Well, another Church of God prophecy bites the dust.
This afternoon's headline:
Helmut Kohl, Chancellor Who Reunited Germany, Dies at 87
Helmut Kohl, a towering postwar figure who reunified Germany after 45 years of Cold War antagonism, propelled a deeply held vision of Europe’s integration and earned plaudits from Moscow and Washington for his deft handling of the fall of the Berlin Wall, died on Friday at his home in Ludwigshafen, Germany, the Rhine port city where he was born. He was 87.“We mourn,” his party, the Christian Democratic Union, said on Twitter in announcing his death. New York Times
Every prophecy that the WCG/Armstrongism uttered about Germany has failed, as usual. Now, all we have to do is wait on Bob Thiel's bromance buddy, Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to declare himself the leader of the Holy Roman Empire so that he and Angela Merkel can open concentration camps to imprison Americans. That is the wet dream that some COG "leaders" dream about.
Every prophecy of Herbert Armstrong's has failed. Almost-arrested Theil's prophecies are failing. Dave Pack's prophecies are failing. Gerald Flurry's prophecies are guaranteed to fail. All it take sis for ONE prophecy to fail and the scriptures call them liars. When will they all just ever shut up?
These churches have a history of using prophesy as a tool of robbing their members of their God given rights. Some talk of people being 'humble' at the end of the tribulation. By humble they really mean being the mindless puppets of power hungry ministers. Wet dreams indeed.
ReplyDeleteBy 1987, I had been gone from the WCG scene for 12 years. I never knew that the honorary title of "Beast" had been conferred upon Helmut Kohl when Franz Josef Strauss died in 1988. In Amstrongism, there is a long tradition of erroneous "Beasts", which of course so eloquently testifies that their prophecies are speculative as opposed to having been inspired by God. They did experience difficulties in terms of credibility when Adolf Hitler died (although they insisted that he was alive and in hiding well into the '60s), but by this point in time, members seeing this news probably just remark to their spouses, "Guess what, Honey? Another Beast just died!"
ReplyDeleteWould any of our posters from the ACOGs care to comment? Considering the history of this thing, is prophecy even taken seriously by most of the members? We know that prominent ministers still openly teach it, but is there an active sense of church-wide urgency like there was leading up to the failure of 1975? Does a member who just bought a new car tell people "this one should last me to "the end"? Do members have a "Petra pack" stored in their car or closet that they can quickly grab if they get notification that the church is fleeing? Or, have the cumulative failures numbed what used to be such a sharp edge?
BB
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, bible prophecy is ambiguous and anybody can put their on little spin to it!
ReplyDeleteHWA said he was not a prophet.
ReplyDeleteTherefore his speculations were not prophecy.
He wrote that he certainly never was divinely inspired to prophecy.
Helmut Kohl was never called "the beast" except perhaps by the local pastor from Tolohassooo.
(Although I am sure this blog can come up with someone from Pasadena.)
HWA wrote and said in 1982 that he sure hoped any "place of safety" woud not be in Petra and that he did not know where such a place would be.
In 1989 I travelled to the Wall and chipped at it at the annoyance of the East German border patrol. The day I returned to church official statement by Joe Tkach in answering questions by the press, was that this chipping at the wall did not and would not introduce the prophetic outcome that the church had speculated about and the newspaper asked about.
This signalled to me the departure of "that old time religion" and ultimately my release from wcg. (I agreed with tkach his assessment of the "prophetic situation" but the flat denial was a clear sign of the coming changes signalling the expiry date of wcg as it had been.)
nck
LIES , LIES, and MORE LIES!
ReplyDeleteNeither Kohl, nor Franz Joseph Strauss nor HITLER are dead, but all of them are alive and well in SIERRA CITY CALIFORNIA!
A mind is a beautiful thing that can be ruined by abuse or enhanced by the right spirit and direction.
ReplyDeleteWhen one thinks about it, your mind is your most precious possession. It is the real you. It should be your first and last line of defense, but in truth many allow others access to their minds more than they should.
Like baited fish hooks, there are many fishers of men out there on the prowl just waiting for a bite. Yes, believe it or not, your subscription has been paid for by others. There is no risk to you.
Such innocent sounding words. Its free so what harm could come from it? Everything we give away is free. There is no catch. Its all above board. There is no obligation. Don't believe me, believe your bible.
All of this is true, until, wait for it, UNTIL you actually join the organization and then bit by bit, your mind, your money, and your time, are slowly taken from you so that it becomes, you must obey the government that God put in His church. You must tithe two tithes and a tenth of the second tithe, and then every third year, give an additional tithe. And you must do all this with a good attitude. Humble yourself and submit to your minister for he only wants the best FOR you.
What one should really say, is that he wants the best FROM you, so that he can have a better than average home, drive a better than average car, cloth his children in better than average clothes, and feed them better than ground beef. All this and more is what is expected from the average cog member.
What these poor folk don't know is that all the prophets, apostles, etc., never had an organization over them. No middle man to rape their resources. No middle man to lift himself up while putting you down. No middle man to demand your obedience over your obedience to the Most High. Of course they never word it this way, but that is actually what it is.
These many cogs have set themselves up showing that they are God. Come out of her My people and don't partake of her sins.
Byker Bob said, "By 1987, I had been gone from the WCG scene for 12 years. I never knew that the honorary title of "Beast" had been conferred upon Helmut Kohl when Franz Josef Strauss died in 1988".
ReplyDeleteMY COMMENT - Byker, I left WCG about the same time you did (1976 for me). This is news to me too!
