In this Issue
From the Publisher
Remembering Benjamin Rea
Old Church of God Microfilms found!
More Old Photographs
Israelite Church of God in Chile
Earliest Baptised Members in the Radio/Worldwide Church of God
Deaconess Baptised in 1918, Evicted by Sunday Worshipers
History of the Work sermon by Aaron Dean
HWA's first booklet published in late 1920s
HWA mentioned in an old 1938 CG7 publication
Over 290 Herman Louis Hoeh Audios transcribed!
New book: The Millennial Reign of the Messiah
Church of God Networks
More Articles Published
List of our Websites and Blogs
How to Navigate the Friends of the Sabbath site
From the Publisher
Dear friends and supporters,
It has taken me longer than expected to produce this current edition. That is because there has been so much going on finalising my new book on The Millennial Reign of the Messiah (details below), researching, writing articles for publications, writing papers, negotiations for archive materials and updating the website accordingly.
We now have over 630 subscribers and I invite you to let others know that they can subscribe for free. Let’s try and reach 1,000 subscribers within a couple of years.
Many folk have been helpful, sending me items to scan or to convert tapes to MP3 & MP4; or have scanned photographs and other items for the website. For them I - and I know all of us - are very grateful. I have e-mailed them individually thanking them for their valuable contribution.
I continue to receive a steady trickle of information: such as the photo of the church in the late 1940s (scroll down); 5 tapes from the late 1970s to convert to MP3; a paper by Carl Franklin I have been seeking for years; and further information on the earliest attendees of the Radio Church of God in Sydney - all this week alone! Over a year, these trickles really mount up adding to our knowledge and understanding of our history. You now have an enormous archives database to undertake research you were not able to before.
Finally, this edition contains many juicy bits of information including the good news that the lost microfilms of Church of God (Seventh Day) (CG7) literature has been found after so many years and prayers!
Sincerely,
Craig M White
Publisher
PS: you can view past editions of this newsletter (vol 1. no. 1 to vol. 2 no. 2) here and vol. 2 no. 3 onward here.
Remembering Benjamin Rea
Information on WCG pioneer, Benjamin Rea can be found here. Although he died in 1965, his work for the Church was instrumental in reaching Spanish people around the world should be acknowledged and preserved. After all, that work continues to this day in one form or another.
Old Church of God Microfilms Found!
When the CG7 had Midwest Bible College (MBC) in Stanberry, MO there was a wonderful, large library. It included many volumes of excellent theology research books. When the college closed in 1975 the library went first to Summit School of Theology in Denver. Then, when that closed about 2000AD the books just remained in an unheated building which possibly resulted in their deterioration. From around 2021 there has been talk of selling the Conference property in Colorado. So, many of the books were sent to Spring Vale Academy in Michigan and others got disbursed to places unknown.
The CG7 literature, though, was never kept in the library. It was in the publishing house vault downstairs from the college in Stanberry. When the publishing house moved to Denver (1975) some of the old literature and magazine were moved, others were left behind (I have visited the Denver offices and personally viewed the old periodicals). A previous pastor of the Stanberry, MO church found that there were still quite a lot of things in the vault - including a knee-high stack of Sabbath School Missionary periodicals.
Only some MBC library books were sent to Spring Vale. All CG7 tracts, magazines and other literature were kept in the publishing house vault. But where are they today? No one is willing to reveal their location or perhaps they were thrown out. If so, that together with the fire to the head office in the early 1900s, has resulted in the loss of much of original CG7 literature and history. A massive tragedy. However, due to what I have managed to collect over the years and scanning by John Lemley, some old booklets and tracts have been preserved here - I hope to re-figure that area of the website soon. Let’s hope and pray that more old booklets and tracts are found.
Apparently much or most of the old periodicals were placed on microfilm. A CG7 minister purchased one of the microfilms from the Denver office in the late 1990s for a friend in Canada. Years later he wrote back with the troubling news that he inadvertently discarded it while cleaning up in his office. The CG7 minister contacted Denver to purchase another microfilm, but was informed that they did not have any and we were concerned that they were lost forever. This information was relayed to me by elder John Lemley. But we prayed about it hoping for a miracle.
[Below are two photographs of a portion of the CG7 archives I took during my visit to the Church of God (Seventh Day) head offices in 2018].
In the meantime I gathered what I could and uploaded them to the Friends of the Sabbath website which you can view here. That is: Messenger of Truth (1853-58); The Hope of Israel (1863-72); Advent and Sabbath Advocate and the Hope of Israel (1872-73); Advent and Sabbath Advocate (1874-92); Sabbath Advocate and Herald of the Coming Kingdom (1892-1900); The Bible Advocate and Herald of the Coming Kingdom (1900); The Bible Advocate and Herald of the Coming Kingdom (1900-72); Bible Advocate (1972-date).
