Bob Thiel has some nerve, eh?
To tell us :
...notice that when God’s people die, they rest. As other scriptures show, death is like sleep.Why do they die when they do?Because they die when it is best for them.It may be best because they will cease physical suffering.It may be because negative events are coming that they would be best to avoid.It may be because they refuse to properly repent further. Bob Thiel: Why Do Christian People Die?
Hmm-mm...
When A.C. alumna Mrs. Amy Allwine was violently killed by pious church hubby Steven (when HE decided it was time for her to "go"), was that really "when it is best" for her (as Bob teaches)?
She was a beloved dog trainer, & a good cook often fond of baking, and receiving many compliments for her many wholesome endeavours.
Bob has some nerve, to 1/2 the time say no one should kill... then, the other 1/2 of the time, to conversely insinuate that "God apparently led Mr. Steven Allwine to end Mrs. Allwine's life in 2016"!
I for one am not going to put up with some Podium Premier to shuffle cards of faith in my head like that in a quagmire of zonked "logic".
It's not clear if he's stating that everyone's death is timed best, or if the lesson covers only church members "time".
Was Bathsheba's 1st husband Uriah "meant" to have his death occur at a time convenient for David after ogling Mrs. Uriah as his personal eye-candy? Bob will have cookie-cutter reasoning on that event & for others. (even though we will probably hear from someone that Jesus' lineage came from Bathsheba etc.) How do we process that info respectfully? Doesn't it hurt a little bit, while we remain open-minded to at least accept it I suppose...
Some statements are confusing and contradictive. It happens when it's time :
Why do they die when they do?Because they die when it is best for them.It may be best because they will cease physical suffering.It may be because negative events are coming that they would be best to avoid.It may be because they refuse to properly repent further.
Then, it can happen due to foolishness :
Why should you die before your time? (Ecclesiastes 7:17)While there is a time to die, notice that foolishness and wickedness can have one die earlier than what would otherwise happen.
(guess what on a side note, Bob or hardly no one else can explain why the explicit naughty passage of Ezekiel 23:20 is printed for all age groups to see...but remains off-limits in most lessons...)
Are we to gloss over how (for example, those who are of the pro-life political stance) the idea of the abortions are done at a time "not chosen by God"?
With the pollyanna la-la land approach to this subject, diseases may/or may not be worth researching to treat & cure.
(why even put on a band-aid, or have a broken bone set, or have dental hygiene cleanings?) ...or attend chemo-therapy...skin grafts...blood transfusions...
WCG used to discourage medical treatments. (then we hear of HWA's assistants being told to hide or bury or burn a briefcase full of medicines useful for seniors Mr. Armstrong's age). No wonder Bobby Fischer departed the Pasadena campus life.
Does Bob T. think criminals who kill are simply a marionette-on-strings puppet of God's without free will, & acting on behalf of God when they end someone's life...if he says deaths happen "when it's best for the person" (victim)?
Bob & the superficially like-minded will remember Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who invented a medical "device" which a terminally ill or suffering "patient" could use. And upon personally operating it, the person chooses to elect "their time to die". But all my extensive past fellowshipping in COG never expounded approval or permission for anyone to use any such kind of device like Kevorkian's. (or to use other tools for the same result).
Dibar Apartian's son left life in Pasadena at "the wrong time", not at "the correct time" or at the time which was "best".
Why does Bob think those who died of polio, smallpox, A.I.D.S., cirrosis of the liver (whether from swine trichinosis or from alcohol abuse)...or from lung cancer from smoking tobacco, all went "when it was best"? Aren't smokers and excess drinkers advised by church to stop?
Or does Bob think it was just "the right time to go"? He surely has in mind some instances of tragedy lately in the news that should "not have happened". But then his lesson says otherwise...that even avoidable tragedies occur when "they should". (although he does have that clause regarding : "Why should you die before your time? (Ecclesiastes 7:17)
While there is a time to die, notice that foolishness and wickedness can have one die earlier than what would otherwise happen."
