Biblestudy: Who Was Herbert W. Armstrong?

To Reject God's Messenger Is to Reject God
#BS-383
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 06-Mar-99; 73 minutes

I want to share a belief that is a major plank in the Church of the Great God's foundation and it is what played a major role in producing the unity that we had under Herbert W. Armstrong in the Worldwide Church of God. I also want to make a disclaimer at the beginning of this. And that is, what I am going to tell you is only one part of a much larger picture, but it is an element that is I feel is needed if we are ever going to be united again into a group and I believe that it will play a major role in reuniting us in the future.

I have titled this Bible study, "Who was Herbert W. Armstrong" because I feel that one of the major but frequently un-verbalized, unspoken issues in the greater church today is the role that Herbert Armstrong filled in God's purpose in the end time.

Now, it is maybe a disturbing and sobering fact that God's servants in all of history have hardly ever been recognized for what they were. So I am going to begin with that point so that you understand why even in the church, Herbert Armstrong is not recognized for what he was. That people give him lip service but further and further, they are drifting away from what he represented. And that is why the splitting is continuing.

Turn with me to Matthew 16. I want to show you right from the Boss, Jesus Christ, that He was not recognized. You would think that if anybody would be recognized as being the Servant of God it would be Jesus Christ. But He was not.

Matthew 16:13-17 When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" And they said, "Some say that you are John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." [they did not recognize, they thought that He was a godly Man, but they could not pinpoint it] He said to them, "But who do you say [His disciples] that I am?" And Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." [Now I want you to pay attention to what Jesus said in reply.] Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven."

It is not something physically discerned by the eyes, by the ears. What we are looking at here is a matter of faith. It is a matter of revelation by God. Flesh and blood did not reveal who the Christ was to the disciples, God did.

We will not turn back there but you can write this down in your notes. Matthew 14:1-3, another example of the same thing. Herod, the king, the man who surely should have had his finger on things, keeping track of what was going on in the nation that he ruled over. Herod was confused too. He thought that Jesus was John the Baptist resurrected. Now, Herod was responsible for putting John to death and he undoubtedly had somewhat of a guilty conscience. There was something bearing down on his mind and he thought, "Hey, God's out to get me. He resurrected him and here he is." But he was wrong. Jesus was not John the Baptist. Confusion because it had not been revealed to them who He was.

Let us go to John the seventh chapter, and I chose this verse because this event took place about six months before Jesus was crucified. So Jesus had been preaching for three years all up and down Judea and into Samaria and up and down through it. And six months before He was crucified this episode took place at the Feast of Tabernacles.

John 7:10-12 But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, "Where is He?" And there was much complaining among the people concerning Him. Some said, "He is good"; others said, "No, on the contrary, He deceives the people."

They did not know six months before He was put to death who He was. How many people at Jesus' trial and Jesus' crucifixion, those events leading up to that, recognized who He was? Do you think that they ever would have said "Crucify Him, crucify Him!" if they thought that He was the Prophet of Deuteronomy 18? If they would have ever thought that they were dealing with the Son of God, God in the flesh, do you think that they would have cried out like that? As far as faith was concerned, their minds, their eyes, their ears were closed. They did not get it. It had not been revealed to them and the only ones to whom it was revealed were too weak to do anything about it. And so God was put to death.

In Luke the 13th chapter, we find that this was not at all unusual.

Luke 13:34 [Jesus said] "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! [hang on to that word "to you"] How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!"

As I said at the beginning of this, the history that God shows throughout His Word is that those that He sent were not accepted for what they were, as the servants of God. Jesus gave a parable in which God is pictured as the master of a vineyard. And so He sends servant after servant and they are hurt, they are put to death. And finally, He says, "I will send My Son and surely they will listen to Him." And they put Him to death.

So we are looking here at something that is not at all unusual because Israel has a long history of not recognizing those sent to them by God. If they had recognized them, they would have never stoned them, they would have never done what they did to them.

