For a church movement that smugly brags it would rather celebrate a hill than ever celebrate a birthday (because pagan!!!), certain Armstrongist COG leaders positively salivate over commemorating the most riveting dates in COG history: the day the state stamped their church incorporation papers, the sacred long weekend they cracked open that moldy booklet for the 47th time at a summer camp, and, of course, the holy anniversary of the fever dream in which God Himself apparently whispered, “The Churches of God are doing great, but you know what they’re really missing? Yet another splinter run by a guy with a blog and a persecution complex.”
This time, the Greatest Prophet Ever to Grace the Churches of God With His Physical Presence™ (trademark pending) decided poor Dibar Apartian hadn’t suffered enough in the grave, so he exhumed the man’s comments, dusted them off, and ran them through the patented Thiel Scripture-Twister™ (now with 30% more confirmation bias!) to “prove” he had no choice but to courageously apostatize from the Living Church of God and found the One True Remnant™—population: him, his wife, a few Caucasians and some Africans.
For years, the Living Church of God smiled through gritted teeth while Bwana Bob threw hourly tantrums about their “wrong doctrines” and “inaccurate information” (because nothing says spiritual maturity like a short little man whining on the internet that the big kids won’t listen to him). They kept patting him on the head in public like the awkward cousin at Thanksgiving, all while texting each other screenshots of his latest unhinged “prophetic” rants and laughing so hard they needed oxygen.
And just like how he “miraculously” turned Gaylyn Bonjour’s polite "blessing" into a divinely ordained double portion anointing, the Great Bwana has now performed the same linguistic equivalent of a pretzel factory explosion on Dibar Apartian’s words until they “clearly” say exactly what he needed them to say this news cycle.
Crackpot Bob is now desperately trying to retcon history so that Apartian looks like some cloak-and-dagger resistance fighter secretly undermining Rod Meredith, in the same way he insists Apartian single-handedly forced LCG’s magazines to publish his groundbreaking research and biblical interpretations.
The man has spent decades absolutely fuming that first Worldwide, then Global, then Living all looked at his “impeccable” research, his “incontestable” corrections, and his entirely self-awarded credentials and collectively said, “Yeah… hard pass on ordaining Captain Tinfoil.” One former UCG minister summed it up best: the guy is “completely nuts.” But sure, Bob, clearly the problem is that every single church organization on the planet is blind to your towering genius.
Many members in LCG were unaware that Dibar Apartian had issues with LCG’s Tomorrow’s World magazine. He stated it lacked interest, depth, and relevance. In 2007 and 2008, he pushed Dr. Meredith to agree to have articles in it from me as he told me that my articles were what LCG needed. Dr. Meredith agreed, at least at that time. I agreed, but only under the provision that LCG would first fix errors in its booklet on church history. Although LCG, numerous times agreed to do that and told me numerous times that it was working on doing that, it never happened as various ones promised. The reality is that one of the top people did not want the magazine changed and prevented the booklet changes apparently as a reason to not have me submit articles.
And the hits just keep coming from the One-Man Prophetic Extravaganza™.
Now Crackpot Bob is solemnly swearing up and down that Rod Meredith, on his deathbed no less, looked him square in the eye and declared, “Bob, my son, you are a prophet, yea verily, the prophetiest prophet who ever propheted.”
How convenient that the only witness to this sacred moment is… checks notes… only Bob himself. Because nothing screams credibility like a private conversation with a dead man who can’t fact-check you.
Everyone who actually knew Rod Meredith for more than five minutes is currently choking on their coffee, wondering if Bob mistakenly thought “You’re a prophet” sounds exactly like “Please stop sending me 40-page single-spaced emails about Mayan calendars and lukewarm Laodiceans.”
But sure, Bob, keep swinging that imaginary deathbed endorsement around like it’s the Ark of the Covenant. The rest of us will just be over here marveling at how you’ve turned “Rod once said ‘God bless you’ after I sneezed” into “clear biblical proof I’m the end-time Elijah.” Truly, the gift of creative hearing is strong with this one.
