This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Herbert W. Armstrong, born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1892, adopted Sabbatarian and British Israelist teaching after his own 1927 conversion in Oregon, joining and then splitting from an existing Church of God (Seventh Day) ministry. In 1933 he began an independent radio broadcast from a 100 watt station in Eugene, Oregon, first airing 7 January 1934, under the name Radio Church of God, paired with a magazine, The Plain Truth. The ministry grew quickly: Armstrong incorporated the church in 1946, moved its headquarters to Pasadena, California in 1947, and founded Ambassador College the same year to train its ministers.
On 5 January 1968 the church took the name Worldwide Church of God, by which time its doctrine was fully formed and distinctive within American Christianity. It required members to keep the seventh day Sabbath and the annual Hebrew festivals, Passover, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles, as commanded practice rather than optional observance. It taught British Israelism, identifying the British and American peoples as descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel and reading contemporary geopolitics through that lens. And it rejected the Trinity, teaching instead that the Father and the Son alone were fully divine.
By Armstrong's death on 16 January 1986, weekly attendance had reached roughly 120,000 and annual income approached 200 million dollars, making it one of the larger independent radio ministries built in twentieth century America.
Sources Worldwide Church of God (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors with A Short History of Grace Communion International (Grace Communion International)Grace Communion International