Oh happy day. Internet access restored. Finally. The last week has been akin to having higher brain functions shut down, albeit temporarily. I'd like to say I have a whole backlog of postings ready to roll out. Sadly that's not true. But the normal abnormal service will resume shortly. Meanwhile, perhaps I could share Brother Tom's comments on the outage mentioned in the previous post.
Well, you are in for a surprise! You have been operating in a Dark Age for ages! If you have joined the scoffing cabal that think the bible is fiction; British Israelism is an aboration and Mr Armstrong was a charlaton, then you have never seen the light!
Yup. Card carrying member of the scoffing cabal when it comes to inerrancy, BI (what's an "aboration" Tom, it ain't in the Oxford) and that old "charlaton" (that ain't in the Oxford either) "Mister" Herb Armstrong - whoever he might have been. Time to invest in a dictionary Tom, it'll do your credibility wonders. Failing that, try using a spell-checker. The attached scoffers graphic is dedicated to you, enjoy.
Glad things are working again, Gavin. Is there any explanation of what happened? Stories of destroyed servers or malicious malware are always fascinating.
ReplyDeleteAh, the Bible. Yes. Well here's something to consider;
Deuteronomy 18:20-22 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
:21 And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken?
:22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
You know, like when Herbert Armstrong prophesied in 1943 during World War II over the radio that the United States would fall to Germany and the United States Government had no fear of him and took him off the air for awhile. And then there's 1975 in Prophecy -- so wrong at so many levels (read about Tito). It seems that all his prophecies failed while he was alive. We have a collection of 209 of them over at the Painful Truth (although, truth be told, some of them might overlap, but still...). And as for British Israel, have you read Silenced.co "Foundation of Sand"?
And now we have Robert Coulter's book, "Journey" which says that Herbert Armstrong was less than honest. Less than honest? He outright lied. You might have well as believed Harold Camping.
Morons.
The world seems disproportionately filled with them....
It is amazing to me that there could be a profound example, unfolding in real time, which directly counteracts the cause and effect prophesied by someone who called himself a type of Elijah, (but denied that he was a prophet), yet the followers of "Elijah" all have blinded themselves to that example. Tom's "Mister Armstrong" forecast that God, through the Germans, would unleash a new holocaust on such English-speaking peoples as had forgotten their Mosaic heritage, causing them to repent, and to re embrace carefully picked and chosen elements of Old Covenant law.
ReplyDeleteWas this the effect which the holocaust has had upon Jewish people in the diaspora around the world? Are they now more intensely practicing their faith? Did the horrendous deaths of 6 million of their countrymen open up a new line of thinking, meaning that Jews experienced an epiphany, and suddenly realized they went through a holocaust due to a missing dimension (Jesus) whom they now embrace? Why, no. For many Jews, the holocaust was so surreal, such overkill, pointlessly killing so many relative innocents, that for them, it was God who died in the holocaust! It became the genesis for Jewish agnosticism, Jewish existentialism, and several other "isms"! What makes the students of Herbert W. Armstrong believe that a slightly different ethnicity would react in a totally different manner to genocide?
Armstrongism is preposterous on so many levels. The more deeply we examine its origins and premises, the more ridiculous and purely manipulative it becomes!
BB
Personally, I always loved it when HWA was called "Dr. Armstrong"...well, because everybody can benefit from a good belly laugh!
ReplyDeleteI do not think BI is an aboration (sic) but I do marvel that it can still be believed by some people in this era of advanced genetics. I thought of this just recently in the context of the conflict going on in and around Gaza. What is lost in the media in general is the fact that the Jews and the Palestinians are genetically indistinguishable. They are both Haplogroup J - the ancient Semitic stock. The battle between the Jews and the Palestinians is much like the conflict between the Ulster Scots and the Irish - two identical peoples viciously at war with each other.
