FROM CULT TO GRACE; My Journey Out of The Worldwide Church of God

Herbert W. Armstrong. Founder of the Worldwide Church of God
1892-1986


This is my own personal journey out of the Worldwide Church of God Into the land of grace.

My purpose in writing this is not to disparage anyone. Rather, I'm doing it for the benefit of others who were a part of the Worldwide Church of God or other groups that hold to doctrinal views that are inconsistant with the gospel, and perhaps are still struggling to make sense of everything. I hope that by sharing my story, it may help others sort out their own experiences.

My parents became involved in the Worldwise Church of God in 1969. I was 3 years old at the time. As were many, they were attracted by the "truth; much of which revolved around Sabbath keeping and subtituting the holy days for "pagan" days.There was no Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween, or Easter. These were all forbidden because they have roots in paganism. I was very limited in extracurricular school activities because of the Sabbath. I remember one year, I took failing grades on my Fall midterms because they fell during the Feast of Tabernacles. I believed I was enduring persecution for righteousness sake.
I guess my experience may have been somewhat different because there were always things that didn't quite make sense. For example: We were taught that there were 3 resurrections. I have never seen more than 2. The resurrection of those in Christ and the rest of the dead, who lived after the thousand years. (Rev. 20)
Another thing that puzzled me was, where did we get the authority to determine HOW we kept the holy days. Deut. 4:2 says, do not add to, or take from the law. During the Feast of Tabernacles the people were supposed to make booths or "succots". Where did we get the authority to substitute anything from a tent to a ritzy condo for a succot?
I never understood the rationale for banning birthdays, makeup, and military service. But I went along with it, figuring that if I was patient things would become clear.

I attended Ambassador College in Big Sandy Texas from 1985-87. I brought all of these questions with me. (although I knew better than to bring them up) I still had them when I left. It was during that time -- in January of 1986 that Mr. Armstrong passed away. Joseph TKach Sr. became the new leader and over the next decade many of these beliefs were changed. The final shoe dropped in the spring of 1995 when Mr. Tkach explained in a sermon, shared with all the congregations, that the Sabbath was not a part of the New Covenant. There was a huge split at that time.

Between 1995-96 I was in the same boat as a lot of people were -- having the rug yanked out from under me. Everything revolved around knowing the "TRUTH". But somehow the truth was no longer the truth. And yet I was being told that what they were teaching now, was the truth. Of course, the obvious question was; if we were so sure before that we knew the truth, and it turned out to not be true, how can we be so sure that what we are teaching now is the truth.

Two things happened.

We stayed with WWCG for about a year, but after that we began attending a local, non-denominational church near where we lived. Soon I became disillusioned with that church as well. For some time I didn't attend church. I simply saw no point in it. 
One night, after my family went to the evening service I stayed home and picked up a bible that was laying on the end table by the couch. I opened to the book of Revelation. For some reason, none of the apocalyptic/prophetic imagery was hitting me. What WAS hitting me were the images of the deity. In the first chapter, we see a being who had hair like wool. face shining like the sun, eyes like fire, etc. He called himself the Alpha and Omega. He said that he had been dead but is alive now and forever. I figured that must be Jesus. 
Later in ch 19 he shows up on a white horse. Among the names he goes by is "The Word of God". I immediately thought of John 1:1, "In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the Word was God." Okay I thought, so this rider on the white horse is somehow God. 
Then in chapter 20 we see a being on a great white throne. The only description given in vs. 11 is, "Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place found for them". My mind immediately went to Gen. 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Everything I can know and understand is contained within the realm of heaven and earth. Whoever this is on the throne in not only outside of heaven and earth, but trandscends both; his creation has to step aside. I guessed that this must be God the Father himself. But then in the next chapter he identifies himself. Vs. 6, "I am the Alpha and the Omega". I thought, 'wait a minute, that was the one in the first chapter who identified himself that way but added that he had been dead. Are they somehow the same person? 
Then in Chapter 22 vs 13 he repeats, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End". The climax is verse 16 and it is the ONLY time in the entire book that he calls himself by this name, "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony to the churches." When I read that, it could not have been more real if he had grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes and said, "Grant, it's ME, Jesus!" I actually stopped reading and thought, either this stuff is true or it isn't. If it isn't true then there is no point reading the last few verses. But if it is true, then I need to read the rest and then I need to go back to the beginning and read everything else in the bible. Because if he is who he said he was, then everything he said is the truth.

