The Painful Truth-Herbert W. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God

Peter Debruge, Chief Film Critic for Variety has this to say in his review of the Science Fiction Movie, Garm Wars: The Last Druid:

‘Ghost in the Shell’ director Mamoru Oshii scraps his anime roots for a visually stunning yet impenetrable hybrid blend of live-action and CG visuals.

He ends with this:

In the end, Khara is less concerned with protecting the Druid than in getting answers — a sentiment audiences will certainly share. Before her quest is done, Khara will convince Wydd to spill secrets meant to enlighten, but every word out of his mouth merely serves to make things more confusing. Though it couldn’t have been Oshii’s intention, to watch is to comprehend how it feels to desperately crave peace — the kind that can only be found when the credits roll and the house lights come up.

Now you may wonder what this has to do with The Painful Truth and Armstrongism and we’re coming to that. We are about to embark on a wondrous journey of non-revelation that will leave you with the very same sentiment — “to watch is to comprehend how it feels to desperately crave peace — the kind that can only be found when the credits roll and the house lights come up”.

We are talking, of course, about the silly idea that the Druids are British-Israelites. “What!”, you say. After all this has to be the MOST stupid idea ever. If you think that, prepare to be surprised and appalled by none other than the Philadelpha Church of God’s moron emeritus, Brad MacDonald:

It’s hard to imagine just how wrong anyone could get this topic. The article is headache inducing, particularly since our readership is more than a bit familiar that we’ve thoroughly debunked British Israelism, but Brad takes the alternative world science fiction to a whole new level of idiocy. Redfox has an article on Living Armstrongism containing the Overview of the October 2014 Philadelphia Trumpet mentioning the Brad MacDonald article. Here are a few banners in the article:

Many people contest the idea that the Bible can provide insight into the identity of nations and international relations. But the facts in The United States and Britain in Prophecy are validated by science, by rational argumentation, and by convincing empirical evidence.

For those of you who contest that the Bible can provide insight into the identity of nations and international relations, go right on and keep contesting it. You are on solid ground. The non facts (outright lies) in The United States and Britain in Prophecy are invalidated by science, invalidated by rational argumentation and certainly completely debunked by objective empirical evidence.

The Druids worshiped in the same manner as the Israelite practitioners of Jeroboam’s religion.

Really, really tough to prove. There aren’t many examples of any sort of written documentation from the Druids. It’s pretty clear, this is just plain made up out of thin air. Pretty much everything in their booklet and in the article are nothing more than ox dung.

This nonsense doesn’t just stop with the Philadelphia Church of God, over at the Cry Aloud Cybermagazine, there’s a preposterous article, Joshua is Hu Gadarn who started the Druids in Britain and Ireland. Shame on him. This is another example of collecting dubious sources and amalgamating them in creatives and the justifying one of the premises with The Compendium of World History, Volume II by ‘Dr.’ Herman L. Hoeh. It adds insult to injury with a sly side reference to the persecution of non Jewish groups in Europe being persecuted for keeping the Sabbath from the First Century through the Middle Ages. The idea is nonsense and we’ve shown before that the Waldensians never kept the Sabbath, no matter how much Ellen G. White may have insisted they did. Over at the PreteristArchive.com website in the article Why British Israelism is Wrong by the Adelaide Revival Center, the following points were made:

The Encyclopedia Britannica says, “The theory [of British-Israelism] … rests on premises which are deemed by scholars – both theological and anthropological – to be utterly unsound”.

Morris Silverman, Assistant Professor of History at Yeshiva University, New York, agreed. In Time magazine, he noted, “The British-Israel theory is complete nonsense, as anyone with the slightest knowledge of history, anthropology or philology can tell”.

And:

So, if the British are not lost Israelites, then who are they? I had the opportunity of listening to Adelaide English History lecturer, Marcia Nichol, discuss this. According to her, the first Celtic people were not Israelites, but could be traced to a group known as the ‘Urn-Field People’, or ‘Proto-Celts’. They were called ‘Urn-Field People’ because they cremated their dead and placed them in distinctive urn cemeteries. They were a Northern European people who began to appear from about 1300 B.C.E., and spoke a form of Celtic. Their Anglo-Saxon counterparts were descended from a central Asian plains culture who later migrated along the same route as the Beaker people, because of food shortages. They were around long before Assyrians took the Israelites captive!