What will be the upcoming & clever Dave Pack-style back-step on his lesson he wrote too quick? Likely, the same lesson will just be re-posted a few times per year like all the other lessons, with some cut/paste add-ons or cuts.
Even HWA made a statement I remember, something about: "no, death is not a friend, but an enemy!"
Kolchak
26 comments:
Then why does Bob sell supplements and practice the voodoo necessary to believe homeopathy to treat illness that might prolong one's life? Is Bob trying to thwart God's plan for timely and necessary death?
Maybe Bob just can't abide time, circumstances and natural death without coming up with profound and God ordained reasons for it? I mean, Bob can't even abide a tornado, flood or blizzard without tying it to prophecy comes alive or his God "trying" to tell someone something.
I like how Bob's god has to try...
And didn't Mr. Thiel speculate that the strokes &/or death of Mrs. Meredith (young 2nd wife of RCM), came about after Bob's personal admonitions he warned Mr. RCM about?
(now I could be getting the RCM wives mixed up, & I surely can be corrected if so)
Is Bob revealing his own severe and untreated depressive disorder with his unscriptural remarks? Or is he really just that shallow -- or monstrous?
Bob is certainly revealing his pettiness with his suggestion that some people die "when they refuse to properly repent further". He clearly doesn't believe in the God revealed in 2 Peter 3:9. It boggles the mind that anyone other than a witch doctor would choose to be Overseen by Bwana Mzungu Bob, Blatant Overlooker of Scripture and Petulant Pronouncer of Curses on those who fail to repent of their sins against Bob.
And does Bob think John List killing his wife & kids in 1971 was their "correct time" to die?
What the hell kind of superstition is that?
Death is so mind blowing, that I have never heard a satisfactory explanation for its timing from any source. Most cultures teach that it is an aspect of ones life over which the human involved is not permitted to take control.
It's also something that you really can't say anything which could possibly make better, although we all do try.
I've met some evangelicals who actually believe that performing an abortion sends an innocent soul to Hell for all eternity. There are those who weep over a miscarriage for the same reason.
When I was a young boy, my grandmother taught us how to play several types of games of Solitaire. One of my favorites was "Clock Solitaire". You dealt the cards on the table in the shape of a clock. As you picked up the cards in sequence, you would place them at the bottom of the stack of four cards in correct numeric position, turn up the top card and repeat. The kings went in the center of the clock. Winning was rare, because it meant the last card drawn had to be the last of the four kings. If all four kings came up before all the others were face up, you lost. I'm sure Nanna knew that the game was a metaphor for life, but she let us figure that out for ourselves.
John 13:4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no
Time and chance.
I am thinking of King Josiah who was slain by King Neco of Egypt at Megiddo. Was it King Josiah's time to go? No, and his death was so completely unnecessary and not God's timing that Neco himself was used by God to warn and admonish King Josiah, which Neco himself knew. So God and Neco contradict the leader of ccog.
What about the little boy babies who were slaughtered in the account of Matthew 2? Was it their best time to die?
What about the young lady named Morgan Montgomery who was tragically killed in that water skiing accident whille the Lifeless Church Of God (LCG) was on watch? I've been water skiing too many times not to know that this was
not mere time and chance. The motorboats should never be so close together in such lake traffic as that. LCG should have had a spotter in the back of the boat for the water skier. And, they should have had a spotter on shore. All standard measures. Yet LCG and the people at that camp were never held accountable for the poor girl's completely avoidable death. In one update to us Rod Meredith even said that they could do nothing to pay for the girl's funeral. A minister who eventually started his own failing group wrote that the answer to her death was quite simple really, that time and chance happen to us all, and that was that. When I challenged that minister about this point and his coldness and to get him to see liability in it all, I was put on his "list". So completely avoidable was her death. Was it just a matter of Miss Morgan Montgomery's right time to go?
