Former COG Member Now Part of Branch Davidians

American Cult: 5 Spiritual Groups That Went Too Far

I remember when the Branch Davidian siege was underway how some ministers in Pasadena were quite concerned.  They admitted that we had loose ties to the Davidians because of the Adventist Sabbatarian connections.  They had had some conversations with some COG ministers over the past and the church was concerned about being associated with them.  Plus, James Tabor was working with the authorities trying to get them to understand what was happening with David Koresh and his apocalyptic visions.

 At Bible Study With David Koresh’s Last Followers

Every Saturday afternoon, on the Branch Davidian sabbath, Clive Doyle drives to the North Waco home of Sheila Martin, where the two old friends study the Bible together, often joined by a small group of spiritual seekers and curious interlopers. Doyle grew up in Australia, Martin in Boston, but both are now in their seventies and have lived in McLennan County for decades. In the Waco area, where many residents would just as soon forget the tragic events that embroiled the Branch Davidians 25 years ago, Doyle and Martin are unique. They are the last two people living there—and among just a handful left in the world—who fervently believe that their former spiritual leader, David Koresh, was not a crazed cult leader, or a delusional narcissist, or even merely a gifted interpreter of scripture, but a genuine prophet of God.

One of these Saturdays, I drove up to Waco to join Doyle and Martin. Outside, it was cold and raw, with low-hanging clouds throwing off an occasional mist of rain. Inside Martin’s living room, the climate was far cozier, with potted plants, soft lighting, and religious paraphernalia cluttering the space. Martin—who is petite and African-American, and still speaks in a pahked-the-cah New England brogue—took her usual hostess’s position at a small table next to the kitchen, ready to accommodate anyone who needed a glass of water or something to eat. Doyle—jowled and a little stooped as he nears eighty—lowered himself onto a worn couch, taking charge of the room. Seated around the two Branch Davidians were Doyle’s roommate Ron Goines, a messianic Jew who first came to Mount Carmel in 1998, and Marlene Joyce, a former follower of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God who has been attending Branch Davidian services since the mid-nineties.

Read the entire article here:  At Bible Study With David Koresh’s Last Followers

Here are various articles describing James Tabor's work on the Branch Davidians.

Waco Redux: 25 Years Later

April 19, 1993–Waco Branch Davidian Tragedy Going on 25 Years

Master’s Commission: Cult, Compound, Coercive

Sacred And Profane: How not to negotiate with believers.

James Tabor also wrote a book on the Davidians: 

Why Waco? Cults and the Battle for Religious Freedom in America

Ummmm......

As a former pastor giving sermons every week, in hindsight, I found I was quoting scriptures for one reason or another for effect and yet many times the little observer in my head was asking while I was quoting it, "what exactly does that mean and how does that translate in real life? I am sure those listening may have been asking the same thing at the same moment.

The classic WCG practice of endeavoring to apply James 5: 14

"Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

,,,was particularly difficult to practice and to do it exclusive of medical opinion and help could be debilitating or fatal.  Personally I erred on the side of  "Lets get you to a doctor and I'll anoint you on the way..."  Thus no regrets personally in this area or horror stories I contributed to personally because of too rigid a view.  I have always been grateful for my more metered beliefs growing up before I came to WCG in such areas.  James 5:14 was way below the Presbyterian radar. 

Growing up, no Presbyterian would remotely think to only get anointed for "healing". My sense is that they had learned long ago not to take things too literally or seriously in  some areas and that some demands of scripture, even in the New Testament were based in the naiveté' of the times. . So they didn't and thus no drama, trauma and controversy over such things ever happened.   On so many topics in WCG, it was years of chaos over such topics with consequences for minister and member alike. 

Being sick and dying was even the result of not discerning the Lord's body correctly during the Lord's Supper or Passover depending on your Church.  What was the connection between that and being sick from time to time or even dying?  Both are quite normal things if you show up on the planet. 

I do know that when we did not receive all one asked for it was because ...

 …2You crave what you do not have. You kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures.

The following are also New Testament scriptures that I probably quoted depending on the topic yet quietly wondered, "what exactly does that mean?  It simply doesn't seem to be true or really work that way."  And yet still, when quoted, everyone somehow believed them though never quite knowing in what way they did or in what circumstance it was proved they delivered as advertised.  

1) And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, `Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen.  “And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” (Matthew 21:21-22 NAS)

2) Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8 NAB)

3) Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.  For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst. (Matthew 18:19-20 NAS)

4) Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.  Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours. (Mark 11:24-25 NAB)

5) And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Luke 11:9-13 NAB)

6) And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it. (John 14:13-14 NAB)

7) If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. (John 15:7 NAB)

8) It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. (John 15:16 NAB)

9) On that day you will not question me about anything.  Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.  Until now you have not asked anything in my name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete. (John 16:23-24 NAB)

Comments?

