The Worldwide
Church of God
The Worldwide
Church of God, Before and After
Their Incredible
Journey: “I have just come through one of the
most incredible journeys a Christian could ever come
through. Imagine being a member of an old-covenant
Sabbatarian Church of God (looked upon by other Christian
churches as a cult). You
are a loyal member for over 26 years. You
admire and follow that Church’s past leader. Then
he dies. That leader had preached a prophetic version
of the gospel not much unlike what the Old Testament
Prophets had preached to the Jews about a glorious conquering
Messiah who would come, conquer their enemies and usher
Israel and the entire world into a golden age of peace
and prosperity such as the world has never known. (Nothing
wrong in the message itself, it’s Biblical, it’s
just not the gospel of salvation.) Then
the successor of the founding leader of this old-covenant
Sabbatarian Church of God, appointed by him before his
death, takes over, and little by little from 1986 to
1995, discovers that this Sabbatarian Church of God has
been living in the wrong covenant, discovers that the
Sabbath and Holy Days or Sunday/Christmas/Easter, i.e.
“days of worship” are an optional choice for
believers in Jesus Christ. Just
nine short years from the death of Herbert W. Armstrong,
Joseph Tkach Sr. courageously takes the final steps which
bring the Worldwide Church of God into the new covenant
understanding and the resultant freedoms of choice in days
of worship that accompany it. As
a part of the massive changes made, Mr. Tkach Sr. discovered
we had neglected the gospel of Christ (gospel of salvation)
which Paul and the early Church of God had preached exclusively. He
then switched the Worldwide Church of God over to preaching
the gospel of Christ exclusively.
Background information
The old Worldwide Church of God is mirrored in Romans 14: In verses 1-2 of Romans 14 Paul sets
the overall principle that he whose faith is strong (faith
about a particular freedom in the Bible to do something)
should not look down on the guy
whose faith isn’t strong in that area. Now
what is Paul talking about? The
Church of God in Rome was split down the middle, half being
Gentile Christians, and half being Jewish-Christians (just
like Torah-observant Messianic Jewish believers today). The
Jewish-Christians probably had been the early members of
the Church of God in Rome, and had been baptized that first
Pentecost in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit came upon the
120 disciples. Many
of these Jewish-Christians still adhered to the old covenant
Law of Moses, while believing in Jesus Christ as their Savior
[just like the Worldwide Church of God from 1934 to 1986]. Their
conscience wouldn’t allow them to eat pork or shellfish. The Gentiles, knowing that eating pork
or shellfish was no longer forbidden in the new covenant
freedoms the Church of God had legislated in Acts 15 in Jerusalem,
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit directly guiding
Peter and James, had no problem eating such food. It is a matter of conscience now (see
Romans 14:22-23). But
even so, should a Gentile Christian sit down next to his
Jewish-Christian brother and consume a ham sandwich? Would
that be an acceptable thing to do? Romans 14:1-2, “Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing
judgment on disputable matters. One
man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another
man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.” Now
why vegetables? Halley
brings out that all meat that showed up in the Roman meat
markets was previously sacrificed to idols in the pagan temples. To
Jewish believers who had been Orthodox Jews before, this
was detestable. Also Roman meat may have been tainted
with pork, unclean meats. The
Jewish-Christians had been brought up under the Law of Moses
as children, and they still applied the Law of Moses to their
Christianity, as the early Church of God before 50AD had
in Jerusalem. It
was deeply imbedded in their consciences. Proverbs
states, “Train up a child in the way that he should
go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” These
Jewish-Christians had been trained up in Jewish homes which
strictly observed the Law of Moses. The
Worldwide Church of God observed the Mosaic food laws of
Leviticus 11, just like the early Judeo-Christians did in
Rome.