What would the ministers of LCG and CCOG say about that?
This is just another example of Bwana Butt-hurt Bob's smug sense of self-righteousness. His statements are targeted at the late Sasha Veljic who passed just a few days before Bob penned this missive.
Bob Thiel has proven himself to be the biggest jerk the church has ever seen. The self-righteous hypocrisy drips off his fingertips when he writes the lies he does, and he wonders why his church does not grow.
Death is unnatural. It is a departure from the norm. We are designed to live for eternity. Even though for both the elect and non-elect it is a transition and not a terminus. The elect transition to paradise and the nonn-elect transition to kolasis.
The last I looked, Calvinists believe that the infant children of non-elect parents are cast into Hell if they die. I think the Reformed denominations are shifting towards Barth so I don't know how prevalent this view now is. Calvinism is just as bizarre as Armstrongism. Because of historical developments, Calvinism managed to carve out a place in Christian orthodoxy. Go figure.
Death, per se, is not a good thing.
Scout
Death is unnatural. It is a departure from the norm. We are designed to live for eternity.
Look at the natural world all around you, as Romans 1:20 instructs. Death is a vital part of every ecosystem you can find. As long as there is birth, a world without death would quickly become a hellscape and would be unsustainable. Even the food you eat requires other living things to die, as very few of us would want to live on a diet of nothing but milk and dropped fruits.
In the Millennium, God's promised perfect world, will manna fall from the skies six days a week? Or will death still be the way that human beings get their food? Scripture shows that a Temple will remain part of the Millennial system. Though its purpose is mysterious, it won't be repeating Cain's practice of offering vegetables (also killed when harvested); it will be causing the deaths of animals. God seems to have no problem with death in the right context. So we can't say that death is a departure from the norm or an unnatural phenomenon. Death and life are inextricably intertwined.
It feels necessary & needed for us all to occasionally post & recall the hearbreaking water skiing accident that the inept group of boating boneheads holding membership to LCG should have avoided on that lake.
The group still owes some kind of monetary debt to Miss Montgomery's family for funeral costs. (or at least conscience, & guilt debt) They take Passover each year knowing they refused to press Meredith into simply paying?) : "In one update to us Rod Meredith even said that they could do nothing to pay for the girl's funeral."
I knew there was some kind of reason I never trusted to go with Global or Living after the Tkach era splitoffs.
Such an event at that lake with Miss Montgomery is serious enough to have brought onto LCG an exact duplicate of the 1979 California Receivership temporary meltdown that practically closed down the old WCG. Why would God want an organization still conducting His "work" after they can't have courtesy to siphon off an atomically small sliver of income to pay a girl's funeral caused by their athletic, buffed boating men?
The tithepayers should have temporarily splintered off into sects until top leadership relented & released simple funds to cover that huge sad blunder.
It should have been featured in a NANCY GRACE crime episode. Even on Vinnie Politan CourtTV. They would have buckled down with righteous litigating anger onto podium Premier Meredith.
It is LCG's equivalent to what PCG did to Ms. Chaisson regarding the story of childrens' winter clothing in a very cold climate.
Both sub groups of that example of "pristine" LCG are as sickening as each other...the group operating speedboats & equipment at the lake along with who should have been spotting from shore, AND the group of tithe-payers & tithe-PAYEES 💵💵💰💷 who have a program set up collecting ample funds able to cover what the entire LCG "presided" over as a whole.
The church literature printing costs of their "the work" spent on the portion of GOTOs who won't ultimately join LCG, would have likely been enough to pay the funeral Mr. Meredith refused to cover!
That stupid teethy smile of Rod Meredith always had a portion of the lake event radiating through his wide grin despite anything else he was "smiling" about after the event occurred under LCG's watch.
whoops I meant RCG not PCG equivalent
4:42 sounds like one of the avid hunter sportsmen of CCOG
or Bob himself or Bob's sidekicks
4:42 the likely pro-Armstrongite...did you notice even HWA himself stating : "no, death is not a friend, but an enemy!"
so why are you touting the "benefits" of death...
