who celebrate the resurrection on Sunday or eat shrimp. The apostles preached in streets and synagogues. They did not require a proprietary restoration before anyone was allowed to understand.

Under the New Covenant, gratitude sounds different. You thank God that the veil is taken away in Christ. You do not thank him that your group finally obtained the decoder ring and that Satan has, for some reason, issued a communications blackout to every other pulpit on earth-including the three Armstrongist pulpits across town.

The tragedy of COGland is not that it takes the Bible seriously. It is that it takes Armstrong's restoration so seriously that Christ becomes the mascot of a remnant brand.

A faith that must keep insisting "no one else has ever understood this" is already nervous. A faith that then splits into hundreds of groups, each repeating the sentence, has confessed the problem out loud. If the truth were the person and work of Jesus, it would be large enough for the catholic church of all who belong to him. If the truth is a restored code plus the right human government, it will keep shrinking until it fits inside one man's office.

Winnail asked whether readers were thankful for the opportunity to understand truths hidden from the world. A better question: thankful to whom, and for what? If the gift is Christ, the Spirit, and sins remembered no more, then the thanksgiving is Christian. If the gift is exclusive sight, withheld from the rest of the body and located in one lineage of evangelists who cannot agree which lineage is real, then the thanksgiving is just the old boast in a Sabbath suit.

The New Covenant does not need a replica Armstrong. It already has a Head. He does not require four competing press secretaries to protect him from the rest of Christianity. The substance belongs to Christ. The shadows were never the prize. And a truth that can only survive by declaring everyone else blind is not the truth that sets people free. It is a flashlight fight in broad daylight.

Are You Thankful for the Truth?

The Sabbath is a good time to thank God for giving us an understanding of His truth—that there is a real God who is guiding the course of history (Job 12:23; Daniel 2:21; 4:17), that there is a real purpose for life (1 John 3:1–3), and that Jesus Christ is going to return to bring peace and justice to the world and restore all things (Isaiah 9:6–7; Acts 3:19–21). We are told that the saints will reign with Christ and fill the earth with a knowledge of God’s ways (Daniel 7:27; Isaiah 11:9). The capacity to understand the truth about the plan of God is a gift that God is only giving to a few at this time (1 Corinthians 1:26). The Bible reveals that Satan has blinded the rest of the world to these important and wonderful truths (2 Corinthians 4:3–4). Are you thankful for the opportunity to understand these truths that have been hidden from the world? —Douglas S. Winnail

The Ministry Vacated So Christ Had To Ordain Me

 

There is a special kind of confidence that only exists in the Armstrongist remnant universe. It is the confidence that allows a man in Keosauqua, Iowa, to look at the wreckage of the old Worldwide Church of God, notice that almost every ordained minister either changed doctrines, started their own group, retired, or died, and conclude: "Well, that leaves me. Christ had no choice."

Samuel Kitchen has made the claim with remarkable clarity. The ministry vacated their posts. Therefore Jesus Christ was compelled to ordain a man still inside "the church." Either Kitchen is a false minister, he writes, or he has been ordained by Jesus Christ. There is no third option. The logic is airtight if you already accept the premise that the entire visible ministry of a denomination that once numbered over 100,000 members simply walked off the job and left the Son of God holding an empty clipboard. 

That is the entire argument, dressed up in a thick coat of King James verses. Herbert W. Armstrong was ordained by Christ. The Worldwide Church of God is "the vine." Everyone who left is scattering, planting tares, and will be uprooted. When the hired help disappears, the Owner of the vineyard is forced to tap whoever is still standing in the building. In this case, that person happens to be a third-generation member who runs websites, writes AI-assisted hymns, collects tithes under a letter of authorization from a Philippine elder who later moved on, and explains that the authorization remains valid because Jesus is still Head of the Church. 

It is an elegant solution to a staffing problem. No messy laying-on-of-hands by existing evangelists. No need for the kind of public recognition Armstrong himself insisted upon. Just a quiet, private promotion issued after everyone else "vacated." The verses about false prophets, blind guides, and plants the Father did not plant are then aimed, with impressive precision, at everyone except the man now claiming the office.

