Bitter Bob
If you thought things couldn't bet any crazier in Theildom, think again. Thiel is making a claim that Dibar Apartian wanted him to whip the LCG headquarters into shape. Thiel was supposed to weed out false doctrine and teachings in order to bring the truth back to LCG.
Thiel even goes as far to claim Apartian thought Thiel should be leading the Living Church of God!
This just adds another dimension to Thiel's illegitimate claim that he is THE anointed heir of the message of "god." It just adds more fuel to the intense hatred he has for Rod Meredith. Mededith's rejection of Thiel has been a devastating blow to Thiel's ego and self worth. He has never been able to recover from that rejection.
Yet, prior to the GCG split, Dibar Apartian expressed his opinion about various actions and decisions that the then presiding evangelist Roderick C. Meredith made that he did not care for. Dibar Apartian personally told me in late 1998, that he told Dr. Meredith if he ever did something like this again that he would not follow him into another organization. This clarified, for me at least, some of his views of Dr. Meredith.
Dibar Apartian was disappointed with LCG's Tomorrow's World magazine. He stated it lacked interest, depth, and relevance. In 2007 and 2008, he pushed Dr. Meredith to agree to have articles in it from me as he told me that my articles were what LCG needed. Dr. Meredith agreed at the time. I agreed, but under the proviso that LCG would first fix errors in its booklet on church history as I did not want to have LCG publish more materials that contradicted others. Although LCG leaders agreed to do that and told me on numerous times that they were working on it, it never happened as various ones promised. The reality is that one of the top people did not want the magazine changed. He also prevented the booklet changes from being adopted as a reason to not have me submit articles.
Despite this, Dibar Apartian frequently used to urge me to try to get the other leaders in LCG to correct various historical, doctrinal, prophetic, and literature errors. Although I tried to get him to do more of that himself, he always instructed me to not only do that, but to remind other leaders in Charlotte to keep their promises to fix errors, literature, etc. Which I did. He did what he did differently to try to affect change.
Dibar Apartian indicated to me, multiple times, over the years that he wanted me to lead needed changes in Charlotte and I tried for years.
In 2008, he told me that I may be "the one," meaning the one to lead the final Philadelphia work, and he confirmed that in 2009 and 2010.
Thiel then adds this odd statement:
In one of our last conversations, he concluded with the words, "I love you." I was emotionally touched.
Church of God News 9/16/14
It's amazing how much justification Thiel has to build up for running his illegitimate "end time" work. Bob, in the end it doesn't matter what you say. The results speak plainly for themselves. I don't recall the Dibar Apartian story or even fragments coming out before now. I have a feeling that your wife and kids would be much happier if you just stopped the whole charade. I know being a naturopath isn't nearly as attention getting but it seemed like it paid the bills.
ReplyDeleteDon Quixote.
ReplyDeleteLook! Over there!
Another windmill!
Does Thiel have any personal correspondence from Mr. Apartian, or recordings or film which might tend to corroborate this? Without confirmation, basically we have gossip.
ReplyDeleteTalk about double standards! I'd just bet that if we confronted Thiel about Herbie's incest, he would demand dna-tested used condoms...... (uh, oops, negatory on that, chief, I forgot for a minute, dna is the "false" science that Satan uses to disprove British Israelism). Fact is, I don't even know what these people consider truth or proof any more. Thiel appears to think we should take everything he says as truth, without any effort to "prove all things".
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Those bookcases are still crooked!
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"The final Philadelphia work"...as if the Armstrong's wild speculation that the seven churches in Asia represented "church eras". And, what's an even wilder speculaton, the Armstrongites imagine that they have (somehow) descended from those churches.
ReplyDeleteHow many people on this blog still remember that HWA was trying to make himself blood kin to Jesus Christ? What? You couldn't tell that HWA was Jewish? But,no, seriously, he did that by claiming descendancy from from English royalty - who he claimed was in the same bloodline as the folks mentioned (made up) in his "US and British commonwealth in prophecy" booklet.
Yep, and if Herbie had lived just another decade, he would have convinced the WCG that it was the gospel truth.
