40 Years in the Wilderness, a Legacy and Challenge

40 has always been a meaningful biblical number. Jan. 16, 2026 will be the 40th anniversary of Herbert W. Armstrong’s death. Regardless of where or when you came into God’s truth, there is likely a connection to the man that God used to reveal truth to others. I had the privilege of knowing him my whole life and working directly with him every day for his last years.

God started Herbert Armstrong’s journey through his wife Loma who challenged him to prove the Sabbath. He was a successful business man with something God saw He could use. Mr. Armstrong knew he would be rejected by important men if he kept the Sabbath. He took the challenge to prove his wife wrong.

In a three-year study he proved the Sabbath was commanded, and began to keep it. It was not popular and he went from rich to poor to keep God’s laws, something most men would never do. God led him to understand other truths including that they should keep the Holy Days of Leviticus 23. God did not reveal to him what these days meant until Mr. Armstrong and his wife had kept them for several years. He sought the truth, wherever it would lead, like men in the Bible, whom God chose, often over their own desires or objections.

It took courage, commitment and convictions to go against the grain as God showed him so many things where the Bible disagrees with popular Christianity. While it is hard for anyone to make this step, it is easier knowing there are congregations where others see the truth as you do. Mr. Armstrong and his wife did it alone.

The radio broadcast started when no one was willing to open the daily radio station in Eugene, Oregon. Mr. Armstrong, with prayer, accepted the opportunity. When the station began to get mail from his talks, he was offered radio time at $2.50 a program. It was an enormous sum at the time, and often he drove to the station without the money, having faith it would somehow come. It did come as God blessed the Church during Mr. Armstrong’s 50 years as Pastor General. The Church went from one station to 476 independent stations purchasing $27 million of time in each of the last few years of his life.

Mr. Armstrong started the Plain Truth magazine, which grew to nearly 9 million copies by 1986. Churches he established early in his ministry disintegrated without pastors. He moved to Pasadena, California to do the broadcast and raised up a college there in 1947 with four students and eight faculty. He later founded two other campuses in England and Texas. These could train men and women in the scriptures and train pastors for the Church. He wrote hundreds of booklets and several books, his last being “Mystery of the Ages,” to be a textbook companion to the Bible for Sophomore Bible class at Ambassador.

Reading Matthew 24:14, Mr. Armstrong realized that he needed to preach the gospel to the world before Jesus would return. A request for some color photos for the Plain Truth magazine that King Leopold III of Belgium had taken led to the king seeing an Envoy and asking to meet with Mr. Armstrong. He wanted to “meet a man who built a character-building institution.” This meeting led to the king introducing Mr. Armstrong to Prime Minister Lee of Singapore and President Suharto of Indonesia. Was this how God wanted to spread the gospel?

This led to over a decade of visits with royalty, emperors, presidents, prime ministers and diplomats in many different countries to deliver the gospel of the Kingdom. Mr. Armstrong was an ambassador without portfolio. His last trip covered nine countries in 24 days while legally blind by IRS standards, and physically weak at age 92, showing his determination to do the work, performed in his weakness, but with God’s strength.

His most common phrases over the years were “Blow the dust off of your Bible” and “Don’t believe me, believe your Bible.” The Bible is God’s word, and Mr. Armstrong was true to it for himself and the Church until his death on Jan. 16, 1986. The United Church of God started with, and maintains this view of the Bible.

There were things Mr. Armstrong really missed as the Church grew and he aged. “I miss just being able to fellowship with the brethren, but I can’t handle shaking hands with 1,000 people.” The other, in his words was, “I just miss being able to read the Bible.” His final TV programs showed him using a magnifying glass to read. What most didn’t know about that red Bible, was that it was in three volumes, and when he changed passages, I would have to freeze the shoot, place another volume exactly where the prior one was, and he would go on in that volume. I finally convinced him to simply state the verse and production would write the quote at the bottom of the screen.

In the last six months of his life, He made a request to “find something Jesus said to someone about something.” He couldn’t be specific so he asked that I begin reading Matthew. He would recognize it when we found it. After finishing the gospels, “It must have been Paul.” So we began with the epistles and ended up reading the entire New Testament. I really think he just wanted to hear it again but didn’t want to ask. He didn’t like putting people out for personal requests.

His last directive to me was, “Promise me you will help prepare the Bride”—to him the next step before Jesus’ return. In these 40 years since his death over half of the Church went apostate under the leadership of his successor, Joseph Tkach. At the time I wondered why God didn’t tell Mr. Armstrong who He wanted as successor. Looking back, my simple answer is that God wanted to test the Bride. As WCG cancelled the truth for heresy, every single person had to ask, “am I following a man or am I following God’s word?” Mr. Armstrong held God’s word dear.

Do we value God’s word as much as he did? Will we hold fast to truth and endure to the end as he did? It’s been 40 years. Are you proving yourself ready to enter the Promised Land?