LCG: The Millennial High Lasted Exactly Six Days: LCG's Annual Post-Feast Scolding

 

Living Church of God members are freshly back from the Feast of Tabernacles, where they spent eight days marinating in "millennial bliss." Love, unity, answered prayer, the usual harvest of glowing surveys, and the obligatory "this one was even better than last year" testimonies. Opening Night sermons painted vivid pictures of Christ's coming kingdom. The Last Great Day closed with hope for the masses. For one week, the brethren were kings-and-priests-in-training, rejoicing before the Lord and generally acting as if the world had already been remade.

Then they came home-and right on schedule came the familiar reminder that they cannot be trusted with the vision they just received.

Douglas S. Winnail's latest piece makes the point with the usual historical parade. The lessons of history, we are told, show that both mankind in general and God's chosen people have drifted off course again and again, due to Satan's deceptive influence. Adam and Eve made wrong choices that sent human history in the wrong direction. Ancient Israel turned away from God and suffered serious consequences-and modern Israelite nations are heading down the same path. The implication is clear enough for the recently returned Feast-goers: you are cut from the same cloth. You just spent eight days hearing about the Kingdom, and the moment the hotel checkout is complete you are already at risk of repeating the same fatal drift.

The Church, the piece continues, was established to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, to warn the world of the consequences of sin, and to announce events that indicate Christ's return is near. Its mission also involves preparing a people to rule with Jesus Christ as kings, priests, and teachers in His coming Kingdom. To qualify for this exciting reward, members must avoid being distracted by the trials and temptations of this world and remain faithful and focused on their calling and God-given mission. The closing exhortation is pure post-Feast form: "Let's stay focused on that mission!"

There it is-the annual transition from millennial preview to managerial scolding. The good feelings and warm intentions did not even last one week. Members who just left Feast sites where they were told they are in training for rulership are now being treated as people too prone to distraction, too easily deceived, too stupid to keep from losing their way once ordinary life resumes. Every week brings some fresh perceived indiscretion: a moment of ordinary human weakness, an insufficiently intense zeal, a failure to remain in permanent Feast-level focus. The leadership does not pause to be simply grateful that people rearranged their lives, spent their second tithe, traveled, and showed up. Gratitude is quickly subordinated to the next warning that the brethren are one careless step from the ditch.

That is the problem with the law. Under a system that measures people by continuous performance, holy-day observance, and ministerial oversight, the members are never good enough. The Feast high is temporary by design; the insufficiency is permanent. No amount of "best Feast ever" reports changes the underlying arithmetic: the law demands what human beings cannot sustain, then interprets the inevitable drop as evidence of Satan's influence, spiritual drift, or failure to stay focused on the mission. The New Covenant says otherwise. It speaks of a finished work, of righteousness that is not earned by perpetual self-examination, of a Spirit that writes the law on the heart rather than requiring weekly reminders that the people who just spent eight days in "millennial bliss" are already in danger of repeating Adam's mistake or Israel's apostasy. LCG does not teach that concept. It teaches the old pattern: rejoice on schedule, then brace for the correction that proves you still need the system to keep you from drifting.

The Feast pictures a future kingdom of peace. The post-Feast admonition pictures the present arrangement: members as perpetual spiritual children who cannot be left unsupervised for more than a few days without wandering off. One is a prophecy. The other is simply the management style of a law-based organization that has never quite trusted its own people with the freedom the New Covenant actually offers.

Bwana Bob’s Sabbatarian Superheroes Storm the Vatican Gates

By a Concerned Brother 

Who Can Actually Read Primary Sources

Bob Thiel (a.k.a. COGwriter, a.k.a. the man who somehow keeps discovering that every interesting early Christian was secretly a proto-Armstrongite) has once again delivered a masterclass in selective historiography. In his latest article, he assures us that Church of God sabbatarians "confronted the Bishops of Rome" about the Sabbath. The actual historical record? It shows people arguing about the date of Passover/Easter, not marching into Rome waving seventh-day Sabbath tracts while demanding the Bishop of Rome keep the weekly rest day. 

Let's walk through the parade of "sabbatarian" heroes Thiel has assembled. 

Polycarp of Smyrna vs. Anicetus: The Great Sabbath Showdown That Wasn't 

Polycarp, the aged bishop of Smyrna and disciple of John, did indeed travel to Rome and meet with Anicetus. They disagreed. They parted in peace. Anicetus even let Polycarp celebrate the Eucharist in the Roman church out of respect.

 What were they arguing about? Whether the annual Christian Passover (Pascha) should be observed on the 14th of Nisan (the Quartodeciman position, common in Asia Minor) or on the following Sunday. Irenaeus, who knew Polycarp, recorded this. Eusebius preserved it. Britannica summarizes it. No one-not Irenaeus, not Eusebius, not any early source-describes this as a confrontation over the weekly Sabbath. Thiel's version turns a calm, respectful disagreement between two bishops who both claimed apostolic tradition into evidence that "Sabbatarian/Church of God leaders" were standing up to Rome about the seventh day. Polycarp was not leading a separate sabbatarian sect outside the mainstream church of his day. He was a highly respected bishop within it.

Polycrates of Ephesus and the Same Exact Argument, Round Two 

Decades later, Polycrates of Ephesus wrote to Victor of Rome defending the same Quartodeciman practice-keeping the annual feast on the 14th-citing Philip, John, Polycarp, and other "great lights" of Asia who had done likewise. Victor threatened to cut them off. Others (including Irenaeus) told Victor to calm down. The churches of Asia held their ground on the annual observance. Again, the primary sources (Eusebius, Church History V.24) are explicit: this is about the date of the Paschal feast, not the weekly Sabbath. 

