Question:  Hi Greg,

            I have a friend who still follows the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong (very sad).  My friend explains that Mr. Armstrong taught that the Feast of Tabernacles is when Christ will return again, but I can’t find anywhere in the Bible where Tabernacles depicts the time when Christ will return.  How does Armstrongism teach this?

            Thanks,

            April

Answer:  Dear April,

            The brief answer is this: Mr. Armstrong reasoned that the Old Testament law was still binding upon Christians – he started with the Ten Commandments, since the Ten Commandments include the seventh day Sabbath.

            He correctly decided that no human had the authority to “change the day of worship” from Saturday to Sunday, so, since (he reasoned) the Ten Commandments were still binding on the Christian – necessary and required for salvation – the Saturday Sabbath was still in effect.

            He did not understand that the vast majority of Christians do not worship on Sunday because they think that some human “changed the day” – but that they do so following the early Christians who met on that day in honor of the day of Jesus’ resurrection.  This probably accounts for the fact that those who follow the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong reject Easter Sunday as the day/time when our Lord rose from the tomb.

            His reasoning about the seventh day Sabbath was affected by Seventh Day Adventism – which links (as did Mr. Armstrong) the Saturday Sabbath to eschatology (teaching about the end times).  Following the ideas of Adventism, Mr. Armstrong taught that the mark of the beast spoken of in the book of Revelation will be given to those Christians who worship on Sunday, and that Saturday “keepers” would be exempt from the great tribulation.

            Having decided that the Saturday Sabbath was “still in force” and that “the Sabbath sign” helped one identify “true” Christians from “false” Christians (i.e. those who worship on Sunday), Mr. Armstrong and those who assisted him in the early years of his ministry came to believe that not only the “weekly” Sabbath was required of “true” Christians, but also the “annual” sabbaths.

            What are these annual sabbaths?  They are the Hebrew holy days, according to Armstrongism (which you say your friend is following) prescribed and set forth in the Old Testament.  Armstrongism reasons that the weekly and annual sabbaths “stand or fall” together.  That is, the same rationale that compels one to “keep” Saturday drives one to “keep” the Hebrew holy days.

            One more step is necessary to explain your question about the Feast of Tabernacles.  Mr. Armstrong also bought into the central tenets of dispensationalism as a basic prophetic framework for end time events.  Dispensationalism is primarily accepted by (both in its early days, as well as those who follow its teachings today) those who are orthodox Christians in other ways.  Dispensationalism teaches that God has “dispensed” his plan in seven dispensations – and that seven of the Hebrew holy days (there can actually be more, depending upon how one counts them) are symbolic of how God has revealed himself, “dispensing” his plan and knowledge to humankind.

            Mr. Armstrong took this idea, borrowed from dispensationalism, that the Feast of Tabernacles was the seventh holy day of the Jews.  Since dispensationalism concluded that human history would last 6,000 years, followed by a 1,000-year millennium, the idea was that the Feast of Tabernacles, the seventh of the annual Hebrew holy days, would picture the 1,000-year millennial rest.  Of course the 7000-year dispensation plan for world history has been discredited by their own chronologies – they reasoned that the creation of Adam and Eve took place anywhere from 4030 to 4004 BC – making the Second Coming somewhere around 1970-2000.  But all of those dates are obviously false, as we now live in the 21^st century and Jesus has not returned yet (at least he hasn’t unless you are a Jehovah’s Witness – some of these folks say he returned in 1914!)

            The Y2K hysteria that drove many Christians to do some rather silly and irrational things in January of 2000 was part of this broken-beyond-repair dispensation methodology.  Armstrongism borrows all of this methodology from dispensationalism (like the seventh day Sabbath was borrowed from sabbatarians).  Dispensationalism was first popularized in the early 1830’s – and parts of it are still proving attractive to those who buy the “Left Behind” series of books authored by Tim LaHaye.  The “Left Behind” series is based upon the central tenets of a dispensational worldview of end time events.

            There are, of course, differences.  In Armstrongism, the Feast of Tabernacles came to be purely a future time of millennial rest, a utopian world following the Second Coming.  In dispensationalism the Feast of Tabernacles both points back to a memorial of leaving Egypt (which was the “meaning” of the holy day for the Hebrews) – while also symbolizing a future millennial rest.  In Armstrongism many symbolic passages that orthodox Christians understand as pictures of the age to come were applied to physical life on this earth during the millennium.  It is helpful to show those who follow the tenets of Armstrongism that his teachings were all borrowed from someone else, since the vast majority of those who follow his teachings believe that God revealed these “truths” to Herbert W. Armstrong, and no one else (thus, the “one and only true church”).  Some background can help them (if they will listen) to see a bigger picture.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht