God's most perfect and only true Church of God leader in this horrendous end-times dispensation of the prophetic work of God has always tried to remind us daily that only through himself and his little itty-bitty group can salvation be found. People laugh and mock him, knowing for sure that it is all a lie. That doesn't deter him, as he is back today ridiculing Dave Pack over something he wrote for one of his booklets.
Another Work-a "Short Work" ...
God's commission to His Church continues until the end of the age-that God's kingdom will be preached "until the end come." It has also proven conclusively that the nations of Israel are to be warned by the "watchman" of Ezekiel 33-that these two components of the Great Commission in this age have not changed, nor will they until completed. It is against the second part of this backdrop that a special prophecy in Romans 9:27-29 comes into view. ...Paul recorded, "Isaiah also cried concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant [take note] shall be saved: for He will finish the Work and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Isaiah said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodom, and been made like unto Gomorrah." The Work of God Its Final Chapter!
It seems, according to our favorite Crackpot Prophet, Dave has no idea of who the "short work" will be in 2026. There can only be one prophet and one witnesses that shouts from the mountaintops that the law is to be kept, and that grace is selectively given only after right belief and strict adherence to Bob's teachings.
And there you have it: two aging men who both inherited the same Armstrongist playbook, both convinced they alone inherited the mantle, both spending an impressive amount of energy proving the other guy is the obvious heretic. Dave Pack of the Restored Church of God has turned failed date-setting into a performance art. By multiple independent tallies he has offered well over a hundred specific or strongly implied dates since 2013, many of them delivered with "impossible it's wrong" confidence in his never-ending "Greatest Untold Story" series (now hundreds of parts long). When the Kingdom fails to arrive on schedule he laughs it off, blames "enemies" for noticing, and immediately produces the next unicorn date. He has claimed the offices of Elijah, Joshua, "that Prophet," and the man who will gather all the other scattered COG groups under his Wadsworth campus. The "short work" of Romans 9:28 is, in his telling, something spectacular that his organization will finish just before Jesus shows up-again.
Bob Thiel of the Continuing Church of God watches this spectacle with the satisfied air of a man who has already been validated by dreams (his own and other people's), a 2011 "double-portion" anointing from a Living Church of God minister, and the fact that his group grew in Africa. He posts almost daily that CCOG is the group actually preparing for the short work by translating literature into an ever-growing list of languages. Dave, Bob informs us, simply doesn't understand who will cut the work short in 2026. Only one prophet can shout from the mountaintops that the law must still be kept and that grace is available only after you accept Bob's particular package of restored truths.
New Covenant Christians look at this food fight and politely decline the invitation. The reason is not complicated. Both men preach a gospel that adds the works of the Mosaic law-seventh-day Sabbath, annual holy days, clean and unclean meats, three tithes, British-Israel identity of the English-speaking nations-as necessary components of remaining in the "true church." Salvation, in their system, is not the finished work of Christ received by faith; it is faith plus correct organization plus correct calendar plus correct diet plus correct understanding of which man currently holds the prophetic office. Paul called that "another gospel." The letter to the Galatians exists precisely so that people would stop submitting again to a yoke of slavery after Christ has set them free.
A New Covenant Christian does not need Dave Pack's next date or Bob Thiel's latest language count to know that the work of redemption was cut short-once, at the cross. The remnant that is saved is not the handful of people who picked the correct Armstrongist splinter in 2026. It is everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. The watchman of Ezekiel is not a man in Ohio or a man with a globe and a vintage microphone. The short work is not a last-minute literature blitz by the one true remnant. It is the gospel of grace that has already gone out to the nations.
So why would anyone who actually believes the New Covenant follow either of these two? They wouldn't. They would recognize the familiar pattern: two competing little flocks, each insisting the other is Laodicean or worse, both requiring extra-biblical hurdles that Jesus never placed in front of the thief on the cross. They would notice that the energy spent mocking each other's prophetic charts could have been spent simply pointing people to the One who already finished the work. And they would walk past the table with the numbered plaques and the World Books, grateful that salvation was never that complicated.
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