Interest in Armstrongism is waning. Below are the results from the Google search engine.
Now we search for Continuing Church of God. How does little Bobby Thiel rate?
Now we compare the two search terms ‘Herbert W. Armstrong vs. Continuing Church of God:
Now we pit Bob Thiel against his former master, Rod Meredith.
Now we add the big three up against Bob’s little flock.
Now I ask Bob Thiel to explain his claims that his little flock is the fastest growing cult among the Armstrong brand. Feel free to post here Bob. I think a forth coming answer to these statistics is well overdue.
One more chart. The Painful Truth vs. Continuing Church of God vs. Banned by HWA.
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Thanks for the search stats, very interesting.
Like statistics, growth figures can be manipulated and misleading. It would be harder, in hard numbers, for any of the big COGs to double membership in a year, but when a new COG starts with a handful of followers, it’s not hard at all.
About 10 years ago, Dave Pack gave RCG stats all as percentages, no hard figures. I put all hid numbers in a spreadsheet, and the smallest membership count that made his numbers work was 5000, and somewhere between 5000 and 10,000 was probably correct.
I think the estimate for CCOG is 1975 in Africa, 25 elsewhere. And despite what I said, I’ll guess it’s the African count that will grow faster.
Hoss, unfortunately for Bob Thiel, the number of followers in Africa can be extremely misleading. Often, they will claim to be followers of multiple ACoGs at the same time. They may cozy up to Meredith’s group while reps are there and then be oh so very devoted CCoG members.
Why?
Money.
If they can get money from one dupe, why not two or three?
And don’t be so sure that those funds for a Festival are actually going to pay for the Festival either.
Nigerians have learned this long ago. You never know when some widow of some prince might show up to want money to go to the Feast….
Which would make Robert Thiel quite the fool, don’t you think?
Well, even Che Guevara ran into trouble in Africa as he attempted and miserably failed to foment a communist revolution there. Conditions in Africa are unlike those in any other place in the world. They do not lend themselves to other than tentative and precarious commitment to an ideology.
Excellent work on the Google stats, by the way. I believe your hard evidence certainly takes the wind out of some peoples’ sails! Hopefully this will become one of the more popular posts of the years, and other sites will repost and hat tip!
BB