Herbert W Armstrong

   Why is it? The question that we should ask ourselves. There are very few countries that are free in this world.

   But before I go to that part of the story for an occasion as this weekend is, I would like to mention briefly that. West Virginia is a remarkable land within the United States historically, both from the point of view of the churches of God and, of course, the present state of affairs. It is a very wealthy state when it comes to the minerals.

   It is also one of the few states that has been permanently raped since the great industrialists acquired so much of their power. Now, you see, it is an area that has immense natural resources. It's a hilly land, and people who understood that acquired the land years ago.

   And in a sense, most of the decisions that are made in terms of who has a job, who does not, which plant is closed, which is not, would be made in the boardrooms of other states, primarily in the Middle Atlantic or New England states. It is a significant factor. Therefore, that it is easy to see one side of the story of West Virginia.

   I'd like to tell a little bit, as someone who had never been there before, that this state has a grave number of deficiencies because of its long-standing problem. One of the new problems that has been added, of course, is the population pressure and the desire of those who do own much of the land where buildings could be built to resist any such buildings.

   So, in a state with a reasonably low income, where let us say the average income of the median of the United States would be looked upon as being too prosperous by the majority of people in this state, you have a situation where the housing market is significantly higher than it is in upstate New York. A house that would be let us say $50,000 to $60,000 in upstate New York would be $75,000 to $80,000 in Charleston, the capital of West Virginia. And unless you happen to be an old-time property owner, you simply cannot now afford to buy.

   You must simply live as a renter in the various mine housing structures that are provided. It is one of those peculiar things that there are many, many poor people, and also a significant number who have had roots long enough to be relatively prosperous in terms at least of their homes.

   There's no way to view the state wholly in the eyes of some of the articles that have appeared in Time magazine, at least around 1960, where we thought of the state as the Grand Appalachia. There's much of it that is not. The Southwest is.

   Large numbers of blacks are in the southwest. Very few of them are members of the church. In fact, this area has the smallest accumulation of black members that I have seen in a long time because the blacks have simply not wanted to come to this area except as they've been brought to the mine regions, where perhaps their poverty is typical of the inner ghettos of the major cities, where the number of blacks called to the church of God is comparatively minimal in comparison with the suburbs.

   But they are some very remarkable brethren there, and that's quite a contrast to New York City, you know, where we have so many black members. These people are mostly English and Scotch-Irish or Ulster Scots, and they do not have the same opportunities that we generally find elsewhere.

   They are people who have tended to want to be separate from the Mainstream, or they wouldn't have lived there that long. As a whole, there are people who do not immediately make your acquaintance, but when they are convinced of you and persuaded, then they are extremely warm and hospitable. There was really only one person who, other than the black brethren, only one person who spoke at any length to me for the hour before the services when I was there.

   They simply greeted me. And walked on. They are, in that sense, by nature, essentially careful of, or even suspicious, of outsiders.

   The history of the state is certainly representative of the need. But after services, and apart from the question of the sermon, which, of course, could bring up question, I found them an entirely different people. They were persuaded, they understood.

   And when they understand the person and are persuaded, then they have no further doubts and they are very open. I think this is a very interesting way to look at these people, quite different from my experience with the churches in the South or in Minnesota or Wisconsin.

   But it is indeed an interesting area that they did bestow on me through one of the local ministers, or his wife, however that was arranged, a pull-over shirt that said WVU, West Virginia University Mountaineers. And I was asked to wear it, and they would like to have had proof that I would do so. So, Mr. Dexter Faulkner, who was the managing editor of the Plain Truth, did take a photograph of me in Randy Coles' office where the layouts and the Graphics are designed for the Plain Truth and developed them that same day. I gave him credit for these remarkable pictures.

   It was unusual the way it came out because not everybody seems appropriately garbed in a pullover or t-shirt, but it came out very well and I sent one to each of the ministers for the two congregations at Charleston and Parkersburg. And I should assume that my name is held in significant respect among the hill folk in the Church of God as a result.

   I would extend their very best wishes to you. Their history is recent in comparison with Southern California, but they are loyal. They are not gossiped.