Polycrates even notes that his relatives "always observed the day when the people put away the leaven." That is a reference to the annual Feast of Unleavened Bread timing, not "we kept Saturday every week and Rome hated us for it." Thiel lists nine bullet points about Polycrates' fidelity to the Gospel and refusal to submit to Rome. All of them are about the annual festival date. The weekly Sabbath is simply inserted into the narrative by Thiel's framing. 

The Supporting Cast of Late and Dubious Claims 

• Pius I: Later traditions (especially the 6th-century Liber Pontificalis) credit him with decreeing Easter on Sunday. Early sources show that he and his predecessors did not themselves observe Nisan 14 but stayed in peace with those who did. Thiel's claim that Pius forced converts to renounce the biblical Sabbath is an inference drawn from a secondary modern summary, not a primary confrontation by sabbatarians. 
• Eleutherius and unclean meats: The Liber Pontificalis (again, centuries later) attributes to him a decree that Christians need not reject any food as unclean. Scholars widely regard this as likely anachronistic-possibly retrojected from later concerns. It is not strong evidence of a specific sabbatarian showdown. 
• Sylvester I and the desposyni: Thiel leans on Malachi Martin's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, which describes a 318 meeting between Sylvester and Jewish Christian leaders descended from Jesus' family. Martin himself notes that the interview "was not, as far as we know, recorded." There is no contemporary source. Martin was a colorful and frequently controversial figure whose historical reconstructions often lack documentation. This is not the kind of evidence that holds up under scrutiny. 
• Cathari and Paulicians: These were later groups that opposed the Roman Church on various grounds (dualism, rejection of sacraments and images, etc.). They were not "Church of God sabbatarians" maintaining an unbroken seventh-day Sabbath lineage from the apostles. Armstrongite literature has long appropriated various dissenting groups for the succession chart; the actual doctrines rarely match the modern COG package. 

The Actual Pattern 

The early sources show a real and significant dispute in the second century over the annual Christian Passover date, with Asia Minor defending a practice linked to the Jewish calendar and Rome preferring a Sunday-centered observance tied to the resurrection. That dispute is well attested. What is not well attested is a parallel, organized movement of "Church of God sabbatarians" specifically confronting the bishops of Rome over the weekly seventh-day Sabbath as a binding New Covenant requirement. 

Early Gentile Christian writings (Ignatius, the Didache, Justin Martyr, and others) predominantly point to Sunday as the day of Christian assembly. Jewish Christians retained more of the older practices for a time. The Quartodeciman controversy was real; Thiel's rebranding of it as proof of a distinct sabbatarian "true church" confronting Rome on the Sabbath is the Armstrongite myth at work-taking real historical figures who disagreed with Rome on one issue and inserting them into the required succession narrative. 

Bwana Bob's article is less history than theological wish-fulfillment: every bishop who ever argued with Rome about anything Jewish-adjacent becomes a proto-COG sabbatarian hero, and every later heretical group that hated Rome becomes evidence of the remnant. The primary sources simply do not support the claim as stated

Why I am Ex-PCG

 

WHY I’M EX-PCG

By Dan Moffett

My wife never wanted to be part of the Philadelphia Church of God. She attended because I did. During those years, we had painful experiences with the man who later became the regional director in our area.

Then my wife died suddenly from a brain aneurysm.

Her death devastated me. At first, I hardly cared whether I lived or died. I did not even want to go home. What brought me home was knowing that my two sons, who still lived there, needed their father.

At a time when I desperately needed compassion, I felt very little from the church leadership. The regional director did not want to conduct her funeral. During the announcements at Sabbath services, the local minister said only a few words about her death. He told me the director had forbidden him from saying more because it was the Sabbath and would be inappropriate.

I was too overwhelmed with grief to argue. I brought photographs of my wife and placed them on a table. She had been my companion for decades, and I wanted her life to be remembered.

A few weeks later, our first grandchild was born.

That day was both beautiful and heartbreaking. My wife had looked forward so much to becoming a grandmother, but she was not there to hold that baby.

When I held my grandchild, something changed inside me. I knew I wanted to live. I wanted to see this child grow up, and I knew I needed to improve my health to give myself that chance.

Over the next two years, I lost 160 pounds. Eventually, I began to believe that I was not too old to find companionship again.

There were no single women in my congregation, so I traveled to meet people. My minister cautioned me against traveling too much and reminded me that my local congregation was where I belonged.

A friend who was a minister told me about a single woman in his area. She was a schoolteacher, close to my age, and someone he thought I should meet.

I went to visit, and we connected. We began spending time together, traveling back and forth to see each other. Sometimes I stayed in her area for a week so we could visit every day.

We grew close and believed we were in love. We began talking about marriage.

During that relationship, we became sexually intimate. We understood that this went against the beliefs we professed, and we agreed that it would not happen again before marriage. I take responsibility for my part in that decision.

One day, my minister called while she was visiting me. He asked whether we were in love and wanted to marry. I answered yes to both questions.

After he spoke with the regional director, I was told that we should stop spending time together until the ministers had met her.

She came to meet the local minister, but afterward she was so frightened that we stopped seeing each other for a time. When several difficult things happened in her life, she came to believe they were punishment for what we had done. The guilt weighed heavily on both of us, and we ended the relationship.

That was another painful loss, but I tried to move forward.

