Bill, the creator of the once hugely influential Ekklesia site, has bowed out of the ex-COGosphere. Bill's was one of two sites that I found incredibly helpful in the year or two before catching the bug myself and launching what was then known as The Missing Dimension. Bill has been extremely gracious in mentioning AW in his closing commentary, but in truth the credit goes in the other direction. Thanks Bill, your work has been much appreciated! Do click across and check out what he has to say.
On a quite different note, Bob Thiel is yapping away on the End Time conspiracy stuff. That's nothing new, but how's this for speculation?
"[R]egular readers of the COGwriter page will recall that for a long time, I have warned that that the CERN project known as the Large Hadron Collider may generate some type of important military capability for the Europeans. And while that was not the direct subject of the Angels & Demons movie, this capability would likely be used by the Europeans to fulfill the following prophecy:" [Rev. 13:3-4]
Now Bob is a nice guy. He has a couple of doctorates, one of which actually means something. Yet he writes this kind of babbling idiocy. Is this the kind of bumf LCG pastors, credentialled with yellowing degrees from Ambassador College, actually rattle their tonsils about on Saturdays? Rabid, uninformed speculation mutates into wacky pseudo-doctrine before our eyes: "may generate" becomes "would likely be used." Presto: the rabbit (perhaps the Easter Bunny doing a little temping) emerges from the hat. It all seems harmless, but the danger is always that somebody actually takes it seriously.
15 comments:
Not simply LCG. I heard a UCG Pastor use part of the "announcements" today to discuss a book called The Lennon Prophecy, in which an ally of the Beatles claims the Fab 4 used occult demonism in their rise -- then Satan somehow used Mark David Chapman to kill John Lennon.
Aaaaah, sheesh!
The thing that upsets me about the Double Doctor Minister Wannabe Thiel (DD for short), is that he trashes all other organizations other that the Living Dead Church of God for their inaccuracies, and then goes off the deep end with this CERN stuff.
Look in the mirror DD! Oh by the way I see your arch rival UCG is destroying your LDCG in the polls! Yea !!!!!!!
Yes, Bob Thiel does trash all other COG organizations. Doesn't he ever read Philippians 4:8? What good reports does he have for most COG groups? In the area where I live the LCG has fallen apart. Most of the congregation now attends with UCG. He'd never write about this on his blog.
gotta love it!
he writes his farewell page, and in the left margin is a full length ad for RCG.ORG
Hmmmm... looks like the WCG/CGI is outlasting the critics. Nothing sensational to report on, so no use in keeping the gossip line going. Tkach & Company must have big smiles on their faces as one-by-one the critics gospel lines dry up over time ("Nothing here to see, so move along now.")
Bill and all the other folks on Ekklesia were of tremendous help to me back around 1988 - 2000 when I was trying to sort through my own personal version of the WCG - AC experience. Thank you, Bill, and all your cohorts. I will be forever grateful.
Glenn
For Bill F.
Bill, best wishes for the health and happiness of you and your family. Ekklesia provided the opportunity for some of the best therapy I have ever received. (The correct dates for my sojourn there were from 1998 through around 2001.) Thanks again to all who ever participated on Ekklesia.
Glenn
Thanks Glenn for the kind words.
If it helped even one person it was worth the 14 years of keeping it online.
Early on it occurred to many of us that leaving a belief system as hermetically sealed (with its circular logic) as the Armstrong tradition was, was a bit like grieving. It takes a while to get your feet underneath you.
To heap insult upon injury all the organizations would say "nobody forced you to join". Perhaps not in the sense of a Gestapo goon with a gun to your head, but more in the sense of hypnotist through suggestion and a authoritative voice. HWA had some of his best recruitment years when he could only afford late night radio, because the human brain naturally goes into a hypnogogic state near bed time. Some of those we once considered "the great speakers" differ little from how hypnosis experts work, "neuro-linguistic programming", especially those with the "voice of authority".
HWA himself admits in his early coworker letters to have studied the writings of Adolph Hitler, Carl Marx, and other megalomaniacs of mass movements in the early 20th century.
Sometimes I wonder if HWA was sincere, or truly considered us "the dumb sheep" of Tangled Web fame.
In the end does it even matter if was sincere if he still caused harm? Do we give Hitler Kudos for being kind to dogs?
We are known in this life by the mess we leave behind. As Roy Sampson taught us Phoenix WCG boys in our hiking club in the 1960s (until Ron Reedy squashed it), "leave your campground cleaner than when you found it". Not bad advice then, not bad advice for life either.
Do you think Bob will disappear down a hadron created black hole?
Bill,
Thanks for your time in contributing to the cause of exposing HWA and his minions. It is people such as you and Ed that helped me out of that little cult of horrors!
As a parting memory I have a little gift here. Loma and Herbie that will remind you that there is justice in the afterlife.
After about twenty+ years of allowing past issues to silently smolder, my own entry point into the world of WCG recovery was through the Painful Truth site. I actually learned of Ekklesia from occasional references to that site made by Ed Mentell. The materials presented by Bill have been helpful to me, and I have admired Bill's personal style. Thanks, Bill! I would hope that much of Ekklesia would be archived so that it can continue to help others.
As for Dr. Thiel, what more can we say than has already been said? He seems to relish defending the indefensible. I really wish that just one of these churches that insists on adhering to the Armstrong doctrines would utilize a little truth in advertising, and perhaps call themselves something like "The Church of Extrabiblical Theories and Speculation".
BB
Anonymous said...
gotta love it!
he writes his farewell page, and in the left margin is a full length ad for RCG.ORGI've removed the Google adsense code, and as for the ad expense, better his money goes into my pocket than the RCG. Of course it will never match what Herbie sucked out of my pocket.
-Bill
Byker Bob said...
.....I would hope that much of Ekklesia would be archived so that it can continue to help others. Almost all of my material is available on other web sites. I will keep the pages archived, perhaps in PDF form, for my own use on a book I am working on but I am not going to spend my network dollar on HWA anymore.
There comes a time when you get so far down the road that the whole experience seems like a bad dream. And nobody wants to revisit a nightmare.
I do plan to write a parabolic story about the experience that could as easily apply to any religion. It will be fictional in characters only, although significant public figures will appear as themselves. Sometimes a story tells a truth better than an essay or exposé. Jesus was fond of story telling.
I purposely waited until the those that took credit for the changes wrote their books. Now its my turn.
Hello Bill,
I sent you a private message.
I recommend "Myth of a Christian Religion: by Greg Boyd before you write your book.
John Cooper
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