HERBERT ARMSTRONG'S 18 RESTORED TRUTHS
THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER CONCERNING THEM
by Keith Hunt
In the vanity of Herbert W. Armstrong's mind, especially in
his latter years of his life, as a snow ball gathering speed and
more snow as it rolls down the mountainside, so it was with HWA
as his time on earth drew to a close. He powerfully tried to
proclaim to his church organization that THROUGH HIM there was 18
truths RESTORED to the true Church of God.
I will not make this a long in-depth study, as it really is
not needed. And the Bible SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.
These 18 so-called restored truths I list (from a sermon
that HWA gave, so they are from the horse's mouth) and give
comment on.
(1) THE TRUE GOSPEL
HWA thought the true Gospel had been lost until he came along to
restore it. What CRAZY and twisted reasoning! From the beginning
of the church in the first century and as it was handed on to
others, the true Gospel HAS ALWAYS BEEN TAUGHT AND PROCLAIMED by
God's people down through the centuries. The people of God,
scattered here and there, in this country or that country, east
and west, in the hills and the mountains, the valleys and the
forests, wherever they were with the Bible, have understood the
true Gospel. And that simple truth is that Jesus is CENTRAL, and
SALVATION is only through Him, and that HE WILL RETURN to
establish the Kingdom of God on earth. People reading the Bible
can come to see this true Gospel, through the guiding of the Holy
Spirit. I was a kid growing up in a Church of England school. Our
first half hour of each school day was spent reading the Bible.
From age 6 I was reading the Bible. The Holy Spirit led me to see
as clear as day, that Jesus would return to this earth, and we
would be with Him. And from reading the Bible, the New Testament,
it was clear to me that Jesus was the ONLY Savior to salvation.
This was all before I ever knew there was a Herbert W. Armstrong.
God's people from all ages past have ALWAYS KNOWN the true
Gospel. Jesus said He would build His church and the gates of
death would never prevail against it. Hence that church has NEVER
LOST the truth of the true Gospel, not for one second. This is
the most important truth for God's true church, and it has never
ever lost that truth.
(2) PURPOSE OF GOD IN MANKIND
God's people have always known, again from reading the Bible,
that they were the VERY SONS and DAUGHTERS of God the Father. The
Bible over and over again teaches this very basic truth. I knew
it as a child growing up. Jesus taught it. The NT writers taught
it. We are brothers and sisters to Jesus the Christ. The NT
teaches we are HEIRS of God and JOINT-HEIRS with Jesus (Romans
8). Such teaching is all over the NT. God's people from the first
century and on to the present have always known the purpose and
reason that mankind was created on earth, to be a part of God's
FAMILY! Now, many of the saints of the past may not have PUT IT
DOWN ON PAPER as HWA did, but they knew it. HWA did make this
truth a point of EMPHASIS during his ministry, but to say God's
children HAD LOST this truth, is just the imagination of a man
who became blinded with his own vanity.
(3) GOD'S PLAN IN THE FESTIVALS
I do see where God used HWA to bring the PLAN of Salvation and
the Festivals of God TOGETHER to unify them and indeed to
understand the plan of salvation in a way that was probably not
fully understood in any large way before. This truth I will admit may
have become lost down through the centuries to the majority of
God's people. Through the so-called "dark ages" God's children
were more concerned with holding fast to the way of life and
commandments of God, as they withstood the woman riding the beast
and her power to kill and destroy, than to proclaim the overall
plan of salvation to the people around them.
Yes, in certain ways God did use HWA to proclaim to the world at
large the wonderful plan of salvation for all peoples, as given
in the typology of the Festivals of the Lord as found in
Leviticus 23.
It is true God did some work through HWA and the old WCG. There
was light there in certain ways that was opened up brighter and
clearer than what God's people had coming through the dark ages
and the woman whore giving birth to children. It was time yes,
for God to now shine forth more light on certain of His truths.
(4) CHURCH GOVERNMENT
HWA DID START off right on this subject in his early ministry. He
wrote articles concerning it, which are probably reproduced here
and there on the Internet.
BUT THE SAD FACT IS ..... HWA DESTROYED that truth!! HE FINALLY
ADOPTED THE ROMAN CATHOLIC TEACHING on this subject. He did NOT
RESTORE this truth (MANY in the Church of God before him, had
that truth, were teaching it, practicing it, proclaiming it, a
fact of recorded articles in the files of various Churches of
God) but in fact DESTROYED this truth of God's Word.
I have spent much time and effort giving you the truth of this
subject in study after study found on this Website!
