In parts 1 and 2 I shared about my history with growing up in the WWCG and touched on where my family and I ended up after the doctrinal changes the church made in December 1994 (and following church split and fracturing as a result). In this segment I’m going to spend a little time on looking back and reflecting on that time. It’s hard to imagine that was 25+ years ago!
ARMSTRONG HIMSELF
There is tons and tons of content about the old WWCG online. There are whole websites dedicated to the preservation of Herbert Armstrong’s teachings, materials and audio/video. If you were apart of this movement and haven’t searched some of this stuff out on the web yet then I encourage you to do so as the content is vast and organized well (https://wwcg-archives.com for example). Looking at it all the content now helps me understand why I grew up thinking that way I did as a child. It’s very enlightening.
I recently listened to a full sermon of Armstrong’s that he gave in Minneapolis in 1981 entitled “To Those Whom God Has Called“. It’s a message he delivered near the end of his life and it covers a broad range of topics and gives a really great overview/introduction/refresher to the churches theology and his preaching style. My dad and mom were actually in attendance for this sermon. I was too – I was only one year old! It was held at the old Minneapolis Auditorium where the now Minneapolis Convention Center now stands. I’ve listen to various audio clips from Armstrong over the past few years but I payed much closer attention to this one analyzing it from a few different perspectives.
This guy might be what us young folk call “old-school” in his approach and style but holy cow was he fired up! A very educated, polished, boisterous and authoritative presentation. I can easily see why so many people followed this guy. Actually, hearing his voice is still very comforting. I grew up with that voice as the church would often play his sermons during meeting times and my parents watched old video presentations from his telecasts. I can still distinguish that voice instantaneously.
There is so much I deeply disagree with Armstrong about. But there is also a lot of things that aren’t that far off from what I believe today. Rather than take his sermon apart and deconstruct it I’ll just say one thing: I can agree with those who feel that great damage was done by Armstrong and his movement. You’re right. But I also can see some good. My families conversion might be a testimony to the good that came out of it.
Armstrong ‘s message must have resonated with people who wanted to go deeper in regard to spiritual holiness. He certainly offered up plenty of audio and literary material to appeal to those of the intellect, and offered a authoritative this is the only true message to God that convicted the hearts of the simple minded. Who knows, perhaps I would have been drawn in to the church as well if I was an adult hearing his radio programs in the 1950’s and 60’s.
A GOOD EXPERIENCE
Looking back at it all I truly had a great experience in the church. I’ve read some of the X-WWCG members posts and websites and sadly it seems there was a really dark side of the whole experience. But I think there are dark sides to every denomination so I wouldn’t blame Armstrong for all the bad. Perhaps I was sheltered from some of that junk due to my church experience being limited to up to age fourteen. I know my sister, who is 8 years older, didn’t have a great time in the WWCG, especially in her teens, but I haven’t had the privilege of picking her brain on it. I also have a X-WWCG member friend of mine who is 15-20 years older that I meet with in person every few months to fellowship with and he didn’t have that bad of an experience either. Some of us were spared from the pain that so many others experienced.
NOSTALGIA
In the present day I find myself very nostalgic of those WWCG times. One of the things I still enjoy doing is going online an listening to online recordings of “The Bible Hymnal” and sing along (our very own WWCG original hymn book that 95% were songs that were written for specifically our church). You can find most of them on YouTube. As a college trained musician I can attest that these hymns are written just as well as any other hymns out there – and they are just as catchy. I’m also nostalgic for that great sense of being “called out” that the church brought. When you are told that you are one of the privileged few have the real “truth” to matters of humanity and spirituality it makes you feel really special, and admittingly, better than everyone else. You always interrupt the world from the position of “we’ve got it all figured out and you don’t”.
The highlight from my childhood memories of the WWCG were the annual pilgrimages to Wisconsin Dells for the week-long church festival called the Feast of Tabernacles. We all used to get “feast fever” in the months leading up to the church holiday due to the excitement. Although I just asked my mom and dad if they felt the same way too – they said no. Mom says that the only thing she enjoyed was not having to cook for a week and the brief break of getting out her normal housewife routines. My dad said that the sermons were not very good and it was a real financial stress on the family.
The festival was to represent/celebrate the goodness of what the new Kingdom will be like at Christ return. So basically it was a vacation for kids in the beginning of the school year where we got to eat out every day, go on amusement park rides and do family fun – just so long as we didn’t complain about the 10am services every day (they did A.M. and P.M. double services on the first and last day if I remember right -uggg). The Feast of Tabernacles was such a great time for a kid. I love having all those memories of celebrating what the world tomorrow in God’s soon coming Kingdom would be like.