Now, I begin here for two reasons. One is to show that we are working within our time of the scattering of the church. We are working with this principle and we have to examine ourselves in relation to the one that God sent to us. Do we still recognize what he was? Do we still recognize the message that he brought to us? How can we make the best use of this time now that we have been scattered? And you all know that from the time of Herbert Armstrong's death, things went down, deteriorated in a hurry. At first, it seemed slow, but within three years, things were really falling apart. But once the leader was smitten, things began to disintegrate. So we find ourselves in a scattered condition.

How can we make the best use of this time since, as I said in the sermon, the scattering is a gift from God? It is a blessing because, if God had not brought us up short, we would have gone on straight into the Lake of Fire because He could not accept us as we were. The scattering revealed our spiritual condition and our spiritual condition was not one of unity. Unfortunately, the only thing that was holding us together was Herbert Armstrong. And when he was taken out of the way, the reality was revealed, the reality is we were not unified around God, we were unified around Herbert Armstrong. So once he was gone, there was no reason to stay together.

Ephesians 5:14 Therefore He says, "Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light."

Connect this thought with Matthew 25:1-5. In Jesus' parable there He shows that the whole church went to sleep. All ten virgins went to sleep just prior to the time the bridegroom is to come. And so he says, "Awake!" It is as though we are sleeping, even dead. Maybe our faith has just diminished away but God considers it about dead. So Christ shall give you light.

Ephesians 5:15-17 See then that you walk [live your life] circumspectly [that is, wisely], not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. [It is an evil time in the church.] Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

There is the challenge before us. We do not want to be overlooking something that is important to God's purpose in our lives. The scattering is from Him and He intends that we use it to the best of our ability to get right with Him so that our unity is with Him. Not a man, not a church organization, with Him. This does not mean that we do not need the church. It does not mean that we do not need men. It does mean that our faith has to be in the right place.

Now, I think that it is generally well known that I believe that God deliberately caused the scattering. I believe that because nothing—there is no power in heaven and earth—that can remove His church, His children out of His hand unless He deliberately allowed it, unless He deliberately engineered it. And just as He did with Job, where He engineered that, and just as he did with Abraham, where He engineered that, He engineered the scattering of the church. He may have used Satan, He may have used the Tkach's, but He was the driving force behind it, for our good. And that is why I say the scattering is a gift of His grace. It is for our good.

Turn with me to John 5, verse 17 and we will see a principle here regarding God's care of the church.

John 5:17 Jesus answered them, "My Father has been working until now, and I have been working."

This is Jesus' reply to an accusation that was made against Him when He healed a man on the Sabbath. He told him to pick up his cot and go home or whatever it was. And the people, the scribes, saw him carrying his cot and they accused him of breaking the Sabbath, of bearing a burden on the Sabbath. And so they asked him, why was he doing that? And the man said, that Man told me to do it. Well, that man was Jesus. And so when the scribes accused Him, this was Jesus' justification for what He told that man to do. And I will tell you, the scribes were upset no end because they concluded correctly that Jesus equated Himself with God because He said, "My Father has been working."

The English does not do that phrase justice because what it means is, "My Father is working until now." Jesus was saying that My Father began working sometime in the definite past and He has never stopped working on that purpose. Then He said, "And I have been working." And that is when they blew their top because what Jesus was saying is, "I am working, I have been working right along with Him, and I have every right as God to tell this man to carry that burden."

Now, what I want to get out of this is God began working in the indefinite past, He has never stopped working on His work, and His work is creation. His work is creating sons in His image. He is working on it constantly, night and day, forever we might say. He is so attuned to it, He is so close to us. That statement that says that "we are the apple of His eye," it really literally means, "You are My eyes." People, you cannot get any closer than that. The scrutiny that He is giving to us, nothing could happen to you or the church without Him engineering it. His decisions are perfect. His decisions are always in love, and the church is scattered because He willed it.

