Thursday, January 5, 2017

Stephen Flurry Uses Hyslop's Nonsense to Demonize Christmas

In a recent episode of PCG's Trumpet Daily (December 26, 2016) PCG's heir apparent, Stephen Flurry, after excoriating President Obama for abstaining to vote on a recent UN Security Council resolution discussed a 5,000 year old nativity scene found in Egypt. He exploits news of this discovery to promote his views regarding Nimrod which are derived from The Two Babylons by Alexander Hyslop, an anti-Catholic polemic dating from the 1850s.

He states that when Eve gave birth to Cain she thought that Cain was the Messiah and this misconception created a dysfunctional relationship between the two that led to Cain's murder of Abel.

He then discusses Nimrod and asserts that he created a pagan religion that essentially the entire world imitated. He cites Mystery of the Ages by HWA, Satan's Great Deception by C. Paul Meredith and Hyslop. However both HWA and C. Paul Meredith's writings about Nimrod are derived from Hyslop. So there is only one real source for these paranoid views about Nimrod cited in this broadcast, namely Hyslop.

Hyslop asserted that most Catholic practices were a direct imitation of the Babylonian religion as he described it.

Stephen Flurry never mentions in his broadcast that Alexander Hyslop was a Presbyterian. In all likelihood he worshiped on Sunday. It is never explained that Hyslop's point was to vilify the Roman Catholic Church. The very subtitle of the book is "The Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife." But HWA adapted Hyslop's ideas to demonize the Protestant Churches in general in order to lure away potential converts who may be loyal to such churches.

But Hyslop's writings are nonsense as xHWA showed in his posts, The Two Babylons and The Babylon Connection. It is mentioned that at different points of The Two Babylons Hyslop asserted that Semiramis was Nimrod's wife, elsewhere his mother and elsewhere even his daughter. HWA tried to reconcile this by insisting that Semiramis was Nimrod's mother and his wife. But he said nothing about Semiramis being Nimrod's daughter.

Stephen Flurry followed HWA's understanding and also insisted that Semiramis was Nimrod's mother-wife. But listening to this I could not help but think how easy it would be for a listener unfamiliar with Armstrongism to know what he was alluding to.

It is unfortunate that PCG's leaders are using a discredited, anti-Catholic polemic from the 1850s to demonize mainstream Churches and common holidays such as Christmas and Easter. There is nothing wrong for a Christian in celebrating such festivals. And they are certainly not the creation of some fanciful "Babylonian religion" that sprang from Hyslop's anti-Catholic imagination.

1 comment: