The Seven Church Eras: 2,000 Years of True Church History (Behind the Work, 1983)

Author: Herbert W. Armstrong Original Air Date: October 1, 1983

A History of the True Church: From Sardis to Philadelphia – Behind the Work 1983

Introduction and Greetings
The Prophecy of Seven Church Eras
The Purpose of God’s Church
The True Gospel and God’s Law
The Early Church and Persecution
The Lost Century and Transformation
The Smyrna Era – Tribulation and Poverty
The Pergamos Era and the Dark Ages
The Thyatira Era and Peter Waldo
The Sardis Era and the New World
Herbert W. Armstrong’s Early Life
God’s Calling and Personal Struggles
Proving God’s Existence and Law
Early Ministry Challenges and Growth
Formation of the Oregon Conference
The Beginning of the Philadelphia Era
Radio Ministry and Expansion
Transition to the Philadelphia Era
Relocation to Pasadena and Television
Worldwide Impact and Future Vision
Final Reflections and Encouragement

Introduction and Greetings

Art Gilmore (Voice Over): The following is a worldwide Church of God presentation.

Herbert W. Armstrong: Greetings, brethren, all around the world at feast sites everywhere. I’m speaking to you from our television studios in Pasadena, where I speak to the world. As a voice crying out in the wilderness of modern religious confusion in this Babylon of our present time, showing the people the way in these last days and what is coming upon the world.

You know, the disciples had asked Jesus for a sign of his coming in the end of the world, and he had replied as we read in Matthew 24 and verse 14, this gospel of the kingdom, the same gospel he preached, the kingdom of God shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come.

The Prophecy of Seven Church Eras

On this 50th anniversary year of the Philadelphia era of God’s church, I want to give you a history of the transition from the Sardis era to the Philadelphia era. You know that in the second chapter and third chapter of Revelation, Jesus looked into the future and down through the stream of time until his second coming, He gave a prophecy of seven eras or little periods of time between then and his second coming in the seven different churches that are mentioned there.

Art Gilmore (Voice Over): The book of Revelation records seven messages to seven churches that existed in Asia Minor towards the end of the first century AD. These churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea were located along one of the mail routes of the old Roman Empire.

Riders would follow the route carrying messages from town to town. The messages to the seven churches have words of both encouragement and correction, and they clearly show the dominant characteristics of each of the congregations at that time. But these messages were intended for a wider audience than the Christians in these small towns.

They are a series of remarkable prophecies by which the future of the true church was predicted in outline form from the day it began on Pentecost 31 AD until the second coming of Christ. The history of the Church would fall into seven distinct eras, each with its own strengths and weaknesses and its own special trials and problems.

Just as a message could pass along the mail route from Ephesus to Laodicea, so would the truth of God be passed from era to era. It was like a relay race in which the baton is passed from runner to runner. Each one doing his part until the finish line is reached.

It has not been an easy race. God’s servants often had to run in the face of ridicule and persecution as they strived to keep alive the truth that had been entrusted to them.

Through the centuries the church pressed onward and during the trials of the moment, always looking forward to the day when their faith and courage would be rewarded.

Herbert W. Armstrong: We are in the Philadelphia era. But how did we come out of the Sardis era, and what was the history of the real transition at that time? So what is the true history, not only of that transition, but of the one true church?

The Purpose of God’s Church

What is the purpose of the church? It’s important, brethren, that you understand this.

It’s important to understand and realize that the church is the one important thing at this time in the fulfilling of God’s purpose on earth. Now, the greatest subject in all of the universe is the purpose of God. God says His purpose shall stand. It will be fulfilled.

What is that great purpose of God?

Well, we read something of it in the eighth chapter of Romans, beginning with verse 28. Where it says, and we know that all things work together for good to them, that love God to them who are called according to his purpose. Everything in God’s purpose began before the world was, there was no universe that is no planets, no stars, suns, planets, and things of that sort.

There was just two persons, the Word and God, as you read in John the first chapter. The Word was a person. God was another person, and the Word was God and the Word was with God and all things were made by Him. And it says that in Him was life. He lived. Now who was that Word? The 14th verse there says, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory is the only begotten of the Father, which was Jesus Christ.

The True Gospel and God’s Law

So Christ, before he was born as a human being had lived as the Word forever, from all eternity, had lived with God. Now they lived. If they lived, how did they live? You know, today we talk a great deal about lifestyle. Different people want to have different lifestyles. Well, what was God’s lifestyle? You know, when Jesus was on earth, He still lived that same lifestyle, giving us an example that we should also live that same kind of lifestyle as He did.

But the way they lived, let me give that to you. They lived the way of love. When Jesus was baptized, God said from heaven, this is my beloved son, in whom I’m well pleased. He loved the son, and Jesus loved the Father. So love is God’s way of life. Now, a way of life then is a law, and law is merely the, well, laying down the rules of how you live.

You take sports or athletics, take a baseball game, a basketball game, a football game or something, and the rules are merely the laws that regulate how you play the game, how you live, and how you act during the time you’re playing the game. And so a law is merely the code that directs how you live. It is a way of life.

And Christ came to show us the way to live, and He said that He had set us an example, which He should… we should live as He did. He lived the way of God’s lifestyle, God’s way of living. That’s the way we’re to live now. As I’ve said before, the law is love. The law is magnified. But there’s only one kind of love that will fulfill it.

Now, love is a fulfilling of the law, but it requires the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. No other love will fulfill God’s law. In other words, brethren, we are not born with the kind of love that can really fulfill God’s law in the way that God requires.

