Op-Ed: A Warning Against Henry Hilderbrandt and ‘Church of God Restoration’
The Church of God Restoration, located in Aylmer, Ontario, has been in and out of the news for the last year, usually in cases involving the government seeking to shut them down, all to no avail. Led by Pastor Henry Hilderbrandt, the church and its leadership have been a thorn in the side of the province of Ontario for nearly 14 months now, all the while gaining more and more prominence and notoriety.
They gained attention by ignoring the province’s early prohibitions against having even a drive-in church service, and later on fully open services, along with being issued tens of thousands of dollars of tickets and fines. In fact, one time the police gave all the present congregants at a church service $880 fines, but still they persisted.
Standing up to political bullies and tyrants has inevitably resulted in Hilderbrant becoming a rock star on the free-speech stage in Canada and a prominent speaker, yet along with attention, so comes with it the scrutiny.
While we appreciate the stand he is taking and the sacrifices he has made, it must be said clearly and publicly that we do not consider him a brother in Christ, we reject their doctrinal distinctives, and would actively discourage anyone from attending their church if they care even a little bit about their own soul.
By way of brief background, the Church of God Restoration was formed after a major split from the Church of God, initiated 40 years ago by a man named Daniel Layne. Coming from a Holiness/Wesleyan movement, he viewed the denomination as too liberal, breaking away and forming 21 congregations worldwide, composed of about 4000 members. These congregations, about 10 in North America, are all close-knit and are led by a group of Capital-A “Apostles.”
Founder Layne ruled the congregations with an iron fist. While starting off relatively stable, he would later claim he was one of the angels of God prophesied in the book of Revelation, sent to open up the seventh seal. He came to Aylmer, where Henry Hilderbrandt now pastors, and preached that the churches there were ‘dead’, and that they had found the True Church.
The church website describes the body:
This (The Church of God Restoration) is a divine move of the Spirit, ordained by God and prophesied of in Revelation and other scriptures. God is restoring His church and calling all of His true children out of every sect and schism back to the one fold.
Unlike the Amish who like to be left to themselves, the COGR are not shy and will aggressively proselytize among other churches, seeking to draw away congregants into their folds and having the greatest success among fundamentalist churches and Mennonites. In Aylmer’s case, they emphasize that in order to get to heaven, the person being recruited needed to leave their false church and join the true church. Around 50 people joined him from surrounding churches and they formed their congregation.
Layne passed away in 2011 and was succeeded by Ray Tinsman, who is now the Chief Apostle. COGR teaches that those who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit can and must attain sinless perfection, and they have rules in place to see that attained. A small summary, but by no means an exhaustive list of the rules and regulations that must be followed include:
- No TV, jewelry, alcohol, caffeine, holiday celebrations, dancing, or no ball games.
- There is to be no decorating your home, wearing fragrances, or introducing children to cartoon characters.
- Marriages are arranged by the pastor.
- Some jobs are off-limits to members, such as being a police officer, doctor, nurse, military, long-distance trucker, or any job in a restricted place like a restaurant or casino.
- They are against the medical industry and refuse any sort of medical intervention, medicine, or vaccines.
- Men and boys cannot wear jeans, but rather must wear dark pants and white shirts, along with black vests. This does not change no matter how warm it is outside.
- Women must wear long dresses that cover their ankles and have sleeves that go down to the wrist.
- They cannot cut their hair and cannot wear lace of any kind, irrespective of the article of clothing.
- They also cannot wear the color red and the church controls the color of underwear and stockings congregants are allowed to wear.
Along with this rigid legalism comes bizarre and blasphemous views on the Office of the Apostle and the way they view scripture.
After taking over from founder Daniel Layne, Tinsman formed the “Presbytery.” The Presbytery is comprised of 12 apostles, two of which are women, and one who is Henry Hildebrandt from Aylmer.
