Armstrongism's much mocked urban hippy family is in the news again. National Geographic is premiering a new 10 part series starting this week about " Doomsday Preppers" and our very own urban preppers, the Dervaes family is included.
Armstrognism has always had a fringe element that secretly prepared for the end times. They stored food, bought guns, and some even moved to remote locations in order to be away from civilization as much as possible. It was conspiracy theories of Gary North in the late 70's, it was The Protocols of Zion, it was Visions of Fatima, the Illuminati, and the myriad of failed prophecies by Herbert Armstrong, Gerald Waterhouse and Rod Meredith that scared the crap out of members.
The Dervaes family has been in the news a lot over the years. It's like they prostitute themselves out for the next news reporter or interview. What most of these reporters don't realize is that these people are not just mere urban homesteaders, they are the result of aberrant religious teaching of an American doomsday cult.
Herbert Armstrong, Gerald Waterhouse, Dean Blackwell, and others spent seven decades of delivering earth shattering scenarios on how the world was coming to an end, because God was going to punish the United States and the British Commonwealth nations.
Literal reading of Bible scriptures has distorted these people with all kinds of doom and gloom scenarios. The Dervaes family did not set out to be urban homesteaders that would be plastered all over the Internet and news media. They set out over 25 years ago to prepare to lower their standard of living and to separate themselves from the world. When the end comes (or a major natural disaster) and the cities are in chaos, power is down, grocery stores are depleted, money is worthless, then these people will be taking care of themselves and those they have chosen to part of their inner circle. For the Dervaes it will be those that subscribe to the tenants of pre-1986 Armstrongism.
The other thing that the Dervaes hope from all this media prostitution, is that they will have a chance to get the "true gospel" message out at sometime in the future. After the Dervaes started becoming 'famous' Jules took down his Armstrongism pages and moved them elsewhere. While people looked at them as sustainability nutcases, they did not want the added baggage of being accused of being religious nutcases too. All of that will change when bad things start to happen and Jules finds a platform to preach again.
Lord spare us!
The problem is, an aberrant dingbat religion is 100% behind their activities.
Check out Silenced for more on the story: COG Nuts on Doomsday Preppers
Urban Hippy Armstrongites Still Causing Controversy
"Dingbat Dervaes" Urban Homesteaders Continue to be Mocked By Pasadenans
Extreme Armstrongism: "Urban Homesteaders' Threaten To Sue
Wikipedia also keeps alive the religions connection of the Dervaes. Jules Dervaes
ht: Jace
If I can separate the religion from the prepper/home grown skills, I admire the ingenuity of the family. I am also not stupid. Along with the self sustaining mentality goes the religious and control elements which detract from it. I think the time is coming when we will wish we had the self preservation skills that some have taken the time to learn.
ReplyDeleteIn order to truly be prepared, a certain level of affluency is required. Or, as in the case of Jules and company, time and gradual aquisition.
ReplyDeleteBottom line is that if people know you have things which they need following worst case scenario, you become a target. People would most certainly be following all of the Mormons home from Temple on Sundays, while others discover any number of resources. This was true during the time of Josephus c 70AD, and there are probably even earlier examples.
I prefer to be prepared more as Hank Jr. outlines in his song, "A Country Boy Can Survive." You also have to ask yourself whether certain events would be worth surviving for. Who among us would want to survive initial bad events only to find ourselves in the middle of nuclear winter?
BB
Jules Dervaes is the guy who wrote The Letter to Laodicea, which Gerald Flurry copied and revised to produce his own Malachi's Message book. That is why Gerald claims that God revealed it to him only and denies that he learned it from anyone else.
ReplyDeleteJules Dervaes had The Letter to Laodicea delivered to about 700 WCG ministers--including Gerald Flurry--by American postmen. That is why Gerald claims that it was delivered by a mighty angel.
Like the not-so-great false prophets of old, Gerald stole from some other false prophet words supposedly from God.
It is too bad that drunken false prophets like Gerald Flurry did not at least pick up some good gardening tips from Jules Dervaes.