CAN’T STOP THINKING WWCG
As I’ve aged I’ve found that the influence of the WWCG on my childhood was profound, and thankfully overall good. As an adult I still feel as though my WWCG experience is like an unresolved equation. I don’t think about my first girlfriend, or first house, or jobs I’ve had, or people I’ve known in the same way. Those have all come to pass and I don’t dwell on them. I’ve moved on. But when I comes to the WWCG I can’t get it off my mind, sometimes daily. I don’t even know what I’m searching for…but I keep searching. I scouring the internet looking for any history I can find in old documents and articles, learning about the splinter groups, going on Facebook and searching for folks that I remember seeing at the WWCG services, and so on. I’ve tried to invite as many Minneapolis WWCG people as I could find to read these blog posts – both so that you could hear my story, but also because I’m deeply interested in you and would love to hear your story. Maybe we could to a phone call or shoot me and email!! What were the changes in winter 94′ like for you? How did you come to your conclusions? Where are you at now with faith? You must have some great stories!
I LOVE YOU GUYS
Lastly, to those of you current/former WWCG’ers, thank you for all the good times and raising me up in the knowledge of God. I did not turn from knowing Him. My walk with Him is priceless and you guys played a big role in establishing the ways of the Kingdom into my heart. I love my God! And I hope to rejoice with you all when at last His Kingdom is established in full on this earth and when at the end of the age we will reign with Him forever. The love of God in Christ to you all, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 8:38-39.
The Flowage 
Great series! Thanking God for your parents and The Holy Spirit in your journey.
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Amen! I cried a few times when writing this. It’s an amazing thing that God did in this church movement. So thankful that through it all I finally met the person of Jesus and entered into a life of freedom and resting in His finished work.
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As someone who also grew up in the WCG, I liked these blog posts. I also was at that 1981 Mpls HWA sermon.
Have you read The Fragmentation of a Sect about the WCG? I reviewed it at https://wp.me/p4jmub-3TB.
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No I haven’t read that one yet but I read through your blog post. Sounds worth the read. I think I read that you moved over to the agnostic view. Do you habe any posts that talk about that transition?
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Not being given to autobiography, I haven’t written a lot on that. There is a bit in my review of a memoir of an ex-WCG member (https://marzaat.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/the-world-in-flames/). You can also find a bit at https://wp.me/p4jmub-5L.
I would consider myself an atheist. To me, agnostic is a bit of a cop out. You either act like a believer or not. You can’t functionally operate with doubt.
On the other hand, I have a lot of sympathy for political commentator Douglas Murray’s idea of “cultural Christian”. I’m not hostile to (most) religions, and I’m certainly not interested in proselytizing for atheism or corroding Christian faith.
It’s probably more a matter of personal peculiarities. My wife says I’m the most unspiritual person she knows. I seem to possess little by way of transcendental hunger.
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I probably past by you at the Dells feast site in the early 80’s. You probably had one of the cool YOU jackets I wanted.
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Never belonged to YOU. I don’t believe our church in South Dakota even had a chapter though I think my younger brother played basketball as part of YOU get togethers.
Last time I was at the Dells was 1981.
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Just wondering what year you were born? I also grew up in the WWCG, but in Australia (1975).
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Yup, 1980 over here.
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My mom and one of her eldest brothers were members of the Worldwide Church of God in the early ’80s. A family friend told me this one day while we were talking. Unfortunately, he has joined a WCG offshoot, specifically the Philadelphia Church of God, and believes that the former WCG and now the PCG is the “only true church.” He believes they have all the answers and teaches their followers how to “live the right way.” Last time I checked this guy and his wife were divorcing because she was always at odds over her husband’s “beliefs.” Getting back to my mother, she believed that the original WCG taught the truth and the right way to live despite not being in the church for very long. There’s also a history of mental illness with my mom and her siblings so it was easy for her and my uncle to get sucked into this cult.
Growing up and being raised in WCG teachings were the worst particularly when I got older. I always felt different for not keeping the holidays including my birthdays most years of my childhood. However, by the time I was 11, I could no longer watch my favorite shows from Friday at sunset to Saturday at sunset. It was the same situation whenever it was a holy day. It made keeping these days feel like a burden compared to the holidays everyone else kept. My mom also demanded that whenever one of us had to say our prayers the other person had to leave the room. This happened once my sister and I got older. It felt like we were in the church without being in the church. The other horrible thing was how I felt like I didn’t have much of a future after graduating high school. The ’00s weren’t like things are today as far as current events are concerned, but quite a few horrible things happened such as 9/11, the War in Iraq and the late 2000s recession. The last one is what stuck out to me the most. My mom felt like all these events were being fulfilled by bible prophecy and the great tribulation was just around the corner. As as a 16/17 year old girl, I thought I didn’t have much of a future and the only highlight would be my high school graduation. To think that I would never finish college (if I were to enroll), get married or have a family of my own was the most frightening for me. Even as my mom ironically tried to encourage me to attend college during after high school and maybe get an art degree, I felt like it was pointless. Plus, my grades weren’t very good.
