Herbert W. Armstrong (July 31, 1892 – January 16, 1986) was the founder of the Radio Church of God / Worldwide Church of God; chancellor of Ambassador College; publisher of The Plain Truth magazine in several languages; presenter of The World Tomorrow radio and television programs; father of radio-television evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong; president of the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation; self-styled as Ambassador for World Peace and patron of the Ambassador Auditorium concert series.

Brief biography

Birth, marriage and early career

Most biographical information about Herbert W. Armstrong comes from his own writings. He was born in 1892 in Des Moines, Iowa, to parents of the Quaker faith. He dropped out of high school circa 1908, beginning a career in business sales and advertising. In 1917 he married Loma Dillon who died in 1966. He married Ramona Martin in 1977. That marriage ended in divorce in 1982. Most of his early life until 1926 was devoted to selling advertising services and copywriting. During this time he adopted a copy and layout style of presentation in which upper and lower case words were mixed within both headlines and text for emphasis and impact. This writing style became his own trademark which he never abandoned throughout his life.

Early religious beliefs

In his early life Herbert W. Armstrong abandoned the faith of his parents and professed agnosticism. At some time around 1926 or 1927 when he was living in Oregon, his wife Loma became friendly with a lady who was a member of the Church of God (Seventh Day). He is said to have been converted to her beliefs after attempting to prove them to be wrong. He described it in interesting terms: That she "kept Saturday for Sunday," and that he would prove to her that the Bible taught somewhere that "thou shalt keep Sunday," indicating his total unfamiliarity with scripture at the time.

Ordination and foundation of his own belief system

By his own published admission, in 1927 Herbert W. Armstrong was baptized by a Baptist minister, but continued as a member of the Church of God. On February 9, 1930, Garner Ted Armstrong was born. In 1931 Armstrong was ordained by the Oregon Conference of The Church of God and in Chapter 24 of his autobiography under the heading of Ordained to Christ's Ministry, Armstrong explained his own thought process that formed the backbone of everything that he came to believe and put into practice. (Note that the upper and lowercase style of writing in the following abbreviated excerpt is in the original text which was the signature style of his authorship):

First, Jesus Christ began His earthly ministry at about age 30. God took away my business .. inducting me into His ministry, when I was 30! Second, Jesus began .. training .. His original disciples for carrying HIS GOSPEL to the world in the year A.D. 27. Precisely 100 time-cycles later, in 1927, He began my intensive study and training for carrying HIS SAME GOSPEL to all nations of today's world. .. the significance of 100 time-cycles! God set the earth, sun, and moon in their orbits to mark off divisions of time on the earth. .. the earth, the sun, and the moon come into almost exact conjunction only once in 19 years. Thus 19 years mark off one complete time-cycle! .. Exactly 100 time-cycles later, after 3½ years of intensive study and training, Christ ordained me to preach this same Gospel of the Kingdom in all the world as a witness to all nations (Matt. 24:14). This ordination took place at, or very near, the Day of Pentecost, 1931. .. Christ started out His original apostles preaching the very Gospel of the Kingdom which God had sent by Him, and which He had taught the apostles, in the year A.D. 31. For exactly one 19-year time-cycle this preaching was confined to the continent where it started -- Asia. After precisely one 19-year time-cycle, A.D. 50, Christ opened a door for the Apostle Paul to carry the same Gospel to EUROPE! This was A.D. 50. Before A.D. 70, Roman armies besieged Jerusalem. From that time the Roman government stamped out the organized mass spreading of the Gospel of Christ. Soon a different gospel was being tolerated, later endorsed and then enforced by Roman government. It was Roman paganism now being palmed off under the new name "Christianity." .. For nearly 19 centuries the world has been rendered spiritually drunk on the wine of this counterfeit gospel! As prophecy foretold, ALL nations have been deceived. But looking into our time, just before the END of this age (Matt. 24:14), Jesus foretold that His same original Gospel of the Kingdom of God was to be preached and published (Mark 13:10) in all the world as a witness to ALL NATIONS! This was to immediately precede HIS SECOND COMING! TODAY THIS IS BEING DONE! Now consider this amazing parallel! God first opened a door -- that of radio and the printing press -- for the mass proclaiming of HIS ORIGINAL TRUE GOSPEL the first week in 1934! The exact date was January 7, 1934. Exactly one time-cycle later, January 7, 1953, God opened wide the massive door of the most powerful commercial radio station on earth, and RADIO LUXEMBOURG began broadcasting Christ's Gospel to EUROPE and Britain!