The Old Testament Holy Day observances: Next,
these Jewish-Christians in Rome would never have been in
Jerusalem for the Passover/Pentecost Holy Day season and
witnessed the miracle of the Holy Spirit descending on the
saints and apostles and then been baptized on that Pentecost
just fifty days after the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ had they not been brought up in the strictness of
the Law of Moses, so much so that they thought it of extreme
importance to observe the Holy Days in Jerusalem. We
see historic evidence of this recorded in Acts 2:1-11 which
states,
“Now when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they
were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven,
as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house
where they were sitting. Then
there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one
sat upon each of them. Then they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit and began to speak with other tongues [foreign languages],
as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now
there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every
nation under heaven [obviously temporarily dwelling in Jerusalem
for the Spring Holy Day season of Passover./Unleavened Bread/Pentecost]. And
when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and
were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own
language. Then they were all amazed and marveled,
saying, to one another, ‘Look, are not all these who
speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in their
own language in which we were born?’---‘Parthians
and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea
and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia. Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts
of Libya and adjoining Cyrene, visitors
from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs---we
all hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works
of God.” These Jews from Rome were devout
Jews, devout in the Law of Moses. Now
go forward in time. The
Church of God at Rome is composed of two groups, Jewish-Christians
and Gentile Christians. The
Jewish-Christians had been devout Jews, devout in the Law
of Moses. When
Paul wrote to them the counsel at Jerusalem in Acts 15 had
already occurred. They
all understood that the old covenant Law of Moses had been
declared obsolete, no longer binding on new covenant Christians. The
Law of Christ [interestingly, including 9 of the 10 commandments]
was now the law Christians were under, being written on their
hearts and minds by Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Think
about that for awhile. Paul
had already taught and declared the new covenant freedom
from the old covenant Law of Moses, but this declaration
could not erase the childhood programming which remained
imbedded in the Jewish-Christian mind. To
obey or not to obey the tenants of the old covenant had been
made totally optional for all Christians at the counsel of
Jerusalem in Acts 15. But in the conscience of the Jewish-Christian
in Rome, it was not an optional matter---gray for the Gentile
Christian was black and white with no inbetween for the Jewish-Christian.
The whole chapter of Romans 14
is telling believers it is OK to follow either the law
of Christ or Law of Moses, all the while believing in
Jesus as your Messiah and Savior, whichever your Christian
conscience dictated.
Verses 3-4 continues the thought: “The
man who eats everything must not look down on him who does
not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn
the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who
are you to judge someone else’s servant? To
his own master he stands or falls. And
he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” Paul
is saying in essence, ‘Whatever these people are
doing, Jewish-Christian or Gentile Christian, they’re
doing it to the Lord, and that is acceptable to the Lord. Now
Paul zeroes in on the Holy Day observances. Understand
that the whole context of Romans is between Jewish-Christians
and Gentile Christians at Rome. The
next verses are clearly addressing the observance of the
Sabbath and Holy Days which had been commanded in the books
of Leviticus 23 and Exodus and Deuteronomy, under the old
covenant. Paul
is getting into a pretty heavy area in the Jewish religious
conscience---the observance of Sabbath and Holy Days---the
choice to observe or not to observe is now optional under
the new covenant. Romans 14:5-6, “One man considers one
day more sacred than another [i.e. the Sabbath, which the
Jews, Jewish-Christians, and many of the early Apostolic
Churches of God observed on Saturday]; another man considers
every day alike. Each
one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He
who regards one day as special, does it to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for
he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to
the Lord and gives thanks to God.” The
central beliefs of the Worldwide Church of God, a Sabbatarian
Church of God, were to be found in their adherence to the
Seventh Day Sabbath and Holy Days of Leviticus 23, and
the food laws found in Leviticus 11. Other
than a few oddball beliefs that didn’t stop them
from believing in Jesus as God the Son and being fully
Christian, they were a modern day snapshot of the Jewish-Christians
in Rome when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans.
Cult-like, but not a cult
Some Christian
denominations have called the old Worldwide Church of God
a cult [in fact, their current leadership has done so as
well, much to the hurt of many members who came through these
massive changes]. I
think in light of their recent past changes we ought to be
very careful of statements and accusations like that. 49,000
members out of this 89,000 member Christian denomination
followed the lead of the Holy Spirit within them, through
an often painful and yet courageous journey from old-covenant
Christianity to new covenant Christianity. If the Worldwide
Church of God had truly been a cult---and not simply an old
covenant Sabbatarian Christian Church---how could the Holy
Spirit possibly lead 49,000 loyal members out of 89,000 members
into the truth of the new covenant? This is a good question, and it ought
to make us extremely cautious in our labeling other Sabbatarian
Churches of God as cults. Such
wrong labeling amounts to spiritual libel. Funny
that there is only one letter difference between the two
words, and a wrong label can amount to libel. Along
that line of thinking I have a perfect example of the type
of reference other Evangelical Christian leaders often make
toward our past while praising our courage of coming into
the new covenant spiritual understandings. But
they do it in such a way as to paint all our past beliefs
in a very dark and negative way (when, mostly, they were
a reflection of Jewish-Christianity of the 1st century). To call the Worldwide Church of God before
the “changes” were made a cult not only hurts
many loyal members who came through those changes inspite
of loving Mr. Armstrong, but it is considered by those same
members as accepting a complement which has been embedded
in a slanderous lie. In
my opinion, the leaders within the Worldwide Church of God
at this time [Mr. Tkach Jr., Greg Albrecht, Daniel Rogers,
just to name three], should have stopped accepting such tainted
compliments, and even call such ones giving them, and demand
that they stop. It
never happened though. That
leadership, after the death of Joseph Tkach Sr. obviously
had a hidden agenda. The example I give is a comment written
or given by Richard J. Foster, author of “Celebration
of Disciple” and
“Streams of Living Water”, commenting on Mr.