The same texts that warn "leave them alone" are offered as both shield and sword. Hosea's "let him alone," Christ's warning about blind leaders of the blind, and the fruit-inspection passage in Matthew 7 are all pressed into service. The implication is straightforward: anyone who questions the new arrangement is the one who should be left alone. Those not "with the vine" will find themselves barred from the Kingdom. It is a tidy theological circle.

Forty years after Armstrong's death, the old organization is gone. Grace Communion International kept the legal shell and dropped the distinctive doctrines. Dozens of splinter groups claim to be the faithful remnant. Into that crowded field walks a man who argues that the vacancy itself constitutes the call. The ministry left; therefore Christ ordained the remaining occupant. The claim is not that Kitchen sought the office. The claim is that heaven ran out of options.

One can almost picture the scene in the heavenly HR department: the last qualified candidates have all taken other positions or started competing franchises. The position cannot stay vacant. A third-generation member in rural Iowa is still showing up, still posting sermons from the 1970s and 1980s, still insisting the corporation may have died but the spiritual organism did not. Fine. Stamp the papers. Forced ordination it is.

Whether this produces good fruit or simply another small website asking for tithes to "restore the storehouse" is, of course, the test the same scriptures Kitchen quotes actually recommend. In the meantime, the rest of the former Worldwide Church of God diaspora can be forgiven for treating the announcement the way most people treat a coworker who declares himself CEO after everyone else quit: with a mixture of pity, amusement, and the quiet decision to not join forces with him. Exactly as the verses suggest.

Armstrongism's Favorite Control Issue Just Got Smaller: Crackpot Bob and the Case of the Missing Covenant Skin

 

Crackpot Bob, self-appointed prophet of the Continuing Church of Prophetic Recycling, and pretend professional commenter on everything from European beasts to wearables as 666-adjacent, has decided the great moral crisis of the hour is whether Europeans should be allowed to look sideways at ritual circumcision. Belgium investigates a handful of unlicensed mohels; Jewish groups (quite reasonably) defend a core religious practice; EU officials scramble to say they are not trying to ban Jewish life. And Crackpot Bob, who is neither Jewish, Belgian, nor a pediatric urologist, inserts himself like a man who just discovered a new lever for other people's bodies.

This is classic Armstrongite muscle memory. Herbert Armstrong's heirs spent decades turning optional, cultural, or ceremonial items into identity tests. Sabbath? Fine, that's actually in the New Testament conversation. Holy days? Debatable. Then came British Israelism charts, makeup bans, three tithes, and the quiet pressure to treat every Old Testament physical sign as if Jesus merely paused it instead of fulfilling it. Circumcision is the latest exhibit: officially "not required," unofficially "you're unloving and deceived if you don't."

The New Covenant is not subtle about this

Acts 15 is the Jerusalem Council's memo to the Gentile churches: no circumcision requirement. The issue was not "wait until the baby is eight days old." It was whether belonging to Christ required the Abrahamic flesh-sign. The answer was no.

Paul is even blunter:

• Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. (1 Corinthians 7:19)"
• For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation." (Galatians 6:15)"
• If you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing." (Galatians 5:2) 

Romans 2:28-29 and Colossians 2:11 relocate the sign inward: circumcision of the heart, made without hands. That is the New Covenant version. The physical rite was a covenant marker for Abraham's physical descendants and for those entering that national covenant. It was never presented as a universal health ordinance that Gentile Christians must impose on infants to prove they love them.

Paul had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3) for missional reasons among Jews, not because the Council got it wrong. That is the opposite of turning it into a standing pastoral recommendation wrapped in CDC citations.

Early Jewish believers in Jerusalem kept many Jewish customs. Of course they did. They were Jews. That does not convert a fulfilled covenant sign into a Christian parental duty. Justin Martyr and later Gentile churches dropped it for a reason. Pretending "the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were circumcised, therefore you should snip your son" is like arguing that because Peter kept kosher until the sheet vision, every COG kitchen must still avoid shrimp."

Not required, but..." is how control works

Thiel's own writing admits Gentiles need not be circumcised to be Christians. Then the paragraph immediately pivots: parents who skip it are unloving; opponents are "evil men and impostors... deceiving and being deceived"; science and Moses both demand it; infants should not get to decide later. That is not "optional." That is a guilt sandwich with extra prophecy.

