It’s always a miraculous thing when you witness a person being freed from the bondage of a legalistic cult and seeing them find true freedom in Christ. How much more so then to see an entire movement actually reject the false teachings of it’s founder and embrace the truths of the Bible as God intended rather than remaining slaves to laws and rules and regulations prescribed by men and women who twist and distort the word to maintain control over their flocks. One such movement was not afraid to question the teachings of it’s founder. The leadership of this church was humble and wise enough to recognize that they could reject the founder’s false teachings without rejecting God. The story of this transformation from abusive cult to mainstream evangelical Church is now being told in a new video release called ‘Called to be Free’ where the leaders and members tell their stories in their own words. [1]

I remember back in my college days listening to a dynamic ‘preacher’ on a radio program called ‘The World Tomorrow.’ His name was Herbert W. Armstrong and he was exciting to listen to. It was on this radio broadcast that I heard about their magazine called The Plain Truth. As it just so happened, we had a few magazines stands on our campus offering free copies of this magazine. I was really impressed with this ‘ministry’ that could have such a great radio broadcast and offer these beautiful glossy magazines free of charge. It wasn’t until I met a member of this ‘church’ in one of my classes however that I learned just how this ‘church’ managed to do this.

The Worldwide Church of God was a full blown cult that required almost forty percent of a person’s income in order to be a member in good standing! Members would say that was way too much, that it was more like twenty percent. However, once you included the costs of attending all of the Old Testament Feasts that were hosted by the church in various hotels around the world every year that every member was required to attend, the figure did actually work out to almost forty percent. One member said that it was easier to become a member of the CIA or FBI than it was to become a member of the Worldwide Church of God!

Fortunately, that has all now changed for the members of the Worldwide Church of God since the passing of it’s founder Herbert W. Armstrong. The new leadership of the WCG would bring reform to the church. The rest of the story is better told by the leaders and members themselves so Pastor Joel Kramer and Scott Johnson of Living Hope Fellowship set out on a project to allow them to do just that. The following is Scott Johnson’s story of how the video ‘Called to be Free’ began.

Making All Things New
A Miracle of Modern Reformation By Scott Johnson

It started last November with a phone call from Greg Johnson of Standing Together Ministries. “We’re hosting a pastor’s luncheon in Salt Lake City, and the keynote speaker is from the leadership of the Worldwide Church of God. Would you be interested in attending?”

The Worldwide Church of God. Wasn’t that a cult? Greg must have sensed our hesitation. “They’ve changed! They’re not a cult anymore. They’ve renounced their heretical teachings.”

With both our skepticism and our curiosity aroused, Joel and I attended the pastor’s luncheon, and heard the story. We walked out of there dumbfounded. To call the story amazing would do it an injustice. It was a complete spiritual upheaval of an entire religious organization, on a corporate level, from the top down, something virtually unheard of in 2,000 years of church history.

If ever there was a story that needed telling, this was it. It had some very interesting implications for ministry to Mormons. Where was the video on this story? There wasn’t one. We emailed the keynote speaker, Mike Feazell, and asked if the Worldwide Church of God might be willing for us to do a video on their story. To our surprise, they agreed. Three weeks later, hardly aware of what we were doing or what we were getting ourselves into, we piled all of our video gear into the car and headed to the Worldwide Church of God headquarters in Pasadena, California.

For two weeks we received an intense education in what many consider one of the more spectacular miracles in Church history, and one that was still unfolding before our eyes.

Anatomy of a Cult

The organization known today as The Worldwide Church of God began in the 1930s as The Radio Church of God, a radio ministry led by Herbert W. Armstrong. His preaching style was intriguing, and his teaching was characterized by a sensationalistic approach to end-times prophecy. As his following grew, the church established congregations in areas of greatest concentration of listenership. The church continued to grow throughout the 1960s, and changed its name to the Worldwide Church of God. By then, they had adopted a significant amount of unorthodox and esoteric doctrines and teachings. Armstrong considered himself to be Jesus Christ’s end-time apostle, in the spirit of the prophet Elijah.

Armstrong taught his followers that the Old Testament Levitical laws must be observed. The church’s insistence on keeping the Saturday Sabbath and the Jewish festivals was the defining characteristic of the movement. The Worldwide Church of God considered Sabbath-keeping to be the mark of a true believer. Levitical dietary laws and tithing were also mandatory, and other things were prohibited, including the observance of Christmas, Easter, birthdays, and the use of makeup. The use of most pharmaceuticals and many forms of medical treatment were considered a lack of faith in God. All of this fostered an atmosphere of extreme legalism that caused many to wrestle internally with fear and shame, while externally laboring to produce an appearance of righteousness.

