From The Plain Truth, July, 1965, “Personal From the Editor”:
“Christians” do not make Christianity. Christianity makes a Christian! And “Christians” did not invent the Christian truths, beliefs, practices, and way of life! Christians are only true Christians when and if they obey what Christ commands!
Is it possible for really “good Christians” to change pagan practices into Christian ones? Would you admit with me that the apostle Paul was one of the greatest Christian men who ever lived? But Paul didn’t have the power to change even one tiny point of what Christ had commanded! Notice the proof!
“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel”(Galatians 1:6). Paul was rebuking the Galatians who were GENTILES, for allowing themselves to be entrapped back into believing in a completely physical type of “religion” which included all sorts of carnal, physical customs!
He said, “Which is NOT another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, LET HIM BE ACCURSED”! (Galatians 1:7-8.)
Notice that well! Paul put a careful and perfectly honest control over himself! He warned those people that, even if he, PAUL, should CHANGE his doctrine, and begin living by different customs, that such personal, human change would definitely not “change” anything in the unalterable truth of Christ!
He included—and he was inspired by God’s Holy Spirit to do so—Angels from heaven! So even lesser spirit beings do not have the power to change anything God has set down in His Word! God, your Creator, has said He will not change! And He has put an absolute, unshakable, unbreakable and inviolable guarantee that no other being or power can change His laws!”
No greater honor and respect could be paid Mr. Armstrong than to acknowledge that he was the servant chosen by God to receive—by divine revelation—God’s immutable Truth and way of life in these last days, and that he was commissioned to proclaim that way. However, the above quote acknowledges the original teaching of the Church and the fact that even a chosen servant has no authority to change one jot or tittle of that which he receives from God. Yet, less than a decade after this powerful statement, that is exactly what occurred. Those who believe the departure from Truth in the Worldwide Church of God occurred in the 1980s or 1990s are sadly mistaken. The real beginning of that visible apostasy began in 1974 with the change of Pentecost from Monday to Sunday, and the change in divorce and remarriage a few months later. Was a Monday Pentecost and the doctrine of marriage divinely revealed to Mr. Armstrong from the beginning? Mr. Armstrong asserted for many years that his teachings had not been of his own invention, nor had they come from religious scholars, but that he had received them as divine revelation from God:
And so I say to you, as the Apostle Paul said to those at Galatia: I certify you, brethren, that the GOSPEL which is preached of me is not after man, for I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it but BY THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST. . . . When it pleased God, who . . . called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him to the world; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood—neither went I to any sect or denomination or human theologian, but I went directly to the WORD of GOD, on my knees, corrected, reproved, and instructed in God’s righteousness and TRUTH!—Herbert W. Armstrong, Co-worker Letter; November 29, 1954.
Monday Pentecost and the sanctity of marriage were integral parts of that gospel preached by Mr. Armstrong for almost forty years until 1974. Either these doctrines were Truth from the beginning, or we were never the Church of God. The elements of that gospel stand or fall together. Are you truly seeking the foundation upon which God’s Church was established? Remember, God does not change. Truth does not change. God is not the author of confusion. May He grant you the ability to discern, and to hold fast—in love—the immutable way of life we received from Jesus Christ through Mr. Armstrong from the beginning!