In COGR theology, ‘apostles’ are described and defined as “sent ones,” given by God’s Spirit, to “progressively restore truths lost in the great falling away, and…not only to complete the restoration of all truth, but also to lead in and oversee the gathering together of the members of Christ’s body into one fold.”
Basically, these apostles are the replacements for the 12 apostles that Jesus had and are elevated to blasphemous heights.
At a recent gathering where one of their “apostles” was teaching, they gave the “Chief Apostle” Tinsman some very lofty titles, bestowing upon him:
the only name, the name that is above all names on this creature earth, the governor of the world, the judge of all this world … our very own, brother Tinsman.”
Crucially, they believe that these apostles can teach new modern-day revelation that is on par with the scriptures. Apostle Henry Hildebrandt taught at one of these all-church meetings, noting:
If we do not recognize, accept, and receive the present-day apostles of the Lord, we are no better than short-sighted man or the Catholic church.
and
If you identify the Bible as your ‘present truth,’ why do you go to service? Why go to the meetinghouse? You have your Bible at home and Walmart sells them for just a few dollars. You come to service to hear what the Spirit is presently saying to the church. Present truth comes through men. From the creation of the world until now, God has always had men who were in charge.
In an open Q&A at Tinsman’s church in August 2019, where lay people and regular folk can attend and ask the leadership questions, the following interaction took place.
Participant: ‘Could an apostle (of the Church of God Restoration) write scripture?’
Tinsman: ‘Most all scripture was written by an apostle.’
Participant: ‘Could one of you write scripture?’
Tinsman: ‘Yes sir.’
Participant: ‘Do you have any plans to?’
Tinsman: ‘No sir.’
Participant: ‘Why not?’
Tinsman: ‘I don’t know.’
When asked, “Do you have the ability to take away someone’s salvation?” Tinsman replied, “Yes!”
Much like the Mormons, this church presents a theological facade and looks relatively normal and orthodox on the surface, if a bit strict. But once drawn into the fold, the full breach and scope of their blasphemous beliefs are discovered and made manifest.
Consider them to be marked and avoided.
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The epitome of ‘religion.’ Yikes.
Seems we have all sorts of groups these days who have a problem with both the Bible and God’s authority.
Please don’t do this! This petty quarrelling is the worst thing Christians could be doing right now; right when churches across the country are unifying against government overreach, we have to find something to separate over? Satan must be thrilled. I’m not saying these issues aren’t important, but let’s work through them as we focus on the larger battle. Who is the enemy here? Pastor Hildebrandt? When churches are being barricaded by Canadian police?
I’ve been attending here for the last few weeks because every other church is closed. Pastor Hildebrandt has made it clear that he regards the other Christians who are gathered to be Christians and even preached a sermon on it. He is yet to say or do anything heretical in any of my time there. When there’s no other church left to go to why not stand with the only church that is open? This past week we had 1000 people and the gospel was preached. Not once have we been asked to dress like them or observe their internal rules 🤷♂️
Daryl, I explore you to not join their group.
Please do yourself and your family the favor of staying away from that group.
I used to attend there for over 20 years and I know all too well how their system works.
The preachers will all ban together and all preach along the same line of Jesus is love, Jesus will forgive your sins, repent and be saved today before it is too late….. and once a person gets “saved” it is then that they start to preach along a slightly different path, one that will convince you that in order to stay saved you have to give up your old ways of life, you have to give up worldly clothing and start dressing modestly….. and that is only the beginning of what they do to slowly get the new members entangled into their web of rules and restrictions that they call “the church standards”.
I lost my family to that church due to Henry’s ungodly unbiblical interference with my children.
Henry would make decisions for what my children can or cannot do in my own home without my knowledge or consent, he would neglect to communicate with the father of the children and demand obedience of all children to the rules and restrictions that he sets in place without the father’s consent.
Please stay away from them at all costs, unless you want to freely give up your rights and freedoms of being the parent of your own children.
There is other options out there, I attended a church close by last Sunday. The gospel was preached.