So the scattering is an act of love. Do you know why? That is what the sermon was about today. He wants to know whether we believe Him and whether we will put our trust in Him, whether we will go right on obeying regardless of how things look to the eye, because our faith is in Him. And I am telling you, He is learning a lot from the way that we are reacting. And so Paul said, Let us be circumspect about this. Let us be wise in how we make use of our time because God is watching, God is evaluating, God is there to help. He wants to see if we are going to go right on living by faith.

We have plenty of things that we can do, that we can understand, but understand this. What is God doing? He is creating us in His image and this scattering is intended to help us to be in His image. He is the Potter. We are the clay. The clay on the potter's wheel does not shape itself. The potter shapes. We have to worship, we have to yield. He wants to see how malleable we are going to be during this period of time. It has an end toward which He is working and this is going to become important in the next sermon. But in Ephesians 2, it says verse 8,

Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.

There is the end toward which He is working. He is creating us so that we can do good works, the implication being that until He began this personally and individually in us, we were not able to do the good works and it only as He is creating that we become enabled to do the good works that He wants us to do.

In Acts 8, verse 1 it shows there that the first century church around Jerusalem were scattered because of persecution. Now I simply wanted that verse to touch on because I want you to reflect on the church in regard to this, because we are not being scattered because of persecution. Nobody out in the world is threatening our lives. We are scattered for a different reason altogether. And that different reason is supplied in the Bible. You can write this down, Leviticus 26:14-16, just to give you a foundation. And in verse 33 which says that if you will not obey Me, I will scatter you. Scattering, when it is not caused by persecution, is something that God does as a corrective punishment. It is intended to correct a flaw, but it carries with it the pain of a punishment as well in order to get us to yield, in order to get us so that we will be like Him.

I want to read to you Daniel 9, verse 7, because Daniel understood this principle that I am talking about. And so he says in a prayer that he makes when he understood that the 70 years that had been prophesized by Jeremiah was just about up.

Daniel 9:7 "O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, . . .

What God has done to the church is a righteous act on His part. And so being scattered, being in Babylon for them was a righteous act on God's part. Daniel was saying, I agree. You did the right thing.

Daniel 9:7 . . . but to us shame of face, as it is this day—to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to all Israel, those near and those far off in all the countries to which you have driven them [God did it], because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against You."

The church is not in this condition by accident like ancient Israel and like ancient Judah. We have been scattered as a punishment because we had back-slid away from the message that was given to us by Herbert Armstrong and we were not submitting to it. And God was not pleased. We were probably pleased with ourselves, but He was not pleased with us.

You can write down Lamentations 2, beginning in verse 1 and you can read about seven or eight verses. I only want to touch on that so that you will understand how God makes it abundantly clear that when He decimated Judah and when He destroyed Jerusalem, He said, "I did it," over and over, over 20 times He said, "I did it," so that we get the point. Our Father is not backing away from the responsibility. We have to recognize it as a matter of faith if we are going to make the best kind of use of it.

I do want you to go with me to I Kings 12. This happened during the days of Rehoboam when Israel rebelled against Rehoboam because of the high taxation that came on Israel as a result of all the wonderful projects that Solomon went into. Those things did not come freely and they did not come cheaply. So Israel wanted some relief and so they appealed to Solomon's son Rehoboam, please lower our taxes and we will be faithful.

I Kings 12:15 So the king did not listen to the people [notice this next phrase]; for the turn of events was from the Lord [God was directing Israel in complaining to the king about the high taxation], that He might fulfill His word which the Lord spoken by Alijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

I Kings 12:21 And when Rehoboam come to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah. . .

Because Rehoboam did not like this at all. He was going to go to war to hold on to most of his country, Israel. Ten of the 12 tribes were going to rebel away and so he was going to mount the army against them and bring these people in.