In 2018 a minister from another Church of God was given 1,000s of photographs of pages of old CG7 periodicals dating to the 1800s and uploaded them to a drive for me to download. My understanding is that these were from the Andrews University whose staff had somehow managed to photograph these editions. Clayton Porter assisted me for weeks during mid-2018 in assembling the photographs I was sent of these periodicals from a source. We had to take individual pages and combine them together into single files to complete a given issue of the periodical. Then labelling them followed by uploading to the site. This meant that many or most CG7 periodicals for the late 1800s were now preserved for posterity.
Then 23 December 2023, Rose Difley rang the CG7 offices and was told they did have it (somewhere along the line it had been found) and after several communications back and forth, John Lemley was sent the microfilms which were received 11 April 2024 and on 24 April the results of the sample conversions were provided by the company involved and it looks good! We hope that these will all be converted in searchable PDF format soon.
Photographs of the boxes containing the microfilm rolls and list below have been provided by John Lemley below.
There are twenty-four microfilm rolls:
Nov. 2, 1864 thru March 16, 1886
June 30, 1868 thru March 19, 1889
March 30, 1886 thru May 16, 1893
March 26, 1889 thru January 23, 1894
March 20, 1894 thru June 14, 1898
January 30, 1894 thru July 5, 1904
July 16, 1901 thru June 12, 1900
July 12, 1904 thru February 11, 1908
February 18, 1908 thru November 29, 1910
December 6, 1910 thru February 18, 1913
February 25, 1913 thru May 11, 1915
May 18, 1915 thru August 7, 1917
August 14, 1917 thru November 11, 1919
November 18, 1919 thru January 24, 1922
January 31, 1922 thru December 18, 1923
January 8, 1924 thru December 22, 1925
January 5, 1926 thru December 20, 1927
January 3, 1928 thru December 24, 1929
December 31, 1928 thru December 22, 1931
January 4, 1932 thru December 25, 1933
January 22, 1934 thru December 18, 1934
January 7, 1935 thru December 21, 1936
January 4, 1937 thru December 19, 1938
January 2, 1939 thru December 23, 1940
I took a photograph in 2018 of this photo of CG7 elders (late 1800s or early 1900s I believe) at the CG7 head office.
Old Church of God (Seventh Day) Booklets & Tracts
Some time has been spent reconfiguring and reordering the section on the website containing scores of old CG7 booklets and tracts. Many of these date back to the 1800s into the early 1900s. You can read them for free online at this link.
More Old Photographs
Michael Armstrong and Susan Herrmann, and others have been kind and cooperative in scanning many photographs to help preserve the WCG’s history and memory.
For the benefit of visitors to the Friends of the Sabbath website, the kind person who undertook the upgrades to the websites, has now inputted a code that opens up photographs in the web page instead of just seeing lists of them in folders and sub-folders.
You can see most of them here.
There is another website that keeps on taking 100s of rare papers, theses, audios and videos from my site without acknowledgement or request. It will be interesting to see if they nab any of these.
Herbert and Richard Armstrong, May 1955.
A formal faculty reception at beginning of school year, mid-1960s.
Loma Armstrong - Feb 1955, Redwood Building, Big Sandy, Texas.
Jann Cole LeBleu sent me this one of Radio Church of God members in the late 1940s. You can see Mrs Armstrong in the middle:
Israelite Church of God in Chile
Ricardo López Marchant and I have been in contact for some years concerning the history of the Israelite Church in Chile which has been around since the 1890s. I came across a paper about them in the late 1970s and knowing more about them has always been on my radar - see information I have collected in this paper page 21 and also this article page 32. Ricardo was kind enough to send me his book on the history of this group which he has made available for all and sundry here. It took some time for me to format it after using Google Translate to translate it from Spanish to English but it was worth it! I have only formatted it, not edited it in any way.
Chapters V and VI are the most important for our research purpose. Slowly but surely the gaps in our knowledge of the history of the Churches of God are being filled in.
The above link includes a document (dated 1969) concerning why the Israelite Church did not merge with the WCG (though some members did join). Photograph below is of the group celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles in 1911.
Earliest Baptised Members in the Radio/Worldwide Church of God
I am gradually making progress in assembling lists of the earliest baptised members in the WCG which you can find here.
But I am still seeking those from countries such as Canada, Philippines, Germany et al and any help in finding these names is most appreciated.
Elder Robin Jones supplied valuable information for Britain. He wrote several e-mails to me and I include one below (14 March 2024):
“Mr Armstrong held two weeks of Evangelistic Meetings in June/July 1956 in the Andrews Halls, London. A Bible Study/Church was initiated - - no. 016 with about a dozen attending. George Meeker (now the London Office manager) was the Pastor.
Later in 1956, Rod Meredith came to London to study at the British Museum Library for his thesis on the Protestant Reformation. By December that year, the new London Church had dwindled to just five or six people.