   They're very cheerful about their responsibility. And it's one of those churches that happily has wondered why everyone else flew over and went to New York and Pennsylvania or Washington, D.C. or Massachusetts, but no one ever dropped down to visit these people in West Virginia. And now there is a reason. The reason being, of course, secondarily that not everybody was interested in small areas of the church, but something that might have been more important.

   But there's another real reason, and that's very difficult to get to West Virginia. I had to use Piedmont Airlines, that means the Foothills Airlines.

   And the countryside, of course, is full of hills, and the air strip at Charleston is on top of the hill. Now, the interesting thing is that when I arrived there, I had both a schedule for departure as well as a standby. And the Scheduled departure meant that it would have taken me between West Virginia and Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh and Chicago, Chicago, Los Angeles.

   I would have had to wait at the airports between five and six hours at two places to make connections, Pittsburgh and Chicago, because nothing really flies directly in there. As it was, just to give you an insight into what the ticket that I had was simply worthless in terms of they're getting me on the computer. It is interesting that this kind of situation can occur with this modern technology, but it does mean that the airlines have yet to come to grips with it.

   So that my schedule, where I was written up okay with a travel agent, and Southern California had said it is confirmed. It didn't have the least record. And the one where I was the standby, I happily was able to get on, even though at Chicago, I had to wait three hours between flights to get to Southern California here. It is one of those unfrequented areas and, in a certain sense, therefore, unspoiled by much of the problem that has beset other areas of the church. I thought it appropriate at that occasion to discuss something of the nature of the history of the churches of God.

   Since this was a modern assemblage, we should not assume that the congregations there, that was only 15 years old, is necessarily the oldest congregation from a historic perspective of the church. Because the oldest congregation of the churches of God, Seventh Day, go back or goes back to the year 1859 under Pastor J.W. Niles, called the Wilbur Church of God, Wilbur being a geographic area. Now, it is this Church of God Seventh-day group of people that Mr. Armstrong came to have fellowship with in the state of Oregon in the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s.

   That ultimately, of course, did not seek to support the work that the brethren at Eugene, that Mr. Armstrong was led to raise up by the radio broadcast, did not seek to support that group and in a sense have had no fellowship or wanted to have fellowship with this work since the late 1930s. Nevertheless, it was contact with them that is important in the history of the continuity of this church. What is further interesting is that this church in Wilbur, West Virginia, going back to 1859, is two years older than the founding of that organization called… on the map.

   I wanted to get a map of this area so, our local minister there, Timothy Snyder, pulled out the map that he had, and we looked at the area where the churches of God had a history. And as you may know, of course, that in 1931, the churches of God's Seventh Day, in a sense, divided like a tree that is dying, its branches that are dead fall in one direction and another.

   Their main headquarters, apart from the Oregon Conference that Mr. Armstrong has mentioned was in Stanbury, Missouri, but they also had another that was centered in Salem, West Virginia at that time.

   And we should ask ourselves a little bit about why Salem, West Virginia. So now I will go back into the story just a little. In 1789, which was during the time of the founding of the Constitution of the United States, you remember this period of time after the nation's birth.

   Not in 1776, which was its Declaration of Independence, but 1783, when, in fact, the treaty was signed that gave rise to the states as independent and so recognized by Europe. We lived under the Articles of Confederation, and then we had the Constitutional Convention, that indeed was a very important concept. And in 1789, while these things were occurring, the brethren of the Churches of God in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, migrated from New Jersey, the southwest through Pennsylvania, and came to a community in one of the richer valleys of northern Virginia and founded a community there called New Salem.

   You've heard of Salem, Massachusetts. Well, this was New Salem, and it was in Virginia. Later on, of course during the Civil War, you will note that West Virginia was split off from Virginia, and the community of New Salem came to be known as Salem, West Virginia. So I would say that we should take note in terms of the history of the Church of God that in 1789, brethren from New Jersey in the town of Shrewsbury moved and, in fact, founded New Salem, Virginia, which is now Salem, West Virginia.

   And from here, they spread into a number of areas. And as we looked on the map, we marveled to what extent there were biblical names throughout the valley, as you might expect. There was Berea, and then we noted some other places that we have heard of in reading the history of the church at that time.

   We simply couldn't find any place on the map, however named Wilbur. We looked at one map and then another.

   And so I told the brethren as I was recounting the history of the churches of God in Virginia and West Virginia, therefore, as we now know the area, that we have the story preserved in the churches of God Seventh Day by the authors Duggar and Dodd. And Mr. Armstone knew both of these men, of course.

