Following service in the United States Navy during the Korean War, Armstrong returned to Pasadena, California, where his father had moved the church's operations in 1946.

Ambassador was not regionally accredited, and Armstrong eventually completed bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in the only discipline offered, theology.

He was ordained a minister in 1955 and held key administrative posts in both the Worldwide Church of God and Ambassador College until he was disfellowshipped (excommunicated) by his father in 1978.

[3] In 1975, Garner Ted Armstrong arranged for his friend, Hee Haw co-host Buck Owens, to entertain attendees on Family Night at the annual fall Feast of Tabernacles church convention.

[7] Country music star Merle Haggard said that his most popular song "Okie From Muskogee" was inspired by listening to a Garner Ted Armstrong radio program of The World Tomorrow.

January 1972 was supposed to be the conclusion of the second of two 19-year "time cycles" which, according to the elder Armstrong, had begun in 1953 when The World Tomorrow began to be heard over Radio Luxembourg in Europe.

According to his theory, at the conclusion of that second 19-year time cycle the members of the church were expected to flee to a place of refuge, which leading ministers had speculated could be the ancient city of Petra, carved into rock in Jordan.

According to Armstrong, notables such as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Nelson Rockefeller, Cyrus Vance and Hubert Humphrey, as well as a number of U.S. senators, were frequent viewers of the broadcast.

[12] Senator Bob Dole requested all copies of Armstrong's 1970's World Tomorrow broadcasts be preserved into the national archives of the Library of Congress TV & Film division.

Armstrong and others in the organization were skeptical of Rader's legal and financial dealings and suspected a bid to control the church's multimillion-dollar business.

One plan was formulated by Armstrong, who wanted to take the church in a direction built around a larger publishing and broadcasting platform that would go out under his name.

Armstrong was wary of prophecies built around specific dates, and he was reported to be against the idea of continuing to deliver messages that associated the U.S. and Britain with the Lost Ten Tribes.

He experimented with turning the church's flagship magazine The Plain Truth into a tabloid-size newspaper in the style of the Christian Science Monitor.

He envisioned a television broadcast along the lines of one that was later developed by the Christian Science Church, which created a short-lived nightly news program that was later seen on the Discovery Channel.

This foundation helped to finance the Tatum O'Neal motion picture Paper Moon and a new and slick commercial publication called Quest; bought Everest House, a publishing company; and turned the Ambassador Auditorium, located on the college campus in Pasadena, into a performing arts venue that boasted an annual subscription series featuring world-renowned performers and celebrities from stage, screen and the recording arts.

In 1978 Herbert Armstrong excommunicated his son and fired him from all roles in the church and college on the night of Wednesday, June 28, 1978, by means of a phone call to Tyler, Texas.

He continued to conduct personal appearance campaigns throughout the United States, Australia, Jamaica, and Canada, but on a much smaller scale than during his heyday in the 1970s.

In 1997,[18] following accusations by a masseuse named Sue Rae Robertson,[19][20] Armstrong was asked to resign as leader of the CGI, but to remain a laymember, by the church's board of directors.

[24] He was buried in Gladewater Memorial Park, approximately two miles east of the former Big Sandy, Texas, campus of Ambassador University.