Part 3: The Third Angel's Message Examined
Herbert
Armstrong's Developing Work
The Worldwide Church of God Today
Endnotes
We will now highlight some points in Mr. Armstrong's original manuscript that that he did not include in his later work, The United States and Britain in Prophecy.
The title of the original manuscript, What Is the Third Angel's Message?, highlights the context in which Mr. Armstrong believed Anglo-Israelism should be presented. As he proceeded through the text, he discussed the development of the Abrahamic covenant as it was renewed among Abraham's descendants. This discussion eventually brought him to the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, the grandsons of Israel. He wrote:
If you are wondering what all this early history of the beginnings of Israel has to do with the Sabbath, the Mark of the Beast, the call to "Come out of her, my people," and the Third Angel's Message, you will see, I am sure, before we are finished. The connection is very, very vital. (What Is the Third Angel's Message?, 43)
The influence of J.H. Allen is evident in the general presentation of Mr. Armstrong's argument. Herbert Armstrong acknowledged that influence on pages 109 and 112, when he quoted Allen in support of the idea that Ephraim is in the British Isles.51
In chapter 12, Herbert Armstrong combined the Guinness/Dugger seven-times theory with the Jehovah's Witnesses' seven-times theory. However, where Dugger and the Jehovah's Witnesses had claimed 1914 as the terminus of the "seven times," Mr. Armstrong followed Guinness in claiming 1917 as its end.52 Dugger saw the date as the time God would remove his curse from the Jews. Mr. Armstrong saw it as the time England would begin to repossess her rightful property. Mr. Armstrong viewed General Allenby's capture of Jerusalem as "clinching proof that Ephraim today resides in the British Isles."53 He confidently predicted that because Palestine belonged to Ephraim and not the Jews, "The Zionist movement is doomed to failure."54
Numerology also played an important role in his thinking, especially the number 19. He incorrectly noted that there was a 19-year period from Nebuchadnezzar's first siege of Jerusalem till its final fall. On that basis Mr. Armstrong then predicted a 19-year period from 1917 until 1936. It would be around 1936 that God would deliver
all the Promised Land to Ephraim-Israel, or Great Britain — a date 2,520 years from 585 B.C.... Many different prophecies fix the date in the same year, 1936, and this coincides exactly with the Great Pyramid date.... In this connection, it must be especially emphasized that I do not say 1936 is the date of our Lord's return. In fact, were it not definitely ordained that no man may know the day or the hour of that event, I should be inclined to expect it before 1936 — perhaps as early as the spring of 1933. But we do not know when that shall be. What we do know is that the balance of Palestine, including the land of the North of Jerusalem — formerly Samaria, now called Syria — is definitely destined to fall into the hands of Great Britain in the year of 1936. (Ibid., 120-21)
All of this was but a prelude to Armageddon.
If Armageddon must be the battle which accomplished the delivery of this territory, then we say Armageddon must be fought in the year 1936. And well may it prove to be so. We know Russia is secretly allied with Turkey and Germany, lusting for a war of revenge against Britain, swearing to take Palestine from Great Britain at all costs. We expect Mussolini to be in some manner prominently identified, and he expects to be ready with many millions of armed men and so many airplanes their shadow will hide the sun over all Italian soil, by 1935. The recent alliance between Mussolini and the Pope may well have startling significance bearing on these very events. (Ibid., 121)
He said that the samurai, "or white Japanese," were Israelites (ibid., 138D), but he offered no proof. Was it their "whiteness," their aristocracy or both that made them Israelites?
Mr. Armstrong emphatically declared, "Deny this and you deny God's power to keep his word, or else you must deny the divine inspiration of the Bible altogether" (ibid., 140). When it came to Anglo-Israelism, there was no room for disagreement. To deny his conclusions was to deny the Word of God.
What difference does it make? Unless we know our identity as Israel, we cannot understand the mighty personal warning which the Almighty has published in every English Bible to every individual Israelite....
Just as surely as it was given to God's holy prophets to foretell 2,500 years ago that in the year 1917 A.D. the Army and Air forces of the British throne should take Jerusalem... so he has revealed thru those same prophets what is yet to take place before all things are fulfilled....
These things could never be understood except thru a knowledge of Israel's twentieth-century identity.
For instance, the book of Ezekiel is addressed primarily to the United States and Great Britain, and to those of our present generation. In it are recorded events destined to take place within the NEXT SEVEN OR EIGHT YEARS. (Ibid., 146D-146E, emphasis his)
Herbert Armstrong's transformation of Ezekiel into a warning for America appears to be unique in all Anglo-Israelism. It may be the one significant contribution he made to the belief. As such, it became an effective tool in calling people to repentance and to the Sabbath. Hence the connection with the Third Angel's Message.