   And they mentioned the Wilbur Church, which is the oldest functioning Church of God Seventh Day. That is a part of this group of people that Mr. Armstrong has written of in his contact with them earlier part of the century. But we simply didn't know where it is on the map. And I had never had the chance to be there to search.

   So after the sermon and the close of the service, someone walked up to me and he said, I live within three miles of the Wilbur Church. The reason you will not find Wilbur on the map is that it doesn't exist. It simply is a church house going back to 1859 that is off a dirt road, that is off a paved road, that is near an intersection of two major roads.

   And there isn't anything else there. Now, this is really remarkable when one considers that this is typical of where the people whom God was then calling tended to live.

   Out in the country, on the farm, and its oldest church congregation functioning to this day is not even in a town, not even with a post office, just an area way off an intersection of highways. So the brethren there are going to obtain some photographs for me, both of the story of the churches of God in Salem, West Virginia, as well as of the Wilbur Church.

   And one of the brethren also lives and takes care of, in the city, a town of Berea that is on the map, of Sabbath-keeping people who go back to the Seventh-day Baptist. And our brethren take care of some of the elderly people of the remnant of the Seventh-day Baptist. Baptist group.

   And remember, Seventh-day Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists represent, in a sense, people who moved away and no longer were in the mainstream of the Church of God Seventh-day. Or one might put it another way, they were the main group of people, and only the small remnant stayed faithful. One could say from the time of the founding of the Seventh-day Baptist organization at the beginning of the last century.

   To the formal organization in the early 1860s of the Church of God Seventh-day, following the Seventh-day Adventist organization, the history of this church, as we look back at its roots, is centered fundamentally in the state then known as Virginia that we now know as West Virginia. And probably that link where we have the least evidence of a number of people or of leaders is to be found in this state.

   One of the weakest links in the whole history of the church when so few have ever left a record. You have a better record earlier, and of course, a complete record afterwards. But in the first half of the last century, as the brethren tended to be centered in this part of the Virginia Hills, we simply only know that they existed for the simple reason that Seventh-day Baptists refer to them, and we find them still there. And a significant local church in 1859 was already established before the Adventists organized, and they represent the bulk of the people who followed Ellen G. White, which the Church of God did not.

   Ellen G. White was viewed as a prophetess who taught that the Passover could be observed four times a year, which she had from her Methodist background, the churches of God's Seventh Day observed it on the 14th and only once a year.

   That was the big distinguishing factor early in the history of the church, and where it did not follow the Seventh-day Adventist thought that was already developing from L.G. White's ideas. So we go back a little further, how the church came to New Jersey, how the church came to all of the colonies on the east coast, he would have to go back a little further in time.

   And here we'll pick up the story of 1664 when Stephen Mumford from the Mill Yard Church in England, that is now nearly the heart of London, came to the colony, Newport, in Rhode Island, and there explained some things about the Sabbath, the millennium, and various subjects, certainly baptism, two brethren, most of whom were Baptists there. And in 1671, on the 23rd of December, there was organized the first congregation of the churches of God, or Sabbatarians.

   They would be a part of the history of Seventh-day Baptists too, because the Baptists take their root from this, those that are Seventh-day Baptists. From 1664, to 1671. In about seven years' time, a congregation was raised up in Newport, Rhode Island, and from that time to 1789, the churches spread throughout Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and down the east coast.

   They did not continue to exist down the east coast into the southern states, but then they began to migrate to the western part of Virginia. Now, I would like to ask on this day, how is it that the church should have taken root in Rhode Island? I think this is an important question for us to have some better knowledge on than we have.

   Why Rhode Island? Why not Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts? Why not in New York City? Why not in Charleston in the Carolinas? Why not among the followers of William Penn in Pennsylvania? And here we come to a very Important story that I would like us at this 4th of July season to take note of.

   First of all, the United States in its constitutional form we think of today as a nation that has a separation of church and state. But when the early colonies in the area of New England and the Middle Atlantic States were founded, it was not a matter of separation of church and state. But a matter of religious freedom.

   Now we should take note that the man who founded Rhode Island as a colony that we may have learned of, but perhaps have never seen fully or clearly in the story. Roger Williams was the founder of Rhode Island. He was born in 1603.