In 1933 the Church of God group into which Armstrong had been baptized and ordained split into two factions. Armstrong followed the breakaway group which was led by A. N. Dugger who then formed the Church of God 7th Day with its US headquarters in Salem, West Virginia and world headquarters in Jerusalem. On October 9, 1933, Armstrong took to the airwaves for the first time with a religious program on radio station KORE in Eugene, Oregon where he pastored a church congregation. The broadcast over KORE gave rise to the name Radio Church of God. In 1934 he began publication of The Plain Truth magazine which was an outgrowth of earlier attempts at publication.

Credentials

Herbert W. Armstrong received his

Armstrong claimed that after documenting and explaining his belief that the Bible required true Christians to observe the biblical Holy Days as set forth in Leviticus 23 (and other places), the leadership of the Church of God (Seventh Day), told him that although some of them agreed with him, that this doctrine could not be taught as many members would be offended. Armstrong said he then decided he had to discontinue his association with that group. A few years later (1937) the Church of God (Seventh Day) revoked his ministerial credentials for doctrinal differences. Since he was no longer part of them, Armstrong continued working as he had been. To read more of what Armstrong said about his leaving and what the Church of God (Seventh Day) said about his leaving, please see the article

As editor and publisher of The Plain Truth Armstrong received from Alger Hiss, Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, full press credentials to cover the UN Charter Conference in San Francisco in 1945. He continued to have a variety of other press credentials until his death.

Move to California

On March 3, 1946 he moved his base of operations to Pasadena, California where he incorporated the Radio Church of God:

.. we, HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG, BASIL WOLVERTON, DAVID T. HENION, JAMES A. GOTT, ESTHER M. OLSON, and LOMA D. ARMSTRONG, have voluntarily associated ourselves together for the purpose of incorporating a hitherto unincorporated voluntary association in Eugene, Lane County, Oregon, known as "Radio Church of God", under Title III, Article I of the General Nonprofit Corporation Law of the State of California ..

On January 5, 1968, Herbert W. Armstrong and one associate filed a Certificate of Amendment to the Articles of Incorporation of the Radio Church of God, which stated that the two individuals were the President and Secretary of the corporation and that as a result of a meeting of the board of directors it was resolved that:

ARTICLE I of the Articles of Incorporation of this corporation be amended to read asfollows: "The name of this corporation shall be WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD."

As leader of the Worldwide Church of God he began to be regarded by his followers as a modern-day apostle. He later used that term freely to describe his own office, and published a flowchart in a church newspaper that had a line of succession from "God" to "Jesus Christ" to "HWA," making him, presumably, third in line of authority in the universe.

Beliefs

Many, but not all, of Herbert W. Armstrong's teachings appear to have been influenced by Church of God ministers Andrew N. Dugger (1886-1975) and Clarence O. Dodd (1899-1955).

Armstrong preached a gospel that was quite different from that of mainstream Christianity because he did not primarily intend to attract members, but to serve as a base with which to warn the world of a timetable of coming events. The climax of those events, in his concept, would result in the return of Jesus Christ to Earth as King of kings and Lord of lords in order to establish the Kingdom of God.