Health organizations do not speak with one voice the way Thiel pretends. WHO and CDC have supported voluntary medical male circumcision in high-HIV adult populations in parts of Africa-an entirely different context from routine neonatal cutting in low-HIV Western countries. Many European pediatric bodies do not recommend routine infant circumcision. U.S. rates have been falling for years. Benefits exist in some analyses (UTI reduction in infancy, some STI associations); so do costs, complications, loss of tissue, and the ethical question of permanently altering a non-consenting minor for non-therapeutic reasons. Adults can choose. Infants cannot.

Jews and Muslims have a religious claim that is their business and their covenant. Christians in the New Covenant do not inherit that claim as a command. Some families will still choose it for culture, family resemblance, or personal medical judgment. Fine. That is liberty. What is not fine is a tiny Church of God fiefdom treating foreskin policy as another loyalty test, another way to mark who is "in" and who is worldly, deceived, or insufficiently faithful to "the fathers."

Armstrongism has always been hungry for distinctive physical markers. When the big distinctive (you are the one true remnant, the rest of Christianity is deceived) starts to look thin, the smaller ones get louder. Diet. Calendar. And now, apparently, whether your son's anatomy matches a Bronze Age covenant sign that Paul said no longer avails anything.

If Bob wants to argue medical statistics, he can do it without 2 Timothy 3:13. If he wants to defend Jewish religious liberty in Belgium, he can do it without implying that Gentile Christian parents who leave their sons intact are failing Deuteronomy. The hissy fit is not really about Europe. It is about a movement that cannot stop managing other people's bodies and calling it love.

Saxony-Anhalt Votes, America Prepares for Servitude: The COG WWIII Prophecy Industrial Complex Never Sleeps

  

Congratulations, America. A political party just won a state election in Saxony-Anhalt, a place most Americans could not find on a map if you handed them the map, a highlighter, and a three-hour head start. According to the latest dispatch from the Continuing Church of Prophetic Recycling, this means Ulrich Siegmund and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg are about to shake hands with Moscow, reorganize Europe into the ten-horned monster from Revelation 17, betray the United States, invade the homeland, execute the inconvenient, and ship the remaining millennials to Europe to polish the Baron's riding boots.  

This is not analysis. This is the same movie Armstrongism has been screening since the 1950s, only the actors keep getting recast. First it was Adenauer. Then Strauss. Then Kohl. Then Merkel was secretly paving the way. Now it's a guy who won 43.8 percent in one eastern Landtag and a former defense minister who once called Donald Trump a blonde lunatic and later a clown. 

Crackpot Bob's script never changes: Germany stirs, the Beast awakens, America is toast, and the faithful should really consider the literature table on the way out.  The fear tactic is beautifully efficient. Take a real, messy, democratic event - voters in a poorer eastern state punishing the governing parties over migration, energy prices, and general exhaustion - and immediately inflate it into the opening credits of World War III plus the Book of Revelation director's cut.

Any German politician who is not a perfect Atlanticist liberal instantly becomes "a 21st-century Hitler." Any suggestion that Europe might want its own defense policy becomes "the deal with the King of the North." A talk-show appearance about whether the church should be political becomes "positioning himself for the final reorganization."  

Notice the flexibility. If the AfD governs, that's the Beast rising. If the AfD is frozen out, that's the Beast being restrained until the appointed hour. If Guttenberg criticizes the firewall, he's building a coalition of ten kings. If he stays on the sidelines, he's the little horn waiting for his moment with only a small number of supporters (Daniel 11:23, naturally). There is no possible outcome that does not confirm the prophecy. That is not watchfulness. That is a closed interpretive system that treats current events as set dressing for a story written decades ago. 

The enslavement-and-invasion climax is the tell. No serious reading of German or European politics in 2026 points to panzers rolling through Ohio so that young Americans can become household staff in Franconia. What it does point to is a religious subculture that has spent seventy years needing a German villain the way some people need a weather forecast. The AfD's actual problems - its fringe, its slogans, its coalition math - are far less interesting than the eschatological fan fiction they can be forced into.  Europe will keep changing. Germany will keep arguing with itself. Voters will keep surprising pollsters. None of that requires a two-headed Beast, a secret Vatican-Moscow-Berlin pact, or a sudden American body count. It just requires people to stop treating every regional election as the first trumpet.  