   He died in 1683 at the age of 80. He was a man who was highly educated in England, but found for reasons of conscience that he simply was not prepared to serve the Church of England directly. And he came to study various subjects in the Bible as other people were studying them.

   Many of these subjects involved the question of taking of oaths in civic affairs, as in the court situation. The question of the government of the church, the question of baptism, the question of where the church had been, the question of the millennium, what had the church been doing for 1,260 years? All of these things were troubling many people in England at this time.

   This, of course, is the period that we associate with the translation of the version of the Bible that I have here, the King James Version. This is the time after the death of King James I that Charles I succeeded him. And there was, of course, a major controversy that was developing between the then-established Church of England on the one hand and essentially the parliamentarians on the other, who were seeking to prevent Charles I of England from going back on some of the steps that had already been taken in the reformation in England. And the controversy grew up into a civil war. This is not a history subject at this point that we'll take one perspective of it only.

   It grew up into a civil war. And we had a controversy in the 1840s between Parliament and the king. It ended, of course, with the capture of the king in 1848 and his execution in 1849, by what was then called the Rumpf Parliament. And this is a very significant history because it would not have been possible for Stephen Mumford to have come to Rhode Island in 1664 if there had not been a place in the colonies that had a certain concept of freedom of religion at the level that we now think of it as separation of church and state.

   You see, when Massachusetts was founded by the Pilgrims or Puritans, the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1630 was established, the leaders of the colony, Puritans, did not assume that freedom of religion meant other than the state should determine what the true religion is and establish that faith. Now, let me state this clearly so we know the difference between the reasons for the founding of many of the religious colonies and the nature of the state that we now call the United States. The Puritans as a whole conceived that the king needed guidance and that it was his duty to establish the true faith.

   It was not a question of freedom of religion, but of determining the nature of what the true faith should be. It having already been determined that the Catholic Church was not the proper continuity of the true faith by the Puritans, they viewed it as essential for Parliament to impose on the King the responsibility to properly evaluate these matters and ultimately to establish the true faith and to Enforce it.

   It was first conceived of as a responsibility to the Church of England. But gradually, different groups began to divide on the subject. The king wanted to go in the direction of the Catholic Church more and more.

   He was, of course, at this time a Protestant, but there was a movement in that direction in the royal family. Parliamentarians as a whole wanted the true faith to be established. They had not yet defined it because there were all sorts of arguments as to what it should be.

   There were those who separated and proposed to establish, shall we say, local opportunities for the Commonwealth of Israel in the New World, but essentially with the idea of establishing the true faith and enforcing it. It was in the early 1630s, after the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, we have the man of our story, Roger Williams, who came to this colony. And he thought that since these were Puritans, he should find among them a people who were dedicated, who were, through the Spirit of God, seeking to do his will, because this is what he had heard the Puritans we're seeking to do.

   Imbued with the Spirit of God, coming to understand what the Bible says, peace by peace, and so than they were of the truth of God as it was being perceived even among them. And he began to realize that though he was a separatist to begin with, that it was not now a question of separating and forming another church.

   And instituting a fellowship that would require everybody to adhere to the new faith and it must be enforced, he gradually, over a period of years and by 1635, clearly enunciated the responsibility in his effort…. because in the early 1630s, after the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, we have the man of our story, Roger Williams, who came to this colony. And he thought that since these were Puritans, he should find among them a people who were dedicated, who were, through the Spirit of God, seeking to do his will, because this is what he had heard that Puritans were seeking to do. Imbued with the Spirit of God, coming to understand what the Bible says, piece by piece.

   When he came there, he found that they were very conscious of their social status, more so than they were of the truth of God as it was being perceived even among them. And he began to realize that though he was a separatist to begin with, that it was not now a question of separatists and forming another church and instituting a fellowship that would require everybody to adhere to the new faith and that must be enforced, he gradually, over a period of years and by 1635, clearly enunciated the responsibility in his estimation of what government in this world had as it’s real duty. He did not find anywhere in the Bible, outside of the unique establishment of the state that we call Israel in the Bible, the church that is the congregation of Israel at Sinai.

