One of the PT editors recently made this statement to me: “Bob Thiel is guilty of a shocking display of dishonesty and sophistry.” I confess to a similar sentiment, but as it is, Thiel, who is a peddler of Herbert Armstrong’s fictional and failed prophecies, is generally considered by the ACOG community as a huckster and poses little threat if he is constantly challenged and kept in check. He certainly does not display the honesty or character of Ian Boyne, who allowed people to challenge his thoughts and his writings.
Just for the record, the Painful Truth does not attack those who hold a religious belief. Rather, we wish to expose those who we consider to be false teachers who live at the expense of others. Keep in mind always, that evil prevails when good people do nothing.
With this short article, we want to share with you our view about Bob Thiel’s malignant beliefs and what damage we can expect in the coming year. We would not have to do so if Thiel allowed comments at his website where we could challenge him and refute his writings.
Two types of liars
Clever liars use some truth to tell a monstrous lie. HWA did, so did Adolf and a host of other liars that came before. However, a person who is striving for honesty and integrity always brings the truth into the light. When proven wrong, a honest man will choose to admit he was wrong and apologize for any hurt he may have caused. Truth is tough. It’s humbling and it’s often times, extremely embarrassing.
Habitual liars. These people make a habit out of lying. They have a lifestyle of deceit. These people (if you can call them that) live in an a false reality that they have come to believe. Shrink’s call these people “delusional”, I call them sociopaths/psychopaths. There is a danger in these people. These liar’s can ruin your life and the lives of those around you.
Opinions
Keep in mind that opinions are like sphincters: we all have them. As we know, Bob’s opinions are certainly not filled with gumdrops and happiness or even pink unicorns. His opinions on religion, or world politics, mostly everything are grossly mistaken, and the conclusions from what he wrongly takes to be evidence that supports his views are dreadfully distorted. He sees the world through false prophet Herbert W. Armstrong’s eyes instead of implementing objective thought.
Bob’s message is the same as Herbie’s, in that you should be afraid, especially if you are not of the chosen race, the chosen people, or the chosen church. Be afraid of people whose religious faith is different, or those who were born in a different country, who’s skin is of another flavor. Just be afraid, because in fear there is no love, because fear has to do with punishment, and punishment has to do with control. Mind control. After what all of us have experienced, should we be surprised by his brazen behavior?
Whatever culture any of these ACOG’s go to preach, they attempt to change it to a model made in the U.S.A. If you have to think about this, think as to what happened to the American Indians when they embraced the missionaries of the day. Missionaries always destroy the culture they infiltrate! Are the ACOG’s any different?
As we march forward into the future this following year, it remains to be seen whether Bob’s sick racialism will be capable of self-critique. Can he, will he acknowledge his own insularity and excesses, or will he continue down the path of smug self-congratulation and vanity, never passing up an opportunity to destroy, debauch, devalue, and dehumanize a wide assortment of innocent people?
With that asked, I’m glad I am not serving in Bob’s brownshirt brigade, having to listen to his self-serving—no disagreements, no arguments, no reasoning, no thinking, no responsibility cult of ignorance. The fact of the matter is that he has been promoting his contemptuous précis as a revolutionary religion that will change lives indelibly for the better. Well it ain’t revolutionary, and it won’t change you life for the better! Instead, history has shown that Armstrongism is a controlling, destructive movement that converts religious people into atheists.
To his discredit, Bob has never had a single new idea. He has merely gussied up Herbie’s old concepts in new rhetoric. His cause is not glorious. It is not wonderful. It is a attempt to twist and distort facts to justify his views, believing that his rhetoric is the torch that is lighting humanities path to a peaceful, prosperous future. To me, there is something fundamentally wrong with that story. All of us who had anything to do with a ACOG have seen this narcissistic behavior in the Armstrong splits.
“Armstrong was a man utterly without honor, without principles, without a shred of genuine decency or patriotism. He was the ultimate exterminator of religious life for thousands, and the grand compelling creator of a vast army of atheists.”
