Armstrong's biography states that he had been ordained in 1931 by the Oregon Conference of the Church of God (Seventh Day), an Adventist group, but split with them in 1933.
[citation needed] The program was essentially a condensed church service on the air, with hymn singing featured along with Armstrong's message.
Armstrong's doctrine included strict observation of the Saturday Sabbath, annual festivals and holy days described in Leviticus Chapter 23; the distinction between the flesh of ritually clean and unclean animals listed in Leviticus Chapter 11;[6] the forbidding of medical interventions,[7] and the required payment of three tithes to the church.
[citation needed] In 1956, Armstrong published 1975 in Prophecy!, a pamphlet that predicted catastrophic draught, famine, and epidemic disease in the United States between 1965 and 1972, as well as an upcoming nuclear world war instigated by underground German Nazis, the subsequent enslavement of Christians in Europe, concluding in the return of Jesus Christ.
Because church literature such as The Wonderful World Tomorrow, 1975 in Prophecy!, and many others had attempted to pinpoint the date of Christ's return, members continued to wait anxiously for the Second Coming.
The article surmised:Both passages make two points in common: that a bishop or church elder must be faithful to his wife and rule strictly over believing children.
[19] While some congregants speculated adultery, others guessed that father and son had disagreed on the format of their radio and television programs, or on some tenets of the church, such as the Elder Armstrong's vocal support for racial segregation.
[citation needed] In 1977, Herbert Armstrong married Ramona Martin, a woman nearly fifty years his junior, and moved to Tucson, Arizona while recovering from a heart attack.
The pamphlet asserted that the church's tithing system reduced members to poverty, costing up to 40% of their income, to support the Armstrongs' lavish lifestyle, including multiple homes, expensive cars, and a Gulfstream jet.
[4] During the 1960s, "Armstrong had sought to put into stronger action what he later termed God's way of give",[25] which was said to include "the way of character, generosity, cultural enrichment, true education: of beautifying the environment and caring for fellow man."
He began undertaking humanitarian projects in underprivileged locales around the world, which led to the creation of the church-run Ambassador International Cultural Foundation (AICF) in 1975.
The church auditorium hosted, at highly subsidized ticket prices, hundreds of performances by noted artists such as Luciano Pavarotti, Vladimir Horowitz, Bing Crosby, Marcel Marceau, and Bob Hope.
Quest publishers hired a professional staff unrelated to the church to create a high-quality publication devoted to the humanities, travel, and the arts.
[citation needed] Several members in good standing with the WCG prompted the State of California to investigate charges of malfeasance by Rader and Herbert W. Armstrong.
A coalition of six ex-ministers brought accusations of misappropriation of funds against Herbert W. Armstrong and Stanley Rader to the Attorney General of California, contending that the two men were siphoning millions of dollars for their personal indulgences.
In 1979, California Attorney General George Deukmejian placed the church campus in Pasadena into financial receivership for a half year.
Wallace alleged that there had been lavish secret expenditures, conflict of interest, insider deals, posh homes and lifestyles in the higher ranks, and the heavy involvement of Stanley Rader in financial manipulation.
In referring to the investigation of the California Attorney General, Rader wrote Against the Gates of Hell: The Threat to Religious Freedom in America in 1980, in which he contended that his fight with the Attorney General was solely about the government's circumventing religious freedoms rather than about abuse of public trust or fraudulent misappropriation of tithe funds.
While remaining a member, he left the public spotlight as an attorney, retired, but continued to receive payments from the WCG on his lifetime contract, $300,000 per year, until his death from acute pancreatic cancer on July 2, 2002.
[citation needed] Walter Martin, in his book The Kingdom of the Cults (1965), devoted 34 pages to the group, claiming that Armstrong borrowed freely from Seventh-day Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormon doctrines.
Shortly before his death, on January 7, Armstrong appointed Joseph W. Tkach Sr. to succeed him "... as pastor general, in the difficult times ahead".
The changes were presented as new understandings of Christmas and Easter,[31] Babylon and the harlot,[32] British Israelism,[33] Saturday Sabbath,[34] and other doctrines.
In the 2004 video production Called To Be Free, former dean of WCG's Ambassador College Greg Albrecht, declared Herbert Armstrong to be both a false prophet and a heretic.
[37] Much of GCI's current doctrine follows mainstream Protestant beliefs that faith in Jesus is the only way to receive salvation and that the Bible is the divinely inspired and the infallible word of God.
This and the President's power to appoint and remove members of the Advisory Council have remained areas of concern even among those who applaud the church's doctrinal changes.
The early WCG used a three-tithe system, under which members were expected to give a tithe or 10% "of their increase", usually interpreted as a family's income.
Under Joseph W. Tkach Sr., the mandatory nature of the church's three-tithe system was abolished, and it was suggested that tithes could be calculated on net, rather than gross, income.
The denomination sold much of its property, including sites used for festivals, camps built for teenagers, college campuses, and private aircraft.