So a whole civilization developed and a whole civilization just based on man cut off from the spirit of God.

Now we came into a world finally that is a paradox. It’s very difficult to explain this paradox. It’s a world, especially in our 20th century today, of awesome progress at the same time of appalling evils. It’s a world beset with every kind of trouble, violence, everything wrong, crime, war, destruction.

It’s a world built on a system. It has a system of education. It has a system of governments and they’re manmade governments as influenced by Satan. And even in governments today, the matter is to get. Wars are caused by one nation trying to invade another and take away from the other. But Jesus said, I will build my church.

He was going to start another civilization different entirely than the one started through Adam. Now, Jesus explained in one parable about the kingdom of God, how it was like the mustard seed beginning like a grain of mustard seed, and it would grow till it fills the whole earth. Now, ultimately it started with just one man, Jesus Christ.

He chose 12 apostles, His 12 disciples who became 12 apostles on the day of Pentecost when they did receive the Holy Spirit. Then 120 who would follow Jesus all received the Holy Spirit on that day of Pentecost, and the church was born. Now it first started with Christ and his 12 disciples now 120, and there were 3000 more converted that day. A few thousand more a day or so later. But they had to be called and chosen.

Now, in 2 Corinthians 6: 17, you read how Christ had said to those that are called, come out from among them, of the world and be separate. Come out from Satan’s world. This is Satan’s world started by Adam, the human Adam.

The world tomorrow, the kingdom of God will be God’s world started by Jesus Christ, the second Adam. Now the purpose of God and of the church is God’s righteousness. And then we become God, ultimately in the resurrection. We are to become God. To become God we have to have God’s righteousness. We have to be like God, we have to come to the place where we never will sin.

And sin is the transgression of that law.

The Early Church and Persecution

Now then a history of the church, Acts 8 and verse 1. It was when Saul was consenting to, uh, Stephen’s death. And that was just a few days after the church began. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church, which was at Jerusalem. And they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.

The persecution set in. And it sat in very early, just a matter of days, you might say, after the church had started. Then we turn next to 2 Corinthians. I want you to notice the scripture here in the, um, 11th chapter and verse three, Paul said, but I fear lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds, those in the church now, those that were starting out into God’s world… so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ for if he that cometh, preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive another spirit or another gospel which you have not received, that you might bear with him. Now, he goes on and describes the false preachers that were coming in and changing the gospel of Christ right at that time.

He says, for such beginning verse 13, such a false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ and no marvel for Satan himself is transformed as an angel of light. He pretends to be an angel of light, but he’s not. He’s a deceiver. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers be transformed as the ministers of righteousness.

That is, if Satan’s ministers be transformed as the ministers of righteousness. Then we turn next to Galatians, the first chapter and verses 6 and 7, Paul said, I marvel that you are so soon turned away from him that called you. You see again, you had to be called to become a member of the church. No one can come to Christ except those that are called… from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that would trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They were already turning to a different gospel already.

The Lost Century and Transformation

The curtain was rung down on the history of the true church. You read of it in the Book of Acts, but it doesn’t go much beyond that and the curtain seems to lift and we begin to get a little bit of the history in about 150 AD. And there we see a church calling itself Christian, but it’s a totally different church is different as night is from day as up is down from up or black from white, but it called itself Christian. Now from, uh, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume One and chapter 15, this is a book of history. “The scanty and suspicious materials on ecclesiastical history seldom enable us to dispel the dark cloud that hangs over the first age of the church.”

I have often called it the lost century because the history of that church was lost at that time.

Art Gilmore (Voice Over): Scholars and church historians recognize that events in the early Christian Church between 50 and 150 AD can only be seen in vague outline as if obscured by a thick mist.

The noted English scholar, Samuel G. Green, in A Handbook of Church History wrote, “The 30 years which followed the close of the New Testament Canon and the destruction of Jerusalem are in truth the most obscure in the history of the Church. When we emerge in the second century we are, to a great extent in a changed world.”

In Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, William Fitzgerald wrote, “Over this period of transition, which immediately succeeds upon the era properly called apostolic, great obscurity hangs…”

In The Course of Christian History, William J. McGlothlin wrote, “But Christianity itself had been in the process of transformation as it progressed and at the close of the period was in many respects, quite different from apostolic Christianity…”

In History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff wrote, “The remaining thirty years of the first century are involved in mysterious darkness, illuminated only by the writings of John. This is a period of church history about which we know least and would like to know most.”

But if we look closely through this mist, we can begin to see what was happening.

The world in which Christ founded his church was the world of the Roman Empire. The greatest and most powerful empire that had ever existed. It stretched from Britain to the far reaches of modern day Turkey encompassing peoples from many different backgrounds and cultures under one system of government.

Rome’s ruling hand was firm, but the subject peoples enjoyed considerable freedom within the compass of Roman law, providing all citizens and conquered peoples paid due homage to the Roman Emperor. They were also allowed to practice their religious beliefs and worship the gods of their ancestors. After the day of Pentecost, the apostles began to follow Christ’s instruction to go to all the world preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

Once Christianity spread from Judea to the Gentile lands to the north, it began to encounter those who practiced the pagan religions of Babylon, Persia, and Greece. The apostles came in contact with Simon Magus, a self-proclaimed leader in a cult that was deeply rooted in the mystery religion of ancient Babylon Simon Magus’ plot to buy himself a position of influence in the early church was foiled by Peter, but other false teachers soon followed.

