Dr. Stavrinides died the other day and just like clockwork the ravenous wolves of Armstrongism started peeing on the ground marking their territory as they sought to malign his character and his faith.
Most of this bad-mouthing has come from self-appointed stinking turds masquerading as faithful men of God who in rebellious fits of vile impertinence decided they were better than everyone else and started their own little cults.
Castrated from the very start by Herbert Armstrong's very own words condemning their actions, these little men struggle to find position and honor in their tiny little apostate communities as they continually lash out at others who are better than they are.
This brings us today to our great Bwana Bob Thiel, the chief overseer of the improperly named "continuing" Church of a lesser "god". Nothing pops his holistic cork more than COG and former COG members being more successful than he is and having a better relationship with God than he does.
After he read the notice I put up on this blog and copied the exact information I posted on this blog, he set about maligning the character and faith of Dr. Stavrinides. Dr. Stav's religious knowledge, his historical knowledge, and his ability to debate and examine issues of importance make the superficial crap that was spoonfed the Great Bwana Bob by Armstrongism and his spiritual daddy, Rod Meredith look like baby pablum curdling on the highchair. Dr. Stav could have wiped the floor with Bwana Bob's so-called intellect many times over, but he was too good of a person to do that. Not so with Bwana Bob.
The Chief Overseer of Feculence starts off by claiming Dr Stav's church, where he was a Greek Orthodox priest, said he was God. Can Bwana Bob really be THIS stupid? Godly men who practice their faith will always be said by their associates, members, and others as God sent to them. In no manner whatsoever do any of these people claim the person is God. That is blasphemy in almost every branch of Christianity except in Armstrongism and Mormonism which both teach humans will be God.
Bwana Bob says:
No, Orthodox church, he was NOT “God sent to us as a church.” That is a blasphemous statement.
His parish wrote in his obituary:
We are truly going to miss you. We have learned so many things from him. He has taught us to love and respect each other.You were God sent to us as a church. Not only we got the best priest, we also got a very educated priest who just loved to teach and guide us in the right way. He never gave up on us. He always remained committed to the church, even having to endure a two-hour drive plus traffic from Glendora to Saint George Orthodox Church Hesperia. We are extremely grateful to meet you and spend lots of time with him.
No matter how busy things got, he always made time for the people he cared about, and showed us that family always comes first no matter what. Everyone who knew him knew how proud he was of the people he loved,
He stressed the significance of attending church and emphasized the need to prioritize it. He used to say, (We always should put God first before anything)
Father Alexander had the Bible memorized. Any question you ask, he would say go to this verse and chapter.
Here we have a group of people who recognized the God-given attributes that Dr. Stav epitomized and practiced to all around him. He epitomized godly attributes as all REAl Christians are supposed to be doing (except for Bob Thiel, apparently). He was not God on earth or sent as a God to his church. Greek Orthodox Christians would be appalled how some small-minded iniquitous man such as Bwana Bob would say this.
Bwana Bob continues on trying to malign him.
Dr. K. J. Stavrinides had been a member of the old Worldwide Church of God.
After Herbert W. Armstrong died and the Tkach Administration was in place, he rose from being basically a little known teacher to being one who tried to persuade the membership to change and embrace the Greco-Roman trinity that was enforced by Emperor Theodosius.
Dr Stave was not a "little-known" teacher. He was highly respected by students, faculty, and church members for his intellect and his Biblical knowledge, something that Bwana Bob is greatly lacking in. He wrote numerous articles for church publications and was sought out by other institutions for his knowledge and expertise.
Next, the Bwana tries to smear his name by attaching him to Tkach jr and the God Is... booklet. The God Is...booklet was a wake-up call for many in the church to examine how we understood God.
Bwana Bob then tries to smear him one more time by stating he taught at Azusa Pacific University as if this is some kind of great blasphemy. APU is highly rated for its education, nursing, religious, and other teaching areas. It has also been in existence since 1899, something that Armstrongism was never able to accomplish with its three colleges or even its church!
Dr Stav's students rated him highly, something that Bwana Bob has never accomplished. Imagine at any point from this moment forward that anyone and I repeat ANYONE would EVER say this about Bob Thiel:
It is those who truly hold to the original faith that are called, chosen, and faithful.
Sadly, Dr. Stavrinides, Hank Hanegraaff, Joseph Tkach, Jr. and many thousands who had at least some affiliation with the old Worldwide Church of God fell away from being faithful.
Do not follow their poor legacy.
Dr Stavrinides will be remembered for a long time. Bob Thiel, not so much.
25 comments:
Damn! Bob Thiel is going to need a major run to CVS to buy up their butt-hurt salve! Will they have enough on hand?
To borrow from the memorial statement you originally posted: "He has taught us to love and respect each other.You were God sent to us as a church."
I'd like to think this was a typo - that they meant, "You were God-sent to us as a church." With a hyphen.
Otherwise, Dr. Thiel's point is quite valid.
People need to give the family and friends space to mourn the death of their loved ones. Only afterwards, should legitimate complaints be made about that person.
Uh, there does seem to be much, much yet to learn about...God, particularly and including Bob Thiel, and me.
I think the missing customary hyphen (or inserted space) is obvious from the context. I don't think they'd call him "God" and then go on to say "Not only we got the best priest, we also got a very educated priest who just loved to teach and guide us in the right way. He never gave up on us. He always remained committed to the church, even having to endure a two-hour drive plus traffic..."
Plus, there are several other grammatical errors in the post - a missing hyphen is the least of them.
