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It was a spring Saturday morning, 31 years ago. In a midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom, a congregation had gathered to hear a leading minister—with the "rank" of evangelist—preach the sermon of the day.

Though only in his mid-40s, the speaker's hair was already gray, his dress formal, and his manner authoritative. We were, after all, a lone island of "true" followers of Christ in a sea of paganized "Churchianity," destined to tread on the ashes of those who rejected the end-time message.

Something was bothering Roderick C. Meredith that day. I don't remember what it was, but I'll never forget his emphasis: "It's just plain weird, people! It's just plain weird!" he shouted, pacing in the front of the ballroom. We sat in rapt attention. You really could hear a pin drop, even if the floor was carpeted.

I wore down an entire red pencil that day, highlighting verses in a wide-margin, heavy-paper King James.

About a year later, driving a company Jaguar, he gave me a tour of the England campus of the church's Ambassador College, which was closed and would ultimately be sold.

Five years after that day, I shook the dust of Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, the church where Meredith was a high official, from my shoes. I eventually became an evangelical, and swore off Armstrong's iconoclastic beliefs that Anglo-Saxons were descended from the "lost" tribes of Israel, that Old Testament feast days were to be preferred, birthdays shunned, and politics avoided—along with the Trinity, "unclean" foods, most medicines, and crosses. Oddly enough, drinking, dancing and, ultimately, divorce and remarriage were tolerated there — although the latter in only limited circumstances.

Nearly 20 years later, I interviewed Meredith, now "exiled" from the Armstrong group because he refused to adopt the changes Armstrong's successors discovered: "British Israelism" is a myth, they said; the Sabbath is optional; tithing isn't mandatory, nor are the dietary laws. Christmas, Easter, birthdays, voting, a decorated tree indoors in December: All are matters of individual taste and conscience.

Meredith, still a courteous man, said he was standing firm in his beliefs. I reported that and his views in Christianity Today in 1993. While Meredith's story would surface every once in a while, it was a bit of a shock to me when Terry Ratzmann, a 44-year-old single man and apparently longtime member of the old Worldwide Church and then Meredith's Living Church of God, walked into another hotel room where another Meredith-following congregation was meeting, pulled out a handgun, and started shooting.

Murder in the Living Church of God
Seven people at the meeting were killed, including the circuit-riding pastor Randy Gilbert and his 17-year-old son, James. Four others were wounded, including Gilbert's wife, Marjean, who remained in critical condition at this writing. When a stunned congregant finally confronted him verbally, Ratzmann reportedly turned the gun on himself and fired. He was the eighth fatality that day.

Outside the small community of people who either knew of the Armstrong saga or its offshoots, the world at large probably knew little of the Living Church of God. It claims 7,000 members in 280 congregations, averaging about 25 people per group. These congregations usually meet in rented rooms: hotels, schools, Masonic lodges, what-have-you, following a pattern established by Herbert Armstrong, who believed that investing in local church buildings is wasteful spending.

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March (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49