The COG Watchmen that No One Even Knows About

In COG lore, the Watchmen stand at the wall, warning the world about their impending doom. Every COG claims to have one, yet NO ONE in the world even knows who they are.

For decades, the Living Church of God, Bob Thiel, and the wider Armstrongite movement have told their members they occupy a unique, urgent office: they are God's watchmen. Their job is to warn the modern "Israelite" nations-chiefly the United States, Britain, and related countries-of coming catastrophe unless those nations repent of sins such as abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism. 

Doug Winnail of the Living Church of God recently restated the claim in familiar terms:

The Watchman's Message

Throughout history, God has sent prophets to warn His people that, if they disobey His laws and despise His statutes, they will reap serious consequences (Leviticus 26:14-19). Yet modern Israelite nations are largely ignorant of this sobering warning. Today, political and religious leaders are actively promoting values and behaviors that clearly violate the laws of God, such as abortion (Exodus 20:13), homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22; Genesis 2:24), and transgenderism (Deuteronomy 22:5). The Bible labels these actions sins and abominations. Isaiah was told, "Cry aloud... tell My people their transgression" (Isaiah 58:1). Jeremiah warned that nations forsaking God's laws would enter a time of trouble as a result (Jeremiah 2:19; 30:7). Ezekiel was given a commission to be a watchman and carry this warning to the Israelite nations (Ezekiel 3:16-21; 33:1-11), and that is our mission today. Let's pray for strength and help to complete that mission. -Douglas S. Winnail

The language is borrowed from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and especially Ezekiel 33. Herbert W. Armstrong applied it to himself and the old Worldwide Church of God. After Armstrong died in 1986 and the subsequent doctrinal collapse of that organization, nearly every splinter group inherited the same self-description. The problem is not merely that the groups disagree with one another. It is that the claim no longer describes any observable reality.

Hundreds of groups, no audience.

The Worldwide Church of God once numbered well over 100,000 members and reached hundreds of millions through the decades through The World Tomorrow and The Plain Truth. After 1986, it fractured. Researchers have counted 300 to 400 offshoots; the Church of God Network later identified more than 1,500 congregations across the surviving organizations. The largest remaining bodies-United Church of God, Living Church of God, Church of God a Worldwide Association-still number only in the low tens of thousands at most. LCG's 2025 Feast of Tabernacles drew 11,326 attendees worldwide. The Philadelphia Church of God is estimated to be well below its claimed 5,000 members. Many of the rest are far smaller. 

These organizations do not present a single, recognizable voice. They present dozens of competing voices, each insisting it alone continues "the Work." Gerald Weston leads LCG. Gerald Flurry leads PCG. David Pack of the Restored Church of God has spent years declaring himself prophet and setting dates that have failed more than a hundred times. Bob Thiel of the Continuing Church of God operates a prolific website and claims growth, much of it in Africa, while remaining virtually unknown outside the same small circuit. None of these men is a public figure. None commands the attention of governments, major media, or the general population of the nations they claim to warn. The result is predictable. No one outside the movement is shaking. Politicians do not adjust policy because a Charlotte, Grover Beach, Wadsworth, or Edmond minister issued a booklet or popped off at the mouth. Newsrooms do not treat Tomorrow's World or The Philadelphia Trumpet as a prophetic alarm. Ordinary citizens do not encounter these messages as a trumpet blast from the wall; they encounter them, if at all, as one more obscure religious broadcast or website among thousands.

It is just a message for the insiders to make them feel special.

The watchman doctrine functions far more effectively inside the congregations than outside them. It gives members a sense of cosmic importance: they are not simply attending a small Sabbath-keeping church; they are part of the only group commissioned to deliver a life-or-death warning before the Great Tribulation. That narrative justifies high commitment, multiple tithes in some groups, and loyalty to a particular leader even as the surrounding culture ignores him.

It also explains why the groups spend so much energy on one another. If there can be only one true watchman work, then every other splinter is either Laodicean, apostate, or simply not doing "the Work." The warning to the world is frequently interrupted by the warning against rival Church of God organizations. The public, which was never listening in the first place, notices none of this intramural combat.

LCG's Tomorrow's World telecast and magazine represent the most professional remaining outreach. Older promotional materials claimed availability in tens of millions of households and hundreds of thousands of weekly viewers. Actual cultural impact remains modest; the associated YouTube channel sits at roughly 18,000 subscribers. That is not nothing, but it is not a watchman standing on the wall of a nation. It is a niche religious program competing with every other niche religious program. 

A watchman in Ezekiel's day stood on a city wall and blew a trumpet the inhabitants could hear. The modern application assumes the same logic at a national and global scale. Hundreds of minuscule, mutually exclusive groups cannot occupy that role. They lack the platform, the recognition, and the unity required to deliver a single, unmistakable warning. The claim survives because it is never tested against results. Success is measured by literature mailed, websites maintained, and members retained-not by whether the intended audience actually heard and trembled.

The original glory days of old - the Armstrong-era work, at least, possessed size and visibility. The successor groups possess conviction and a recycled script. Conviction is not the same as commission, and a recycled script is not the same as a message that lands. Whether the speaker is Weston, Pack, Thiel, or Flurry, the world continues on its way. The farce is not that these men believe they have something to say. The farce is the insistence, year after year, that the world is listening.