   He did not find anywhere that God ever asked any other state to establish the true religion and to enforce it in this age. That probably was the greatest concept that ever came to the mind of Roger Williams, and it set the stage, if you please, for why the United States is what it is today. Now, let me clarify this again so there is no doubt what it means, and in context with the problem in California, I think you should understand it.

   Roger Williams did not find in the Bible that Paul when he went to the Greeks, he required of the Greeks to adopt the true faith and then to get hold of government and then to enforce it in this age on everybody within the state. To that, I think we would all give assent.

   There is no such establishment of religion or requirement. Indeed, what we find in Revelation 17 is the concept that a church saw it as an opportunity or responsibility to lay hold of the state, in this case the Roman Empire, and to establish its views of quote the true faith, unquote, and to enforce it. Lodger Williams was remarkable even among all of the reformers as essentially, the first man. He honored others who had other ideas, but he is essentially the first man who recognized that in this age, apart from the congregation of Israel, as God established it at Sinai, the state was never anywhere authorized in the Bible to establish a religion, to finance that religion, and to enforce it. Roger Williams came to the conclusion that it was not the duty of the state to collect the tithe.

   It was not the duty of a state to determine what the true faith is. Rather, it was its responsibility to establish the opportunity for the true faith to have the freedom to function. It was the responsibility, as he conceived of it, for the state to have a relationship that we now know essentially as the separation of church and state.

   It was the function of the state to provide the opportunity for truth to exist and not to sit as a judge as to what is truth, what is error, and how error must be extirpated and destroyed because that, of course, was the way it had been done in the Middle Ages, and anything that was called heretical was destroyed, as much as men could lay hands on heretics. Roger Williams proposed some of these ideas, raised the issue of oaths in court, and by October 1635 was ordered to appear before court in a lengthy disputation.

   He was ordered to, in fact, be expelled from Massachusetts. It was not immediately enforced because of the state of his health. What the state of his health may have been, at least the court accepted that and allowed some six weeks.

   They were ready to seize him and send him back to England when he fled and went to an area that we now, know as Rhode Island. Now, it took two steps, we won't go through that part of the story, but he ultimately came to Rhode Island, an area that was yet to be properly incorporated. This was in 1636, and he established there a colony of people.

   Many Baptists came with him and other dissenters. And in 1636, the first Colony was established here, which had no actual charter yet from government. And it was established, conceived upon the idea of the freedom to practice one's religion.

   It was not an attempt to establish a millennial commonwealth. The Puritans viewed their responsibility as a duty to establish the millennial Commonwealth.

   That's the term that we can find in the record. It means that they were going to establish and enforce the thousand years through human government. The Puritans had discovered that the millennium was referred to in the Bible, a great discovery when you see that for a thousand years and more it had been suppressed.

   But having discovered it, they still thought in terms of human beings in this life establishing the government of God and enforcing it on people. This was just the way everybody had taken religion for granted as an instrumentality, either of the state or dominating over the state.

   So we may say that Roger Williams' concepts were most remarkable. There was trouble in the colony because it had no original legal sanction, and he went to England and arrived there at the time of the controversy between Parliament and King.

   We may quickly say, from a historic point of view, that as a result of appealing to Parliament, he obtained a charter for the establishment of the colony of Rhode Island in the area where we now know it, then a colony that granted freedom of religion. That was the way the colony was established.

   It was not an attempt to establish the true faith, but to enable it to exist. It is significant, therefore, that in 28 years' time, from 1636 to 1664, it had become sufficiently established that the churches of God, or the churches of Christ, or the Sabbatarians in England, sent over Stephen Mumford to the United States. That is a geographical area that we now know.

   But then to the colonies. And that the colony that was chosen was not Massachusetts. The colony that was chosen was not New York or Pennsylvania, but it was Rhode Island.

   And the first church that was established in 1671 as an organized body in Newport, Rhode Island, was under William Hiscock, H-I-S, or Hiscox, H-I-S-C-O-X. Also, at that Time Stephen Mumford was there as well as his wife. We have the record of the churches from then on in the United States, which may be discerned in the rest of the 1600s and in the 1700s to the early 1800s to Seventh-day Baptist literature.

   Roger Williams had not yet, during all this time, touched upon the question of the Sabbath. He simply was looking at the Bible, finding in it remarkable things he had never perceived before. The question of the Sabbath had not originally risen in his mind.