Who knows, in another 20 years, Herbie may have become "God in the flesh". HEH! I'm not too sure but what some don't think that he was anyway.
Hey, Byker -- Thiel thinks he's already refuted the incest allegations:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cogwriter.com/hwaacc.htm
@9:11, My favorite part of his defense of HWA was that he had asked Garner Ted about the allegation. Since Garner Ted gave him basically a non answer and didn't say anything about it, it has to be false. I mean if the great Bob Thiel asks and doesn't get anything but an ambiguous response he has to be right.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone in the LCG saw Thiel as anything more than he was- a Meredith apologist who wrote about cog history, however slanted it was. Through the years as Thiel's head swelled, he began to speculate more and more on fringe subjects and prophecy. I'm sure the LCG leadership and members started to feel the embarrassment, and why wouldn't they? When Thiel started to question LCG doctrine, it became more of an issue. Meredith put out a message that Thiel wasn't an official spokesman, and Thiel's ego errupted. He had a good thing going, by the shear amount of material he produced you knew he seemed to enjoy it. He could have probably continued at least until Meredith died, but Bobby just couldn't leave well enough alone. His continued protests about his "double portions" and deathbed confessions are just pathetic.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if its the bookcases that are crooked or Bob's head.
ReplyDeleteYep, I had seen that same set of apologetics several years ago, but just re-read them. They don't accomplish anything definitive, and they don't break any new ground. They are about tenth rate spin, and are most certainly injected with an overpowerimg presence of "self" and the normal hero worship we would expect from Bob Thiel.
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Politics, egos, and infighting. I suspect the Pharisees were very adept such things. So are the modern Pharisees.
ReplyDeleteNone of the specific "prophecy" items listed above in Transformed by Truth were actually false. After all, if the criterion for a true or false prophecy is that it happens when the predictor thinks it will happen, then Paul, Peter and even Jesus are guilty of the same type of false prophecies that Herbert W. Armstrong is accused of. (For example, "Surely I am coming quickly," Revelation 22:20).
ReplyDeleteWait!
What?
Thiel accuses Jesus of being a false prophet?
Like that gives Thiel a lot of credibility (thankfully, he uses the Mayans and Catholics for most of his sources, which conveniently avoids any disturbing questions about the New Testament).
Thiel is just a more recent manifestation of the mindset first manifested in William F. Dankenbring. I used to work with him. Prolific writer who just had to get his own thing going. He has to be in his seventies now if he's still kicking and I have no idea how big his org has become. He's about as kooky as Thiel. You can look him up if you want to.
ReplyDeleteWhat Thiel's story does bring out is that LCG's leaders are double-minded, deceitful, lying hypocrites.
ReplyDeleteTo Bitter Bob, they said, "Keep up those big tithes and offerings. Maybe you'll be in charge someday."
To other people, they said, "Bob is nuts, but we are trying to work with him to help him get balanced."
Bob's problem is that he thought Meredith was being sincere and honest in dealing with Bob Thiel.
The first time I heard Meredith trash-talking LCG ministers and brethren, I was shocked. Eventually I realized that Meredith sets the pace for his church. Winnail trash-talks Meredith, Meredith trash-talks Winnail, other men trash-talk each other and Winnail and Meredith... there's just not a lot of Christian love once you get below the surface and see how things really are in LCG.
The simple statement "Know thyself" becomes an impossibility within the ACOG framework. Anybody who believes that abilities beyond one's experience and intellect are somehow going to be "poured into" your head so that you can be a priest or king sometime in the future, and to rule the world with HWA, never really gets to know his or her own limitations, so that he might concentrate on the development of his innate abilities. The spoonfed facades and valences ACOGgers act behind prevents knowing self, or developing real, useable talents.
ReplyDeleteWhen you think in terms of what human "gave" you your power, or who endorsed you, or agreed with your ideas, you are dealing from a position of weakness from the get-go, and doomed to failure. That is mealy mouthed stuff that never impresses anyone. The Bible says that people listened to Jesus because he spoke with authority. It was something that just came through naturally, not something which He affected.