(5) WHO AND WHAT IS GOD - NO TRINITY
Why, I as a kid in a religious school, reading my Bible, came to
see this truth of God, years before I ever knew HWA existed! To
think that people down through the centuries reading their
Bibles, could not also come to see this truth, is saying that God
is pretty powerless, and that His Spirit cannot be that mighty,
and Jesus is a liar when He said, that the Spirit would come and
would LEAD us into all truth (yes Jesus said that, if you've
forgotten, or do not know, it's in the Gospel of John). I knew
from a child as the years went by into my teenage years, WHO and
WHAT God IS! I did not believe in a Trinity as the RC and
Protestant churches teach it. I knew the Godhead was ONE, but
made up of TWO individual Beings - the Father and the Son. It was
as clear as the sun shines in a blue sky with no clouds, to me. I
knew this truth way before I ever heard or read anything coming
from HWA and the old WCG.
God DID HAVE MANY down though the centuries, who could read their
Bible, be led by the Holy Spirit, and who came to see, exactly
what I saw and came to believe, as I was reading my Bible as a child,
and young man.
To think that a man could say he was the RESTORER of this truth
to God's true church, is to say people could not read the Bible
and come to understand it. Such a thought can only come from a
mind that is blinded to reality and has become filled with the
vainness of pomposity.
(6) MAN IS MORTAL
Oh, how silly man can be. How forgetful he can be. HWA was TAUGHT
by the very Church of God the truth that man does not have an
immortal soul, that man was made from the dust of the earth. All
this truth was proclaimed mightily by all the various true
Churches of God way before HWA was born, never mind caming into the
ministry through one of those church organizations.
(7) SPIRIT IN MAN
Now I will say, this is possibly the ONE other clear teaching
that the Lord led HWA to see, this one, and the plan of God as
through the Festivals of ancient Israel. It is possible some
other individuals here or there may have seen this truth, but it
was, in the last 200 years or so, proclaimed far and wide around
the earth, through the work of the old WCG led by HWA. Human
beings do have a spirit that goes back to God at death
(Ecc.12:7). This is in the Bible, and individuals I'm sure have
understood this down through the past centuries. But it would
seem that most of the Churches of God, did not teach it over the
last few hundred years or so. HWA was led to put this truth down
in concrete and a simple way, as the cassette tape records, but
it is not capable of anything without a functioning body. Hence
our spirit with the mind, and a body, makes us distinct from all
other creatures. It is a unique "spirit" of man, within man, that
is us in character and personality. This spirit goes back to God
at death, and it is there kept by the Lord, ready for it to unite
with our resurrected body, when Jesus comes again. We shall still
this way, be a person, a glorified person, that is still "us" -
Just as Jesus was Himself at His resurrection.
So Abraham will still be Abraham, Moses will be Moses, David will
be David etc.
(8) FIRST-FRUITS
Anyone reading the Bible will clearly see that we, up to the
coming of Christ back to this earth, are the first-fruits to God.
A reading of the Bible, as God's people did through the past
centuries, would have seen the prophecies of the age to come as
the apostle Paul once phrased it. They would have seen there is
an age to come, a salvation during that age. It would have been
common knowledge that the saints up to the coming of Christ, were
the first-fruits, with other fruits to come later.
It's hard to see that anyone could claim this as some "restored"
truth to God's people, unless that person had some "axe" to grind
to some organization he was leading by the nose.
(9) TRUTH OF THE HOLY SPRIT
Well again, if that person has not taken the trouble to remember
the teachings of the very church organization from which he came,
then he may try to claim to his organization that he was the only
one restoring the truth that the Holy Spirit was NOT third
person of a Trinity Godhead. Most Churches of God BEFORE HWA came
along, taught the truth about the Holy Spirit. I certainly knew
this truth before I ever heard of HWA. So did thousands down
through the centuries. It was never lost!
(10) BEGOTTEN NOW
Probably most of God's people over the centuries did not think
about it too deeply. They knew they were a child of God. They
knew they would be CHANGED at the last trumpet sound, when Jesus
returned to earth, and the resurrection took place. All of that
is clearly in the Bible.
(11) BORN AT THE RESURRECTION
God's people have always known they will be glorified, made new,
have a different body, at the resurrection. All of that is in the
Bible, clear to see and understand. HWA put it as an "emphasis" -
brought out the passages with "begotten" and "born" and the easy
to understand passage of John 3, the so-called "born again"
passage. Nothing obscure here. No huge revelation per se. HWA
just put it all together in a nice neat package. We must admit
HWA did have certain "natural" or "spiritual" gifts and he used
them at times.
(13) IDENTITY OF ISRAEL
Oh, HWA got all of that teaching from organizations like the
British Israel Society, and other individuals who had been
proclaiming all this for a hundred years or so before HWA was a
minister. Now, it is true that most of the Churches of God in the
time of HWA did not teach it or believe it. But the teaching
itself was NOT NEW!