Four major platforms of doctrine

Although Armstrong always taught that faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the baptism of believers into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were central tenets of belief and practice for Christians, he also taught biblical practices that mainstream Christianity believes to be non-binding because of the New Covenant:

1. A belief that the Old Testament commandment to observe the seventh-day Sabbath, various Holy Days and abstention from proscribed animals and fish is still in effect. These requirements are simply toward either Orthodox Judaism or Reform Judaism but rather requirements that were placed upon God's people, whether Jew or Gentile, because they had typological value and taught thereby God's plan of salvation for Mankind and the need for holiness. To this end he offered a booklet called:
2. A belief that primarily the Anglo-Saxon peoples were the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel and by virtue of having this basic knowledge prophecies of the Bible that were formerly cryptic or impossible to comprehend may be understood. Most particularly, Armstrong identified the United States and British Commonwealth (as it was known then) with the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim. To support this biblical claim he offered the public a book called: . Some claim that the argument put forward in the "United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy" were strongly based on the writings of J.H. Allen, specifically his text "Judah's Scepter and Joseph's Birthright". Although the Worldwide Church of God never supported anti-semitism and taught vigorously against racism, the British-Israelism belief system is primarily found in Christian Identity movements.
3. A belief that Armstrong had been given a commission to warn the world by print and broadcasting media before the end of the age would come about with a World War III brought on by a United States of Europe. For many years the key to the timetable was described as being two 19-year timecycles, with the second and last timecycle having commenced in 1953 when The World Tomorrow program was first transmitted by Radio Luxembourg. The end of that last timecycle was set for some time in February of 1972. All of this was laid out in a booklet called: 1975 in Prophecy!, which was written by Armstrong and illustrated by Basil Wolverton. As that date approached with seemingly very few developments suggesting the fulfilment of Armstrong's prophetic scheme, there was naturally a de-emphasis placed on that speculation - to say the least.
4. A belief that the true Church of God was not Protestant as it could trace its history from the Day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts through present, and did not trace itself from the Protestant Reformation. Essentially Armstong taught that the seven churches in Revelation 2 & 3 describe characteristics of the true Church that would occur in succession, and he specifically identified some of the groups that fulfilled these related prophecies. There were also many differences between the teachings of Armstrong and the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. Some of these are documented in an article .

Other doctrines

Among the most distinctive teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong,

1. The true Gospel is the literal establishment of a world government, the Kingdom of God, with Jesus ruling as king and the glorified saints ruling under Jesus over all humanity.
2. The Church's primary responsibility is to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom of God. Secondarily, the church is to warn the world, especially the modern descendents of the tribes of Israel (the Anglo-celtic nations), of impending disaster prophesied to occur at the end of this age—soon!—just before the return of Jesus Christ.
3. Not all who call themselves Christians are saved - indeed, only those baptized into the Church of God are true Christians.
4. Eternal life is God's gift and works do not save anyone - but the works one do show the faith they have (Jam. 2:18), which will determine their reward and level of authority and service in the Kingdom of God.
5. The Worldwide Church of God was the continuation of God's only true church
6. Herbert Armstrong was God's end-time Apostle.
7. Those who do not keep the Sabbath are not true Christians. True Christians are identified as those who "keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus Christ" (Matthew 5:17ff, 19:17; Revelation 14:12).
8. Use of medicines and the medical profession for treatment of illness or disease is sinful and revealed a lack of faith. This teaching was later changed.
9. Divorce of any kind is sinful, and, if a person had divorced prior to becoming a member of the Worldwide Church of God, that person had to separate from the later spouse. This teaching was later changed -- coincidentally, not long before Armstrong married a divorced woman.
10. Use of makeup by women is sinful. This teaching was later changed during Armstrong's administration. Armstrong later claimed that it had been changed without his knowledge or approval, and changed it back in 1981. It remained that way until his death, after which church leaders removed the restriction.
11. Those not called during this age have a part in the second resurrection (to judgment). Then, they will have the opportunity to learn God's truth.
12. The reward of the saved is not Heaven, but the Kingdom of Heaven with the Government of God set up on the Earth, for the first time since Satan's rebellion, during the 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ on the Earth over those who survive the great tribulation.
13. Those called in this life receive salvation at the return of Jesus Christ and reign with Him 1,000 years as kings and priests over humanity.
14. After the 1,000 years, the Great White Throne Judgement period will occur, in which all who have ever lived will appear before the judgement seat of God and have the opportunity to learn God's way and do His will for the first time ever. This will happen after Satan the Devil is cast into the Lake of Fire so he can deceive the people no more.
15. The kingdom of God will eventually be handed by Jesus Christ to God the Father. How the kingdom got away from God in the first place was not fully explained.
16. All who reject God wil be permanently destroyed in the Lake of Fire as opposed to being tormented forever and ever. Satan's punishment is to last forever, and it will torment him.
17. The Christian Godhead is a family made up of two personages, with the Father, whom Jesus revealed, and the Son, Jesus. However, the Godhead will later expand to billions of personages, as the destiny of humans, if they obey the Law of God and keep the faith of Jesus, is to be reborn as God beings.
18. The Holy Spirit is not a third Person of the Godhead, but rather is the power that emanated from God the Father and Jesus Christ that can be in mankind making us one with them and enabling us to keep God's commandments as Jesus did.
19. Jesus Christ existed before he was in the flesh, as the Word. He was the God of the Old Testament.
20. A first, second, and third tithe must be paid. The first tithe is 10% (tithe literally means ) of a member's earnings, and is to be given to the Church (thought to be the modern day inheritor of the Levitical priesthood duty of Old Testament Israel). Members should save a second 10% to be spent on themselves when observing the annual Sabbaths of the Old Testament. A third 10% is to be sent to the Church every third year, which is used to help those in the Church who are in need. (Deut. 26:12) Third tithe is also used to pay the staff of the Church as they are considered spiritual Levites, since they are doing God's work. Additionally, members were to pay a "tithe of the tithe," meaning one-tenth of the second tithe should be sent to the church each year instead of being spent on themselves while observing the annual Sabbaths. No scriptural evidence was provided by Armstrong for this requirement.
21. Those who do not pay God His tithes are robbing Him.
22. One is not born again until the resurrection.

