Bob Thiel’s grand claim is that the true “Church of God” alone possessed and preserved the New Testament canon (and for that matter, the ENTIRE Bible) from the apostles forward, that Catholics and Protestants were latecomers and interlopers, and that this pure chain of custody somehow terminates in his own “Continuing” Church of God in 2026. This is not history. It is pure fictional COG mythology.
There was no organization in the first or second century that looked, taught, or behaved like modern Armstrongism. The groups Thiel waves at (Nazarenes, certain Asia Minor congregations, later Waldenses) did not keep the Armstrong package: British-Israel identity, the specific holy-day calendar HWA adopted, the rejection of the Trinity in the exact way the COGs do, the mandatory third tithe, or the “one true church” hierarchical structure that ends with a living apostle/prophet. Claiming them as “our people” is the same move every restorationist group makes: find someone who kept the Sabbath or rejected Rome and declare them your spiritual grandparents.
Bwana Bob's “chain of custody” is pure mythology. Yes, the apostles and their immediate successors knew which writings were authoritative. That is not news. What is news is the leap that only a continuous, doctrinally pure “Church of God” line ever possessed them while the rest of Christendom wandered in darkness. Polycarp of Smyrna is claimed by Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants as one of their own early witnesses. He did not hand a sealed packet of 27 books to a secret COG courier with instructions to keep it away from those nasty Greco-Romans. The early lists, quotes, and disputes show a broad Christian community gradually recognizing the same core writings. The fact that some later Catholics and Orthodox included extra books (or temporarily disputed a few) does not magically transfer ownership of the canon to a 20th-century American splinter movement.
Crackpot Bob's timeline is a classic Armstrongist history rewrite. It treats every mention of “sacred scriptures” by an early writer as proof of the full modern Protestant canon already locked down and exclusive to “us.” Then it jumps centuries, waves at the Waldenses (who were not Church of God or Armstrongist in nature), skips the total absence of anything resembling the Radio Church of God or Worldwide Church of God for most of Christian history, and lands triumphantly on Herbert Armstrong in the 1930s. From there it is only a short, bitter hop through successive splits until Bob Thiel declares that his group now holds the true custodianship. This is not a chain. It is a series of historical non-sequiturs connected by wishful thinking and the magic phrase “Church of God.”
The claim that “the Bible is entirely a COG project” is laughable on its face. The books were written by first-century Jewish and Gentile believers, circulated among multiple congregations, quoted by a wide range of early Christian writers, and eventually standardized through the broader church’s process of recognition. No exclusive COG copyright office existed. The idea that God left His word only with a tiny, mostly invisible flock that somehow resurfaces every few centuries just long enough to hand the baton to the next true remnant is the same mythology every exclusive group tells itself.
Bwana Bob's endpoint is pure farce. Even if one granted every previous claim, the final link—“and therefore the Continuing Church of God under Bob Thiel is the true custodial church in 2026”—requires believing that a man who left Living Church of God over personality and prophetic disagreements, started his own group, and began issuing dreams and self-promotions is the living terminus of the apostolic canon. That is not continuity. That is a man writing himself into the story replacing God's hand in the entire matter.
Greco-Roman and Protestant churches have their own historical problems and anachronisms. That does not make Thiel’s alternative true by default. Two competing myths do not produce one historical fact. The books of the New Testament were recognized, preserved, and transmitted by the wider Christian movement. The idea that only one tiny, doctrinally specific stream ever truly “had” them is the kind of claim that sounds profound only if you already need it to be true.
In short: the apostles wrote letters. Later Christians recognized them. Centuries of ordinary transmission followed. Then, in the 20th century, a former advertising man in Oregon decided he had restored the true church. Decades of splits later, Bob Thiel decided he was the final custodian. That is not a chain of custody. That is pure Armstrongite myth making..
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