Thursday, March 8, 2012

Dervaes: Urban Hippy Armstrongite Cultists In News Again



 
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

Dennis On: "Mining the Scriptures For Jesus: A Simple Example With Huge Implications for Literalists"






Mining the Scriptures For Jesus

A Simple Example With Huge Implications for Literalists

Dennis Diehl - EzineArticles Expert Author

I have pointed out many times in the past that the Gospels are hardly harmonious.  They are neither four different views of the same events nor coherent in their presentation.  Simply put, they are contrived accounts copied by others, embellished a bit along the way and even cleaned up of embarrassing accounts that detracted from the ever evolving story of Jesus.

It is not inspiration for Matthew to copy 90+% of Mark and Luke well over 50%.  That's just copying.

A short reminder here that the Four Gospels were written AFTER the Apostle Paul had lived, written his views of Jesus and died.  For Paul, Jesus was just a Jew, born of a woman.  (Romans 1:3)  There was no glorious birth story around yet for Paul to draw on or care about.  The Jesus of Paul was hallucinatory. He never met nor does he quote any living Jesus and for Paul, Jesus was more the Cosmic Christ in his head than any living human being.  But Paul wrote first, so the first Jesus was not of this earth and did not really live a life worth telling about on earth. 

THEN come the Gospels AFTER Paul.  So to have a better view of how it really was, it would at least have been nice to realize that Paul wrote first, then the Gospels and finally Revelation.  The current order of things gives the opposite impression of reality in the first century.  To Paul, Jesus was Cosmic and in the heavens and then was made human by the Gospels.  But with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John first, it gives the impression of first an earthly Jeusus and THEN the Theological and Cosmic Christ of Paul.  Wrong, Wrong. 

At any rate, I'd like to show by a major blunder made by the writer of Matthew, that to reach back into the Old Testament and mine the scriptures, parts of them, phrases or whatever it took, was how the story of Jesus was cobbled together. These men had no clue about Jesus real birth, so they simply made it up and in doing so didn't even read each other's stories to "all speak the same thing."  

First, be reminded that in Matthew, he tells the story of Jesus with his mining the OT for helpful stories that I call the , "And thus it was fulfilled,"s.  Every time Matthew tells us a detail which we take as fact about Jesus birth, he gets it from the Old Testament.  This is WHY the story of Jesus birth SEEMS so prophetic.  The truth is the story was written to fit the Old Testament scriptures (and badly so I will show), and not prophetic at all.

Here are three classic examples from Matthew.

"1. The virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14)

This verse is part of a prophecy that Isaiah relates to King Ahaz regarding the fate of the two kings threatening Judah at that time and the fate of Judah itself. In the original Hebrew, the verse says that a "young woman" will give birth, not a "virgin" which is an entirely different Hebrew word. The young woman became a virgin only when the Hebrew word was mistranslated into Greek.
This passage obviously has nothing to do with Jesus (who, if this prophecy did apply to him, should have been named Immanuel instead of Jesus).




(I might also add that Immanuel means "God IS with us" as in will be on our side against the Assyrians, so don't fret, and NOT "God with us" as if Jesus was God with us in the flesh--Dennis)



2. The "slaughter of the innocents" (Jeremiah 31:15)

 

Matthew says that Herod, in an attempt to kill the newborn Messiah, had all the male children two years old and under put to death in Bethlehem and its environs, and that this was in fulfillment of prophecy.

This is a pure invention on Matthew's part. Herod was guilty of many monstrous crimes, including the murder of several members of his own family. However, ancient historians such as Josephus, who delighted in listing Herod's crimes, do not mention what would have been Herod's greatest crime by far. It simply didn't happen.
The context of Jeremiah 31:15 makes it clear that the weeping is for the Israelites about to be taken into exile in Babylon, and has nothing to do with slaughtered children hundreds of years later.

3. Called out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1)

Matthew has Mary, Joseph and Jesus fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod, and says that the return of Jesus from Egypt was in fulfillment of prophecy (Matthew 2:15). However, Matthew quotes only the second half of Hosea 11:1. The first half of the verse makes it very clear that the verse refers to God calling the Israelites out of Egypt in the exodus led by Moses, and has nothing to do with Jesus.

As further proof that the slaughter of the innocents and the flight into Egypt never happened, one need only compare the Matthew and Luke accounts of what happened between the time of Jesus' birth and the family's arrival in Nazareth. According to Luke, forty days (the purification period) after Jesus was born, his parents brought him to the temple, made the prescribed sacrifice, and returned to Nazareth. Into this same time period Matthew somehow manages to squeeze: the visit of the Magi to Herod, the slaughter of the innocents and the flight into Egypt, the sojourn in Egypt, and the return from Egypt. All of this action must occur in the forty day period because Matthew has the Magi visit Jesus in Bethlehem before the slaughter of the innocents."
(New Testament Contradictions: Paul Carlson)

This is commonly understood misuse and misapplication by Matthew. It is a writing style called Midrash where you reach into the past to find scripture to tell the story of the present, but it is not meant to be taken literally. 