Later, I went on a few dates with another woman. There was no sexual involvement. We had not even kissed. I was determined not to repeat my earlier mistake.

That year, I arrived a few days early for the Feast of Tabernacles. While walking through the hotel, I encountered the woman from my first relationship.

We went to dinner. She began crying and told me she still loved me and wanted to marry me. I told her I felt the same way.

The second woman was also attending the Feast. When she learned that the first woman was there, she went to the regional director. I was then instructed not to see either woman until he spoke with me.

He arranged meetings with all three of us, speaking with the women first. When I saw the first woman come out crying, I feared what was ahead.

During my meeting, he questioned me about our relationship. I explained that we had dated, wanted to continue seeing each other, and hoped to receive counseling for marriage.

He pressed for more details. I admitted that we had been intimate. When he asked directly whether we had had sex, I answered honestly.

He called me a “sexual predator.”

I was stunned. I told him that, in 38 years, I had been sexually involved with only one woman besides my deceased wife. I asked whether that made me a sexual predator.

He said yes.

Then he asked whether I had had sex with the second woman. I told him no and explained that we had not even held hands or kissed.

He insisted that I had. He said “NO YOU HAD SEX WITH HER”

I denied it again, but he repeated the accusation. It was deeply disturbing to tell the truth and have a minister insist that I was lying.

He then questioned me about pornography and masturbation. I felt humiliated by the direction the meeting had taken.

The local minister sat quietly with a distressed expression. I cannot know what he was thinking, but I felt very alone.

The first woman and I were suspended immediately, and I was ordered to leave the Feast.

I left early the next morning. As I passed her hotel room, I noticed a bill beneath her door and thought she might also be leaving.

About an hour into my drive, I stopped at a Walmart and called her. She had traveled to the Feast with another family, and I was concerned that she might not have money or transportation to get home.

She did not answer, so I left a message offering to send money if she needed help.

After she reported that call to the minister, he called me and said I would be “marked” for contacting her.

When the regional director called, I asked whether I could receive counseling. He told me I was out, no longer a member.

After more than 33 years of involvement in the church community, I asked, “That’s it? No counseling? No second chance?”

He told me not to call again.

He also said he was having to put out many people in the region. To me, he spoke as though the burden was his, while the people losing their relationships and community were given little consideration.

I had devoted decades of my life to that religious community and raised four children within it. Two had attended Armstrong College.

Now I felt discarded.

The emotional consequences were severe. I went through a period of profound despair and did not know how I would recover.

Then the separation reached into my family.

My daughter who lived with me was required to leave home. My other daughter and my granddaughter were forbidden from seeing me. My son at Armstrong College was not allowed to have contact with me.

Losing church membership was painful. Losing contact with my children and grandchild was far worse.

Thankfully, one of my daughters and her husband decided to leave the PCG. They saw what had happened and would not participate in keeping their daughter from her grandfather.

My youngest son also remained with me. What he witnessed damaged his confidence in religion and caused him to question whether God existed. That was another heartbreaking consequence.

I wrote to Gerald Flurry, whom the church called “That Prophet,” explaining what had happened.

I never received an answer.

I later learned through my son-in-law that the regional director knew about the letter and had accused me of lying to Flurry. That director was Cal Culpepper.

I have described these events as I experienced and remember them. I acknowledge my own mistakes. What I cannot accept is the humiliation, the accusations I denied, the refusal to offer further counseling, and the separation of my family.

In time, I began rebuilding my life.

I made friends among people we had been taught to avoid. I discovered kindness, generosity, and genuine concern outside the church community. Those friendships helped me recover.

At the time I first wrote this account, my daughter, son-in-law, two granddaughters, and youngest son were part of my life. Their love helped me move forward. We continued to grieve the separation from my other two children who remained in the PCG.

My hope was—and remains—that our family could be reunited.

I share this account because decisions made by religious leaders can have lasting consequences. Behind every suspension, expulsion, and no-contact instruction are real people: parents, children, grandparents, and grandchildren.

This is why I’m ex-PCG.




An update, fourteen years later

Since I first wrote this letter fourteen years ago, my youngest son has died by suicide.

I believe he never fully recovered from the loss of contact with his only brother and his sister. They were still alive, but the separation meant they were no longer part of his life. I cannot know everything that contributed to his death, but I believe that unresolved grief weighed heavily on him.

When I wrote this account, I still hoped our family would be reunited. Now I carry the sorrow of knowing that, for my youngest son, that reunion can no longer happen in this life.

I continue to hope for contact with my other children. I also hold to the hope of the resurrection, when I believe I will see my youngest son again.

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

If all this has happened to me, just one person.

Imagine how many other people have had their lives ruined by this evil controlling cult church.

This site has been warning of this group for over 33 years. You will find hundreds of damaged lives, broken marriages, destroyed families and even member and ex member suicides. Exit And Support Network

The PCG’s “Rule of 7”: When Even Dinner Required Supervision

This happened to my family when Mr Cocomise was minister of the Philadelphia Church of God congregation in Lexington Kentucky..

The PCG’s “Rule of 7”: When Even Dinner Required Supervision

Dan Mofett

One thing we enjoyed during my years in the Philadelphia Church of God (PCG) was eating together. Almost every Sabbath, many members of our congregation would meet at a local restaurant after services. It was an opportunity to visit, share a meal, and enjoy one another’s company.

Then something changed.

One Sabbath, someone asked which restaurant we were going to. I told them and went ahead to save some seats. My family of six sat down, expecting others to join us.

No one came.

I thought it was strange, but when the same thing happened the following week, I began asking why nobody was joining us anymore.

