Dear Friends,

We have observed over time, and it has been brought to our attention, that the New Moons were and are a serious matter of contention among the various Churches of God.

The United Church of God, an International Association (UCG), was forced to issue a doctrinal paper on the New Moons that was seriously inaccurate, and an apology for their incorrect position. We were then forced to issue a paper that dealt with the plethora of false assertions contained in that UCG document so that the Churches of God were not deceived by their work. See the CCG paper Commentary on the UCG Doctrinal Paper Should Christians Observe New Moons? (No. 124).

This issue of the New Moons has seen people leave the UCG, even to entire churches. It will continue to cause problems for the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) offshoots as their arguments to stop people from keeping them are all based on false premises, as will be evident from the paper above. That paper also contains the original UCG paper as an Appendix.

The failure of the UCG, and the Living Church of God (LCG), and the Philadelphia Church of God (PCG) to understand the true Calendar seems to come directly from their inability to understand the doctrine of the nature of God.

Most of the error stems from the theological ignorance of Herbert Armstrong and the blatant idolatry involved concerning him. I am reliably informed that over 100 people in California went to his grave on a daily basis over the week after his burial, expecting him to be resurrected as one of the Two Witnesses.

In fact, it might be said that he has more influence now that he is dead than he ever had when he was alive.

It might help us to reflect on the arguments and errors that he introduced to the Church to understand what is happening to the freezing of the theology of the Churches of God into such inflexible error.

When Herbert Armstrong was literally dismissed from The Church of God (Seventh Day) for introducing error, he commenced to keep the New Moons as Bible studies. However, it soon became apparent that he had a conflict with the calendar as taught by the Jews. Instead of keeping the New Moons as Sabbaths he realised that it would cost a lot of money, and people would have great difficulty in doing that and continuing to tithe, as they might lose employment in the US. It became a test that he was not willing to undertake. Thus he abandoned the New Moon studies and simply adopted the Hillel calendar of rabbinical Judaism. To support that move he adopted the fiction that the Jews, and particularly the Levites, had been given authority for the Oracles of God. This view was completely false and never accepted or adopted by the Church before in its history. We examined that proposition in the paper The Oracles of God (No. 184).

In order to appeal to US Christianity Armstrong was vague on the theology of the nature of God, and in the end adopted a Ditheist position that said that there were two co-eternal beings that existed for eternity before the beginning of creation. He, and his entourage, finally argued that one of these Gods agreed to give up his position and come down to Earth and be the son of the other. This form of dualism had never really been seen before in the Churches of God. He argued that these two formed a family. He then argued that Satan was the creation of these two, but having created him they could not kill him, and that he would never die but be tormented forever and ever in a lake of fire that these other two dreamt up. He would be accompanied forever and ever by the other demons that were also unable to die. Thus, according to this reasoning, as Gods they were not omnipotent because they could not control or terminate their own creation.

This paragraph is part of the explanation for the creation of the imaginative "third resurrection". It goes like this: God didn't want any more demons (humans given immortality) running around the universe destroying the Kingdom like the demons did previously, so the third resurrection was there to deal with the incorrigible, which included those who left the organization. One can only guess at the motives for the creation of that stupid idea among the ministry.

The WCG offshoots still do not understand the concept of "many are called, but few are chosen". The WCG taught that if you were called and part of WCG and don't make the First Resurrection, that was the end of you. You were then headed for the invented "Third" because you had your chance and blew it! So you better pay, pray, stay, sit down and obey. It was simply part of the mind-control tactics that still form doctrine in the offshoots.

The entire structure of the sons of God and the position of the Bible – that there was only One True God, and He sent Jesus Christ – was simply ignored, yet the Church only ever prayed to the one God who was always acknowledged as the Father and all things were asked in Jesus Christ’s name. No rigorous study was ever done on the early theology of the Nature of God in the first- and second-century Church (see the papers Early Theology of the Godhead (No. 127) and The Original Doctrines of the Christian Faith (No. 88)).

