For the last seven weeks Bob Thiel has been preaching one sermon. It has now reached part seven and is well into the eight hour mark. What is the single most important topic he is discussing? He can't nail down his topic to any one subject so has to ramble on and on about numerous subjects that he actually knows nothing about with most of the topics complete fabrications of his delusional mind.
This is a list of things he set himself as the complete authority over. Imagine eight hours of listening to this drivel!
...discusses issues associated with John the Baptist and his father Zacharias and not accepting when God answers prayer. He also explains verses that some claim are in the Bible about Jesus’ mother Mary. John Baptist’s teachings, controversies related to Jesus’ genealogy, Satan’s influences, past issues that are present today, points about Peter and the other Apostles, and goes over Jesus’ teachings on many points including the Sermon on the Mount version in Luke. ...some of Jesus’ miracles, the purpose of the parable of the sower, explains the gospel of the Kingdom, goes over information related to John the Baptist, discusses growing in grace and knowledge, some about women supporting the ministry of Jesus and the CCOG, and quotes Jesus about bearing fruit and on other matters. the 70,’ doing the work of proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom as a witness, the opportunity for salvation, the parable of the good Samaritan, prayer, various signs, and letting your light shine....hypocritical religious leader, that souls can die, standing for Jesus, persecution, the parable of ‘the rich fool,’ Christian priorities, the ‘little flock,’ treasure, being ready, watching prophecy, explains that to whom much is given much is required, Jesus’ plan was divisive not ecumenical, discerning the signs of the time, that God has some patience for those who have not born fruit yet, Sabbath hypocrisy, parable of the mustard seed, the kingdom of God, the narrow way, and those unwilling to listen. Sabbath, the invited, salt and the unpardonable sin, being willing to truly follow God, mammon, the parable of ‘the lost sheep,’ and the Rich man and Lazarus...giving offense, faith. the kingdom, prophecy related to the gathered together protected & those that are not, unprofitable servants, prayer and the widow, the important in God’s eyes, blessing of little children, the rich man & the commandments, the soul is not immortal, that promised rewards vary, taxes, the resurrection, and doing things for show.
This is great news. It means he's got no future. The funny thing is, in his introspective moods, I would bet he feels that he has been a really effective mouthpiece for God. The confusion indicates another source, however.
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For most of his adult life, Thiel grew used to senior WCG/GCG/LCG ministers flattering him and making him feel special... which they only did because he was a big tither.
ReplyDeleteThiel grew addicted to that feeling of specialness, and even came to believe some pretty amazing things about himself... things Meredith and other top LCG hirelings encouraged him to believe...
Nobody had the nerve to say, "Bob, shut up. You're full of shit." They wanted his money, and they knew it would stop coming if they said that.
So, it's easy enough to understand how and why Thiel had his psychotic break when Meredith finally had enough and stopped treating him as special.
But it's easy to feel sorry for Thiel. In his mind, he's no different than when he was the darling of the important evangelists... but now he's the grand poobah of a fringe website and tiny little cult... so he has to justify why the most important man in the whole world must have so little power, influence or visibility.
It's kind of sad. Usually people who break like Thiel believe they are Napoleon or Jesus, not Elijah... but the phenomenon is not unknown nor dissimilar.
Basically, HWA was a man with delusions of grandeur. Instead of wanting be Napoleon, he wanted to be a guilded age captain of industry, like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Stanford, Huntington, or JP Morgan. When he hit on the religion racket, he realized this was just as good as any other way to realize his dream of being a robber baron. Even better, perhaps. People can argue with an industrial titan, but who can argue with authority of Jesus f#%@&$g Christ? Of course, he wasn't. He lived his whole life pretending to be a modern day apostle and guilded age captain of industry. What he really was, was a phony, a child molester, and guy who, besides Beverly and Dorothy, never produced a single useful thing in his entire life, but much harm instead.
ReplyDeleteAnd now there's a whole crop of guys who were duped by HWA and haven't woken up the the fact that HWA was a big phony, and now THEY'RE pretending to be HWA. They're pretending to be someone who was pretending to be someone.
What's funnier yet (sadder, really) is to imagine a few delusional men 50 years from now, presiding over a handful of lost souls, and pretending to be someone like Bob Thiel.
And besides those who think they ARE ol’ Herbert, we have those who go on and go on about how great he was, and why don’t we remember or recognize that?
ReplyDeleteThe very fact you have to spend so much time trying to get such a message across shows your premise is false.
It may have been commented on here before, but I ran across the online tome, “Herbert W. Armstrong Did NOT Commit Incest!”:
http://www.herbert-armstrong.org/Miscellaneous/Herbert%20W.%20Armstrong%20Did%20NOT%20Commit%20Incest.pdf
I didn’t read the entire 35 pages (!) – that would be something you MAKE someone do whom you don’t like very much – but the portions I waded through all came across as if the writer was YELLING at me: “Of course he didn’t! There’s no evidence! Show me some evidence!”
How much time, how much of your life, did you spend on this? What other “cause” could you have helped with, using that time? What a waste!
After reading through that long list, I am confident that Bob is an expert on the last item.
ReplyDelete"And there shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, and there will be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base, that has an attachment…at this time, a friend shall lose his friends’s hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before around eight o’clock..."
ReplyDeleteEven if HWA didn't commit incest, he sure as hell committed British Israelism! One way or another, he is still a rapist, whether physical or spiritual. Most folks around here actually prefer his guilt of the spiritual rape, because false prophets go to TLoF.
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Thiel is like Obama. A loser in a quest for greatness.
ReplyDeleteAnon August 11, 2014 at 3:34 AM,
ReplyDeleteThat article blamed Satan, the editor (me) and others for Herbie's penis crimes. But Herbie, he didn't do it! No, not the great 20th century apostle that bought the gospel to the world after 1900 years! What a bunch of shit!
"Herbert W. Armstrong Did NOT Commit Incest!"
ReplyDeleteLOL. Obviously written before Deborah Armstrong and Larry Gott came forward and said, yeah, actually, he did, and everyone in the Armstrong family knew about it the whole time.
Actually, the paper appears to be born of desperation, or exasperation. We have examined and studied so many compelling arguments against Armstrongism on just about every level, that you could either throw away or be ignorant of probably 85% of them and the remainder would still effectively prove that HWA was a charlatan, and his religion a sham. If you were to completely throw away the incest, there is still more than enough to get the job done. As an example, I had never even once heard a whisper of these allegations for the first 25 years after my successful exit from Armstrongism.
ReplyDeleteIt is most certainly not logical to imagine that a 35 page paper simply consisting of unprovable speculation in the opposing direction would ever renew someone to Armstrongism, causing, say, one or all of us to chose a splinter group to call for counseling leading to reinstatement. That leaves a probable targeted audience for the paper as the choir, and the purpose as a reassurance of, or rallying of the troops. This issue really bothers them, enough that, counter to HWA's own example, (which the author cites), he feels compelled to launch a defense.
Bottom line, though, is that you can't prove a negative, and that is what the writer has attempted (unsuccessfully) to do.
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