Thursday, November 21, 2013

Denise Muses...




Dear Dave,

Please don't be offended I called you Dave.  We are just too close for me to call you Mr. Dave.  It makes me feel icky and like there is a large gulf between us and I pray there is not. I so miss you.  

You said in your last letter that would be your last for a very long time and it has been and I miss you. I haven't heard from you in over six weeks and I am afraid you have forgotten me.  I'm staring at your pictures and remember the moments you made me laugh.  I read your many letters to myself over and over and miss the hundreds of hours you poured out your soul to me when you revealed yourself as Joshua the High Priest. I know that wasn't easy and I respect you for doing the hard thing. It's not easy to unlock the Bible Code on your real identity and I so respect just how you did it.  No one knows the Bible like you do!!  Let them laugh all they want. We know what happens to scoffers.  You just be strong.  I am so proud of you! I miss you. You are the only Joshua High Priest I know and I don't want to lose you!  None of my friends have a Joshua High Priest as a personal friend!  They are so so jealous when I tell them all about you!  :)

Oh sure, I was hurt when you sent me your 35 ways to get back into your heart. I didn't want to sell my soul or leave my brains at the door but now I will!  I will do anything if you just write again.  I was upset when you wrote your special letter to some of my minister friends  You said your letter would correct them but ultimately inspire, but it didn't much and that's ok!  I was inspired!   I like it when you correct me!

I was a fool to think getting back to you would be easy and I was angry, but I never thought it would end this way, and I'd be missing you so.  If there might still be room in your heart for me, please write more. I hang on every word and I save them just incase you disappear again as I think you have.  Please don't be ashamed of your mistakes.  Ghastly days!  I make them too!  It's all good!  We can be together again and just start over.  I know you have many more thoughts to share.  I gyrate just thinking about you and them.  Sorry...I'm a bad girl I know! :)

 I can't tell you how thrilled I used to be to see it was a letter from you.  I waited every friday hoping against hope you would write and I wait still.  You are so special to me.  Without you...well...life is just not the same.  The joy is gone and I find myself reading over your old letters just to believe you are still around and relive those moments of awe. 

I know winter is coming and you will be very busy in Ohio. Winters there are harsh so do dress warmly and take care of yourself.  I was looking through a Kentucky Race Horse catalogue recently and you can get Mahagony and Teak snow fences of all things.  Very nice stuff.  When I saw it, I immediately thought of you.  I'll help you put it up if you want me to .  I'll do anything to get close again. They even have very nice quality and easy to use snow shovels for younger people so your students can help dig out and you won't have to have the parking lots plowed.  That can save you lots of money over just one winter and it will keep your students busy and less likely to have impure thoughts. I have impure thoughts at times too of course.  I will help them shovel if you will just let me. They will just be so tired they won't have time!  Lol. I can picture you smiling now.   I just want to be helpful if you will let me.  We can be close again if only you will write.

Oh Dave, where are you?  Please write me again and continue to tell me all you are up to.  You are so awesome.  I don't believe I have ever quite met anyone like you.  Oh maybe back in the late 70's, I am not sure, but really never anyone like you. Oh sure, I hurt you over your broken promises of last summer, but I can let that go. I have hormonal imbalances and it shows sometimes.  You could heal me with your knowledge of herbs and vitamins! I will pay full price for them and expect no discount just because we are so close...or were until you stopped writing me.   I was hurt and only wanted to protect you from those who would make light of just who you really are, but I know you didn't mean to hurt me.  It just happened.  I was crazy and such a fool.  I miss you.  Please keep writing those special letters to me.  

I send my love and hello's to those wonderful and crazy 16 agreers that have been so helpful to you this past year.  I feel so good knowing you have them to encourage you and hope they feel inspired to tell you to write me so please do!  I'd be careful not to disagree your agreers  lol!   I know the prophecy is still "on" and just pray that I am still on with you.  If I am being brash or harsh, I don't mean to be. Please don't be mad at me.  It's the chemical imbalances talking, not me.  I got them from my previous career.  It happens!   I have to go to work now. I have a full schedule of clients so will be too tired to write when I get home late tonight.  I miss you.  Write and announce again soon!

Anxiously Waiting and Lonely in Greenville
Denise


Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Bob Thiel Off In Search of the Lost Ark


Why is it that so many of the splinter cults have to imitate everything that HWA did.  When the WCG imploded all the archaeological digs that the church was participating in ceased.  Then Flurry had to start his version of the "dig".  Now Thiel is going to send his cult members over to dig around Israel too.