But what about the ancient writings? True, some point to early English legends to show that Israelites came to Britain. But this is quite deceptive. The legends contain little, if any, real history. Sometimes, they are even misquoted to prove the British-Israel viewpoint! Irish Historian Sean O’Faolain says, “We do not read the literature as it was originally created. The Christian scribes and the patriotic ficto-historians have freely altered the original records and the traditional lore to suit their own ends … Myth and history, dreams and facts, are forever inextricably commingled”. Because of this, James Campbell, in his book The Anglo-Saxons, describes the early British legends as “largely romance”. So, these spurious texts cannot prove British-Israelism.

As for the true destiny of the Israelites, the inspired writings are our best source. British-Israelites distinguish between the ‘Jews’ and ‘Israelites’ – and this has some basis. Before the captivities of the tribes, Israel and Judah were once united. Saul, in about 1117 B.C.E. ruled over a ‘united’ kingdom of Israel and Judah (1Samuel 8:4-9). But In about 998 B.C.E., the kingdom was split in two after the death of Solomon. Judah supported King Rehoboam, and Israel supported Jeroboam (1Kings 11:29-37).

The real fate of many of these Israelites was probably death….

The imbeciles trudge onward and over at seekgod.ca under A Little Identity Crisis ~ British Israelism, there is this jewel:

Brothers supposedly “authored the “British Israel” movement that taught that the scattered and lost 10 families of Israel had journeyed northward, and through migrations had settled in northwestern Europe and particularly the United Kingdom.”

However the facts go much deeper, with a connection to the Druids. Professor Stuart Piggot writes in ‘The Druids” of the influence of Rowland Jones who saw Cabalistic teaching in the words and syllables of the Druids. Professor Piggot states, “of Rowland Jones, it has been written”:  

“…through his influence on…William Owen Pughe… he helped to pollute the stream of Welsh scholarship throughout the nineteenth century…The Druids in their latter days begin to move away from scholarship, however eccentric, and offer themselves as symbols within a non-rational universe…Pughe was one of the Twenty-four Elders appointed by Joanna Southcott, the religious maniac, together with the engraver William Sharp, who had previously been  a follower of Richard Brothers…Both Sharp and Pughe were friends of William Blake, and Robert Southey wrote of Pughe, ‘Poor Owen found everything he wished to find in the Bardic system, and there he found Blake’s notions, and thus Blake and his wife were persuaded that his dreams were old patriarchal truths, long forgotten and now re-revealed.”

 “…’the antiquities of every Nation under Heaven’, Blake was to write, ‘is no less sacred than that of the Jews. They are the same thing, as Jacob Bryant and all the antiquaries have proved. ‘ Though the Druids change their character as Blake’s own vision changed during the writings of the Prophetic Books between 1797 and 1804, they have their apotheosis in the context of his revolutionary discovery that Britain was the original Holy Land, and Jerusalem not so far from Primrose Hill…”

“The Druids are the priests, lawgivers, philosophers and mathematicians of Urizen, but by Jerusalem, “All things Begin & End in Albion’s Ancient Druid Rocky Shore”…’Was Britain the Primitive Seat of Patriarchal Religion?’ Blake asked, and straightway gave his answer: Patriarchal Druids originated in Britain and spread their doctrine far and wide, even to the oak-groves on the Plain of Mamre. ‘Your Ancestors,’ he told his readers, ‘derived their origin from Abraham, Heber, Shem and Noah, who were Druids, as the Druid Temples (which are Patriarchal Pillars and Oak Groves) over the whole Earth to witness to this day.’ And in a single phrase Blake takes us, and the Druids, back to a familiar landscape. ‘The Nature of my Work, ‘ he wrote, ‘is Visionary or Imaginative; it is an endeavour to Restore what the Ancients call’d the Golden Age.’”.  

The history of the Druids provides some of the more notable names involved in the movement, along with some of it’s more aberrant factions and teachings.

 “…1781, a ‘secret society’, The Order of the Ancient Druids, had been set up in London by Henry Hurle…on Garlick Hill in the city, on lines doubtless inspired by Freemasonry…In 1833 the Order split…majority became ‘The United Ancient Order of the Druids.’ This, with …numerous daughter Orders, flourishes as a Friendly Society, but the rump of the 1833 split also contained its original mystic lines…Albion Lodge of the Ancient Order of Druids of Oxford (1908) it accepted as an initiate the young Winston Churchill at a ceremony in Blenheim Park…. Henry Hurles original Order…The British Circle of the Universal Bond—split and formed The Order of the Bards, Ovates and Druids in 1963—meet on Tower Hill in London.  1717 members of Druids include John Toland, William Stukeley, Lord Winchilsea and William Blake. Chief druid from 1909 to 1946 –George Watson Macgregor Reid, friend of Bernard Shaw…”.