Dibar Apartian frequently used to urge me to try to get the other leaders in LCG to correct doctrinal, prophetic, and literature errors. Although I tried to get him to do more of that himself, he always instructed me to not only do that, but to remind other leaders in Charlotte to keep their promises to fix errors, literature, etc.
But we did have an incident where he got quite angry with me. It was related to something that started on October 3, 2008 when Dr. Roderick C. Meredith (Presiding Evangelist of the Living Church of God) called me and said to me, “God may consider you to be a prophet.” Dr. Meredith and I discussed this in depth as Dr. Meredith was the one who brought the topic up.
Oh, it gets even richer.
Even Dibar Apartian (yes, the same guy Bob just dug up like a theological gopher to prop up his latest fever dream) reportedly looked at Crackpot Bob one day, blinked twice, and realized he’d been bamboozled by a walking, talking Wikipedia page with a martyrdom complex.
According to people who were actually in the room (instead of, you know, channeling the conversation through a crystal ball and a persecution filter), Apartian eventually figured out that every time Bob opened his mouth, truth took the elevator down twenty floors and jumped out the window.
Word is, Apartian went from “mildly amused” to “Dear God, this man is an utter fraud” faster than you can say “double portion of delusion.”He supposedly warned others that Bob’s “research” was about as reliable as a chocolate teapot and that his “prophetic insights” had all the spiritual weight of a wet napkin.
But why let a little thing like the dead guy’s actual opinion stop the Bwana Bob Myth-Making Machine™?
Nah, just twist a couple of polite sentences, sprinkle in some posthumous fan fiction, and boom: Apartian is now retroactively Bob’s biggest cheerleader instead of the guy who quietly face-palmed every time Bob walked into headquarters with another 87-page “emergency correction” about why the church calendar was off by 0.3 seconds.
Dead men tell no tales… but apparently they do provide excellent ventriloquist dummies for narcissistic “prophets” with blog access.
Magnificent.
Later that month, my family and I went to the Feast of Tabernacles in Evian, France. The conversation with Dr. Meredith weighed on my mind, so I asked Dibar Apartian (who was the Feast site coordinator) and Dr. Jeff Fall (who was my pastor then, and who also attended there that year) to meet with me before services one morning. I told both of them about the conversation with Dr. Meredith.
Upon hearing this, Dibar Apartian got upset. He told me that Dr. Meredith did not say such a thing and I assured him that he had. His emotions got the best of him and he stormed out of the meeting and I completed it by discussing what happened in more depth with Dr. Fall.
A couple of days later, after Dibar Apartian calmed down, he came up to me and said that I was either “the one” to lead the Philadelphian remnant or the “biggest threat to the church.” He also came up to me shortly thereafter and told me how much he appreciated a sermonette I later gave during that Feast.
And here comes the next jaw-dropping plot twist from the Thiel Cinematic Universe™!
After poor Dibar Apartian finally realized he’d been conned by a human PowerPoint presentation with delusions of grandeur, Crackpot Bob insists that—miracle of miracles—Apartian suddenly did a complete 180°, fell to his knees, and tearfully confessed, “Bob, I was blind! You truly ARE the end-time prophet I always secretly knew you were!” Yeah, sure, and jackasses sprout wings and start doing barrel rolls over the Sea of Galilee every Passover. Totally plausible.
Having failed to convince the living, Bob now pivots to slandering the dead. He’s gleefully telling anyone still listening that Apartian (the same Apartian who loyally stood by Rod Meredith for decades like a French bulldog with a PhD) was actually seething with secret resentment the whole time.
Apparently Apartian spent his final years whispering to the potted plants about how Meredith was a spiritual lightweight and only Bwana Bob, the Mayo-Dipped Messiah™, understood True Truth™.
Bob needs this fictional feud like he needs oxygen, because nothing screams “God forced me to apostatize and start my own elite club” quite like inventing a dead guy’s diary entries that paint your former boss as the bad guy and yourself as the misunderstood hero.
It’s not enough that Apartian is dead and can’t sue for defamation; Bob has to drag the man’s reputation through the mud just to give his 2012 resignation letter a retroactive glow-up.
Stay classy, Prophet Profit. Stay classy.
