Improper Sabbath observance… the death of WCG?

BY RICHARD C. NICKELS

“How did the Worldwide Church of God get to its present position, that the seventh – day Sabbath is no longer a requirement for Christians? In the Twentieth Century, Herbert W. Armstrong and his Worldwide Church of God promoted the Sabbath in a powerful way, throughout the world. After Armstrong’s death in 1986, his successor Joseph Tkach led an assault on all of Armstrong’s teachings. This attack resulted in an abandonment of teaching that the Sabbath is a commandment of God, acceptance of the Trinity, Christmas and Easter, and in short, a wholesale departure from nearly every one of Armstrong’s distinctive teachings. Some Worldwide Church of God congregations today meet on Sunday, or other days of the week. They believe that no day of the week is holy time.

How did this change come about? It did not start after 1986. It began decades earlier. Paul Royer, one of the leading ministers in Pasadena for many years, left the Worldwide Church of God in 1975 and currently heads The Church of God, Sonoma in California. In a 1976 sermon tape entitled “Keeping the Sabbath,” Royer claims that breaking the Sabbath was the beginning of the downfall of the Worldwide Church of God. Royer maintains that one of the major ways we show our respect for God is how we keep the Sabbath.

In the late 1960s, Royer noticed students jogging at Ambassador College just before sundown on Friday evening, and others shopping at El Rancho supermarket on Sabbath afternoon. He remarked to his friend Rod Meredith, “Give us 15-20 years, and this Church will not even know the Sabbath.” Meredith thought it would take 40 years…”

(this article is an excerpt from the June-July 1999 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel)

To read the rest of this article, which starts on page 4, click this link: https://biblesabbath.org/tss/477/tss_477.pdf