Nightmares and Double Blessings Do Not A Prophet Make...or Modern Day Elisha's

The sheer depth of lunacy that the Church of God has produced over the decades in regards to self-appointed prophets  apostles and two witless witnesses is appalling.  Even more appalling is that self-appointed false prophets claim an ordinary prayer is somehow a direct line down from God to set them apart from all other Church of God leaders and ministers.

Over the decades literally hundreds of these fraudulent fools have come knocking at he doors of the church with new found revealed knowledge gained through direct communication from God in visions and nightmares.

Bob Thiel has taken on many mantles and names over the last few years of his vain attempt to make himself legitimate in the eyes of COG members.  Because Rod Meredith slammed the door in his face and publicly rebuked him, Thiel has had a hard time drawing regular COG folk to his dark side.

Because no one listens to him in the except for several hundred African's who found a new cash cow, Thiel has to continually try and prove he has been God sent.

Because of his bitterness at Rod Meredith that still consumes his dark soul, Thiel has to claim he is the Elisha to succeed the corrupt Elijah who was unable to lead the church properly.  Meredith was Elijah and Thiel is Elisha.  Elisha picked up the mantle that elijah was too inept to wear. Thiel has now taken on the mantle that Rod Meredith used to wear.

Elijah, however, over time seem to have lost the mental/emotional ability to properly lead (cf. 1 Kings 19:13-18). God later took him and replaced him with Elisha as the top ecclesiastical authority. Elisha then received a “double-portion” (two-portion literally) of the gift that God had given Elijah:

9 And so it was, when they had crossed over, that Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask! What may I do for you, before I am taken away from you?”
Elisha said, “Please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me.”
10 So he said, “You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if not, it shall not be so.” 11 Then it happened, as they continued on and talked, that suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, and separated the two of them; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
12 And Elisha saw it, and he cried out, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen!” So he saw him no more. And he took hold of his own clothes and tore them into two pieces. 13 He also took up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood by the bank of the Jordan. (2 Kings 2:9-13)

The recipient of the double-portion, Elisha, was a type of Elijah. Elisha picked up the mantle of Elijah (2 Kings 2:13) which God wanted him to have (1 Kings 19:16-19), did a similar miraculous dry river crossing (2 Kings 2:13-14), also did other miracles (2 Kings 4:30-35; 2 Kings 10:5-14; 2 Kings 6:16-18), as he replaced Elijah as God’s top ecclesiastical authority on earth (cf. 1 Kings 19:16). 

Thiel continues to drag Gaylyn Bonjour though the mud by making false assertions that Bonjour deliberately set him apart as the new Elisha. 

A minister of the Living Church of God prayed and anointed Bob Thiel for a ‘double portion’ of God’s Spirit back in late 2011 and told him that was reminiscent of what happened to Elisha.

Bob Thiel has now taken on another new mantle, that of John the Baptist.  Meredith dropped Elijah's mantle and Thiel picked it up.  Thiel also places himself on par withHerbert Armstrong  who claimed he was a voice in the wilderness.  Thiel is NOT that voice in the wilderness.

Interestingly, for several years after Elisha picked up the mantle that Elijah dropped, Elijah was still alive. While many outside of the Church of God seem to doubt this, the following passage confirms that Elijah was still alive later, even though the main work/mantle had shifted to Elisha:

5 Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem…
12 And a letter came to him from Elijah the prophet, saying,
Thus says the Lord God of your father David:
Because you have not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat your father, or in the ways of Asa king of Judah, 13 but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and have made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to play the harlot like the harlotry of the house of Ahab, and also have killed your brothers, those of your father’s household, who were better than yourself, 14 behold, the Lord will strike your people with a serious affliction — your children, your wives, and all your possessions; 15 and you will become very sick with a disease of your intestines, until your intestines come out by reason of the sickness, day by day. (2 Chronicles 21:5, 12-15)

The Bible, however, teaches that a voice from the wilderness would come again:

3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; Make straight in the desert A highway for our God. (Isaiah 40:3)

John the Baptist said that he was fulfilling this (though he did not indicate he would be the only one to do so):

19 Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”…

23 He said: “I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,”‘ as the prophet Isaiah said.” (John 1:19,23)

The Church of God position has been that someone would come in the spirit and power of Elijah to “restore all things” and possibly be one of the two witnesses. While the late Herbert W. Armstrong (died in January 1986) sometimes indicated that he fulfilled that role, he told people that I have personally spoken with that there could be another other than he. Those with a WCG background might find the following quote from Herbert W. Armstrong of some assistance here as he wrote: 

Those called into the Church were called not merely for salvation and eternal life, but to learn the way of God’s government and develop the divine character during this mortal life in the Church age…

Also Malachi 4:5-6 pictures the Elijah to come at the very end of the Church age (Mystery of the Ages. 1985, pp. 201, 349).

