What is your answer to the question “Who are you?” Your answer tells a lot about your identity.
I am a calendar.
~ person I once spoke to
In Babylon 5, there was an ancient war between the side of light and the side of darkness (aka “the Shadows”). To the latter, the relevant question always was, “What do you want?” To the former, the relevant question always was, “Who are you?”
This question has a lot of relevance in real life as well. I remember once someone was keeping alternative days for the Feast of Tabernacles. He mentioned he was going home a couple of days earlier, and I said something like, “Oh?” He answered, “I am a calendar.” That really made my mind go tilt. He not only kept an alternative calendar, but he had wrapped up his identity in it.
I once posted that followers of Herbert W Armstrong would not make it into the Kingdom. Someone really took offense at that and claimed he was a follower of HWA. Not only was he too young to remember much, if anything, of HWA, but I pointed out that he did not keep all the things that HWA taught. His own organization rejected both the primacy of Peter and the one-man rule doctrines.
Don’t get me wrong. HWA did a lot of things right. However, he was a man, and he got a lot of things wrong. In fact, one of his greatest strengths was his ability to change course when proven wrong (which in itself often was quite a doing, but change he did).
On a side note, that is why people like William Dankenbring were such obvious liars. His claim that HWA “admitted that the Jews observed the correct Passover but he was afraid to change it” falls on deaf ears.
Oftentimes, the Church of God movement is called “Armstrongism”. HWA himself rejected that label. His view was quite clear: It is the Church of God, and he was only the human instrument used to raise it up in the modern era. Saying you are a follower of HWA means you have to reject what he himself taught.
No, I am not a calendar. No, I am not a follower of HWA. I am a Christian. I am a follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself tore the veil that kept us back from the Father, and He is Our Mediator. If He is not the only man between you and God, then you are worshiping an idol.