At first I was a little taken aback to see the familiar bespectacled face smiling back at me from an internet advert, with the caption: ‘Do you remember…Herbert W. Armstrong?’ Indeed, I do: I used to write for The Plain Truth magazine. That was the official organ of the Worldwide Church of God, a Sabbatarian denomination often branded a cult and frequently labelled Armstrongism. But was any of that criticism valid or fair? Let me tell you my story.

The first time I encountered The Plain Truth was as a youngster, probably sometime between 1968 and 1970, before I left BearsdenPrimary School. Opposite our school’s gate on Roman Road sat a popular newsagent outside which stood a stand containing magazines under a prominent sign saying, FREE, so one day I took one. It soon became clear that it was a religious publication and, coming from a Presbyterian background in the Church of Scotland, I saw nothing in it with which I could disagree. It contained various articles concerning End Time Apocalyptic events, relating tem to current political events and world affairs, and warning against the consequences of sin, al of which resonated pretty much with what my own denomination had already taught me to believe. But after reading a few issues, I got on with being a youngster and let my interest lapse. In fact, I was slowly coming into a relationship with God and soon began learning quite enough at Crusaders classes every Sunday. The Crusaders I joined in 1971 at the age of 13 was a non-denominational Bible-based evangelical Christian organisation first founded in 1906 and since renamed Urban Saints;, similar and loosely related to the Scripture Union and, as such, has been teaching the Word of God to generations of young people throughout Great Britain. As a young child I had had little interest in the Bible but after being born again at 12 or 13, I somehow I took to it with ease and quickly discovered a ready facility to understand things in it that others my age found difficult, and by the age of 17, had risen to become a Crusaders Senior teaching in my own right. From thereon, my Christian walk took me through the Brethren church, where I was baptized in 1977 and married in 1982. Meanwhile, I had joined the police force in 1979, in which I spent several years as a young constable in Glasgow. Then, in 1985 I was reintroduced to an old acquaintance, The Plain Truth magazine. I was actually on my way to a colleague’s retirement do, when I stopped in at a city newsagent for an Evening Times newspaper, when I spotted one of those long familiar newsstands marked FREE, and also left with a copy of the magazine.

At the time, my wife and I had not long moved to our new home and were on a spiritual quest for a local church and for a while attended our local Church of Scotland, although I had actually left the denomination as a teenager due to their negative attitude to adult baptism. However, from the day that I picked it up again after so many years I, and very soon my wife also, became subscribers to The Plain Truth, or PT as we came to know it. The thing we found most impressive about the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong was that they were Biblical, and verifiably so; with a very strong emphasis on observing the Ten Commandments. They also taught that God is our heavenly Father and that Jesus his divine Son had died on the Cross for our sins. All-in-all, the PT seemed pretty soundly based. Then Herbert W. Armstrong died, not long after which we became interested in finding out whether the PT was published by a specific church and if so, whether it had a congregation in Glasgow. So we wrote to them and asked.

Sure enough, we discovered that the PT was published by the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) and yes, there was a Glasgow congregation. Could we attend? That’s when we met the local pastor and encountered our crunch point. Membership entailed a cost, by which I don’t mean tithing. Yes, they taught tithing but that was not an issue. Many churches teach tithing and we had no problem with it. What WCG membership required was something altogether more radical: They were Sabbath-keepers. When I say Sabbath-keepers, I mean radical Commandment keepers, because the logic of the WCG was simply this:

If you’re a Christian and believe that Christians should obey the Ten Commandments, then should you be keeping all ten? Well, every church I had ever gone to had taught that Christians should indeed obey the Ten Commandments, so the argument appeared unassailable.

So, did we keep all ten? I suppose not, because I worked most Saturdays which the WCG, in strict adherence of the Bible, defined as the Sabbath. Indeed, they followed the Bible to the letter and reckoned the Sabbath from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday which, on a winter’s day in Glasgow, could mean about half-past three in the afternoon. According to Jesus, if our ox falls in a ditch on the Sabbath we can pull it out, however, the WCG taught that habitual Sabbath-breaking for the sake of personal convenience was considered unacceptable, even for essential workers. After all, if we lived in a perfect world, we would all keep the Sabbath and not need hospitals or the police. Then there was the church’s attitude to the Holy Spirit, which they did not consider a Person, but the power of God. Hmm, that bothered me, as it smacked of Jehovah’s Witness teaching. No, we’re not JWs. Take time to think about, they said. We did so, and although I was still concerned about the Holy Spirit issue, I was convinced that everything else fitted what I had been taught before, and I was also impressed by another fascinating tenet of WCG teaching: If anything they taught could be demonstrated to be in error according to the Bible, they would change their teaching. That was the clincher which I took to God is prayer: ‘Father, I’m not sure of their teaching on the Holy Spirit, but I’m willing to be obedient to the church leadership, and trust you either to show me that I’m wrong, or show the church and they change.’

