We rather like the review of the Autobiography Volume 2 by Jim Frank at amazon.com:
Herbert W Armstrong didn't seem to have a single doctrine that he didn't steal from another religion.
G. G. Rupert of the Church of God Seventh Day had a set of eclectic doctrines that were well suited to the purposes of Herbert Armstrong. Besides the Sabbath and the Holydays, there were doctrines of clean and unclean meats, and the Plan of God embedded in the pamphlets written by Rupert. It was upon these doctrines and teachings that Herbert Armstrong based the religion that he founded. Herbert wrote to the leadership of the Church of which he was a minister about the things he began to believe and was rebuffed. Not being able to take being ignored for his ideas, Herbert left and formally started his own Church.
The British Israelism theory was a clear ripoff from J. H. Allen's book, although the original idea came from a English lunatic. The doctrine of soul-sleep, the idea that the soul dies with the physical body, and that both are resurrected simultaneously is based on the Adventists.
Armstrong strongly taught the Gap theory, where he places a gap of indeterminate time between the first two verses of Genesis chapter 1. The rebellion and fall of Satan goes in here and God is forced to re-create the world, contradicting God's description of the completed creation on day six as being "very good". Now does that make sense? He could weave stories like that and the Two Trees for hours boring his audience into submission. The God family idea is vintage mormonism, telling those who believe the WCG's message, they will become gods themselves, and will then populate all the planets in the universe.
Why is it that the earth today is so filled with wickedness, suffering, and sorrow? God permits them, because his purpose is to build another paradise on earth. Also the Holy Ghost is not a person but a force, rejecting the traditional symbol of Christianity the cross, and denying the existence of Hell - these are all ideas based on teachings of The Jehovah's Witnesses.
A peculiar feature of Worldwide Church's Millennium is that Jewish festivals will be celebrated, but Armstrong had his own spin on when the Passover is observed, and he changed the date of Pentocost. He was known to flip-flop on other issues (makeup, divorce and remarriage) as well. I thought a truly inspired man of God would have had it right the first time. Armstrong would call his followers his dumb sheep, because they seemed to accept what he said without questioning it.