But now comes the proof that Matthew was doing just that and was mining the Old Testament for stories to tell about Jesus, when in fact he knew precious little about him in the flesh.

"Since the prophecies mentioned above do not, in their original context, refer to Jesus, why did Matthew include them in his gospel? There are two possibilities:


1. The church says that the words had a hidden future context as well as the original context, ie, God was keeping very important secrets from His chosen people.

2. Matthew, in his zeal to prove that Jesus was the Messiah, searched the Old Testament for passages (sometimes just phrases) that could be construed as messianic prophecies and then created or modified events in Jesus' life to fulfill those "prophecies."

Fortunately for those who really want to know the truth, Matthew made a colossal blunder later in his gospel which leaves no doubt at all as to which of the above possibilities is true.
His blunder involves what is known as Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem riding on a donkey (if you believe Mark, Luke or John) or riding on two donkeys (if you believe Matthew). In Matthew 21:1-7, two animals are mentioned in three of the verses, so this cannot be explained away as a copying error. And Matthew has Jesus riding on both animals at the same time, for verse 7 literally says, "on them he sat."

Why does Matthew have Jesus riding on two donkeys at the same time? Because he MISREAD (emphasis mine)  Zechariah 9:9 which reads in part, "mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
Anyone familiar with Old Testament Hebrew would know that the word translated "and" in this passage does not indicate another animal but is used in the sense of "even" (which is used in many translations) for emphasis. The Old Testament often uses parallel phrases which refer to the same thing for emphasis, but Matthew was evidently not familiar with this usage. Although the result is rather humorous, it is also very revealing. It demonstrates conclusively that MATTHEW CREATED EVENTS (emphasis mine) in Jesus' life to fulfill Old Testament prophecies, even if it meant creating an absurd event. Matthew's gospel is full of fulfilled prophecies. Working the way Matthew did, and believing as the church does in "future contexts," any phrase in the Bible could be turned into a fulfilled prophecy!"

(New Testament Contradictions, Paul Carlson)

I just thought it would be fun and enlightening to share this.  
Why is it important? 

 Because the leading Guru's of the COG's do the same thing and reach into the Old Testament, even seeing themselves in it, and make it mean Sabbath after Sabbath what it does not mean and cannot mean but will make shipwreck of their followers faith and lives in a very short time. 

Making the Bible mean what it never meant is a very old way of telling a story. But it is nonetheless a story.

Maybe we should let it go as "An earthly story with a heavenly meaning," before many more sincere folk get burned.

Throw Out That Morton Salt! It's Satan's Tool To Make You Sin in Days of Unleavened Bread




Are you ready to throw out your Morton salt for the Days of Unleavened Bread?  One of Apostle Malm's acolytes says that you need to.  It seems Moton's has added baking soda in with the salt.  I checked my box and a Safeway brand and they both have baking soda added.  Obviously this qualifies as a leavening agent to these misguided folk.


If you use salt in your water softener, you had better check it for baking soda and get ready to throw it out.  If you need salt to throw on the ice on your front sidewalk, be prepared to throw it out too.

This reminds me of the stupid minister that demanded that the College throw out the baking soda used in the gym pool to keep alkalinity down. They refused and the minister went into melt down as everyone stood around and laughed at him.

Beware of Brewers Yeast too.  It's another dirty filthy leavening agent used by Satan to make your DUB's less righteous.  I suppose we need to start dumping beer now too?  When will these fools ever stop?

A Malmite writes:

I just want to say, and no one ever believes me, that brewer’s yeast is leavening. Supposedly it is dead, but I did an experiment one year with some brewer’s yeast that came in a wine-making kit, it did a great job of leavening my experiemental loaf of bread.

Also, one warning about salt. I had to throw out one of those blue round boxes of salt because they had put sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) as an anti-caking agent. I only discovered this after the Days of Unleavened Bread last year, much to my chagrin. I threw it out anyway, as I feel it is still a symbol of sin even if I missed it when I was supposed to find it. If I find any hidden leavening or leavened product after DUB that I missed, I throw it out to show that I am sorry that I wasn’t careful enough and missed it.

Baking soda is used as an anti-caking agent not as a leavening agent.  Just further proof that legalism destroys brain function in these people.