I Kings 12:21-24 . . . with the tribe of Benjamin, one hundred and eighty thousand chosen men who were warriors, to fight against the house of Israel, that he might restore the kingdom to Rehoboam the son of Solomon. But the word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying, "Speak to Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, to all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the remnant of the people, saying, 'Thus says the Lord: "You shall not go up nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel. Let every man return to his house, for this thing is from Me."'" [There was enough respect in Rehoboam and the Jews that they heeded the word of the prophet.] Therefore they obeyed the word of the Lord and turned back, according to the word of the Lord.

II Kings 17:18 [200 years later] Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them from His sight; and there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone.

God removed Israel. And of course, later on, He also removed Judah. The only difference between us and them is not in principle. The difference is that things are happening much more rapidly with us than it did with Israel because time is running out. And I think God has things perfectly timed. He waited until the death of Herbert Armstrong. He allowed things to simmer for about three years and then bang! the foundation for splitting was set and we began splitting all over the place. This thing is from the Eternal.

Now, we are supposed to look to the Bible for direction. I think that we would unanimously agree that we are to do this. I feel that in the greater church far too few are looking at this in this manner. They are looking at themselves as victims of Satan, victims of the Tkach's, and that they are somehow blameless of having been any part of the cause of this. But I think the instruction in God's Word is very clear. We are to live by every word of God, Jesus said, and therefore we have to consider the history of Israel. According to Romans 15:4, that "whatever things were written before were written for our learning." Who is the we? The church—that we would learn from it.

I Corinthians 10:11-13 says, "All these things are examples and they are given to us upon whom the ends of the ages have come." I will tell you, if that is not written to the end time church, I do not know what is. The end of the age are come up us, not the first century church—us.

And so what happened to Israel and to Judah is an example to us. God scattered them. He brought Judah back for His purposes, but it was a very small amount of people.

Ephesians 2:8 tells us that salvation is by grace through faith. Now, for us, there would be no salvation without grace, but it is the operation of faith in us that God is watching. When you add to that Hebrews 10:38, where He says that "the just shall live by faith," that is a command! He expects us to live according to what is written in His Word, trusting it regardless of the way things look, but trusting His Word.

And so the Old Testament examples show us that He scattered Israel. It tells us that if we sin, He will scatter us. He is telling us we are scattered because we have sinned.

We also know that He who scatters also regathers. He regathered a portion of Judah and the prophecies for the future tell us He is going to regather Israel too, but we can bank on that. He who scattered the church is faithful. He has established the pattern. He is going to regather it but in His good time. Our responsibility now is to use our faith in His Word so that when He is ready to bring the church back together again, we are ready to because we have been living by faith right along regardless of the scattered condition.

Now, here we get into something that is really sticky and really important. And that is that any old faith will not cut it. I have used the term in the sermon today a number of times, "living faith." I did that, connecting it to works because you are going to find out living faith will produce the right works. It is impossible to stop it as we will find. They are virtually synonymous with each other. But it is living faith that He wants, a faith that is being lived by, not merely something intellectually believed in, but a faith that is producing the right kind of works toward which He is pointing His creation, to which the Potter is working.

In the Bible, this faith is also called the faith, definite article the. And the reason is because there are lots of different kinds of faith. Everybody in this room has faith in certain products. They like certain kinds of cars, they like certain kinds of food products manufactured or processed by certain processors. The same way with clothing. We could go on and on in that kind of vein. I just want you to see as plainly and clearly as I can make it that there are all kinds of faith, and brethren, there are all kinds of spiritual faith.

There is Methodist faith, there is Presbyterian faith, there is Catholic faith, there is Buddhist faith, there is Shinto faith, there is Taoism faith, there is on and on and go. There is New Age faith, you name it and there are all kinds of faith. Now, are they saving faith?

I think you understand very well that a person with Methodist faith is going to do what? They are going to follow the tenets of the Methodist church because that is what their faith is in. If it was not in that they would be somewhere else or they would be looking for somebody somewhere else.

