Doug Winnail claims that God is about to reveal his intentions to the prophets in the Living Church of God. People have been asking for years now who those prophets are and the church says it has no need for prophets in the 21st century. Gerald Weston certainly is not one.
Poor Bob Thiel. If he had just hung around a little longer instead of self-appointing himself as a prophet, he might have been LCG's official prophet. That is what he has claimed for many years now. He thinks the is the rightful heir to prophethood status in the church and that LCG ministries were are ignorant to recognize him as one. Thankfully, Rod Meredith saw thought the lies and deceptions of Thiel and publicly denounced him from the pulpit, sending the wanna-be dictator into wild and fantastical delusions of grandeur that the church has not seen before.
A Real God Guides History: We live in a world where prominent voices claim that God does not exist, that no one can predict the future, and that human beings must determine their own future. However, the Bible reveals just the opposite! Isaiah 46:9–11 clearly states that only God can predict the future and bring it to pass. Job stated what many have forgotten today, that God “makes nations great, and destroys them” (Job 12:23–25). Daniel told King Nebuchadnezzar that God “removes kings and raises up kings” (Daniel 2:21)—that God actually intervenes in human affairs to work out His plan and purpose. When Daniel explained a vision that Nebuchadnezzar had about the future, he told the king, “The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure” (Daniel 2:45). Nebuchadnezzar later concluded that God “does according to His will” and “No one can restrain His hand” (Daniel 4:35). The Bible is a unique book that contains specific prophecies recorded thousands of years ago—that predicted events that are making news today. Amos 3:7 states that God will reveal His intentions to His servants the prophets, so they can alert the world about the significance of coming events. All this is possible because there is a real God who reveals the future and guides the course of history.
Have a profitable Sabbath,
Douglas S. Winnail
30 comments:
That's not even close to the most disturbing item in that letter. Did you see this?
Contacts/Inquiries from the Media
As you may know, Mr. Dexter Wakefield is Director of Public Relations for the Church; handling inquiries from the media is his responsibility. Therefore, please direct any and all contacts from the media (“reporters,” news organizations, magazines, journals, newspapers, etc.) to Mr. Wakefield. If you receive a call from someone in the media, simply refer them to Mr. Wakefield by providing the contact information, or link to our Press Kit, as noted below. If the individual wishes to leave a message, then please obtain his or her name, the name of the organization they work for, and their contact information and convey that by phone or e-mail to Mr. Wakefield. If you receive an e-mail from the media, please forward it to Mr. Wakefield.
Here is the contact information for this purpose:
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What genuine church tells its members not to talk to the media but instead to refer all inquiries to some bureaucrat at Headquarters? Most reporters who talk to local church members are asking questions about the local congregation. How is Wakefield more knowledgeable about the local congregation than its own members?
And how do you think this edict will make LCG look to those reporters? Ask someone a simple and innocent question about their local fundraiser or about a congregation member who just won some local recognition, and LCG insists that the local member say "Talk to my leaders in Charlotte." That's a SURE-FIRE way to convince the rest of the world that your church is a cult. Unfortunately, members will obey, because now if they see their names in print talking about their own church, they'll get picked on by Wakefield and his minions.
Or, maybe just a few members will wake up to Wakefield and realize that LCG isn't their church. It's his church, and Weston's, while members are just cash cows to be milked.
This is exactly why Meredith kicked him out of LCG. Bob is delusional.
If anyone in LCG declared him or herself a prophet, the leadership would drum them out faster than they could say Bob Thiel. No one trusts the leaders of the church and most certainly would immediately reject some minister acting out claiming they are a prophet.
All of you silly people here fail to see that Jesus is not coming back to Wadsworth or Edmond. He is coming to Arroyo Grande, CA where he will run his work out of the depressing storefront of Robert Thiel.
Doug Winnail writes, but is anyone learning anything new?
Doug writes: "A Real God Guides History: We live in a world where prominent voices claim that God does not exist, that no one can predict the future, and that human beings must determine their own future. However, the Bible reveals just the opposite!...there is a real God who reveals the future and guides the course of history..."
******
Yes, Doug mentions Isaiah, Job, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, and yes they were all inspired to write/do all sorts of things: truth, but where does Bob/Doug fit into this scheme of things?
For example, Bob Thiel and Doug, to my knowledge, still believe/teach the old flawed "Beast Chart" of prophecies. As far as I know both men still believe/teach a Mickey Mouse Millennium where they expect "another Jesus" to return very soon to reign on earth for 1,000 years...something, a theory that Isaiah, Job, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar never taught.
Are Thiel/Winnail teaching another gospel that includes their Jesus? What is the real Good News. Are people going to the lake of fire part of their "good news," etc.? I believe they still preach that eventually only spirit beings will exist, but human beings will have ceased to exist, but where is their proof of that?
For example, Isaiah, inspired by God, to wrote the following to a whole bunch of human beings to again exist in the future with him (Isaiah): "Thy dead [men] shall live, [together with] my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew [is as] the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." Isaiah 26:19
Is that 1st, 2nd, 3rd resurrection? Will they all be flesh or spirit at that time?
