I collect sermon illustrations and came across one that had a different angle. Curious, I dug a little deeper and found it was from what used to be the Worldwide Church of God. It is a movement that Herbert Armstrong founded.
Armstrong had some weird ideas. He did not believe in the Trinity. He believed Anglo-Saxons are descendants of Jews – specifically, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Therefore, Britain and America are literally God’s Chosen People. Because we are the Ten Lost Tribes, we should follow Old Testament kosher laws for food. Church should be on Saturday and all the Old Testament festivals should be followed. Churches that don’t follow this are counterfeit.
We should also tithe like they did, which he interpreted to mean 10% one year, on your gross income, not net. The next year you did that 10% and another 10% to pay to go to their Feast of Tabernacles. It was an awesome meal – at that price it should be.
The next year you did those two tithes and a third one, which was distributed to poor people. Imagine giving 30% of your income to God. Our church budget would never be in the red!
It was an expensive group to belong to, but their commitment level was very high. Armstrong taught that Jesus was coming back in 1975 so you didn’t need a lot of money anyway. 133,000 Americans identified with Armstrong’s sect. His Worldwide Church of God owned $300 million in property and had a college, a radio and TV program and a nationally distributed magazine called “The Plain Truth.”
Then Armstrong died, and something very weird happened, something almost unprecedented. The new leadership studied their Bibles and began to think Armstrong was wrong about a lot of things. Americans weren’t part of the Ten Lost Tribes. Their emphasis on prophecy and the Old Testament was unbalanced.
Over a ten-year period they discarded these teachings and changed to become orthodox Evangelical Christians. It was like Jehovah’s Witnesses deciding to become Baptist.
The results? Their attendance dropped almost two-thirds, to 50,000. Their budget collapsed and they had to sell almost all their property. The magazine and radio and TV programs had to be shut down. The group’s employees went from 1,000 to 40. Sort of what most Americans call abject failure.
Here is what their own website says:
“We acknowledge that many of our doctrines were erroneous. We acknowledge that the organization would not exist without those erroneous doctrines.
“But we do not conclude that Jesus Christ rescued us as a group merely to have us disband. He has bought and paid for this church. It belongs to him, and we have told him that he can have it! If it is of any value to him, he can use it as his instrument, and we are happy to let him lead us.” [1]
To me, this is a great triumph for God. They shrank in numbers and power, but they became true to the gospel. In God’s eyes, that makes them winners.
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1. https://www.gci.org/aboutus/history