I have been a visitor for over a year and do I ever stand with Hildebrandt. I really appreciate the other two comments here as well. Thank you Lord Jesus for every saint in The Church of God, especially Henry, Susan, and El Vira Father, for the role models and support they’ve been for me and my family, and thank you for everything You are doing through them in this historic time. All glory and honour to you Lord. Please bless and keep us Lord. 👑
We love you so much. Your faithful servants.
Barbara, I am saddened to see that you are such a loyalist to Henry’s cult, he is determined to control every aspect of the children and young people for their entire lives, even well into their young adult years.
Henry has boldly stated from the pulpit that he will tell your children exactly what they can or cannot do regardless of how old they are!!!!
The young people must obey his instructions or they will not last long in his congregation!!!
Henry does not even follow his own advice that he gives to the parents during Saturday evening “Parent’s Meeting” where Henry gives detailed instructions to the parents as to how they shall train up a child and how they should talk to the children.
He warns the parents to never speak to the children in an angry tone and it should never be heard that a parent would be yelling at a child…… and then comes Sunday morning…… Henry gets behind the pulpit and starts to speak very harshly to the children and young people and gradually raises his voice till he is full out yelling at the children in his congregation!!!
Henry is not a true “Apostol”, he is far from being a humble God fearing man, he is a proud, angry, controlling man who demands obedience of every man woman and child that is under his grasp to control them as he sees fit.
Henry is fitting for freedom of oppression from the tyrannical leadership of the government, but yet he will not allow his followers the freedom from a tyrannical controlling religious leadership which he is the head of that controlling body in Canada…….
Please stay away from his tyrannical controlling leadership!!!
Is the Church of God Restoration Trinitarian? They don’t seem to have a Statement of Faith on this.
BEWARE OF THIS CULTS SELF DECLARED CHIEF APOSTLE MR. DONALD RAY TINSMAN WHOM HAS UP AND PROCLAIMED HIMSELF AS GOD IN THE FLESH DOWN HERE UPON THIS EARTH. SPEAKING OF THE ANTICHRIST…
I first came to know of Hildebrandt through the freedom movement and decided to investigate his fellowship. It took me all of 2 minutes to see blaring red flags of a dangerous, seditious (against the Christ Himself) cult.
First, it is tantamount to blasphemy to presume to appoint oneself or anyone else to the office of Apostle. That is an anti-Biblical, anti-Christ non-starter. The lesser (man) does not appoint anyone to serve the greater (Jesus). Jesus appointed all His 12 personally (Matthais was an ignorant misstep on the part of the 11 which came to nothing). Then they appoint those who serve under them and so on. This is the divine order. Even in human affairs, no one but the President or Prime Minister appoints whom will serve in his cabinet. There are 12 foundation stones of the New Jerusalem, no more and no less, and COGR’s band of usurpers will not be added to those.
Second, it was evident by their uniform dress code that these are people operating in the carnal realm of physical uniformity not true unity, which is spiritual. I have much experience with the former via other groups. They all try to impose a false unity through an outward uniformity. In doing so they lay all manner of yokes open their trusting victims and they expose their Nicolaitan motives to control and oppress in the name of their false theology. They serve the letter, not the spirit and They also rebel against God’s own example of the tremendous variety He endowed throughout all His Creation. These people seek to become robots following man-made precepts until every individual thought is dead and the Spirit fully quenched.
Those two witnesses were enough for me to know to stay well away. When I encountered Henry in person I had a strong sense of a very controlling darkness but I dismissed it at the time because of his church freedom efforts. Not everyone who joins with us is of us. I’ve since seen some of their toxic services online and this article reveals more of the prideful, blasphemous rot that is always lurking under the surface of these cults. They’re careful to present one face to visitors they hope to win over and make into twice the sons of hell they are, but membership will reveal a darker path of progressive victimization and alienation from Christ and toward a men. Turn to Jesus and ask Him to teach you, as He commanded in Mat 23:8.