In his early epistles, Paul warned the fledgling churches of Greece and Galatia that they were in danger of turning aside after another gospel, a false concept of Christ and His message. The gospel of Christ was being diluted as false ministers with their teaching heavily influenced by the beliefs of Babylon and Persia steadily infiltrated the congregations.

As the first century wore on, the original apostles encouraged the members to stay faithful. Jude, the brother of Jesus, urges the membership to strive for the faith that was once delivered. The Apostle John warns the brethren to have nothing to do with those who are bringing in false doctrines.

Many who called themselves Christian had not been truly converted. But throughout this period, all who called themselves Christian, suffered greatly from the Roman authorities because they refused to worship the emperor.

The mad Niro in AD 64 blamed the burning of Rome on the Christians and persecuted them savagely. Thousands suffered martyrdom.

Shortly afterwards, the Jews of Palestine finally rose in rebellion against the Roman authorities. The rebellion was suppressed and Jerusalem was destroyed. In AD 70, a small number of true Christians in Jerusalem fled over the mountains to the safety of Pella.

Sometime during those first two centuries, the baton was passed from the Ephesian era to the people that God had called to the Smyrna era of his church. Powerless, often persecuted and rejected as heretics, the world lost sight of them. Instead, they emerged from the lost century, a church that was steadily growing in popularity, but growing further away from the gospel that Jesus taught.

Persecution continued at various times under the Romans until the fourth century when Constantine recognized the church as an official religion of the empire.

But the church that he recognized was by now very different from the church that Jesus founded. The doctrines and teachings that he had taught his apostles were now buried amid the trappings, ceremonies, mysteries, and rituals of a church that called itself by the name of Christ. Once Constantine recognized them, this church threw renewed energy into taking its message to the world.

Teachers and preachers went to all parts of the Roman Empire with a message about Christ. Thousands, maybe millions heard this gospel and believed it, but it was not the gospel of the kingdom of God.

So you’ll find that false church described in the Bible in Revelation 17. You’ll find the true church of God described in the Bible in Revelation 12.

And it’s a persecuted church and always very small, and we are that church.

But the gospel was suppressed from the world. Now the gospel of the kingdom of God was not preached to the world from 53 AD until God used me to go on radio Luxembourg in Europe after we’d carried it all over the United States, coast to coast, 100 time cycles later, the precise right year to preach the gospel of the kingdom for the first time in 1900 years.

And brethren, I’m merely a sort of a spearhead, you might say, of this whole church, and that’s this church’s work — of getting that gospel of the kingdom out to the world for the first time in 1900 years.

Art Gilmore (Voice Over): What happened to the true church during those centuries in which the gospel was suppressed? Emperor Constantine died in AD 337, just over 300 years after Christ was crucified. He had given his blessing to a church that claimed to be the one that Christ founded. Now that they were free from fear of oppression, the persecuted became persecutors.

Those who dared to disagree with their doctrine were branded as heretics worthy of punishment. In AD 365, the Council of Laodicea wrote in one of its most famous Canons, Christians must not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honoring the Lord’s day. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.

The Smyrna Era – Tribulation and Poverty

The small remnant of Christians of the Smyrna era fled once more to seek the religious freedom they needed to practice their beliefs. They left few records. Occasionally they appear as a footnote of history, rejected as heretics, ridiculed, and hounded by their enemies.

But their strongest testimony comes from Jesus himself in his words of encouragement to the church that was at Smyrna. I know your works, your tribulation and your poverty. Fear none of these things that you must suffer. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life.

The Pergamos Era and the Dark Ages

And so the baton passed from the Smyrna Christians to those of the Pergamos era. These had been called to carry the truth through one of history’s most difficult periods, the Dark ages. The power and influence of the great universal church spread far and wide driving those who clung to the truth of God ever further into the wilderness. But they were never far from threat of persecution and martyrdom. And so very few of the Pergamos Christians remained faithful.

1000 years after Jesus had founded His church, the exhausted remnant of the Pergamos era handed over the baton.

The Thyatira Era and Peter Waldo

The Thyatiran era got off to a vigorous start preaching repentance throughout the alpine valleys of Southern France and Northern Italy. Many heard and were converted. The religious authorities quickly reacted to this challenge. Leaders of the true church were arrested. Some were martyred. After the death of its first leaders, the church went into a temporary decline, but emerged once more under the dynamic leadership of Peter Waldo. For several years in the 12th century, they flourished in the Alpine Valleys preaching what truth they had. Booklets and articles were written and copied by hand. This was still before the days of printing.

As Jesus prophesied of the Thyatian era, they had faith and they worked hard. Their latter works were greater than the first. But once again, persecution followed as the full force of the Inquisition was felt in the peaceful valleys that had once provided a safe haven for the work of God. Many that remained began to adopt the customs and traditions of the world around them.

Europe now had many scattered groups of people calling themselves Christians. Meanwhile, the world was changing. Printing had been invented, and knowledge began to be increased. The Protestant reformation broke the monopoly of the Church of Rome.

As religious wars swept across the European continent during the Middle Ages, many refugees fled to the relative safety and tolerance of England. Among them were members of the true church. They brought with them their doctrines and beliefs, especially the knowledge of the Sabbath. The strict Sunday observing Puritans resisted, but in spite of a rising tide of opposition in the early 17th century, there were several small Sabbath keeping congregations in England.

The Sardis Era and the New World

Jesus was raising up the fifth era of his church — Sardis. Protestant England became increasingly intolerant of dissenters, including Sabbath keepers. The true church in England, withered and all, but died out.

But across the ocean, men were beginning to discover a new world.

