as he headed back we turned to see someone walking toward us from the Chapel. It turned out to be a real-live Branch Davidian! He told us he thought God was telling him to talk to us since we had come back a second time (scary – we never saw him on our first trip!).
The Man of Sin
He then proceeded to tell us about how David Koresh was the “Man of Sin” (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:3) who had to come in order for Jesus Christ to return (that, you see, is why he could mandate celibacy for all the men and then take their wives – he was the one sinning – oh and plus he needed to have 24 kids to fulfill some prophecy). So, thanks to David K’s sinful lifestyle and death, Jesus can come back.
The New World Order
Among other barely coherent “facts” he shared, we were told that the Pope is a 33rd degree Mason (as is George Bush) who controls all the banks through the Vatican, nuns marry Archbishops, and Waco is the new Jerusalem as indicated by the lack of gays and lesbians around and the fact that it is on the same latitude as Jerusalem (yes, we checked),
The Sabbath
Our new friend informed us that the Sabbath is not when “we thought it was” (not sure when he thought we thought it was) because the Gregorian calendar and it got messed up. The Adventist connection to this group helped explain the obsession with the Sabbath and the End Times (what David Koresh brought to the table was his self-identification as a sinful messiah, plus a bunch of guns and underage polygamy). He would not tell us when the “real” Sabbath was because (and I quote) “he had to give us some reason to come back.” (Odd – how would we know when to come to his church if we did not know when it met?) As it turned out, we found out anyway because it was listed on their flier (it’s Sunday – I guess they are Baptist after all!).
The Mighty-Breasted Mother God
The real kicker was when he explained that God is not a Trinity but a . . . well, he did not have a word for it – but God is four, not three. There is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of course – but there is also a female Mother God because Hebrew words ending in “ah” are feminine (shekinah, Jehovah, etc.) and some name of God means “mighty breasted one” (from the Hebrew shaddai, I think). This prompted him to warn the husband of the married couple about treating his wife right, because if he didn’t he was violating the feminine image of God (create in OUR image – remember?). His proof text for this was 1 John 5:7 – “For there are three that bear record – the Spirit, and the water, and the blood.” You see, blood and water came out of Jesus’ flesh at the cross and the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit are one so they are all somehow one but this other spirit isn’t so . . . I honestly got so confused by then I just sort of stared over his shoulder for awhile.
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