Monday, February 28, 2011

Armstrongism, British Israelism, Two House Messianics


I found this interesting little family tree of the silliness that is British Israelism and how it came into the COG.

It is from the Ephraimite Deception web site


By the 19th Century Anti-Semitism was rampant throughout most of the civilized world and the Jews of the diaspora had become a people rejected by most of the civilized world. Against this backdrop an Irish Minister of the 19th Century, John Wilson, published his essay entitled "Our Israelitish Origin" in 1840. Wilson attempted to provide empirical information that supported British- Israelism. His arguments suggested that similarities to English ways in certain elements in Hebrew language and social institutions were not merely coincidental.. British-Israel organizations formed during the 1870s on account of slow, but growing acceptanceof Wilson's teachings. The linguistic argument is still the principle argument used today to support this theory. Such concepts as Brit-Ish meaning "Covenant of Man" and the Gaelic word for name being "Shaim" have become cornerstones of the Brit-Israel concept. The reality is that most of these borrowed words can be traced to the documented Semitic origin of the Celtic people. A history which shows them to be Phoenician in origin. For more detail please read my page on The History of the European peoples.

Wilson's claims that the Irish were the residue of the lost tribes found it primary acceptance amongst the Millerites. The followers of a false prophet from New York named William Miller who proclaimed that "Jesus" would return on October 23, 1844 (Sukkoth) when he failed to appear he moved the date 6 months to approximently Pesach, 1845. After the failure of his prophecies the Millerites tended to fall apart but historically many of their adherents moved were instrumental in the forming of the Adventist Sects later in the 19th Century.

By the early 20th century these beliefs had migrated to America and tended to follow two distinct pathways to the modern day. First the Millerites had become the American Adventists which continue to this day as the sect known as Seventh Day Adventists. An offshoot of that sect developed in 1927 as the Worldwide Church of God under American Adventist Herbert W. Armstrong. In 1928, Howard B. Rand became the National Chairman of the Ango-Saxon Federation of America. Rand was a notorious Anti-Semite and by the 1940s he influenced Pastor Wesley Swift of Lancaster California to adopt a mixture of British Israelism and Racial Hatred that became the modern day Christian Identity Movement, the spiritual arm of the Ku Klux Klan. The Identity movement emphatically believes that the modern day Jews are of the House of Judah, while Anglo-Saxons are of the House of Israel.  The movement maintains that only the Anglo-Saxons, of the House of Israel, have a covenant with God, thereby inducing pro-white attitudes.

So the etymology of Anglo-Israelism traces the movement from one teacher using linguistic games in the early 19th century... through a false prophet to the formation of a strange legalistic sect (the Adventists) to a full blown cult (WWCOG) and its derivatives (COG) into modern day where we have seen that it produced as a sub-branch and anti-Semitic hate group
Further information debunking British Israelism can be found here: Debunking British Israelism


Sunday, February 27, 2011

"Dingbat Dervaes" Urban Homesteaders Continue to be Mocked By Pasadenans





Once more the craziness that Armstrongism brings out in people is exposed for all the world to see!

Jules Dervaes continues to be mocked after his recent spate of threats against anyone using the name "Urban Homesteaders".  Dervaes was a former Pasadena WCG employee who went off the deep end and spent a year or more picketing and protesting the Worldwide Church of God.

He and his family moved into a small bungalow off or Orange Grove Blvd where they started doing back year farming, using bicycles to power their mixers and blenders and taking only one shower a week to save on water.

Larry Wilson from the Pasadena Star News rips the family a new one over their stupid legal challenges:

Larry Wilson: Legal Dirt of Pasadena's Farming Dervaes Family

I've never darkened the Dervaes family door, although I may be the only Southern California journalist not to have paid a visit to the farm in the city that Jules Dervaes and his daughters and son have made both an agricultural and media phenomenon. Living (almost) off the grid, pedaling a stationary bike to run the Mixmaster when a farmhand feels like a smoothie, showering but once a week to keep the water bill down - doesn't matter that the story's been done, over and over. It's a great story.


And now, it's a creepy one, because of a weird linguistic power grab.