Armstrongism's Longest Running Ministry To Its Members: You Are Too Stupid To Know How To Dress Appropriately, So Let Us Tell You

 

Living Church of God is once again telling grown adults what to wear to church and what kind of swimsuit will not scandalize the Millennium. Coats, collared shirts, ties, and nice slacks for men. For women: no form-fitting clothes, no high hemlines, no cleavage, no bare shoulders, no backless dresses, no crop-tops. At the pool or beach: cover the midsection, ladies. Men: no Speedos unless a European pool forces the issue. After all, you are future kings and priests. You must discern between what is appropriate and what is not.

Just not, apparently, without a memo. 

This is not a new burst of pastoral concern. It is a seasonal ritual. LCG has been issuing nearly the same Feast fashion briefing for years - 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and now again - as if the flock keeps forgetting how fabric works between Atonement and Opening Night. 

Armstrongism did not invent modest dress. It did invent the idea that converted adults cannot be trusted to figure it out.

Herbert W. Armstrong did not merely prefer a jacket. In May 1979 he asked, in print, whether some members might be kept out of the Kingdom of God because they showed up in jeans, overalls, or tennis shoes. "THIS IS SERIOUS!" he wrote. Church was coming into the very presence of God. He had pressed his own suit on an ironing board when he owned one pair of shoes with holes in the soles. The rest of you could at least try. 

The system that followed treated clothing as a sacrament of submission. Women were not to wear pants except for sports. Skirts had to reach the knee. Hair had to cover the nape of the neck. Makeup was banned, then allowed, then banned again because Satan had supposedly used lipstick to knock the church off track. It's always the women at fault, not the narcissistic toupee-wearing ministers. Men were not to let sideburns drop below mid-ear or comb hair over the forehead. Toupees were out unless you were a minister or evangelist. If a poor new member arrived without a tie, one could be issued at the door - salvation by accessory. Ministers counseled members on cars, jobs, mates, and, in some eras, what was permitted in the marriage bed. Clothing was simply the most visible leash. 

The makeup saga remains the masterpiece. In 1955 the church "ruled." In 1974 the rule loosened. In 1981 Armstrong announced that Satan had used cosmetics to derail the work, and women were to wash their faces. Headquarters church reportedly complied the very next Sabbath. Some women later admitted they took it off for services and put it back on for the world - a small, human act of sanity that was treated as double-mindedness. The Bride of Christ, Armstrong warned, would not rise to meet Jesus with painted faces. The returning Christ, one gathers, has strong opinions about Maybelline. 

None of this was ever just about taste. It was about who gets to decide that you are serious. "God looks on the heart" is always the continuing mantra. Then comes the verse about hemlines. The proof-texts do honest work in other contexts - 1 Timothy 2, Matthew 22's wedding garment, "come out from among them." In Armstrongist hands, they become a standing implication: left alone, you will dress like the world, offend your neighbor, and possibly forfeit a throne. The ministry will discern for you. You will be grateful.

The swimwear paragraph is the tell. Adults who have tithed, kept the Sabbath, avoided shrimp, and scheduled vacation around Leviticus 23 are still assumed unable to distinguish a swimsuit from a statement. Love God. Love neighbor. Therefore, no Speedo, unless France insists. Cover the midsection. As future kings and priests, you must learn to tell holy from profane - starting with the difference between a tankini and a bikini, as defined this year in Charlotte.

There is a word for a religion that produces people it will not let pick their own clothes. It is not "discipleship." It is childcare with extra tithes.

The tragedy is not that someone prefers a tie on the High Days. Plenty of people dress up for things they consider sacred. The tragedy is the unblinking assumption, decade after decade, splinter after splinter, that the members are the last people on earth who can be trusted with a mirror. Herbert pressed his suit. His successors press the same point: you are almost royalty. You are almost priests. You are almost ready to judge the world.

Just not the swimwear aisle.

Not without help.

------------------------

Appropriate Dress for Feast Services
While God looks on the heart, dress and outward decorum are also important (Matthew 22:8-14), and it's good to review basic principles for attire at Feast services. For men in most Western countries, coats, collared shirts, ties, and nice slacks are considered appropriate on special occasions. This may vary somewhat in tropical climates. For ladies, 1 Timothy 2:9-10 explains that dress should be "modest apparel, with propriety and moderation." Form-fitting clothing, high hemlines, necklines showing cleavage, bare shoulders, backless dresses, crop-tops, and the like are not appropriate for Church services. Our challenge as disciples of Jesus Christ is to be separate from this world and be lights to it (2 Corinthians 6:17; Matthew 5:14-16). This is especially true as we gather to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles together, multiplying our examples and reflecting the Church as a group.