Using a personal example, when I work on people's equipment, they respect the work that is accomplished. I can't imagine feeling the need to share with them what my shop teacher had said about me decades ago, or compliments given by an inventor I once worked with. I sometimes share my mentors, a printer, an engineer, and a salesman, but that is usually after someone has asked me how I learned to do what I do. Each of those three provided very critical elements which I borrowed and adapted, as appropriate, to my own personality and natural abilities, and parlayed into a challenging career.
For me to fantasize that I would be ruling over and teaching 'the truth" to some tribal nation in the millennium is patently ridiculous, and unnatural. It's more likely that I'd be involved somehow in their technology, but the Armstrongs had attempted to kill that through the teaching that we'd be returning to an agrarian society in the millennium. As for Bob Thiel, perhaps he would be teaching massage techniques and therapy. Why not just be content with that, rather than aspiring to be a derivative of some other crackpot's theology?
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@Anonymous 7:00, I have no doubt that LCG leadership are lying hypocrites. Having said that, I have a hard time believing anyone of importance suggested to Thiel he might be their leader one day. I'm guessing Meredith and others probably overstated to him his worth though. Thiel would undoubtedly eat such praise up. Robert seems to have a very high opinion of himself and they probably helped create their own Frankenstein Monster.
ReplyDeleteIn essence I think you are correct. I just think Robert Thiel's leadership ideas are more a product of his own delusion and vanity. And I would bet that you are correct that LCG and Meredith were playing the other side against him for a while before he revolted.
...he ever did something like this again that he would not follow him into another organization.
ReplyDeleteThat's the problem. Stupids following stupiders.
Bob is not terribly different from Harold Camping. He doesn't know anything more about the future than Harold Camping or William Miller. All these guys read an ancient book and they think they "know" something, but they're just real estate agents for sand castles built in the sky. They have no justification for feeling so certain about such rank speculation. Everything is possible, but not everything is probable, and even fewer things are definite. But Bob is emboldened to conflate those things because there's a lot of people in the market for cloud real estate, who are buying what Bob is selling. Unfortunately for Bob, reality doesn't care about his speculations, and it wouldn't matter how many people bought Bob's bullshit. That doesn't make it come true.
ReplyDeleteBut how anyone can be so vain as Bob is when they've got absolutely nothing is beyond me. If one wants to talk about morality and civilized values, etc., I don't thing the bible is the best book for even that sort of thing, but so long as nobody is advocating any crusades, fine. But to start using it to predict the future, is just nuts. It was a mistake for the early church fathers to let Athanasius talk them into including Revelation in the NT canon.
I wonder if Thiel has anything to prophesy about tomorrow's vote in Scotland as to whether to secede from the UK. Maybe some deceased Meredithites shared something about this with him?
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I wonder if Thiel has anything to prophesy about tomorrow's vote in Scotland as to whether to secede from the UK. Maybe some deceased Meredithites shared something about this with him?
ReplyDeleteAt the séance, one knock is yes, two knocks are no.
Armstrongism is such a cesspool of toxic lies with Armstrongists wallowing in the sludge. It's nice and warm and they've been there so long they can't smell the stench.
Bobby is actually suffering from delusional thinking and perhaps a rather narcissitic viewpoint and mindset common to those few who have risen to see themselves spoken of by the prophets. Sad actually and merely mental illness of sorts.
ReplyDeleteYa know, Mikey, it's just mind-boggling! Conservative radio talk show host, Michael Medved was just all over this topic. I first became aware of it through Gavin's new blog, but didn't begin to realize all of the implications of a "yes" vote until hearing them outlined on the Medved show.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand, the secession issue is part of an emerging global trend towards autonomy of nations, and the creation of new nations. This trend is affecting the EU, bigtime, there being quite a struggle to hold that all together currently. That, of course, bodes against the Armstrong prophecy mold, but you would think that at least one of these "prophets" might have let it all hang out, forecasting this Scottish issue as coming down in some way supporting the "pro-Armstrong" side, and then adding his own erroneous opinions as to how "the world" could have missed, or been blinded by Satan from recognizing the importance of such a huge end-time event. Oh, and send your tithes and offerings to........(the hero).
Ahhh. The further adventures of Zerubbabel and spontaneous human combustion in the Elul!
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