UCG: Cringe Worthy Video To Rope Millennial's And Gen X Into The Church

 

What were they thinking?

Since the United Church of God is afraid of comments on the video, you can share them here:

Bubonic Plague, Massacres, Captive Women and What this Means for British-Israelism

 

(From: Nature. 2015 Jun 11; 522(7555): 207–211.)

 

The Latest Findings on the Ancient Migrations into Europe:

Bubonic Plague, Massacres, Captive Women and What this Means for British-Israelism

 

By Scriptor

It is inevitable that as genetics is used in synergy with archaeology that British-Israelism (BI) will fare poorly. Evidence against the non-scientific idea of BI will continue to accumulate and the advocates of BI will have to meet the challenge with counterposed and credible data and scientific research. A recent wave of findings has revealed events in the history of human migration into Europe that depart from what has been traditionally believed by archaeologists. This new migration scenario will be described and its impact on BI will be discussed.

The people of Europe are a mixed population. They are an amalgam of three groups of people who invaded Europe at different times. The first occupiers of Europe were Hunter-Gatherers and are identified with Y Chromosome Haplogroup (Hg) I. The second group to invade were Neolithic Farmers from Anatolia identified with Hg G. And the third and final group of invaders were Steppe Pastoralists (Yamnaya people who later became the Corded Ware people), who came out of Eurasia, are identified by Hg R (R1a and R1b). The ancient Hg R people were cattle herders on the Russian Steppes. Hg I survives in south Scandinavia. Hg G survives in Sardinia and other circum-Mediterranean locations. [Otzi, the prehistoric man found in the Swiss Alps and living circa 5000 years ago (YA), is Hg G.] Otherwise, Hg I and Hg G survive in small numbers throughout Europe. The great majority Europeans, from Russia to Britain, are Hg R. (Note: While these three populations are at great variance genetically, actually different races, they were all Caucasian in appearance. The Hunter-Gatherers, closely connected genetically to modern southern Scandinavians, had blue eyes and dark skin as recently as 7,000 YA. Light skin is a relatively recent mutation. This is known from genome sequencing done on excavated skeletons.)

Using genetics and traditional archaeology (excavations and artifacts), a new migration scenario for Europe has been recently developed. I will summarize the scenario here and give references at the end of this article leading to greater detail. At one time Europe was occupied by the Hunter-Gatherers. Later another group of people came out of Anatolia and invaded Europe (5th Millennium BC). These people were agriculturalists and are referred to as Neolithic Farmers. They ceased their invasion when they reached the forested areas of Europe because this type of terrain was not conducive to farming. The Hunter-Gatherers remained in the forested areas of North Europe. The Neolithic Farmers began to mix with the Hunter Gathers after their arable lands reached carrying capacity. The Neolithic Farmers developed large, well-organized cities and were successful in their settlement of the arable land. They developed proto-urban mega sites – cities of more than 10,000 people. Then disaster occurred. An early ancestral form of bubonic plague started in the Ukraine and decimated Europe leaving vast stretches of land with very much reduced populations of Hunter-Gatherers and Neolithic Farmers (4,900 YA).

The depopulation caused by the bubonic plague gave opportunity to the Steppe Pastoralists to take over Europe (4,800 YA). The Bubonic Plague was also among the Pastoralists but they had developed some immunity to it. They sent expeditions of male warriors into Europe. In the conflict with the Neolithic Farmers and the Hunter Gatherers, they wiped out the indigenous male population and took the women into captivity for labor and reproduction. Mass graves and massacre sites have been excavated. This is unfortunately an ugly picture. The Pastoralists also altered the environment. In Denmark for instance, they burnt down forests and converted the land into fields for grazing their herds. When they reached the Atlantic shore of Europe, they acquired maritime technology from the Bell Beaker people, a related Hg R people, of Spain, and invaded the British Isles where events proceeded much as they had on the mainland, with the displacement of indigenous populations. This migration pattern may sound familiar. It is essentially what happened when the Hg R people invaded the New World. But instead of bubonic plague, the diseases transmitted to the indigenous population were smallpox, measles, and other common diseases that Europeans had already adapted to but Native Americans had no resistance to.

The result was that the Europeans are a composite of principally these three peoples. The chart at the top of this essay illustrates the population composition. The part of the chart labeled “Modern” shows the composition of modern European nations. Europeans have Neolithic Farmer and Hunter Gatherer genes principally from the women who were taken captive but the European Y chromosome lineage is primarily from the male Steppe Pastoralists. It is as if a painter had three colors of paint: white, red, and blue. These three colors were mixed to form various shades of purple. There can be some variation in the mixtures but all the colors are basically purples. And the European people are all about the same genetically from Russia to Britain and from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. Variation in admixture of the same basic genetic components is what causes local differences in the people of Europe.