What About the Pool or Beach?
Swimwear at the Feast of Tabernacles should be modest and in good taste. We are to be guided by the two great commandments-to love God and love our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39)-so as not to offend God or our neighbor in our attire at the Feast. Accordingly, ladies' swimwear at the Feast should be modest and cover the midsection, and men should not wear Speedo-type suits unless pool facility rules specifically require them, as is the case in some European countries. As future kings and priests, we have a responsibility to discern between what is appropriate and what is not-and to live accordingly (Ezekiel 22:26).

When A Church of God Leader Discovers Restraint—Right After Decades of the Opposite

The Living Church of God has never met a late-summer earthquake, fire, flood, or terrorist anniversary it couldn't convert into proof that Satan is personally offended by the Feast of Trumpets and the Feast of Tabernacles. For decades the formula has been reliable: scan the news as Tishri approaches, find something awful, declare it a spiritual assault designed to "deflect" attention from God's master plan, then collect the offerings while the brethren sit in a pleasant state of dread. Bigger body count, better sermon. The bigger the tragedy, the more it gets milked for "end-time events." Armstrongism has always loved this particular flavor of weather-as-theology.

That is why Gerald Weston's latest paragraph lands with such comic timing. After years of the same organization treating every cluster of misfortune as Satan's festival-season sabotage, Weston now writes:

The Feast of Trumpets is almost here. Interestingly, the Holy Day begins on the evening of September 11 this year-the 25th anniversary of those infamous terrorist attacks that took place on United States soil. I mention this because the Holy Days have often seen unusual events occur, though we should be careful not to make too much of what may be only an interesting coincidence. What is certain is that Trumpets will be followed in short order by Atonement, Tabernacles, and the Last Great Day. Spectacular events will take place when each of these days become reality, and that is not idle speculation. May God speed those days!

Ah. Caution. Suddenly. After the church spent decades doing exactly the thing he now advises against.

It is almost as if someone noticed that living in a permanent state of "the end is this Feast cycle" has side effects. One of those side effects sat in a Living Church of God congregation in 2005. Terry Ratzmann had been listening to Roderick Meredith's trademark sermons about death, destruction, and how little time remained. The man lost all hope. Then he opened fire. Eight people died, including the shooter. The organization treated it as an isolated tragedy rather than an indictment of a preaching style that treats despair as a spiritual discipline.

Fear is useful. Fear keeps people watching the telecast, sending in the co-worker letter checks, and staying inside the one true remnant that alone understands why the latest hurricane is actually about Tabernacles. A congregation that is slightly terrified tithes more reliably than a congregation that is merely informed. Weston knows this history; he inherited it. The "we should be careful not to make too much of it" line is therefore not a sudden conversion to epistemic humility. It is a limited-time disclaimer issued while still reminding everyone that spectacular events will occur when these days become reality-and that is definitely not idle speculation.

So the machine continues, just with a new warning label. Satan is still the convenient author of whatever happens in September. The Holy Days are still the interpretive key that turns random suffering into prophetic confirmation. The only change is that the Presiding Evangelist has added a sentence that lets him claim he never really meant the previous forty years of "I told you so."

The Feast of Trumpets begins the evening of September 11, 2026. Something terrible will almost certainly happen somewhere in the world that week, because something terrible happens somewhere every week. When it does, watch how quickly the caution evaporates and the old script returns. The coincidence will once again become evidence. The evidence will once again become urgency. And the urgency will once again be good for the budget.

May God speed those days, indeed. The overhead isn't going to pay itself.

God Is Going To Use One Man Exclusively To Warn The COG's When It Is Time To Flee!

The Secret Has Been Revealed. Surprise: It Is Bob.

Genuflect at his feet now so that you may be saved!

Stand in awe and gaze upon his magnificence!

Never in the long, splintered, spreadsheet-of-splits history of the Church of God movement have so many people been so confidently wrong about so many verses while one man in a beige suit, under a glowing planet, surrounded by books to make you think he is educated, has been so willing to announce that the problem is everyone else.