It wasn’t until around the age of 20 that I researched how Herbert Armstrong’s original WCG congregation taught their followers lies and led them to believe they were based on what was written in the bible. The WCG offshoots picked up where Armstrong left off before he died in 1986. I just wished I could’ve stopped keeping these beliefs before I became an adult. After attending two churches between the ages of 19 and 24, I decided to become Buddhist. I’m free from these teachings and I’m never going back. Sorry if my post was a little too long. 🙏
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Wow Jessica, I related to SO much of what you just said! Especially when you talked about how you imagined there not being much of a future after high school and that we would never finish college—SO TRUE! I didn’t think I was gonna make it past 17 years old.
I put together a few podcast episodes on why I still choose to believe in God after the WWCG. Much of it breaks down into how Jesus responded to what philosophers call, “The Problem of Evil.” My take is that Jesus’s answers to evil are much more in line with “love” and the desires of the human heart than what atheism, other religions, and even some Christian churches offer.
You know, I’ve never thought about how a follower of Buddhism might respond to how I laid those episodes out. If you ever interested, I would love to have you check them out and share your feedback. I’m a lifelong learner, and I bet you’d have some insights into my premise that I haven’t even though of yet. Here is a link to the first one. There are 4 total, but the first two are the most broad. The 3rd and 4th episodes on “The Problem of Evil” deal more with how I explain Old Testament depictions of violence in light how Jesus treated evil and taught about violence while He walked the earth.
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That was a very interesting video. During my time in church and Sunday school, I was taught how to become saved by God and Jesus and how to be forgiven for my sins. One thing I learned about Jesus is that he died for all the sins of mankind when he gave his life on the cross. However, the former WCG and its offshoots twisted the teachings of obtaining eternal salvation around to fit their narrative. The current WCG offshoots such as the PCG and others teach their followers that if you were never called by God in this lifetime, you’ll have a chance to repent during the great white throne judgment. Mainstream Christianity teaches that the time to repent and become saved is now while you’re still alive not after death. The current WCG offshoots also don’t believe that God’s kingdom will be set up in heaven nor do they think that you will go to heaven or hell once you die. Instead, they tell their followers that the kingdom will be set up on earth after the great tribulation once the world is destroyed. It was also said that Herbert Armstrong didn’t really believe in a heaven or hell and he thought of heaven as being like a retirement home. It’s probably the reason why the WCG offshoots tell their followers that if you walk away from their truth and don’t repent that you’ll end up burning in the lake of fire.
Regarding what you talked about in your video, from a Buddhist perspective, I know there’s a lot of evil in the world but there’s also a lot of good too. While there is no actual god to worship in Buddhism, unless you consider Buddha a god, it’s still okay to believe in the God in heaven or another god. Worshipping a god is a choice. What I did learn from my time in church was how despite the bad things that happen in the world, God is still loving and merciful. We don’t always know why God allows misfortunes such as natural disasters, war, diseases and famine to happen, but to still worship him anyway. At least that’s my take from what a church pastor would say. Also, in Buddhism they believe in both karma and reincarnation compared to Christianity. Like in Christianity, Buddhism teaches its followers it’s better to do good than evil because your past misdeeds can come back to haunt to. This is actually taught to everyone regardless of whether or not they follow a specific religion. Buddhism teaches that suffering is apart of the human condition. At least that’s what I learned.
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Yes, in the WWCG, if you were never called by God in this lifetime, the teaching was that you’ll have a chance to change your mind later on.
But Armstrong was an anhinilaistst (conditional motality view) coming out of the 7th Day Adventist tradition, so a non-repentant person does not get burned and torturted forever in “hell”, but rather at “judgement”, you recieve your due punishment and you merely cease to exist.
Yup, those sound like the basic tenants of Buddism that I have been told as well. I feel like Jesus offers a must more hopeful view of evil and suffering–that evil is NOT from God, nor is it purely random, nor is it necessary for character development. He instead taught that there is a warring, evil force in the spiritual realm that is responsible for all of life’s garbage including cosmic evil too. Suffering for others VOLUNTARILY is God’s will, but not cancer, sickness, disease, and brokenness. Something about seeing evil that way resonates in my heart.
Thanks for checking that violence out!
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*I meant “video” 🙂
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