Our favorite wounded martyr of the Church of God movement is back again claiming religious persecution. Never has the church had such a great man leading the church than what Bwana Beto Bob is doing. Because he is so great there is now a vast conspiracy conspiring against him. Google and Facebook are personally working to shut him down...as if that would be a bad thing,
In spite of the constant whining about Google trying to silence him, he relies heavily upon them to justify the "numbers" that he claims to be reaching.
Beto made this comment the other day:
Let me add it is not just Facebook. Google is threatening us with religious ad restriction. Although my contact with Google this week said we were still okay, I have my doubts and am concerned that this will change.
Our successful Google campaign has had 418,000,000 computer impressions around the world–yes, close to a half a billion.
For the computer illiterate, that sounds impressive and a sure sign God is performing powerful work in assisting Beto to get the law message out to the world. But, it is not. It's a wild 1/2 truth meant to deceive those with no knowledge of computer/internet terminology.
Here is what a "reach vs impression" is:
Reach is the total number of people who see your content. Impressions are the number of times your content is displayed, no matter if it was clicked or not.
Think of reach as the number of unique people who see your content. In a perfect world, every one of your followers would see every piece of content you posted.
Unfortunately, that’s not how things work on social, and not all of your followers will see every single post you publish. For instance, Groupon has 17 million followers, but their organic content doesn’t come close to getting that number of engagements because only a fraction of their audience sees it.
However, an impression means that content was delivered to someone’s feed. A viewer doesn’t have to engage with the post in order for it to count as an impression. Also, one person could have multiple impressions for a single piece of content. Reach vs. impressions: What’s the difference in terms?
Another view on "reach vs impressions:"
To put it simply, reach shows the number of unique users that were exposed to your content, while impressions show the number of times your content was displayed to these users.
Theoretically, the people that follow you should see each piece of content you publish on social media, right?
That’s why they became your followers, after all – to stay up to date with what you are posting!
Sadly, that’s not the way things work on social media.
Social media platforms use complex algorithms to determine which content to show to which users, and as a result, only a fraction of your following is made aware of your activity every time you publish something.
In fact, this fraction is quite small – especially after the algorithm changes and the much talked about decline of organic reach across leading social media platforms in the course of the last couple of years.
Lower overall reach means fewer people seeing your posts, which ultimately leads to a drop in engagement and fewer conversations with potential customers. Reach vs Impression: What’s The Difference and Why Is It Important?
Of that 1/2 billion people Beto has claimed to have gotten his message across to, the actuality is that his real reach has been negligible. Caucasians, in all of what he calls "British Israelite" nations, have refused to follow him. Beto's ads and articles are getting flashed all over computer screens and no one is clicking.
Beto Bob has become the King of Half-Truths, taking the crown away from Dave Pack.
Always the bridesmaid and never the bride.
It would be very telling if Beto had to answer the following question: Of all those individuals who are part of your statistics, how many do you feel were reached to the point where God now holds them accountable? (And of course I speak as a fool. God wouldn't hold anyone accountable for hearing Beto Bob's message!)
ReplyDeleteWell Bob, I was so impressed with the figures you quoted I almost choked on my ham sandwich.
ReplyDeletePersecution then is indeed coming.
Perhaps if you were to leave early for Petra things will be a little easier for you.
But why don’t you just retire to a little island in the South Pacific, where nobody has heard of you or would recognise you or care that you are ‘doubly blessed’.
Have you thought of Antarctica?
The winters are a little cold there but I hear the whales need saving.
This is funny! I use google a lot and have never seen one ad from the so-called CCOG.
ReplyDeleteI find it uncomfortable when you make fun of Bob because he can’t reach Caucasians but has a following in Africa. Your language implies that Caucasian followers are worth more than non white followers. Even though you say it jokingly it sounds racist.
ReplyDeleteIt does.
Delete5.11 am
DeleteIt's been pointed out many times on this blog that Bob's so called African followers are phonies, whereas the Caucasians are legitimate since they financially contribute to his church.
"Our successful Google campaign has had 418,000,000 computer impressions around the world–yes, close to a half a billion."
ReplyDeleteEvidently those "impressions" aren't making much an impression
As the article pointed out, half a million impressions isn't really that much.
ReplyDeleteIf Bob purchased half a million impressions that offered a landing page that in turn offered something free, but of obvious value, it would be considered a good result if this led to just 50 - 200 people ordering his free literature or asking for a ministerial contact.