Crackpot Bob has surveyed the Churches of God in 2026 and discovered a warehouse of blaspheming idiots. Their crime is not adultery, not covering up African scandals, not inventing credentials, not turning dreams into résumés. Their crime is refusing to admit that the Great Tribulation begins at Daniel 11:39 and not 11:40. One verse. That is the whole priesthood. Miss it, and you do not get the wilderness reservation. You get Revelation 12:17, which is the biblical term for you should have listened to Bob.

Other groups, we are told, will not know the Tribulation has started until it has started. Bob's group will know in advance. Because Bob knows. Because God tells prophets. God speaks directly to Bob. Because Amos 3:7-8 is not a verse so much as a vacancy Bob filled before anyone else checked the listing.

A lion has roared. Who will not fear?

The Lord God has spoken. Who can but prophesy?

Bob can. Bob does. Bob has a website about it.

While many believe all COGs are the same, there is only one that best represents the Philadelphian remnant. There is one that has restored the most truth. There is one that has had the most Divine confirmations. These are not boasts. They are measurements taken with a ruler Bob brought from home. Truth restored: whatever he posted last. Confirmations: dreams, an anointing he will not stop narrating, and a certificate that reads SELF AWARDED because heaven, apparently, was busy.

Then the funnel narrows, as it always does.

God will use one man to issue the decree to flee.

The most faithful should gather first.

Would that man not be in the church with the best prophetic understandings?

If you have not already done so, should you not support the work of that church?

That is not theology. That is a sales script.

Notice the furniture. Scripture is quoted. A verse dispute is promoted to a sorting hat. The remnant is identified. The remnant is given the most truth. The remnant is decorated with the most confirmations. A single man is required to blow the flee-whistle. Then, with the innocence of a man who has only just noticed the coincidence, we are asked whether that man would not, naturally, be the one already sitting in the leather chair, already talking to the microphone, already asking you to gather.

It is a closed loop with a PayPal button.

Armstrongism has produced a graveyard of men who discovered they were Elijah, Elisha, a witness, Joshua, Zerubbabel, or the last Philadelphian on earth who still understood church government. Bob's contribution is not the claim. It is the filing system. Dreams. Double portions. Confirmations. Restored details. A running inventory of why every other group is Laodicean and therefore doomed to miss the bus. The decree to flee is always coming. The gathering is always now. The man who will issue the decree is never, even once, somebody else.

If you stay in another group you are not merely mistaken. You are on the path that ends outside the place of safety, watching the protected ones leave, then enjoying the leftover wrath like a man who picked the wrong verse and the wrong website. That is the product. Fear first. Affiliation second. Support the work third.

The lack of humility is glaring. He does not say, "I am the most important man in the Churches of God today." He merely arranges Amos, Daniel, Zephaniah, and Revelation so that no other conclusion will sit in the chair. One church. One remnant. One set of confirmations. One decree. One man. If you have not already done so, should you not support the work?

Yes, Bob. We heard you. The lion roared. The secret was revealed. The secret was that the secret-revealer would also be taking questions, tithes, and credit.

And behind the chair, as the World Books stand at attention and the Earth glows like a nightclub in the rapture district, the older consultant leans in to make sure the bones and the calendar still agree. The decree is a serious document. It helps to have a second opinion looking over your shoulder.

Gather together. The most faithful always do.

The rest can argue about verse 40 until the wilderness is full and the stamp is dry. 

The word of God teaches: 

 

7 Surely the Lord God does nothing,

Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.

8 A lion has roared!

Who will not fear?

The Lord God has spoken!

Who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:7-8)

Related to point 7 in the list, unless other COG groups will accept that the Great Tribulation begins with Daniel 11:39 and not 11:40, they will NOT know when the Great Tribulation will begin until after it starts. Therefore, those with them will not have possibly fled to a place of protection in the wilderness as taught in Revelation 12:14-16 for 3 1/2 years-but instead will be subject to the devil's wrath per Revelation 12:17.

While many believe that all COGs are the same, there is only one that best represents the Philadelphian remnant 

There is one church that has restored the most truth 

There has been one church that has had the most Divine confirmations 

God will use one man to issue the decree to flee, and the most faithful are told to be gathered together before that happens per Zephaniah 2:1-3.

Would that man not be in the church with the best prophetic understandings?

If you have not already done so, should you not gather together and support the work of that church?