 “A man named Owen Morgan or Morien around the 1920’s in England managed to reconcile his pious Welsh Calvinistic Methodism with Druidism even though it meant equating Taliesin with Jesus Christ.–his writings such things as Phallic worship to the Holy Greal, by way of Druidic Mysteries.”

OK. We give up. Let them have it their way: The Druids were British Israelites descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel. They embraced the religion of Reheboam. Fine. Read Hosea. Dare you. It’s about Ephraim: Boozing alcoholics, with a lot of objectionable practices. If you count them as Druids, you can add human sacrifice to that.

So go ahead.

There’s one trade-off, though. Read Revelation 7:5-8. Note that Manasses and Joseph are mentioned among the tribes that are sealed, but there is no mention of Ephraim [along with no mention of Dan]. Ephraim is one of the two lost tribes of Israel. There is no sealing and likely there is to be no salvation for them. They are gone for good by the time we get through to the Great Tribulation.

So if you want to claim an heritage of Ephraim as a Lost Tribe of Israel, be aware that God wasn’t much happy with Ephraim even before the end of the Old Testament and having your ancestors practicing human sacrifice is a less than noble heritage. In the end, there won’t be salvation and redemption as a tribe (all of this is nonsense of course because Britain isn’t Ephraim, but just for argument’s sake…). You are so screwed.

If that’s what you want to believe, you can have it. It’s the worst science fiction ever. It’s wrong of course, and your opinion that the United States and British Commonwealth are descended from Lost Tribes of Israel is so wrong in so many ways, but you are welcome to be stupid and hold to an unworkable belief system that will lead you absolutely nowhere you want to go.

If you have been paying any attention at all, you’ll have noticed that the claim of Druid British Israelism is that the Druids went to Mesopotamia to Abraham and that Abraham was a Druid Priest. This would certainly explain the religion of the Israelites, passed from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — it was the celebration of the Ancient Pagan Druid’s Religion, replete with the Feast of Tabernacles, the keeping of the Sabbath and the Calendar. It seems reasonable that Stonehenge was built to ascertain the signs and wonders in the heavens so that the British Hebrew festivals could be kept in their proper times, based on moon phases, Solstices and the Equinoxes. Note that through the ages that not just Abraham, but evidently such luminaries as Winston Churchill and Pat Robertson can claim a Druidic connection. Since Glenn Beck believes in British Israelism, we can only assume that he is of the Druids as well (based on Occam’s Razor that the most simplistic of two ideas is the most likely to survive — and it’s likely that Occam was also a Druid). We’d like to think so. It would explain a lot. It is also likely, based on this faux infotainment that the United States Fathers established the Constitution of Druid concepts and that they were high level 33 degree Druids, particularly Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. See, when you have one good explanation for everything, everything just falls into place.

So there we have it. Herbert Armstrong discovered the key to understanding the Bible through British Israelism and British Israelism was founded by the Druids. We can stop calling them Armstrongists, ACoG and Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia and simplify things by just calling them Ancient Pagan Druids or APD for short. The Armstrongists don’t realize that as they save their ‘second tithe’ for the Feast of Tabernacles, observe the supposed Jewish Calendar, believe in the mystical mysteries of Olde Testament Christianity devoid of spiritual values embedded in absolute materialism and ancient rituals, noting that in psychology, the term ritual is sometimes used in a technical sense for a repetitive behavior systematically used by a person to neutralize or prevent anxiety; it is a symptom of obsessive–compulsive disorder. Of course, the original Druids differed in some regards. Monotheistic druids believe there is one Deity: either a Goddess or God, or a Being who is better named Spirit or Great Spirit, to remove misleading associations to gender. But other druids are duotheists, believing that Deity exists as a pair of forces or beings, which they often characterize as the God and Goddess, or in the case of the Armstrongists, God and the Word. Soon they will be Polytheistic Druids believing that many gods and goddesses exist, where they are God as God is God.

All of this should lead us all to one inevitable conclusion.

Herbert Armstrong was really very stupid.