Rod Meredith saw the need for urgent action. He planned a four week Evangelistic Campaign, five nights a week for January/February 1957. As I was studying in London at the time, I was able to attend those meetings at the Commonwealth Institute on Northumberland Avenue. After that campaign, the London Church had from 20 to 25 attending.
Mr and Mrs Meredith and George Meeker stayed in London until just after Passover in 1957. In those first eight or nine months of the London Church about 10 or 12 were baptised.
Mr and Mrs Howard Silcox. ( They later took care of the Ambassador College grounds at Bricket Wood.)
Me and Mrs Silvernail.”
Further information on the Work in Britain can be found here.
Deaconess Baptised in 1918, Evicted by Sunday Worshipers
[I thought that this old article may be of interest to readers. Please be advised that the Sabbatarian group mentioned below had no connection (as far as I know) with the group based in Chile].
Worldwide News
Monday, March 4, 1985
By Jeff Zhorne
FIUGGI, Italy- One might say Gladys Carnes, who will be 88 March 5, has known God’s truth all her life, having been brought up by her father, a Bible-believing minister, and baptized in 1918 at age 21.
Mrs. Carnes, who attends the Brighton, England, church and attended the Feast of Tabernacles here in 1984, was ordained a deaconess April 1, 1980.
Her father, Alfred Henry Wight, was a minister among a people that the world called “Christian Israelites,” said Mrs. Carnes. Seven churches existed in London (Holborn, Finchley and Forest-Gate), Southbend and Moorcombe, England, Wales and Scotland.
“A Mr. Sheffield baptized me in London in 1918; I don’t remember his first name because when I was young, people didn’t worry that much about Christian names,” said Mrs. Carnes.
“In England the Church kept the Passover, the Days of Unleavened Bread and the Sabbath,” she recalled.
But in 1919, the Church declared Sunday as the day of worship, and her family was thrown out because they believed in God’s Sabbath. “They literally threw stones at us” she said.
“You know, there is a building by my house (in Holborn) that was built in 1600’s, and it is inscribed with ‘Church of God’. People were burned at the stake there for keeping the Sabbath”.
After eviction by the “Christian Israelites,” who continued to call themselves the church of God, Mr. Wight still kept the Sabbath at home. The year “1919 was the end of churches for father,” she remarked.
Miss Wight, in 1920, married Thomas St. John Carnes, an Irish Roman Catholic.”
“ My father was against our marriage,” said Mrs. Carnes, but Tom and I agreed that we would never talk about religion and our children would choose (their religion) at the age of 16. They both chose the Church of England, but Tom kept his word- we never argued about religion.”
In 1922 Mr. and Mrs. Carnes moved to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where they lived for 12 years. There Mr. Carnes was superintendent of prisons for the British Colonial Service. “Of course there was no church in Sri Lanka, so I gradually lost interest,” she said.
“Then Mr. Carnes uncle Leonard Lilly from Seattle, Washington, sent her one of the first Plain Truths printed on neostyle by Pastor General Herbert W. Armstrong in 1934. Mr. Lilly told her to take note, “Here is the truth returned.”
“I met Mr. Armstrong”, said Mrs. Carnes, “and he said I didn’t have to be baptized again.”
In the 1950’s God’s Church was raised up at Denison House in London. Mrs. Carnes met Mr. Armstrong’s wife, Loma, there.
“I’m telling you now-no joking-God has always looked after me. Just like that snake in Sri Lanka.”
A cobra was once coiled on the kitchen counter of her house. Just when Mrs. Carnes was the snake, a man walked in the doorway and said, “Don’t move” he shot the snake before it could strike her.
Mrs. Carnes told of how her father would anoint sick people with “a small bottle of olive oil.”
Mrs. Carnes husband died in 1976. Today Mrs. Carnes, at her home in Telscombe Cliffs, England, still weeds her garden, paints and washes her curtains twice a year.
During the Feast she walked two miles to the top of Fiuggi-and walked back down again.
History of the Work sermon by Aaron Dean
This sermon was given 22 July 2023 can be watched on YouTube here.
Other sermons by him and more by other presenters on Herbert W Armstrong are available here.
Further information on Stan Rader who he mentions can be found here.
HWA's first booklet published in late 1920s
Most people do not know that HWA’s article on ‘Can a Sabbath Keeper Believe in Evolution?” published in the Church of God (Seventh Day) periodical The Bible Advocate, in 1928 was also published as a booklet probably in late 1928 or 1929. You can find this and other articles by him published in that periodical here.
It was probably the first booklet ever published under his name.
Many thanks to John Lemley who found it amongst his items and scanned this for us.