Though the term "urban homestead" has been around the formerly wild West at least since the halcyon working-hippie days of the Whole Earth Catalog four decades ago, the Dervaes are attempting to copyright it, along with "urban homesteading," claiming sole right to be able to use those words. Or at least to use them without the stupid "R" in a circle that signifies English that had been part of the commonweal is now owned by some joker or another. (An affectation you don't have to use, by the way. "Rose Parade" is a copyrighted term, for instance. The TofR uses the "R" to keep its claim live; the rest of us don't have to.)
After the family succeeded in intimidating Facebook into shutting down others using the term, the wonderfully droll Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly reports a new Facebook site, Take Back Urban Home-steading(s), is fighting against what he terms the "dingbat Dervaes." I just went there and found almost 2,000 "friends." Typical comment: "I am deeply disappointed that these folks, whom I previously admired, are causing so much grief for people who have been using the phrase for years."

The Dervaes apparently have resorted to bullying tactics and bullied Facebook into taking down other "Urban Homesteader" site.  One person the Dervaes succeeded in getting kicked off of Facebook has started a new page to protest the "dingbat Dervaes".


This page has evolved into an organic expression of the urban homesteading community and our quest for keeping the words which define who we are as a movement and community germane to all of us. In a real way we're advocating for one another; we're discussing, networking, organizing for change, creating events, and expanding our vast and original knowledge of urban homesteading. We're finding new formats in spreading the word that we ARE urban homestead, and that nobody can copyright our identity, which belongs to all of us.

The Derveas family has recently trademarked the terms "Urban Homestead" and "Urban Homesteading." These terms can no longer be used in facebook page titles, or on blogs or otherwise for profit. If you use the term not for profit you must use the trademark symbol and "specifically identify products or services from the Dervaes Institute." They add that it would be "proper to use generic e=terms such as "modern homesteading." They have had facebook pages with the terms Urban Homestead and Urban Homesteading in the name shut down without notifying those pages first. Please join this group to show that UH is not a brand or company, but a grassroots community and lifestyle. 

There are  loads of other links on this Facebook page (above) from people challenging the Dervaes.


How Finding 'Grace' Sent Malm Into Fits of Rage Today



Interesting things have been going on over on James Malm's 'Glowering Darkness' blog today.  He seems to be going into meltdown mode.  . He is posting things that are getting crazier and crazier every day.  Conspiracy theories, demons, Russian witches, Judaizing, UCG accusations, and theological ignorant ramblings.The entire world is a conspiracy and a tool of Satan to keep us from keeping the law and doing 'works.'


Malm is going ballistic over Bible translations that he claims are 'new age' and are products of demonism inspired by Russian witch Madam Blavatski.  Malm says Thomas Edison was one of Madam Blavatski's acolytes and got many of his inventions from demons.   Since Satan is an angel of light, he inspired Edison to create the light bulb........ He also claims Hitler was one of her acolytes as well as Henry Ford.


Malm says President Roosevelt never made a decision without first consulting spirits in seances and that Chruchilll was a druid who worked with demons. And that the Anglo Saxon world is rotting away because of demons, Theosophy and Madam Blavatski.


So what stirred up this conspiracy theory lunacy?  It was something that you would never have guessed.


An ex-UCG member who spent time studing his bible without any HWA, UCG, related booklets and articles and discovered GRACE!  That simple little word that turns rabid Armstrongite's into frothing at the mouth rage!


If you believe in God's grace you are a damnable heretic committing all kinds of  wantonness because being grace filled means you are an unrepentant, sodomizing, adulterous sinner.  Oy!  The lies Armstrongites love to tell in order to keep people enslaved to the law!






This is the false religion of license to sin, through the grace of God; which was prophesied to come in the last days.  This denies Christ even though it purports to emphasize Christ.
This false permissive “love” removes the AUTHORITY of Jesus Christ and the need to recognize that authority and to obey him and his Father.  This deceitful insidious evil, preempts obedience by producing the attitude that it really does not matter because we shall all be forgiven anyway.  The law is then  pictured as something Pharisaical and an unnecessary heavy burden; when in fact the law delivers us from the burden of sin.


Here is what set Malm off the deep end today: Grace may be entering the UCG (FINALLY!!!!)