Stephen Mumford, a member of a Sabbath keeping church in London, left England for Newport, Rhode Island in 1664. Rhode Island was the smallest of the American colonies and had been founded by Roger Williams, a Baptist fleeing persecution from the Puritans of Massachusetts. Rhode Island was the first place in the world to guarantee freedom of religion as a basic tenant of its constitution.

Finding none who kept the Sabbath, Mumford and his wife began to fellowship with a Baptist church in Newport. He did not proselytize, but quietly maintain his own belief. Several members of the Sunday keeping congregation became convinced that they too should observe the Sabbath. They became the first Sabbath keeping congregation in America.

At first, they met in private homes. In the historical museum at Newport, their record book is preserved containing names, their contributions, even records of their ordination services. Also preserved is the simple but elegant meeting hall that they built in Newport in the early years of the 18th century. Others joined them in their belief as God began to call more to his work in the new world.

A second congregation was established at Hopkinton. This soon became a thriving church of several hundred. A bridge today marks the spot where their meeting house once stood. Several thousand were baptized here on the banks of the Pawcatuck River.

By the mid 1800s, Sabbath keeping congregations could be found throughout the Midwest. At Battle Creek, Michigan in 1860, many thousands were persuaded to accept the beliefs of the followers of Ellen G. White, a self-proclaimed prophetess. They adopted the name Seventh Day Adventists, by which name they are known to this day. A number of the Sabbath keeping churches refuse to accept these teachings and doctrines.

They moved their headquarters to Marion, Iowa and then to Stanbury, Missouri. A magazine “The Bible Advocate” was published. Their efforts bore some fruit. Small congregations sprung up across the nation. And so it was that sometime in the 19th century, a small congregation of the True Church of God was established in the peaceful Willamette Valley in Oregon.

They were farmers without formal education. They lacked trained ministers to teach and guide them, but they had the name Church of God, and they faithfully kept the Sabbath day. God’s church had come a long way across the turbulent centuries since the day of Pentecost. It was weak and lacked influence.

Years of persecution and compromise had taken their toll. Much truth had been lost, but they had stayed the course. In the Willamette Valley they waited. It was nearly time for the baton to change again into the hands of those God would call to do his end time work.

As mankind near the end of 6,000 years of Satan’s misrule of the Earth, God’s church had to be ready for a new and critical phase of the work. Jesus had prophesied that before the end could come, the true gospel of the kingdom must preached to all the world as a witness. As man’s knowledge increased, the technology began to be developed by which a voice could indeed cry out and be heard around the world.

And so as God had raised up Elijah and John the Baptist as his special messengers, he now raised up a man to work in the power and spirit of Elijah, preparing the way for Christ’s second coming. His mission was to restore to God’s church the true gospel which had been suppressed for 1900 years, and to restore the government of God in the church and prepare Christ’s bride for his coming.

Herbert W. Armstrong’s Early Life

Herbert w Armstrong was born July 31st, 1892 in Des Moines, Iowa of substantial God-fearing parents. He was the eldest son of Horace Elon Armstrong, who was the eldest son of Nathan Armstrong, who was the eldest son of Samuel Armstrong, who was married to Elizabeth Cope.

The family genealogy has been preserved through the Cope Foundation and can be traced back to Princess Joan — the daughter of Edward I, the king of England between 1272 and 1307 — and thus through a royal line that can be traced back to King David of Ancient Israel.

As a young man from age 18, Herbert Armstrong became unusually successful in the field of magazine and newspaper advertising. At age 25, he was married to Loma Dillon, an Iowa school teacher.

Herbert W. Armstrong: Very shortly after our marriage, my wife had a most extraordinarily impressive dream. It was more like a vision.

She had never experienced anything like it. She told me that she seemed to be standing on one of the busiest corners in the north side residential area of Chicago, uh, very near to where we were living at the time. She saw an extraordinary site up in the heavens. It was first like many giant birds, and then it seemed like one of them was coming closer and she began to think it was the second coming of Christ. And it finally came on down and it proved to be an angel.

She said she was very much concerned because I had not been religiously interested since I was 18 years of age. And she thought, as she said, that Herbert wasn’t saved and she was afraid that I would be lost. She thought this was the second coming of Christ and it proved to be an angel. A great crowd was gathering all around. It seemed like there were hundreds upon hundreds of people that had seen the site and they were all coming up closer. The angel came on down and to her surprise, he put his arm around both her and me. And she said that she had thought it was the second coming of Christ and he said, no, but it will be somewhat soon.

And he told her that God had something for us to do. He had a work for us to do that he needed me. And she was surprised. And then the angel seemed to vanish and later she came out of the vision or awakened or whatever. She told me the dream. I was embarrassed. I had not been interested since 18 years of age. Although I’d been brought up in Sunday school and church, I had not been religiously interested. I was interested in business and I wanted to get it out of my mind because of my embarrassment. There was a church just half a block down on the corner. I suggested that she go tell the dream to the minister of the church. Maybe he could tell her what it meant, if it meant anything. I didn’t know. I wanted to get it outta my mind. And like Jonah, if that was a call from God, I wanted to run away. I went on back to business. Now, that was in 1917.

In business, I continued to succeed. And by 1920, when I was 28 years of age, I was making what would be the equivalent in today’s inflated, uh, uh, dollar value, the equivalent of at least about 300,000 or more dollars a year income.

And then all of a sudden I had run away from God. And now God took everything away from me in the flash depression of 1920. It came suddenly, and all of my big clients went into receivership. That included such corporations as the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. The J.I. Case Plow Works, the Moline Plow Works, John Deere and Company and companies of that sort all went into the receivership. My business was utterly just swept out from under my feet through no cause of my own at all.