ReplyDeleteHerman Hoeh asserted that the Palestinians were actually descendants of the ancient Philistines. It is that specious argument used over and over again that resemblance in names establish equivalency. The word Palestine resembles the word Philistine. The word saxon resembles the word 'saacs son. Hoeh also follows tradition and places his Palestinians in the Black African branch of mankind as descendants of Ham. The only problem is that the Palestinians look like other Middle Easterners and do not look like Sub-Saharan Africans at all. In fact they look like the Jews used to look before the Jews filtered through Europe and acquired European elements in their genome. But much of Hoeh's racist theorizing is based on Biblical scriptures that refer to people who are genetically the same but religiously at odds.
The British people are almost entirely haplogroup R1b and are at as great a distance from the Jews genetically as are the American Indians. But I can hear the Thought Police from the Ministry of Truth shouting from the pulpit how modern genetics was devised by Satan to conceal the identity of the true people of Israel. Overall, the Though Police are a hopeless lot just like Orwell wrote.
-- Neo
Yes, but the thought police have power. They polarize people. They have outrage on their side. They use the power of hyperbole.
DeleteThe next thing you know, those of us who oppose them (by using facts) will be accused of burning kittens.
I do NOT burn kittens.
No.
I wait until they are full grown!
I have to go now and set fire to Mikey.
Or that's what they'd like you to believe (or something just as outrageous).
I loathe liars and the worst kind are the ones (in Armstrongism) that lie to themselves and then turn around and become all self-righteous about our supposed persecution of their silly belief system which shouldn't exist at all because it can be scientifically disproved.
No, we don't burn kittens!
But I'm not so sure I'd trust those members of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia that are Republican dog owners....
Gavin, why didn't post my comment?
ReplyDeleteSo far I've posted all your comments on these threads. You might like to check that you actually sent something else.
DeleteMaybe there are still problems with the ISP / Webhost?
DeleteI'm certain you weren't busy setting fire to your cat.
Just when did you stop burning kittens?
It's all just a big Mythunderstanding.
DeleteBy the way, there's an excellent guest editorial, "Living in Indignation" in the October 2014 Analog: Science Fiction and Fact magazine by Richard A. Lovett concerning the disturbing trend of a "culture awash with outrage" used to polarize people on both sides of an issue. He says:
ReplyDeleteIt's easy enough for this to get out of hand when someone really is getting away with some sort of injustice. But if blogger Clark is right, America's infatuation with outrage -- the difference between indignation and IndigNation -- isn't about redressing wrong: It's about creating excuses to feed self-righteousness. Hugo winner and Analog contributor David Brin agrees, suggesting as far back as 2005 that this might be a form of "self-addiction" warranting serious study by neuroscientists. He speaks of the intoxication of this type of outrage makes us feel morally superior to our opponents.
And then he gives my favorite part about burning kittens:
As an example, Clark likes to compare it to stirring up outrage over kitten burning. That's right, igniting baby felines. "Burning kittens is... quite simply evil," Clark Says, "No one should burn kittens." But other than perhaps a few psychopaths, nobody burns kittens. And that, Clark says, means that feeding our own self-righteousness by denouncing kitten-burning is itself not only a waste of time, but actively wrong. Anyone who did that who did that, he says, would be "not driven by their opposition to kitten-burning," but by their opposition to a make-believe faction of other people whom they imagine kitten-burning.
It's just another piece of hyperbole.
Richard Lovett ends the article by saying:
This doesn't mean we always have to agree with everyone--ore even come close to it. But if we can't understand where the other is coming from--can't break through the cycle of self-addicted self-rigtheousness to see our opponents not as kitten-burners but as human--we are doomed to being less than the humans we ourselves could be.
And just to be clear, I don't burn kittens. If I were to set fire to felines I'd make sure they were fully grown cats.
Hey, Mikey, where are the matches, here kitty, kitty, kitty.
Or so those who would oppose my debunking of British Israelism would have you believe.