Even more alarming were the heretical doctrines that were promoted. The Worldwide Church of God taught something called Anglo-Israelism, the belief that Anglo-Saxon peoples are descended from Israel (specifically Manasseh and Ephraim); hence, the necessity for adherence to Levitical law. They rejected orthodox views of the nature of God, including the Trinity and the personhood of the Holy Spirit, and maintained a belief that the faithful would become gods in the “God Family,” currently made up of the Father and the Elder Brother, Jesus.

Throughout the middle and into the latter part of the 20th century, the Worldwide Church of God grew substantially in its membership, impact, finances, and scope. Ambassador College was founded in the 1950s in downtown Pasadena to train new ministers for the church. The church became a formidable media empire, with The Plain Truth magazine in eight languages, reaching eight million in worldwide circulation at its height. Radio and television programming of The World Tomorrow, featuring Herbert Armstrong, and for a number of years, his son, Garner Ted Armstrong, was also heard around the world.

And then, in 1986, Herbert W. Armstrong’ who was presumed to be God’s end-times apostle, the man who would usher in the coming of Christ and His reign on earth died.

The church initially seemed to recover from this blow without too much difficulty. By the time his death became imminent, Armstrong had appointed Joseph Tkach, Sr., a man in whom he had a great deal of trust, to succeed him as president and Pastor General of the church. Following Armstrong’s death, Tkach took the reins of leadership with every intention of furthering his predecessor’s vision and teachings. He differed from Armstrong, however, in a number of ways. He was less authoritarian and autocratic, and he was also more willing to give a valid challenge a fair hearing.

The Wall is Breached

The first challenges were administrative in nature and resulted in the relaxing of certain prohibitions, including the use of makeup and the medical profession. Former positions on these issues, the leadership reasoned, were not scripturally defensible. However, the first true crack in the dam of heresy came from a challenge of a seemingly peripheral point of doctrine, which focused on the meaning of a single Greek word.

When one of the leaders agreed with the challenging viewpoint, a doctrinal committee was formed to examine the issue more thoroughly. Once this small point of doctrine was clarified, the committee began to examine a few other similar points of doctrine, in what they believed would be a “fine-tuning” process in their doctrinal position. What followed, however, was significantly more drastic than a few minor adjustments.

The entire doctrinal framework began to unravel around them as they compared their doctrines with the truth found in God’s Word. And not only God’s Word, but also with hard science. The church’s long-held belief in Anglo-Israelism, which has been called the “central plank” of their belief system, has been discredited through DNA testing and population genetics, which only confirmed what archaeological studies had long since concluded.

As heretical doctrines fell away, biblical truth became the foundation for their doctrine. One of the more dramatic doctrinal changes was the recognition of God’s identity as a Trinity of three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a concept the Worldwide Church of God had previously believed was of pagan origin.

The final death blow to their status as a cult came in late December of 1994, when president Joseph Tkach delivered what is now called, ironically, “The Christmas Eve Sermon.” In this three-hour presentation, he formally delineated the doctrinal changes that had been slowly trickling down, including the abolition of the “Sabbath requirement” which had been the keystone of their identity as a church. He acknowledged that the Worldwide Church of God was not the only true church, and that there were believers in other denominations. He lifted the prohibitions that had long been imposed, and explained that the Old Covenant of the Old Testament had been superceded by the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. Our righteousness, he said, comes by grace through faith, from Christ and Christ alone, and not by observance of any law.

For the Worldwide Church of God, this declaration was tantamount to Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. And it had much the same impact. However, the transformation of the Worldwide Church of God was a logistical reversal of the Protestant reformation, in that it was the “mother” organization that was renewed and reformed, instead of the subsequent “splinter” churches.

And there were indeed many “Armstrongist” splinter groups that formed in the wake of the Christmas Eve Sermon. [2] The transformation was certainly not without enormous cost.

Families and friends were torn apart in such a way as to bring to mind Jesus’ words: “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” The leadership endured everything from vitriolic ridicule to outright death threats. When the dust settled, more than half the membership was gone. More than 80 percent of the finances had vanished. Nevertheless, those who remained had encountered the Lord Jesus Christ in a new and remarkable way.

The miracle isn’t so much that doctrinal points were compared and changed in light of Scripture, though that is indeed miraculous. The real miracle happened in the hearts of the people. It happened in the hearts of the leaders who were willing to sacrifice everything their reputation, their livelihood, and in many cases, relationships with their loved ones to be reconciled to the Truth. It happened in the hearts of the members who were willing to abandon a long-held worldview and step into unknown territory. It happened in a group of people who allowed Jesus Christ to take them by the hand and walk them through that minefield, knowing full well that there would be suffering along the way.