As for the "God Is..." booklet, I remember it, but I think I had just left the group or was about to do so by the time it came along, so it was not the big giant to-do for me that people like Gerald Flurry made it out to be. I do remember looking up "hypostase" in the dictionary, not finding it and being rather amused by that in my teenage arrogance, but that's about it. But metaphysics-type stuff was never really a point of interest for me in the first place. If a boat gets rebuilt halfway across the ocean is it the same boat? I don't care, I don't work for the Port Authority... ask them!
I despise Bob Th(d)iel. But even a broken clock is right twice per day, and Thiel isn't too far off the mark with Stavrinides. He was part of the Tkach engine which looked down on the membership and cared nothing about the fallout from shoving unwanted changes down their throats. I listened to many of Dr. Stav's tapes and they were almost incomprehensible. He couldn't explain his ideas in understandable terms. All these high-fives from his students at Azusa Pacific are from a different era, post-AC, and certainly are not reflective of my experiences with him. Yes he was a nice guy but only slightly less of a lunatic than Herman Hoeh.
Bob could have made a much more eloquent statement by simply failing to note Dr. Stavrinides' passing. Interestingly, I first became aware of Thiel due to his jealous comments regarding Dr. Ernest Martin upon his passing. So this is a pattern!
What I want to know is how does someone who has only taken the time to obtain fake credentials from foreign diploma mills not be too embarrassed to take those who made the effort to earn real credentials to task for their life's work??? I mean, it's not as if Father Alexander were a threat to Bob's "work", a work that's already going nowhere!
For shame, Bob! You are a hopeless little ant who believes he can take on the anteaters!
Bob Thiel is an intellectual midget compared to Stavrinides. Stavrinides understanding of the Bible and its Greek roots make Bob's Indian diploma mill a worthless piece of paper.
Bob, with his ThD from a Trinitarian school in India, dares to insult Azusa Pacific? That's rich!
Well, this just shows another incidence of Bob's ignorance- what a pitiful little man.
"Again, I ask...will you ever hear ANYONE ever talk about Bob Thiel in this manner?"
If the world praises you, you are obviously doing something wrong.
Dr. Stavrinides was a voice of reason at a critical moment in the history of the WCG. The WCG, beginning with HWA, had the Doctrine of God completely wrong. Armstrongism asserted a God that was more like a Gnostic demiurge than the God of the Bible. You cannot build a valid theological structure that makes exegetical sense if you get the Doctrine of God wrong at the outset. Dr. Stavrinides was a point of reform as well as a point of division. WCG reformed its Doctrine of God but many departed over this issue. Dr. Stavrinides was an agent in the hand of God for the winnowing of the WCG.
The simple truth is that he will never be popular among former WCG members who rejected Christianity.
Scout
“I listened to many of Dr. Stav's tapes and they were almost incomprehensible.”
Do not worry too much about it if you did not understand the babblings of Stavrinides . Stav did not know what he was talking about either.
No, 5:45. Good people who do right are also often praised by the general population.
The evolution from feudalism into the modern system of rights and checks and balances, based on years of human experience, proves that. People recognize right and good and they often reward it.
Praise of good by the majority of humanity does not indicate that it is actually bad. Results are the criteria by which we assign terms such as good, bad, right, wrong.
What Dr. Stavrinides taught exposed flaws in Armstrongism. So, in a sense, it was bad for Armstrongism. The problem is that we were programmed to see HWA as a quasi-Biblical figure (God's apostle, the equal of Peter, Paul, James, John, etc). He became a false standard for discerning right from wrong. At one time, there was a Good News article in which HWA proclaimed that disagreeing with him was blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. So, we see where aspiring leaders of Armstrongism get their ego, don't we?
As I believe I alluded to earlier, I was either already out of the group or on my way out when "Dr. Stav" came to prominence beyond AC. I remember his name and that's about it (I want to say I may have heard him speak once but I might easily be confusing him with someone else, and I certainly do not remember the topic).
Still, either Bob managed to not read the post very carefully, or he twisted it deliberately just to have something to exalt himself about by fussing. If Bob didn't already have a track record of using the things and people he quotes in very dubious ways, I would have just assumed he skimmed the text and misunderstood.
"Still, either Bob managed to not read the post very carefully, or he twisted it deliberately just to have something to exalt himself about by fussing."
Well that about sums it up, ladies and gentlemen. The Truth(TM) always comes out eventually.
If Dr Stavrinides joined Tkach in shoving the changes down members throats, he's lost my respect. Christ always honored the natural workings of the mind by using persuasion rather than coersion. Knowing the bible inside out but rejecting the separation of church and state is the proverbial penny wise but pound foolish thingy.
Hi Bob!
One of my favorite zingers when my boss is on a tirade is "BREAKING NEWS: Man invents fictional scenario and then gets angry about it."
Good people? There is none good but God. Deceived people? Yeah there is no shortage of those.
That's what this blog is all about. Praising those that are contrary to God.
thiel is a parody of a 3 man circle jerk compared to Stavrinides who as I remember him was an extremely intelligent and a man of great insight.
Dr Stavrinides was well know in the UK WCG, back in the day. He was a lot more approachable than many ministers of that era.
However I mainly remember him giving a series of weekly lectures when he was back in the USA, about 'the nature of God'.
He didn't explain things at all well, and had an annoying habit of making a pronouncement which in effect changed the WCG doctrine in some aspect, and the next week, if someone queried the change of the previous week, would come back with 'you don't still believe that do you?', apparently shocked that the members hadn't taken on board what he had announced for the first time just the week before.
@8:31 I totally agree. A number of us were baffled by the tapes they sent home with us.
Post a Comment