J. Michael Feazell’s new book “The Liberation
of the Worldwide Church of God.” He
states: “We believe in the life-changing influence
of grace and truth. Rarely, however, do we see it demonstrated
with such explosive power as in the case of the Worldwide
Church of God. [So far, this is highly complimentary.] Told by one of its top leaders, here is
the remarkable inside story of what happened when a well-know cult grappled
with the truths of the New Testament. “The
Liberation of the Worldwide Church of God” is far more
than the fascinating account of a church’s journey
from darkness to light and from bondage to grace [now while
I’m extremely glad to have the far greater understanding
of God’s grace and of the new covenant, I don’t
recall being in such darkness and bondage, and I take that
as an insult of monumental proportions]. It
is a blazing testimony to the gospel’s matchless power---a
power able to transform hearts and lives that seem beyond
reach…and fully capable of changing us. [May I say this about that, had we not
been previously transformed by the indwelling of God’s
Holy Spirit, 49,000 of us would never have made the transition
or as he calls it, “the transformation”, into
the new covenant understanding.] That
is as much of his “compliment” as I wish to repeat. When many of our leaders during that time,
as well as those of us normal members who had been a part
of the Worldwide Church of God for many years all say the
same thing---that we were cult-like, but we were not a cult---it
would have been high time for us to have stopped accepting
the accolades of those who wanted to label us (or libel us),
before the changes were made, as a cult. Looking
back at this time, it decidedly wasn’t good for fostering
healing within our denomination between those who loved Mr.
Armstrong and made the changes nonetheless, and those who
didn’t particularly like Mr. Armstrong. And as hindsight will show, it was
a majority of those 49,000 thousand who came into the new
covenant that liked Mr. Armstrong.
The changes made under Joseph Tkach
Sr.
As we were going
into the year of 1995 the Worldwide Church of God was coming
into a very clear understanding of the relevancy of the new
covenant, i.e. that choice in “days of worship” and
other Old Testament laws, were an optional choice for believers
in Jesus. And yet those in the Worldwide Church
of God had been---up until 1995---following a fundamentalist
old covenant application of the Law of Moses, much as the
Jewish-Christians did in Jerusalem and even Rome itself,
as evidenced by Romans 14, (see also Ray Pritz’s Nazarene Jewish Christianity). They had been following these old covenant
Sabbatarian Church of God practices for over 50 years (since
1934), as the Churches of God Seventh Day had going back
through 200 years of history going to Rhode Island in the
1660s. In the
late 1980s Mr. Tkach Sr., under God’s inspiration was
striving mightily to make members of the Worldwide Church
of God far more Christ-centered. Then under God’s inspiration he
discovered the truth about the Triunity of God, as opposed
to the Holy Spirit being merely the power of God. Most
of the 89,000 members of the Worldwide Church of God came
through these changes, albeit some with much grumbling. Then
in 1995 the major ground-shaking doctrinal change came. Mr.
Tkach Sr., upon much research, wrote a paper showing the
observance of Old Testament “days of worship” and
observance of the Old Testament code of laws (as opposed
to the law of Christ found in the New Testament) was an entirely
optional choice for believers, just as Romans 14 states. Let’s see what happened as a result
of that paper being sent to all the congregations of the
Worldwide Church of God and being published in their member
Newspaper, The Worldwide
News.
What happened in 1995?
Mr. Tkach Jr.
(Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God) said in the
February number of the 1996 Plain Truth Magazine, in the
coming to a good understanding of the new covenant freedoms…”resulted
in our abandoning past requirements that Christians [in the
Worldwide Church of God] observe the Seventh Day Sabbath
as “Holy time,” that Christians are obligated
to observe the annual Festivals commanded to Israel in Leviticus
and Deuteronomy, that Christians are required to triple tithe
[the OT tithe system given to Israel] and that Christians
must not eat foods that were “unclean”
under the Old Covenant…Gone is our long-held view
of God as a “family”
of multiple “spirit beings” into which humans
may be born into, replaced by a Biblically accurate view
of one God who exists eternally in three persons, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit…yet our progress has
not been without costs. Income
has plummeted costing us millions of dollars and requiring
us to lay off hundreds of long-term employees. Membership
has declined. Several
[three major ones to be exact] splinter churches have broken
off from us to return to one or the other of our previous
doctrinal and cultural positions. As a result, families have separated and
friendships have been abandoned, sometimes with angry, hurt
feelings and accusations…” That
was Mr. Joseph Tkach Jr.’s description of what we as
a Church just went through up to the time he wrote that article
in February of 1996. The
magazine Christianity
Today ran a very good article about the Worldwide Church
of God titled, “From the Fringe to the Fold, How the
Worldwide Church of God discovered the plain truth of the
gospel”, written by Ruth Tucker. I
am going to quote from page 31 of her article here to show
just how costly these changes were in 1996. It
is no easy thing to change a Church’s long-held doctrinal
beliefs, regardless of whether the change is from error to
Biblically accurate and provable truth. There is a cost. They counted the cost, and they followed
Jesus. That is
just exactly what they did under the courageous leadership
of Joseph Tkach Sr. Here is a further description of that
cost. “By
January 1995, there was a clear consensus at the top---and
among many pastors and laypeople as well---that there was
no turning back. It
was then that Mr. Tkach Sr. issued a document on the “new
covenant”: that would enunciate for any still in doubt
that the church had departed from Mr. Armstrong’s teachings. Here,
among other things, he focused on the Sabbath: “There
is nothing in the new covenant that says we are required
to keep the Sabbath according to the rules of the old covenant…Being
Sabbath keepers does not make us more righteous than other
Christians.” [Comment: At
this point in time, even with this change, the Worldwide
Church of God was still voluntarily observing the Sabbath
and Holy Days as their days of worship.] 1995
became a tumultuous year. The “new
covenant” proclamation unleashed pent-up emotions that
had been, in some cases, simmering for years. Pasadena
headquarters was suddenly inundated with protests and resignations,
including that of David Hume, television host for The World Tomorrow. In
his letter of resignation, he asserted that the “so
called ‘new truths’
were in fact rather old errors,” and accused Joseph
Tkach [Sr.] of already believing these new truths when he
succeeded [Mr.] Armstrong in 1986. The trickle out of the church seemed to
turn into a flood in 1995. At
a conference in Indianapolis in early May, the United Church
of God (UCG) was formed and, unlike previous splinter groups,
posed a serious threat to the WCG. Former WCG directors and pastors were
among the 150 “elders” who gathered in Indianapolis
to select a board and name David Hume, who had also served
the WCG in public relations, as chairman. By year’s end, the number of those
affiliated with the movement [the UCG] was estimated to be
17,000, far exceeding the size of any of the other splinter
groups. They
justified the new movement, saying: “Long-held
beliefs members have dearly sacrificed for have been officially
negated and replaced by doctrines that are diametrically
opposed to the teachings that led members into the church.” In the end, more than a third of the ministers
left the Worldwide Church of God [closer to 50% in the United
States!]. The
west coast of Florida was one of the hardest hit regions
of the country, but other areas experienced similar turbulence. In
Sedona, Arizona, Pastor Rand Holm and his wife, Beth, tell
of their wrenching pain they felt when a sizable group of
faithful churchgoers left their congregation. The losses in Florida and Arizona have
been reflected in membership losses throughout the country. U.S. membership in 1986 stood at 89,000. Today
[in 1996 when this was written] the membership is 49,000
[a 45% loss!]. “So that shows,” laments Joseph
Tkach Jr.,
“that 40,000 people no longer attend with us. It
is the price we’ve paid to make these changes.” The loss of leaders and members
resulted in financial loss. Church
income has dropped 50 percent in 1995. Severance
pay arrangements for administrators and local ministers
who have left the church combined with the decrease in
giving has required painful cutbacks that are as wrenching
as were the church ruptures. Many long-time, faithful employees are
no longer on the church payroll. Adding
to the wrenching pain, uncertainty of finances, and fractured
friendships and churches, Pastor General Joseph Tkach Sr.,
himself was experiencing pain and uncertainty as he battled
cancer. At
the very time “changes” were coming to fruition---at
the peak of his ministry---it appeared doubtful whether
he would live to enjoy the
“Golden Age” that he had set into motion. And
on September 23, 1995, he died at age 68. [Comment:
There are many that were within the Worldwide Church of God
who sincerely felt, knowing Mr. Tkach Sr., and how he felt
about the Sabbath and Holy Days still being a vital part
of the Worldwide Church of God’s spiritual culture
as “days of worship”, that had he lived, he never would have instituted the changes
his son Joseph Tkach Jr. instituted. More
on that later, and the disastrous effects that had on those
who remained in the Worldwide Church of God at this point
in time.] Greg Albrecht’s prayer at Mr. Tkach’s
memorial service sums up the profound influence of this man
who rose out of obscurity to change the course of church
history: “We will leave his body behind,
but we will take his memory and his legacy with us. We
will, in his words, not only keep the faith, we will share
it and we will spread it. We
will proclaim Jesus Christ and the gospel of salvation; the
good news that we have in Christ, the new life in him.”” That
was quoted from page 31 of Christianity Today from an article written by Ruth Tucker. Mr. Tkach Sr. was obviously following
Jesus Christ, and had brought the changes as far as they
Biblically should have been. But
was any more change needed? Were
further changes Mr. Tkach Jr. made actually Biblical? A
denominational leader from another church told the leadership
of the Worldwide Church of God that it wasn’t necessary
for us to give up voluntary observance of the Sabbath and
Holy Days---which were our
“days of worship” culturally and of long-standing. Our
leaders did not heed that wise advice. What
follows is what happened to the Worldwide Church of God over
the next five to six years. Their
initial loss of 40,000 members would pale when compared to
the coming losses. Currently here in 1996 they had 49,000
members.