NO ONE is called to learn about government or to develop "divine character" during their Christian walk.  It is an absolute impossibility  despite the ranting of legalists like Malm and Thiel.  These two men bastardized everything they touch in regards to redemption, justification and salvation. These two men are walking sin machines! 

Thiel closes his silly rant pointing out that Dave Pack is not the modern day Elijah.  Only THiel can possibly be the true Elijah:

Now, I should add that RCG’s David Pack is NOT the prophesied endtime Elijah despite his claims earlier this year–he has NOT restored the truth and is confused/wrong on many points. 

Those of the true and genuine Philadelphian remnant will pay much attention to the voice of the true final Elijah. Those who do not will not fare as well as they could (cf. Revelation 12:14-17). 

We in the Continuing Church of God “have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19, KJV).”

I can state with a fact that Bob Thiel is NOT Elisha, Elijah, or the latter day John the Baptist.  Thiel, like Malm, Pack and Flurry are corrupt men masquerading as men of light. If there were ever "doctrines of demons" to be preached, Thiel is doing it now.

Thiel's  so-called ministry is nothing more than a vanity project as Gavin writes:

His tiny Continuing Church of God is a vanity project that has a future only as long as Bob's personal longevity, and nobody lives forever. B

Bob Thiel is NOT Elisha, Elijah, John the Baptist, a prophet, a true minister, or a follower of Jesus.

When Thiel writes or speaks, Jesus truly weeps!

Rod Meredith, Erdogan and John Robinson

From a reader here:

ACOG ministers are constantly saying weird things. Billingsley has plenty of company. Sometimes the ministers even fight amongst themselves in their own church's publications. LCG seems to do a lot of this, with anti-Meredith, anti-Germano and anti-Winnail factions often quite recognizable. Soon enough I'm sure we'll see an anti-Weston faction start taking its turn. What does this tell us about the LCG ministers who are letting their media effort be used in that way? Are they so eager for power that they delight in cutting down the senior men, not realizing that when the senior men fall, the junior men will fall with them?

The latest example is an article online at Tommows World

The article tells us that Turkey's Recep Erdogan is an autocratic tyrant who seeks to implement Godly rule as he understands it, and is purging Turkey of people who oppose his plan to move away from anti-God secularism. The commentary tells us that Christians aren't to act in such an autocratic way. They should be more "introspective" than Erdogan, and instead of purging their enemies should "learn from past mistakes."

How can LCG reconcile the purging of John Robinson with the standard set in this LCG article? Is this LCG article not a direct attack on Rod Meredith? Is LCG publishing it because there's an internal power struggle? Or are they just a bunch of clueless brainwashed zombies who are at peace with the cognitive dissonance that comes from saying one thing while doing another? LCG has now come out plainly in print as opposing autocratic rule. How can it defend this position against the reality of its form of government and Rod Meredith's practice of the form? In publishing this article, they are either hypocrites, cynical manipulators, or outright idiots.

Don Billinglsey Goes Off The Deep End And Says Hillary Will Be Shot

Don Bilingsley has imagined himself a prophet for many years now and publishes some of the most idiotic rants ever imagined regarding the COG and prophecy.

The Church of God News site had this up:

Church of God Faithful Flock“What Are Your Plans for the Next Six Years?” asks CGFF Pastor Don Billingsley, a Church of God elder since the 1950s, in Historical Reality Reveals the Future - as he shows (?) that Biblical history and prophecy point to President Hillary Clinton being executed in 2023, when God’s Elect will flee to the Place of Safety and the Great Tribulation will then begin.

Just how stupid can this man get?  His small personality cult will be kept safe while Hillary in office, but once something happens he and his group will flee to Petra.  Jordan is never going to allow these raving lunatics from the Church of God into their country.

Someone needs to report him to the government.  All we need is some idiot in his cult that might take matters into their own hands!

Who Is Really Being Persecuted? Church Leaders or Well Meaning Members?

For the 30 some years I worked in Pasadena I saw hundreds and hundreds of kooks show up at HQ claiming they were Elijah's, Elisha's, Joshua's, the Two Witnesses, prophets, people filled with prophetic knowledge, people who dreamed dreams that God had appointed them to reform the church, people who claimed they were Satan, that the mantle of Herbert Armstrong had been passed on to them, and many, many more whack jobs.  Every single one of them were lairs.