It has been suggested that the physical ark of the covenant that the children of Israel had was patterned on one in heaven, thus it could still be on earth.  If it will be found, there is a small chance that the Continuing Church of God may have some involvement with it as we are considering involvement in an archeological project in Jerusalem in the area known as Mt. Zion. On October 24, 2013, while attempting to take some photos and to video some of the remains of the Church of God on Jerusalem’s Western Hill, I was approached by a Jewish rabbi named Avraham Goldstein of the Diaspora Yeshiva who claims that the Ark of the Covenant is below that building on Mt. Zion of the Western Hill.

I love the fact that another Rabbi latched on to another American sucker for funding.  Another great way to waste tithe money.

The Bible shows that well after Solomon’s sons would have died, that the Ark was still in a particular part of Jerusalem:
35:1 Now Josiah kept a Passover to the LORD in Jerusalem, and they slaughtered the Passover lambs on the fourteenth day of the first month. 2 And he set the priests in their duties and encouraged them for the service of the house of the LORD. 3 Then he said to the Levites who taught all Israel, who were holy to the LORD: “Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David, king of Israel, built. It shall no longer be a burden on your shoulders. Now serve the LORD your God and His people Israel (2 Chronicles 35:1-3).
So what happens if Thiel and crew find it?  Are they considered Levites because he self-appointed himself?

I presume that if the Ark of the Covenant is shown or publicly claimed, some may wish to more thoroughly examine it. However, if it is the actual Ark of the Covenant, this would seem to be quite dangerous from a biblical point of view:
1 Again David gathered all the choice men of Israel, thirty thousand. 2 And David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Baale Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, whose name is called by the Name, the LORD of Hosts, who dwells between the cherubim. 3 So they set the ark of God on a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill; and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drove the new cart. 4 And they brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill, accompanying the ark of God; and Ahio went before the ark. 5 Then David and all the house of Israel played music before the LORD on all kinds of instruments of fir wood, on harps, on stringed instruments, on tambourines, on sistrums, and on cymbals.
6 And when they came to Nachon’s threshing floor, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. 7 Then the anger of the LORD was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his error; and he died there by the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:1-7)
Only Levites were supposed to move the Ark (cf. Deuteronomy 31:25; Joshua 3:3), and that is what David finally realized. Non-Levites, like Uzzah were never supposed to touch it.  Though, since there was a change in the priesthood in the New Testament (Hebrews 7:11-12), it may be that ministers that God accepts could move or otherwise handle it.  It may also be that it no longer has any special holiness any more.



"Science, falsely so called." Part II

"See...it is literally true.  It says so right here"

I know what the Bible says very well, from Genesis to Revelation.  Most here on Banned do because if it is one thing the WCG experience gave a person, it was an overview of what the characters in the Bible said and believed was so.  As I have said recently, my Calvinist upbringing in the Memorial Orthodox Presbyterian Church the first 18 years of my life also gave me quite a background from an early age on what the Bible says and who's who.  I was constructing shoebox Tabernacles in the Wilderness and Jerusalem from a very very early age.  The typical Sunday consisted of morning church from 10 to 11:30,  Sunday School where I learned "Run Sam, Lockup Jack.  Dogs Never Get Anything In Zoos, Just  Beatings," which informed me how to remember the 12 Tribes of Israel.  Sunday evening there was again Church services with "Madchen League" and "Teens" meeting from 8-9 pm. In second grade we were memorizing whole chapters and competing with each other not to make even one mistake in repeating it or we were out.  I had to memorize the Westminster Confession of Faith  in stages from age 12 to 16.  It's what our Dutch parents and ancestors expected of us.

"The confession is a systematic exposition of Calvinist orthodoxy (which neo-orthodox scholars refer to as "scholastic Calvinism"),[citation needed] influenced by Puritan and covenant theology.
It includes doctrines common to most of Christendom such as the Trinity and Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection, and it contains doctrines specific to Protestantism such as sola scriptura and sola fide. Its more controversial features include double predestination (held alongside freedom of choice), the covenant of works with Adam, the Puritan doctrine that assurance of salvation is not a necessary consequence of faith, a minimalist conception of worship, and a strict sabbatarianism.
Even more controversially, it states that the Pope is the Antichrist, that the Roman Catholic mass is a form of idolatry, that the civil magistrates have divine authority to punish heresy, and rules out marriage with non-Christians. These formulations were repudiated by several bodies which adopted the confession (for instance, the Church of Scotland, though its ministers are still free to adhere to the full confession and some do), but the confession remains part of the official doctrine of some other Presbyterian churches. For example, the Presbyterian Church of Australia holds to the Westminster Confession of Faith as its standard, subordinate to the Word of God, and read in the light of a declaratory statement.[2]""

There was a short version and a longer Catechism.  I memorized both.  The classic question and the most remembered was..

