The Narrow Path Ministries

Hey guys,

This is probably long overdue. Since I had to write this up for my application to the Great Commission School, I thought I might as well share it here. I hope nothing I've posted recently has caused any great offense to anyone, and, if it has, you'll forgive me. Anyway, here's a bit about me.

I first started getting serious about pursuing the Lord at age 16. I grew up in a rural town in Alabama where almost everyone was either hypocritical Baptist, demonic Pentecostal or holy rolly church of God (This is not meant as a criticism, but rather to portray how I viewed things, and how I was taught to view things while I was growing up). However, my parents were none of these, and we were not a church going family. My dad was strongly influenced by the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong of the Worldwide Church of God, and literature from that organization arrived in our home regularly.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with WCG, but I’m sure you’ve heard of them. They were sabbitarian, and also held to keeping the Jewish “holy” days, (i.e. Atonement, Pentecost, Days of Unleavened Bread, Feast of Tabernacles... etc.) I didn’t know any of this from my occasional perusal of their literature, however. What I did learn from their literature was that... “all those other churches out there were wrong.” An example of this was that, from earliest childhood, I “knew” that Christmas was a pagan holiday steeped in pagan practices and a worldly system of greed. Mostly, all of this “knowledge” just allowed me to feel smugly superior to all those Bible thumping Baptists who didn’t even know which day was the correct sabbath.

At age 15 a new young man moved to my school. (We were a small class of about 30 students. This was in the 10th grade.) He was a Jehovah’s witness. Now I didn’t know then, nor, honestly, even now am I familiar with most of the teachings of the Jehovah’s witnesses. One day at school, however, I walked into class to find that the entire classroom (including many of my friends) were really coming down hard on him, because he had the temerity to suggest that Christmas was a pagan holiday steeped in pagan practices and a worldly system of greed. I mean they were really giving him grief, and he was all alone against the whole classroom. Unlike the rest of the class (including my friends), he was quiet and non-confrontational but standing his ground. The teacher was not intervening in any way.

This seemed to me a grave injustice, and I defended him, which, naturally turned much of the heat in my direction. I defended my position as best I could, but, to my chagrin, I found many of those “goofy” Baptists and Pentecostals, actually knew a thing or two about the Bible and could even reason their position better than I could.

This prompted me to “hit the books” as it were. What this meant, really, was that I began to devour the information published by the WCG. In so doing, I became more and more convinced that they were, in fact, “God’s True Church” and eventually I contacted them in order to request a visit from a minister.

To make a long story short, I fell in with this group completely. I quit high-school band, (because Friday night football games were a violation of the sabbath.)

I was baptized in October 1988 at age 22. I remember very clearly the minister telling me that I was being baptized “not into any sect or human organization, but into the body of Christ in the name of God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.” I then had hands laid on me to receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

I met my wife in this church. We’re still happily married after 21 years. We have no children.

It’s difficult to keep things brief, and to also explain how I came to recognize the doctrinal errors of the organization of Worldwide Church of God. The Lord led this church through a massive change (which led to many schisms) towards orthodoxy. The “official” denominational remnant of this church is now called “Grace Communion International”, but, of course, with so many splinter groups, many of which would claim the true heritage of the “one true church”, that part is really open to debate.

Suffice it to say, that I’ve definitely come to recognize that most of the teachings of the original WCG were heretical. The organization was a cult, but I honestly feel that, somehow, God protected me and my wife from being “damaged” by that aspect of the WCG. (There are genuine horror stories out there, and many of those involved are very bitter.) I’ve always done my best to follow where I thought God was leading, even when this meant bucking the greater church community. (Perhaps, if I’m honest with myself, I could say partly BECAUSE it was bucking the greater church community.)

