Over the decades there have been various crackpots that have come up with all kids of pet theories, wild speculations and outright lies. It is this same legacy that has allowed Bob Thiel and James Malm to flourish and find a few gullible members to join them. Liars have always found fertile ground in the Church of God. We have had lying false prophets that knew the exact timeline of prophetic prophecy.
We have had crack pots that claimed the egret found in front of he Auditorium were going to come alive, four of them would pick up the auditorium and the fifth would lead the way as they flew it to Petra. This idiot actually had people who followed him out of the church over this.
One of the crazy things that was swirling around Pasadena when I came to college was the belief by some that God had personally placed his name on the campus. That belief gained traction because of the street names surrounding the main campus.
Green Street
Orange Grove
Del Mar
St. John
When you take the first letter of each street you come up with this, "GODS," God's campus. God's church, God's college. You name it and some idiot claimed God was behind it.
That belief is still in existence today, even though God apparently abandoned the property a couple decades ago.
There is a new crackpot claiming to be God's mouthpiece, just like all the other COG face prophets out there. This guy is Lee Clark.
The streets cry out!As long as we're here let's apply the principle of using names to identify who Jesus is talking to in this letter. Notice that in verse 12 the word God is used exactly four times. Now did you know the following interesting bit of trivia? The Worldwide Church of God's Ambassador College campus in Pasadena, California, is bordered by four main streets. On the north is Green Street. On the west is Orange Grove. On the south is Del Mar. And on the east is St. John. These are all names of streets. Streets are places. Now if you take the first letter of each of the streets that border the campus, starting at the north and moving counterclockwise, they spell G-O-D-S. GODS!!!
Most will say that this is just coincidence. Is it?! I can heap so many coincidences like this on top of each other that after awhile anyone with a converted mind will only be able to conclude that God Himself is so powerful and intelligent and detail-oriented that He planned all these "coincidences" out some time long ago in the eternity that He inhabits and that when Jesus, who had been God in the flesh, dictated these letters to the apostle John, He knew exactly what He would raise up in the future. He knew down to names of the streets that He would have a Worldwide Church of God in Pasadena, California, USA, eighteen-and-a-half centuries down the road. And He named the streets this way to remind us of our destiny!