So I ask you, what kind of Humpty-Dumpty world is Thiel really living in? The obvious answer is not necessarily the correct answer. Rather, one needs to consider the fact that many people are looking for a modern-day Moses to lead them. Now if we were to compare Bob to Moses, we would have to come to the conclusion that he is a disingenuous being, telling mentally deficient fables that are quite amusing if you like caricatural, distorted, stereotyped assumptions, and blanket generalities.
In short, Bob is no Moses. Moses had God on his side. Thiel parrots the teaching’s of a child molesting false prophet, that are one long elaborated, humorless joke. This man who is without a original thought, seems to impose a suffocating group conformity that ostracizes nonconformists while mouthing pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. Those few who accept without challenge the wild, illiterate claim that Thiel has the moral authority to dictate how other people should conduct themselves in private, have the minds of sheep. They deserve to be impaled on a Morton’s Fork for feeling intellectually and spiritually superior to others while being led by a blind man.
With that being said, we suspect that Bob will just pull his security blanket a little tighter around himself and refuse to come out and deal with the real world!
That my friend is the year ahead. Not only for Thiel, but the rest of the ACOG world!
The Painful Truth is offering our yearly calendar purely in the spirit of uplifting and sharing, as corny and dated as those sentiments may sound in the fast-moving and ever-evolving modern techno-plastic times in which we live.
Thiel never got the acknowledgment he so craved. All he will ever have is the Nigerian scamers as church members.
I would have to believe that in not allowing comments, Bob Thiel had hoped to shut out dissent, and legitimate criticism of what he has made to be his life’s work. There is a certain arrogant type of teacher who feels it is a teacher’s job to teach, and a student’s job to unquestioningly learn. The irony is that in suppressing discussion, he simply takes it out of the environment over which he has some control. It still happens, just elsewhere, and now in a cloud of suspicion. Intellectuals of effortless superiority are generally able to overwhelm questions and have no need to suppress them or hide from them. Thiel is not one of these. His self-defenses come off as being weak and whiney.
Bob Thiel did at one time indulge in debate on the old xCG blog. The topic was the 2,000 year history that Armstrongism had created or plagiarized for itself, and a participant named Jared Olar had vanquished Thiel decisively in an exchange called “Beating Around the Bush”. Jared has not been participating in discussions on the usual Armstrong-dissident sites for a number of years now, but if we Google his name, we find that he went on to have a brilliant career, writing for numerous newspapers. In fact, he wrote an excellent paper, “The Early Waldenses, In History and Sabbatarian Legend”, available with a few mouse clicks on the internet.
There is a reason why we do not discuss “the Bob Thiel phenomenon”. There is no phenomenon! His actual following, as we’ve seen in the case of other purveyors of Armstrongism, does not match the opinion he holds of himself. The criticisms voiced on dissident sites is perhaps the greatest fame, or infamy which he will ever enjoy. Who else even knows who Bob Thiel is? Even in LCG, most members probably only know him as someone who went off the deep end, and needed to be disfellowshipped.
BB
Here is the search term for Bob and his one man show.
Click for larger view.
Click here for a 4 year chart.
No perceivable growth in Bob’s family business.
Here is another chart with the LCG to compare with.
Click here to enlarge
And one last chart.
Click HERE to enlarge
I look forward to another good year of these terrific posts!
—Wes White
Wes,
Feel free to send me something this year that you feel would be a good fit for our audience.
TO funny!
“Bob is no Moses”
The last time I heard Bob speak about Moses was in his 5th anniversary sermon, when excusing himself for not being a good speaker. But then Aaron was provided to make up for this shortcoming — something Bob should consider.
Bob and HWA – Bob is certainly dependent upon HWA to maintain his link in the succession of the Mythical True Church, as a source of filler material for his web site, for the “18 Truths” and major teachings, but I don’t remember Bob ever referring to HWA as an Apostle. He said in a sermon that he doesn’t blindly accept HWA’s every word, and it’s obvious that he has the cafeteria style approach to use of HWA’s material. I seen Bob quote half a sentence from HWA, and then deny that HWA ever taught what was said in the other half…