The next thing happened.

My wife wanted to start attending a small group and I agreed to go along. It was there I met a man who obviously knew his Bible better than anyone I had ever met up to that point. He was very patient with me. He answered all of my questions often by asking me another question to make me think. For some reason I couldn't stump this guy who was attending our small group. After a time I kind of figured out why. He was a genuine Bible scholar. (Phd) He taught for Moody but was a solidly Reformed scholar. He taught me that salvation is by grace alone and the just will live by faith. I actually took Epistles of Paul under him. (Which was a real blessing because I had taken it AC. I was able to get all of that straightened out.) He showed me that, yes, we live by faith. But the question is, is it a "reasonable" faith. I didn't understand what he meant. He explained that the gospel rises and falls on whether or not the resurrection actually happened. It is impossible to prove the Bible empirically so it does require faith. But because there is tremendous evidence to support the resurrection and in nearly 2,000 years, nobody has offered a shred of credible evidence to suggest it was a hoax, it is very reasonable to believe that it happened. That's "reasonable faith".

Now to WWCG

Because everything was about the "truth"  which somehow wasn't true anymore, I had to try and understand how Mr. Armstrong could have gotten it so wrong. In his telling of how he came to understand the "truth", he said that it all started with an argument with his wife about which day should be observed. In his autobiography, he said he asserted to his wife that the Bible said, "thou shalt observe Sunday".
There was the problem.
The Bible doesn't say that.
In reality, the Bible doesn't require us to observe any day. The Old Covenant mandated the children of Israel to keep the sabbath and Holy Days but nobody else was required to. The fact that he actually believed the Bible said that showed that he had no real working knowledge of the scriptures, let alone any understanding of the gospel. The obvious thing to do would be to seek wise godly counsel. A Bible teacher worth his salt should have been able to answer his questions in about 30 minutes. (of course, I will admit that such teachers are more rare than 4 leaf clovers) But what he did, according to his autobiography, was embark on an intensive study to try and prove that the Bible taught that Sunday was the day we should worship. He found, correctly, that the Bible did not command people to worship on Sunday. But he, incorrectly, came to the conclusion that the Old Covenant laws regarding the Sabbath and Holy Days applied to all people for all time. And so a church was born that was completely off at the very foundation. And from there, even though there may have been elements of truth, fundamentally everything was wrong. There was no gospel. The work of Jesus was reduced to simply wiping the slate for us and giving us the opportunity to do it right,.. with the help of the Holy Spirit.... Which was reduced to an impersonal "essence" not too dissimilar to the Force in the Star Wars Movies (except there was no dark side to the Holy Spirit). Of course, you never knew if you were overcoming at an acceptable level or not. The truth is:
We weren't.
None of us were...
Not even close.
We are not capable of it.