  "Q. What is man's chief end?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."

It was also one of the shortest answers as the older one got, the longer and longer the answers to complicated questions became.

There are many many passages of scripture that are very encouraging and true to the human experience.  "The heavens declare the glory of God..."   Scores of chapters in Psalms revealed back then the fears, needs and longings which are not much changed today or we'd not draw comfort and encouragement from them in this crazy world.  It's been crazy all my life and I suspect it has always felt so.  Many New Testament scriptures are very real and encouraging.  Who can not feel what I Corinthians 13 is saying?  It is one the most real and true concepts of love ever written.  I do have a problem thinking the Apostle Paul wrote it due to his other statements about himself and what he hoped the Jews and those who were Jewish Christians would do to themselves or go, but perhaps the man came to his senses as he aged and faced his own death after a few decades of believing he was among the "we" who would be changed and not see death as the billions before him.  "But we see in part..."  I like that...

On the other hand, it takes no work and little real thinking it through to just pick and choose scriptures to formulate one's view of life, its meaning and the possibilities "out there."  Only in the last 25 years have we been treated to the awareness the Hubble Telescope has brought to us.  Our parents and all before them NEVER could conceive of the size, breadth and content of our one Universe.  Only in the last 15 years have we come to identify that most of it is made up of dark matter and energy.  We can now know where and stars are formed and still being formed as we speak.  They are also dying or we'd not be here.  It is awesome.  Just awesome.

The Pillars of Creation-Hubble Telescope


Like it or not.  Agree with the conclusions and implications or not, we have learned more about the actual physical origins of ourselves in the last 50 years than in all of previous history.  Years ago I had my DNA plotted by the National Geographic Genome Project.  I know the route my ancestors took out of Africa , across the Red Sea at Yemen, up into  Iraq,  East through Anatolia, into the Balkans and a passage through the Himalayans to the steppes of Russia with a hard left 35,000 years ago into Europe.  My Y chromosome identify me as a member of the halogroup R1b and has the marker called M168.  It's in my spit and every cell of my body and tells a tale no Bible ever could.  I am a few percent Neanderthal as well which is really awesome...no wisecracks!


News hominid discovery in situ.  Damanisi, Georgia and not the one South of South Carolina.  

This, while meaningful if one does not assign it meaning it never meant,  is not the same as...

Actually doing the hard work of learning.

...and this


...is not the same as


...discovered by 

...this

No one can really test the claims made of many things spoken of in scripture.  These are matters of faith.  Remember how one of the great ways to "prove me now herewith"?   If you tithed, the windows of heaven would open up for you so that you could not contain it.  Really?  That was just not my or anyone I know, actual daily life experience.  Proving God by getting more money back than you gave seems childish to me.  Sounds like a Priestly thing and not an actual God thing.  Giving money to Priests or Ministers seems a suspicious proof of God to me.  We all know the answer when you notice it does not quite work that way in reality , or as King David said, "in my house it was not so."  "It's YOU that is the problem.  You don't have faith.  Send in more."

One can never actually know who really did or did not say what they are said to have said or not said in the Bible.  These also are matters of faith.  We can't really know what an Abraham or Moses said or did thousands of years ago. I am incline not to believe those today who tell me God told them such and such.   I don't even know what my Grandfather actually said or did in his life.  Their sayings are what the Priests who wrote the books imagined they would have said in such stories.  

In the New Testament, it is well understood that no one actually wrote down what Jesus said alone in the Garden to God in prayer or who was told the contents of Pilate's wife's personal dream about Jesus.   It is what the author imagined Jesus or the wife would say in such a case.  The long winded and detailed speeches in John and Acts were not faithfully reproduced as if they had been recorded and then transcribed.  It was a COMMON writing style in Greek to write what an author imagined the character would have said in such a situation.  It is not a word for word possibility.  Thus what Jesus said in John 13-17, read every year at Passover by some, is what the author of John imagined Jesus would say.  No one wrote it down , had the means or the time to do so and would have gotten it that correct.  No other Gospel writer ever heard on word of it or put it in their version of the story. Try it the next time the President gives a speech.  When the martyr Stephen launches in to a long history of Israel before he is stoned to death, it is what the author imagined a Stephen would have said in such a situation to make the points needed to write the Book of Acts.  Same for Paul, Peter and others.   Notice the Book of Mark.  "Mark" NEVER said, "and then Jesus and I went to..." or "and then Jesus told me..."   The book is not written as an eyewitness account. None of them are. They were "Gospels" and there were scores written that did not make the cut. 