That was when I was told the church had implemented what they called “the rule of 7.” As it was explained to me, if more than seven members gathered together at any time, a minister had to be present.

I asked the minister about it, and he confirmed the ruling.

With six people in my family, just two other members joining us would put us over the limit. What had been an ordinary meal among friends now required ministerial supervision.

What troubled me was not simply missing dinner companions. It was realizing that the church’s control extended beyond services and into our personal friendships. Why should members need a minister present just to share a meal?

To me, this was another example of the controlling culture I experienced in the PCG. Even something as simple as eating together became subject to a rule.

Sagaris: Another Ancient Christian Recruited Into Armstrongism After His Death

Sagaris: Another Ancient Christian Recruited Into Armstrongism After His Death

Bob Thiel Discovers Yet Another Member of the Church of God 

Who Never Knew He Was One

There is something wonderfully entertaining about Armstrongist church history. Just when you think the available evidence has been stretched as far as it can possibly go, along comes another ancient Christian who, apparently, has been waiting nearly two thousand years for Bob Thiel to explain his religious affiliation to him.

This time, the fortunate historical candidate is Sagaris, a second-century Christian bishop and martyr associated with Laodicea in Asia Minor.

According to Bob Thiel's article, "Was Sagaris in Asia Minor a Church of God leader?", Sagaris was a faithful member of the Church of God, observed Passover on the fourteenth of Nisan, and held doctrines supposedly shared by the modern Continuing Church of God.

Well, there we have it! Another name added to the Armstrongist historical family tree. Somewhere, Herbert W. Armstrong must be smiling-or at least his posthumous public-relations department is working overtime.

But before we hand Sagaris his CCOG membership card, appoint him to the Council of Elders, and invite him to the Feast of Tabernacles, perhaps we should ask a rather inconvenient question:

What does the historical evidence actually establish?

And, more importantly, what does it fail to establish?

1. What We Actually Know About Sagaris

Let's begin with the evidence rather than the denominational wish list.

The principal ancient testimony comes from Polycrates of Ephesus, writing around the end of the second century. His letter is preserved in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, Book V, chapter 24. Polycrates names Sagaris among respected Christian figures associated with Asia Minor. He identifies him as a martyr who had died at Laodicea and places him among those who observed Passover on the fourteenth day of the month. That is important historical evidence.

It tells us something about Sagaris, the traditions of certain Asian Christian communities, and the controversy over when Christians should observe the annual Paschal celebration. What it does not give us is a membership register for a modern Armstrongist denomination.

Polycrates does not say that Sagaris belonged to the Continuing Church of God. He does not identify himself or Sagaris as members of Herbert Armstrong's twentieth-century religious movement. He does not provide a comprehensive list of doctrines that matches a modern CCOG statement of beliefs. Nor does the surviving passage tell us that Sagaris subscribed to every distinctive doctrine later promoted by Armstrong.

It tells us what it tells us.

Unfortunately, that modest historical conclusion is not nearly as useful to a modern sect trying to establish an ancient pedigree as the much grander claim that Sagaris was one of its own.

2. The Amazing Two-Thousand-Year Membership Application

Here is where Armstrongist historical reasoning becomes particularly entertaining. The argument runs something like this:

• Sagaris was an ancient Christian.
• Sagaris observed Passover on the fourteenth of Nisan.
• Modern Armstrongist churches observe Passover on the fourteenth of Nisan.
• Therefore, Sagaris belonged to the Church of God tradition represented by the Continuing Church of God.

Notice the missing steps.

Where is the evidence connecting Sagaris to a continuous organization extending through the intervening centuries? Where is the documentation establishing that he held the full range of doctrines now associated with Armstrongism? Where is the historical chain connecting his congregation to the modern CCOG? A similarity in one religious practice is not proof of complete doctrinal identity. And doctrinal similarity is not, by itself, proof of institutional continuity.

If observing Passover on the same date is sufficient to establish denominational identity, the historical possibilities become almost limitless. Anyone who shares a particular practice with an ancient Christian can apparently claim that person as a spiritual predecessor. One wonders why other modern religious groups have not simply rummaged through the ancient sources, identified everyone who agreed with one of their practices, and declared the historical investigation complete.

Perhaps they have better things to do.

3. Sagaris Was a Person, Not an Armstrongist Doctrinal Checklist

The real Sagaris deserves to be treated as a historical figure rather than as a prop in a modern denominational argument. Polycrates remembers him as a bishop and martyr. His testimony places Sagaris within the Christian communities of Asia Minor and associates him with the fourteenth-day Passover tradition. That is already interesting enough without inventing additional details.

We should distinguish at least three separate questions:

• Historical identity: Who was Sagaris, and what do the surviving sources say about him?
• Doctrinal beliefs: What can we establish about his beliefs beyond the practices explicitly mentioned in the sources?
• Historical continuity: Is there documented evidence connecting his congregation and teachings to a particular modern denomination?

The evidence cited by Thiel helps answer the first question and contributes to the second. It does not, by itself, establish the third. This distinction is basic historical method, not an attack on anyone's faith.

A historian cannot simply fill gaps in the record with whatever conclusions would be most convenient. The absence of detailed evidence does not give us permission to manufacture it. Yet that is precisely the danger when an ancient figure is introduced primarily to validate a modern organization's claims about itself. Sagaris becomes less a person whose life we investigate and more a name placed on a denominational trophy shelf.

