Things must be getting pretty desperate for the self-appointed end time prophet Bob Thiel. When Thiel apostatized from the Living Church of God and stabbed Rod Meredith and others in the back by forming a new splinter cult, Thiel thought lots of LCG members would flock to his side. They did not. He only has under a hundred here in the US and a couple hundred in Africa. Thiel's epic failure is on par with the epic failure of Dave Pack. Both of these upstarts thought they were God's greatest gift to the church and tens of thousands of COG members would be flocking to their side with pockets overflowing with money. Its never happened.
For the last couple of years Thiel has been trumpeting Gaylyn Bonjour for doubling blessing him, the nightmarish dreams of some woman trying to prove he is the true prophet, and now he drags Dibar Apartian out from the grave to give himself more legitimacy. It probably will not be long till he claims he was trained at the feet of Herbert Armstrong.
The apostle/prophet/Chief Overseer/world's foremost Mayan authority and most accurate eschatologist writes:
Dibar Apartian died four years ago, on December 8, 2010. For those
unfamiliar with him, he had been an evangelist in the Church of God
(COG) for decades.
He was born of Armenian parents and his family had to flee when he
was quite young because of persecution from the Turks (known as the Armenian genocide).
He ended up in the French-speaking portion of Switzerland. During
World War II he worked for the US Embassy there and then later came to
the USA. In the USA, he met and married his wife Shirley.
Dibar Apartian lived into his mid-90s (there were debates about the
year he was born and he himself did not seem to be certain as his early
documents were lost). As many know, he was responsible for the French
language work in the old Radio Church of God which became the old WCG,
then he was in the old GCG, and then the Living Church of God. He also handled other aspects of Church Administration in and out of the USA for LCG.
For decades, he also taught French at the old Ambassador College
(Pasadena, California campus). He loved the French. He loved the
French language, he loved French food, and he loved the French people.
He might have loved all things French, but many of the French speaking Belgians and French citizens did not like him and thought him to be a fraud. This I heard first hand from people at a French Feast site one year.
Apostle/revelator Thiel then takes another jab at Rod Meredith. Still bruised by Meredith's rejection of his apostleship, Thiel continue to lash out in many different ways.
After the apostasy in the old Worldwide Church of God, Dibar Apartian
did not run immediately to Dr. Meredith and the new Global Church of
God as he was unsure where to go. After a couple of years, he ended up
with the Global Church of God mainly because of doctrinal issues he had
in discussions with the emerging United Church of God.
Within a year or less of that, Dibar Apartian and I met. We later
counted each other as friends. We would spend time together when my
family and I used to visit the Garden Grove congregation of the old
Global Church of God in the mid to late 1990s.
Prior to the GCG split in 1998, Dibar Apartian expressed his opinion
about various actions and decisions that the then presiding evangelist
Roderick C. Meredith made. He 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.
Now to cement his position as the end time apostle/prophet and chief pooper-scooper, Theil now writes that Apartian encouraged him to clever and deceptive on how he preached his message so as to not alert Meredith to what was going on. Obviously Thiel FAILED dramatically in THAT department so much so that Meredith publicly rebuked him.
Dibar Apartian and I worked together on many matters, including when I
was looking into a variety of allegations against the late Herbert W.
Armstrong as well as the Elijah issue.
Dibar Apartian and I worked together on how to reach people better in
the third world, including places like Nigeria. Neither of us cared for
how the then LCG director of Church Administration handled some of those
matters, and he made suggestions on how to work to support Matthew
24:14; 28:19-20 without getting some things stopped by that director
(who was later removed from that position).
Apartian was Thiel's go-to guy for prophecy and then takes another direct swipe at Meredith:
He and I often discussed prophetic, historical, doctrinal, and administrative matters.
Many members in LCG were unaware that Dibar Apartian had issues 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 least at that time. I agreed, but under the proviso that LCG
would first fix errors in its booklet on church history. Although LCG,
numerous times agreed to do that and told me numerous times that it was
working on doing that, it never happened as various ones promised. The
reality is that one of the top people did not want the magazine changed
and prevented the booklet changes as a reason to not have me submit
articles.
Thiel also claims that Aprtian told him that it was his job to get the leaders of the COG's to change their ways. Apartian saw no need to do this, so it is quit strange that Thiel now claims this is something that Apartian told him to do.
