In an article that appears in the January, 1979, issue of Beacon Lights, I wrote that we are now, according to astrologers, in the Age of Aquarius. Although astrologers are not agreed about the exact beginning of the Age of Aquarius, they, do think of the twentieth century as the Age of Aquarius. What do they mean by this designation?
Astrologers as well as astronomers speak of a star-age as approximately twenty-two hundred years. It is the age during which the sun rises on the first day of spring in the heavenly space occupied by one of the signs of the zodiac. For the past 2,200 years the sun has been rising in the sign of Pisces (the sign of the fish). Sometime in this century the sun has risen or will rise out of the space occupied by the constellation Aquarius.
Astrologers say too that every time star-ages change new forms of worship develop, new governments are in style, new philosophies become popular. The Age of Aquarius, say the astrologers, will be characterized by humanism, brotherhood, and astrology.
Whether we are in the Age of Aquarius or not is not important to me, although it is a matter concerning which I am curious because so many writers refer to this as being significant. That we are in an age of religious confusion and religious deviation is certainly obvious to anyone who is a discerner of the events of the times in which we live. I teach a course at Covenant Christian High School that investigates the Cults and Isms. This has been a most fortunate time to teach such a course because news about cults and isms has proliferated this year. In a series of three articles entitled “The Truth about THE PLAIN TRUTH” written by the undersigned in the October, November, and December, 1968, issues of Beacon Lights, I investigated and analyzed carefully the Herbert Armstrong movement, one of the twentieth century cults that is currently in the news.
The Worldwide Church of God traces its origin to the organizational genius of Herbert W. Armstrong who first organized the Radio Church of God. Armstrong started a radio ministry in January 1934, in Eugene, Oregon. The first issues of the monthly magazine The Plain Truth were published in 1934 on the borrowed mimeograph. In 1968 the Radio Church of God changed its name to the Worldwide Church of God. In the 46 years of its existence the Worldwide Church has grown to be an $80 million empire consisting of 250 churches and more than 75,000 members including some in Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Since 1972 the Worldwide Church of God has been in the news several times, especially in the last half year. In 1972 trouble erupted between Herbert W. Armstrong and his son Garner Ted, then 42, who had for some time assumed much of the workload of the Worldwide Church of God. Garner Ted, who has the Johnny Carson-type physique and the Paul Harvey-type voice, was peremptorily yanked off the tube and sent into exile by his father. Insiders reported that the son was guilty of adultery. By 1974, however, Herbert announced that the returned Garner Ted was his divinely chosen successor as chief apostle and ambassador of the church. Angry schism ensued in the Worldwide Church because dissidents charged that Garner Ted had not properly repented his adulteries, adding that other church sinners had not been treated so forgivingly. Since 1974, therefore, the church has abandoned its requirement that divorced and remarried persons who join the church must break up their second marriages. (This was undoubtedly done for pragmatic reasons.)
In June, 1978, Garner Ted, now 48, was once again in the news. Despite the fact that Garner Ted, who as TV and radio preacher on The World Tomorrow, had tremendous pulling power gaining financial supporters and converts to the show’s never-mentioned sponsor, the Worldwide Church of God, he was removed from TV and radio. More significantly he was also ousted from the church’s board and from his job as the operating head of the church and of the church-owned Ambassador College in Pasadena, California. Herbert W. Armstrong, the church’s autocratic “Apostle” had seized control and at age 85 had made plans to go on TV himself. This he reportedly has done since July, 1978.
Time magazine reports the following concerning the byzantine – type power struggle in the June 19, 1978 issue.
“Times have changed. Now Herbert’s closest aide and spokesman is Lawyer Stanley Rader, himself recently sidelined and now back in power. Rader denies that Herbert ever designated Garner Ted as his successor. In a florid churchwide encyclical, the father explained the sudden ousting by accusing his son of perfidy (i.e. treachery or unfaithfulness): “I derived my authority from the living CHRIST. You derived what you had from me, and then used it totally CONTRARY to THE WAY Christ had led me.” (Notice the blasphemy and absolutism of this statement. A.L.)