Thus, we decided to take the plunge. And a very hard plunge it was, indeed. I left the police, and with it a good salary, a substantial pension and promising prospects. But there’s something very liberating about taking a step of faith in obedience to God, and somehow we managed. And that’s when we found out about the other things, like the annual Sabbaths and holy days, from the Passover to the Feast of Tabernacles. Week after week after week, we faithfully attended and diligently studied and immersed ourselves in the Word of God; line by line and precept by precept. Nor was this a casual acquaintance with the Bible. WCG sermons could last for three hours and services would last half a day. Nor were they dry meetings or sterile relationships but generally very joyful occasions, with frequent dinner invitations to one another’s homes, and church dances and ceilidhs. Members were generous with their time, their gifts and their hospitality: in a word, the WCG was a real community.

But was there a downside? Yes there was. The first was social. As Sabbath-keepers WCG members were largely social outsiders and because of the employment limitations, unless they were self-employed, very few had well-paid jobs. Also, there was the perennial problem of time off work, or school to observe the Feast days. Members often risked the sack and the gamble was sometimes unsuccessful. Then there the small matter of Christmas and Easter. As co-opted pagan festivals these were a no-no; birthday celebrations were also prohibited and that non-observance put our children in an awkward position with their peers. Then there was the interminably inconvenience of the food laws and the issue of clean and unclean meats. We would check everything we put in our mouths.

‘Excuse me waiter, but was the lentil soup made with a ham bone?’ we might enquire.

Or, during the Feast of Unleavened Bread:

‘Is there any leaven in this cake?’ I even remember having to throw away a Twix at that time because it contained a raising agent.

There were a few other bits and bobs, but those were probably the main obstacles. However, there’s nothing like the feeling of persecution to excite an esprit de corps in any group. Some things were hard or even painful at times, but we were all in it together and that somehow defined us.

Then, something extraordinary occurred; something that may even be unique in church history, and which ironically began with an article in The Plain Truth. I can’t remember what it was about now, but it levelled criticism at some doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church which excited the irate response of one RC priest. Writing to Mr Armstrong’s successor as Pastor General of the church, Joseph W. Tkach, he wrote that he enjoyed the PT of which he was a longstanding reader, but after reading their recent article had to complain that it was an inaccurate misrepresentation of beliefs that the Roman Catholic did not in fact hold. As these letters did surprisingly often, this one landed on Mr Tkach’s desk and he was not best pleased. This charge had to be nonsense, because The Plain Truth did not print lies. So, he commissioned his senior doctrinal advisers to study the matter in Scripture and rebut the priest’s argument. But, after a short while Mr Tkach’s ministers returned with bad news. ‘He’s right’, they said. ‘We’ve studied the matter out and the Worldwide Church of God position on this matter is wrong’.

Mr Tkach was stunned. His integrity before God was at stake: either he could sweep the matter under the carpet and the church could continue with business as usual, or he could do what the WCG had always maintained it would do in such circumstances and change. In fact, Joseph Tkach went even further and asked the unthinkable: If the church was wrong about this issue, what else might we be mistaken about? He then commissioned a comprehensive re-examination of all WCG doctrines and beliefs. The rest is history. That comprehensive re-examination yielded some very uncomfortable results which would eventually tear much of the WCG apart, but Joseph Tkach’s personal integrity before God meant more to him than his own reputation, come what may.

I well remember about that time one visiting speaker from London, a wonderful minister and man of God called Francis Bergin, preaching to the Glasgow congregation: “The Worldwide Church of God has never believed in Salvation by Works. But the way we taught it, you could have been forgiven for thinking that we did.”

Bit by bit by bit, longstanding and long cherished WCG doctrines were dismantled and replaced by evangelical orthodoxies – including, in answer to my prayer all those years before, the personality of the Holy Spirit. Thus had the WCG done what no other minority sect or cult had ever corporately done before: It admitted it had been wrong and changed accordingly. Many of us were delighted, but many of the Old Guard were equally horrified and their disenchantment rapidly took its toll and I believe that today there are around 300 splinter groups which branched off from the original WCG. But from the turmoil emerged a reformed WCG which looked for a new generation of teachers to minister ideas that were new and unfamiliar to many. It was about then that I was asked to become a scheduled speaker and not long afterward that, a writer for The Plain Truth. It was a time of joyous vindication in my belief that God would be faithful and his church obedient, when Mr Tkach fulfilled his obligation to do what the church had always insisted it would if presented with irrefutable evidence of its own error.