Isaiah, yes, was used by God and God provided lots of history through him, but who really believes Isaiah? Does Bobby and Doug Isaiah 26:19?
Time will tell...
John
Seems like LCG wants to get in on the crazy and grab some of the prophecy spotlight away from RCG, PCG, and CCG. Unfortunately, there are too many people who eat up crazy and can't get enough of COG-style prophecy. Doug Winnail is perfect for leading the crazy charge for LCG!
There is no man in LCG that I would ever follow as a prophet. Its bad enough listening to them preach on the Sabbath let alone make some wild prophecy.
There were two great events in LCG history. The day Dr. Thiel was kicked out for apostasy and the day Mr. Meredith died. Both signaled the end of the church that has been rapidly declining ever since.
Is Doug Winnail saying he is Ezekiel?
Doug cited Amos 3:7 and wrote: "God will reveal His intentions to His servants the prophets, so they can alert the world about the significance of coming events."
You always need to fact-check or scripture-check everything Winnail says. In this case, Winnail expounded a bit beyond what the verse says by adding the part about alerting the world about coming events.
That warning Winnail is talking about is the LCG's Ezekiel Message. Ezekiel was a prophet who was given a message for the House of Israel. LCG erroneously claims that the House of Israel was already in captivity prior to Ezekiel being commissioned to give his message; therefore, it is really a message for our lifetime.
Of course, COGs have a very well-documented and very long history of FALSELY prophesying very specific events that were sure to occur in five or ten years – certainly in our lifetime. The COGs have been recording these prophesies that failed to occur for about 90 years - so they are likewise messed up on the details of the Ezekiel Message.
LCG doesn't care that Jesus commissioned his followers to take the Good News to every nation, not to the House of Israel. LCG doesn't care that St. Paul and others were commissioned to take the Good News to the gentile nations. LCG hates the fact that whether a person is a Jew or a Greek - all are called and can come to Jesus as equals. Due to logic, I'll add Israelites are at the same level of importance as Greeks or any other group, in the need to be reached with the Good News.
The Ezekiel Message is just for a nation. The Old Covenant was just for a nation. LCG has missed that the message of the Savior and his Kingdom is not for a nation; it's for all people and the New Covenant is established with individuals, not nations.
LCG's recorded history, including Winnail's ministry, is all about prophesies like the Ezekiel Message, with nothing about the Message the people of the world really need to hear. LCG does not like to teach about a Savior who offers a free gift of salvation.
LCG teaches that their mission is to deliver the Ezekiel Message to the House of Israel - then this teaching demands that you need an Ezekiel to proclaim it. According to the Bible, the prophecy was given to one man; who does LCG claim is their Ezekiel that will reach the House of Israel?
Is Winnail Ezekiel, or is he an Ezekiel impersonator?
Weston is a bonehead. One of the secrets of Judaism is that YHVH is just the Rabbinical Priesthood. That is who Christians and Jews really worship.
If someone calls down fire from heaven---it's fake news.
The two sons of thunder wanted to call down fire from heaven. They were the two Witnesses in type. But the sons of thunder were based on a pagan myth. If you study paganism the bible makes more sense than ever before.
"There were two great events in LCG history. The day Dr. Thiel was kicked out for apostasy and the day Mr. Meredith died. Both signaled the end of the church that has been rapidly declining ever since."
I see two other important events in LCG history:
1) In 1993, Rod Meredith correctly discerned that WCG's problem was one-man rule, so he created the Global Church of God where no one man was a dictator. It wasn't long, however, before he realized that he didn't have the power he wanted. So, under the idea that "all dictatorships are bad unless I'm the dictator", he left GCG and started LCG.
2) Even though he was now dictator, he was still held in check by surrounding himself with good men. But in 2004-2005, he lost 4 of them. Carl McNair and John Ogwyn died. Meredith kicked Don Davis off of the council of elders, and alienated Charles Bryce by undercutting his authority. Free from restraint, Meredith embarked on regular, repeated hate-filled diatribes against all the other churches of God and the men that led them. Instead of uniting all the faithful in one organization, Meredith had unwittingly become the second greatest cause of division in the church of God history (behind Joseph Tkach).
Thiel imagines he is one of the sons of thunder. The problem is, he is more a big old fart than anything prophetic.
Doug is claiming that God reveals his intentions to LCG - if God were to reveal anything to his "servant" Doug, surely it would be that he looks ridiculously vain and fake with the cheap hair dye. How can the church or the world take Doug seriously?
Doug said "Have a profitable Sabbath" as he always does. Did he mean this time "Have a prophetable Sabbath"? :) And too...what's with profiting on the Sabbath???
Under the Banned By HWA post "Dave Pack: Do Not Loathe My Position As Apostle When I Change, Clarify and Make Complete U-Turns", I wrote the following on July 12, 2020 at 4:43 AM:
Whatever happened to Amos 3:7O: "Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets". I use to hear this verse a lot when I was growing up in the R/WCG.
Note that Amos 3:7O doesn't say "Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing by a process of trial and error his plan to his servants the prophets".