This teaching is not a matter of salvation! Thousands of God's
people down the past ages have NEVER KNOWN anything about this
teaching or truth. They WILL STILL be SAVED and in the first
resurrection! We need to get priorities straight, and not make
certain things into a larger "key" than God intended. Many BEFORE
HWA were teaching what some want (including HWA) to call
"restored" truth. It was not restored BECAUSE it was not to be
REVEALED until the last few hundred years or so of this age,
when the prophecies of Genesis would be clear to see had come
to pass.
(14) OPENS BIBLE PROPHECY
Yes, it may be true to say that. Understanding Bible prophecy is
greatly helped by understanding WHO Israel and Judah are today,
if studying Isaiah to the so-called Minor Prophets. But the books
of Daniel and Revelation need no such understanding, and some
could well argue that THOSE books are the MAIN KEY to prophecy
for the last days, with the prophecy of Jesus in Matthew 24;
Mark 13; and Luke 21.
It is in the last days that MANY things to the understanding of
Bible prophecy will be given, not the least that there is still
"prophets" in the functions of the true NT Church of God, just as
there are apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers. It is not
given to everyone to understand the details of Bible prophecy.
Even HWA and his organization made some pretty LARGE ERRORS on
Bible prophecy, and many of those off-shoot organization still
do, and still cling to some of those errors.
HWA was NOT gifted that much in prophecy, he had some of the
keys, but then even with them, got things mixed up and off the
wall at times, and had his followers set dates and looking to him
as some kind of physical savior that would keep them from the
Great Tribulation. He had them teaching he was the Elijah to
come, and God's "special" prophet of the end times, while he was
moving further and further away from Bible truth and forming his
own "special group" - today its called "cult."
(15) 2nd and 3rd TITHE
Again, put out as a restored truth. Nothing could be further from
the truth. The truth of the matter on the old Israel laws of 2nd
and 3rd tithe are all expounding on this Website. Not only did
HWA not know the truth on that subject, even if good hearted
people served those laws in all respect and honesty before God
(which will not go un-noticed by the Lord) the organization of
HWA took those monies eventually (not in the beginning) and
ABUSED the people. Which was also remembered before God, when He
finally DESTROYED that organization, and exposed it for what it
had become.
(16) IDENTITY OF BABYLON AND HER DAUGHTERS
HWA must have thought not only his follows were a little dumb
(it's reported by some that at times behind closed doors he
called the members "dumb sheep") but his "educated" employees
(like ministers) were dumb also. All you have to do is look into
some of the old (two or three hundred years old) Protestant BIBLE
COMMENTARIES (like Albert Barnes, Adam Clarke) and you will
discover they taught that the woman whore that rides the beast of
Revelation is the RC church. They could not see, or did not want
to see, that she had "daughters" born to her (the Protestant
Reformation) and so maybe HWA added that part. But again, if you
go back into the Church of God history of the 1800s and certainly
the time before HWA appeared on the scene, you will discover they
were ALREADY teaching the identity of Babylon and her daughters,
as the RC church and her offspring.
To say that HWA was restoring this truth to the church is pretty
dumb when you have written history of ministers BEFORE HWA who
taught the same restored truth.
(17) SATAN DECEIVING THE WORLD
My HWA must have been running out of things to pick (if he was
trying to get to 20 of them) to come up with this one. Any
Christian reading the Bible from whenever and wherever, surely
knew this truth. It hardly needed to be restored.
(18) TO BE SEPARATE
Again, it's in the Bible, for all to read and see, Jesus said it,
Paul said it. Jesus, in His famous prayer before He died, prayed
the Father would not take His disciples out of the world, but
would keep them from the world. All Christians know they have to
be separate from the world. No new truth here. The organization
that HWA was first a minister of, taught this, and so did many
other Churches of God and many other Protestant churches as well.
Where HWA took it to was to get his followers to "isolate"
themselves from family members, old friends (some they needed to
drop company with, but others were not "evil" in any lifestyle of
crime and filthiness of mind or ways), relatives. He taught them
to become "cultish" in their life. There is a difference between
"separate" and "cultish."
So what was "separate" as HWA and his ministers taught it was not
NEW and it was NOT truth either. That kind of separation has been
going on for centuries with this or that group, who think they
have some special "inside track" or special "phone line"
connection with God.
So much for the so-called 18 "restored truths" to come from HWA
and the old WCG.
You need to keep your nose in the Bible, lay hold of God's
truths, you will find many more than 18 of them, and the best
part is as Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth
shall set you free!"
.....................
Entered on this Website April 2008