The Exodus: A Meaningful Story But Let's Not Take It Literally?

“Yet all agree that the Pentateuch is not a single, seamless composition but a patchwork of different sources, each written under different historical circumstances to express different religious or political viewpoints.”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

“biblical history did not take place in either the particular era or the manner described. Some of the most famous events in the Bible clearly never happened at all.”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

 –Dr. Steven DiMattei

PhD New Testament studies

http://contradictionsinthebible.com/steven-dimattei/

"Despite its provocative and even misleading title, “Contradictions in the Bible” is a website devoted to bringing biblical scholarship to the public, what experts in the field now know about the Bible’s various textual traditions, the historical and literary contexts that produced these texts, how they came to be assembled together, and even the competing aims and agendas of their diverse authors. Thus, this website’s primary aim is to reclaim the topic of Bible Contradictions for its proper field of study—biblical scholarship. In other words, biblical scholars have known and written about the Bible’s Contradictions for centuries now—what has traditionally been labeled as source-critical scholarship, that is the study of the Bible’s numerous, and often competing, textual traditions! "

"In its present form, the book of Exodus is a composite of the Yahwist, Elohist, and Priestly sources. These biblical traditions, which record the story of the Israelites’ enslavement in and exodus from Egypt, maintain that the Israelites were oppressed by an unnamed Pharaoh, used as forced laborers in the Pharaoh’s building projects, and were subsequently liberated by Moses, under Yahweh’s guidance, with signs and wonders.

Yet despite these traditions, historical specifics are never described, and neither are there any extent extra-biblical sources nor archaeological data to corroborate these narratives:

No Egyptian records of a large number of, nor any, Israelites in Egypt during the alleged time periods proposed by our biblical sources

No  literary nor archaeological records of a mass flight of 600,000 males (Ex 12:37) accompanied by women, children, servants, and livestock in what would have been a heavily fortified Egyptian presence from Egypt to Canaan

..

No archeological record of settlements in the Sinai peninsula in and around the time of Rameses II, or the whole New Kingdom period (15^th-11^th c. BC) for that matter—especially true of Kadesh-barnea where this one million plus troop allegedly encamped for 38 of the 40 years spent in the peninsula!

No trace of Egyptian influence on Hebrew material culture and language as the result of four centuries of direct Egyptian contact."

...At the other end of the spectrum, there is significant archaeological data confirming the re-importance of the city of Rameses as well as the foundation of Pithom (Ex 1:11) in the 7^th century BC. In fact, all the major places in the wilderness narratives have settlement layers in the archaeological record for the 7^thcentury BC, especially Kadesh-barnea where the Israelites allegedly remained 38 of their 40 years in the peninsula—at least according to one tradition. In other words, the authors who sculpted the Exodus narrative were familiar with the geopolitical world of the Egyptian delta and the Sinai peninsula as it stood in the

7^th century BC!"

Additionally, such stories need to be assessed from within their own historical and literary culture, and not from modern reader’s agendas, presuppositions, or whims. For example, the biblical plague narrative itself was influenced by older ancient Near Eastern literary—and not historical—traditions. There are a number of Sumerian tales that narrate how the goddess Inanna brought forth three plagues upon the land, the last of which was turning all the water of the land to blood. Various plagues and skin diseases, such as boils, are prominent curses among numerous different covenantal treaty documents in the literature of the ancient Near East. Hail is visibly one of the plagues sent by Inanna as well, and swarms of plant eating locusts are a popular divine punishment in Assyrian vassal treaties and other texts from Mesopotamia. Moreover, in the ancient Near Eastern world one of the most significant ways a scribe could argue for the supremacy of his national deity over and against another nation’s god was to present his god, in the present case Yahweh, as ultimate sovereign over the forces of fertility, life, and death—and this is exactly what the whole plague narrative accomplishes. These stories must be understand and read as products of their own literary and historical contexts.

Thus, far from being a work of historical fact or the recollection of an historical event, the Exodus traditions were most likely the product of centuries of accumulated and shared cultural memories of past events in the long history between Egypt and the land of Canaan: the expulsion of the Semitic Hyksos; the fact that the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom regularly used Semites in their building projects; and the underlying political reality that the Canaanites did in fact liberate themselves from Egyptian control in the 12^th century BC, but it was the Egyptians who were expelled from the land of Canaan, not the Israelites from Egypt! As some scholars have suggested, the shared cultural memory of the liberation of Semites in Egypt might have been a powerful enough narrative to have been the catalyst for creating a shared ethnic identity and past which took the form of the Exodus narrative."

Continue...

Is the Exodus History?

UPDATE
We at the Continuing Church of God offer a  rebuttal

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