Writings

Herbert W. Armstong was a prolific writer and most of his works were stamped with his early style of advertising copy-writing that was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He wrote many articles and booklets and a few books. However, shortly after the death of Herbert W. Armstrong disputes arose over the copyrights to these works when the Worldwide Church of God withdrew them from circulation.

Various groups then attempted to reprint and circulate the writings of Herbert W. Armstrong and this eventually led to a major and lengthy court case between the Worldwide Church of God and the Philadelphia Church of God, which still largely accepts many Armstrong doctrines. Following mutual resolution of that case the Philadelphia Church of God gained legal copyrights to some of the most noteworthy works and these include:

• Mystery of the Ages
• The Incredible Human Potential
• The Missing Dimension in Sex
• The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy
• The Seven Laws of Success
• The United States And Britain In Prophecy

Character and Reputation

Herbert Armstrong's reputation was called into question a number of times over the years by accusers. A letter by former church accountant and lawyer Jack Kessler is widely available through Internet search engines. In it he mentions numerous examples of egregious behavior on the part of Armstrong and other church leaders with whom he had worked. Kessler later returned to the fold and served as an elder in the church after its major doctrinal revisions in the 1990s.

A published article addresses accusations against Armstrong, defending against several of them . It is not known whether the author ever knew or worked with Armstrong personally, as Kessler did.

In 1979 a State of California court placed the church into financial receivership to investigate charges of financial illegalities, based on notarized statements and financial documents accepted as sufficient evidence by the California court. Stanley Rader, Armstrong's personal confidant, CPA and attorney-in-law, was the architect of most of the legal and accounting strategies the Church used for decades. He arranged for a legal strategy to prevent the Church or Armstrong from revealing all financial information. A two million dollar bond was posted as security, pending outcome of appeals . Church members and Ambassador College employees were told not to cooperate with the court order. Los Angeles area riot police squads were summoned as Church families, including women and children, barricaded themselves in at Ambassador to prevent any access to church documents, income and expenditures, bank records, or computer drives. Fortunately, a direct confrontation was avoided.

Rader then vigorously litigated in many venues against a receivership investigation. Utilizing various arguments, he appealed from the Courts of Appeal up to the California Supreme Court numerous times. He even litigated the receivership in the United States Supreme Court, where famed Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe tried to argue on behalf of the church to put an end to the receivership. The USSC, for a third time in a row, denied the church any relief from the Office of the Attorney General of California investigating the abuse of church funds. Frustrated by getting nowhere with his final legal appeals, and denied any legal relief from the pending financial investigation, Rader, as a last resort, lobbied the California state legislature for passage of a special bill exempting the Worldwide Church of God from financial examination by the California Attorney General which, after passage, was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.