In some ways I’m saddened when I consider that so many of my formative years were “wasted” in a church that taught heresy. However, I have always felt close to, and lead by Christ, and I think He has been with me every step of the way. It was through this organization that I met my wife. It is because of my time spent in this organization, that I have a peculiar sympathy for those who are in other “cult like” organizations (e.g. Mormons, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or those who held firm to the old heresies that I once embraced.) So in another very real sense, I am very thankful for the journey that God has led me on. I think it not only gives me a unique perspective, but also a very real appreciation for just how amazing God’s grace really is. (When you’ve spent years literally “keeping” many of the old Jewish laws, you understand that whole system a lot better.) I can look back over my life to date, and see God’s providential hand very clearly at work.

I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Thank you, Perry, for sharing with us you spiritual journey. I recall when Herbert W called his church "The Radio Church of God." I had a friend who was wowed by "The World Tomorrow" and accepted everything Herbert W. taught. Eventually my friend began to support the WWCOG and became a member. He now attends meetings whenever possible, but he and his wife must travel a long ways to do so. When the WWCOG became evangelical, accepted Trinitarianism, and became accepted by evangelical churches, he joined one of the many sects which withdrew from the WWCOG, each one calling themselves "The Church of God" with some adjective identifying their particular sect.

I am curious as to which aspects of his teaching you now regard as heretical. I always disagreed with the Judaizing, including Sabbath keeping, keeping the feasts, etc., and I suppose that could be called "heretical." However several of Armstrong's other teachings, I believed to be correct, and still do, including his exposure of the origins of Christmas as pagan.

Hi Paidion,
Radio Church was before my time, as was Garner Ted, (though, as a youngster, I can remember seeing him on the television.) I started attending around 1983 or 1984. I still struggle with some aspects of Trinitarian theology, although I don’t argue against these basic 4 points: (Christ is God, The Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God, There is one God.) Like your friend, I’m very familiar with traveling long distances to attend services.

On my notebook here in front of me, I quickly scribbled down a list of WCG teachings with which I no longer agree. Some of them, I consider more heretical than others. As I consider listing each of them, it’s very difficult not to include with them the rational for why I believed them at the time. There were rationals. Some of them I now consider to be harmless quirks, except that the were considered a basis for judging whether an individual could be considered as in good standing within the fellowship. Many of them have personal anecdotes that I could include with them. In short each of them could be an essay in themselves. Few of them were unique to WCG.

A big issue with each of the items on the list, is that they were used as a yard-stick for measuring an individual’s righteousness. It’s not that I personally placed them above spiritual priorities, although I’m sure many people did. But the thinking was along the lines of, “if you’re not even willing to address these coarse physical issues, what a horrible state you must be in spiritually.” I now view this as worse than merely judging someone based on their correct observance of the physical “laws”.

Here’s the list, and I’ll only add additional comments when I can’t contain myself. If you, or anyone, has further questions about individual items on the list, I’ll go into more detail if I can.