So, do I remember Herbert W. Armstrong? I certainly do. He was a well-meaning but fallible man who was gifted with an extraordinary ability to communicate which he unfortunately used to teach error. In fact, he taught heresy, but in such a way as to sound convincing to a great many people. The upside of which is that we who experienced the fruits of his teachings actually learned a great deal that is useful. Indeed, I am reminded of the account of Joseph’s reunion with his brothers in Genesis 50:18-20,

His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, "Behold, we are your servants." But Joseph said to them, "Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

For one thing, I learned not to put any man or his teachings on a pedestal and to thoroughly check any teaching against the full counsel of the Word of God. For another, I learned to appreciate Grace in a way that no-one who has never striven to punctiliously to keep the Law. And I also learned to recognise legalism at a thousand paces, and the extent to which so much of the mainstream church that had once criticised the WCG is actually steeped in it. This is analogous to the WCG’s previous charge of syncretism, levelled against the mainstream churches. Syncretism simply means mixing in foreign doctrines or practices, such as observing pagan festivals like Christmas and Easter, and was an accusation the WCG would fling about with alacrity, and no small hypocrisy on our part when I consider how many syncretistic doctrines the WCG itself adopted from Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormonism.

But I have to say that that hypocrisy was not exclusive to the Worldwide Church of God, because so many mainstream churches remain steeped in legalism to this day. Indeed, often the only difference between the WCG and so many of its erstwhile detractors was that the WCG’s adherence to legalism was consistently followed to its logical conclusion. You see, in many, many mainstream churches today no-one will raise an eyebrow at the suggestion that Christians are under the Ten Commandments. The only problem there, as the WCG correctly observed, is that to be logically consistent such Christians must faithfully adhere to the Fourth Commandment and keep the Sabbath. The WCG squared this particular circle by doing just that, whereas most mainstream churches use sophistry to argue their way out of it – none of which is Biblically consistent. The only way out is to accept the Apostle Paul’s admonition is Galatians 3:10-12.

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them." Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for "The righteous shall live by faith." But the law is not of faith, rather "The one who does them shall live by them." Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree" – so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

And Galatians 5:1-5.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

And don’t be confused by Paul’s reference to circumcision: His point relates to the keeping of the whole Law as a means of justification. The mistake that so many mainstream churches make today is precisely the same error that the WCG fell into, which was the assumption that if Christians are not brought under the Law then they will become lawless. In fact, that is a false dichotomy because there is another Biblical alternative: Being led by the Holy Spirit. The difference may be simply illustrated by the example of a man tempted to commit adultery. Which is the better way to avoid so sinning: By obedience to the admonition ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’? Or by the motivation of his love for his wife? The New Covenant position is that when love pertains, Law becomes redundant. Likewise, the man or woman who loves God and is led by his Spirit no longer needs the ‘schoolmaster’ of law (Galatians 3:24-25) to compel them to love God and their neighbour.

(One caveat I would add here, however, is that neither the observing of the weekly Sabbath or of the annual holy days is wrong. Indeed, they can be a blessing if kept with the right heart in the right spirit. And that is the point - one's motive for doing so: Is it to bless God and leanr more about hisgoodness and plan for Salvation? Or is it just to fulfil an obligation and score Brownie points?)

Thus, we embraced the changes as they were known until we left the WCG in 1999, which we did, not in any fit of pique or disenchantment with anything or anyone, but on good terms for the simple reason that God began moving my wife and I on to a new level after receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues. Since then our understanding of spiritual things has multiplied greatly to where we now operate in such gifts as healing and prophecy. Nevertheless, even when we were immersed in the WCG at the height of its error we still witnessed miraculous signs and wonders, including some healings, from which we have learned that God delights in mercy and is a whole lot less concerned with our right doctrine than many imagine and a whole lot more interested in our right relationship with him through his Son Jesus Christ. And that has nothing to do with being right or wrong but is all about our being ‘made the righteousness of God in him’. (2 Corinthians 5:21). Because, as flawed and deep in error as the church was for so many years, there was an awful lot of love going around, and as we read in 1Peter 4:8:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

Do we remember Herbert W. Armstrong?

Yes we do, and we remember that he taught a load of nonsense we should never have heeded.

But error doesn’t have the last word – love does.