CCOG met COG proclamation goal

Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape with the Parable of the Sower, 1557 (Matthew 13:3-23)

As most readers now know, on December 28, 2012, it became necessary for me to cease my affiliation with a group based out of North Carolina and form the Continuing Church of God. Over at the News of those once affiliated with the Global Church of God page I posted a prediction that I felt that in its first 30 days the Continuing Church of God would reach more people with the COG message than any non-GTA group that came out of the old Worldwide Church of God as well as any group that came out of the old Global Church of God.

I also said that I would provide data along this line. Well, the thirty days are now up, so what are the results?

When I made the prediction, only one radio interview was actually scheduled, and one was for a program with a relatively small listenership. As it turns out, I was invited twice to be another show with a much larger audience. According to the lowest estimates of audience by the two radio hosts (and yes, they could exaggerate, though they assured me that they were not doing so), on behalf of the Continuing Church of God, I was able to reach well over 2,000,000 via radio (the highest audience estimates were multiple times that large) in the past couple of weeks.

And the internet? Tallying unique visitors over multiple websites is difficult, so I originally considered not to include any of the visitors to the www.ccog.org, ContinuingCOG channel, or the Bible News Prophecy channel (none of which had content 30 days ago). And without them, the amount of unique visitors for the past 30 days that statistics show was a little over 100,000. The amount related to COGwriter.com is up significantly from the same period for the prior year.

But since some may wish to see more detailed statistics, here is goes:

Websites with Unique visitor counts in the past 30 days*

COGwriter.com                                                               100,154
Bob Thiel YouTube                                                            2,786
CCOG.org                                                                                2,270
BibleNewsProphecy Channel views                            2,094
ContinuingCOG Channel views                                          656

* For the two YouTube channels, total video views, as opposed to people who visited the sites and did not watch, are counted as those are the stats that were immediately available (and probably the most applicable). The amount of articles/pages viewed on COGwriter.com in the past 30 days was 348,363 and for ccog.org 14,572, for a total of 362,935.

Based upon my knowledge of how other COG groups did within their first 30 days of formation, the Continuing Church of God appears to have had a greater reach. This does not mean that the reach will be the same every month, but that it does help show that the Continuing Church of God was (and remains) sufficiently committed to fulfilling Matthew 24:14; 28:19-20 that it did perform as predicted. We will see which doors God opens for us in the future (cf. Revelation 3:7-9). But ultimately, and probably for a very short time, we may reach increased millions if not perhaps billions (cf. Matthew 24:14).

Certain critics, including at least one anonymous COG-type blogger, discounted the proclamation goal of Continuing Church of God by making a variety of statements. One, was that this goal would perhaps be attained by buying an internet audience through Google ads or something similar to that. Although there is a place for such ads, no, we of the Continuing Church of God spent no money for those type of ads yet (nor did others on our behalf that we are aware of).

Another critique was that we of the Continuing Church of God had an unfair advantage. Which was? That unlike others who had left the old WCG/GCG/LCG/etc., I (Bob Thiel) had the legal right to my previous decade or so of writings.

That was considered by this individual as a major advantage I and CCOG had over others.

So, let us consider this.

First, unlike most others who started began a group, I was not on the payroll of a church. Second, I am still not on the payroll of any church. Third, since it was not my intention to start a church, could it not have been God’s plan to have me start with so much material?

Consider that there were probably at least 200,000 people who at some point in time had affiliation with the old Worldwide Church of God, and between 10,000-20,000 who had some affiliation with the old Global Church of God or current Living Church of God. Out of all those people, there was just one with such an extensive library.

A coincidence?

Or perhaps God’s planning? It was certainly not my intent over the years to write articles, etc. so that someday I could end up heading up a group like the Continuing Church of God.

Consider that I did all this work over all these years on an unpaid volunteer basis. Could that possibly be the type of person God might wish to use further?

Now getting back to other statistics, in September 2012, I released the first edition of my book Barack Obama, Prophecy, and the Destruction of the United States-Amazon Kindle edition for free for five days, which is what Amazon Kindle allows. Last week, I released, also for a five day free period, Barack Obama, Prophecy, and the Destruction of the United States-Second Term-Amazon Kindle edition.

How did the second edition do? Well, the first edition resulted in 1,453 people going to Amazon Kindle and downloading the book for free. Since people already had the book, and second editions are generally not more popular than first editions, it perhaps would have been expected that maybe 1,000 would have downloaded the second edition for free. But instead, 4,619 people downloaded the second edition of this book. Now the Kindle edition has the same content as the 160 page print edition (Barack Obama, Prophecy, and the Destruction of the United States-Second Edition for Second Obama Term)–thus thousands of people received a lot of information–including links to various CCOG-related websites in that Kindle-edition this month. Thus, since the formation of the Continuing Church of God we have been able to reach even greater numbers of people about many of the prophetic warnings of the Bible, the sequence of Daniel 11, warnings of increasing moral decay, the need for repentance, and the message that “Jesus will save the world when He establishes the Kingdom of God (2 Timothy 4:1; 1 Corinthians 15:24, 50)” than happened previously. Over three times as many people downloaded the second edition of the Obama prophecy book than downloaded the first edition.

The message is getting out, and we in the Continuing Church of God are working hard to fulfill Matthew 24:14 and Matthew 28:19-20. The Continuing Church of God intends to strive to fulfill Matthew 24:14a, and I believe will be the primary group (the Philadelphia remnant is not restricted to a single corporation) that God will use to accomplish this. Yes, we have quite a way to go, but have done a lot so far with so very few.

Please pray as Jesus said:

37…”The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. 38 Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38)

Teaching the truth and love of the word of God to the world in general (Matthew 24:14) and those called in this age in particular (Matthew 28:19-20) is the mission of the Continuing Church of God. You can click here for Beliefs of the Continuing Church of God.

The official website of the Continuing Church of God is www.ccog.org

If you want to learn more about the group that is striving to be the most faithful, you may find some of the following links of interest:

Continuing Church of God The group striving to be most faithful amongst all real Christian groups to the word of God.
The Philadelphia Church Era was predominant circa 1933 A.D. to 1986 A.D. The old Radio Church of God and old Worldwide Church of God, now essentially the most faithful in the Church of God, and is best represented by the Continuing Church of God.
Should the Church Still Try to Place its Top Priority on Proclaiming the Gospel or Did Herbert W. Armstrong Change that Priority for the Work? Some say the Church should mainly feed the flock now as that is what Herbert W. Armstrong reportedly said. Is that what he said? Is that what the Bible says? What did Paul and Herbert W. Armstrong expect from lower level leaders?
Statement of Beliefs of the Continuing Church of God “Contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3, NKJV), “Let brotherly love (Philadelphia) continue” (Hebrews 13:1) “…continuing stedfastly in the teaching of the apostles” (Acts 2:42 YLT). So, what does that really mean in terms of specific beliefs?