What is absent in these findings is any support for BI and other ideas espoused by Herbert W. Armstrong and Herman Hoeh. There is no evidence in the migration findings for an invasion of the British Isles by people from the Middle East. The R1b peoples of Britain have the same composite genome as the rest of Europe. Hoeh believed that Europe was populated by different races of people, some “Israelitish” and some Gentile. For instance, Hoeh believed that the Ukrainians were descended from Japheth and the British were descended from Shem. Shemites and Japhethites were regarded as different racially that there were policies taught in classes at Ambassador College Pasadena in the Seventies that Japhethites and Shemites should not intermarry. Notice on the chart above the British and Ukrainians are nearly identical genetically. The difference between these peoples is cultural/historical/geopolitical not racial.

The fact is that there is nothing about Europe that reflects Hoeh’s interpretation of the “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10. The text “Table of Nations” is a non-Biblical gloss. And God did not say that the Ukrainians were descended from Japheth; Herman Hoeh did. The recently established migration pattern discussed in this essay, when it is paired with the fact that there are no excavation strata in Palestine evidencing a dense population of Hg R people as BI would predict for the habitation area of the Ten Tribes, forms an elegant proof that BI is patently false. And this does not rest on soft arcane and semi-mythological histories and other incunabula but on hard genetic evidence and artifact excavation.

 

In summary, Europe is not divided up into various nations with greatly differing genetic backgrounds. It is instead a collection of nations with very similar genetic compositions. These peoples differ only in the amounts of the three genetic components in the admixture. The British and other “Israelitish” nations in Western Europe do not stand out genetically in any way from the greater European population. This essential similarity is illustrated in the chart above. And BI as a theory fails to explain the real data.

References

The cited video on YouTube is very interesting and explains this migration data in greater detail but is sufficiently non-technical to be understood by a general audience. It is well worth watching. The article cited is much more academic.

Towards a New European prehistory: genes, archaeology, and language – Kristian Kristiansen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxTVSwt-jsU&t=2738s

Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature. 2015 Jun 11; 522(7555): 207–211. 

Personal Note

A particular study in the article listed in References above includes data from seven Yamnaya burials in Russia from around 5,000 YA. The haplogroup for all these burials is R1b-M269, a very common haplogroup in western Europe. This is also my haplogroup and my male line ancestors came from the British Isles. It is remarkable to realize that my tribe of people, the British people, were on the Steppes of Russia 5,000 YA. That is about 1,000 years earlier than the traditional date for Abraham. Since I have a speck of Jewish ancestry, I am also descended from Abraham. He just seems like a recent relative by comparison. -- Scriptor

LCG Told To Watch and Be Ready As Another Year Passes By

 

LCG is encouraging its members to "watch and be ready", but they have been doing this since the late 1990's and earlier when they were all members of the Worldwide Church of God. They imagine themselves as the final word of prophecy and we have all seen how well that has worked out over the decades. 

This also throws them in direct competition with Bob Thiel since he claims to be the sole informed prophet of the church who knows true prophecy and the exact time to flee to Petra, Pella, or some other hell hole he will decide upon at the spur of the moment before Jordan refuses his little group entry into their country. Can you imagine 8,000 Africans showing up at Jordan's border demanding to be let in because Bob Thiel told them to go there?

Today's COG leaders, Flurry, Pack, Weinland, Thiel, and Weston all believe they are the final word on prophecy and yet, not one single thing any of them have said over the decades has ever come true.

Watch and Be Ready! Jesus told His disciples to watch for the fulfillment of Bible prophecies that indicate the end of the age and His second coming are near (Matthew 24:42–44). These prophecies also reveal that many will be surprised because they don’t understand the prophetic significance of world events they see in the news. God has given His Church a “more sure word of prophecy” so His Church can function as a watchman to warn His chosen people and the world (2 Peter 1:19–20 KJV). The moral decay and declining influence of the Israelite nations (Leviticus 26:14–19; Deuteronomy 31:29), the resurgence of militant Islam (Daniel 11:40), and the movement toward a united Europe (Revelation 17:12–13) promoted by an ecumenically oriented papacy (Isaiah 47:8; Revelation 17:1–5)—all point to end- time events outlined in Bible prophecies. As we see these prophecies come together, we need to draw closer to God and continue to watch world events so we will not be surprised when Christ returns (1 Thessalonians 5:1–6).
Have a profitable Sabbath, Douglas S. Winnail