Part 2: What Went Wrong?
In 1995
the Worldwide Church of God, a torah-observant Sabbatarian
Church of God that observed Sabbath and the biblical Holy
Days commended in Leviticus 23, quite astoundingly, came
into a good understanding of the new covenant, as also explained
in Romans 14. Sabbath
and Holy Day observance became optional rather than mandatory,
i.e. choice in Days of Worship became an optional choice
for believing members. As
a direct result of their Headquarters church in Pasadena
coming into this understanding and then publishing a paper
on it, distributing it to the entire membership, the church
basically split into three groups, two of which were break-away
churches which chose to maintain the former belief system,
that Sabbath and Holy Days were commanded observances, and
not an optional choice for believers. That,
by the way is the difference between “Torah-observant
churches and non-Torah observant churches”. Both
groups, if they hold no serious heretical beliefs, are bonafide
genuine Christian churches (or Messianic Jewish congregations). The
terms themselves are Messianic Jewish, and non-derogatory,
and that’s why I use them. The
remaining church, still going by the name of the Worldwide
Church of God, over the next five years, stopped observing
the Sabbath and Holy Days altogether. Originally,
right after these doctrinal changes and split-up, they had
retained about 45% of the 89,000 original members. But the more they embraced mainstream
Protestantism, giving up all their Sabbatarian days of worship
heritage, their numbers started to plummet, slipping toward
oblivion. Their Headquarters leadership had thought
that they’d found freedom from an oppressive “Bad
News Religion”, a legalistic church. But
the heritage of this Sabbatarian Church of God goes way back
in history, if you honestly compare the beliefs of the pre-1995
Worldwide Church of God (minus a few heretical beliefs) to
previous tiny Sabbatarian Church of God revivals that have
come halfway across the globe from Asia Minor to the United
States (see http://www.unityinchrist.com/history/revivals.htm). But the Worldwide Church of God had come
into the new covenant, cast off “legalism” (not
a bad thing of itself) and embraced the spiritual freedom
found in the new covenant teachings of the New Testament. Then why did their numbers so drastically
shrink over the past ten years from 1995 to 2005? The Lord should have been blessing them
for courageously casting off error (WCG was genuinely in
error in their understanding of the new covenant freedoms
over days of worship, as all Torah-observant groups are,
Sabbatarians included). But
apparently the blessings have been going backwards for them. In the Boston congregation alone, their
pre-1995 numbers in that congregation had been 300+ members,
but from 1995 to 2005 have gone to around 20 members on a
good day. Their Providence, Rhode Island congregation
went through an identical shrinkage from over 300 to a handful. Other congregations reflect the same downward
spiral in numbers. I
know, numbers don’t tell the whole story for any church,
there are big apostate churches around the world with very
large numbers. But
these numbers, and their radical drop, reveal something else. One of the splinter groups, the United
Church of God ( http://www.ucg.org ),
is slowly growing. They
refused to cast off the observance of Holy Days and Sabbath
and other beliefs peculiar to the old WCG. Is
there a reason for this that is biblical? As
a member of a Messianic Jewish congregation for about two
and a half years, I came to realize, by studying the recent
history of this Jewish revival, that the Lord had just revived
the previously dead Jewish branch of the body of Christ. It had been essentially dead for 1700
years. There
are an estimated 500,000 or maybe more Jewish believers in
Yeshua (Jesus’
Hebrew name, taken from Yahwehshua, “God saves”). So here we find the Holy Spirit restoring
the Jewish branch of the body of Christ, which by the way voluntarily observes both the Sabbath and Holy Days of Leviticus
23, while the Worldwide Church of God was casting off any
vestige of
“Jewish” worship practices formerly held and
practiced by the old Worldwide Church of God. So,
my first discovery or realization was that the current Worldwide
Church of God was heading in a direction exactly opposite
from where the Holy Spirit was guiding a massive number of
Jewish believers.