THE GOSPEL

It starts with understanding that God is the creator of all that is. He is supreme and is infinitely greater than the sum-total of everything else. He is holy. That means he is completely separate, unique, and different. He is is completely "other". He created by commands and everything obeyed. He told the mountains and the stars where to stand, and they obeyed. Then he told man to leave a piece of fruit alone and man rebelled. At that point sin entered the world and man became totally depraved. As it says in Gen. 6 and 9, Man's thoughts were only evil continually. 
One of Job's 3 friends, Bildad, asked the ultimate question in Job 25:4, "How then can a man be righteous before God. How can one born of woman be pure?" The answer? He can't.
Righteousness is not about obeying the Ten Commandments. While they have their basis on the greatest commandments, You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, they don't provide us the blueprint on how to love God and love our neighbor. We were taught that Jesus expanded the meaning of the Old Covenant law in the Sermon on The Mount. That's not what he did. He actually showed us that merely keeping the rules doesn't solve man's sin problem. So even if we somehow manage to avoid breaking the letter of the law. If we still have wicked thoughts, we are sinning. And we are guilty. Our nature is sinful. The fact is, NOBODY has ever kept the greatest commandment to love God for even a conscious moment. If anyone thinks they have, they have blasphemed. As John Bunyan said, "The best prayer I ever prayed had enough sin in it to damn the world". There's no way we can ever be empty of self -- even when we pray. And that means we have violated and do violate the first great commandment continually. All of our righteousness is like filthy rags (Isa 64:6). We have absolutely no righteousness on our own. Nor are we capable of it.
And so the Old Testament ends without Bildad's question being answered. If the Old testament ended and there was no New Testament, Man would simply lead a condemned existence and then face judgment and be punished.
 But the last words of the Old Testament tell us that there is more coming.
The answer to Bildad's question finally comes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." That is the only way we could be declared righteous. Our sin had to be placed on the one who is righteous so that his righteousness could be placed on us. This was prophesied in Isaiah 53:6, "We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."
As Jesus was dying he actually gave us a very graphic demonstration of how salvation is accomplished by saving one of the criminals crucified with him (Luke 23:39-43) The thief was never going to do a single "good work". But as his earthly life was ebbing out from him, 3 things happened:

1. He confessed: "We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve".
2. He expressed dependence on Jesus as his Savior: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom".
3. He received assurance of salvation: "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in Paradise"

WWCG took this passage and explained that God made an exception in this case because of the circumstances. However, the Bible doesn't say that. In fact, in Romans 3: 9-11 Paul explains that we are no better. And in verse 23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". But verse 24 tells us the wonderful news of the gospel:
           "And are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ."

So our sins have been removed and we have been declared righteous but there is something else that happens and that is something that the church has all but lost. And is the very reason, I believe, that groups like WWCG form. And that is the doctrine of Regeneration, or being Born Again. In most churches today, born again simply means you asked Jesus into your heart. WWCG went to the other extreme and said the rebirth happens when we are resurrected at his coming. Both are wrong. Rebirth has to happen in order for a person to repent. The unregenerated person is incapable of responding to the gospel(Rom 8:7)
This regeneration is such a drastic change of our old nature into a new nature accomplished by the Holy Spirit that Paul describes it as going from being dead to being alive. Eph 2:4-5, "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions -- it is by grace you have been saved". The word for dead is the Greek word, "necros". And it means, DEAD. We were literally non-living, completely unresponsive to the gospel. Back in Ezekiel 36:26-27, God describes this; "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and keep my laws." This is the new nature which now desires to follow God and obey him. That requires a miracle as great as raising a physically dead man to life and ONLY God can do it. Without the miracle of the rebirth, man cannot respond to the gospel.

In Jeremiah 31:33 (repeated in Hebrews 8:8-12 and 10:16) God describes the New Covenant as one in which his laws would be written on their hearts and minds. That is the change of the reborn man's nature. But verse 31 is very important.

        " 'The time is coming,' declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. IT WILL NOT BE LIKE (caps mine) the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant...."
In John 3:3 Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus and he said, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." Jesus was not talking about entering it in this verse. The word "see" means exactly that, "see". It can also be translated, "perceive" or "understand". Paul says something very similar in 1 Corinhtians  1:18, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God". Without the rebirth the gospel is meaningless.
The WWCG taught that the gospel was largely an expansion of the old covenant. The Ten Commandments were expanded to include our thought life. The Feast days now had much deeper meanings which, incidentally, the Bible doesn't give to them. (An interesting point on that is that, while the early church was eagerly expecting Jesus to return in their lifetime, The Feast of Trumpets, which according to what we were taught in WWCG, pictures the return of Christ, is never once mentioned in the New Testament) And of course, we continued the belief of the clean and unclean meats. The only thing we didn't have to do was the burnt offerings because we understood that Jesus fulfilled that part. But God, in Jeremiah 31 said it would be a DIFFERENT covenant; not an expansion of the old. 
Exodus 34: 27-28 and Deuteronomy 4:13 make it clear that the Old Covenant was the Ten Commandments. That is what has been replaced. The book of Hebrews really is an explanation of how the New Covenant is different and superior to the Old Covenant. In WWCG theology, the responsibility of becoming righteous was on us. Even though God gave us the Holy Spirit to help us, it was our job to be overcoming. But Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. And in chapter 10:14, "because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy", explains that there is a twofold work that is accomplished by him. Our perfection was accomplished at the cross. Our sanctification is an ongoing process that "HE" is accomplishing.