Dibar Apartian frequently used to urge me to try to get the other
leaders in LCG to correct 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.
Then Thiel's story gets stranger when he claims that Apartain got mad at him and stormed out, then apologized days later and said, "either you are the ONE or you are the biggest threat to the church." Its too bad Apartian did not see then that Thiel was indeed a threat and was already in the stages of stepping out on his own.
But we did have an incident where he got quite angry with me. It was
related to something that started on October 3, 2008 when Dr. Roderick
C. Meredith (Presiding Evangelist of the Living Church of God) called me
and said to me, “God may consider you to be a prophet.” Dr . Meredith and I discussed this in depth as Dr. Meredith was the one who brought the topic up.
Later that month, my family and I went to the Feast of Tabernacles in
Evian, France. The conversation with Dr. Meredith weighed on my mind,
so I asked Dibar Apartian (who was the Feast site coordinator) and Dr.
Jeff Fall (who was my pastor, who also attended there that year) to meet
with me before services one morning. I told both of them about the
conversation with Dr. Meredith.
Upon hearing this, Dibar Apartian got upset. He told me that Dr.
Meredith did not say such a thing and I assured him that he had. His
emotions got the best of him and he walked out of the meeting and I
completed it by discussing what happened in more depth with Dr. Fall.
A couple of days later, after Dibar Apartian calmed down, he came up
to me and said that I was either “the one” or the “biggest threat to the
church.”
Its too bad that Apartian did not wake up at that point and see how weird Thiel was becoming.
Next, Thiel uses Apartian specifically to reinforce the idea that Thiel is a prophet.
We continued to speak over the telephone. I would bring up issues
and Dibar Apartian continued to press me to bring the subjects up to
other leaders in Charlotte. So, I did. He told me that I needed to
remind those in Charlotte about errors they were making and truths that
they were not teaching, so I did.
In the Summer of 2009, Dibar Apartian told me, in quite a positive
tone, that Dr. Meredith had been stating in meetings that “Bob Thiel may
be a prophet.” He seemed very excited. I reminded him that I had told
him that in October 2008, and he said yes he knew, but essentially the
forthright way Dr. Meredith brought it up struck him in a very positive
way.
Anyway, we continued to work together and I would bounce doctrinal,
historical, and prophetic issues off of him and as far as I recall, he
always agreed with what I was advocating. He kept telling me to remind
Dr. Meredith and others of issues there, despite the fact that they
often would not resolve matters.
In the late Summer of 2010, I asked Dibar Apartian if he still
thought I was “the greatest threat to the church or ‘the one.’ “ He
said I was not the threat and said that he would try to talk to Dr.
Meredith about my prophetic role, but it is not clear how, or even if,
he did before he died later that year. But what was appeared clear was
that Dibar Apartian believed then that God had a top/prophetic role for
me.
Like Joseph Smith and Herbert Armstrong, Thiel claims that most are trying to discount his stories, but he wants us all to know it is TRUE! Smith found the Golden Plates and Armstrong restored some "gospel" that his god was to impotent to preserve for 1,900 years. Its now Thiel's job to take the TRUE Philadelphians to Petra.
Some have attempted to discount and discredit what happened between
Dibar Apartian and myself, but what is reported here is true. There
should be several in Charlotte who at least used to know this, as well
as one or more LCG ministers not in Charlotte who did.
Theil then blabbers on about how Apartian knew Meredith was wrong and the LCG had issues:
Some time ago, LCG ceased to have the ‘Philadelphia mantle‘
(proper leadership authority for the true and faithful church). It
seems that Dibar Apartian realized this would happen, though even today,
most within LCG (including those who know about the integrity and other
issues) do not wish to take the biblically appropriate steps about
that.
Using Apartian as an authority to "legitimize" one's prophet hood shows an incredible lack of wisdom. Apartian was no more a Bible scholar than Thiel is. A person can preach canned sermons and quote HWA speak all you want and it still does not make on an authority on the Bible. 99.99% of the ministers in the COG have no real theological education,, understand of church history or any knowledge of end time events. All any of them have accomplished is to present to the world and the COG at large how incredibly ridiculous they have all become.