Then
I started reading Dr. Michael L. Brown’s book “Our
Hands Are Stained With Blood”, a tragic story of the “Church and
the Jewish people.” When
Dr. Brown refers to “Church”, capital “C”,
he is basically referring to the Catholic Church, and maybe
the Lutherans in Europe. From 1996 onward the Worldwide Church
of God’s move toward ‘center of the road Protestantism’ was
moving that church into beliefs the Lord finds detestable,
according to the facts revealed in this book about how anti-Semitic
mainstream Protestantism has been in the past (and even now
holding anti-Semitic doctrines such as Replacement Theology
and Amillennialism). But while reading Dr. Brown’s book, I came across one of the most
clear reasons why the shrinking numbers has been taking place
within the Worldwide Church of God. And
it’s not because they rightly discovered that the Holy
Days and Sabbath are now an optional choice for believers,
a voluntary and individual choice. It
is because they cast them off, not allowing their members
to continue observing them if they so wished. (If
they didn’t wish to, there were plenty of active Sunday
observing churches those members could have gone to). As
my first proof of this principle, I will now give a sizeable
quote from Dr. Michael Brown’s book, and you be the
judge. The second
proof will be from a Christian historian/sociologist, Rodney
Stark. It has more do with taking away a person’s
accustomed practices of worship which had deep biblical meanings
to them, meanings now taught and believed by all Messianic
Jewish believers, and replacing them with Gentile Christian
substitutes which they viewed at best as inferior. Is
such a move biblical for a church to make, putting it’s
membership through the unnecessary change of giving up their
accustomed days of worship and the meanings those days conveyed? Or
is it biblically OK to do so? Let’s
see first what Dr. Brown reveals on this subject. Now
granted, his context is Jewish believers in Jesus verses
Gentile Christian believers. But the old Worldwide Church of God was
very similar in beliefs and practices as the Messianic Jews
are. What follows, unabridged, are pages 83-87
of
“Our Hands Are Stained With Blood.” Past
and present members of the Worldwide Church of God should
find this enlightening, taken in context with what they’ve
been through. It may answer many unanswered questions. It is primarily for them that this article
is written, but secondarily, to educate the rest of Gentile
Christianity about a couple viable parts of the body of Christ,
one just restored, the other having a heritage going back
to Asia Minor of the first 300 years AD. Here goes the first set of quotes.
Dr. Michael Brown, Messianic Jewish
theologian
“Rather
than taking the Law away from Israel, God promised to put
it in their hearts [Jeremiah 31:31-34, cf. Hebrews 8:6-13]. The
New Covenant does not do away with God’s Law. Instead,
it makes it relevant in a new and living way. This
actually should be attractive to
other Jews!
Of
course, observance of the Law does not make us more righteous,
more loved or more spiritual. Through
the cross our sins are forgiven, and the Spirit leads us
in paths of life. But where is it written that believers,
in particular Jewish believers, are forbidden to
observe the Law? Are
we free to break the Law but not free to keep the Law? Where is it written that the Spirit always
leads us away from and against the
Law?
Let’s
get more specific: Where
do the Scriptures clearly and decisively make Sunday into
the Sabbath? (Forget about later Church tradition. What does the Bible say?) Then why are Jewish believers who set
aside Saturday for Sabbath worship considered divisive?
Where
does the Word teach
that Jews must become Gentiles to be saved? We
have really forgotten our roots! [For
further exploration of those roots, after reading this article,
log onto http://www.unityinchrist.com/history2/index3.htm.]
Let’s
go back to the Book of Acts. The
early Church was exclusively Jewish. It
was almost ten years before
a group of Gentiles received the gospel, and this created
shock waves in Jerusalem. Some men began to teach these new believers:
Unless you are circumcised,
according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be
saved. They argued that, the Gentiles must be
circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses (Acts
15:1,5).
Of course, their
position was completely wrong. But
there is something important to notice. The
question was not whether the Jews who followed Jesus were allowed to continue obeying the Law. No one ever dreamed of such a question! Jesus had kept the Law, and His disciples
sought to keep it too. Instead
the question was this: Were
Gentiles who followed Jesus required to
keep the Law?
Look
at how much our thinking has changed! In
the Book of Acts they wondered whether Gentiles had to become
Jews in order to be saved. Today
the Church wonders whether Jews can be saved without becoming
Gentiles! It’s true! We’ve
made it all Gentile! We are quick to smell out the Judaizers,
and that’s good. Judaizing is a dangerous tendency that must be avoided. But
are we on the lookout for the Gentilizers?
Did
you know that many Jewish believers have been served ham
sandwiches at church luncheons, to make sure they are “free”? Thank
God, no one is burning us at the stake. But it would be nice for us to have a
little more understanding.
All
of us affirm Peter’s words:
We believe it is through the
grace of our Lord Jesus that we [Jews] are saved, just
as they [Gentiles] are (Acts 15:11).