Later we went on to the West coast in Oregon. I finally managed to begin to get back on my feet and to establish an advertising service for laundries. Now, at that time, I found the laundry industry was the 12th largest industry in the United States, and perhaps the most backward.

However, I had organized an advertising service that was doubling the business of my clients. And all of a sudden, the Laundry Owners National Association had the power to obligate every laundry member to a nationally advertised campaign in such publications as Ladies Home Journal and Women’s Home Companion, McCalls, and other magazines of that sort. Just throwing it all where it was doing our local laundries no good whatsoever. But it took all their advertising appropriation. Again, my business was swept right out from under my feet. I was softened by the blow.

God’s Calling and Personal Struggles

I have often said that God knocked me down in an entirely different way, but as surely as he knocked down the apostle Paul and blinded him.

When Jonah tried to run away, God brought him back. If God calls anyone to a specific responsibility or duty or calling, God is going to make that person do it. Now, God doesn’t call everyone to salvation. And those He does call make their own decision whether they’ll respond or not. But if God is calling, calling one to a specific duty or obligation, believe you me, he’s going to make that person do it.

Jonah had to do it. The Apostle Paul had to do what God called him to do. And I had to do what I was called to do. I felt whipped. I felt beaten. I was frustrated. I knew what it was to have been on top as I was as a young man, only barely 28 years of age. And on top and then to be reduced to absolute poverty where we had nothing. We didn’t even have enough to eat.

I was in that type of condition when God brought his challenge to really call me to what he wanted me to do. You know, brethren, so often a person has to be reduced and have all of this world’s goods taken away from them before they’ll turn to God and give themselves over to Christ, and that’s what I did well.

Proving God’s Existence and Law

I was challenged on God’s law. And also on the subject of origins about evolution. And I found that origin, evolution was false. And God, as the creator is true. I proved that God exists. I had to prove it. I proved about God’s law. And that was in an intensive six months intense study from the fall of 1926 until the spring of 1927, and in the spring of 1927, I was baptized and I gave myself to Christ.

At least I intended to. And I haven’t done it a hundred percent brethren, but I intended to. And perhaps if I had done it more completely, God would’ve produced a whole lot more than has been produced through me. But nevertheless, a great deal has been produced.

And in 100 time cycles, uh, after the disciples, uh, I was baptized. It was exactly 100 time cycles now of 19 years each, because the sun, moon, and stars come into exact conjunction marking off time every 19 years, and it was a century of those. After the original disciples began being taught by Jesus, I began being taught by the word of God in writing. Now it’s the same word of writing. Jesus is the word of God in person. The Bible is the same word of God in writing. So I was taught just as the early disciples were. I was brought into contact with the Sardis people and a group of them that now were living in the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

When I came among the true church back in 1927, they had lost the, the true gospel, but there’s certain things the true church always had. It always had the true name. The true church always kept God’s law. God had, Jesus had prayed that the father would keep the church in his name and 12 times in the New Testament, the church is given its name, the Church of God.

Well, it’s modified sometime by its location, the Church of God at Corinth, the Church of God at Jerusalem. Today, it’s the Worldwide Church of God, but it’s following the whole Bible system 100%. The true church now always kept God’s law, and that means they kept God’s Sabbath.

Early Ministry Challenges and Growth

Now, in the fall of 1930, I went as a guest with some people in that church to a business meeting in the home of Ira Curtis.

Down near Jefferson in Oregon. And during that meeting they asked me if I would, uh, act as secretary because I seemed to have a little more education than most of them. And I was, while I was only a visitor, uh, they asked me to take down the minutes and act as secretary. Well, you know, a fight began and it was coming to almost blows.

They were going to use their fists almost any minute. And there was shouting at one another and there was a disagreement. Half of them on one side and half on the other. You know, in the book of Job you read that when the people of God came together, Satan came also in the midst. I said, you’re commandment keepers and you’re the people of God and you’ve come together but Satan is here. Now I’m gonna drop down to my knees and I’m going to start praying. And asked God to cast Satan out of here, and you brethren can either kneel with me or just go on with your fighting. And I knelt down and began to pray. Well, you know, those brethren all knelt down, began to pray, and when they got up, all the fight was taken out of them.

They then asked me if I would conduct a series of evangelistic meetings in a little church in Harrisburg, and I did it in the last nine days of that year, 1930. And we had, as I remember, three who were baptized as a result in the first time I ever did any preaching like that in my life. But there were fruits, uh, that God produced as a result nevertheless.

Formation of the Oregon Conference

Now, in 1931, in the spring, um, the, uh, Oregon conference was formed. A half of those brethren did split off from the other half, and while they didn’t get into a fist fight, nevertheless, they separated and that half became incorporated as the Oregon Conference of the Church of God. Now, I worked along with them and in June, 1931, just exactly the same month, and I don’t know whether it was the Day of Pentecost, but it was at or very near the day of Pentecost, 100 time cycles from the day the original apostles were ordained when they received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost I was ordained by the Oregon Conference.

Now we’re just beginning to get into a transition from Sardis. Now I want you to notice what happened.

I then was. Put on salary at $20 a week by the Oregon Conference and asked to hold a tent meeting down in Eugene, Oregon with another man whose name was Robert L. Taylor. He had come up from, from California, and, uh, the brethren were very much taken with him. I found out during the meetings that he was a Pentecostal man, and, uh, he didn’t last in the church.

