It's another day in our crazy world and the Church of God. Our favorite self-appointed prophet and savior to the African continent has posted one of the most idiotic things possible in the last couple of days.
The Great Bwana to Africa and leader of 299 caucasian members, worldwide, has posted a story about how "pride" is causing COG members and ex-members from recognizing him as a true prophet of God.
The holistic pill peddling Dr. Thiel also drags out Norm Edwards as a legitimate source of information about pride. Norm, as you may recall, set himself up as the great preserver of truth that he supposedly received under Herbert Armstrong. Norm's theology is as skewed and erroneous as Bob Thiel's and Dave Pack's and should not be considered "truth" by anyone. Norm was also one of the failures on the board of Global Church of God where he and the rest of the inept board members led to the demise of the GCG and the formation of Living Church of God. He also set up a community in Point Austin, MI that turned out to a total disaster with backstabbing, property theft, lawsuits, and more. If any of you remember Homer Kizer, he is the one who went after Edwards. The community Edwards set up for recovering addicts always had problems and was always in financial straits due to the fact that none of the COG groups supported him and very few members did. Port Austin is now being used to house Puerto Rican employees of Huron Casting.
Prophet Bob quotes Edwards to prop his crown up with this:
"With dozens of New Testament Scriptures explaining and encouraging the ongoing prophecy in the New Testament and with no scriptures clearly declaring its end, one must conclude that prophets and prophecy are something that God wants for His Church today!""In this 21 st century, most who call themselves Christian neither observe the Sabbath nor seek prophets or prophecies in their congregations. A few teach and practice one or the other. Only a tiny fraction accepts both.
The single biggest difficulty in acquiring any truth, no matter how valuable, is overcoming our own human pride. It is very difficult to accept that we have been wrong about something for many years— especially when we have been right on other things. The lessons of the books of Kings and Chronicles come to mind. Each king’s life is frequently summed up in a single statement— explaining what he did right and where he fell short. If we hunger and thirst for God as King David did (Psalm 63:1; 107:9), we can receive all that he has for us—and obtain a good report (Acts 22:12; Hebrews 11:2, 39)."
"Finally, for members of a church group with a doctrinal statement that is decades or centuries old, growth is rarely quick or even possible. Both religious and civil leaders struggle with prophets today for the same reason they did in the Old and New Testaments. The prophets speak for God, not for the religious or civil leaders of the day. People who always prophesy what the leaders want are probably false prophets.
This writer heard a church leader put forth this argument against prophets in the church: “If there are real prophets today, then we could ask them and know for sure when Christ will come back. But the Bible says that no man knows that time, so there cannot be prophets today.” We should never underestimate God. He is quite able to not answer the questions we do not need answered now. Jesus already explained this leader’s question:
Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:6-8)."
"One of the most dangerous things we can do is begin thinking we already have everything important (Revelation 3:17-19). We must forever be humble before God and realize that He is bringing about His will. He is not there to back up our will or the policies of our church group. He also knows when is the right time to teach each truth to each person. Even Jesus could not teach His apostles everything at once:
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12)."
Bobiniah Bob continues with more quotes from Edwards (you can read them all here) and then adds this to supposedly impress us with his ungodly self-appointment:
Norman Edwards was the editor for Shepherd’s Voice magazine. He is not part of the Continuing Church of God, where, I function as its human leader (and am an ordained prophet; the only known such ordained prophet in any legitimate Church of God group).
While Norman Edwards and I have long disagreed about aspects of church governance and various matters of doctrine, we both agree that many who are in or claim to be in the Church of God (COG) wrongly do not accept that God has any prophets today and that Laodicean pride gets in the way. We also agree that most have severe difficulty identifying one who really is a prophet because of various unscriptural biases and improper criteria that they have.
Some will come up with their preferred rationale as why not to agree with the position of the Continuing Church of God (CCOG) on these matters. Yet not only is CCOG’s position biblical, it should be noted that leaders in the Living Church of God and/or the United Church of God confirmed to me personally that I was biblically correct on all the above points, despite the fact that their respective churches hold to several of the errors pointed out above. Those who rely too much on a compromised ministry (Ezekiel 34:7-10) to teach them prophecy that is not truly in accordance with scripture need to realize that according to Jesus’ words in Revelation 2 & 3 and Luke 21, only relatively few Christians will be protected from the hour of trial that will come upon the whole world.
As Norman Edward’s article points out, it is scriptural to now have prophets according to the New Testament. But many who truly believe that they live by the word of God have discounted or overlooked what the Bible actually teaches and/or have been influenced by others who have done the same or worse. The COG has at least one demonstrably true prophet today, yet most in the greater COG world seem to be able to ignore the truth about that, like most ignored John the Baptist and others in their day.
Pride is a bigger problem for Christians than most realize.
Bobiniah Thiel is right about one thing though:
