Saturday, April 5, 2014

Bob Thiel Covers Up HWA's Teaching About Prophets

Recently Bob Thiel has released a booklet claiming that his personal following are the only true Christians in the entire world.

It is intriguing to note how Bob Thiel criticizes LCG for changing a particular doctrine regarding the future falling away and yet never acknowledges that he himself has changed church doctrine regarding the nature of New Testament Prophets. From 1953 onwards it was the teaching of HWA's WCG that Prophets under the New Testament dispensation served only to reveal the word of God by personal revelation because the Bible was not then complete (but now that it is complete Prophets of that sort are now no longer necessary). These Prophets had no administrative power according to WCG.

HWA stated that this was the case in his last book, Mystery of the Ages.
The prophets set in the foundation of the Church are those of the Old Testament, whose writings were used to form a considerable part of New Testament and gospel teaching and functioning. No prophets are mentioned as having either administrative, executive or preaching functions in the New Testament Church. (HWA, Mystery of the Ages, Chapter 6.)
(Please note, PCG has deceptively removed the highlighted section saying prophets have no administrative power in their copies of this book, because that statement contradicts their assertion that their leader is "That Prophet".)

This was the teaching of HWA's WCG from 1953 onwards. This is shown in Herman Hoeh's article, "Government in Our Church," Good News, August 1953.
Even though evangelists were next in authority under the apostles, next in spiritual order and above the evangelists are listed the prophets (I Cor. 12:28). Often in the Bible, prophet means preacher or poet. But in the New Testament history there are several instances mentioned in which prophets-both men and women-were used to foretell by special and personal revelation from God (Acts 11: 27-30; 21: 9-10). They spoke and exhorted the brethren and, if men, sometimes preached, although not usually evangelistic for the purpose of raising up churches.

Those who evangelized had authority over local churches, whereas the prophets had no government office or authority. Even in the Old Testament, where both men and women were used as prophets, none of the prophets had government authority unless they were also judges. In the New Testament, the only prophets with government authority were also apostles, evangelists, or elders (Acts 15:32; I Tim. 4:14).' (p.4).
But Bob Thiel has completely ignored this issue in this latest booklet of his. A person reading this book would have no idea that Bob Thiel has covered up this severe problem contradicting his claim to prophethood. His understanding of a prophet is completely different from that of HWA and what HWA's WCG taught from 1953 onwards until HWA's death without interruption.

1 comment:

  1. If only you had bothered, but for some reason you didn't, but Mr. Armstrong not only said there where no prophets in the church UNTIL the two witness's come along. In other words, if Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Thiel are both correct, then that would automatically make Mr. Thiel one of the two witness's, wouldn't it?

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