Ben-Ariel's Religious Bull From Babylon

Here is another example of what I used to be, not by my own choice;

Thinking everyone else was so stupid, and always being the odd man out, I applied the analogy of Noah to my venerable leader, and of course, to myself. Noah being ridiculed while he built the ark was familiar fodder for my own fantasy. I lived in a world on the other side of the looking glass where the facts somehow didn’t line up with everyone else’s, and certainly not with the Bible. Here’s the example; an excerpt from an article by David Ben-Ariel; HWA was ahead of his time.

1) “Why don't you just be honest and admit you hate Herbert W. Armstrong because he spoke the plain truth that CANNOT be refuted?

2) that your traditional Churchianity is merely baptized paganism the Bible condemns as part of Mystery Babylon?

3) For exposing your SUNday as a pagan counterfeit of the biblical Sabbath; your pagan holidays you've sought with your replacement theology to replace the biblical festivals; that sheeple like you bleat they're born again and don't have a clue what they're talking about, since we're born again at the Resurrection only; that God is not the sadist traditional Christians make Him out to be;

4) that the meek inherit the Earth - not float off to Heaven; that you're not an immortal soul, eternal life is a gift from God; the wicked will be destroyed, ashes under our feet;

5) we can become literal God-beings, members of the Kingdom-Family of God?

6) Why don't you just confess and forsake your sins of murderous hatred against HWA for slaughtering your "sacred cow" and exposing it as religious bull from Babylon?

[Rather than repeating, I'll address the points & you can look back at the list to see the subject's details.]

Point one; Herbert can't be refuted: Herbert and Weinland alike follow legends and rumors and present them as fact. His ideas have been refuted, and his corner stone philosophy of British Israelism should cause humiliation to any who continue to buy it; but like the naked Emperor, these people are oblivious to the fact that they are exposed.

Point two; Christian churches are false: This idea comes from the book, The Two Babylon's or Papal Worship proved to be the worship of Nimrod and his wife, by Rev. Alexander Hislop. HWA used the presumption that the Catholic Church is the great whore; and the extra-Biblical belief in church eras, taken from the letters to the churches in Revelation. The lesson of the churches imperfection contained therein needed to be discredited, and replaced by the idea of the church as being a single physical body of believers under a single ruler; himself, instead of many united by one spirit. From Herbert's view only one church, (defined by being under a single administration, and teaching Old Testament law) could exist at any given time because the Bible speaks of one church and one body, so it follows from his purely carnal way of thinking that these churches couldn't have existed simultaneously over the ages, but could only be types, serially, through time. HWA's presumption is the basis of his proof of the church era theory. This provided HWA justification for his authority, and it's the same excuse used by Weinland and all the other disciples of Herbert.

The churches in Revelation chapter 2 and 3 existed simultaneously at the time of the writing and they all lacked perfection. But they had the most important possession; they had the testimony of Jesus. The churches existed simultaneously then, and the archetypes exist now. Just like children have varying degrees of understanding and kinds of faults, so do Gods children. Herbert had nothing but a presumption base on a physical minded perspective of what, "one church, and one body," means. The churches are united as one by the Holy Spirit, not by legalistic perfection, or singularity of administration. The lesson of these churches is that imperfection does not make them false churches. There's no such thing as a perfect person, and therefore, no such thing as a perfect church.

I'd like to touch briefly on a subject that alone could use up many pages. Ancient theological books such as the Vedas and the Shasta-Bad are older than the Hebrew Bible, and they contain remarkably similar accounts, and allusions to the birth of a coming Redeemer. Even the roots of Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma, appear to have their roots in accounts of Noah and his sons. Consider the Magi who saw the signs of the newborn Messiah, and came to find Him, as recorded in the gospels. These were most likely Persians, and philosophical descendants of the Egyptian; Hermes-Thoth, their original lawgiver. (Not Hermes the Greek god. To Herbert, names with similarity in phonemes meant synonymy in person or nation etc.)

These Magi had some revelation from God that, at least in part, proved true. Here's a quote from Hermes from the Pymander; "Thought is God the Father; the Word is the Son; they are indissoluble in eternity, and their union is life." This was written approximately 2800 years before Christ, as is the following in the beginning sentence of the Shasta-bad, the oldest of the Magi's sacred books; "God is one, creator of all things, the sphere of the universe, without beginning, without end. God governs everything by providence and by unalterable laws. Seek not for the essence and nature of the Eternal which is one, indivisible, ineffable: your seeking would be in vain and sinful. It is enough that day by day, night by night, you should adore his power, his wisdom, his goodness, in all his works." This could be right out of the pages of your bible.It's also interesting that in the ancient writings, and inscriptions,the Magi described God as, "He is because he is," the same description God gave Moses to use, to identify who had sent him to them. It seems that people generally understood who's name this was.

I suggest to you that the ancients had knowledge of the plan of God, and you can find remnants of this knowledge within pagan religions. In other words, pagan religions borrowed from the knowledge revealed by God. As an example; similarities between Christian and pagan symbology, of a mother and child's significance in human salvation, are from a root of revealed truth, and not originally pagan.

Point three; Sunday is a counterfeit sabbath: "Sunday worship is worshiping the sun god," say the disciples of Armstrong. These people are applying the Old Covenant law to what day's people keep, and they expect to not look ridiculous. The Sabbath is Saturday (Saturn's day; are they then, worshiping Cronus the Roman god associated with Saturn? Not anymore than Sunday worshipers are worshiping the Roman Sun god. Everyday of the week has a Roman god assigned to it.); the New Covenant has no Sabbath command. There are no days sanctioned in the New Covenant, or they would be spelled out in the contract; and there are no days one could institute, that wouldn’t fall on a day without some pagan name on it. Writings of the early church refer to Sunday as the eighth day. Eight is the number of new beginnings. It was always on a Sunday (the eighth day), when the wave sheaf offering was made, according to the Mosaic Law. In other words, it’s the day Jesus presented himself to the Father after His crucifixion. The day is not any more polluted than Saturday is polluted by worshiping God on Saturn's day.