While not my upbringing or understanding as a child, every "thus saith the Lord," or "And God said.."  is what an author imagined God would say.  When that approach wore a bit thin you find many places in the Psalms where the writer laments not hearing clearly the voice of God and wondering "why art thou so afar off?"    Whoever wrote the Book of Job did not record verbatim the exact conversation God had with Job or the three friends had with him.  It is a literary style no different than Neil Walsch's Conversations with God  ,which I read in my final years of ministry and found absolutely refreshing and inspiring.  Written by a human about humans things as they relate to God, quoting God's answers, nonetheless, written by a human.  There is no reason that, if this series is discovered 1000 years from now, it could not become a religion complete with a Holy Book full of awesome answers to the blunt questions of life as said by God himself/herself.  The Bible evolved the same way just over a longer time with many more authors, who did not write harmoniously and in many cases did not check what others had said so they would not contradict it. 


I have my own Bible of 45 years complete with all the COG and AC notes about the meaning and where else to jump to find confirmation other books of my Bible.  I have two pages in Isaiah with the words "Dad..remember pre-teen basketball tonight" written in permanent marker across the pages by my young son.  I have my dad's Bible with a footnote that says, "Worldwide Church of God terminates Dennis" in it with the date.  Dad also footnoted "Matthew dies .  Hit by train" on a back page.  I still find meaning in the Bible but am careful about assigning meanings it never meant to mean.  Is that so hideous?  Is it so terrible to study and learn or grow in both a kind of grace and knowledge that Book challenges humans to grow in?  Did anyone really ever or actually grow in such grace and knowledge?  Some are proud of their new found Grace which they grew into but what about Knowledge?  Does all human knowledge have to fit into the already stated ideas of a book thousands of year old or it is not true?  Is it really intelligent to believe Genesis 1-3 is literally true and then try to fit all of the real discoveries of human origins into that story?  Is that not why we end up with fantastic tales of Nephilim, Annanuki and dinosaurs on the Ark?  Isn't that why we ask "then where are the dinosaurs that got off the Ark?"   Is it not why we force God into the gaps until that gap is filled and he is forced out?  Is that now why some tell you that Adam and Eve , OF COURSE DUH (as they sound) were not the first humans.  They were the first "SINLESS" humans.  Really?  

Is it not better to separate the purpose of the Bible, which is rarely the purpose literalists give it, from the facts as we know them?  Genesis 1-3 has a great Hebrew and Israelite purpose as defined by the Priests who wrote it, but it is not to confirm in an ancient way what we know to be more correct literally today.  



In every class, in massage anatomy,   I taught students that we had "twelve pair of ribs.  Ten are attached from the spine to the sternum and two pairs of floaters attached only to the spine."  I even showed them how a punch to the floaters could leave you in a curled up pain ridden mess on the floor if you knew just where to strike since organs don't like getting slapped by floaters.  Every time I got to that point, a student, always a girl, raised her hand and said, "But men have one less rib right?"   I assured here I knew where she was coming from but said "No, that's just a story."  One got incensed and told me she was going to tell her dad.  I told her to have him get in touch.  Still waiting.  He probably had to explain Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to her at that time as well.  

The Bible has profound insights and genuine meaning in many places.  My challenge is to separate the genuine and meaningful from the hideous and silly.  It has all those elements because authors bent on explaining their world have all those ways of explaining things in their minds.  Nothing new under the sun and all that. It's not difficult for us to see that today in a Gerald Flurry, Dave Pack, Ron Weinland, James Malm, EWKing or a Bob Thiel where we can decide for ourselves if they have anything important or remotely true to share and teach.  I personally have voted no on all of them.  You can vote no on me too if you wish.  Others vote some and still others, but fewer, vote a complete YES!  Just because a personality or author wrote thousands of years ago does not make them immune from The Clarion Call or ideas about themselves as found in the Book of Haggai.  It's just easier to spot today.

The Bible does have a place for us in our culture.  The problem is that far too many make it mean what it never meant or was meant to mean.

While I don't wish to fight about it, I do understand there needs to be a separation between facts and fiction.

“I personally don’t care what people want to believe—this country was founded on religious freedoms. . . I don’t have any issue what you do in the church, but I’m gonna be up in your face if you’re gonna knock on my science classroom and tell me that they gotta teach what you teach in your Sunday school, because that’s when we’re gonna fight.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson
Physicist and Teacher