The era of Stanley Rader

Following a series of scandals involving Garner Ted Armstrong which began shortly after the dawning of the 1970s and coinciding with the failure of the second 19-year timecycle Garner Ted Armstrong was finally removed as second-in-command of the church and replaced by attorney Stanley Rader, who had enjoyed a long relationship with Herbert W. Armstrong. From the early 1970s until approximately 1979, Stanley Rader created and directed another organization funded by the church called the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation. This development sparked a public relations war between the younger Armstrong and Rader, for continuing influence with the now elderly Armstrong regarding present financial dealings and who would inherit the future legitimate control of his wealthy church college. (See article on Stanley Rader for further detail.) Following a climax when the church was placed into involuntary financial receivership by action of the State of California, legal battles to the USSC, California state legislature, with a major 60 Minutes segment on CBS, Stanley Rader retired with a large cash bonus from Armstrong, followed by a substantial pension.

It was during this era that Herbert W. Armstrong, widowed when his first wife Loma died on April 15, 1967, surprised church members by marrying a woman nearly 50 years his junior, Ramona Martin, in 1977. She lived in Tucson, Arizona. Armstrong found it convenient to move to Arizona during the California financial receivership and orchestrated most church affairs from his temporary base in Tucson. Herbert W. Armstrong, 90, filed a petition for divorce from Ramona Armstrong,44, in April, 1982. They were divorced in Tucson, Arizona a year later 1983, after a lengthy, drawn out legal battle totaling more than 3,000 pages of testimony and documents disputing various aspects of the matter. Upon divorce, Armstrong moved back to the college he founded in Pasadena.

Death and aftermath

On January 16, 1986 the death of Herbert W. Armstrong was announced. Prior to his death, Armstrong ordained Joseph W. Tkach as succeeding Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God.

In the years that followed Tkach commenced a doctrinal review process that led to a change in many of the central beliefs and doctrines that the church had developed under Herbert W. Armstrong. This process included a decision to withhold from further circulation all previous publications that had been authored by Herbert W. Armstrong. A dissenting splinter church that had spun off of the Worldwide Church of God during the doctrinal changes began republishing Armstrong's books, a practice that the Worldwide Church of God challenged on copyright grounds. The splinter church eventually paid damages and purchased additional rights to several more of Armstrong's publications from the Worldwide Church of God for three million dollars, effectively ending the copyright ownership dispute.

Following the major changes in doctrine and practice by the Worldwide Church of God, many members left the organization (See 'The Church Today'), resulting in a dramatic fall in church donations. Joseph W. Tkach Sr. died in 1995. Just as he had been Armstrong's hand-picked successor, he chose his son Joseph Tkach Jr. to assume the office of Pastor General and control of the Worldwide Church and its affiliated Ambassador College. Under the direction of Tkach Jr., the church closed its affiliated Ambassador University in Big Sandy, Texas. The World Tomorrow broadcasts were terminated and The Plain Truth magazine was spun-off to an affiliated organization which shared few of the doctrinal positions held by Armstrong. The church's Ambassador Auditorium, located at the Pasadena campus, was mothballed and eventually the entire Pasadena headquarters of the church was sold off in parcels. The Worldwide Church of God announced plans in 2005 to move its administrative offices to a building in Glendora, California some time in 2006. The WCG also announced that it was contemplating a name change for the denomination.

The Church Today

Because of the dramatic changes in doctrine by post-Armstrong leaders of the Worldwide Church of God, many members who disagreed with the changes left the church. Dozens -- some say hundreds -- of splinter groups formed, but a few main groups became the most prominent. These churches and organizations include the , the , the , and the .

The Organization

The organization called the Worldwide Church of God today considers itself to be and is mostly viewed as a part of the greater Christian community today. In 1997 the Worldwide Church of God was accepted as a member of the National Association of Evangelicals. See Worldwide Church of God for more of its own timeline of change in recent years. The organization today shares few if any of Armstrong's doctrinal positions.