& what's wrong with manna, it might be like tasty granola or Wheaties flakes breakfast-of-champions but will you holler for meat & end up being served quail?
Bobby teaches god punishes wit the weather. How about when bobbys roof leaks to the point it infests the building with mold. Is that a blessing?
Here is what Bob will say about the roof...he will think God took the roof off, to see which CCOG members will "lovingly" chip in some emergency "common", (despite having excellent insurance coverage already).
But Bob has in the past fiddled with the blame game & led us to believe Mrs. &/or Mr. Meredith's strokes/deaths resulted from "not heeding" Bob's rantings & ravings.
Whose ravings weren't heeded before Feb. 2024 CA roof removal & subsequent incoming rain soakings onto CCOG assets?
Did Bob chip in any "common", to help pay for the Merediths' medical expenses, or to help with the Miss Montgomery boating victim funeral expenses?
Anonymous 4:42
"Look at the natural world all around you, as Romans 1:20 instructs."
You mean this "present evil world?" (Galatians 1:4)
"God seems to have no problem with death in the right context."
Romans 5:12 states, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned..." This does not sound to me like death is a natural part of things. It sounds like death is an interloper. If Adam and Eve had not rebelled and were given access to the Tree of Life, mankind would not know death. Death is unnatural and dispensible. I don't think it was God's original intent that we should die.
Scout
Scout does not "think it was God's original intent that we should die."
Menominee tribal members of the Great Lakes region have a different viewpoint, one aligned with the instruction to look at the natural world around you. In one of their legends, three men make a pilgrimage to sacrifice to their god and pray. One prays for better hunting skills to feed his large family, and his wish is granted. The next one says he has what he needs but no one to share it with. He requests a wife. His god says there is a woman who needs a husband living near his route home. He should swing by there and take her with him. The third man says he enjoys life on earth and wants to keep it up. He asks to live forever.
His god gets indignant and declares that wish to be the most arrogant and selfish he has ever heard. Did he not realize that all living things must die to make room for the ones that come after? He can stay on earth forever, but not live forever. The god transforms the man into a rock.
A buddy of mine had had some lifestyle problems, and one of his solutions was AA. One time when I was stressing out, he said to me, "Take a deep breath and repeat after me! Everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be, right now!"
Generally fairly philosophical myself, I got to pondering the deeper meanings of that statement. If true, it meant that it was incumbent upon me to adapt and work within the existing framework, not to attempt to change things which I could not. It's even biblical. The people who were in the churches in Revelation that HWA called "eras" were existing in some pretty crappy situations, and God didn't perform an extraction. He left them in place to function and overcome.
So, taking that into consideration, the correct time for you to die is when you actually do die. I believe even Occam would agree with the simplicity of that.
dang it, 11:48, John List's family he shot in Nov. 1971 N.J. did NOT die at their correct time
& when the auto industry finally relented & wisely began installing gov't. mandated seat belts, that all was due to dedicated heroic folk who DID change things
and the regulations regarding no more asbestos in housing DID too
and the banning of cocaine in original Coca-Cola
and the widespread repair of city water pipes finally in Flint, MI
and the personnel who thwarted more shootings inside Joel Osteen's than what would have occurred additionally otherwise
Very profound 11:48, remarkable. Biblical? So do we go ahead & permit the school shooters to trot off to school with firearms in their backpacks un-impeded? Or ought security personnel at the bldg. entrance CONTINUE TO WAVE the metal detector wand & indeed "try to change things"?
Should the wand also be waved in line at the airport ahead of you & yours on y'all's next exciting flight to attend an exotic F.O.T. COG site?
I don't do F.O.Ts, Carl. But, on the rare occasions when I do fly, I always feel grateful when the TSA lets me through without a cavity search. Hasn't ever happened, but, you know, with a little bit of bad serendipity, almost anything is possible.
