How I Left

I left my splinter group on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008.
I had followed Herbert Armstrong for 30 years.

I insisted on going to services in order to see everyone one last time. I arrived dressed in my best. I made sure to give out as many hugs and hardy handshakes as possible. I got a cup of coffee and settled in for the sermon. When the coffee was gone, so was I. Quietly, I sneaked out the back door, and I am not going to return.

These were the people who were there when I was a child. They were at my wedding. They saw my wife and I through our pregnancies. Everyone was invited to my wife's baptism. They were grandma and grandpa to our children. We went through agonizing church splits together. They loved us like their own. They were a closer family than my physical family. And I never wanted to have to go.

I didn't set out to leave. This was no case of "exit theology" where I prepared for months and looked for a reason to go. I was studying into a false prophet whom I know very well, whom I call the "One Witnesses", when I learned some very terrible information about Herbert Armstrong. I was completely unprepared for the scope and weight of what I would find. I realized that I cannot call one man a false prophet and give the far greater offender a pass. That would be respect of persons. After many long and painful discussions, my wife and I decided we couldn't stay any longer.