Ancient Celts, British-Israelism and Me

 

Ancient Celts (Fair Use)

 

Ancient Celts, British-Israelism and Me

By Scout the Gael

 

I am a conundrum for British-Israelism.  I recently got a result from a genetic testing service indicating my haplogroup down to the subclade.  Like most people in Western Europe, I am R1b-M269 but that is a summary label.  My ancestry follows a certain branch of the R1b tree.  So, my full label or haplogroup is R1b1a2a1a2c1f2c1a.   Judging from how little history there is about this haplogroup, it must not be very common.   Or its members are unspectacular.  But the testing service did mention this.  A 4,000-year-old burial was excavated in Longniddry, East Lothian, Scotland of a man with this same haplogroup.  To geneticists he is known as Gen Scot 22.  And he lived back in Bronze Age Britain.  

This was, of course, a long time ago.  But I feel a connection to him because my haplogroup is a little uncommon.  The testing service stated only 1 in 259 people they have evaluated has this haplogroup. And I like Scotland, I have visited there, and by family tradition my father’s family is Scottish.  So, nothing disturbing there.  And I could actually fit into the crowd shown in the picture above – but with short hair and a ball-cap.  But it is significant that my Celtic ancestors were well-established in Scotland at the time of Abraham.  And who knows when that haplogroup came into existence.  It could have been thousands of years earlier than Gen Scot 22.  These mutations are infrequent. 

I read somewhere and now cannot find it that the ancient Jews knew about the Celts and did not like them.  The Jews mentioned nothing about them being descendants of Israel.   They just felt that they were disgusting.  This was because the Ancient Celts had no institution of marriage.  They copulated freely and the children born of these random unions were raised by the whole tribe.  This is a genealogist’s nightmare, if genealogy could reach back that far.  No marriage records.  No birth records.  And the Jews regarded this whole Haight-Ashbury lifestyle degenerate and disgraceful.  How does that fit into Riverdance?

I am not sure being a Celt is such a good deal.  I connected with a Ph.D. in genetics at a New Zealand University some years back.  I wanted to know if my haplogroup was at the center of the Celtic Nation or at the periphery.  A little vain, really.  He said I was at the nucleus of the Celtic Nation but found the question odd.  He stated that most people don’t want to be known as Celtic.  It made me feel like White trash or a soccer rioter.   But I think he was an English guy or as we Gaels say, a Sassenach (Saxon).  For Celts to be labeled the Chosen People could give them a lift although that would be cruelly teasing someone with false hope.

The question is not how did Tea Tephi get to Ireland, the answer to which was always a little too facile for anyone to believe, but how could Scout’s “Israelite” ancestors be in Scotland before any migrations out of the ancient Israel might have happened.   That observation can generate a lot of dissonance but you know how the dissonance reducers operate.  They would say that the dating system is invalid.  Or, these were descendants of other pre-Abrahamic Hebrews.  Or I am lying about my results.  Conspiracy always finds a way among those who love it.  Or as Jesus said, “But wisdom is justified of all her children.”

I enjoy being an incarnate conundrum for British-Israelism.  Before Abraham, my people were.  So how could we be his descendants?  My ancestors were totally Gentile but are now regarded by a few off-beat White Nationalists and religious denominations as Israelites.  It’s time for the off-beat types to get a life.     

 

Scout

 

 

 

Why are so many present day COG leaders so incredibly boring?

Dumb and dumber, even worse than bouncing Bob!

One thing you have to credit to Herbert Armstrong is that he had charisma and a bombastic personality that kept many people enthralled by his messages. Yet today in COGland, we have some of the most pathetic men leading COG's imaginable. From bouncing Bob Thiel, the always constipated-looking Gerald Flurry, to Wade Cox that other Great White Bwana to Africa, these incredibly boring COG leaders try so desperately to leave their mark on the world. 

None of these guys would ever pass Herbert's Spokesman Club standards.

 

Is there a different spirit running today's Church of God's?

I was looking at Rod Reynold's Church of God Messenger today and at an article about "finding and remaining in the true church". He is just like all the other splinter groups who started a group in direct rebellion against the mother church or, in his case, a double rebellion that was also against the Living Church of God and Rod Meredith.

Every single Church of God splinter group today justifies its existence on its belief that it has preserved the "pure original truth" passed off to it by Herbert Armstrong. None of these guys ever split off claiming they would be exclusively followers of Jesus and The Way. None of them.

There is a different spirit running all of the splinter groups today, and it is not good. They have come preaching "another Jesus" IF he is even mentioned at all.

Reynolds writes:

 "Paul warns against those preaching another Jesus. He warns of receiving a different spirit, or a different gospel. “For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted—you may well put up with it!” (II Corinthians 11:4). Or “... how well you put up with these things” (Bible in Basic English). “... then you listen too much” (Bible in Worldwide English). Paul is saying to them that ironically they are more willing to listen to false teachers all too often than to those who teach the truth. As Gill’s commentary remarks, they “receive his doctrine, submit to his authority, and prefer him to the apostles.”"

"There are ministers, or leaders of Churches, who claim that we can have access to God only through them."

"We are instructed, "Go from the presence of a foolish man, when you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge" (Proverbs 14:7). We are urged to "note those who cause division and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you learned [that is, the doctrine preserved in Scripture], and avoid them " (Romans 16:17). We are war‐ ned, "But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed" (2 Peter 2:1-2). These are those who promise a false "liberty," causing those who had escaped the pollutions of the world to become entangled in them again. "For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them" (2 Peter 2:19-21)."

Tody's COG leaders are men who have caused and continue to cause division and offense contrary to scripture. Men like Pack, Flurry, Thiel, and Weinland are men occupied by a different spirit, a spirit of division and, in most cases, sheer blasphemy. 

The idea of a “progressive revelation” that contradicts the teachings of Christ and the apostles and renders Scripture obsolete is a fiction of apostates who reject Christ's teachings.

Each of these guys mentioned above believes they have a direct conduit to God through which he sends endless updates and knowledge to them. Yet, through it all, they have remained nothing more than liars and false prophets. Churches conceived in a spirit of rebellion cannot produce good fruit.