One-true-church-ism. This, to me, is the most dangerous of all the teachings, and would be the thing that would concern me most about any fellowship I saw teaching it. Once you’re convinced that a particular fellowship is the “one true church”, it becomes impossible to look at anything it teaches objectively. It’s the “one true church” after all—God’s church. It’s very appealing to the vanity. You’re part of the “us” group, and the rest of the world is part of the “them”. For me, personally, this was also the teaching that caused me the most cognitive dissonance while I was a part of the fellowship, and it was the first one I abandoned. This paved the way for clearer thinking on all the others.
Underemphasis of Jesus Jesus, we were taught, was the messenger of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God, therefore, was the message. Other churches taught a message “about the messenger and ignored the message”. To be fair, we had, I think, a proper understanding of Christ’s divinity. The emphasis, though, was on the Kingdom. The Kingdom was the “World Tomorrow” or the Millennium, when we would all be glorified kings and priests, ruling over those who survived the great tribulation.
Judaizing was not limited to sabbath keeping and holy days. It also included dietary restrictions. Many of these dietary restrictions I still consider to be a good idea, I just no longer see them as a matter of righteousness. This could get very nit-picky, like checking to see whether an item was cooked with lard, or whether the green-beans have chunks of ham floating in them.
Unhealthy emphasis on “end time” prophecy.
Anglo/British Israelism
Healing Members were discouraged from seeing doctors. This one never really affected me, because I was ignorant that members were being taught this. (Not sure how I missed it). I’ve always been reluctant to see doctors, but not because of religion. However, this is a case where I later learned that there were some genuine horror stories out there, with much pain and suffering and, according to rumor, even death, that could have been avoided by a simple visit to a physician.
Birthdays Observation was considered a pagan practice.
Make-Up Didn’t affect me, but did the women. This was an on-again, off-again, revolving door.
Baptism You must demonstrate fruits “meet for repentance” before being baptized. I still think that some fellowships may baptized a little too casually. In the case of the WCG though, it had more to do with embracing their peculiar doctrines than a true counting of the cost. You couldn’t be baptized, for example, if you hadn’t overcome a smoking addiction.
Tithing 10% mandatory, 10% (2nd tithe) financed your trip to the Feast of Tabernacles. Two of seven years was “third tithe year” which was used for church benevolence. This could put a real burden on members to have 30% of gross income unavailable for daily needs. On the other hand, it taught me to live well within my means during my formative years, and I don't regret that.
D & R More horror stories here. Again, I was mercifully spared the ill effects of bad teaching in this area.
Pagan Origin of Holidays I don’t disagree with you on the fact that Christmas is an adaptation of pagan rituals. As I write this, it is Easter morning, and many of the trappings of this day have pagan origins as well. Valentines, Halloween, where’s the biblical basis for such nonsense? However, this was just another excuse to “look down our noses” at those who observed these days. Neither Sharon and I ever experienced Christmas as children, so we take a quite sort of pleasure in it’s casual observance now, and perhaps we have a bit fuller appreciation of the “reason for the season” as a result. Sharon put’s up a tree, despite Jer 10:1-4.

Thanks for sharing your story. I'm curious, do you still live in Alabama. I am also from Alabama. I was born in Montgomery, but grew up in Bimingham.

Thank you Perry for explaining those aspects of the group which you came to see were incorrect. I knew about the British-Israelism, but of most of the others, I was unaware.
However, I agreed with their non-Trinitarian position on deity (if I understood them correctly).

Paidion wrote:However, I agreed with their non-Trinitarian position on deity (if I understood them correctly).

I think from some of your other posts, that you probably would not entirely agree with the view of non-Trinitarian theology that I was taught, although I could be wrong about how you view the nature of God.

What I was taught went, briefly, something like this:
The term Elohim, is a uniplural, which signifies one in purpose, but plural in make up. It's like the word "team" or "family". One team/family, multiple members of the team/family. In this way, you could say that, I am Clayton, and my dad is also Clayton. The Father is God; Christ is God. God the Father is of the Team called Elohim. Jesus the Son is of the Team called Elohim. The holy spirit is something like electricity, in that it is the power that God uses to accomplish His purposes.

The problem with trinitarianism, I was taught, is that it too strongly suggests that God is a closed family. But in Genesis God is shown to be recreating Himself... "Let us make man in Our image." and all through the new testament we are spoken of as heirs, and children of God, adopted sons... etc.

Perry,

You didn't mention Roman Catholic as a cult. Good! Maybe the Catholic Church is your next step.

Jon

wwalkeriv wrote:I'm curious, do you still live in Alabama. I am also from Alabama. I was born in Montgomery, but grew up in Bimingham.

Hi wwalkeriv,
Not sure how I missed this question. Didn't mean to ignore you.

Yes, I'm still in Bama... I'm in a small town just south of Cullman, which is straight up I65 from Birmingham.

Glad to meet you Perry, i like your posts. I do remember watching Garner Ted Armstrong as a kid perhaps because he was passionate and charismatic. Of course being Jewish i had no idea what he was really talking about, but it sounded good.

Hi Perry - I was glad to read your testimony, as well as your other posts.

D&R - death and resurrection?

I was mostly glad about your attitude - your appreciation for God for leading you through and out of it. I only remember Garner Ted or his son speaking derisively about 'bunnies' and what do 'bunnies' have to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was encouraging to hear someone making sense! Any way, glad you're here!