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

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

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

Amy Sherald Would Rather Walk Away Than Water Down Her Art

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

Vogue Magazine article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God's Apostle and Chief Overseer Has Died!

 

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

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

of False Prophets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hat tip to SCEI-1 Blood Cult Watch

Also see: 

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

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

News Flash: The Kingdom Will NOT Come on Atonement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If he knew, he would have said it.

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

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

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

He is the only one who is frustrated.

Marc Cebrian

News Flash: The Kingdom Will NOT Come on Atonement

Once for All: How Hebrews Ends the Day of Atonement

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

Old Covenant ritual vs. New Covenant fulfillment

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

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

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

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

 

Fasting under the New Covenant

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

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

How the practice functions in Armstrongism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silent Pilgrim

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

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

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

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

They do not promote the case of the fatherless; 

they do not defend the just cause of the poor. 

 Jeremiah 5:26-28 [1, 2]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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