Crackpot Bob's Newest Magical Succession Trick: Behold, Saint Nepos of the True Church of God!

 

Crackpot Bob's Newest Magical Succession Trick: Behold, Saint Nepos of the True Church of God!

By A Concerned Believer

Just when you thought Bob Thiel had exhausted every dusty name in the early church for his endless "unbroken laying-on-of-hands succession" chain, the Crackpot Prophet has outdone himself. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Nepos of Arsinoë-now officially a direct descendant of the Church of God movement. Yes, really. The same Nepos that mainstream history remembers as a third-century Egyptian bishop who liked a very literal, earthy millennium and got gently corrected after he was already dead.

Nepos was bishop in the Arsinoë (Faiyum) region of Egypt in the first half of the third century. He wrote a now-lost work called Refutation of the Allegorists (or Book of Nepos), arguing against the allegorical reading of Scripture popularized by the Alexandrian school-Clement, Origen, and later Dionysius of Alexandria. Nepos took the thousand-year reign in Revelation 20 literally: Jesus returns, the saints reign with Him on earth for a thousand years of righteous (and, according to his critics, somewhat "Jewish" and bodily) delight. He also wrote hymns and psalms that the brethren enjoyed. Dionysius of Alexandria, who later wrote against the doctrine in On the Promises, still spoke of Nepos with genuine respect: praising his faith, industry, diligence in the Scriptures, and his psalmody. Dionysius treated him as a brother whose interpretation was mistaken, not as a heretic or outsider.

After Nepos died, his teaching continued to circulate in the Arsinoë villages. It produced enough unrest that entire churches experienced schisms and "apostasies." Dionysius went there, called a three-day public examination with the local presbyters and teachers, and sat with them from morning till evening debating the book. The chief promoter, a man named Coracion, publicly renounced the chiliastic view after the discussion. Dionysius wrote his refutation because the book was still circulating and persuasive, not because Nepos had launched a rival "true church" that rejected the rest of the faith.

That is the historical Nepos. Now for the Thielian upgrade. According to Crackpot Bob and the CCOG, Nepos "had laying on of hands succession from the apostles," was a well-respected leader of the faith once delivered to the saints, and was succeeded by Macarius of Edessa. The actual CCOG article is more cautious when you read it carefully: it says "presuming" Nepos belonged to the faithful continuation, "if the succession hypothesis is correct," and "possible successor." In other words, they inserted him into the list because he was a literalist millenarian who opposed allegory, then invented a clean handoff to someone in Edessa for whom there is no documented connection. No historical source places Nepos outside the ordinary Egyptian church under Alexandria's orbit. No source says he kept the seventh-day Sabbath, rejected the developing mainstream calendar or practices, or considered himself the sole true remnant. Chiliasm was still widely held in the second and early third centuries by people as diverse as Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus-none of whom were "Church of God" in the Armstrongist sense. Dionysius simply moved the ball toward a more spiritual reading, and most of the local churches followed after the debate.

Thiel's version turns a respected local bishop whose distinctive teaching was debated and largely abandoned after his death into a foundational link in the one true Church of God succession. The same man who died in the communion of the churches of his day is now retrofitted as the anti-allegorist hero who alone contended for Jude 3. It is succession by selective quotation and hopeful presumption. When the evidence is thin, the list still gets another name.

The lies stop when the desire for an unbroken institutional pedigree stops outweighing what the sources actually say. Until then, expect more forgotten bishops to be drafted into the ranks of the "faithful remnant," complete with video titles and radio segments. Nepos was a literalist chiliast bishop who wrote hymns, opposed allegory, and was treated with respect by the man who later refuted his millennium. He was not the missing link that makes the Continuing Church of God the sole heir of the apostles. History is less cooperative than the succession charts.