To this invention and attribution of sadism to the nature of God, there was a control doctrine introduced to the Church which asserted that anyone who left the Church or who disobeyed its authority and was put out of the Church was sent to the place of torment in what was a manufactured Third Resurrection (see the paper The Fallacy of the Third Resurrection (No. 166)). So God was turned into two Gods who experimented with humans, and if they did not succeed then they were sent to eternal damnation and punishment with the demons, in the Lake of Fire. The logical implications of this absurd and non-biblical reasoning are such a gross imputation on the nature of God and the system disclosed in the pages of the Bible that, if it were true, any sane and rational human being would have a moral obligation to accept death rather than be part of the system.

The truth of the system is borne out by the record of the Church in prophecy. It is a matter of fact that Herbert Armstrong never in all his life ever got one prophecy correct (see the paper False Prophecy (No. 269)). That being the case, it follows as a matter of reason that his understanding was also flawed.

However, he has been turned into an idol by many of his ministry who rely on him for followers. One leader of one of the offshoots said that to reject Herbert Armstrong as God’s Messenger was to reject God. Thus, if you don’t agree that Armstrong had it all correct then you are rejecting God, when it is blatantly obvious that he was in error constantly. We all have an obligation to reject this sort of nonsense.

It is a matter of fact that God has declared through the prophets Isaiah (1:14) Amos (5:21; 8:10) that He hates the Feasts and New Moons of those who pervert His Laws. To invent a false theology on the nature of God and the understanding of the Law saw Judaism sent into dispersion and captivity, and to the adoption of a completely false calendar. In short, their system became corrupt and had to be broken up so that the truth could be sent out in the Last Days in preparation for the Witnesses (see the paper The Witnesses (No. 135)).

The New Moons could not be, and were not, correctly kept (see the papers The New Moons (No. 125) and The New Moons of Israel (No. 132).

The legacy of the Worldwide Church of God was thus the creation of a false God that did not possess the true attributes of God, and the misplacement of Christ in the creation such that false doctrines were able to penetrate the Church concerning God. The Church never properly kept the Feasts, and the New Moons were never kept at all (see the paper God's Calendar (No. 156)).

Because the doctrine on the nature of God was so blatantly polytheist, the Trinitarians were able to penetrate the system and split the Church. In addition to the Trinitarians, the Masonic system was also able to penetrate with a Radical Unitarian doctrine that was designed to inflict further casualties on it. Those who regrouped did so under the very leaders that had not been able to deal with the errors in the first place. The regrouping saw people run off in various directions over arguments that were largely based on control and not doctrine.

There was also then a slow deterioration into Sabellianism, which is a form of Modalism that places Christ as merely a facet of God and is the one being. It is really a facet of Monarchianism that began with Noetus who was denounced by Hippolytus (Phil., ix 4, 5) who stated Noetus got the ideas from the philosopher Heraclitus the Obscure. The Father was the unbegotten creature who was the Creator. He then appeared incarnate as his own son. Because of their imprecise terminology they were often charged with Ditheism (see Enyc. of Religion and Ethics, art. ‘Monarchiansim’, Vol. 8, p. 779). That is exactly what happened with Armstrongism, only they were even more openly ditheist that the Monarchians. The Sabellians were an extension of this view with slightly more precise explanation. The terms and problems were seen in Justin Martyr’s writings, and Novation saying that, I and the father are one not in person but in substance or nature was charged by Tertullian with holding the existence of two Gods. It must flow as a matter of logic that there can be only one God and all other beings flow from the creative activity of that God, or the result is ditheist or polytheist.

It has become a matter of history that the churches emanating from Armstrongism and holding his Ditheism are open continually to collapse into Modalistic Monarchianism, which was developed from Rome into Trinitarianism. We see this occurring all over the Churches of God as they struggle with the problem created by Armstrong, who asserted that Christ was a true God as part of a family of two true Gods from the beginning. This view is directly contrary to Scripture, both OT and NT, and ignores the whole structure of the Heavenly Council of the Sons of God as developed from Genesis to Job and explained in the Psalms.

One of the few exceptions to the vague pronunciations of the Modalists was Athenagorus who said in the Legatio: The Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the Pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in openness and power of spirit, the understanding (nous) and reason (logos) of the Father is the son of God. But if in your surpassing intelligence, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that he is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for God who is the eternal mind (nous) had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with logos (logikos); but inasmuch as he came forth to be the idea and emerging power of all material things (cf. ERE ibid.).