However, one family, the Fishers were added as a result of those meetings, and that was on a night it was very stormy. No meeting was held. The Fishers came in. I had a meeting up in my own room with them that night because there were no tent meeting, and that’s the night they were brought into the church.

Now, on December the first, 1931. The money had run out of the Treasury, and I was asked to help a former newspaper associate of mine to save his newspaper out in Astoria, Oregon. I went out there expecting to be there for just the one month of December. I found I was stuck with it. It was in the midst of the worst part of the depression, and I was kept out there in Astoria for a year and three months until at the end of February in 1933.

So from 31 to 33, I was out in Astoria. At the end of that, February, 1933, the Oregon conference had gotten a little money back into the Treasury again. They asked me to come back at $3 a week. Now, get it, only $3 a week salary. Of course a dollar went farther then in the midst of the depression. But that’s 1933. Previously while I was out on Astoria in 1932, the whole church from Stanbury, Missouri, nationwide had split and the two leading men had split off from the rest of the church and formed a new church at Salem, West Virginia, also calling it the Church of God. And they claim to have a new form of Bible organization with 12 apostles, 70 leading elders and seven deacons to handle the financial affairs. Now they got that from the seven deacons that waited on tables in the Bible. There’s no reference in the Bible to financial affairs. So it, it was not a true Bible organization at all. But they got many of the members to come out of Stanbury and to come with them on that very pretense of a Bible organization.

Now in 1933, from March to June, I held meetings for the Oregon Conference in Salem, Oregon with another minister from California, Sven Oberg.

Well, he was also associated with another man by the name of A.J. Ray from Southern California. But they turned into Pentecostal meetings. So I preached only Sabbaths to our own brethren and Oberg, Mr. Oberg carried on the weeknight meetings for Pentecostal people. And I learned all I wanted to know about Pentecostal people during that time. Uh, these particular Pentecostal people, I think some of them would observe the Sabbath, most of them not.

The Beginning of the Philadelphia Era

Beginning July the fourth, 1933, I began some services in a country school house, eight miles west of Eugene. Now, two places had opened up for meetings. One was that little church in Harrisburg where I had preached at the end of 1930, and the other was a country schoolhouse, one room with 36 seats.

That was the Fir Butte schoolhouse. Well, they gave Mr. Oberg the church and the Oregon Conference people just put me down in the little schoolhouse. Well, I had more, a bigger attendance in that little schoolhouse than he did in the larger church. I had 11 baptized. He had none. And uh, there were eight members of us down there. And then with the 11 that were baptized, that raised up a new church of 19 members.

And that was the beginning of the Philadelphia era at that time.

Radio Ministry and Expansion

Then in October, 1933, the new church, which now is the parent of the Philadelphia era, had decided with the Oregon Conference to start a three point program on radio and the printing to get out a magazine called The Plain Truth and personal evangelism. And I was asked to head it as the leader. Now that was started by the Oregon Conference and our people at Eugene, Oregon.

Then we moved out from the Fir Butte School in August to the Gene School, four miles farther on West, and we held meetings out there on the Sabbath and on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

Then in October, 1933. I had an opportunity to go on the local radio station, 5 mornings for 15 minutes. It was free time and they couldn’t get ministers and local churches to take the time. And so I was able to get it, and of course I didn’t have to pay for it.

Now, that led to the Radio Church. There was quite a lot of mail coming in, and the manager of the station asked me then to start a regular Sunday program. I took it up with the Oregon Conference and with our new church there at Eugene. They were all for it. And so the church went on the air and I did the speaking on the first Sunday in 1934.

We went on Sunday morning at 10 o’clock and the cost was $2 and a half a week, and I only had the money pledged from the brethren for a dollar and a quarter a week, and I had to take the rest of it on faith.

Now that was all started by the new church and the Oregon Conference. That was the beginning of the, what we call then the Radio Church of God.

February 1st, the Plain Truth came out with its first issue, mimeographed. Only about 350 copies were made.

Now, meanwhile, in 1933, I had been issuing a bulletin, which was an ancestor of the present Good News that we have in the church. And that was for the Oregon Conference and the new church there at Eugene.

Then in April of 1934, I began a campaign in downtown Eugene. Then we changed out of Gene school, holding the meetings there on Monday, Wednesday nights, and on the Sabbath. But Sunday night, Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was holding meetings now in downtown Eugene. From the meetings in downtown Eugene, about 15 were baptized.

Now, in September, 1934, I began holding Sabbath morning services in my home in Eugene for the new people that have been brought in by the downtown Eugene Campaign.

By November, 1934, I started a six weeks campaign in a school house out at Alvadore. It’s another little kind of village, about 15 miles northwest of Eugene. It was for six weeks holding nightly meetings Sunday through Friday. Then having our Sabbath services as we had been having them. By January, 1935, the meetings ended with 15 more new converts, baptized — all new members of the church.

Now we had a church out at Alvadore. We had one at Gene School. We had another little group at my home in Eugene. And I was having to pastor all three of those churches. The new church held meetings Sabbath AM at my home, and afternoons every other Sabbath, I would go to Alvadore, and every other Sabbath I would go to the Gene School.

Then in May, 1935, all three of those little groups— about 15 people attending each place— we decided to purchase the church building in Eugene. But by this time, uh, this Mr. A.J. Ray and Sven Oberg had returned back to California and they were gone. So now I returned as pastor of the Oregon Conference at a schoolhouse in Jefferson, Oregon, and I still kept on preaching for them.

Some people have accused me of having just gone out of the church to get a following from myself and start my own church. That is absolutely not true. I was still preaching as the pastor of this church up in Oregon and, uh, in, in the Willamette Valley.

