Authors: Gerald Flurry
In light of accusations the Tkaches would make years later, that Mr. Armstrong was racist, these edits—made
before Mr. Armstrong died
—are quite revealing. There, visibly present in November of 1985, are the fingerprints of Tkachism.
Big Sandy Campus
In the same December 1985 letter in which Mr. Armstrong informed the church about his rapidly declining health, he also made an important decision regarding Ambassador College:
… I feel God has led me in deciding that it is necessary that we close the operations at Big Sandy, Texas, after the end of this present school year. The certification of the college requiring the pursuing of accreditation, the financial needs of the first commission of the church, and the needs of the ministry made this decision necessary. The trained ministry at the campus in Big Sandy are sorely needed elsewhere because of the thousands of prospective member visit requests. I have ordered implementation of this decision to the appropriate officials involved.
16
The same announcement appeared later that week in the
Pastor General’s Report
. Two weeks after that, Richard Ames, director of admissions at
AC
, told the ministry that all applications for Big Sandy had been re-directed to the Pasadena campus.
17
In the December 30, 1985,
Worldwide News,
Aaron Dean wrote a front-page article encouraging the church’s youth to become educated whether they were able to attend Ambassador College or not. Mr. Dean referred to the closure of Big Sandy in the article and commented on how only a few of the church’s young people would be able to attend
AC
.
18
Two and a half weeks later, Mr. Armstrong died. Two months after his death, the newly appointed pastor general of the church, Joseph W. Tkach, paid a visit to the Big Sandy campus. During his trip, Mr. Tkach met with the college’s deputy chancellor, Leslie McCullough, and its faculty members. According to the March 24, 1986,
Worldwide News,
“The pastor general updated the ministry and faculty on events taking place in God’s work, including the status of the Big Sandy campus.”
19
Of course, the “status” of the campus was pretty clear in the weeks prior to Mr. Armstrong’s death: It would be closed.
Around the time of his Big Sandy trip, if not during, Mr. Tkach ordered a feasibility study “to determine the best use of the campus facility and to look long-range at the needs of the church and college in Texas.”
20
He wrote to the ministry a few days after returning to Pasadena, saying, “The trip was most enjoyable and certainly informative for me as I am in the process of making decisions about the future of the campus.”
21
Five weeks after his Big Sandy visit, incredibly, Mr. Tkach announced plans to keep the Big Sandy campus open:
I have instructed Mr. Les McCullough and Dr. Don Ward to apply for state certification so that we may operate the college in Big Sandy, Texas, at least one more year. Last December, Mr. Herbert Armstrong wrote to the brethren that “the certification of the college requiring the pursuing of accreditation, the financial needs of the first commission of the church, and the needs of the ministry” made necessary the decision to close the operations of Ambassador College in Big Sandy, Texas. Since that time I have found that we can be certified for another two-year period without having to pursue accreditation.
This will allow the current freshman class to graduate in Big Sandy, and give us time to see what direction God will lead us regarding the future of the campus there. The state’s decision on certification will not be final until July, but as of now we plan to operate next year. Of course, if certification is denied, we will go ahead with plans to allow qualified Big Sandy students to finish in Pasadena over the next two years.
22
According to Dr. Ward, who heard the April 15 announcement via telephone hook-up in Big Sandy, Mr. Tkach’s announcement was greeted by “thunderous applause that went on for a great while.” Mr. Tkach asked the combined groups of faculty and students to pray that God’s will be “revealed to me.” He said that he was committed to “do whatever is best for God’s work.”
23
Not four months earlier, one of the main reasons Mr. Armstrong gave for closing the campus was to
DO WHAT WAS BEST FOR THE WORK
—its “financial needs” and the fact that Big Sandy’s ministry was needed elsewhere. What a
MONUMENTAL SHIFT
in priorities for Mr. Tkach—and just three months after Mr. Armstrong died!
Dr. Ward,
of course,
NEVER DREAMED
that such a stunning reversal might eventually result in shifting the entire focus of the college onto Big Sandy and in the pursuit of accreditation.
Or did he?
Different Emphasis for Commission
The scripture Mr. Armstrong almost always used to describe the church’s commission is Matthew 24:14: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a
witness
unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
For example, in the February 1972 issue of
Tomorrow’s World,
Mr. Armstrong identified Matthew 24:14 as “the very prophecy defining our commission for this latter day.”
24
In a co-worker letter dated September 17, 1982, Mr. Armstrong said, “Jesus’ sign [that] we are near the end of this world (Matthew 24:14), which you have backed me in proclaiming to the world—the gospel of the kingdom of God—has been going to the world in great power!”
25
In a 1983 sermon, Mr. Armstrong clearly defined the commission for the church: “Today’s mission of the church you will find in Matthew 24 and in verse 14.”
26
Mr. Armstrong wrote in
The Plain Truth About Healing:
“The great commission and ministry for God’s church today is in Jesus’ prophecy concerning it in Matthew 24:14.”
27
In his first sermon as pastor general,
given just two days after Mr. Armstrong died,
Mr. Tkach said,
In the Synoptic Gospels,
OUR COMMISSION IS CLEARLY STATED
—which just means a general view of our responsibilities. Turn to Matthew 28. Here we’re told, in verse 19, to “Go ye therefore, and
teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Our commission here is directly from Christ. We are an extension of the early New Testament Church, who never did complete the commission.
28
This scriptural citation represented a disturbing shift in focus. Mr. Armstrong may have occasionally
associated
Matthew 28:19-20 with the church’s commission, but it was not the primary passage he referred to. He repeatedly emphasized that the church had been commissioned to preach the gospel message to this world
as a witness.