In John 4 Jesus was asked by the Samaritan woman about the proper location for worship, whether the Samaritan mountains or in Jerusalem. Jesus explained in verses 21-24 that it wasn't about a location but that the true worshippers would worship the Father in spirit and truth. Hebrews 4 explains that the Sabbath for the believer is not a day of the week. It is the life we now have in Christ 
Hebrews 4: 9-11;
         "There remains then a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, Therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience".
Jesus calls us in Matthew 11:28-30;
          "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
There can be no greater burden than to carry the guilt and condemnation of our own sins. But the Lord laid our sins on Jesus and put his righteousness on us. THAT IS THE GOSPEL!!!!

The gospel has nothing to do with external rules and regulations. That system had a purpose. And that was to maintain law and order until the time that Jesus would come. (Gal. 3:23-25) Sadly, WWCG misunderstood that. And they ended up doing exactly what Paul said not to do. They placed burdens on people that Christ had lifted and bound our consciences where God had not..

Looking Back (trying to make sense of everything)

Romans. 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose".

I firmly believe that God doesn't waste anything. He is completely sovereign and in complete control.This was the path he chose for me and he is using it for his purposes and glory. Either that, or this verse doesn't belong in the Bible.
I heard an analogy that our lives are like a tapestry that God is weaving. On the front side, the tapestry has a beautiful pattern. On the back side it looks like a tangled mess of different colored threads. For the most part, we only see the back side.  Although I have gotten some glimpses of the beautiful pattern. I have had many experiences and have many friends today that I would never have had if it weren't for WWCG and Ambassador College. And having come from legalism, I have a MUCH greater appreciation for grace and greater empathy for others who have or are going through the same things.
In many ways, we are a product of the sumtotal of our experiences. I have learned not to be like the lump of clay questioning the potter why he made me the way he did. Rather I am learning to trust that he knows what he is doing and his plan is perfect -- even when I don't understand.

So what about those pagan days, holy days and other observances

Rom. 14:5-6, "One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God."

Vs. 14 "As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean."

"A man might think it a sin to have his boots blacked. He should quit and have them whitewashed instead". (C. H. Spurgeon)

Because true worshippers worship in spirit and in truth. True worship transcends a day or a location. We use the Roman calendar. Every weekday and every month is named after some pagan object of worship. (Ceasar was regarded as diety) I don't have shrines set up for these pagan gods. I simply use the calendar to keep track of time, seasons, and my schedule. The question is; are we participating in the worship of a false god? And are we engaging in sinful activity. If people gather on the evening of December 24 and Easter Sunday to sing hymns and songs of praise to our Lord and savior and hear a message about how God invaded humanity to save his people, how is that participating in pagan worship? The sun and fertility goddess worshippers were doing something quite different. Perhaps we were sinning by not participating because we placed the responsibility on our becoming righteous on ourselves, which is self worship. And we judged those who were doing so as "false Christians".
The New Covenant only requires 2 sacrements: baptism and the Lord's Supper. It doesn''t mandate anything else nor does it forbid anything else. Colossians 2:16 says not to let anyone judge you in matters of food, drink, religious festivals, new moons or Sabbath days. By the same token, we shouldn't be judging each other. If some people feel uncomfortable celebrating Christmas or Easter and/or prefer to keep the Sabbath and Holy Days, we should extend the same grace to each other that God has extended to us. And that should go both ways. As verse 17 says, "the reality is found in Christ". Keep that the main thing.

I hope and pray that you are richly blessed and if you are struggling with these things. That God, our savior will bring you to that place of rest.