School shootings? As a gun enthusiast myself, i never was a fan of putting AKs and ARs on the street, and I'm fully in favor of Red Flag Laws. Most of the time, the people who are shooting up our schools were recognized early on, and preventative measures were taken, i.e. gun safes, metal detectors, calls to the police, police staff members on duty at the schools (one or more of the above), and the shooters got through anyway. It's like one of those movies where the bad guys get past all the obstacles through sheer luck almost as it that's what is supposed to happen. Perhaps there is a message or lesson that's supposed to get through, but it is prevented. Most likely these events will continue to happen until the American people overcome the preventors of the message. One would only hope that the solution does not go too far, but the worse and more frequent these shootings become, the more drastic the solution is likely to be.
BTW, this "everything is just as it's supposed to be right now" frame of mind, like anything else, is capable of being taken too far. Those who are not I-0 thinkers have the wisdom to know how far to take it. It's kinda Buddhist when you think about it.
Did Bob "adapt & work within the framework of Meredith's LCG"?
Or is he trying to "change things" in the new corporate CCOG he splintered off of a splinter?
Doesn't Bob teach us to believe God "extracted" Bob & "Philadelphia" OUT of LCG?
We know God through Paul says He works all things "together for good to those who love God". But not all things have originally occured as being a "good thing".
A 19th century pioneer wagon train heading to California could have had it's trip interrupted due to hardship in Iowa resulting in the travellers settling in Iowa, to establish lifelong wealth there instead of at the 1st destination California. That works together for good.
Adam & Eve did a "bad" thing but then God worked it together for good by having that couple's descendants to be the lineage for Jesus (and for ours too).
But God was still upset with Adam & Eve before He worked it together for good. Likely it was not a "good" thing what they did. Not everything is as good as Bob wants us to believe.
Bob will make you feel horrible, or in grave danger, or that you are "troubled", or disobedient and in shame if you don't "do what he says". Then he surely expects even that will work out for good later in resurrections, millenium, etc. We know it will by then, Bob.
It doesn't seem likely that God wanted any "bad things" to occur in the 1st place. Those things were "wrong" & should not have happened. (even if God can use the event toward good afterward).
I hope we can still overall consider death (especially early pre-mature deaths for toddlers, babies, what have you) as being "bad", & not "good", Bob. It all WILL work together "for" good, but it is not good TODAY, when they happen. God likely does not consider it "good" for what Israel Keyes did to Samantha Koenig, Bob & Steve.
I suppose Bob can say almost anything about anything, to which the buddy Steve will always voice an approval. Steve is surely a very high i.q. intelligent fellow, & likely Steve has indeed many times before dealt with grief & loved ones death & ALREADY previously had considered God's handling of those events as a work in progress, and that God will take care of things, & for us to go on with our life, productive & in good hope & faith.
But just because Overseer Bob utters a precept or a truth (even if it's one we ourselves had thought of before), the buddy Steve seems willing to always approve Bob by responding he "had not considered that verse that way" :
"Here is a link to our video: Why Do People Die?
In that video I read and stated the following:
The New Testament teaches:
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)
All things would include death.
Steve Dupuie commented that he had not considered that verse that way, but because since God said it and God is not a liar, it must be so.
What must be so?
People die at the time that it is best for them."
All of us previously, for our whole lives, already consider that God knows what He's doing with the deaths of our loved ones...we have no choice...who can challenge God? (Job 40:1-8). And we do accept it even during (or after) grief.
But will Bob be decent enough to allow us to think of death as something bad & unwanted...not something good or needed or necessary? Can Bob permit us to think it was not "good" the way Jacob Kubai recently killed his daughter?
Please don't tell us it was "good" overall, in the long run, eventually, etc. Please stop insulting our intelligence, just because you have "hierarchy" or "governance".
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