4. The Fourteenth of Nisan: A Practice Is Not an Entire Theology

Thiel's argument centers on the Quartodeciman controversy-the dispute over whether the annual Christian Pascha should be observed according to the fourteenth day of Nisan or according to a Sunday observance. Polycrates's letter is a significant source for this controversy. He appeals to the traditions of earlier Christian leaders and explicitly includes Sagaris among those who observed the fourteenth day.

The evidence for Sagaris's association with the fourteenth-day observance is real. The problem is not that Thiel mentions this evidence. The problem is what he attempts to establish from it.

A calendar practice cannot automatically tell us everything about a person's understanding of salvation, the covenants, the nature of the church, the law of Moses, the Godhead, prophecy, church government, or any of the other subjects that distinguish modern Armstrongist groups from other Christians. Those matters require evidence of their own. Even if Sagaris and a modern CCOG member agree about the date of an annual observance, that agreement does not prove they agree about every other religious question.

Imagine discovering that a second-century Christian ate bread, prayed before meals, and believed Jesus was the Messiah. Would we conclude that he belonged to every modern denomination whose members do the same? Of course not. But apparently, when the subject is an ancient Passover observer, a little historical resemblance can be transformed into a magnificent denominational pedigree.

Armstrongism at its finest: find a point of agreement, enlarge it into an entire theological identity, and announce another victory for the one true church.

5. The Church of God: An Ancient Phrase and a Modern Organization

There is another problem with the claim that Sagaris was a member of the Church of God. Christians have used expressions such as "church of God" since antiquity. The expression appears in the New Testament and was not invented by Herbert Armstrong. But the use of a common Christian designation does not establish that every community described by that language belonged to one continuous institution.

Words can remain in use while organizations, leadership structures, theological emphases, and religious practices change. A modern denomination may sincerely believe that it preserves teachings from the apostolic era. It may identify historical figures whose beliefs resemble its own. It may argue that its doctrines are more faithful to Scripture than those of other traditions. Those are claims that can be investigated and debated. They are not the same thing as demonstrating an unbroken organizational succession from the second century to the present. The distinction matters especially when a modern group uses ancient names to establish exclusive religious authority.

If the argument is that Sagaris observed the fourteenth-day Passover, the historical record supports that point. If the argument is that Sagaris therefore belonged to the exact religious tradition represented today by the CCOG, the record presented in Thiel's article does not establish it.

One is a historical observation. The other is a much larger denominational conclusion.

They should not be confused.

6. Armstrongism's Favorite Historical Parlor Trick

This is hardly a problem unique to the Sagaris article. It illustrates a recurring temptation in Armstrongist historical writing: to search the past for individuals whose reported practices resemble selected modern doctrines, then arrange those individuals into a reassuring procession of spiritual ancestors. The resulting narrative can be wonderfully tidy.

Here is an ancient Christian who observed a particular holy day. There is another who rejected a particular custom. Over there is someone who lived in Asia Minor. And before long, the reader is invited to see the modern denomination as the natural heir of a continuous historical movement. The difficulty is that historical evidence rarely arrives in such convenient packaging.

The early Christian world contained diverse communities, disagreements, developing traditions, and competing interpretations of Scripture. The fact that one community retained a particular practice does not establish that it shared every belief with a modern group that later adopted the same practice.

A responsible historical account must distinguish between what is documented, what is reasonably inferred, and what remains speculation. Otherwise, the past becomes a denominational coloring book. Anything that resembles the preferred picture gets colored in, and anything that does not fit is left outside the lines.

For an organization that places such emphasis on being doctrinally correct, one might expect a particularly rigorous approach to historical evidence. Apparently, rigor becomes somewhat more flexible when the desired conclusion is that another ancient Christian was one of our people.

7. The Irony of Claiming an Ancient Pedigree

The appeal to Sagaris is intended to demonstrate that the CCOG preserves ancient Christian teachings. But the more the argument relies on similarities in selected practices, the more important it becomes to ask whether the rest of the historical evidence supports the claimed continuity.

An ancient precedent can be valuable. It can show that a particular practice existed in early Christianity. It can challenge simplistic accounts of Christian uniformity. It can help modern readers understand why Christians disagreed over religious observances. What it cannot do is automatically certify a modern denomination as the sole legitimate heir of the ancient church. That conclusion requires much more than a list of historical names.

It requires careful evidence about beliefs, institutions, historical transitions, and the actual connections between communities across time. If those connections cannot be demonstrated, the honest conclusion is that a modern group shares certain practices with an ancient community-not that the ancient community has been conclusively identified as an early branch of that modern group. And that conclusion, while less exciting for denominational publicity, is far more defensible.

8. What Would Convincing Evidence Look Like?

If the claim is that Sagaris belonged to the historical tradition represented by the CCOG, the burden is to demonstrate more than a shared calendar observance. A persuasive case would need to address several questions:

• What do the earliest sources actually say about Sagaris?
• Which of his beliefs can be established from those sources, rather than inferred from later interpretations?
• What evidence connects his community to later groups that held the same distinctive doctrines?
• Can that connection be documented across the centuries, including periods for which the historical record is incomplete?
• What evidence distinguishes this proposed line of continuity from other Christian communities that also retained or adopted some of the same practices?

These are reasonable questions for anyone claiming historical continuity. They are not anti-Armstrongist questions. They are the questions that should be asked of any religious movement claiming a unique historical lineage. And if the evidence does not answer them, the claim should be qualified accordingly. A confident declaration is not a substitute for documentation.