The works of
the Law cannot save---ever. But
casting off the Law doesn’t save either! Where
is it written that an anti-Law spirit is virtuous? Where
is it written that breaking the food laws is meritorious? Where is it written that abandoning the
commandments brings us closer to God? Yet
this seems to be the position some Christians take. How did Paul describe Ananias, the disciple
who ministered to him after he met the Lord on the road to
Damascus?
A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and
highly respected by all the Jews living there (Acts 22:12).
What a tremendous
compliment! And
Paul spoke these words toward the end of his life. Certainly Paul understood the doctrine of grace!
James,
the Lord’s brother, shared with Paul the exciting news
that
Many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law (Acts
21:20).
No. He himself was “living obedience
to the law”
(Acts 21:21-25).
In
the epistles Paul also taught about this clearly. In Romans he raised an important question: “Do
we, then, nullify the law by this faith?” This
was his categorical answer: “Not
at all! Rather, we uphold the law” (Romans
3:31).
In
fact, according to Paul:
the law is holy, and the commandment is holy,
righteous and good…the law is spiritual (Romans
7:12, 14).
In
First Corinthians Paul stated in no uncertain terms that
Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision
is nothing. Keeping
God’s commandments is what counts (1 Cor. 7:19).
This
is just what he said to the Galatians:
Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means
anything; what counts is a new creation…For in Christ
Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The
only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through
love (Gal. 6:15; 5:6).
As
far as salvation and relating to God is concerned, circumcision
carries no weight at all. But Paul also had this to say:
Was a man already circumcised when he was
called? He
should not become uncircumcised. Was
a man uncircumcised when he was called? He
should not be circumcised…Each one should remain
in the situation which he was in when God called him (1
Cor. 7:18,20)…”
[Now I have a comment to interject
into the passage here. The
changes the Worldwide Church of God made after coming
into the new covenant understanding of Romans 14 and
Acts 15, were changes that cast off voluntary observance
of days of worship their members
“had been called in”, the spiritual “situation
which he was in when God called him”. Many of WCG’s members had either
spiritually, and sometimes even physically grown up in the “spiritual
situation”
of observing the Old Testament Sabbath and Holy Days. This forced change from allowing voluntary
observance of such days by the membership violated the powerful
spiritual principle Paul brought out in 1 Corinthians 7:18,20,
and I hold that it is the central biblical reason behind
the constant shrinking of numbers of members in the WCG from
1996 to 2005. Now
back to Dr. Brown’s text. Past
and present members of the WCG will find what remains very
interesting.]
“This
is pretty clear too! A Jew
who becomes saved should continue to live as a Jew, just as a man who becomes saved continues to live as a man and
a woman who becomes saved continues to live as a woman. The Jew who becomes born from above must
cast off death-giving traditions. He
must throw aside all feelings of superiority. He
must put no trust in his heritage. He
must enter into new life in the Spirit. He must boast in Jesus and the cross alone. But
he should continue to live as a Jew---wherever it does not contradict
the Word or hinder the Spirit’s flow. Paul says plainly that this is right.
And
what about Jewish believers specifically called to minister
to their own people? Listen
again to Paul:
Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone,
to win as many as possible. To
the Jew I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To
those under the law I became like one under the law (though
I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under
the law (1 Cor. 9-20).
He
took on Jewish customs that
he did not have to, and he submitted himself to all kinds
of traditional laws that were not binding in order to win
his fellow Jews. Jewish
believers can follow this method too, as long as we follow
his message, preaching the unadulterated, uncompromised gospel
with signs, wonders and the power of God.
As
for the Gentile believers at Corinth, Paul had an exhortation:
…Christ, our Passover lamb, has been
crucified. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with old yeast, the yeast
of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast,
the bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5:7-8).
Every believer can keep Israel’s feasts! Jesus
has opened the door.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners
and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s [Jewish]
people and members of God’s household, built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus
Himself as the chief cornerstone (Eph. 2:19-20).
The
wild olive branches (Gentiles) have been grafted into the
natural (Israelite) tree. So
Do not boast over those [natural] branches. If
you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but
the root supports you (Rom. 11:17-18).
The Church [body
of Christ] must thank God for the root!
Let
us decisively sever all ties with sinful prejudices of the
Inquisition. It is an inexpressibly disgraceful past.
The
Inquisition would have burned Peter and Paul at the stake.” [pp. 83-88, “Our Hands Are Stained
With Blood”, by Dr. Michael L. Brown, available at http://www.christianbook.com.]
Now
for the second witness, a very astute sociologist/historian,
Rodney Stark, with some comments of my own added. These
are direct quotes from Rodney Stark’s book “The
Rise of Christianity”, chapter 3. Rodney
Stark is a sociologist, not a historian per se, but he brings
a fresh perspective to church history and how the early Church
grew, from a sociologist’s perspective. He uses historic evidence very carefully
to back up his prognosis of early church growth patterns
and that the early church was indeed heavily Jewish both
ethnically and in worship practices.
