Church of God General Conference (Abrahamic Faith)

Church of God General Conference (Abrahamic Faith) belongs to the Adventist and Sabbatarian family of churches.

Governance: congregational.

Church of God General Conference (Abrahamic Faith) reports 78 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).

A small Adventist body teaching that the kingdom of God is a real government coming to a real earth — and that Abraham's promises are the gospel's backbone.

Heritage

The Church of God General Conference, often distinguished as Abrahamic Faith, gathered nineteenth-century Adventist and Age-to-Come congregations who read the gospel through the promises to Abraham; the general conference organized in 1888 and reorganized in 1921. Long centered in the Midwest, it operates Atlanta Bible College and is headquartered in McDonough, Georgia.

Theological family

Biblical unitarian and Adventist by self-description: one God the Father; Jesus as His virgin-born Son, sinless, crucified, raised and coming again; conditional immortality; and salvation bound up with the kingdom promised to Abraham and David, to be established on earth at Christ's return. Trinitarian bodies differ on the nature of Christ; the difference is reported here, not adjudicated.

Who decides what

Congregational: autonomous churches cooperating through the General Conference for education, publishing (The Restitution Herald) and missions.

What a first-time visitor would find

Sunday worship in a plain evangelical register — hymns, prayer, and preaching that returns often to the covenant promises and the coming kingdom; believers' baptism by immersion; communion observed congregationally.

What it has always cared about

The Abrahamic covenant as the frame of the gospel; the restoration of Israel taken seriously long before it was fashionable; lay Bible study; and a small church sustaining its own college for the sake of doctrinal continuity.

Its gift to the wider church

A sustained, sourced reminder that the gospel Jesus preached was the gospel of the kingdom — a note the wider church keeps rediscovering.

Commonly confused with

With the Christadelphians, doctrinally near but organizationally and historically separate; with the Church of God (Seventh Day), a Sabbatarian body — this church worships on Sunday; and with every other Church of God, to which it is unrelated.

Range of views inside it

Congregations vary in size and style; internal discussion turns on prophetic detail and educational emphasis more than on the core confession, which the conference states plainly.

A note from the mapmakers: Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation. RCMS 2020 counts 78 congregations in the United States. Sentences drawn from this record must distinguish this body from the other Church of God families by its full name or the Abrahamic Faith label, and yield to the congregation's own materials.

Sources: Church of God General Conference — About and beliefs (Church of God General Conference (McDonough, GA)) · Encyclopedia of American Religions (J. Gordon Melton, Gale) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)

Where Church of God General Conference (Abrahamic Faith) churches are on the map

1 Church of God General Conference (Abrahamic Faith) congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

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