From The Journal: News of the Churches of God, Sept. 30, 2000.

By Dixon Cartwright

AMARILLO, Texas--Legend has it that Jeff Booth, on his way out of the Worldwide Church of God, berated an aged and ailing Herbert W. Armstrong for hours on a sunny winter's day 20 years ago in Mr. Armstrong's Tucson, Ariz., home.

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But Mr. Booth tells a different story. In interviews with The Journal last year at the Feast of Tabernacles in San Antonio, Texas, and only a few days ago, he determined to set the record straight about his famous (in some Church of God circles) three-hour meeting with Mr. Armstrong.

Fired seven times

It was January 1980. Not many WCG members, even church pastors, could muster the temerity to request an appointment with Mr. Armstrong to ask him anything, much less probing questions about his opinions on pressing doctrinal questions of the time.

Though direct and to the point in the interview, Mr. Booth says he was never disrespectful, never raised his voice and never asked any personal questions, although the founder of the WCG and Ambassador College did "fire" Mr. Booth from his job as a church pastor seven times during three hours and 20 minutes.

Access to Mr. Armstrong

"In the fall of 1979 I had made a formal request to have a private meeting with Herbert Armstrong," Mr. Booth told The Journal.

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Present in Tucson were Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Booth, Mr. Tkach, Mr. Blackwell and Henry Cornwall, an aide to Mr. Armstrong. Also present in the house, but not in the meeting, was Mr. Armstrong's wife, Ramona.

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The state acted in January 1979. It wasn't long after that that Mr. Armstrong, in an effort to distance himself from the proceedings and to preclude his having to testify in court, removed himself from California and set up housekeeping with his wife in Tucson.

Primacy of Peter

Mr. Booth took advantage of Mr. Armstrong's implied invitation to WCG pastors to meet with him because he wanted to ask him questions about some matters that were troubling him, one of which was the new (for the WCG) doctrine of the "primacy of Peter."

"I actually had two reasons for going out there," Mr. Booth said. "The first was to determine whether my concerns about Mr. Armstrong were true or whether Stanley Radar was the culprit that so many in the ministry were making him out to be. There were rumors that Stanley Radar was manipulating and controlling Mr. Armstrong, and if that were the case then I would have done whatever I could have to help Mr. Armstrong."

In those days, in some WCG members' view, Mr. Rader, a longtime church employee and Ambassador faculty member, had grown close to Mr. Armstrong and was seen by some as a bad influence on him.

Mr. Rader did not become a member of the Worldwide Church of God until sometime in the late '70s, when Mr. Armstrong reportedly baptized him in a bathtub in a hotel in Hong Kong.

Then, in 1979 at the Feast, he and several other men were ordained or raised in ministerial rank, in Mr. Rader's case to "evangelist." Mr. Rader skipped the lower ranks of deacon, local elder, preaching elder and pastor (the rank of pastor, not to be confused with the position of church pastor).

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Troubling events

Mr. Booth had served the WCG as an employee since 1970 and an elder since 1971, when he graduated from the Big Sandy campus of Ambassador. He and his new wife, the former Linda Shaklee of Olympia, Wash., moved to West Texas. Over the years they served congregations in Odessa, Abilene, Lubbock and Amarillo, Texas, and Liberal, Kan.

In 1973 he became pastor in Amarillo and remained in that capacity for seven years, until his memorable meeting with the WCG pastor general.

By the time he took Mr. Armstrong up on his offer to meet with any WCG pastor, Mr. Booth found himself troubled by certain events in the church and certain decisions of Mr. Armstrong's.

Some of the decisions involved church teachings, even though Mr. Booth agreed with many of those early doctrinal changes. But the reasons for the changes, he said, bothered him more than the changes themselves.

"I felt that many of the changes were good. Matter of fact, most of our changes were good. But the changes--including those affecting women's cosmetics and divorce and remarriage--seemed to happen only if they were something Mr. Armstrong himself wanted to do for personal reasons or for his new wife-to-be.

"When Mr. Armstrong wanted to change a doctrine, he simply changed it. I think there should have been more of a deliberate process. The ministry should have been more involved in the doctrinal discussions and decisions."

One doctrine in particular was a problem with Mr. Booth, and it mattered little how it had come into being. The doctrine was the so-called primacy-of-Peter teaching: that the apostle Peter was the first in a line of chief apostles from the first century to Mr. Armstrong. By 1980 Mr. Armstrong for several years had referred to himself as "an apostle" and "chief apostle" and even "God's apostle."

"In the course of the three hours and 20 minutes we discussed a number of things, one of the primary ones being the primacy of Peter," said Mr. Booth. "Mr. Armstrong went into a discussion about having received direct revelation from God Himself of all the truth that he held and stated that he had learned nothing from any man."

Close but no cigar

Mr. Booth was taken aback by Mr. Armstrong's declaration that no man had ever taught him anything. So he asked him: "Did you not learn many of your truths from the Church of God (Seventh Day)?"

"Mr. Armstrong got rather angry when I asked this and told me that, no, he had learned nothing from them. He was merely trying [in the 1930s] to teach leaders of that church the truths that had been revealed to him, and they refused to accept the truth he was trying to teach them."

"Therefore he felt he couldn't work with them any longer because they were not teachable."

Although it has been 20 years since Mr. Booth's meeting with Mr. Armstrong, who died in 1986, Mr. Booth can "still see him getting quite red in the face" when talking about the Church of God (Seventh Day).

Mr. Booth reminded Mr. Armstrong that he had repeatedly, over the years, referred to the CG7 as the "Sardis era" of the church (a reference to one of the congregations of Revelation 2 and 3).