Your second paragraph is interesting. Anyone from the ACOGs care to reply comment to Byker's questions?
Richard
Connie
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth.
Sierra City California = SCC . SCC translated in Roman numerals would be S200
Now would that number of the beast point to the exact adress of S200 Suite Sacramento Board of Behavioral Sciences?
Just speculating here, but we might be on to something here, no?
nck
Being arrested is not a crime. Being almost-arrested is not a crime either. Innocent until proven guilty.
ReplyDeleteI've been watching a lot of WCG splinters but with an eye toward where God may be working. I know you consider ALL of them to be false. However, I would like to hear where Bob Thiel has Prophesied something that has been proven false. I haven't seen anything yet that one could call a false prophecy.
ReplyDeletePlease don't respond with your obviously malicious "almost-arrested ..." diatribe.
BB asked: "...Would any of our posters from the ACOGs care to comment?..."
ReplyDeleteI too do not recall Helmut Kohl, when Franz Josef Strauss died in 1988, ever being referred to as any "Beast." The Beast has the following characteristics:
Revelation 13:2 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a BEAST rise up out of the sea, having SEVEN HEADS and TEN HORNS, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
The Beast has 7 heads and 10 horns, as in the following:
Revelation 12:3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having SEVEN HEADS and TEN HORNS, and seven crowns upon his heads.
Neither Stauss, Kohl, nor Bob Thiel's "Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg" has anything to do with any beast having 7 heads and 10 horns.
Those who have lie about this continue to expose themselves. The speculators just waste their time. Besides the first 6 heads are history and the 7th head won't come into play until Satan is loosed from the bottomless pit.
Time will tell...
John
ThyKingdomCome:
ReplyDeleteFor a summary on what R/WCG ministers said about their special understanding of prophecy, you might look at parts of the Gerringer Letter.
HWA never claimed to be a prophet, but that God had "revealed" to him certain teachings (such as BI and Church Eras) that "unlocked" Bible prophecy. No WCG minister claimed to be a prophet in the classical sense, but to have prophetic insights.
After the day in 1972 when "nothing happened" HWA denied having made predictions about it, but claimed a "new door" had been opened. As for the years of scare mongering about 1972, he blamed others - ministers who were under his strict control.
HWA did lay claim to his "Bricket Wood Prophecy" - a scenario that was laid out in a Bible Study that was "fulfilled" by the Six Day War in June 1967 - much to his surprise.
Bob Thiel, on the other hand, reminds me of a classmate who "told my fortune" - he examined my palm, and told me "You will die some day". Now, I'm still alive, but his "prophecy" will come true one day. But unlike Bob’s approach, when I had typhoid fever and was struck by an automobile, the classmate didn't say "Events in your life align with my prophecy!" and then ignore my total recovery from both events.
Bob is very careful to avoid being backed into a prophetic corner, with a Monte Carlo approach to "predictions" - speculations on a plethora of areas and an opinion on everything – so some event is likely to "align" with one of his many predictions.
He wrote two books on the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election, one if Hillary won, and one for President Trump - what a friend called "a bob (2 shillings) each way on a two-horse race”.
What I believe will foul up Bob's predictions is his adherence to BI, Church Eras, Place of Safety and other "wedge doctrines". I believe his overall framework is flawed.
As for choosing “Which COG is Right for Me?”, choose wisely. The last one I considered was Ron Dart’s CEM-related independent COG. But some assumptions he made in his book on Law and Covenant proved to be the coup de grace to accepting any form of Armstrongism.
nck said: "HWA said he was not a prophet. Therefore his speculations were not prophecy. He wrote that he certainly never was divinely inspired to prophecy."
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to be persnickety, but whether HWA claimed to be a "prophet" is irrelevant. He claimed to speak in the name of God and Jesus Christ and on such authority he made predictions over the course of 50 years that this or that would happen. Thus, by his words and actions he presumed to take on the role of a "prophet" (see Did Herbert Armstrong set dates?
Further, the Bible states: "But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that [is] the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, [but] the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him. (Dt. 18:20-22). It doesn't say that the false prophet claims to be a "prophet," but s/he claims the role of a prophet by presuming to speak in God's name and making a prediction that fails to come to pass. HWA was most definitely guilty of that!
Hoss wrote: "...wrote two books on the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election, one if Hillary won, and one for President Trump - what a friend called "a bob (2 shillings) each way on a two-horse race”..."
ReplyDeleteBob Thiel would be a "middle of the road, lukewarm, type of guy" who might very well tell us/others this:
"Some of my friends were for Hillary and some of my friends were for Donald Trump, but I was for my friends."
Or, "Some of my friends thought the Beast would be Strauss. Some of my friends thought the Beast would be Kohl. Some of my friends thought the Beast would be the red dragon. Some of my friends thought the Beast is Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. I'm for my friends."
Well, no, Bob Thiel says "I'm for Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg."
And for ThyKingdomCome 12:57 PM, who said: "...However, I would like to hear where Bob Thiel has Prophesied something that has been proven false. I haven't seen anything yet that one could call a false prophecy..."
That is just one more false prophecy for Bob Thiel...unless you can explain how that Baron has 7 heads and 10 horns!
Time will tell...
John
2:38 am
ReplyDeleteI have no reason to debate your statement. I'm fine with your assertion.
I leave the conclusion to scholars, legal experts or anyone interested.
As long as we acknowledge that for instance in his "magnum opus" it says that there would be no prophets in the NT COG and his sermons in which he states that he was never divinely inspired to prophecy, than we are ok.
nck