In making the Ezekiel connection, Armstrong made the same error that many prophecy expositors have made. He ignored the plain statements of the prophet himself as to whom he was addressing and when his prophecy would be fulfilled. Training in proper hermeneutical tools would have been helpful. He repeated the error with the Minor Prophets.
Many of these so-called "Minor" Prophets contain a most solemn personal, individual warning to every one of us — a part, if you please, of "the Third Angel's Message," — which has never been understood or preached. (Ibid., 146F)
In his view of the end-time cataclysm, communists and civil-right workers allied themselves with Satan against Israel.
Russia, too, is destined to play a tremendous part in these closing days.... Russia is gaining control in China. She hopes to gain it in Japan, by fomenting race-prejudice against White, or Western, or, if you please, Israelitish, power, dominance and civilization.... She is now bending Herculean efforts to foment unrest among the populous and ignorant Negroes of our South, painting herself as their champion against what she tells them is the tyranny and oppression of our country. (Ibid., 146G-146H)
Of course, communism was an increasing threat to the West in the 1920s. Communism was attractive to oppressed peoples. Many people, not just Herbert Armstrong, saw communism as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. The present was read into the text.55
Having concluded that Ezekiel was written to modern America, much of the remaining text of What Is the Third Angel's Message? attempts to show that America should keep the Sabbath. God's ancient judgment on Israel for breaking the covenant became transformed into a condemnation of America for breaking the Ten Commandments.
After dispensing with America, What Is the Third Angel's Message? discussed the Millennium. At that time, Herbert Armstrong believed, the Ten Commandments will be enforced worldwide. For Mr. Armstrong, Christ was lawgiver, teacher and enforcer. God's promised new covenant was for those who obey. In the midst of page after page of his lengthy discussion of law and the Millennium, Mr. Armstrong gave faith and grace only six lines.56
Herbert Armstrong dedicated chapter 15 to the Sabbath. Here he focused on an important part of his Sabbatarian theology. He explained that Exodus 16 gave a separate Sabbath covenant as a sign between God and his people Israel. That Israel was God's people he understood in terms of race, not in terms of their having entered into a covenant with God. He believed that even if God had abolished the old Mosaic covenant, the Sabbath covenant remained. He failed to realize that the Sabbath was a sign of Israel's sanctification and was therefore an intimate part of the old covenant. The end of the old covenant removed the basis of Israel's sanctification and therefore removed the Sabbath sign.
Starting from his faulty premise, he then Christianized the Sabbath into a sign between God and obedient Christians, whether Jew or gentile. He called it "the final test of obedience" (ibid., 176). Much of the remainder of What Is the Third Angel's Message continues along this line. In typical Adventist emphasis, the Third Angel's Message focuses on the Fourth Commandment.
Why didn't the apostle Paul, sent to the gentiles, more openly and definitely teach observance of the seventh day? Why have the eyes of such great men of God as Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Moody, Finney, Cartwright, et al., been blinded to this truth? Why did not the Holy Spirit lead these men into this truth, when they unquestionably were men filled with the Holy Spirit? (Ibid., 196)
Why indeed, especially if the Sabbath was "the final test of obedience"? The answer, he said, had to do with Israel.
Israel was blinded in part, until the end of the times of the gentiles (1917-1936)... and in the case of those individuals who repented, and returned to the true God, and accepted salvation, God winked at this blindness....
That is why Dwight L. Moody was blinded to the Sabbath truth! That is why Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and all these great latter-day men of God were blinded to this truth!
Israel was blinded to it until the fullness of the Times of the Gentiles (Rom. 11:25), because God did not desire the House of Israel to be identified or known by the world until then.
This too disposes with that question: What about my parents and grandparents... who knew nothing about the Sabbath? Were they saved? The answer is now plain.... If these people had accepted Jesus Christ and his sacrifice... if they were willingly obedient to God so far as they had light or knowledge to be obedient, then God winked at their blindness in part. They were not held responsible for that which they did not know. (Ibid., 209-10)
Since Herbert Armstrong believed, as we have shown, that the time of the Gentiles ended in 1917, it seems to follow from the above argument that he believed it was in that year that the Sabbath became a "final test of obedience." That such a claim was unknown to Jesus and the New Testament church did not alter his conclusion. It would be interesting to know how the coincidental 1917 publication of Allen's Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright fit into this thinking. But we have no written comments on this matter. Mr. Armstrong downplayed Allen's work while emphasizing his own.