   He evaluated the subject of oaths. He looked at church government as well as state government, having understood properly the function of state government to keep the peace. To make it possible for us to conduct our job, as Paul says to the Romans, he looked also at church government as he had seen it around, and he came to the conclusion that there was no organized church body that God was using.

   And indeed, he had not seen anything in the United States or, sorry, in the colonies or England. He did not see it on the mainland of Europe. He did not see it in the Church of England.

   It was his view, which we have in his letters and in the literature that has been preserved from his pen, that he did not find a church government that was actually established by God functioning and being used. He did not see that either the Presbyterian concept or the congregational concept was the way that God first established the church.

   Roger Williams came to the conclusion that if God were to re-establish his government in the church, it would have to be done as he did it at first through the apostles. We have the record in the New Testament. And he therefore formally withdrew from any fellowship with any organized church body because he did not see in them a group of people doing God's work. That is a remarkable state of mind to come to.

   He not only then understood the nature of the function of government in this world, state government, civil government, but he came to see that in the area of religion, there was no government that God had established, which was actually functioning. He saw himself as his job, in a sense, based on Ezekiel 33:1-6, as a witness. He saw himself as a witness to what the Bible said to people who wanted to know what was in there.

   Though he had been an ordained minister, he did not see himself in any role in an organized church. He had not perceived in himself that God had called him for any such function. But it is remarkable that the job he was called to was to establish an area under the throne of the Parliament of England that guaranteed a freedom of religion so that the churches of God, the churches of Christ, that was also a name used by the same group of people, Sabbatarians, because they kept the Sabbath, would be able to function.

   And so would others in the meantime. He analyzed the millennium, the thousand years, and saw that Christ Himself must establish the thousand years, and it is not a matter of the church seeking to use the form of a state to bring it about. He understood that people who had been sprinkled or poured, that is baptism, as it is called in the traditional Christian practice simply were not baptized and had not received the Spirit of God.

   And hence he recognized the importance of baptism. He saw that the churches that had been established by the apostles and their successors had gone into a period of time of flight. And had been in the state of, shall we say, captivity.

   These are terms that you will find in the literature. They had been in the wilderness for 1,260 years. He saw that wilderness as a time of safety for some people, while others, of course, were persecuted during that time, as Daniel 11 records.

   And that in that century, the 17th century, there was the first time that people as a whole, they had the chance to have the freedom of their worship, such as they had not had for nearly 13 centuries. He was very conscious, therefore, of prophecy, as many others among the Puritans were.

   What is significant, however, is that whereas the other Puritans came to establish such groups as Presbyterians in Scotland and Congregationalists in England and America, as well as, of course, the Church of England, Roger Williams established no church. Roger Williams established as the father a concept which ultimately was incorporated in the Constitution of the United States, and that is that there should be no establishment or prohibition of religion. It is not the role of the state to intrude in proper areas of religion, but rather, from all we know, grasp the question of the Sabbath.

   Partly perhaps because he saw that the people who had come to understand this themselves seemed so far removed from what should have been the responsibility of the church, both in terms of church government and in terms of the impact of the Spirit of God. It is not for you or me to judge the question of why Roger Williams did not understand the Sabbath clearly as you and I do.

   He simply made no decision. He puzzled over these people who came there in 1664 and established the congregation in 1671, perhaps puzzled over them in the same manner that Herbert W. Armstrong puzzled over this same people later, when he asks of himself, who are they? Because on the one hand, they have more of the truth of God than he had found assembled anywhere. And on the other, they seem so pitifully weak.

   They did not understand church government. This is an interesting background because it is important for us to realize that God sometimes reveals His will in one way to one person and his will in another way to another.

   But Roger Williams was the man who was used to lay the foundation for the opportunity of this work to be what it is. And it started with a recognition of the role of human government in this age and a response to the nature of God's government in the church. And this is why he established no religion of his own, why he, in fact, shared many of the practices that we do.

   Perhaps one could say that intellectually, the things that we may talk about as distinct from doing, we talk about the millennium, we talk about the 1260 years prophecy, you know, we talk about baptism and oaths and the nature of Church government, those things he understood. But Roger Williams was afraid to practice certain things because he did not see himself called to establish them as the apostles were. And it simply was not given to him to see what he could do with respect to the Sabbath or the Passover.