Transition to the Philadelphia Era

In the meantime, however, in the year of 1934, the Oregon Conference had decided to switch over from Stanbury to the Salem, West Virginia faction of the main church and, uh, now at Eugene. We didn’t quite go along with that, but we agreed to cooperate with them. So I became one of their ministers in a way, but I was with them, but I was not under them. I was not under their authority. I was not paid by them.

In early 1936, another radio station opened up in Oregon in Portland, KWJJ, a much larger station. And we went on the air in Portland, Oregon. Now, the Salem ministers persecuted me from the Salem, West Virginia organization, but the members did not. Just some of the ministers. They held an annual camp meeting. But one night during that camp meeting, they pulled a double cross and put another minister they’d brought back from the Sardis, people from, uh, uh, from Kansas and put him in as pastor of the church in the schoolhouse up in, uh, uh, near Jefferson, Oregon, the Sardis Group.

Well, it was really a piece of rotten dirty politics, and the brethren saw it. Half of the brethren in that church, the Oregon conference, came out and said, Mr. Armstrong, we’re going to stand with you. Now in the meantime, brethren, there still was about 35 brethren up in Jefferson, Oregon that were still loyal to Stanbury all this time, had not been with us at all this time.

They now asked me to come up and organize them into a church. I did do that, and that was a new church at Jefferson. In the meantime, the radio work was in increasing, The Plain Truth was increasing. I was holding meetings in different places and I was still pastoring their churches, however, and pastoring the church for the Stanbury group. Now, far from having gone out away from them to start a church of my own.

Now early in 1937, a radio station in Seattle opened up to us —KRSC in Seattle —and I preached Sabbath mornings at our Eugene Church. Now we bought the church building. I preached there at Eugene.

I drove 55 miles to Jefferson where I preached to the Stanbury Group Church up there in the afternoon.

And then I went on to Seattle. I’d have to drive the car.

I arrived up there by or after midnight, sometimes 12:30 in the morning. I had to be up at 5:30 the next morning, go on the radio at KRSC at 8:30. By nine o’clock I was off the air and I started the long drive to Portland. I would arrive at Portland for a four o’clock afternoon broadcast on KWJJ.

Then at 4:30 I had to be off the air and I had to drive 55 miles to Eugene, and then I had to preach that night.

Now, that was the way I carried on a schedule, and I had to get out The Plain Truth and pray for the sick and have counseling and everything else all through the rest of the week.

Now, in the meantime a radio station opened up in Spokane and in Salem, Oregon, and we had a network arranged. Our own network. And I called it the Liberty Network. But it was over telegraph lines of the postal telegraph company. I reached a 50,000 Watts station over in Spokane and also a local station at Salem, Oregon and Portland, as well as Eugene for some time on that network.

Now, I simply, the work was growing so fast that I told the brethren of the Sardis church in Jefferson that I could only preach about half the time. So one of their men, Roy Daily, took it every other Sabbath and then every other Sabbath, I continued on. And this continued for some years.

In April, 1942, I was able to get on a station in Southern California, Hollywood, KMTR it was then called. A very good station. I started on that and then they opened up a time that I could preach every evening at five o’clock. And for the first time we went on to radio daily with daily programs. Well, that had an immediate response and the work now was beginning to grow. And now at that time, I had to drop preaching up at Jefferson to the Sardis people altogether.

And that did not happen until in 1942. So all of this time, from 1933 when the Philadelphia era began, I was still working with them. You see, it was a gradual transition from the Sardis era down to the present Philadelphia era.

Now the Philadelphia era was complete and was separated completely now from the Sardis era. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what has happened to those people from that time on. I lost track of them. They split. They resplit and resplit. Now, that transition then had finally become complete, and the Philadelphia era finally was established.

I’ve said this, and I want you to know that I did not just leave the Sardis people to start some work of my own. This has been continuously God’s church. But the Sardis people never would accept the message of the Gospel of the Kingdom. They never would accept God’s holy days. They never would accept any new truth. But the Philadelphia era has brought much new truth into God’s work. And it has grown and developed into one church worldwide.

Relocation to Pasadena and Television

Art Gilmore (Voice Over): Soon after Mr. Armstrong began broadcasting daily, the opportunity came to purchase time on the giant 50,000 Watts Station, WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. And a few months later, another super station, WOAI in San Antonio, Texas. Then in August, 1944, Mr. Armstrong was able to purchase time on even more powerful stations in Mexico.

The World Tomorrow program could now be heard nationwide and mail was received from every State of the Union. As a result, the plain truth circulation soon increased to 75,000 copies a month. Mr. Armstrong realized that the work had outgrown the office facilities at Eugene. The peaceful Oregon town had been a good place to begin, but if the message was to reach the world, Mr. Armstrong needed to be closer to Hollywood, the media capital of America.

He also began to realize the need to train others to help in the fast growing work. And so 12 years after the work began in the Willamette Valley, the headquarters was moved to Pasadena in Southern California.

In 1947, ambassador College opened with just four students, but the college enrollment grew. The first class graduated in 1951, the first of many hundreds of young people who would be trained to help in the work.

In 1953, the most powerful radio station on earth, Radio Luxembourg began to broadcast The World Tomorrow to the British Isles and the continent of Europe.

And so growth continued around the world. First on radio and then on television. Today the program is heard around the world. The programs are also subtitled in the French language for viewers in France and Belgium. An Italian subtitle program is being prepared and will be seen in Italy.

The circulation of The Plain Truth has kept pace with the growth of the TV and radio program. The first issue was hand produced by Mr. And Mrs. Armstrong using an old neo style machine. About 250 copies were duplicated. Now as The Plain Truth approaches its 50th year, over 6 million copies are printed each month.

It is published in six languages, English, German, French, Spanish. Dutch, Italian and plans are now being completed for a Norwegian edition to begin in 1984. Thousands of magazines are distributed each month through lighted displays, at major train stations and airports through the Elson’s gift stores at major hotels and in supermarkets across the nation.

In response to the first broadcast, 14 letters were received. On August 17th, 1983. The mail receiving department in Pasadena received the 50 millionth letter asking for literature.

The work has come a long way from the days when Mr. And Mrs. Armstrong worked together in a cramped two room office in Eugene. They lacked proper resources. The files, records, accounts and subscription lists were kept in cardboard boxes. There was no money to buy filing cabinets, but it was God’s work and like a mustard seed, it grew.

Today, each of those boxes has become a major department employing dozens of people. The department heads report regularly to Mr. Armstrong informing him of progress and getting his direction for future growth in their areas of responsibility.

In the boardroom, in the administration building in Pasadena, Mr. Armstrong also meets regularly with the Council of Elders, senior ministers, and officials of the church.

Herbert W. Armstrong: Well, glad to have all of you around this table once again, and, uh, I just want to give you first a little rundown on some of the things that we have to discuss.

We, uh, now have received the first worldwide financial statement prepared by Arthur Anderson and Company. They audit some of the largest banks in the United States, some of the greatest industrial corporations, and they audit the books now, the Worldwide Church of God and it’s, uh, affiliated corporations, not only here, but in all of our offices all over the world.

Now, incidentally, this is another very exceptional thing about it. This is the golden anniversary year of the church. This era of the church, and I emphasize this era because the church began in 31 AD, and it’s the same church, but it has had different eras and there are certain distinctions in differences between different periods of time, as Jesus made plain in the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation.

Art Gilmore (Voice Over): Over 1100 ministers and elders now serve 750 congregations in 62 countries. As God has blessed the Philadelphia era causing it to grow until it has become truly a Worldwide Church of God.

Worldwide Impact and Future Vision

As Pastor General of the Worldwide Church, and as a voice crying out in the wilderness of confusion and ignorance, Mr. Armstrong must visit all parts of the world. God has opened the door for him to take the announcement of the coming kingdom of God to leaders and rulers of major nations, and to speak directly to the people of many countries.

The first apostles would be astonished to see the size and scope of the work now. In just one day, Mr. Armstrong can cover more miles than the Apostle Paul did in his lifetime. The means of communications, the technology, and the modern resources that God has given to his end time work would indeed be strange to those men who first received the commission to take the gospel to the world nearly 2000 years ago.

But some things would not be strange. The Sabbath and Holy Days, the name, the Church of God, and the Gospel of the Kingdom, these they would recognize handed down through the ages from the time of Christ to the time of the end. And now as then, there are people whom God has called working together in unity behind the chosen leader. To preach the gospel to all the world.

Herbert W. Armstrong: Brethren, while I’ve been preaching to all of the world, the Gospel of the Kingdom —during that time, the atomic bomb and then the hydrogen bomb has been perfected and weapons of mass destruction so that now all humanity can be blasted off this earth in a height, in a nuclear war.

And the Bible prophecy say the nuclear war is going to come, and unless God did step in and stop it, there wouldn’t be a single human being left alive on the face of the earth. You find that in verses 21 and 22 of Matthew 24. And then soon after that they will see Jesus Christ coming in the clouds of heaven in power and great glory as the King of kings and the Lord of lords to rule over all nations.

And then brethren, at that time, the dead in Christ will rise first .We, which are in the church and have been called and have grown in grace and the knowledge of the truth of Jesus Christ and who have overcome. And if we have endured, we are to be chained from mortal to immortal, and we will reign with Christ forever and ever.

But the first thousand years, we will reign over all of the people that are left alive and the government will be run by Christ and we under him will be ruling over the nations. Now in Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, you know, the prophecies for this church and therein the messages to these very seven churches. We then at that time are going to be given power over the nations and we shall rule them with a rod of iron.

We will be gained, if we overcome, we will be granted to sit with Christ on his throne, over the all governments of all of the earth, ruling all the nations. It’s a wonderful thing. And ultimately it’ll be all God’s world. And that is the purpose of God. And after that, and after the thousand years will come, the great judgment. Judgment is on the church at this time.

Then we’ll become the judge, come the judgment that we observe on the last day after the Feast of Tabernacles, when all whoever lived are going to be resurrected. And then will their time of judgment come. They will be told that Christ came and died for them and that if they want to repent and turn God’s way, they too can then have salvation and eternal life.

And finally, God’s purpose shall be fulfilled. Satan is fighting it now, but brethren, if you want to know how it’s all going to come out —and this world’s a troubled world —I’ve looked clear to the end of the story in the Bible and the way it comes out is we win. And the Kingdom of God is going to win and there will be peace on earth and happiness and eternal life, and we will be God.

We will be children of God and made very God.

We are going to go to all of the other planets of this solar system and then out into outer space.

Now what all will be done there? We don’t know. God hasn’t revealed it, but there’s just enough to show us that we are going to restore the whole universe! And great things are finally going to happen.

Final Reflections and Encouragement

Well, brethren, I hope I haven’t kept you too late, but I hope this is… opens your eyes a little bit to the history of this church, of which you now are a member. So now I bet you all good night.