Sabbellius was excommunicated by Callistus, the senior bishop of Rome, which Hippolytus says was for fear of himself, and Hippolytus castigates them all including what are now referred to as popes Zephrynus and Callistus. Hippolytus was the bishop of the Roman port city of Ostia. He clearly did not recognise any authority of any bishop of Rome and censured them for their corrupt way of life.

The problem is obvious that, because these people wanted to make Christ the first product of God as God and deny the same position to the other sons of God, the position became hopelessly illogical, and the only way out was to become Trinitarian, for to remain ditheist is inconceivably idolatrous. This same position is what has happened to the ministry of the WCG and they are not trained to see the problem for what it is. Joseph Tkach Jnr admits in his book Transformed by Truth that they were told what they were doing, which is true because I wrote and told his father on a continual basis the steps they would take and where they would end up, and his father did not have the intelligence to see what he was actually doing and where he was being led by his entourage.

The same error of theology entered the church in China, in the True Jesus Church, where they have virtually destroyed the supremacy of the Father to such an extent of Sabbellianism that effectively replaces Him with Christ. There is only one Being who is Christ.

The destruction of WCG was deliberate under a man of limited intellect using men who were opportunists. The casualties were the members and the junior ministry who were demoralised by them. In addition to these people there were a series of Radical Unitarians trying to further reduce and break up the system. These people deny the pre-existence of Christ (see the paper The Pre-Existence of Jesus Christ (No. 243)).

The fundamental issue is that it was Jesus Christ that gave the Law to Moses at Sinai. No man has seen God ever, yet they ate with the Angel of God (called Yahovah) on Sinai, and the NT tells us that Being was Christ (1Cor. 10:4). The Gnostics had to deny that at all costs in order to do away with the Law of God. The Church had never accepted such a view and Herbert Armstrong had no business introducing that view into the Church.

What happened in the Church was because the process of logical argument and analysis was supplanted by a spirit of accusation that attacked the man, and accused the man, rather than examine the arguments. This serious intellectual error exists in all walks of life, and forms the basis of politics at all levels in the USA, and is infecting the Commonwealth in all nations.

The capacity to correct error depends on a free and open mind. God gives us understanding, a piece at a time. If we act on what we are given then we are given more to understand. We were contacted by a pastor who is in a church that broke away from UCG and has commenced to keep the New Moons. It was their position that the New Moons “sorts the men from the boys”. It is true that the test of the Faith is keeping the Calendar correctly, including the New Moons and the full Feasts of God, including the Passover for eight days as instructed.

The people of God are attacked now in the Last Days on a continual basis. It is a matter of faith and the capacity to ensure that we keep the things entrusted to us.

Remember this fact of Paul’s instruction to the Colossian Church:
Let no man judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ (Col. 2:16-17).

The text shows clearly that they were keeping all the food laws and the Feasts, New Moons and Sabbaths.

They were told not to let men judge them in how they kept them, not how they did not keep them.

It is strange indeed that the ministry of the Churches of God could interpret this text and conclude that the New Moons need not be kept, but the Feasts and Sabbaths need to be kept.

In the same way, they can use Leviticus 23 as an explanation of the Feasts and Sabbaths and yet not keep the Wave-Sheaf offering that is laid down in the same chapter in the sequence.

The problem stemmed again from the vanity of Herbert Armstrong. They kept Pentecost on a Monday and Ernest Martin told them they were wrong, but rather than admit Martin was correct, Armstrong did not implement the Wave Sheaf because to do so would have shown clearly that Martin was correct, and that Pentecost was on a Sunday. They waited until Martin left and then introduced a Sunday Pentecost but forgot about the Wave Sheaf. Same old story: if you don’t do it you can’t understand it, and you can lose the opportunity.

God has told us to give our ways to Him and He will establish our thoughts. It is not the other way around. Do it and then you will understand the reasoning and plan of it. You don’t just think about it and not do it. If you approach the Faith that way you will probably lose what understanding you actually do have.

The knowledge of the Plan of God in the Bible is given: here a little, there a little, precept upon precept, line upon line. It is the Holy Spirit that leads you and opens your eyes. It is not of your own doing. Beware of it when men speak well of you for so they did to the false prophets. Hold fast to the Faith once delivered and be glad when some see the light and turn and follow the way of truth.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General