Exposing the underbelly of Armstrongism in all of its wacky glory! Nothing you read here is made up. What you read here is the up to date face of Herbert W Armstrong's legacy. It's the gritty and dirty behind the scenes look at Armstrongism as you have never seen it before!
With all the new crazy self-appointed Chief Overseers, Apostles, Prophets, Pharisees, legalists, and outright liars leading various Churches of God today, it is important to hold these agents of deception accountable.
Herbert Armstrong's Tangled Web of Corrupt Leaders
Several years ago Rod Meredith declared that he had never committed a major sin since baptism. Now he declares he cannot make a "huge" mistake. It must be a grand life knowing that you are incapable of ever doing anything wrong or sinning in a big way. That logic is about as sound as being "doubly blessed" and starting your own church.
Sinless Herbert and Loma, the father and mother of us all, apparently were guileless and sinless, till a bunch of sniveling backbiting members entered the scene.
We have brethren right now – and my word doesn't prove it to you – one thing I'm grateful, we have a lot of very human people in the work, but at least the leading ministers overall have been the most dedicated, the most solid, the most loyal men closest to God that I have ever experienced since the earliest days of the Church when just Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong were the father figure and mother figure. Pretty quick after that human nature came in and people were playing games – not horrible, I'm just saying we had a lot of [it], very obvious – now so many of the men like Mr. Ames, and Dr. Winnail, and Mr. Gerald Weston and others have been tested and tried, and tried and tested, and they have been walking with God, they've been put through the mill so to speak, and you have a group of men, that if anything happens to me, that have been tried and tested for DECADES, DECADES in the way of God. Will they make mistakes? YES! Did Mr. Armstrong ever make mistakes? Of course he did; he said many times, he said, "Herbert Armstrong has made HUNDREDS of mistakes." But he said, "God has never allowed me to make a huge mistake to destroy the Work." So he'll let us make little mistakes, but not huge mistakes, and then he'll straighten it out in his time.
As the Living Church of God continues to struggle administratively and financially it has to start cutting back on expenses. Jimmy Meredith can only redecorate so many offices and take so many all expenses paid trips to Hawaii till the money till starts going dry.
Imitating their mother church, the LCG is pulling the same trick that the Worldwide Church of God did decades ago when it had members dress up in Sabbath wear and answer phone calls in their homes. That experiment was a flop like so many others. It's the 21st century and they STILL can't come up with an original idea.
Jimmy Meredith writes:
In an effort to potentially save a substantial amount of this expense,
we are exploring the possibility of bringing our call center in-house.
However, for this to happen we will need your help! This is an
opportunity for Church members to let their lights shine and have a
direct “hands on” part in preaching the Gospel. In order for this to be
successful, we need many volunteers who are able to work from home and
are willing to assist with our peak-volume call-in periods at different
times throughout the week.
Then like any good COG leader, Jimmy declares that if the program fails its the fault of the membership. Its success depends entirely upon the membership. No one in Charlotte could ever be held accountable!
Ever since Loma Armstrong had her dream/nightmare that spurred her husband on to start a money making empire, various Church of God wannabe leaders have attempted the same thing. Dreams and visions have produced a plethora of incompetent abusive COG leaders. Just look at the hierarchy of any of the larger COG's today and you sill see what those nightmares have produced.
Using dreams as a tool to legitimize yourself is also another attempt to cover up the fact that these men have no original thoughts in their heads. Everything they do is copied from the actions of Herbert Armstrong. Even though they all live and have churches that exist in the 21'st century, they still rely on a model from the late 19th century work/power ethic. Just like Herbert Armstrong, these men have never held legitimate hard working jobs where they have had to toil with their hands and get dirty and sweat. God forbid if a COG leader ever had to sweat from physical exertion! Basketball maybe, but never physical work. Any how, that's another story.
Today, we have another self-appointed COG leader who is trying to legitimatize his apostate brand of false Christianity. Bob Thiel is back with another poor attempt in trying to prove he is something more than another crazy Californian.
The self-appointed prophet/apostle/chief overseer and world renown expert on the Mayans, writes this about himself, though he uses HWA's own words to discredit himself.
Do dreams and prophets have any place in the Christian Church today?
Did any precede the start of the old Radio Church of God? What about
the Continuing Church of God (which did not officially form as a declared entity until December 28, 2012)?
The Bible records that God often has used dreams to give messages
(Genesis 20:3-7, 28:10-17, 31:10-13, 31:24, 37:5-10, 40:5-18, 41:1-32;
Numbers 12:6; Judges 7:13-15; 1 Kings 3:5-15; Daniel 2:3-45, 4:4-27,
7:1-28; Matthew 1:20-25, 2:12, 2:13, 2:19, 2:22; Acts 16:9).
I had a dream prior to the start of the Continuing Church of God, as did someone I did not know who lived in New Zealand.
While some may wish to discount what happened with me, let us also
look at something that the late Herbert W. Armstrong wrote about dreams:
Let me say here that in about 99,999 times out of
100,000, when people think GOD is speaking to them in a dream or vision
in this day and age, it is pure imagination, or some form of
self-hypnotism or self-deception. I have only come to believe that this
dream was a bonafide call from God in the light of subsequent events.
(Autobiography of Herbert Armstrong, (Volume 1), chapter 10, 1973, p.
194)
And that is correct. Most dreams are not from God, even if people think that they are. Notice what the Bible teaches:
7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there is also vanity. But fear God. (Ecclesiastes 5:7)
Most dreams don't come from God but from the minds of delusional self-adsorbed men...except in Thiel's case. Since he is the ONLY legitimate TRUE COG leader on the face of the earth today, his dreams are 100% God inspired. No nightmares for Bob!