   He himself said these things he waited for Christ's to clearly define and establish that there should come a time when an apostle or apostle should again be called of God to make these things known. And so he puzzled over Sabbatarians, the churches of God, the churches of Christ, the names applied to them.

   And among those people were ministers like Stephen Mumford, William Hiscock, J.W. Niles. He founded the Wilbur Church much later, of course, jumping over a century, and names in between.

   These people began to study the Bible. They began to establish over a period, shall we say, of 200 years, between the middle of the 16th century, sorry, of the 1600s to the middle of the 1800s, a period of 200 years, in which the characteristics in the English-speaking world of the Church of God as we know it came to the fore.

   They did not understand church government. They did understand baptism by immersion. They had doubts about the Trinity.

   They did understand oaths in general. They looked forward to the thousand years. They did understand the Sabbath.

   They did, in general, observe the Unleavened Bread and wine once a year, and they had very little help. They did recognize, as others did, the falsity of Christmas. It seems very strange that it would have taken them so long to recover these truths, but it did.

   It was not until the middle of the last century that there was an organized attempt to publish. And then it never did grow, to speak of, in terms of spiritual truth beyond us.

   But the churches of God did spread through the country until also they came to the state of Oregon as that territory was opened up. And Mr. Armstrong came to meet there what we call the Oregon Conference of the Church of God, there was essentially self-governing.

   So we move from the days of Roger Williams, who died in 1683, to a period of time when the church that he was looking for, but simply did not discern any more than Mr. Armstrong discerned that clearly as the church of God in the early 1930s.

   He puzzled, and in fact, it was not until this work came to take on much of its character in the 1950s, then he could look back and see clearly what he himself did not fully understand in the 30s or early 40s. It was not until the 1950s that Mr. Armstrong grasped the relationship of this work to those people and their role in terms of history in general. It may be described as that period in time when the truth had nearly fallen to the ground, had nearly fallen into death.

   And that was the people that was told to strengthen that which remains. It is the church that ultimately coveted properly the name Church of God, did not call themselves Seventh-day Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, but in fact held to the true name throughout the period. And as Jesus said of that very church in Revelation 3, you have a name that you're alive.

   This is where you ought to look. But spiritually, at the top, when that message was to be read to them, they were dead. Roger Williams did not see much spiritual life among them.

   We do not to this day see their magazines on the newsstand. We do not see millions of copies in circulation throughout the world.

   God had to use this work instead. We come then to the crisis of 1978. In the state of affairs that was developing as a result, of course, of the events in Guyana and the failure of the state of California, as they viewed it, to prevent this great tragedy that took place there.

   And that religion was centered in the Bay Region of the United States of California. And the state became very conscious of, let us say, a failure to exercise certain responsibility as it viewed the matter. And the rest of the story, of course, is our experience in a nation that has been conceived up to this point in time as essentially being governed by the concept of the freedom of church and state, there developed the idea that the churches cannot be wholly free any longer, that, in fact, the church must have the state of an arbiter, and the expenditures of money should be, in fact, subject ultimately to the evaluation of the state.

   In order to protect any dissident group or faction or individual from preconceived ideas of misappropriation of money and any other thoughts, of course, that have been expressed. We have moved, interestingly, through a period of three centuries in the United States and in the colonies when there was the basic concept of freedom available where the state was not establishing or disenfranchising a religion.

   And so, on this 4th of July weekend celebration, both in terms of the freedom of the country, I think we should reflect back on earlier events and realize to what extent the state of California has conceived of an idea that goes back to the Middle Ages, that goes back to the early Puritans for that matter, that the state has an obligation and a duty in some way to regulate, if not to establish, the faith, and to intrude in the function of the church rather than that individuals should seek to Christ to arbitrate matters of difference, whether those be honest differences or not.

   Head of his church and Members in the church or anybody that may claim to have Christ as its head should not have to go to the state for a decision. A state that conceives its responsibility, as the state of California seems to, in the office of the Attorney General, could not truly regard Christ as head of that church, or as for that matter, head of any church, or would not have to exercise such responsibility. It is a view that presumes that Christ is gone a long way off, that the shepherd of the sheep has returned as the Lamb of God to heavenly pastures, while it must shepherd the decisions today.