The thing that set Abraham apart, he believed in God. And because he did, he produced the right works. Abraham had the faith. It took Jacob a long time to get the faith. He believed in God long before he had the faith that he would really live by.

Now look at this. Turn with me to Titus 3. I am just going to give you a few scriptures. It begins to become so plain you begin to see it all over the place.

Titus 3:15 All who are with me greet you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all.

II Timothy 4:7 I have fought a good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

I Timothy 6:21 By professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. Grace be with you.

There are many, many more scriptures referring to the faith. It is faith preceded by the definite article, not a faith. Now, why must it be this way? It is because every spiritual message has the power to create faith. It does not matter whether the message is true or false, it can create faith. Why do you think there is a Methodist church or a Presbyterian church or a Lutheran church or a Catholic church? Those people are there because they believe they have faith in what those organizations teach. They have faith in the message of those organizations. The message does not have to be true to create faith. That is the problem.

We are beginning to get close to Herbert Armstrong. Why do you think that God was so concerned in the Bible about false prophets, about false ministers who are preaching messages either directly to the church, to God's people, His covenant people Israel, to the church under the New Covenant, or that people were hearing out on the street or whatever? Why do you think that He was so concerned? Because it is even possible for God's people to be deceived into a false faith by a message that is appealing to them. And in order to avoid that God went to the place where He told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 13, that if you have a false prophet put that person to death, because they are going to destroy your faith.

You see, truth is the issue here. So faith in untrue messages is created by hearing the untrue messages, because the people did not discern that it was deceit, that it was untrue, and reject them. Instead, they believe the lie. Is this not what Adam and Eve did? It is so simply told there. They rejected belief in God and instead chose to believe the lie. What Satan said created faith. And so they chose on the basis of that. That same principle is at work.

Are you beginning to see why God is so concerned about worldliness? The spirit of worldliness destroys the faith and creates faith in it. And unless we reject it consciously and openly, if we are not careful, we will drift right into it and become subject to that faith. That is what happened to the Worldwide Church of God.

We have to understand where saving faith comes from. And it is very simple. In I Corinthians 2:9-12 (we have gone through those scriptures so frequently), this is the most important element in creating the faith that will believe God rather than men, rather than Satan. We cannot even have this faith until God creates a miracle in our minds and opens our minds to it. The carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God—it cannot be.

God by His power breaks through that enmity and He surcharges our mind with a desire. That is what He does when He calls us. He tweaks our mind by a miracle and turns it in a direction that it would never go to otherwise. And so He begins to reveal Himself, and He usually does this through a man, although He did not do it, let us say, with Abraham. He went to Abraham personally and did it. But He sends a man with a message. In this case, a man was sent with a message to revive the church. And that man in our day was Herbert W. Armstrong.

Now look at Romans because this is very important to this. Romans 10. And let me add right here, none of this depends on Herbert W. Armstrong being sinless, perfect in his life. It does not mean that he has to be infallible in what he says. All of this depends on God's faithfulness in using him. None of God's servants that He sent were perfect. Did Moses sin? I mean, he sinned so badly in God's eyes He would not let him in the Promised Land. Did Abraham sin? He told lies. Isaac too. David was for all intents and purposes, not only an adulterer but a murderer.

This does not require Herbert Armstrong being sinless in his life because he is going to have human nature just like the rest of us and he is going to make sins just like all of us did, and he is not infallible. Nobody is infallible in the things that he is uttering. But that does not stop God from getting His message through to the people that He is calling through His chosen servant. Now look at this Romans 10, verse 14.

Romans 10:14 How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?

This is the way all of us have been in the past before God sent a messenger with a message. We did not know God so how could we believe? How could we have faith in God unless God sent somebody, unless we heard about God?

Romans 10:14 And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent.

There is the process by which saving faith, the faith arises. God initiates it through His calling which comes through the messenger He sends with a specific message at a specific time.