Sagaris Can Rest in Peace Without a CCOG Membership Card

Sagaris was an important early Christian figure remembered by Polycrates as a bishop and martyr associated with Laodicea. Polycrates also identifies him with the fourteenth-day Passover observance. That evidence deserves to be taken seriously.

But the evidence cited in Bob Thiel's article does not establish that Sagaris belonged to the modern Continuing Church of God, that he held the entire collection of doctrines associated with Armstrongism, or that an unbroken institutional line connects his congregation to today's CCOG. Those are additional claims, and they require additional evidence.

There is nothing wrong with discovering that an ancient Christian practiced something that modern Armstrongists also practice. That is a legitimate historical observation. The trouble begins when resemblance becomes identity, identity becomes succession, and succession becomes proof that one modern organization alone represents the authentic church across the centuries. At that point, history has stopped being an investigation and started serving as a denominational recruitment department.

Let us give Sagaris the respect he deserves. Remember him for what the ancient testimony actually records. Recognize the significance of the Quartodeciman controversy. Acknowledge the limits of the surviving evidence. And please, spare the man the indignity of being drafted into a modern ecclesiastical identity dispute nearly two millennia after his death. He has already been remembered as a Christian bishop and martyr. He does not need an Armstrongist makeover.

Sagaris is evidence that some second-century Christians observed Passover on the fourteenth of Nisan. He is not, on the evidence presented, proof that the Continuing Church of God possesses an unbroken institutional pedigree reaching back to him. That is the difference between studying church history and recruiting the dead to settle modern denominational arguments.

And if this is Armstrongist historical scholarship at its finest, perhaps the next project should be a membership directory of every ancient Christian who ever agreed with one of Bob Thiel's teachings. At the rate things are going, the CCOG's historical membership may soon outnumber its living membership by the thousands.

Now that would be a church growth report worth publishing.

Your Salvation Is Entirely In My Hands. Return To The WCG, Give Me Your Money and Then You Will Be Saved!

Samuel Kitchen has discovered a gospel the apostles somehow missed: you are saved by returning your wallet to the Worldwide Church of God, and if you do not, Satan gets your children and you lose your salvation. Remember, boys and girls, salvation is only available through Samuel!!!!!! Salvation is only a COG thing.

Samuel introduces a new warning to those still refusing to join him. If they do not return to the one true church,  their children will die, and when they die, that has the potential to prohibit a new COG congregation from forming, or even growing.

That is not a paraphrase. It is the offer. After draping himself in Jeremiah 15:19-21, Zechariah 3, Malachi 3:11, and Revelation 12, he lands the plane: obey the command to bring tithes and offerings to the Worldwide Church of God "in a RETURN," or you will not endure. You will be delivered to Satan the devourer. He will devour you and your children. Congregations included. Then, with the straight face of every collection-plate prophet since the invention of the green offering envelope, he adds that he is not here to hurt you. He is here so you can be spared.

A man who threatens to hand your children to the devil if you will not fund his rebuilt House of God is not sparing anybody. It is only about himself.

Jeremiah 15 was not a franchise agreement. The Lord was speaking to Jeremiah, personally, about a ministry already under way: 

...if you return, I will bring you again, and you will stand before me; if you separate the precious from the vile, you will be as my mouth. 

Kitchen reads that as a boarding pass to Petra. Verse 19 becomes Zechariah 3, which becomes the rebuke of "Satan the devourer," which becomes the earth swallowing the armies that chase "the Church," which becomes - by a leap that would embarrass a circus acrobat - your duty to mail support to a reconstituted Worldwide Church of God. The brass wall is no longer a promise to a weeping prophet. It is a membership perk. The place of safety is no longer a metaphor, or even the old Armstrong cave tour. It is the reward for coming home to the right letterhead.

That is not exposition. That is a man inserting himself into a text that never heard of him.

The New Covenant has already named the house, and it is not in Pasadena. Christ is the temple. His people are the living stones. The veil is ripped in half and is down. The once-for-all offering has been made, and the writer of Hebrews did not leave a footnote for a 2026 capital campaign. Paul told the Galatians that if righteousness came by the law, Christ died for nothing. He did not add, "unless the law in question is a tithe earmarked for the right splinter." Salvation in the apostolic preaching is by grace, through faith, not of works, so that no prophet can boast that he spared you. Kitchen's version cannot survive that sentence. In his mouth, returning saves. Not returning means you will not endure. The verb has been moved. Christ is no longer the one who saves. The return to Sammy is.

Haggai is drafted for the same job. Those who say it is not time to rebuild the house are wasting money on "false churches," enriching Babylon, and risking being buried as ashes while the pound and the talent are snatched away. Your house, your desires, the ordinary life you were given, are trash next to what God is offering, and what God is offering turns out to be funding his work. Mark 8:38 is then waved like a warrant. Be ashamed of me and my words, says Jesus, and the Son of Man will be ashamed of you. Kitchen hears his own fundraising pitch in that verse. Romans 9:33, which is about believing on Christ the stumbling stone, is recruited as moral cover for a man who is not ashamed of his king. The stumble, in context, is the stumble of refusing the scheme. Believe on the return, and you shall not be ashamed. Decline the return, and the devourer is already measuring the children.

This is the blasphemy, and it should be named as such. It puts a human organization in the office of Christ. It makes an Old Covenant levy, wrenched out of Israel's land system and Malachi's temple, into the condition of enduring to the end. It takes the finished work and staples an invoice to it. And it does the cruelest thing a religious man can do with a pulpit: it aims the threat downward, at the sons and daughters of people who will not salute his letterhead. "I am not here to hurt you" is the sentence abusers use when the threat is the product. The hurt is the sermon. The spare-you is the close.

