Garner Ted Armstrong
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Garner Ted Armstrong is an American evangelist and the son of Herbert W. Armstrong, and founder of the Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association and Intercontinental Church of God, a Sabbatarian organization that teaches observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, and annual Sabbath days based on Leviticus 23.
Garner Ted is recognized as the star of The World Tomorrow, television and radio program. His Christ centered message is unlike that of most other religious broadcasters.
Garner Ted’s genealogy is described in his father, Herbert W. Armstrong’s, autobiography. The elder Armstrong reported that the Armstrong ancestors arrived in America in the late 17th century with William Penn. The ancestry was traced to Edward I of England. Garner Ted’s grandmother was “something like a third cousin to former President Herbert Hoover“.[
Armstrong was born in Portland, Oregon, to Loma Isabelle (Dillon) and Herbert W. Armstrong. He was raised in Eugene, Oregon. He was the youngest of four children. He was named for a great-grandmother on his mother’s side, Martha Garner, who was born in Suffolk, England in 1841 and died in Iowa in 1923, seven years before he was born.
Following service in the United States Navy during the Korean War, Ted returned to Pasadena, California, where his father had moved the church’s operations in 1946. He was baptized in early 1953. He enrolled in Ambassador College, founded by his father and supported by the church. Armstrong completed bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. He was ordained a minister in 1955 and held key administrative posts in both the Worldwide Church of God and Ambassador College. He was executive vice president of the church and president of the college, and was widely considered to be heir-apparent to succeed his father as head of the church and its operations.
In 1976 Garner Ted was a guest on the Hee Haw show that starred Buck Owens and Roy Clark. He popped up out of the “corn patch” on the show to say “Sa-loot” to his hometown of Eugene, Oregon. He sang a country western song he had written titled “Working Man’s Hall of Fame,” and joined “the whole Hee Haw gang” to sing the popular Ocean gospel song Put Your Hand in the Hand.
Garner Ted was a popular speaker among the country music stars in the US, and a close personal friend of Merle Haggard. In fact, after Garner Ted died in 2003, Haggard commented that “after Johnny Cash died, I lost a real close friend in Garner Ted Armstrong. He was like a professor to me. What education I have, I owe to him.”[
He was so well known that one of the Hee Haw regulars, Archie Campbell, released a parody record in which he did a voice impression of Garner Ted doing the World Tomorrow program. On Archie’s record he was “Gagner Fred Hamstrung.” The Simpsons actor Harry Shearer parodied Garner Ted Armstrong during coverage of the annual New Year’s Day Pasadena Rose Parade along with The Credibility Gap ensemble of comedians featuring Michael McKean and David Lander of Laverne & Shirley fame, on their Warner Bros. Records comedy album, The Credibility Gap Floats, 1979. Garner Ted Armstrong became a a “household name” in the US and all around the world where his program was broadcast. Armstrong also arranged for his pal Hee Haw co-host Buck Owens to entertain attendees at the annual Feast of Tabernacles convention one year.
By 1977, Armstrong’s media exposure included a daily radio program broadcast on over 300 radio stations across the United States, 33 in Australia, and 11 in the Philippines, with other programs throughout the world rebroadcast in the German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Russian languages. With an annual television budget of six million dollars, his exposure also included television programs which appeared on up to 165 channels. For almost two years this included a daily television appearance. According to Armstrong, notables such as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Nelson Rockefeller, Cyrus Vance and Hubert Humphrey, as well as a number of U.S. senators were frequent viewers of the broadcast. President Johnson personally told Armstrong during an afternoon lunch the two men had at Johnson’s Texas ranch, quote “I watch your show (The World Tomorrow (radio and television)) all the time and I agree with most of what you have to say”. His friend, United States Senator Bob Dole ordered all copies of Garner Ted Armstrong’s 1970’s World Tomorrow broadcasts be preserved into the national archives of the Library of Congress TV & Film division. The World Tomorrow is the only television program of a religious nature included in the Library of Congress holdings.