In the Old Covenant, to eat meat offered to an idol was a strict no-no. You could be defiled by contact in a number of situations. This is not the case with the New Covenant. Paul's view was strictly modern; 1Cor 8:4 “We know that an idol is nothing at all.” The meat is just meat, but the actual sacrificing is a different story; 1Cor10:18-20 “Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the alter. 19 Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or an idol is anything? 20 No, but we know the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, I don’t want you to be participators with demons.” It’s the same thing with a day, unless, on the day you worship some demon, a day is just a day. 1Cor 10:25 "Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it." In spite of what HWA, Ben-Ariel or Ron Weinland say, no one is worshiping Nimrod on Sunday.

Herbert defined true worship by Holy Days, Sabbaths and Feasts. This is, strictly, an Old Covenant view. What a day might have been in the past, can’t hurt you. Some churches try to get kids to come to church and do something Jesus-oriented instead of going out and participating in Halloween. They give it a different name. It’s a replacement, it’s not Halloween. And because it’s on the same day doesn’t mean demons are being memorialized. The kids who might feel left out, no longer do, so the temptation is neutralized. All I can say is; more power to them.

We were never allowed to wear a cross, in OWCG, because of its pagan origins; but what was a horrific symbol of evil became the instrument of our salvation. Misconceptions can pollute your mind, but your mind can’t be polluted if you are like Paul who said; 1Cor 2:2 “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” We used to hold people in contempt who expressed themselves like this, just like Weinland does today. I wouldn’t doubt that Paul might have worn a cross. Gal 6:14 “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Point four; no one goes to heaven: These people seem to be completely ignorant of what churches teach. I’ve heard plenty of them refer to the rulership of Jesus and his saints on earth. The Armstrongists get so riled up and sometimes virtually scream, “no one goes to heaven,” but even Satan went before the throne of God in the book of Job. Is a child of God less than the devil? And what of the numberless multitude in the book of Revelation? They're clearly in heaven. Does it even matter? Old covenant people were defiled by a host of rather innocuous things. These Armstrong worshipers get bent out of shape by non-salvation issues, and I guess it provides an excuse to be self-righteously indignant.

Point five; the elect of God become gods: The idea that you shall become like God was Satan’s first lie. Shouldn’t that embarrass people who one up the devil by believing they become God. The scriptures speak of human kind becoming the children of God, apparently this isn’t enough for them.

God has many names in the Old Testament: Hebrew; El: mighty one or a deity; Elah: object of worship, H430 Elohim: gods in the ordinary sense, occasionally applied by way of deference to magistrates, and sometimes as a superlative: angels, great, judges, mighty; Eloah: object of worship; Yahweh: self existent or eternal; G2316 Theos: a deity, (with G3580) the supreme divinity; fig. a magistrate.

The question is, which of these definitions of God do these people want to be? The Bible uses the phrase, “you are gods,” three times, in Psalm 82:6, and Jesus repeats the verse twice in John 10:34-35. The Greek has only the one word for God, be it in the greater or the lesser sense, so any Hebrew name of God is converted to the one, which is less precise. It just happens that in the verse Jesus quoted the word god is from H430 Elohim which can be applied to a judge. Why would any one extrapolate from this that they can become God in the greater sense. This little scrap is all Herbert had to formulate one of his foundational teachings; and this is supposed to be proof? Paul said, 1Cor6:3“Don’t you know that we will judge angels,” elohim and theos both apply, since both can mean a "judge".

The definitions of God are; All Mighty, All Knowing, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Creator, Eternal, Love (the personification of), Ruler of the Universe, and "I am". There's not a single one of them that we can cast a shadow upon, He can share some limited aspect of his qualities but, we will never match his definition, so we will never be God as the English word is defined, since it has no applications for anything less than the Almighty.

Gods names are all descriptions of Himself; And God can make us similar to himself in some remote fashion; he judges and so can we; he rules and so can we; But to be self existent, no; to be eternal (meaning both forwards and backwards), no; and who is arrogant enough to think that they should become an object of worship, apparently HWA did, and his disciples do today. I have literally heard it stated from the pulpit that; "as a god, you will be entitled to worship."

And they like to point the finger screaming, “You pagans!” but how often in the books of the prophets does God say, “I am God, I will not give my glory to another.” God says in Isa 43:10 “Before me no God was formed, nor shall there be one after me.” David Ben-Ariel would have us believe Herbert over the Bible. The disdain that Ben-Ariel has for people, because they don’t believe they will become objects of worship, is kind of sick.

Point six; those who are anti HWA are filled with murderous hate: Just like Herbert, Ben-Ariel forms opinions by jumping to conclusions, forming wildly disproportional ideas from the scantest of evidence. "People, who are anti-Armstrong, have a murderous hatred," you say. This demonstrates classic OWCG paranoia. Sure, I know, the devil is at work in everyone who doesn’t except his BS. My problem is, I don’t like to be lied to. That really ticks me off. I don’t like the fact that so much of my life was wasted on Herbert’s nonsense. And I don’t want anybody to be where I was. I don’t want anyone to follow any of Herbert’s Mini-Me's, and that includes David Ben-Ariel and Ron Weinland. It actually would have been nice if Herbert could have repented before he died. There’s no way he could have made up for the damage he wreaked, but Jesus can, and Jesus did die for anyone who repents.