LCG: Please Review the Booklet "Germany in Prophecy" Before Satan and the Beast Notice Your Airline Boarding Pass”

Living Church of God, ever true to Roderick Meredith's hyperventilating past, has started hyperventilating again. Germany is "rising." Members need to dust off Germany in Prophecy. The AfD just scored a major win in Saxony-Anhalt. Get ready for jackboot Germans taking over the world. Arroyo Grande and Charlotte, here they come. Oh noes!!!!!!!!! 

Then they instantly pivot to a plane that ran off the runway at Heathrow, airports shutting down because Anak Krakatau is coughing ash. Satan, we are told, is so furious that COG members are heading to the Feast that he is personally disrupting air travel. All because of them.

Gerald Weston writes:

Greetings from Charlotte,

There is a lot happening of late. The AfD party in Germany scored a major win, causing much concern over a far-right party eventually gaining power over the whole country and taking Germany down a dangerous path once again. Messrs. Rod McNair and Douglas Winnail authored the booklet Germany in Prophecy, which points out that the country is given to sudden dramatic changes. Please review this resource as you see changes taking place in Europe. The wars in Iran and Ukraine continue to escalate along dangerous lines. Meanwhile, London's Heathrow Airport, Miami International Airport, and some Indonesian airports were shut down due to technical issues, a plane going off the runway, and the Anak Krakatau volcanic eruption-stranding and disrupting the plans of literally hundreds of thousands of travelers worldwide. We must never forget who the god of this age is and how he hates the Feast days that are now upon us. Let us pray for the safety of all our members and Festival sites and do our part in traveling safely. And let us never forget the reason we observe these important days. -Gerald E. Weston

There it is. The whole operating system on one index card: Europe is becoming the Beast, your passport is a spiritual target, and Lucifer runs air traffic control.

Armstrongism exists because fear works. Not because the forecasts aged well. Herbert's dates slid. 1972 and 1975 came and went without the nuclear fireworks package. The "final revival of the Holy Roman Empire" has been imminent for longer than most members have been alive. What never went out of print is the feeling: you are special, you are hunted, and the only people who can read the map are the men in Charlotte holding the booklet.

The racial machinery is still the engine. British-Israelism says the United States, Britain, and the white Commonwealth are Ephraim and Manasseh - the lost tribes with the birthright. Germany is recast as Assyria, the rod of God's anger, the coming king of the North who will punish those same "Israelite" nations for Sunday-keeping, Christmas trees, and insufficient third tithe. That is why a state election in Magdeburg is not allowed to remain a state election. It has to become Genesis-plus-Isaiah-plus-Revelation with a 2026 dateline. If the chosen nations are not in danger, the chosen church loses its plot. 

Notice the second move. After the German alarm comes the travel snarl - and Satan is credited as the author. In this universe the Accuser is not a defeated rebel. He is the most competent character on the stage. Christ, the one they claim to follow, is oddly underemployed until the sequel in which He returns to slaughter the portion of humanity that refused to follow Gerald Weston, Dave Pack, Gerald Flurry, or Bob Thiel. Until then, the devil gets the airport, the volcano, and the headlines. The Lamb gets the footnote and the offering envelope.

Why keep members in a fearful frenzy? Because calm people start reading Galatians. Calm people notice that "neither Jew nor Greek" is a wrecking ball aimed at a racial prophecy chart. Calm people notice that Colossians 2 does not say, "Let no one judge you except headquarters, and also please consult Germany in Prophecy before you book the Feast." Calm people notice that the New Covenant does not require a German election to prove God is still interested.

The New Covenant offered an alternative and Armstrongism treated it like a competing product. Grace does not need you anxious about Saxony-Anhalt. Union with Christ does not need your ancestry to be Manasseh. The Spirit is not a frequent-flyer program Satan can cancel with volcanic ash. Perfect love casts out fear. That is precisely why fear has to be restocked every week before the Feast.

Weston's note is not analysis. It is maintenance. Review the booklet. Remember the god of this age. Pray for Festival sites. Travel safely - and never forget why you keep these days. Translation: stay inside the story in which Charlotte holds the decoder ring and the rest of the church holds its breath.

The satire writes itself, but the theology is older than Meredith's eye surgery. A system that must turn every runway excursion into spiritual warfare is a system that cannot afford a Savior who already said "it is finished." If Jesus is sufficient, you do not need jackboots in the middle distance to keep the lights on. If identity is in Christ, you do not need gold countries on a map and gray countries as extras. If the devil is not the most powerful god in the room, you can fly to the Feast without narrating yourself as the reason Krakatau woke up.

Armstrongism lives on fear because fear is the only fuel that still burns after a century of revised dates. The New Covenant lives on a cross and an empty tomb, which is why it does not need AfD's 43.8 percent to remain true. 

If the gospel requires a German statehouse, a Heathrow runway, and a volcano to stay interesting, it is not the gospel. It is a subscription. Weston can keep ringing the Assyria bell. Meredith's heirs can keep discovering that Europe is "given to sudden dramatic changes," a sentence that would also describe weather, teenagers, and the church's own prophetic calendar. Meanwhile the New Covenant sits there, unpaid and un-hyperventilated, insisting that the dividing wall is already down, that days do not commend you to God, and that the one they claim to follow is not waiting in the wings until He can out-perform Satan at travel disruption. Charlotte will call that Laodicean. Scripture calls it news. The jackboots can wait. The booklet can wait. The frenzy can wait. The alternative already arrived, and it did not need Magdeburg to close the sale.

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