The Worldwide Church of God counted the cost. And they paid the price. But such is the price of the Gospel, they will tell you. In our interviews with nearly 50 leaders and laypeople of the church, we asked many of them if it was worth it. Never was there a hesitation in their unanimous answer: “Absolutely.”

Making All Things New

We saw many eyes that glistened both with tears and with a first-love excitement in Jesus Christ. They spoke of things like “grace” and “freedom” as new-found treasures, with an abounding joy that far too many jaded evangelicals have forgotten. No one with whom we talked was willing to take even the slightest amount of credit for what happened. Many of them told us, “It was God Who did it. How could it be anything else?”

When we look back, we realize just how brazen we were to even approach them about doing a video. After all, at one time the Worldwide Church of God had been a multimillion dollar international media empire. And we were basically two guys who had a video camera. And yet they said, “Come.” Not only did they accept our offer to come, they bent over backwards to help us and accommodate us. They didn’t so much as cast a reproachful eye on our ramshackle setup. They treated us with love. They let us into their fellowship. And we came away more blessed than we could possibly have imagined.

The miraculous transformation of the Worldwide Church of God strikes a chord with most Christians who hear about it for the first time. It is a unique story. It is an amazing story. It is a story that the Church “capital C” needs to hear, that we might be able to rejoice in the freedom of God’s grace, and shake off the shackles of the legalism and self-righteousness we all cling to in one form or another.

One Fuller Seminary theologian said in reference to the transformation, “Dare we hope that Mormonism could be next?” Dare we? We have long been convinced that God is preparing to do something in fact, is already doing many things to set people free from Mormonism. Dare we hope that what happened with the Worldwide Church of God could happen with the LDS church? Perhaps it is better to ask: Is that too big a miracle for God to do?

Now, as we pore over hours of video footage and reams of transcriptions, the daunting task ahead is to tell this miraculous story in such a way as to convey its power and awe. That in itself will be a miracle. But then again, we serve a God of miracles.

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Notes:

[1] You can order your copy of Called to be Free from http://www.macgregorministries.org/videos/videos.html
Video image of ‘Called to be Free’ and text of ‘Making All Things New’ accessed from http://www.macgregorministries.org/videos/videos.html Saturday, February 5, 2005.

[2] Splinter groups faithful to Armstrongism:
The Philadelphia Church of God: http://www.pcog.org/
The Key of David: http://www.keyofdavid.com/
Church of God, Fathful Flock: http://www.cog-ff.com/
God’s Church, Worldwide: http://www.gcww.org/
The True Christian: http://www.truechristian.org/

For further study:

Official Worlwide Church of God web site: http://www.wcg.org/
http://www.wcg.org/lit/AboutUs/history.htm
Plain Truth Ministries: http://www.ptm.org/

http://www.wcg.org/lit/AboutUs/history.htm
http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/philcog.html
http://www.macgregorministries.org/cult_groups/philadelphians.html
http://www.marktab.org/wcgweb3.html
http://www.watchman.org/profile/pcgpro.htm
http://home.datawest.net/esn-recovery/mike_ep/pcg/what_is.htm
http://www.standingtogether.org/itn_111203.html

Photos Credits:

Scott Johnson of Living Hope Ministries ( http://www.lhvm.org/ ) also co-produced the video ‘DNA vs. The Book of Mormon’ with Pastor Joel Kramer. [joelscott.jpg photo of Scott Johnson accessed from http://www.mormonchallenge.com/contact.htm Saturday, February 5, 2005]

Photo of WCG founder Herbert W. Armstrong accessed from http://www.cog-ff.com/bstudies.html Saturday, February 5, 2005.

The Plain Truth 50 Years magazine cover of February 1984 accessed from http://www.angelfire.com/ga4/wwwcg/20years.html Saturday, February 5, 2005.

Photo of former President of WCG Joseph Tkach Sr. accessed from http://www.wcg.org/lit/booklets/truth/photos7.htm Saturday, February 5, 2005.
Note: Current presidency is held by Joseph Tkach, Jr., after his father’s death in 1995.

Scott Johnson and Joel Kramer, of Living Hope Fellowship, interview J. Michael Feazell about the changes in the WCG. [feazell.jpg photo by Thomas C. Hanson, accessed from http://www.standingtogether.org/itn_111203.html Saturday, February 5, 2005]