Dr. Robert Thiel
In my view and experience, the concept and teaching in WCG and now most splinters, of fleeing or going to the Place of Safety to experience God's protection during the final times before the Second Coming was and still is one of the most dangerous misapplication of scripture they ever came up with. It was the theme of Gerald Waterhouse's long winded and fanciful sermons, along with loyalty to HWA and belief in his all wise leadership, as he toured the churches spreading the Gospel of Fear and "How the hell is THAT going work?"
Waterhouse added the extra fact, one of many, that it was not just a place of safety but a place of final training to be, as I assumed, God as God is God and ruling over the nations. I detested Gerald's visits, from my youthful self until the end and told him in the end that he caused more fear, worry and questions in the congregation than he answered and that I was no longer going to answer for him after he left. I have related that at the same time I asked him what he was going to do when HWA died. I never thought he wouldn't. He said that he'd believe it after three days and three nights. That was one of the last straws for me and he never had many straws to deal with from me to begin with over the years.
The Place of Safety is, by far, the most dangerous and ill conceived teaching of WCG and HWA or those around him. Let me be clear. I never believed it and like BI, divine healing only and divorce and remarriage, never gave a sermon on it. I handled questions on it personally and privately and reminded folk that much of this was speculation and simple opinions that we could wait and see about. BI never made a big impression on me as the NT did not care who your ancestors were from all I could tell nor made a point of it. But the prophecy based WCG/HWA was hooked on it for any number of reasons.
I took it as wild speculation based on scripture hoping along with cut and paste theology and wasn't about to tell any church I might have pastored at the time that "it's time to go." I may have lacked faith, but I did not lack common sense. That was just never going to happen.
It is an insane teaching based on taking practically all scriptures related to the topic wildly out of context, both in historical and even some kind of future context. Ass kissing Evangelicals are trying every way they can to put their idea of how such end time fantasies can be brought about by POTUS, who we all know said with a straight face , "No one loves the Bible more than me" and Evangelicals fanaticize as being chosen by God. (I like the concept that this might be so only if God has run out of Locusts:)
Nevertheless, Bob Thiel teaches it as in days of old.
"Are some of God’s people actually going to flee right before the tribulation?
According to Jesus, the answer is yes."
"Let this be perfectly clear, there are two groups of God’s people mentioned in Revelation 12–one which goes to a place of safety and one which does not."
"The idea that those going to the place will undergo final training is one that we in the
Continuing Church of God also embrace. We do not believe that the faithful are simply going to save their physical lives, but also be trained so that they can be more effective servants of God. To learn to better spread the love of God to more of humanity.
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I believe most here know the routine and most of the reasonings and meanderings through scripture to "prove" that a Place of Safety, most likely in Petra, Jordan or vicinity is a supposed very real promise for the true church (there is no one true church) today. .(Or ever).
It falls on deaf ears to say that the Book of Revelation is a failed first century prophecy meant to encourage Jewish Christians trapped in the final days of the Temple in Jerusalem under Roman assault. In this case, as in the days of the Maccabean uprising, the Romans won again. Any fleeing to be done has been done or was unable to be done but it is all done. Take the Book of Revelation as a guide to our times at your own risk. I'd be a bit careful following a Bob Thiel out into the Jordanian countryside to get away from chaos in the Middle East or anyplace else on the planet. Certainly a Dave Pack, as failed a seer as he has proven to be cannot be trusted to get this right as if was the right thing to teach or do in the first place, which it is not.
The Book of Revelation is not for today and of course, that will start a brawl right there. It does not predict helicopter gun ships with the faces of men and is full of hyperbole which was a perfectly fine way to write apocalyptic literature. "So only today could we get a 200 million man army" is a bogus and inappropriate response just as much as trying to figure out how the stars of heaven could fall to earth knowing, as we do today, the nature of stars. It is, however, exaggeration at its best. It was most likely written sometime between January and September of 70 AD, just prior to the Fall of Jerusalem and never even made it to the three and a half year mark where Messiah would come. The Romans put an end to that pipedream in 8 months. Whole other topic.
As noted in The Religion of the Orient, which I have quoted in the past:
"Revelation was the swan song of Militant Jewish Christianity. When Jerusalem was destroyed, when Rome waxed grater and more powerful, when the False Prophet gained more and more followers, when the book itself was proved totally false within two years, when it became evident that the Jewish Messiah-Christ would not come, the Hebrew Christians lost their virility and their cult faded under the combined assault of orthodox Judaism and of Gentile Christianity."
pg 479-
So to the point. The teaching of a Place of Safety and/or Final Training is the most dangerous and anxiety fraught mistaken belief of the WCG and now most splinters of note. It is foolish and a formula for a disaster in religious shenanigans. While the writers of the day may have themselves felt this to be true if one just waited to see, they were as mistaken then as they would be now again.
Christians and humans have always looked for safety and hope in troubled times. Revelation was written for just such a purpose. Relying on the proof texting waltz through scriptures by those so inclined or the cobbling together of scripture on the answer to this troublesome question of physical survival until the Second Coming is looking for deliverance in all the wrong places.
It never seems to occur to these folk that "If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed" found in Job might be safer for all concerned. But then facing death graciously as all have in the past and must still is not a strong view of the Church either. Getting out of it seems more the way to go and the teaching of The Place of Safety goes a long way in the specialness that does not really belong to the Churches of God to begin with. They will be as mistaken about "we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed" (I Cor 15:51) as Paul was when he had to come to grips with his own mistaken views on the soon and shortness of his times.