Then the church ruptured into countless heretical splinter personality cults that were far more corrupt than anything WCG had ever been.  We have seen the Flurry, Pack and Meredith all claim that God had personally spoken to them to restore the faith once delivered.  No one was more qualified to do that job than they were.  Each one had some creature they called god telling them that they were especial and called out.  They were not.  We all have seen the corrupt fruit that these "so called" ministers have produced over the last two decades while their new churches were under their control.  Before that we saw the worthless fruit of the labors for decades earlier.

Even those that have ungodly nightmares now seem to think they are set apart.

False prophet and legalistic spiritual abuser, Bob Thiel still claims that because he had a nightmare/dream/hallucination, that his god now has now placed his mantle upon him to do some kind of amazing work.

He bitterly writes:

Consider that furthermore more in his latest rant against me, Gary Leonard falsely asserted that I and a woman from New Zealand (who I did not know) had nightmares. No, we had dreams. 

The self-appointed  false prophet. who was never ordained as a minister in the Living Church of God. then goes on to quote scripture to support his hallucinations.  Church of God ministers somehow think that buy posting countless scriptures that they intern justify their  beliefs.  It never has and they never  will.

Apparently Gary Leonard does not believe that God uses dreams, even though the Bible says God does (Genesis 20:3-7, 28:10-17, 31:10-13, 31:24, 37:5-10, 40:5-18, 41:1-32; Numbers 12:6; Judges 7:13-15; 1 Kings 3:5-15; Daniel 2:3-45, 4:4-27, 7:1-28; Matthew 1:20-25, 2:12, 2:13, 2:19, 2:22; Acts 16:9; see also Dreams, the Bible, the Radio Church of God, and the Continuing Church of God).

I can state for a fact that God never inspired any dream telling Thiel to start his own personality cult.  His own mind told him that he deserved to be a leader.   Even Rod Meredith knew Thiel was unfit to be a minister.

The self-appointed false prophet is also very unhappy at being referred to as "Almost Arrested."

Furthermore, he continues to refer to refer to me with statements like “Almost Arrested” to imply I am some type of criminal, without bothering to explain that I was almost arrested because I told government authorities that I would observe the biblical Day of Atonement  (details of this are in my post, ‘Banned by HWA’ continues to make false assertions–Matthew 13:19-21?, that Gary Leonard responded to, though he did not bother to mention the truth about this).

If he had bothered to check he would have seen the reason that so many call him "almost arrested."  had occurred many, many posts ago.   Even though he claims above that he almost was.

The tactics of Thiel, Flurry, Malm, Pack and most other COG leaders is to combine error with fact, truth with imaginative thinking,  proof-texting instead of well reasoned scriptural understanding.  They are sneaky an beguiling, just like Satan in the Garden.

He then continues on that those that have blogs, web sites, have written books, that speak out publicly at the abuse in the Church of God are guilty of stealing people's crowns and their chance to make it into the kingdom.

Sadly, various ones have let the anti-COG people “take their crown”–did not “endure to the end” as they should have. They allowed people once considered to be brothers to betray them spiritually. 

For decades the spiritual lives of church members have been raped and pillaged by unsound ministers  who betrayed them spiritually.  They have every right to walk away from Armstrongism and learn sound scriptural reasoning.  Tens of thousands of former church members have done just that!  They have been healed from the abuse.  They live truly fruitful lives and understand God better than they ever have.  Sure many have also left faith behind, but that no more makes them evil or unworthy.  After the crap that the church has pulled on them, they have every right to do such a thing!

True spiritual knowledge and a grounded spiritual life cannot be found in the Continuing Church of God no matter how much Thiel pontificates or  how special he thinks he is.  Salvation will never be found in the Continuing Church of God.  Redemptive life lies outside its doors, if they would only dare to look,  as they chuck Thiel's booklets and magazines in the bin.

He imagines himself to be equals to Jesus and the apostles and that he is being persecuted as they were.  Talk about a steaming pile of bullshit!

Some do not seem to understand that Jesus and the apostles faced intense criticism and false assertions–and that those who really want to follow Him will be subject to it as well (John 15:18-25).

There is NOTHING about Thiel that even compares to ANYTHING the Apostles or Jesus ever said or did.  According to scripture they were persecuted for speaking truth.  Thiel does not.  He and his personality cult are not facing persecution form this blog or the government.  Delusional COG "leaders" love to thrown that out to divert attention away from their inept actions.

Anyone thinking God dwells in the Continuing Church of God is in for a rude awakening.  God does not.