Romans 10:16-17 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our report?" [That fits right where we began, where people do not recognize the messenger. Here comes the conclusion.] So then faith [saving faith, the faith] comes by hearing [Hearing what? the message from God.], and hearing by the word of God.

The one that came through the one sent.

Now let me toss in a warning here from Luke chapter 10, verse 16. It is a warning from the Boss, from Jesus Christ. He was speaking to the apostles, the ones that He was sending.

Luke 10:16 "He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me."

To reject the message of the messenger is to reject God. And in that person, faith, the faith will never come to fruition or if the messenger and his message is rejected, the people will fall away.

This is the sequence that drew us into the church. This is the sequence that united us under Herbert Armstrong. Did we not voluntarily give ourselves to God through Herbert W. Armstrong in order that Herbert Armstrong could take the message from God to others? And as we surrendered our lives in faith to God, God's purpose, then, could be worked out in and through us, His spiritual creation of Himself in us.

Somehow, brethren, we have got to recapture that faith because if we look at the message to the Ephesian church, they left their first love. There is a big difference between lost and left. If you lose something, it is gone. But if you left it, it means it remains and you can go back to it. It is just like you departed from it for a while.

Now, what was the message? Repent, and go back to the first works. Works. But it takes the faith to do those works. Faith in what? Faith in the message that God gave through His messenger.

The message to the Laodicean church. Those people were wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. It is almost a vivid word-for-word description of what the Ephesians had left; just showing the effect. And so He told those people to recapture the zeal, be zealous and repent.

The messages to those two churches are like bookends about what we have to do. Every message to the church carries the message to repent and to overcome.

Now, the key for us is to recapture what we had under Herbert Armstrong, only we have to focus it on God rather than him. And it can be done. We can do it individually, personally. It begins in our own home. It begins on our knees. It has to be carried out using the faith that came from the message that was given to Herbert Armstrong.

So turn with me to the book of Jude. I will very quickly go through three verses one here and several in the book of I John. Because what we are experiencing here also happened to the first century church. Jude said,

Jude 3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning the common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

There is God's advice, His counsel to the first century church.

Now let us go to I John. As far as I know, John wrote about 25 or 30 years after Jude, the first century was just about over. But I want you to see the way that John begins this epistle. He says,

I John 1:1-2 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us.

These pronouns, "we," "us." Who is he talking about here? He is talking about the apostles, the ones who were sent. Why was he doing this? Because the church was under attack by false ministers, primarily ministers, who had a very strong Gnostic leaning intermixed with their teachings. And the people in the church were having faith in that message created in them and they were taking over the church to the extent that John himself was apparently disfellowshipped. An apostle!

The faith had changed from what had been given them through the apostles, the ones sent. It had been taken away by them listening to false messages. And so what is he telling them there? He is telling them the same thing, in more words than Jude did, go back to the faith once delivered by the apostles.

I John 1:3-6 That which we have seen and heard, declare we to you [That is, the message, the message about eternal life, eternal life being the way that God lives.], that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full. This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.

One more. I Timothy 6. Again, I will pick up on the apostle Paul here in almost the last epistle that he wrote, an address to the man that he considered his son in the faith, when he said,

I Timothy 6:20-21 Oh, Timothy! [it is an appeal] Guard [protect, preserve] what was committed to your trust [What had been committed to Timothy's trust? The message! How do I know that? Because what it says in the rest of the verse.], avoiding profane and idle babblings [false teachings] and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge—by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. Grace be with you. Amen.

So, in short, without any details, what we have to do is get back to devotion, enthusiasm, and zeal for the message that was given through Herbert W. Armstrong to revive the church at the end time. How were we scattered? By those men who preached a false message to us. And in order to preserve ourselves, we had to flee from it.

We are not lost out here in this scattering because God does not do that. He does not leave His people. He is with us and that faith can be recaptured in our relationship one-on-one with Him. He forgives and He feeds and He will save us.

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