Some Questions & Answers For Us Sabbath-keepers
Why Did God Allow The Demise Of The Worldwide Church of God?
I have a good article on my website on the Worldwide Church of God, showing the reason behind the demise of the WCG from a loyal local member's perspective, just as Mr. Kubik's account is from a ministerial perspective, his being as a direct eyewitness (see https://unityinchrist.com/wwcofg/wwcofgod.html , and to read Victor Kubik’s description of what happened within the Worldwide Church of God to cause it’s demise, click on these links: https://kubik.org/groundzero/ )
Creation, How Long Did It Really Take? In The 1970s Dr. Hoeh Was Investigating Earth’s Early Geology, Paleontology and Early Man
I have also gone on to connect the dots Dr. Hoeh was trying to connect through his research on early man and early geology and paleontology (see https://unityinchrist.com/Genesis1-1-31.html). Dr. Hoeh was clearly knocking on the door of Theistic evolution, the word “evolution” being a very bad word to use for the process, because real theistic evolution was a 100 percent God-controlled event from beginning to end, carried out by God or his angelic servants flipping genetic “gene switches,” to bring about the changes of lifeforms from single-celled organisms to complex lifeforms as we see them today, going through the various eons, epochs and periods from the creation of earth 4.5 billion years ago to now. GMO geneticists are knocking on the doorstep of what God was doing, but in a very crude, imperfect and dangerous way. The record of the rocks doesn’t lie, but as Dr. Michael Behe (PhD in biochemistry) brought out in his landmark book “Darwin’s Black Box,” all cells are so very highly complex, that the first living cell had to have been created all at once. The record of the rocks shows that “all at once” creation of the first living cell took place some 3.5bya, and what the record of the rocks shows, is God's theistic “evolutionary” creative work to transform those early cells into what we have now, but first, by creating cyanobacteria to terraform earth’s atmosphere by creating oxygen. It’s all in my article. I’m sure Dr. Hoeh and Mr. Armstrong were on the trail to doing what I did in the article linked above. Feel free to share those two articles if you like, especially the one about the demise of Worldwide, it’s a sad account, and totally friendly to Mr. Armstrong. I remember Mr. Armstrong had told Dr. Hoeh to keep investigating about geology, paleontology and early man, but keep it under his hat. At that time, we were already teaching “the Gap Theory,” to account for the Dinosaur creation way before the creation of man. But recent studies show not all life died out 65 million years ago, which upsets that doctrinal applecart. At the end of that article linked above, I have an interesting idea about how God might have actually created Adam and all the lifeforms within the Garden of Eden in six literal days, even though all the lifeforms outside the Garden of Eden had come from a long line of epochs and periods of time, where life had been “theistically” evolved, which would make both interpretive “Creation” camps correct. Now onto the next subject: I think a lot of Sabbath-keeping Church of God members, a lot of them newer now, need to know what happened to Worldwide, and that Worldwide wasn’t a cult, like many liked to call it. With that thought in mind, read the next paragraph.
The Worldwide Church of God Was Called A Cult By Sunday-keepers--Was It?
In the church history section of my website, I have transcripts from Worldwide Church of God Bible studies about our early Church history going back to 325AD, taking it from the Paulicians to the Thyatirans, the Waldensians in France, to the Sabbath-keepers in and around London, to the Colony of Rhode Island, then out to Oregon where Mrs. Armstrong met a Mrs. Runcorn who convinced her of the Sabbath, which proves that the Worldwide Church of God was not a cultic aberration, but just one of a long line of Sabbath-keeping Church of God revivals going from the 300s AD right up to the beginnings of the Worldwide Church of God (see https://unityinchrist.com/history/revivals.htm , each chapter hypertext link to the next). I also have a good research article covering the beginnings of the early Church of God in Jerusalem, and then going up into Asia Minor which proves, probably to the chagrin of the Calvary Chapels and many Sunday preachers, that the early Christian churches, starting in Jerusalem, did not switch right over to Sunday observance after a few years, but kept observing the 7th day Sabbath and Holy Days of Leviticus 23 for the first 300 years of the Church’s existence (see https://unityinchrist.com/history2/index3.htm and https://unityinchrist.com/history2/earlychurch1.htm). Next, a question which has baffled many Sabbath-keeping Church of God brethren, and one which begs an answer.
Why Were The Early Sabbath-keepers In Rhode Island So Adept At Winning Over Local Baptists To Sabbath Observance?
The early Sabbath-keepers both in London and Rhode Island (see https://www.unityinchrist.com/history/historycog1.htm ) had a unique understanding that the Baptists were real Christians, but merely mistaken about the fact that the Sabbath had not been abrogated, so they learned how to “witness” to Baptists, convincing them of the Sabbath (since the early Anabaptists had in reality come from the Sabbath-keepers in France that had been decimated by the Catholic Inquisitions in the 1100s AD through 1500s AD, so a lot of them started keeping Sunday to survive, and became the early Anabaptists, who later became the Baptists). So Sabbath-keeping Church of God people in and around London, and then the Colony of Rhode Island, and then across the early US, became adept at convincing Baptists of the Sabbath, that it had not been abrogated, viewing their Baptist neighbours as genuine believers, but as yet deceived on the issue of the Sabbath. These early Church of God believers could literally decimate a local Baptist church of its members, they were so good at it. That is why the 2nd Baptist Church of Newport, Colony of Rhode Island literally kicked out Stephen Mumford, his wife and the few members they had convinced of the Sabbath, right out of their Baptist congregation they were fellowshipping in on Sundays (Ruth Burdick was one of the early members in Mumford's congregation, the ancestor of a good Sabbath-keeping friend of mine, George Burdick). As a matter of fact, as you will see if your read about them in the article linked above, during the Revolutionary War the Baptist pastors, being pro-Revolutionary had to flee when the British took over Newport, Rhode Island, and they asked the Sabbath-keeping pastors if they would do double duty, preaching to their own congregations on the Sabbath, and preaching to their congregations on Sunday (the Sabbath-keeping Church of God pastors were strictly apolitical, so the British left them alone). They gladly took on this duty of preaching to the Sunday-keeping Baptists on Sundays. They never would have agreed to doing so if they regarded these Baptists as being “false Christians” as so many of us Sabbath-keeping Church of God members are prone to do. It is this attitude of not viewing Sunday-keeping Christians as “false Christians,” that enabled them to be so successful in witnessing to Baptists and convincing them of the Sabbath, something we have totally failed at, through our lack of good manners and total lack of sensitivity, which was taught, sadly, within the congregations of the Worldwide Church of God. I wrote an article titled “Has The Sabbath Been Abrogated?” where at the end of the article I actually apologize to Sunday-keepers for our lack of manners toward them. (see https://unityinchrist.com/wwcofg/Has%20the%20Sabbath%20Been%20Abrogated.htm and see also https://www.unityinchrist.com/topical%20studies/TheElephantsInTheRoom.html )
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