How Bob Thiel Decided to Make Himself a Prophet

Banned by HWA had a great post discussing Bob Thiel's bizarre, legalistic hang up over American football.

There was this great comment that well describes how Thiel leaped over the edge to declare himself a prophet, just like Gerald Flurry, Ronald Weinland and Joseph Smith before him.

Have some sympathy for Thiel. 

He believes God used Rod Meredith to save the church from the Tkach apostasy. 

He then heard Rod Meredith encourage him in the idea that he is a prophet.  

He then heard Rod Meredith disavow his prophethood. 

How to reconcile all of this? There are really only two options Thiel can embrace: 

1. God wasn't using Rod Meredith to start Global and LCG, which means Thiel's decade of pro-LCG polemics were the false writings of a deluded fanatic, and Thiel wasn't in the One True Church™ after all. 

2. Just as God used Rod Meredith to lead the true remnant out of WCG, so too has God used Prophet Bob to lead the true remnant out of LCG. 

Prophet Bob has done a great job of documenting the falsity of all the other non-LCG ACOGs. For him to embrace #1 is thus to admit that ALL the ACOGs are false, and he might as well join the Greek Orthodox Church. 

If there's a positive spin on any of this, it's that he has burned all his ACOG bridges. His next step is to become an anti-ACOG critic. Of course, he will have to develop some real humility to admit he was deceived, so we may have to endure quite a few more years of CCOG first.

Personally I find it very difficult to have sympathy for him. If he decided to disappear from public view and process his expulsion from LCG personally I would have more respect for him than I do now. But for him to arrogantly proclaim himself a prophet and beg for tithes and loyalty from any wandering Armstrongite out there so he can exploit them is disgusting. He will not get far, but that will be little comfort to those sucked into his influence.

False prophet Bob Thiel (COGWriter) is also a liar.

It has been an exciting week as statistics show that in our first thirty days, the Continuing Church of God was able to reach over 2,000,000 people over the radio and over 100,000 over the internet.

The largest radio stations here in Los Angeles with a listening audience from Santa Barbara to San Diego and from Santa Monica to Riverside cannot garner that many listeners to a station at one time.  They never have and never will, particularly if it is a talk radio show.  Thiel is a liar. (Banned by HWA.)

And the idiot is still whining about the US government assuming more debt. As I explained before it is good for a government to spend more during a recession in order to take up the slack in the economy caused by people not spending as much as before. National debt is nothing like credit card debt.

Most important, this credit-card metaphor is a totally false analogy because, unlike a consumer on a spending spree who later has to pay the piper, government’s borrowing strategy directly affects economic growth. When deficit spending helps increase growth, that, in turn, makes the debt less burdensome. The Federal Reserve also has the power to buy public debt ‑ a prerogative not available to consumers. (Source)

This self proclaimed prophet does not even understand simple economics.

Bob Thiel is just a joke who perfectly personifies everything wrong with Armstrongism in miniature.