New Covenant Christians do not owe Samuel Kitchen a return. They do not owe the Worldwide Church of God a tithe in order to be hid from Satan. They are not sentenced to the Great Tribulation by the absence of their name on his donor list, and neither are their children. The gospel is not "consider your ways and rebuild my house, or the devil gets the family." The gospel is that the Son has already stood before the Father, already silenced the accuser, already delivered his people out of the hand of the terrible, and he did not subcontract the transaction to a man rebuilding a brand.

Kitchen says he is not ashamed of his God, his King, and his brother. Fine. The question is whether he is ashamed to let that King finish a sentence without a collection plate. A Christ who cannot save unless you return to the Worldwide Church of God is not the Christ of the apostles. He is a tenant in someone else's building, and the rent is due.

Sam's own words:

"Therefore thus saith the Lord, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.

"And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord.

"And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible."(verses 18-21)

That is ultimately the Church going into the place of safety. Verse 19, refers to what is described in Zechariah 3, Joshua STANDING before the LORD. That is the place in time when the Lord rebukes Satan the DEVOURER(Mal. 3:11), and the earth swallows up the armies that chase after the Church.(Rev. 12:13-17)

But those who are obeying God, and the command to bring tithes and offerings to the Worldwide Church of God, in a RETURN, are fearing God and trembling at His Word, and are not sitting with the mockers in these cog groups!

IN RETURNING YOU SHALL BE SAVED! Because by not returning YOU WILL NOT ENDURE! You will be delivered to Satan the Devil, and HE WILL DEVOUR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN! You are not only sentencing YOU to the Great Tribulation but also your children, and that can mean congregations for the ministry!

SO it is something you should consider. CONSIDER YOUR WAYS. I AM NOT HEAR TO HURT YOU! I am hear to declare you the Word of God, and for you to be SPARED!!!!!

Haggai 1 talks about a people who says IT IS NOT TIME TO RETURN to rebuild the House of God. You wasted a lot of time and money for these false churches and babylon is being enriched by it! But you don't even want to do what must be done for God's house, that you think to just bury and do nothing?

Will the Worldwide Church of God be buried, or will you be buried as ASHES? That pound and talent will be taken away if you don't do something with it! IT WAS GIVEN for you to give to to God and DO HIS WORK! You having a fancy house, or everything you ever could desire in your heart, IS TRASH compared to what God is offering!

Mark 8:38

"Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

Romans 9:33

"As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed."

I AM NOT ASHAMED OF MY GOD, MY KING AND BROTHER...JESUS CHRIST! That si why I am standing here, to speak HIS WORD and to REJOICE IN HIS WORD!

In Jesus' name,

Samuel W Kitchen

Prima Thiel: Bob Thiel Puts His Law Above Paul, Then Blames Luther for Adding a Word

Bob Thiel's current article on Martin Luther is not a history lesson. It is a law-keeping brief. The target is not Wittenberg in 1522. The target is anyone who believes Paul meant what he wrote: a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Strip away the footnotes and the Catholic quotations, and what remains is the old Armstrongist move. Discredit the Reformers, borrow a Roman Catholic stick to beat them with, then smuggle Sabbaths, holy days, and tithes back in as the real gospel. The New Covenant is the thing he cannot stand. Luther is only the prop.

Thiel's showpiece is Romans 3:28. Paul wrote that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Luther's German Bible reads that a man is justified without the works of the law, through faith alone. The word allein is not in the Greek. Thiel treats that as a confession of fraud, then quotes Luther's blunt line that he knew the word was not there and would have it so.

Luther said that. He said it in the Open Letter on Translating in 1530, and he said it with contempt for critics who could count letters and could not read a sentence. His point was German idiom. When German affirms one thing and denies another, it often supplies allein so the denial lands. "The farmer brings grain and no money" is weaker, in his ear, than "the farmer brings grain alone and no money." He was translating χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου, "apart from works of the law," into speech a Saxon could hear. He was not inventing a doctrine the verse did not already carry.

The exclusive force is Paul's. Romans 3:21-28, Romans 4:4-5, Galatians 2:16, Galatians 3:10-14, and Ephesians 2:8-9 all say the same thing: the ground of justification is not the sinner's law-keeping. Faith receives a righteousness that is not its own. Adding "alone" in German made that exclusion audible. It did not create it. Catholic translators and commentators have long conceded that Paul's contrast is exclusive even when they reject the Protestant system built on it. Thiel needs the inserted adverb to be the whole doctrine, because if the doctrine is already in χωρὶς, his article collapses.

Calling this Marcionism is a smear, not an argument. Marcion threw out the Old Testament and rewrote Luke. Luther translated the Old Testament, preached it, and held that the law still kills and still guides. Those are not the same project.

The other crowd-pleaser is the August 1, 1521 letter from the Wartburg to Philip Melanchthon. Thiel cuts it down to a license: sin boldly, even fornication or murder a thousand times a day, and faith will cover it. Then he drops Hebrews 10:26-27 on the table as if Luther had never read it. "Sin boldly" was a letter to a scrupulous friend.

Read the paragraph he will not quote. Luther tells Melanchthon to preach real mercy, not imaginary mercy. God does not save imaginary sinners. Be a sinner and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger. This life is not the place where justice dwells. No sin can separate us from the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Do you think that Lamb paid a small price?