Before the conclusion of his manuscript, Mr. Armstrong told his readers that his Third Angel's Message must be shouted to the world. "Any movement prior to 1917, therefore, was premature, and bound to be more or less in error, so far as proclaiming this truth is concerned" (ibid., 210). Keep in mind that he believed God had revealed only to him Anglo-Israelism's connection to the Third Angel's Message. He believed that God had commissioned only him to broadcast this message worldwide — this less than two years after his baptism. Through What Is the Third Angel's Message?, articles in The Bible Advocate and personal correspondence, Herbert Armstrong was already preaching to whoever would listen, two years before his official ordination. Chapter 21 concludes:
We are ready to explain it, the true Third Angel's Message — the last, final warning Message which God is going to shout to a complacent, tradition-loving, self-seeking world before the falling of the Seven Last Plagues and the re-opening of the final terrible War Tribulation which is destined to culminate in the Battle of Armageddon in the year 1936 — this true Third Angel's Message is, after all, just one more last and final warning from Almighty God....
In these closing chapters, God has placed this final eleventh-hour warning in his word. And in these closing chapters we shall examine this very definite, specific, last-minute warning, just as the Bible has it, for this very present generation. (Ibid., 237-8)
Notice, Herbert Armstrong said that this manuscript was not simply his idea. He proclaimed it as God's "final eleventh-hour warning." It was God, not Herbert Armstrong, who placed this warning in this manuscript. In the closing pages of the book, Herbert Armstrong again transformed the Third Angel's Message. It had become a kingdom message.
This third and last stage of the Gospel is, simply, the gospel of the kingdom. It is this gospel which is to be preached to all the world just before the "end" comes. It is a warning not to worship the beast or the image of the beast, nor to have his mark, and it has something to do with keeping the commands of God. (ibid., 245)
While Herbert Armstrong would eventually drop the term Third Angel's Message from his vocabulary, and de-emphasize Revelation 14, such changes were cosmetic. The underlying message remained the same.
Furthermore, God's grace became of secondary importance. The important message for today, Mr. Armstrong felt, was obedience.
Just as the tendencies of the times required, in the apostles' day, that the grace aspect of the gospel be stressed, so now the tendencies of the times require that the obedience aspect be stressed. (Ibid.)
Yet is this the New Testament perspective? Does the New Testament view grace as a temporary emphasis, appropriate for only that culture?
In 1931 the Oregon Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day) ordained Herbert Armstrong into the ministry. For the church, it was a time of increasing division and disenchantment with its national leadership. The world had entered the Great Depression, and nations were converting to the dark faiths of fascism and communism. There was talk of another world war.
Herbert Armstrong's Developing Work
Two years later, in 1933, the Oregon Conference supported one of Herbert Armstrong's evangelistic campaigns near Eugene, Oregon. That campaign led directly to the establishing of the independent Eugene congregation. This congregation became the parent of the Worldwide Church of God.
As the Church of God (Seventh Day) General Conference split apart, Herbert Armstrong received an opportunity to begin a radio ministry. As we have seen, since at least 1929 he had believed that God had commissioned him specifically to broadcast the Third Angel's/Anglo-Israel/kingdom message to the world.
With the assistance of the Oregon members, his internationally known work began. An advertising man by background, he wanted to give his listeners more than a weekly radio show. For them, he created a magazine.
The magazine never mentioned the Third Angel's Message by that name. By this time, Herbert Armstrong may no longer have accepted Adventist views on this doctrine. Yet the teaching was there. It was just framed in other terms. The emphasis, besides Anglo-Israelism, became the coming kingdom of God. Everything he said got back to the kingdom or Israel or the Ten Commandments. Everything he did, he understood in terms of his assumed commission.
Early issues of the magazine echoed these themes. "The Times of the Gentiles correspond with the Times of Judah's national punishment."57 These Times of the Gentiles, he explained, had begun to taper off since 1917, but would continue until 1936. He taught that 1936 marked the "End of the Age." Coming soon was the heavenly signs and the Day of the Lord.