This is what happened in the WCG with the Tkach era and it is what is now happening in the UCG.  In May there will be another Conference and election: WATCH the direction that is taken after that.  The fruits should become clear by the fall Feast.
I received a message from a man in the UCG, who is now taking a sabbatical to write a book on Law and Grace in preparation for the coming changes. His Blog is an excellent placce to see the subtlty of the new take on the Covenants, and Law and Grace; that are slowly being inserted into the UCG.
Michael Mynard’s Blog  will put right before  your eyes in a  nutshell; what will be done subtly over many months in the UCG. His web site is now under construction.  By all means look through this Blog and its pages to see the subtle errors. See how he says that the sons of the King are “above the law” subtly twisting a scripture on the temple tax to somehow include all the law.  Be sure to notice how many “New Age” quotes and translations he uses.
Read through this Blog and then take a listen to the New Covenant series of audios by Robin Webber.  Look for the subtlities, the inferences, the allusions and the little twists, as he uses a six or seven part series to put over the new UCG agenda and bury it in a multitude of words.  “Church family is to love one another; we obey God because we love him and for no other reason because we no longer have to obey,
Double speak to confuse and distract as the subliminal message of “love trumps law” is entrenched in this phsycologiocal warfare of the spirit. Teaching us that we should just wink at and tolerate sin; and compromise with God’s law anytime the going gets difficult.
Teaching that “love” is the “easy way” and that when the going gets tough we should just push the “easy butten” and compromise with God’s law because he is love and will understand and forgive.

One reader who mistakenly thinks Malm is endorsing Michael Maynard's blog sends Malm into meltdown with his response.  Careful Bro!  You are going to pop a blood vessel!


I AM NOT ENDORSING HIS BLOG! I AM PRESENTING IT AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE EVIL THAT WOULD BE THE ULTIMATE RESULT OF THIS “LOVE TRUMPS LAW” GARBAGE; SLOWLY BEING SEEPED INTO UCG.
Michael’s blog is the anithesis of sound doctrione and true reliogion; his positions are an abomination and utterly disgusting to me!!! James

Malm also has this to say about "'love is the fulfillment of the law' hype"

It destroys faith and without faith we cannot please God. It also destroys “works” and there can be no faith without works for only the “doers of the law will be justified”. A terrible and most subtle evil is seeping into the organization. The whole concept that UCG is now following is to focus people inward at serving each other and loving each other and the organization. The problem is that the focus is being changed from God to US; the focus is being changed from serving God and achieving unity through our unity with God to unity by and through ourselves



Michael's blog is here The True Doctrine of Christ
and here  Unraveling Armstrong's Doctrinal Errors
Here are some interesting quotes from Maynard's blog that I am SURE that set Malm off today:

I told  Dave Treybig, the Tampa United Church of God's former pastor, by email this past July, I was taking a sabbatical to write a book on a biblical topic. My topic had to do with investigating the UCG’s doctrines that teach a blend of Old Testament Laws including Holy Days, Tithing, and Circumcision, with New Testament theology that can never be fully reconciled from scripture.  This area of UCG theology has always caused me, and many others I know, internal conflict because it obviously contradicted the new testament aspect of Salvation through Grace.  This caused me to attempt to ignore this conflict between Bible truth and  UCG (Armstrong) doctrine. But sooner or later I knew I would be forced to face this seeming “paradox.” On what level I did not know until now.

The general membership of the UCG and other churches that adhere to Armstrongism  know that  observing all of the Old Testament "annual sabbaths" or holy days is a doctrinal requirement for church members. Further it is reasoned that is  the only way the church could fully understand God’s plan of salvation. However based upon the writings of the Apostle Paul, this doctrine is clearly anything but Christian and not supported by any New Testament scripture. The first era Church of God never observed these days. Not one instance of observing the Feast pf Tabernacles, or other Feast Day Observance is recorded after the first Pentecost where the Holy Spirit was given thus beginning the New Covenant Church of Christ.

Salvation  is offered by God by Faith through Grace alone,  the Gentiles knew nothing about the Laws of Moses. They were never bound to observe the law of Moses by the apostles of Christ. 
 
 There was no salvation, no eternal life obtainable under the Old Covenant.

According to All  New Testament Teachings          ..especially those of Paul...Herbert W. Armstrong taught a theology that CUT HIS DISCIPLES OFF FROM CHRIST and LEFT THEM FALLEN FROM GRACE! CUT OFF FROM SALVATION! 



RIGHT NOW, ALL WHO FOLLOW
ARMSTRONGISM ARE LOST!
(as Paul writes in Galatians 5)


FOR INSTANCE, BY KEEPING THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES THIS YEAR YOU HAVE CAUSED THE LOSS OF YOUR SALVATION!


Michael Maynard has discovered many of the things a lot  of us discovered years ago.   Being free from Armstrongism is such a great thing!