HWA mentioned in an 1938 Church of God publication
You may be interested to learn that HWA was mentioned in the Sabbath School Missionary, 28 Nov 1938, p. 3. The section in letters to the editor titled "Sunbeams" and was written by a youth.
Apparently this periodical was published since the 1880s.
Although HWA's credentials were withdrawn by the Church of God (Seventh Day) group based in Salem, West Virginia in mid 1938, HWA continued to pastor his congregations in Oregon.
FROM OREGON
Dear Readers,
I haven’t written for so long, I thought I would write. It sure has been hot out here. Every-thing is so dry (Aug). We are irrigating today. It is pretty when they are irrigating. It sprinkles way out.
Well tomorrow will be Sabbath. Bro. Armstrong is our minister. We go to Sabbath school every Sabbath. I am 11 years old and in the 6th grade. I might get to go to Jefferson school; they have a new school house.
We, heard Bro. Kauer and Bro. Murray. They showed pictures. Bro. Murray is a native of Trinidad Islands.
Bro. Dailey is our minister part of the time.
We had an all day meeting in June. There was a nice crowd at Eugene at S. S.; in my class there are 14. There are 11 in the primary class.
I will close with a puzzle: enim seye era reve wadtor eth dLro; rof He llash klucp my teef tou fo eht ten.
LaVonne Henion [emphasis mine]
NB: Herbert Armstrong used to preach in the Jefferson Schoolhouse mentioned above. It is now a private residence.
Over 290 Herman Louis Hoeh Audios transcribed!
Rommel Valencia, recently transcribed audios on my website. We decided that the Herman Hoeh audios should be transcribed. Go to this link and scroll down to ‘Sermons and Lectures’ for the texts of all of these sermons! You can listen to these sermons at this link.
The audio to text transcription by OpenAI Whisper. And technical automation implemented by Rom Valencia.
Rom noted: >AI transcriber services still requires humans to design, enhance, implement, maintain and test (quality assurance). Human transcribers are not "out of a job" yet, just enormous increased in productivity.<
What a terrific blessing this is for the Churches of God. But remember, some of what is contained in the sermons would be dated or superseded.
Unsurprisingly, one site keeps on nabbing scores and scores of audios and papers from the Friends of the Sabbath site without discussion or simply linking to the source.
New book: The Millennial Reign of the Messiah
My new book on the Millennium was published earlier this year. Basic information:
Thirteen chapters plus appendices
Eighteen tables and charts
Twenty-five illustrations
Over 320 pages
Over 138,000 words
Further details here. Purchase from Amazon here or direct from the publisher here.
I hope that it has contributed to our understanding of the 1,000 year reign of Christ by providing a huge amount of detail.
Church of God Networks (CGN)
I was asked to join the CGN as Australian local contact, with this role taking effect in January.
The local contacts have held meetings, hosted by Daniel Russo, the President and are working on various matters.
The CGN website can be accessed here.
More Articles Published
Articles have been published by yours truly on subjects which might interest you:
“What will the Beast be like?” Twenty-First Century Watch, First Quarter 2024, pp. 20-25.
“Meet Your Board. Craig M White,” The Sabbath Sentinel, March 2024, p. 21 [this edition will be uploaded to the website in due course]
List of our Websites and Blogs
History Research Projects Foundation (a tax exempt foundation)
Friends of the Sabbath
Friends of the Sabbath (Facebook group)
Friends of the Sabbath Telegram channel
Origin of Nations
Origin of Nations news and information (Facebook group)
Lost Tribes (Facebook group)
Origin of Nations & World News Discussion Forum (e-mail group) [NB: click on the link and search for the forum]
HWA Library & Archives
HWA Library & WCG Archives (Facebook group)
HWA Library & WCG Archives (YouTube)
WCG & HWA News, Library, Archives Discussion Forum (e-mail group) [NB: click on the link and search for the forum]
My Articles & Papers
Globalresearchera1 (Academia site with select articles only)
World News
Global Newsa1 (X page - formerly Twitter)
GlobalNewsa1 Telegram channel (world news)
Bible Study, Church History and Other
Work of God through the Ages (Facebook page. Note: this page will be closed after the almost 700 members transfer to the new group referred to below)
Work of God through the Ages (Facebook group)
Global Bible News, Studies and Information Telegram channel (Bible history, archaeology news etc)
Sharing and Giving (currently inactive)
How to navigate the Friends of the Sabbath website
The website is vast with over 350 gigs of information, periodicals, articles, papers, photographs, audios and videos. The information has taken years to build (since the 1990s) and decades to collect the information (since the 1970s).
Due to its size, the huge number of categories and sub-categories, pages and sections it can be daunting to navigate or to find the relevant information the browser or researcher may be seeking.
So, what I recommend to everyone is to simply go to the Explore by Alphabetical Order section. In that you will find the most important areas to explore. Try it and see how you go - you never know what fascinating and helpful information you will come across!