Many see in these goings-on a byzantine power struggle, in which Rader and his former secretary, who is now married to Herbert, have ganged up on Gamer Ted. There is also another possible issue. Gamer Ted has gradually played down some of Dad’s more embarrassing dogmas. Among them: that heaven is racially segregated, that Britain and the U.S. have become the “real Israel,”….”
(For a more careful study of the doctrines and theology of the Worldwide Church of God I refer you to my articles in the Beacon Lights.)
It is now January, 1979, and the paranoid behavior of Herbert W. Armstrong is once again in the news. Last week California’s attorney general agreed with those angry dropouts from the Worldwide Church who for a decade have grumbled that all is not holy or honest in the $80 million empire created by the eccentric and monomaniacal Herbert W. Armstrong. (Complaints of autocratic rule caused 40 ministers and 3000 members to quit the church in 1973 and 1974, but income and membership reportedly gained in succeeding years.)
Newsweek, January 15, 1979 reports the following:
“A California judge immediately placed the church in temporary receivership, and state attorneys seized armloads of financial records from the sect’s offices in Pasadena. Among other things, the suit charged that Armstrong, 86, and Rader, 48, had sold as many as 50 parcels of church land in California, “shredded and destroyed” church records, and were about to sell for only $10 million a school site in Texas that had been valued at $30 million.
Although Armstrong pledged “every effort to cooperate with the attorney general’s office,” the suit threatened to unravel the incredibly prosperous organization he started 46 years ago. Claiming to be Christ’s ambassador on earth, Armstrong preached a bizarre fundamentalism that upheld the Jewish Sabbath and a kosher diet and disavowed Christmas, Easter, the Trinity and other Christian doctrines. But the key to his success was an apocalyptic (i.e. prophetic) insistence that the end of the world was near. Only by heeding his prophecies could his followers avoid fiery extinction.”
At this juncture we should notice that the ideas of Armstrong are always a
conglomeration of truth and error. Although we too may agree that the end of the world is near and that we are living in the last days, we disagree with Armstrong when he says that he has some corner on prophecy and that therefore only by heeding his prophecies can anyone avoid fiery extinction. This type of apocalyptic and eschatological error is one of the chief marks of the cultic movements.
Since the beginning of the troubles between father and son in 1972, groups of Armstrong ministers have complained publicly that the “ambassador of Christ” and his family had become more wealthy and worldly than his message allowed. From the $75 million collected annually from no more than 70,000 followers, the sect paid its inner elite six-figure salaries, established the 80 acre Ambassador College, and a lavish Ambassador International Cultural Foundation, both in Pasadena, California. (Time reported in June, 1978, that the Pasadena school is almost destroyed. The full-time student body is being slashed from 1,120 to 250, the faculty from 177 to 25.)
From the office of his own Church of God, International, in Tyler, Texas, where he broadcasts a daily quarter-hour of radio prophecy, Garner Ted, who was in large part responsible for the phenomenal growth of the Worldwide Church of God “empire” through the World Tomorrow broadcasts, defended his father’s integrity last week. He insisted that the “Rasputin- like” influence of Stanley Rader has caused the church’s current crisis.
Newsweek reports as follows:
“…“There were expenditures that I was deeply concerned about,” said Garner Ted, “like $700,000 for Rader in one year alone, including a salary of $200,000.” But since his excommunication, Gamer Ted, said, he has been unable to speak with his father.
“I try to get in touch with him but they keep changing his number,” he said.
Meanwhile, the aged Herbert Armstrong now lives in virtual seclusion in Tucson, Ariz., with his new much younger wife. “Church members still believe he is God’s representative on earth,” said former member John Trechak, one of the church’s leading critics. “But he is so senile that his messages are whatever he has been told in the last fifteen minutes.” Within a 24-hour period last week, Armstrong fired and then rehired Rader, to the chagrin of his many opponents in the church. Rader promptly sought to have the suit dismissed as an unconstitutional infringement on the freedom of religion. His motion failed, but a hearing in scheduled this week to determine whether the receivership should be continued.