Like I said above, Thiel goes on to elaborate how he has patterned his mini-cult after Herbert Armstrong's example. Just because Loma and HWA had dreams, Bob can too!
Loma and Herbert Armstrong were married in 1917. They were
specifically told that they would have a work to do. Furthermore, the
bright lights in the dream may have had to do with doing a work (cf.
Matthew 5:16)–a work that seemed to vanish and return (flash). Thus,
there was a dream from God given to a woman in the 20th century that
preceded the start of the old Radio Church of God that Herbert W.
Armstrong led. The Radio Church of God represented the start of the
Philadelphia era and the Philadelphian work–a work that is not finished
(cf. Matthew 24:14-15)–and Herbert W. Armstrong claimed that a dream
given to his wife was from God, prior to the start of the Philadelphia
era.
Since the Philadelphia era was raised up years after that dream, a
question to ponder is would God do anything similar to point to the
continuation of the end-time COG remnant of the Philadelphians?
Consider that in Loma Armstrong’s dream that there were two sets of
flashing stars–there were two parts to the dream. Herbert Armstrong is
now dead and there was a pause between the work God had him to do and
the completion of the final phase of the work to finally fulfill Matthew
24:14 (cf. Isaiah 29:14).
In the past, like in 2013 and 2014, I have called the time between his death and the formation of the Continuing Church of God the transitional phase –which
is consistent with Loma Armstrong’s dream. God will cut that final work
short (Romans 9:28) which results in the famine of the word (Amos 8:12; )
which is consistent with the vanishing stars in Loma Armstrong’s dream
(though there could be other interpretations–we in CCOG are continuing
the Philadelphia work and expect to be the ones God will use on earth to
help finish it).
With a few hundred US members and several hundred poor African members, Thiel is set to take his mind-boggling work to the leaders of the world so that the entire earth will hear the message of the kingdom before the end happens.
Theil thinks his new cult is the fulfillment of the second part of Loma's nightmare:
Notice that the dream was to go until the end of the world and the
coming of Jesus–since Herbert Armstrong has been dead since January 16,
1986–if the dream was from God then, does it not make sense that the
second half of the dream would be fulfilled by another in the 21st
century? We in the Continuing Church of God are fulfilling that second part of stars.
Perhaps it should be mentioned, Herbert Armstrong had more
information about what I am referring to as the first set of stars in
the dream. He wrote:
It was a dazzling spectacle…People by the hundreds came
running into this broad intersection looking up to see the strange
phenomena … A vast multitude of eyes were upon us… I have only come to
believe that this dream was a bonafide call from God in the light of
subsequent events. (Armstrong HW. The Autobiography of Herbert W.
Armstrong, 9th installment. Plain Truth, August 1958, p. 18).
Eyes of a vast multitude suggest that the dream was saying that the
work to be done was to have a witness to many. This happened with the
old Radio and Worldwide Church of God under Herbert Armstrong’s
leadership in the 20th century. The second set of stars in the dream,
which he did not mention in the August 1958 Plain Truth, article, but did in his published Autobiography, may pertain to what I have called, for years, The Final Phase of the Work.
But even if it had applicability to the ministry of Herbert Armstrong
only, the dream, which he shortly before his death he confirmed he
believed was from God (per Aaron Dean, who I discussed this with on
October 30, 2015), shows that one did precede the COG work he was
involved in.
Thiel's work now surpasses anything Dave Pack, Rod Meredith and Gerald Flurry are doing. Even with all their expensive media campaigns they are poor imitations of the greatness that is Bob Thiel!
Thiel then goes on to express his bitterness he STILL holds against Rod Meredith's rejection and later church wide public humiliation.
Several years ago I had a dream, which while I did not understand it
at first, as it became more and more fulfilled over the years, I began
to understand it and believe it was from God.
I was 50 at the time (which essentially makes me an ‘old man’ per
Numbers 8:25; cf. John 8:57). In my dream, there seemed to be two
parallel lines. Living Church of God
(LCG) evangelist Roderick Meredith was on the top line and I was on the
line much below. In the dream, I kept calling up to Dr. Meredith, but
he never would respond. This lack of response made no sense to me during
the dream. Then after what seemed to be a long time, the lines-crossed
with his line dropping and my line going up.
One reason that I did not understand it at the time was that I was on
relatively close speaking terms with Dr. Meredith then (he repeatedly
told me he considered me to be his friend, plus he had appointed me an
adviser to LCG on matters of doctrine and prophecy), so that aspect of
the dream made no sense. Also, since I had no intentions of leaving
Living Church of God then (and certainly no plans to start a separate
church), it was not clear what the dream was saying. Another reason I
was unsure about the dream then was that I had not had any anointing for
the Holy Spirit beyond baptism when I had that dream.
But these matters changed eventually. For one, I was unexpectedly
anointed for a ‘double-portion’ of God’s Spirit (cf. 2 Kings 2:9) on
December 15, 2011 by an LCG minister named Gaylyn Bonjour.
Furthermore, over time, Dr. Meredith became more distant from me,
would not keep various promises to me, and ultimately stopped speaking
with me. And after I got a letter from him on 12/28/12, it was clear to
me that there was no way that the Philadelphia mantle could be with him
or any of his leaders. These subsequent events showed me that the dream
was being fulfilled.
The fact that Americans are sending this moron money shows how gullible and naive people really are. God never expects this kind of loyalty out of any Christian.