The Great Tribulation, he said, began in 1928. With the world in the midst of the Great Depression, it was easy to believe the Tribulation had begun. Mr. Armstrong was certain that only Jesus Christ's return would end the Depression. Before then, the world would plunge into its last war. When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, Herbert Armstrong cried, "He is marching to Armageddon!"58
At first Herbert Armstrong thought Mussolini would destroy the United States. Then in 1940, he commented that he might have been wrong. He said that it now appeared that Hitler would do the United States in.59
Throughout the war, his message remained the same. Fascism would conquer America. Naturally, he continued to feel divinely commissioned to warn America. Toward that goal, in September 1942, he published the first edition of The United States and Britain in Prophecy. Missing was any mention of the seven-times theory as it related to the Jews. Herbert Armstrong probably still believed in the previous interpretation, but in the booklet he wrote that the "seven times" of punishment applied to the lost tribes of Israel. For them, he said the seven times spanned the period from 718 b.c. (the incorrect date of Samaria's conquest) until a.d. 1803 (the date of the Louisiana Purchase). Still, the earlier interpretation continued to affect his thinking. He firmly believed that the times of the Gentiles were over, and that the world was in the Great Tribulation.
Whenever the war news appeared favorable, Mr. Armstrong simply discounted it. He saw all news through the lens of his prophetic viewpoint and his belief in his own unique commission. In early 1944 he wrote to his contributors:
This time is a time of great suspense. Apparently the Allied forces are not prepared, yet, to launch the much-advertised invasion of Hitler's Europe.... We have made but the slightest little dents in the Jap defenses in the Pacific, and at the present rate (played up dramatically in news headlines and broadcasts as if actually we're winning the war) it will take us about twenty years, and more resources than we possess, to take enough of these island defenses to smash thru to the central objective and WIN....
The prophecies of Almighty GOD tell us bluntly that WE ARE GOING TO LOSE — unless our people will REPENT and turn to ALMIGHTY GOD in real earnest, and in FAITH — trusting HIM to deliver us! And instead of doing that, we are trusting in the enthusiastic and exaggerated news reports, believing we are WINNING, and meantime as a nation OUR SINS ARE INCREASING AT A TOBOGGAN-SLIDE RATE!
God has called me to the special mission of WARNING THIS NATION. But I cannot do it alone.... You are one of my co-workers, and I am depending upon you to remain steadfastly back of me, with your earnest believing PRAYERS, as well as the material help you are sending. We must never let up.... This business of SHOUTING and THUNDERING out this warning on which our destiny as a nation depends. (Herbert W. Armstrong, co-worker letter dated, based on its content, to early 1944. Emphasis is his. Notice the emphasis on shouting.)
The success of his work further convinced Mr. Armstrong that his perceptions of himself and his work were correct. How else could you explain his success if God were not behind it? He felt that God backed his prophetic opinions and stood behind him. He believed that he spoke with the authority of God.
As the war drew to its obvious close, Mr. Armstrong's message changed. He dropped all insistence that the war would lead to America's destruction. Gone was the cry that the Tribulation had already begun. But the substance of the message did not change. The Third Angel was present, only transformed.
Despite what our senses told us, the Allies had not defeated Germany. The Nazis had gone underground. Next time, Europe would unite under an evil fascist-papal alliance. It would conquer, subjugate and depopulate the United States. The church had to warn the Anglo-Saxon nations about God's wrath. The church had to call them to repentance and urge them to keep God's Sabbath and Holy Days. The church also must tell the world the good news beyond: God would send Jesus Christ to set up his kingdom.
Following the war, Herbert Armstrong established Ambassador College to provide a trained ministry for the church. These young men went out, visited people on baptizing tours and established congregations. Through their influence, many lives changed for the better. Yet the prophetic speculations continued. The ministry created various blueprints in attempts to figure out the date of Jesus' return. All prophetic schemata failed.
The Worldwide Church of God Today
In 1986 Herbert Armstrong died. Shortly before his death he published Mystery of the Ages, a book that summarized his core beliefs up to that moment. In it he wrote that the Bible was a coded book "not intended to be understood until our day in this latter half of the twentieth century."60 He claimed that he, in writing Mystery of the Ages, was used of God to decode the Bible so that we could understand it.
In an unmistakable reference to himself, he declared that Isaiah's prophecy about "the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness [Isaiah 40:3]" was being fulfilled.61 The prophesied Elijah was not only John the Baptist, but was also an end-time human messenger. In a clear reference to his many appearances before world leaders, he saw himself fulfilling that role.62
The idea that God had specially commissioned him to "shout" the Third Angel's Message to the whole world — an idea traceable back to January 1929 when in answer to prayer a woman offered him a job stacking wood — had grown bigger through the years. Though the phrase "the Third Angel's Message" had long since dropped from his vocabulary, the basic belief that God had given him a unique commission remained. That he continued to see his mission linked to Anglo-Israelism is evident from reading Mystery of the Ages.