It should be noted that Dibar Apartian had major issues with LCG in general and Dr. Meredith in particular. He had some warnings about LCG. And I was not the only one who knew this. Though since I left, various ordained leaders in LCG have spread falsehoods about me–but let me add that I do not believe that Gerald Weston knows the truth about what happened as my sources indicate he was told falsehoods that he has accepted–maybe one day he will learn-as the Bible warns, “Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord deceitfully” (Jeremiah 48:10).
And the grand finale of this tragicomedy just keeps delivering.
Enter the Mysterious Backstabbing LCG Minister™ (name conveniently withheld because “sources” and “plausible deniability”). This anonymous hero allegedly pulled Bob aside one day and whispered the magic words that sent our humble prophet into orbit: “Bob, LCG is no longer God’s Church… only YOU can save us now.
Translation: someone poured jet fuel straight into Bwana Bob’s already planet-sized ego, and the resulting explosion registered on the Richter scale.
Suddenly the voices in his head had a second opinion! Hallelujah, it’s a prophetic duo!
Of course, the prideful arrogance that had been simmering on low for decades finally boiled over like an unattended teapot, and even the endlessly patient Rod Meredith snapped. In a moment that now lives in COG infamy, Meredith publicly dressed down Captain Ego in front of God and everybody, basically telling him, “Sit down, shut up, and stop acting like you’re the fourth member of the Trinity.”
The public rebuke still burns Crackpot Bob’s backside to this very day; you can practically see the scorch marks every time he types another 9,000-word “dreams + anonymous sources + twisted quotes = I’m totally Elijah” manifesto.
To this day it absolutely frosts his cupcakes that the rest of us refuse to swoon over his fantastical fan-fiction used to justify the Great 2012 Apost-a-schism and the founding of the Continuing Continuing Continuing Church of God (Now With 37% More Persecution Complex!).
Sorry, Bob. Some of us prefer our history without the extra helping of delusional sprinkles.
Some have attempted to discount and discredit what happened between Dibar Apartian and myself, but what is reported here is true.
In a post shown on the Banned by HWA site in March 2016, its webmaster Gary Leonard oddly posted the following:
Several LCG asked me if I had any information on Dibar Apartian and his belief that LCG was no longer God’s church. This was posted in December of 2015. You can see it between snarky comments about Bob and his self righteous grandeous image he tries to portray of himself.
The only version of this story is coming from Bob Thiel when he tried to use it to smear Meredith whom he is angry with for refusing to listen to him. and incorporate changes he felt LCG needed.
Gary Leonard then made some more attacks against me and included some information I posted.
Yet, if Gary had looked at certain comments at his own blog, he would have realized that I am not the only one to post comments related to Dibar Apartian’s views of the Living Church of God (and I posted none at Gary Leonard’s blog).
Still seething from that public spanking Rod Meredith gave him years ago, Crackpot Bob dreamed up what he clearly thinks is his magnum opus: a 61-point manifesto triumphantly titled “Living Church of God: 61 Errors and Heresies (And Why Only I, The Great Bwana, Have 100% Pure, Uncut,
Pharmaceutical-Grade Doctrine™).”Sixty-one! That’s one error for every year he’s been nursing that same bruised backside, apparently.
The butthurt doth linger a longeth time, verily, even unto the third and fourth generation of blog posts.
According to the world’s foremost authority on everything (himself), LCG is now so hopelessly corrupt that only the improperly named Continuing Church of God (headquarters: an itty-bitty storefront on Grover Beach, California) teaches the full, unvarnished, 100% certified-organic truth. No errors, no mistakes, no room for improvement; just pure, flawless, factory-sealed revelation straight from the mind of the end-time Elijah who totally wasn’t passed over for ordination three separate times because he’s “completely nuts.”
We all know that’s an industrial-strength lie, of course. Give it six months and he’ll be up to 83 errors, then 127, then a nice round 153 (one for every fish Jesus miraculously caught, naturally), because the list only ever grows in direct proportion to how ignored and irrelevant he feels that week.
So remember, folks: when your entire identity is built on being the only person in 2,000 years of church history who finally got everything exactly right, the butthurt truly doth linger a longeth time. Forever, actually. Until the next anonymous “source” tells him he’s also the second witness.
