Some time ago, a new brother in Jesus Christ asked me to take a look at the Web site of a group called The Church of God’s Faithful (setapartbytruth.org). The group was founded by a man named Robert G. Ardis, who apparently left the soi-disant Philadelphia Church of God founded by Gerald Flurry. My friend says that his whole family’s enthralled by Mr. Ardis’ ideas, and wondered if I would give him a hand in refuting them.
Well, it’s been my experience that once one gets into a heretical frame of mind (as Paul defined it: essentially “opinionatedness” masquerading as a love of the truth), there is little any human being can do about it; such a one is self-condemned (Titus 3:8-11). My brother and fellow worker in Christ over at COGwriter specializes in refuting various heresies; that takes more time and energy (including emotional energy) than I can muster, and I have no idea what grace is upon him that he can do it. But I can address a few ideas from Mr. Ardis’ Web site in this morning’s edition (second article) of LCG Scribe…
What sets the “remnant of Philadelphia” apart?
Let’s quote Mr. Ardis’ own greetings page on this:
It’s quite amazing that you could even locate us amidst all the confusion that exists today in the Churches of God. Isn’t it incredible that the Worldwide Church of God, as it was at the death of God’s Apostle Herbert W. Armstrong, has now split and splintered into over 300 different groups and churches—all in disagreement to one degree or another?
And here we are, the Church of God’s Faithful! Are we just another tiny splinter church among all the rest? Do we have any fruit that would make it worth your while even to investigate us? God’s Word says, “…you will know them by their fruit” (Matt 7:16). Do we have any fruit that would identify us—that would make you know who we are? We do not have beautiful buildings; a college campus, a powerful television or radio program, or any of what Mr. Armstrong had at his death—or that which some of the larger splits and splinters have today. We have none of this, therefore are we lacking in fruit?
Mr. Ardis then goes on to claim that his group’s possession of the truth that Scripture teaches is what sets that group apart. Well, any sect can say that; many sects down through history in all world religions have said that; but does saying it make it so? Let’s test that assumption (or rather presumption) a bit.
Mr. Ardis agrees with us (and with many others for that fact) that there have been prophesied historical eras of the true Church of God (as based on the symbolism implied by Revelation 1:9-20 and chapters 2-3. He agrees (indeed, insists) that Herbert W. Armstrong was the late founder and leader of the Work of the Philadelphian Era (cf. Revelation 3:7-13). But does that make Mr. Ardis and his CGF Mr. Armstrong’s legitimate heirs?
Consider what Jesus Christ says about the remnant of the Philadelphian Era. Now let’s keep in mind a little-realized fact (one which the late Dr. Herman L. Hoeh realized in part and wrote about in passing in his booklet A True History of the True Church): each “Church era” starts out well, but then “lets down” in its obedience to God, leading to a crisis — and this crisis leads to the fulfillment of the prophecy for that era. Philadelphia is no different in this. What Jesus Christ says about that prophetic Church fits that Church after Mr. Armstrong’s death and the ensuing apostasy from “the faith once and for all delivered to the saints” in antiquity (cf. Jude 3-4) far better than it fits that Church before Mr. Armstrong’s death.
Mr. Ardis says that God’s Church must always be growing in new truth. Now there’s a red flag of a sectarian if there ever was one, all else being equal. The true faith was “once and for all delivered to the saints” while the original apostles were still living. What Mr. Armstrong called “new truth” was typically the rediscovery of and expansion on ”old truth” that had been lost (cf. Revelation 3:1-4). “New truth” should be consonant with the essentials of what has been revealed before — not contradictory to it.
So leaving aside the obvious signs such as the name of the Church, its keeping of the true Sabbath, and such like, what does Jesus Christ say specifically to prophetic Philadelphia?
a) Jesus Christ has set, is setting and will continue to set before that Church an “open door” to preach the Gospel to the world, in a way that He has not to any of the other Church eras (for that is the force both of the Greek verb involved and of the symbolism used). By Mr. Ardis’ own admission, his outreach is practically nonexistent. He isn’t doing what Mr. Meredith (founder of the Global, and later the Living, Church of God) did immediately: setting himself to reviving Mr. Armstrong’s Work of preaching in a really significant way. Mr. Ardis has a magazine; he has a Web site; but the burden of proof is certainly on Mr. Ardis here!
b) The remnant of Philadelphia has “little power”, which (again according to the Greek, this time mostly in how it says what it says) is no compliment. However, it has remained faithful in very specific ways. (The Revised Standard Version puts it well: “I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”) Looking at the background of the original City of Philadelphia (as Wm. Ramsay’s books on the Letters to the Seven Churches and on Revelation overall) is very helpful in explaining this set of statements, and indeed of most of the symbolism that Jesus Christ uses in speaking to Philadelphia. One thing is clear: Philadelphia will not be so weak that it can’t fulfull its mission — on the contrary!
Now Jesus Christ’s “word” has to do with His commandments, and specifically God’s law of justice. His “name” has to do with His authority, as He wields it directly and through human beings. These two principles are two of the seven principles of God’s government in the broadest sense — the very two principles which Mr. Armstrong emphasized the most consistently when he spoke and wrote about “God’s government”. We shall see a little of how Mr. Ardis stacks up in these two areas.
