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CHURCH OF GOD HISTORY ARTICLES, NOTES & CHARTS

New book on Church of God Sabbatarian History coming! Click for detals.

Click here for History of Doctrinal Development in the Church of God since the 1800s. 

Twentieth Century Pioneers

The history of the early Work of Herbert W Armstrong and the Radio Church of God in photographs


Little known information on HWA and the development of WCG doctrin
es


Herman L Hoeh was a key play in the formation of WCG doctrines


GG Rupert's similarities to HWA’s doctrines. This article discusses those similarities

 


Additional information on Rupert


Information on the pioneers of the WCG

Lists and Charts of the Early Years of Herbet W Armstrong

WCG Pioneers in Chart form
 
The Church of God and Sabbatarians since the 17th Century

Historical developments of the Church since the late 1700s in chart form


What Sabbatarians believed since the 1700s


The Seventh Day Baptists relationships with other sabbatarians in the 1800s


Information about a group that once promulgated God's Holy Days

 


Is there a missing link in the history of the Church of God?


Was the Church ever known as 'Church of God (Adventist)'?

Doctrines of the Sabbatarians Since the First Century (to be completed)

Variety of charts simplifying aspects of Church of God history
History of Doctrinal Development

Origin and development of the Fair Chance doctrine (original articles here)


Background to the origin of many doctrines

How the Israel Identity Truth entered the Church of God

Summary of the development of WCG doctrines
 

History of the Third Resurrectiion Doctrine
Click here for additonal information on the History of Doctrinal Development in the Church of God since the 1800s.       
History of the Sabbatarians since the First Century

Tracking the history of the
h
oly days


What the early Church believed


Sabbatarians are a small, scattered flock of God's people


The history of various Church of God groups around the world

Worldwide Church of God History


History of WCG Ministerial Conferences

History of WCG Foreign Works
  History of the Feast of Tabernacles History of the World Tomorrow broadcast

The doctrinal changes uniquely traced year-by-year
 
History of the Plain Truth magazine History of WCG publications History of the Place of Safety Doctrine  
Miscellanous

Why Church history? Is is important to record and tend to?

List of groups in Australia
 

Source: Wikipedia

Articles by others on the Waldenses available here (NB: not all of this information is about those that were called Waldenses who observed the Sabbaths. Most who were known as Waldenses did not observe the seventh-day Sabbath).

It must have been in 1977 or 1978 that I discovered Gerard Damsteegt, a SDA scholar who authored a fascinating book ‘Foundations of the Seventh-day Adventist Message and Mission’ in the SDA bookshop in Perth. 

The SDA bookshop also had a lot of old pre-SDA literature and original SDA literature. Years before, as a youngster, I read their literature in the Port Elizabeth, South Africa library as part of my research. Uriah Smith in particular interested me. The other SDA bookshops in Strathfield (a suburb of Sydney) and Avondale College also contained much old literature. Nowadays, that has changed and their bookshops are more and more mainstream and without depth. 

 I found the book by Damsteegt intriguing filled with all sorts of fascinating titbits – include a copy of the SDA 1872 Fundamentals. This included article V: 

>V. That the new birth comprises the entire change necessary to fit us for the kingdom of God, and consists of two parts: first, a moral change, wrought by conversion and a Christian life; second, a physical change at the second coming of Christ, whereby, if dead, we are raised incorruptible, and if living, are changed to immortality in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. John 3:3, 5; Luke 20:36.< 

Some time later (2005), I obtained an article by him arguing for the Waldenses (or many of them) being Sabbath-keepers. The article was titled The Waldenses. An Analysis of Insabbatati.

In June 2010 he advised me he was withdrawing the article, pending the publication of further research, after rigorous review. His new article was published in 2016 and is available here (Decoding Ancient Waldensian Names: New Discoveries). Shows you how long it can take for scholarly articles to be reviewed and accepted for publication and to finally be published behind a queue of others! 

I think you will find the article of great interest – in particular the 16th page onward following the sub-heading Waldensian Sabbath-keepers. I think it shows that the Waldensians, much like the terms Adventist or Scythian, is an umbrella term for several groups. 

Finally, let me make this point: I have much literature on the Waldensians and from what I could gather, there were Sabbatarians amongst them. It was rather obvious from my readings that many Waldensians observed the 7th day Sabbath, but most didn't. We should not force history into our template, but deeply and honestly study the records.

The old WCG papers by Lester Grabbe "Were the Waldenses a part of God's Church?" (1981) and Lawson Briggs “Did Peter Waldo Keep the Sabbath?” (1974) notwithstanding, some Waldenses did indeed observe the seventh day Sabbath.