Less than that, Bob is wasting his money or running a poorly conceived ad campaign.
Jeef, the point is that Bob's African followers have different motivations than his Caucasian followers.
ReplyDeleteBob isn't getting middle-class and upper-middle-class African followers from the big African cities. What happens in Africa is that desperately poor people cling to a local evangelist, and the local evangelist falsely presents himself to wealthy Western ministers as a convert. When an African evangelist joins Bob, Bob counts the evangelist's followers as CCOG members, even though they are really following the local evangelist, and will profess allegiance to a Sunday church or a different Sabbath-keeping church whenever one of the evangelist's benefactors arrives for an inspection.
Imagine that Gerald Flurry offered to send you a free laptop computer in exchange for your local pastor agreeing to call himself a member of PCG. Even many in the USA would agree to this, and in the grinding poverty of Africa such agreement comes even more easily. Now imagine that Flurry only spoke Swahili and you only spoke English, and you'll understand what it's like for Bob's African "members." Most don't even understand what Bob is saying, and only interact with their local pastor, who may be SDA or COG7 or Baptist or Methodist today, depending on which benefactor he's dealing with.
"I find it uncomfortable when you make fun of Bob because he can’t reach Caucasians but has a following in Africa. Your language implies that Caucasian followers are worth more than non white followers. Even though you say it jokingly it sounds racist."
ReplyDeleteI don't see anything racist about that comment. Bob and the others in Armstrongism still subscribe to British Israelism that Armstrong set as the caucasian nations who were descendants of Abraham, who in their eyes was white. It was those white nations that Armnstrogism went out to with its so-called gospel. The Abrahamic covenant was for those white descendants. Christ though came along and said all of that nonsense was moot and declared all people as recipients of the New Covenant. Just one more reason why Christ irritates the hell out of today's Armstrongite leaders.
I, Prophet Tonto , TOP BOB THIEL!!
ReplyDeleteThis post comment has the potential audience of over SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE, who can read this post via THE WORLDWIDE WEB, transmitted by satellite to even THE MOST REMOTE REGIONS OF THE EARTH!
Speaking of almost choking on a ham sandwich, today's sermon is about food.
ReplyDeleteAs expected, Bob covers the unclean meats issue as a health law. As Zippo noted about HWA "doing his own thing" with CG7, he was into fringe health remedies. And HWA, in his own account, blustered in and mocked a CG7 leader, demanding that he accept that he accept his view that clean and unclean meats was to be kept as a health law, not simply because it was a biblical command.
I think the first Jewish comments on biblical commands being health issues as well was by the 12 Century sage Maimonides (aka Rambam) who was also considered a physician - not a naturopath...
HWAs account of that incident is amusing since his church would end up adopting much of his opponent's attitude.
Delete"Beto Bob has become the King of Half-Truths, taking the crown away from Dave P"
ReplyDeleteI'll wager Pack climbs back on top this afternoon. It's a gorgeous late summer Saturday afternoon in Wadsworth. Isn't it about the time men in the little flock choke themselves on their neckties and ladies remove their makeup to gather for a few hours of Pack rambling on about something? I'll be gyrating in my seat knowing I won't be there, but I will be looking forward to the commentary from Marc regarding half-truths uttered with spittle flying, glasses moving, and promises made to be broken. Much more could be said, I have fifty more proofs but not enough time for all the verses.
As the article states at the end, Bob is always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
ReplyDeleteI commented a few months back, that Bob is neither the bride nor the bridesmaid....He is the little flower girl!
Our favourite littlest false prophlet of all is so beyond his normally wacko dreaming if he thinks this effort will come to anything other than his imagined role of leading 100 white people into ???? What, Bob? What are you leading, other than the smallest, shortest, most useless parade in history? I know you fantasize that you are leading the "short work" (his term, not mine), and I suppose you are the most qualified to lead that, being so vertically challenged. But what good is it doing anyone? Are you leading your whopping 100 members to Christ? No, you're not.
You really should stop this nonsense, Bob, for your own sake, as well as others. Unless and until you earn a real Thd from a real school and spend years studying Scripture to see how it all fits together, you are wasting your time and misleading people. I don't think you have ever once stopped to think how serious the role of a teacher/preacher is. People will be condemned for believing your lies. You will be condemned for lying about being a prophet. This is as serious as it gets and you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. You are the greatest fool I have ever seen, but don't say you were not warned! You are NO man of God.