So then: as long as we’re talking about fruits, let’s talk about the Gospel, Commandments and Name of Jesus Christ. Presumably Mr. Ardis’ Statement of Beliefs should be taken as the foundation of what he believes is “the Gospel”. Yet there is not one really meaningful word about the Gospel, Commandments and Name of Jesus Christ in it. Everything revolves in the end around Mr. Ardis’ alleged relationship with the duly ordained apostle, Herbert Armstrong, and the self-appointed “prophet”, Gerald Flurry. Again, this is sectarian thinking. You won’t find anything like this in the Living Church of God’s Official Statement of Beliefs.
The CGF’s Statement by contrast is marked by a number of peculiarities, of which a few follow:
a. Which teachings of Mr. Armstrong does Mr. Ardis claim to follow? In the essentials Mr. Armstrong established them by his death in 1986; but in the details he sometimes vacillated, and (more often than many would still like to admit) he lacked precision in his explanations of doctrine in the semantic and theological senses. These demonstrable facts are part of the reason why there are over 300-plus groups out there that claim to be Mr. Armstrong’s legitimate heirs. Correcting such problems is the responsibility of those who are the heirs of apostolic teaching, namely the evangelists and those they have trained in their turn (cf. 2 Timothy 2:1-2) – and the senior evangelists that Mr. Armstrong trained personally are virtually all in the Living Church of God, as are many of their elder students.
b. Mr. Armstrong was ordained (by the Oregon Conference of the Church of God) as a latter-day apostle, and he fulfilled that office (in every way that someone not a witness to Jesus Christ’s resurrection and/or an author of Scripture could fulfill it). But even Mr. Armstrong came to understand by the end of his life that he was not the Elijah to come (as prophesied by Malachi), and said so publicly (yet without enough explanation to make the point clear in everyone’s minds). I personally would expect that “Elijah” to come out of the Laodicean Era, and as one of the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 (the other would be more a Moses figure, and would come from the Philadelphian Era). John the Baptist, the forerunner of the end-time Elijah, arose out of the forerunner of the Laodicean Era: the priestly families of Jesus’ day. Mr. Armstrong was parallel to the Maccabean priest-kings, and his real heirs to the scribes and Pharisees (the good ones, of which there were some).
c. The next two points draw upon Mr. Armstrong’s speculation in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, which had no real basis in the first place; even Mr. Armstrong largely abandoned such speculation in time. Zerubbabel finished the physical Temple in his day, but the spiritual Temple that is the Church (symbolically) won’t be finished until Jesus Christ’s return. From another point of view, it won’t be finished until New Jerusalem comes down from heaven, for true Christians will be joining the true Chuch all through the Millennium. Moreover, the Parable of the Banquet that Mr. Artis twists relates specifically to how the Jews, and then the Gentiles, responded to the Gospel in Jesus’ day. It by no means limits how many people God can call down through time until the end. In fact, other parables show that the guests at the banquet (when Christ returns) will be a relatively large number of people — not a tiny group of people. It will still be small compared to the great denominations of this world — but not insignificant. Let God decide how many. We needn’t twist His words to fit our agendas!
d. Going down several points: to paint virtually everyone else but the CGF as “the synagogues of Satan” is nonsensical. In the original historical context, these were the Samaritans, who came to cooperate closely in the construction of what became the Roman Catholic Church. In prophetic fulfillment, this interpretation is verified. To paint the notoriously dictatorial Gerald Flurry as being in any way a “Laodicean”, even a Laodicean overcomer, is likewise nonsense. Laodiceans are neither fixated on hierarchy nor fixated on heretical thinking, as Mr. Flurry is. Their whole drive is to make peace between and to cooperate with people on the grounds of common faith (and a separate article needs to be written to show this). They don’t set themselves apart as “holier than thou” as Mr. Flurry apparently does (or as Mr. Artis apparently does) — quite the contrary, they don’t make all the distinctions that they should, unless they’re very careful!
Jesus Christ’s chief rebuke of Laodicea is that they are physically rich and spiritually poor, just as Smyrna was physically poor and spiritually rich. Neither of these descriptions fits Mr. Flurry. An out-and-out heretic of the Work of Philadelphia like Mr. Flurry (let me be really plain about that) is spiritually cold, not lukewarm; he is spiritually bankrupt, not just poor; and his spiritual blindness is the near-incurable kind of the Pharisees, not symbolically that kind curable by the City of Laodicea’s famous eye salve. Moreover, the idea that the late Joseph Tkach Sr. could in any way be “the man of sin” described in 2 Thessalonians is utterly laughable. (That will be the last Pope, thank you very much; he’s associated with the Roman Beast and will work miracles, as Mr. Tkach certainly didn’t.) Someone ought to expose armchair theorists like this to works like the Commentary on Habakkuk in the Dead Sea Scrolls; perhaps they’ll look in the mirror and realize that there really is nothing new under the sun.
My friend asks: how can people think in this way? The problem may be that he thinks that human beings are rational by default. They aren’t. We all have a positive and a negative side, and under the influence of “the world, the flesh and the Devil” we can justify anything we want to, in any way that we want to. That is why we all need what Paul describes in Galatians 2:20 — even kind and well-meaning people like my friend!
Peace in Jesus Christ, (שלום בישוע המשיח)
John Wheeler (יוחנן רכב)