Whatever the court eventually decides, the leadership of the Worldwide Church of God has reached its own apocalyptic moment. And in its search for a media messiah, the membership may well turn once again to the ambassador’s original heir apparent, Garner Ted.”
In June 1978, Time analyzed the situation as follows:
“Who will eventually succeed the aged and ailing Apostle Herbert? Recent convert Rader appears all-powerful, but he is not a minister and has numerous enemies. “Many people fear Stan immensely,” says a veteran headquarters official. An anonymous “committee of Twelve” has sent a vicious anti-Rader letter to all Worldwide ministers. Rader’s candidate to take over may be the newly installed director of the church’s ministry, C. Wayne Cole. But Garner Ted should not be counted out. Says Professor Joseph Hopkins of Pennsylvania’s Westminster College, author of a recent book called The Armstrong Empire: “There is nobody around who can take Garner Ted’s place as a radio-TV money raiser. The Worldwide Church of God has no future without him.””
Whether the Worldwide Church has a future without Garner Ted is difficult for me to discern with complete accuracy, but this evaluation by Time coincides with an evaluation given by Martin E. Marty. Recently Martin E. Marty, one of America’s most highly respected spokesmen for liberal Christians spoke to about 300 persons in the Gezon Auditorium of Calvin College as part of the college’s year-long lecture series. I was one of these 300 persons. In that speech Marty said that most religious television programs represent a threat to the organized Church because they promote an “individualized religion.” In terms of the Apostles Creed this would mean that there is no real communion of the saints because the Church is not gathered by the word and spirit in these TV spectaculars. The Gospel is not preached. It is instead a gospel of man which is not “the Gospel.” Marty also said that the majority of religious programs “are run by personalities who are skilled in a highly competitive showbiz enterprise. They almost never add members to the rolls of the Church, yet take millions of dollars that would ordinarily go into collection plates.” He also stated that such shows are a threat to the Church because they are “almost entirely entertainment.”
Although the analysis of Marty is all very true from a merely formal point, it is still very superficial because it does not touch the real root of the problem. The fundamental problem of movements such as the Worldwide Church of God is that they are not the Church and simply pose as the Church. They offer stones for bread and they present a gospel which is not the gospel. They are those who are condemned by the apostle Paul in Galatians 1:6-9,
“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.”
Movements like the Armstrong empire have great influence but they are personalized and they are not really Christ centered. They mention Christ but they deny Christ and his work. They rarely survive the person who starts it. Marty said, “Most of these projects eventually come to an end in some kind of scandal.”
That this analysis is correct is most assuredly true of the Armstrong movement.
The Church, which is the Bride of Christ, is of God. The Worldwide Church of God is not the Church of God. It simply is not the Church. It is a sect. They are those who are ever seeking and never coming to the knowledge of the truth (cf. I Tim. 3:7). Because the Worldwide Church of God is not the Church, it stands condemned by the same condemnation given by Moses when he spoke to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 13:1-6:
“If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.”
Because the Worldwide Church of God is a cult given over to apocalyptic pronouncements, it falls under another of the condemnations of Moses in Deuteronomy 18:22,
“When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.”
The Worldwide Church of God is not the Church and Armstrong is not the ambassador of Christ even though he arrogantly claims to be such. Christ condemns all of his kind when he proclaims in Matthew 24:11, 23, and 24 the following:
“And many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”
The apocalypse is not yet for the true Church of Christ. Let the Church, however, lift up her head for her redemption is nigh. “Be not afraid, my Children,” says our God, “for unto you is the kingdom.”
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15,16a)
In another place Jesus says,
“And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” (I John 5:20-21)