In chapter five, Herbert Armstrong hearkened back to The United States and Britain in Prophecy, "a book I wrote more than 50 years ago."63 The chapter summarized much of what was in that book, quoting it extensively. In Mystery of the Ages, Mr. Armstrong continued claiming that unless the Anglo-Saxon peoples repented of their sins, Old Testament prophecies foretold their horrible conquest by a united Europe. After that, he thought, "communist hordes" would crush Europe.64 America's national sins would soon usher in the Great Tribulation.
Before his death, Herbert Armstrong appointed Joseph W. Tkach as his successor. In June 1988 Mr. Tkach withdrew Mystery of the Ages from circulation. In early 1991 he informed the ministry of his plans to review and perhaps update The United States and Britain in Prophecy. He solicited their comments. All mention of Anglo-Israelism disappeared from the church's publications. In July 1995, the church announced in the Pastor General's Report that Anglo-Israelism lacked any credible evidence and that the church would no longer teach it. This was followed by a study paper sent to the ministry giving detailed reasons why this was so.
The church had come to believe that Anglo-Israelism had distracted it from giving its full attention to its truly God-given commission — the preaching of the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ — and the duty to make disciples of Christ of all nations.
Herbert Armstrong always urged the ministry to be faithful to the Bible. He never claimed that he wrote infallible scripture. He never claimed that he understood all biblical truth. Yet he did claim to have a special understanding of prophecy, and if he was not a prophet, that he at least functioned as one. To many, he appeared to view his ministry more in terms of the Old Testament prophets than the New Testament apostles. He referred to himself as the watchman of Ezekiel. He said he was the Elijah to come. And if he were the Elijah, how was this different from being a prophet? For those who still believe this claim, his failed predictions pose a dilemma.
Today we know that many and varied influences shaped Herbert Armstrong's prophetic teachings. Despite what he believed, not everything he taught came from the Bible. Many things he taught were the products of his life and times. Are we any different today?
The ministry of the Church of God, to remain credible, must use Scripture correctly. Understanding our denominational history, tied as it is to Herbert Armstrong, can help us do that, especially as it gives insight into what has shaped our thinking. With insight should come wisdom.
We must state, as Paul did: "Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: `So that you may be proved right in your words and prevail in your judging"' (Romans 3:4, NIV).
Further, we must remember what Peter wrote: "No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation" (2 Peter 1:20). If we do that, we will remain faithful and true to the God who saved us.
51 Mr. Armstrong's first direct quote of Allen comes from page 227 of Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright: "It is a well-known fact that the history of no country on the face of the earth has so puzzled historians as that of Ireland." The second quotation, "It is unmistakably recorded in British history that the earliest settlers in Wales and southern England were called Simonii," can be found in Allen, page 275. Allen frequently used phrases such as "It is a well-known fact," and "It is unmistakably recorded" to lend an air of authority to his work.
Mr. Armstrong uncritically points to Allen as the authority who tells us that Simonii is the plural of Simeon. Herbert Armstrong's lack of any training in lexicography, etymology, linguistics and historiography made him vulnerable to unfounded conclusions that appeared to support Anglo-Israelism. Training in linguistic and hermeneutical principles would have made him more cautious.
52 To arrive at 1917, Mr. Armstrong incorrectly dated the fall of Jerusalem to 585 b.c., though he was aware that 587 was the more widely accepted date. See Thiele, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, rev. ed. [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1983] for a scholarly discussion of how Jerusalem's fall can accurately be dated.
53 What Is the Third Angel's Message?, 120.
54 Ibid.
55 For an excellent survey of this phenomenon in American evangelicalism, read Paul Boyer's When Time Shall Be No More (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap/Harvard, 1992). It helps one see how Herbert Armstrong's prophetic views were in line with their social-historical context.
56 Ibid., 165.
57 Herbert W. Armstrong, "What Is Going to Happen," PT, June-July 1934, 4.
58 Herbert W. Armstrong, PT, July, 1935, 5.
59 PT, August-September 1940, 2.
60 Mystery of the Ages (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1985), xi.
61 Ibid., 9.
62 Ibid., 10.
63 Ibid., 161. He thus places the date for the first writing of The United States and Britain in Prophecy as pre-1935. Actually, it was written later. As we have shown, The United States and Britain in Prophecy was built upon his original manuscript, What Is the Third Angel's Message? It must be to this earlier manuscript that he refers.
64 Ibid., 195.
by Ralph Orr
Copyright 1996