The magazine is published by United Church of God. This is from A Brief History of the United Church of God
: Many of the current ministers and members of the United Church of God were once members of the Worldwide Church of God, a nonprofit corporation under the leadership of Herbert W. Armstrong until his death in 1986. A subsequent unwarranted shift toward nonbiblical practices and beliefs led numerous ministers and members to leave the fellowship of that organization.
Concerned with uneven administrative practices of the former assembly, more than 100 ordained ministers developed a new administrative structure that was more directly accountable to members and the ministry.
Unfortunately for the late Mr. Armstrong, his many novel doctrines are all over 1900 years too late in their formulation to be expositions of "authentic, primitive" Christianity, and most of the others that he borrowed seldom have, in turn, more than a 200 year-old pedigree themselves, which is equally incapable of establishing apostolic origins to the doctrines!
I would say that Armstrong didn't really come up with any new or original doctrine. Instead his strength was to publicize biblical doctrine that had been trivialized and ignored by the traditional church. Ideas such as observing God's holy days and not man created holy days were nothing new.
Armstrongism is little more than a cult, in which an appreciation for historical Christianity is of no concern whatsoever.
I can't argue what "Armstrongism" holds because I'm not an "Armstrongite". However, I do know that traditional Christianity has decided that in many cases tradition should trump the bible.
What utter rubbish this article is! It makes objections that never existed for very near 1900 years since the time of Christ, and still dares to complain of the novelty of Easter celebrations! Whew!
The only things that need to be addressed are:
1. Was Easter observed by Christ?
2. Did the Lord specify which days are holy and which days to observe?
3. Did the traditional church stop observing these days and substitute their own?
‘Was Easter observed by Christ?’
Would’ve been tough for Him to do so, since by the first anniversary of His resurrection, Easter, He was back in Heaven.
This is a rather silly question, when you think about it. He certainly "observed" His own Resurrection, if that's what you mean! But, no, He did not observe Easter (or the anniversary of His resurrection) while He lived here on earth for the simple reason that He was no longer here as a walking, talking God/Man after His ascension! That, you will recall, was only 40 days after His resurrection, and therefore missed reaching even the first anniversary of His resurrection by 325 days.
2. Did the Lord specify which days are holy and which days to observe?
No, He did not. Neither did He prohibit observations of the days commemorating His birth, death and resurrection, which the Church established very early on.
3. Did the traditional church stop observing these days and substitute their own?
Yes, they did. Certainly St. Paul implies, in Romans 14, that the holy days of the Jews were no longer mandated in the New Covenant. There is absolutely no evidence that the universal Church celebrated even one of them after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and even the ethnic Jews who were Christians had become absorbed into the general Christian population and stopped their observances by the mid-second Century. To resuscitate these Old Covenant holy days, and imply they have some mandate to this day, bespeaks a special kind of arrogance, and implies a very poor reliance on the the providential care of God for His own Church.
Herbert W. Armstrong, among others, had just such that kind of a lack of understanding of God's Providence. The groups that splintered off from his Worldwide Church of God, such as the one which published this article, continue in that fundamental lack of understanding. Furthermore, their use of such highly discredited sources about "Catholicism" like Alexander Hislop betrays an ignorance of even the most basic understanding of Church and world history, the development of world religions, and a methodology for the cultivation of even the most elementary logic about pretty much anything.
The article heading this thread is ludicrous at all levels. I would not trust its authoritativeness on even a single point. Dig deeper.