“Granted, the received wisdom recognizes that Jews made up the
bulk of very early converts, as phrases such as “Jewish
Christianity” and
“the Christian Synagogue” acknowledge. But
it is generally assumed that this pattern ended abruptly
in the wake of the revolt of 66-74, although some writers
will accept a substantial role for Jewish conversion into
the second century, regarding the Bar- Kokhba revolt as the “final
straw” in Jewish-Christian sympathies.
Perhaps
only a sociologist would be foolish enough to suggest that,
contrary to the received wisdom, Jewish Christianity played
a central role until much later in the rise of Christianity—that
not only was it the Jews of the diaspora who provided the
initial basis for church growth during the first and early
second centuries, but that the Jews continued as a significant
source of Christian converts until at least as late as
the fourth century and that Jewish Christianity was still
significant in the fifth century.” [“The Rise
of Christianity”, p.49, par. 2-3, Rodney Stark]
Next is a quote
where Rodney gives a little social science which put the
historic evidence in a new light. The
bottom line of the social science here is “birds of
a feather flock together.”
“The second proposition is that People
are more willing to adopt a new religion to the extent
that it retains cultural continuity with conventional
religion(s) with which they already are familiar…As
Noch so aptly put it: “The receptivity of most
people for that which is wholly new (if anything is)
is small…” [ibid. p. 55, par 2&3]
And who did
the apostle Paul evangelize to, Gentiles? Or
was it to the Jews of the Diaspora, and the God-fearers within
the same synagogues? If so, what religious customs of worship
would have provided this continuity? It
wouldn’t be the Gentilized Christianity of today we’re
so familiar with. The continuity would have been found in
early Nazarene Jewish Christianity. Stark
further postulates:
“The principle of cultural continuity captures the human tendency
to maximize—to get the most for the least cost. In
the case of adopting a new religious outlook, cost can
be measured in terms of how much of what one already knows
and more or less accepts one must discard in order to make
the shift. To
the extent that potential converts can retain much of their
original cultural heritage and merely add to it, cost is
minimized (Stark and Bainbridge 1987)” [ibid. p.55,
par. 4]
And here is
an interesting modern proof of this principle. The
Worldwide Church of God, prior to coming into a better understanding
of the New Testament freedoms which allow for freedom of
choice in
“days of worship” (cf. Romans 14), was a Sabbath/Holy
Day observing Sabbatarian Church of God. They were a true reflection of the early
Judeo-Christian Churches of God in their worship practices. Their members were spiritually brought
up in these “Jewish” days of worship, including
Levitical dietary practices. A few years after they accepted this New
Testament understanding of freedom in the area of days of
worship, the headquarters leadership started gradually forcing
the denomination, congregation by congregation, over to Sunday/Christmas/Easter
observance for their days of worship. From
the period between 1995 and 2005 they lost a very large number of their members,
merely because the cost of accepting this new religion which
went against their spiritual cultural background was far
too great. Where that church had 89,000 members,
it now numbers in the mere few thousands, whereas the two
major splinter churches which broke off from them are healthy. I
am not trying to slam any of these churches, just making
a sociological observation that fits this “social law” Rodney
Stark brings out here. The apostle Paul said the same thing when
he said “Were you born a Jew? Remain
a Jew. Were you
born a Gentile? Remain a Gentile.” Paul in no way meant that one should not
accept Yeshua, Jesus, only that if your background was Jewish,
be a part of Jewish-Christianity, not Gentile—don’t
go against your cultural-spiritual upbringing. Messianic
Judeo-Christianity did not go against Jewish cultural upbringing,
it only enhanced it. If Paul’s major evangelism was within
the Jewish synagogues of the Diaspora, then the Judeo-Christian
churches he was founding observed Hebrew Old Testament Holy
Days and Sabbath as days of worship. Where his converts were strictly Gentile
(as a few were), he encouraged them to chose days of worship
conducive to their cultural upbringing, as Romans 14 indicates.
So
Dr. Michael Brown gave us the biblical/spiritual reasons
why the Headquarters administration of the Worldwide Church
of God made a huge mistake in forcing their membership to
cast off the “Days of Worship” they had been
spiritually brought up in. Then
Rodney Stark just gave us the sociological reasons why that
was a serious mistake.
How many of us are there? I
don’t honestly now how many members were slowly forced
out of the Worldwide Church of God when they started quietly
shifting from Sabbath and Holy Days to Sunday/Christmas/Easter
observance, but my guess is that it was in the multiple tens
of thousands, close to 45,000. Now
those of us who came through all the changes under Joe Tkach
Sr. into the new covenant understanding of Romans 14 and
Acts 15---that “days of worship” are an optional
choice for the believer---but still preferred Sabbath and
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