Brief biography

          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, Armstrong returned to Pasadena, California where his father had moved the church's operations in 1946. He enrolled in Ambassador College, founded by his father and supported by the church. Ambassador was state-approved but not accredited, and Armstrong eventually completed bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in the only discipline offered, theology. He was ordained a minister in 1955 and held key administrative posts in both the Worldwide Church of God and Ambassador College until he was disfellowshipped (excommunicated) by his father in 1978. Prior to his removal, 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.

Personality

           In the mid 1970s, Penthouse magazine described Garner Ted as providing "late night companionship to thousands of truckers, the voice of the morning to millions of farmers, the living room preacher to a subculture of lonely, frightened, disoriented Americans." Noted for his charisma, movie star looks, and for being a music enthusiast, he toyed with becoming a nightclub singer before following his father into ministry. He was at ease before cameras and microphones. In radio and TV programs he mixed political, economic, and social news of the day with Bible-based commentary. Armstrong's voice, style and presentation (with a low-key, ironic delivery more in the style of a comedian's monologue than in the didactic fashion of the standard evangelist) attracted millions to the church-sponsored broadcasts. His voice was so widely known that his name was included with many of the world's politicians and entertainers on the record track The Intro and the Outro by the Bonzo Dog Band of the 1960s. On a radio commercial that aired in the Raleigh, NC area in the mid 1980s, he was among several celebrities said to have been seen at a popular restaurant in the area.

          Armstrong's proclivity toward secular pursuits outside evangelism was evidenced by his appearance as a guest on the US television show Hee Haw in the 1970s (Armstrong had arranged for Hee Haw co-host Buck Owens to entertain attendees at the WCG's annual convention one year), and his authorship of a novel, "Churchill's Gold", penned under the pseudonym William Talboy Wright - a mixture of names from his grandparents: William Dillon (maternal grandfather), Isabelle Talboy (maternal grandmother), and Eva Wright (paternal grandmother).His love for music and music theory is evidenced in subtle passages of the novel.

Childhood, youth, and military service: 1930-1955

          Garner Ted's genealogy is described in his father's autobiography. The elder Armstrong reported that the Armstrong ancestors arrived in America in the late 1600s with William Penn. The ancestry was traced to Edward I of England, and according to the Church's teaching on the identity of the descendants of the ancient Israelites, back to King Herremon of [Ireland], and ultimately to King David of ancient Israel. Garner Ted's grandmother was "something like a third cousin to former President Herbert Hoover" (Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong, Vol. I, 1967 edition, pp. 25-26).

He was baptized in early 1953 (Origin and History, p. 36).

Early ministry: 1955-1971

          Garner Ted Armstrong was ordained to the ministry by his father in 1955. G.T. Armstrong later reported in a sermon that he didn't want to be a minister, to which his father answered something to the effect that because he didn't want to enter the ministry that was a sign that he should. In 1957, he began to take over much of his father's broadcasting responsibilities. During that same year, he travelled extensively through South America. As a fluent Spanish speaker, he made several Spanish language broadcasts of the World Tomorrow.

          Armstrong conducted a major evangelistic campaign in Springfield, Missouri during the summer of 1958, around the time of the death of his brother Richard David Armstrong near San Luis Obispo, California.

          In June 1959, Armstrong traveled with his father to Denmark, England, Rome, Italy and Monte Carlo to promote the World Tomorrow program. The younger Armstrong later described this trip as a positive bonding experience between father and son in the wake of the death of Richard David the previous year. It was during this trip that the Armstrongs discovered the property outside London that would later serve as the Bricket Wood campus of Ambassador College. Later that year, the younger Armstrong visited Australia and the Philippines to help oversee the overseas development of the Church's infrastructure.

          In 1961, he was dispatched to Berlin to cover the growing tensions that led to the construction of the Berlin Wall.

          After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, Armstrong delivered an emotional message live on the World Tomorrow. He later reported that this was the most requested episode of the World Tomorrow broadcast.

Following a brief 1955 experiment on television by his father, Garner Ted Armstrong launched a televised version of the World Tomorrow in 1967. He would be the chief television host until 1978.

          In 1968, he interviewed West German cabinet minister Franz Josef Strauss for the World Tomorrow.

          You can hear some of GTA's "World Tomorrow" programs from the 1960's at www.icg.org.au

Challenging times: 1971-1978

          The decade of the 1970s brought a series of reversals for Armstrong's career, however. In 1972, Time magazine reported that Herbert W. Armstrong had said, without further elaboration, that his son was "in the bonds of Satan" and had been removed from church roles. Speculation and ministerial unrest were rife that the younger Armstrong had been committing adultery, gambling and had raped the stewardess on his personal jet airplane.

          Ironically, the year 1972 had been prominent in Herbert W. Armstrong's prophetic views, as elaborated in a booklet called 1975 in Prophecy!. January 1972 was supposed to be the conclusion of the second of two 19-year "time cycles" which, according to the elder Armstrong, had begun in 1953 when The World Tomorrow began to be heard over Radio Luxembourg in Europe. According to his theory, at the conclusion of that second 19-year time cycle the members of the church were expected to flee to a place of refuge, which leading ministers had speculated could be the ancient city of Petra, carved into rock in Jordan. Following this flight, World War III supposedly would begin, with a United States of Europe rising up to overthrow both the United States of America and the United Kingdom. This fitted with both of the Armstrongs' teachings of a theory generally referred to as British Israelism, outlined in the elder Armstrong's book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.

          When the church's speculative prophecies about 1972 and 1975 did not occur, Garner Ted Armstrong proposed dropping such an approach in favor of one centered on Christian living and an outline of church doctrines and practice. His establishment of a "Systematic Theology Project" was eventually jettisoned by his father, but a form of it was later adopted by a separate church that Garner Ted would establish

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