"Therefore, Mr. Armstrong, wouldn't it be logical to presume that truth was handed down from generation to generation of the church, starting with the apostles right on down to the ministers today?"

At that point Mr. Armstrong informed Mr. Booth that members of the Church of God (Seventh Day) were not true Christians. He said the Church of God (Seventh Day) was not the true church, just the closest thing he could find to the true church. (Mr. Booth said that Mr. Blackwell commented to Mr. Tkach after the meeting that this part of the discussion was "instructional" and "enlightening" to him.)

"He got quite angry and told me they never were the church," said Mr. Booth. "They merely were the closest thing to the church. When they rejected the truth he tried to reveal to them, then he had nothing more to do with them. He said: 'I tried to teach them the truth God revealed to me, but they wouldn't accept it. I was never a part of their organization.' He said he had never worked for them and had never been paid a dime by them."

So Mr. Booth asked him about pictures of ministerial credentials he had seen that showed he was ordained by the "Oregon Conference of The Church of God" in June 1931.

"I had also seen photocopies of canceled checks written to and endorsed by Mr. Armstrong, showing that Mr. Armstrong had indeed worked for the Church of God (Seventh Day). So I brought this up, and it made him quite angry. After he calmed down a little, then I asked him what was this truth they were rejecting."

Rejecting teaching

Mr. Armstrong said the Church of God (Seventh Day) rejected the teaching of the identity of Israel: that the United States and Britain and certain other nations are the modern descendants of the 10 lost tribes.

"I said, 'Well, Mr. Armstrong, did you not learn your understanding about the identity of Israel from J.H. Allen?'"

Mr. Allen was a Methodist preacher who early in the 20th century wrote a book espousing British-Israelism.

"Mr. Armstrong again got quite angry and informed me that, no, he did not learn anything about Israel from J.H. Allen."

Mr. Booth pressed the point: "Mr. Armstrong, I read J.H. Allen's book, Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright, and then I immediately reread your United States & British Commonwealth in Prophecy, and I saw whole sections that were nearly identical in the two books. J.H. Allen's book was written in 1917, and yours was written in the 1960s.

"Since clearly entire sections are nearly word for word, I have to assume that's where you got the information. I don't see a problem with learning from others, but shouldn't they be given their due?"

At that point Mr. Armstrong fired Mr. Booth as an employee of the Worldwide Church of God.

During the conversation Mr. Armstrong terminated Mr. Booth's employment a total of seven times. But, instead of walking out after a firing, he would ask Mr. Armstrong another question, at which time Mr. Armstrong would get interested in replying to it, and the conversation would continue.

Never on Monday

Besides making "startling comments" regarding the primacy of Peter, Mr. Armstrong talked about the dating of the yearly Pentecost observance and how it related to the chief-apostle, or primacy-of-Peter, issue discussion.

Mr. Armstrong had recently changed the WCG's observance of the Day of Pentecost to a Sunday each year, whereas for years the WCG had always observed it on the Monday 49 days after a weekly Sabbath in or near the Days of Unleavened Bread.

"You know, we recently changed the Day of Pentecost from Monday to Sunday as far as our observance," Mr. Armstrong told Mr. Booth. "The Day of Pentecost is now on Sunday. But, since I had made the decision to observe Pentecost on Monday, for years the Day of Pentecost was actually on Monday."

Mr. Armstrong explained his reasoning: He, as chief apostle, had the power to bind and loose. "Whatever I bind is bound in heaven, and whatever I loose is loosed in heaven," Mr. Booth quoted him as saying.

"In other words," Mr. Booth told The Journal, "he could be right even when he was wrong.

"So I asked him a question: Are you telling me that you can bind God to error?

"Mr. Armstrong got quite angry again and repeated to me that he had the keys to bind and loose and that whatever was bound on earth was bound in heaven. Then he fired me again because he said I had no right to question him."

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Although Mr. Booth says he never raised his voice, even when asking the hard questions, Mr. Armstrong was sometimes so exasperated that he called Mr. Booth names.

"He called me a nothing. He called me a nobody. He said what right did I have to question him on anything. Those are direct quotes. I can remember them very clearly."

Then Mr. Armstrong asked Mr. Booth if he believed he (Mr. Armstrong) were an apostle.

"Trying to prolong the interview, I had to figure out how I was going to answer that question. So I answered it with a question. I said, 'How exactly does one know an apostle when one sees one? How would I know and recognize an apostle?'"

Mr. Armstrong then talked about "fruit" and "the end-time work" and "some more about God's divine revelation to him and all the things that he had accomplished. All of this was proof in his eyes."

Mr. Booth asked him which apostle passed the baton on to him in the 1930s.

"He said there were some gaps," said Mr. Booth, "and one of the gaps was apparently the Church of God (Seventh Day)."

Mr. Booth said to Mr. Armstrong that, if the CG7 were not part of the Church of God, then where was the Church of God in the '30s?

"He just said it was himself. He was the church, and he was just trying to bring the Church of God (Seventh Day) along."

Mr. Armstrong, said Mr. Booth, believed not only that he was God's apostle but that he was the latest in a line of God's representatives with the title "Peter."

"When we were discussing the primacy of Peter," remembers Mr. Booth, "he said, 'Young man, you may not know this but Peter is a title, not a name.' It was a title given to Simon and a title that means the Peter. The title, and the keys, passed from chief apostle to chief apostle, from Peter to Peter. Each chief apostle was the new Peter. He said, 'Now I am the chief apostle, and I am the Peter.' "

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