With that as its focus, as Mr. Armstrong would then explain,
God would provide
members and co-workers who responded to the warning message.
29
Certainly, the church then had an obligation to teach and train those who responded to God’s call, but this was secondary to the church’s main mission—preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God as a witness. Mr. Armstrong explained:
The two spiritual areas, which are the real purpose and mission of the church, are, one, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God for a witness to the nations of the world .… Now the
second mission
of the church is to feed the flock, as Jesus said, on the spiritual food of the Word of God.
30
To be fair to Mr. Tkach, in that same sermon, he did quote from Matthew 24:14 right at the end of the message. He said, “We have a commission to preach the gospel as a warning message to a dying world.”
31
But he then wrote just a few days after that sermon: “My faith and confidence are in Jesus Christ’s sure and infallible promise, built into the
very commission
He gave His church: ‘… Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20).”
32
Shifting the work’s
emphasis
to the
SECONDARY MISSION
of feeding the flock, as opposed to preaching the gospel to the world,
HAD A DEVASTATING, DOMINO-LIKE EFFECT ON NEARLY EVERY ASPECT OF THE WORK
.
It turned the church inward
—leading to a focus on Ambassador College, local congregations and personal evangelism. Proclaiming the gospel message as a witness took a back seat to the inward needs of the church.
Mystery of the Ages
Serialization
As I mentioned, editors had made subtle changes to the softbound
Mystery of the Ages
even before Mr. Armstrong died. Much more significant than that, however, are the deletions made in the serialization of the book in the
Plain Truth
magazine. Mr. Armstrong actually started the project, beginning with the July 1985 issue. He wanted the message of the book to reach the “largest audience possible, “
33
and the
Plain Truth
circulation was around 8 million at the time.
Because of the length of the book, serializing
Mystery of the Ages
took a year and a half (from July 1985 to December 1986). As with any serialization, one might expect editors to condense some portions of the text. But to do so in a way that completely alters the author’s clear intent cannot be considered an
abridged
version of the original text—rather a
corrupt
version.
The most glaring deletion occurs at the end of chapter 6—“Mystery of the Church”—in the July-August 1986
Plain Truth
installment. In the book, the section begins with the subhead, “Restoration of God’s Truth to Church.” In the first paragraph under the subhead, Mr. Armstrong begins by summarizing the history of the church of God—from the first century to the time of the end. In the book, he wrote, “From the year 1931, exactly 1,900 years (a century of time cycles) from the foundation of the church, this small remnant of the original true church of God began to take on new life
as the Philadelphia era.”
Those last four italicized words are left out of the serialization, which is significant, as anyone ever associated with the
WCG
would know.
From that point in the text, editors saw fit to delete a number of specific prophecies in the serialization, beginning with this one:
It had come to the “time of the end.” A new spiritual vitality was infused into it. The time had come for Jesus’ prophecy of Matthew 24:14 to be fulfilled—“this gospel of the kingdom shall be [proclaimed] in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” Such vital truth that had been lost was gradually revealed and proclaimed.
34
In light of what we covered about the church’s commission, the significance of this omission is obvious. The
Plain Truth
version then omits six paragraphs about the Philadelphia era and the leader who God prophesied to raise up during that era (Mr. Armstrong, as the church had always believed). Mr. Armstrong wrote,
To this era—or to its human leader—God had set before it an open door .… This church and/or its leader had but little strength. Neither were of great and powerful stature in Satan’s world but those of this era were faithful to the Word of God. Though much of the original gospel truth, imparted to the original apostles by Jesus in person, had been lost, it was restored through the Bible to this era of God’s church who were faithful in keeping it.
35
That is missing in the serialization version. And so is this next paragraph:
It is revealed in Malachi 3:1-5 and 4:5-6 that God would raise up one in the power and spirit of Elijah, shortly prior to the Second Coming of Christ. In Matthew 17:11 Jesus said, even after John the Baptist had completed his mission, that this prophesied Elijah “truly shall first come, and restore all things.” Although it is plainly revealed that John the Baptist had come in the power and spirit of Elijah, he did not restore anything. The human leader to be raised up somewhat shortly prior to Christ’s Second Coming was to prepare the way—prepare the church—for Christ’s coming, and restore the truth that had been lost through the preceding eras of the church. Also a door was to be opened for this leader and/or the Philadelphia era of the church to fulfill Matthew 24:14: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
36
After these deletions, the serialization then continues:
It was to be at a time when, for the first time in the history of mankind, the weapons of mass destruction were produced that could erase all humanity from the Earth (Matt. 24:21-22). This also was to occur just before the Second Coming of Christ (verses 29-30).
These prophecies have now definitely been fulfilled.
The true gospel has been restored and has now gone in power into every nation on the face of the Earth.
37
For a person reading
the book
, “these prophecies have now definitely been fulfilled” refers to Matthew 24:14, Revelation 3:7-13, Malachi 3:1-5, Malachi 4:5-6 and Matthew 17:11! In reading the serialization, however, you don’t even know what prophecies Mr. Armstrong is referring to. To delete all the prophecies and then say, “These prophecies have now definitely been fulfilled,” makes no sense.
Within a few months of assuming his new position as pastor general, Mr. Tkach had already signed off on eliminating some of the strongest statements Mr. Armstrong made in
Mystery of the Ages
.
And these just happened to be statements about Mr. Armstrong’s office, his prophesied role in world events and his God-given commission.