Dominion Day/Independence Day Special: How to Celebrate Freedom by Joining a New Pyramid Scheme

Independence Day, Dominion Day, and the Curious Case of “You Can Be Free from the World… Just Not from Me”
Tomorrow Canada celebrates Dominion Day. Saturday the United States celebrates Independence Day. Many will wave flags, eat hot dogs, and feel a warm glow about national freedom.
Bob Thiel has a different kind of independence in mind.
In his latest post he begins with the familiar 1 John 2:15-17 warning against loving the world. Fair enough. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life really do pass away. But then, with the smoothness of a used-car salesman sliding from “freedom from the world” into “you really shouldn’t be independent from my church government,” he pivots hard.
The question he wants you asking is not “How do I live free in Christ?” but “Should I be independent from the Philadelphia portion of the Church of God?” And by “Philadelphia portion,” he means the Continuing Church of God — the one he leads.
To answer that question he reaches for the late Herbert W. Armstrong’s writings on the nature of the Church and, especially, on government. The quotes are long, repetitive, and very clear about what HWA believed:

• The Church is a hierarchical organization with government “from the top down.”
• God has always worked through “one man at a time.”
• Jesus restored that government through Herbert Armstrong.
• Anyone who wants to be a “loner” or “individual Christian” outside that structure is deceived.
• Rejecting this one-man rule is the mark of Laodiceanism.

Bob then adds his own commentary: most people who were in the old Worldwide Church of God rejected this teaching after HWA died, and that’s why they became Laodicean. The solution? Submit to the one man God is supposedly using today — which, conveniently, turns out to be Bob himself.
Here’s where the New Covenant makes this entire construction collapse.
Under the New Covenant, Jesus is the one and only Mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5). There is no longer a human high priest, no continuing line of Moses-figures, no single man through whom God must work. The veil was torn. Every believer now has direct access to the Father through Christ (Hebrews 4:14-16; 10:19-22). The Spirit was poured out on all flesh at Pentecost, not funneled through one designated human leader.
HWA’s claim that “the whole thing was government” and that Christ raised him up specifically “to restore government in His Church” is not a New Covenant idea. It is a retrofitted Old Covenant theocracy dressed in New Testament language. The New Testament never presents the Church as a restored version of ancient Israel’s political structure with a single human ruler at the top. Instead it presents the Church as:

• The body of Christ with Christ as the only Head (Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18).
• A royal priesthood in which every believer has direct access to God (1 Peter 2:9).
• A community where leadership is plural, local, and servant-hearted, not a global pyramid (Titus 1:5; Acts 14:23; 1 Peter 5:1-3).

When Jesus corrected His disciples about authority, He explicitly rejected the Gentile model of “lording it over” others and told them the greatest would be the servant of all (Mark 10:42-45). HWA’s model does the exact opposite: it makes submission to the top man the central test of faithfulness.
Several fallacies run through the HWA quotes Bob recycles:

1. Selective Old Testament proof-texting.
   Yes, God often worked through one prominent individual in the Old Testament. He also worked through judges, prophets, and kings who frequently failed. The New Testament pattern is different. After the resurrection we see multiple apostles, elders in every city, and a council in Acts 15 where Peter, Paul, James, and others all speak. No single man silences the rest by divine right.
2. Circular authority.
   HWA declares that God raised him up to restore government, therefore anyone who questions his government is resisting God. Bob repeats the same move: God works through one man; that man is me (or whoever currently claims the title); therefore questioning me is Laodicean rebellion. This is self-authenticating reasoning that cannot be falsified from within the system.
3. Redefining Laodicea.
   The letter to Laodicea in Revelation 3 rebukes self-sufficiency, lukewarmness, and spiritual blindness. Bob (and HWA before him) redefines “Laodicean” as “anyone who rejects our particular form of hierarchical government.” That is not what the text says. It is a rhetorical move designed to make dissent itself proof of spiritual failure.
4. The “you can’t join” bait-and-switch.
   HWA correctly notes that only God adds people to the true Church through the Spirit. He then uses that truth to argue that you must therefore submit to his organization and its government. The sleight of hand is obvious: the universal body of Christ (all true believers) is confused with one particular human organization. You can be genuinely regenerated by the Spirit and still refuse to submit to any self-appointed “one man” hierarchy without ceasing to be part of Christ’s Church.

The most glaring problem is staring everyone in the face. If God’s government is so essential, so hierarchical, and so dependent on one man at a time, why has that very system produced decades of fragmentation, power struggles, and new “restored” churches every time the current leader dies or is challenged? The model HWA insisted was divinely mandated has proven spectacularly unable to maintain unity. 
The endless splinters are not a bug in the system — they are the predictable result of concentrating so much authority in fallible human leaders who then demand absolute loyalty.
Bob’s post tries to sell independence from the world while demanding dependence on his version of “Philadelphia” governance. That is not New Covenant freedom. That is trading one form of bondage for another.
In the New Covenant you are free from the world’s values. You are also free from the need to find the one correct human organization with the one correct human leader at the top. You are free to follow Christ as Head, to serve one another in love, and to gather with other believers wherever the Spirit leads — without having to pledge loyalty to a self-appointed apostle who claims Christ raised him up to restore government.
The real test is not whether you submit to the right flowchart. The real test is whether you abide in Christ, walk in the Spirit, and love the brothers and sisters He has given you — even the ones who don’t fit neatly into anyone’s hierarchy.
So celebrate your national independence if you like. But the deeper freedom on offer is independence from both the world’s systems and the religious systems that try to replace Christ’s direct headship with human chains of command.
That freedom is available right now. It doesn’t require signing up with any particular splinter group or submitting to any self-appointed “one man.” It only requires turning to the One who actually tore the veil and invited us to come boldly to the throne of grace.