END OF LAKE OF FIRE CHURCH OF GOD QUOTE
MY COMMENT - It appears the Packatollah has committed "a gaffee". A "gaffee" in Washington politics is when a politician accidently tells the truth. Applied to the ACOGs, Pack's gaffe is accidently telling the truth by explicitly stating that understanding prophecy is a process of "trial and error". If this Doug Winnail were completely honest, the entire prophetic message of Armstrongism for the past 86+ years (going back to 1934) has been a process of trial and error. And a lot of error! Remember the Radio Church of God booklet, "1975 in Prophecy"?
Richard
A Sidebar: "A Real God Guides History"
It is important to recognize that Winnail's brief exposition on god and history is based on an anthropomorphic view of God. We now understand that spacetime was created by God ex nihilo. Time, for instance, responds to gravity so time is a physical artifact of the creation. Because Armstrongists are immersed in the OT and receive it literally, where that is convenient to do so, they do not recognize the language of anthropomorphism that the OT uses. So they mistakenly believe that god lives inside spacetime like humans do, for instance. The unfortunate outcome is that the attributes of their god are like those of a demiurge of Platonic Philosophy. They have lost the recognition of the Christian god in anthropomorphic verbiage.
It is also important to recognize that if you read an passage with Armstrongist authorship like this, it has an indoctrinating effect. While you are reading for the content about prophecy, the main point of the text, your brain is being washed by a rich subtext of demiurgic language and viewpoint. A Christian author could write this same passage and recognize the literary device of anthropomorphism. Likewise, a Christian reader would recognize this. And the transcendence of God would be the substrate of the entire exposition. But Armstrongists would read this passage with an entirely different meaning. For them, using the same language that Winnail uses, there would be immanence of a sort but no transcendence. This amounts to a persistent de-glorification of god.
This phenomenon is something that most Armstrongists cannot recognize because of years of subtle indoctrination and lack of critical thinking. In fact, I would not expect a good Armstrongist to even understand what I have just written. My guess is that this brief and well-meaning observation would only make an Armstrongist defensive and angry.
"what's with profiting on the Sabbath???"
In ACOG world, it means that members are supposed to be fed spiritual meat on the Sabbath, but will instead will be fed spiritual milk. And all the members are expected to fake reality and pretend that they were fed spiritual meat.
It's like the yearly "the best feast ever" lie that members are expected to parrot,
In order to compete with the other claimed "Philadelphians", they must have Christ make his pre-advent touchdown in the Tobacco State.
Wait!... Let me get this right! Is Doug Winnail "PROPHESYING" that there is going to be a prophet?
Well, then what's that make Doug Winnail??
Thiel imagines he is one of the sons of thunder.
In Australia we'd call him a son of chunder.
In Oz we read The Plain Struth, and listened to The World Temora with Goanna Ted.
Reality is that when a prophet does show up, and if by just a small chance shows up in one of these splinter groups; it will be someone who is not recognized as being anyone in that organization. Just little ol Joe who keeps to himself off in the corner. The reality also is that he will not be accepted as one by the so-called leadership of that organization.
Bob Thiel should have stayed in the LCG!
Non_Ecliptic_Orbit
July 17, 2020 at 7:35 AM
Well said.
Winnail is such a wanker.
God has revealed nothing to him.
Winnail is deceptively insinuating that God because God reveals his plans to his servants - he therefore knows something about God's plans.
Winnail does not know anything about God's plan of Salvation by Grace (Ephesians 2:5-9).
If God has not revealed this truth to Winnail, then God is not revealing anything to him.
Whatever Winnail prophesizes about coming events is an evil attempt to get people so focused on Old Covenant prophesies that the won't care about what it written in Ephesians 2:5-9.
When the LCG ministry is called out for using Amos 3:7 in an effort to inquire if they are saying that they are Prophets, the LCG ministry always uses the explanation that they aren't Prophets in the sense of "fore-telling" things that aren't written in the Scriptures, but that they are "forth-telling" only those things that are in the Scriptures. However this explanation is a lie that started with Herbert W. Armstrong and continues today through LCG and all of the other splinter groups.
Only Jon Brisby has Jesus Christ !
Douglas Winnail declares: "All this is possible because there is a real God who reveals the future and guides the course of history."
Yes, but he reveals the future only one second at a time.
Reminds me of my late stepfather-in-law, who always insisted on tuning in to the TV or radio weather forecast. He said, "If you don't get that forecast, you just have to take it like it comes."
The COG god reveals the future so unreliably that we all have to simply give up and take it like it comes.
And stop second-guessing. If god truly is guiding the course of history, then we should accept--or better yet approve--his choice to install as our president a black man or an incompetent narcissist. We need to learn the lesson of Job: our grasp of the situation is too feeble to allow us to even question how things are going, even if they are going so badly that we all curse the day we were born.
DSW isn't a godly person... he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. LCG is not a godly organization... and they wouldn't recognize a real servant of the true God even if that person supernaturally flew into their presence with a chorus of singing angels opening up the sky while lightning flashed all around with deafening rumbles of thunder!
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