Armstrongites don't understand the world around them because they do not understand music or science. Music is usually based on copping a riff, and then bending and customizing it to create a new and fresh sound. Let's use the example of the basic twelve bar blues progression on guitar, commionly known as the "Chuck Berry" beat, although Chuck undoubtedly borrowed it from someone else. That basic pattern has been modified and interpreted infinitely over the decades because it is an exciting and very danceable basis for a song.. Also, the guitar itself has been modified extensively to produce ever more pleasing sounds. Originally, in HWA's early life, it was exclusively an acoustic rhythm instrument. Charlie Christian pioneered it as a solo instrument, playing a sequence of notes, rather than just progressions of the seven basic chords. And then, Les Paul, and others, developed amplification systems, so it became an electric instrument which could hold its own amongst the instruments in a big band setting, or combo.
ReplyDeleteIf you select a beginning point for virtually anything, humans immediately modify that thing, often based on a better understanding of it, and they harness it, to be assimilated in more useful, fresh, and exciting ways. Armstrongism's counter principle for this was their sub doctrine of degeneracy. (heh! "We are Devo"???). In other words, they universally considered any modification of the original to be a perversion.
The second foundational concept which Armstrongites failed to understand is that once things exist, they just are. Science does not automatically conclude that something which exists is either good or bad. They see each item as neutral and they study its observable characteristics in order to know what it is, how it fits in, and how it can benefit humanity or the planet. Farmer Brown's horses and donkeys are frolicking around in the meadow. One of the donkeys is in heat and a horse takes advantage. A mule is born. Is it a perversion, or is it something with beneficial characteristics all its own which Farmer Brown can harness and use?. A white woman has been beaten by her husband. She seeks some solace and liquid comfort at a local bar. A Black gentleman is kind to her. Nine months later, a beautiful daughter is born. Is she something that should not even exist, or does she have intrinsic value and strengths totally unique to her? Science would discover those things that a judgmental human would never recognize or acknowledge. Bad, nasty, evil science is often exponentially more perceptive. What about law? For thousands of years, nobody was able to thwart or defy gravity. About 120 years ago, Wilber and Orvil Wright discovered that by combining several laws of physics, they could counter, or "break" the law of gravity, and fly. Some fundamentalists have proclaimed that God never intended for man to fly. Our own former fundamentalist brand claimed flight as their own, saying that God allowed man to invent it so that they could spread their half a gospel message around the world. Which brings us back to Bob Thiel. Most of us are philosophically at odds with him. However, considering the plight of the poorest of the African people, if he is improving the quality of their physical lives right now, (and he would have to actually be being exploited himself to accomplish this), then is that a totally bad thing? I get it that he is disingenuously using them to swell his own numbers and ego as a prophet, but I'm reminded of HWA's joke about the poor little old Christian lady who was the butt of the neighborhood teenagers' jokes who taunted her for thinking God had answered her prayers for a loaf of bread, when it was actually they who had laid it on her bedroom window sill. She told them, "God sent it, even if He did use the devil to deliver it!"
God does use false prophets. Just not in a way consistent with their fantasies.
Bob's CCOG channel on YouTube has fewer than 3,500 subscribers. The Tomorrow's World channel has more than 150,000 subscribers. The Key of David channel has more than 80,000 subscribers.
ReplyDeleteBob's most popular CCOG video has 125,000 viewers. Gerald Flurry's top video has 1.3 million. The top Tomorrow's World video has 1.9 million.
Tomorrow's World sent subscribers something like 6 million magazines in the last year. Gerald Flurry sent his subscribers more than 2 million. Bob sent laptops and seeds to Africa.
Bob needs to stick with the "Gideon's army" and "little flock" excuses, and not pretend he's doing a big work.
IMO: "Unclean meat" laws are health issues: don't eat this or you'll get sick. The laws aren't in the OT to lengthen the chapters.
ReplyDeleteDear Dr. Bob Thiel,
ReplyDeleteI never knew you.
Love,
Jesus
"Unclean meat laws are health issues: don't eat this or you'll get sick. The laws aren't in the OT to lengthen the chapters."
ReplyDeleteNope:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI0ZUhBvIx4