He continued his ministry in later years through the Church of God, International (CGI) in the years that followed. Meanwhile, he appeared on both the John Ankerberg Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
He continued to conduct personal appearance campaigns throughout the United States, Australia, Jamaica, and Canada but on a much smaller scale than during his heyday in the 1970s. The appearances also provided opportunities for unofficial reunions for those who left or remained in the Worldwide Church of God. In the 1980s, he was in Jamaica when Hurricane Gilbert, a major hurricane, struck the island.[
In the fall of 1989, he travelled to Berlin to do on the spot radio broadcasts covering the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Until his death, he was the head of his Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association, which he had established in 1978, and the Intercontinental Church of God
Garner Ted Armstrong died on September 15, 2003, due to complications from pneumonia. He was buried in Gladewater Memorial Park, approximately two miles east of the former Big Sandy, Texas, campus of Ambassador University. He is buried with his wife’s family: his father-in-law Roy Hammer, his mother-in-law Pearl Hammer, and several other members of the Hammer family. His parents, paternal grandmother, and brother are buried in Altadena, California. The Hammers were the donors of the original property on which the Ambassador campus was located. His widow, Shirley, died in 2014.
Rather than selecting a new media spokesman, the evangelistic association continues to broadcast programs made by Garner Ted Armstrong on television stations, cable and radio. The Intercontinental Church of God and Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association are now led by Mark Armstrong. Mark Armstrong functions as CEO of the organizations and producer of the television outreach program.
Watch “Garner Ted Armstrong – His Life and Work” on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/238856511?ref=em-share
- The Plain Truth About Child Rearing (1963, based on doctoral dissertation)
- Your Marriage Can Be Happy (1960)
- After Death…then What? (1966)
- The Wonderful World Tomorrow: What It Will Be Like (1966, co-written with Herbert W. Armstrong)
- A Whale of A Tale (1968)
- Modern Dating: Key to Success or Failure in Marriage (1969)
- Some Fishy Stories About Evolution (1969)
- A Theory For The Birds (1971)
- The Real Jesus (1972, short version; 1977, expanded version published by Sheed, Andres, McMichael)
- What Is A Real Christian? (1973)
- Did God Create a Devil (1973, contributed Part Two titled, “Satan’s Fate”; remainder of text written by Herbert W. Armstrong)
- Do You Have An Immortal Soul? (1975)
- The Real Jesus (1977)
- How To Get Rid of Guilt (1979)
- Why Should You Repent? (1980)
- Oh God, Where Were You When I Needed You? (1980)
- Peter’s Story (1981)
- Facts You Should Know About Christmas (1981)
- The Ten Commandments (1981)
- Saturday-Sunday, Which? (1982)
- What Is The Real Gospel? (1982)
- Europe and America in Prophecy (1984)
- Can You Understand Bible Prophecy? (1984)
- Believe It Or Not – The Bible Does Not Promise Heaven! (1985)
- The Passover – Is It For Christians? (1986)
- What Is The Mark of the Beast? (1987)
- Churchill’s Gold (1988, under the pseudonym, William Talboy Wright)
- The Answer to Unanswered Prayer (1989)
- The Shocking Truth About Satanism (1989)
- Violent Crime Can Be Stopped – Here’s How! (1992)
- The Origin and History of the Church of God, International (1992)
- Betrayal and Forgiveness (1993)
- The Real Reasons Why Christ Came to This Earth (1995)
- God’s Armor (1995)
- The Great Tribulation: Is It About to Happen? (1996)
- Life on Mars? Or Did God Create the Universe? (1996)
- The Beast of the Apocalypse: What Is It? (1997)
- Saved By Grace? (1998)
- Coming Soon…An Invasion From Outer Space! (1999)
GARNER TED ARMSTRONG TRUMPETS THE EZEKIEL WATCHMAN MESSAGE
Garner Ted Armstrong 