That is pastoral hyperbole to a man eaten by scruples, written in Latin, in private. It is the same move as Paul in Romans 5:20: where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. It is not an invitation to kill the neighbors. Luther spent the rest of his career insisting that faith that does not produce works is dead, and that the Christian is bound to the neighbor. Antinomian license was not his program. Thiel's excerpt is the excerpt Catholic polemicists have used since the sixteenth century. He borrowed it because it serves the same purpose for him that it served for them: make grace sound like permission, then sell law as the cure.

Hebrews 10:26-27 does not say what he needs it to say. Willful sin after receiving the knowledge of the truth, in that chapter, is apostasy from the sacrifice of Christ back to a system that cannot save. It is trampling the Son of God and treating the blood of the covenant as common. It is not "you missed a Sabbath" or "you did not send a tithe to Wadsworth or Arroyo Grande." Using it as a club against justification by faith is the oldest confusion in this argument: mixing the ground of acceptance with the fruit of a new life.

James is not the trump card he thinks it is. Thiel is right that Luther spoke harshly of James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation, and that the 1522 preface called James an epistle of straw beside John, Paul, and 1 Peter. He is wrong about what that proves.

Luther did not cut James out of the Bible. He printed it, argued with it, and said he would not stop anyone else from ranking it higher. The "straw" line was dropped from the general preface after 1537. His complaint was that James, as he read it, did not preach Christ with the clarity of Romans. That was a bad judgment. It was not a secret amendment of the canon, and it is not a reason to hand the New Testament back to a sabbath-keeping sect.

James 2:24 is the verse he wants: a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. Paul and James are not answering the same question. Paul asks what justifies the ungodly before God. His answer is faith in Christ, apart from works of the law. James asks what kind of faith is real when someone claims to have it and will not lift a finger for a brother. His answer is that dead faith does not justify anybody, because it is not faith. Abraham is in both arguments. Paul cites Genesis 15: the ungodly man is counted righteous when he believes. James cites Genesis 22: the man who believed is shown to have believed when he acts. One is the root. The other is the fruit. Thiel needs them to be rivals so he can discard Paul whenever Paul will not support food laws and holy days.

The early church did not resolve this by putting Moses back in charge of Gentiles. Acts 15 already refused that settlement.

The Matthew 3:2 claim, that Luther changed "repent" to "mend," is contested even in Thiel's own paragraph, and he admits he does not know enough German to judge it. The Acts 19:18 claim comes from the same Catholic source, Patrick O'Hare's The Facts About Luther. So does most of the file. Thiel then cites Herman Bernard Kramer, a Roman Catholic priest, to the effect that Protestant Bible translations were deceit and hypocrisy.

That is an extraordinary witness for a man who thinks the Roman church is Babylon. He will take Rome's word when Rome is useful against Luther, and drop it the moment Rome speaks about Sunday, the Trinity, or the mass. This is not suspicion of tradition. It is shopping.

On Luke 10:28 and Matthew 19, Luther's irony is not a denial that Jesus said "do this and live." It is a reading of what happens when a lawyer asks how to inherit eternal life and is handed the law. The law answers the question it was asked. It also exposes the man who asked it. The rich ruler in Matthew 19 walks away. The lawyer in Luke 10 is told to go and do likewise after a story that destroys his boundary around "neighbor." Jesus is not offering commandment-keeping as a competing plan of salvation beside the cross. He is shutting the mouth of self-righteousness. Paul says the same thing in Romans 3:19-20. Thiel reads every "do this" as a COG membership requirement.

The most revealing section is not about Luther at all. Thiel says John 1:14 and Philippians 2:6-7 show that Jesus emptied himself of his divinity on earth, otherwise he could not have been tempted. That is not Luther's error. That is Thiel's.

Philippians 2:7 says he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and being found in human likeness. The text says what the emptying consisted of: he took, he humbled himself, he became obedient to death. It does not say he ceased to be God. John 1:14 says the Word became flesh. It does not say the Word stopped being the Word. Hebrews 4:15 says he was tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin. A truly human nature can be tempted. It does not require the Son to park his deity outside Bethlehem.

Historic Christian confession, from the early centuries through Chalcedon, is that he is fully God and fully man in one person. The kenosis theory Thiel is selling, that the Son stripped himself of divinity, leaves you with a savior who is not God during the very years the gospel happened. Luther's incarnational language was an attempt to protect the opposite claim. Thiel uses a quarrel about a German verb to smuggle in a Christology the church rejected long before Ambassador College existed.

The article ends with the claim that no early Christian practiced anything like modern Protestantism. As a description of sixteenth-century institutions, that is trivial. As a doctrinal claim, it is a trick. The question is not whether Polycarp kept a Sunday school roster. The question is whether Gentiles were justified by faith in Christ or by taking on the law of Moses.

Paul already answered it, under apostolic fire, in Galatians. If righteousness comes through the law, Christ died for nothing. The Jerusalem council already refused to put that yoke on Gentile disciples. The New Covenant texts already say the law was a tutor until Christ, that the first covenant is obsolete, and that the Spirit, not the letter, marks the people of God. Thiel's system cannot survive those sentences, so Luther has to be a forger, James has to cancel Paul, and grace has to be redefined as empowered law-keeping.

Luther was a flawed man. His tongue was violent. His judgment on James was poor. His later writing on the Jews is indefensible. None of that puts allein into the Greek, and none of it puts the Sinai covenant back on the conscience of the person who has been crucified with Christ. Thiel is not defending the Bible against a reckless translator. He is defending a works-righteous sect against the apostle who said the law was never given to justify. The New Covenant is the offense. Luther is just the name on the warrant