Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Rubén Gómez
Read between
May 10 - May 12, 2023
Lord’s ethical principles, based on love for God and neighbor, do precisely that.
The basic meaning of the word Torah is instruction, and translating it consistently as law can be misleading. 5
The HRM is well known for its bitter criticism of Christian denominations and its proselytizing activity among people who are already believers. 8
founded in 1933 by Herbert W. Armstrong (1892-1986), who believed himself to be an apostle and prophet for these last days. Highly critical of traditional Christianity (which he scornfully used to call Churchianity and considered to be a pagan form of religion),
(WCG) was unmistakably restorationist or primitivist, as it maintained the firm belief that the primitive Christian church was the pure form of Christianity and that the so-called modern or traditional Christianity had become corrupted and needed to be restored.
The WCG taught that Christianity was part of an apostate and pagan religious system whose origins could be traced back to Nimrod and Semiramis.
relied heavily on Alexander’s thesis, popularized by Ralph Woodrow[31] in his book Babylon Mystery Religion, who would later recant it.
Therefore, long before Jim Staley preached his famous sermon Identity Crisis,[33] Armstrong was already teaching that “[t]o become a converted Christian, one must become, spiritually, AN ISRAELITE!.”[34] The much-vaunted spiritual identity had been lost because it was not recognized that “[t]he peoples of the United States, the British Commonwealth nations, and the nations of Northwestern Europe are, in fact, the peoples of the TEN TRIBES of the HOUSE OF ISRAEL.
WHY do our nations think they are Gentiles? WHY don’t they KNOW their true identity?”[36]
The WCG taught that the definitive proof of obedience to God was keeping the Sabbath. THE SABBATH COMMAND IS THE ONLY one of the ten which is a SIGN identifying
Moreover, to dispel doubts, he added, “Yes, this is the TEST COMMAND - the one on which YOUR VERY SALVATION and ETERNITY DEPENDS!.”
for the WCG, the Christian holidays of Easter and Christmas were pagan expressions characteristic of a corrupt system.
Now I finally understand the pagan accusations.
Today the professing Christian world rejects God’s Holy Days; holy to him, but which a deceived ‘Christianity’ hates. They observe instead the pagan days –Christmas, New Year's, Easter, and others– ‘which God hateth’![44] There is a significant amount of open criticism of these Christian holidays in the literature of the WCG: “Now that we know the pagan origin of the Easter celebration, let’s clear away the web of error that covers the truth about keeping the Passover, the memorial of Christ’s death.”
Tkach candidly admits that “For decades, we prejudiced our members against Christmas and Easter by teaching that they originated as pagan days of worship.”[48] Armstrong was intolerant on the subject and did not allow for any justification: “But, many still reason, ‘even so – even though Christmas was a PAGAN custom, honoring the false SUN-GOD, we don’t observe it to honor the false god, we observe it to honor CHRIST.”[49]
Satan has DECEIVED all traditional Christianity.[51]
HRM believes all normie Christians are deceived dummy less-thans.
Some as well known as the fierce attacks against apostate Christianity and its pagan celebrations of Easter and Christmas, as well as its ardent defense of a slightly modified form of Anglo-Israelism (two house theology), a non-negotiable element that serves to identify believers with Israel. The belief that we must all observe the Sabbath,
we see that none of these things are new developments brought about by HRM (not even the deep aversion to the Council of Nicaea!). But what stands out the most is that the language and arguments are almost identical. If
The Sacred Name Movement Like the Universal Church of God, the Sacred Name Movement (SNM) also began in the 1930s, driven by Clarence O. Dodd. Both
However, the main contribution of the SNM was to claim that Hebrew and Aramaic were the languages in which the NT had originally been written, as well as its emphasis on using the proper name of the deity
as miswriting or mispronouncing them implies invoking a false and pagan god.
insistence on pronouncing a name as if it were the only valid one is more characteristic of magic spells than biblical spirituality.
Lol
God listens to all those who address him, regardless of their language or pronunciation.
We believe that although the original text was inspired, there is no such thing as an INSPIRED TRANSLATION. Therefore, until such time as the original documents are unearthed we must base all doctrine on the Old Testament.
Huge leap in logic on this belief.
These are false teachings and unfounded justifications to support the return to a religion and salvation based on works, which is the very antithesis of the Gospel message.
After so much time, we are witnessing the resurgence of fables that should have been left behind a long time ago, since we had been warned against them (2 Tim 4:3-4).
They believe that being faithful to Scripture means following some form of biblical Judaism (as opposed to Rabbinical Judaism), and therefore call all Gentiles to keep the Torah. Only the latter group can be properly called forerunners or current practitioners of HRM.
Being a primitivist movement, the HRM claims to trace its origins back to “Abram the Hebrew” (Gen 14:13) and, in the NT, to “the sect of
from the beginning of the 1970s, the Messianic movement (the natural heir of the centuries-old Hebrew Christianity) began gaining prominence among Jews in the US.
The HRM has adopted many doctrines from the Worldwide Church of God, including one law theology and two house theology. 3
Attacks against the Greek NT and the insistence on using Hebrew names to refer, among others, to the proper names of God and the Messiah,
Modern attacks against traditional Christianity by the HRM are not original and were refuted and discarded long ago.
HRM and atheists have this common talking point: dummy christians do not know their true identity.
The HRM began to take off in the mid-90s of the last century, when the WCG broke up into multiple groups.
Not every attempt at studying the Jewish background of our Christian texts and beliefs is related to the current HRM. 1 It has been argued that the WCG and the SNM are the two main influences on the current HRM.
Important! Study and valuing is not necessarily being in hrm.
What does it mean to be a restorationist and primitivist movement?
Do you think returning to a first-century type of Christianity is possible or even biblical?
What would be, in your opinion, the benefits of studying the Hebrew roots of Christianity without actually taking on the sign commandments given to the Jewish people as binding for Gentiles?
As we have seen, the HRM assigns absolutely disproportionate importance to Hebrew.
the HRM gives a prophetic spin to the restoration of the Hebrew language
Yehuda towards the end of the 19th century and interprets the passage from Zeph 3:9 (“For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord”)
As for the name of the Messiah, it is considered that the traditional English form of Jesus is a pagan name.
That explains why we end up with the Greek Ιησούς (Iesus) and, from there, the Latin Iesus and the English Jesus. In these last two cases, the Greek diphthong “ού” turns into a “u,” whereas the change to the English “J” instead of “I” is a later development.
There is no reason why the name of the Lord cannot be pronounced in each of the world's different languages.
emphasizing a particular language or pronunciation is characteristic of magic and superstition, not divine revelation.
Hebrish The term Hebrish (a combination of Hebrew and English) is generally used to refer to the constant, tedious, and for many, incomprehensible interspersing of Hebrew words in written texts, sermons, tea...
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based, as mentioned before, on the concept that Hebrew is a sacred language much more profound th...
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In sum, Hebrish creates more confusion under the false guise of spiritual depth and knowledge. Any biblical term can be translated into English without resorting to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek (particularly when no further explanation is given) in front of an audience that speaks another.
supposedly restored bibles being published with the aim of recovering the hypothetical Hebrew background of the text.
Hebrew writing changed over time and did not preserve any pictographic meaning, only the sound of each letter. On
So shabbat is the seventh day of the week, and bereshit is literally “in the beginning.” End of the story.
Furthermore, this method is based on concealment rather than revelation. Only a few people who have accessed a superior knowledge (the code)
