The Other Koresh

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This Friday, 19 April, marks the 20th anniversary of the fire that ended the Waco siege, after a 50-day-long standoff between David Koresh and his followers, and the FBI. Seventy-six people died in the inferno, and the name “Koresh” is forever infamous as a result. What most people don’t know is that a century earlier, there was another Koresh… also American, and just as messianic, if less randy.

Cyrus Teed was born in 1839 in New York State. This was a time of great religious ferment in America, and utopians, prophets, and saviours roamed the land, founding sects and communes, and awaiting the arrival of paradise on Earth. These groups fascinated Teed, an army medic by training, which led him to pay his first visit in 1873 to the Harmonists, a communist sect awaiting the return of Christ. The Harmonists were interesting, but he joined another group… the Shakers. The Shakers were a big deal in the 1870s; during Teed’s time, there were 58 settlements dotted across the USA. Founded by a female Christ-figure, who went by the name of Mother Ann, the Shakers weren’t only communists, but also celibate, with a tendency to release sexual tension during sacred worship by trembling, shaking, writhing, and jumping up and down.

Teed liked the celibacy and communism, but he was developing his own ideas about salvation. He went into private medical practice and treated his patients with something he called “electro-alchemy”. Meanwhile, his updated version of this mediaeval science led him to make great discoveries. In 1869, he not only discovered how to transmute base metal into gold (allegedly), but also experienced a revelation regarding the nature of reality. What had he discovered? That the Earth is a concave sphere and that we live inside it, on the inner edge; that God is half female; that reincarnation is a cosmic law; that the Bible is a symbolic text which requires a prophet to interpret it correctly and… that Cyrus Teed was that prophet (or messiah, if you will). Teed also learned a few other things – that money is evil, heaven and hell are within us, communism is awesome, etc…

Thus, in the early 1880s, ”Koreshanity” was born. He derived the name from his own… Cyrus is the English form of Koresh, the Persian king who released the Jews from Babylonian captivity, thus, being acclaimed by the Israelites as a “messiah”. Cyrus-Koresh now founded his own celibate commune in a third-floor New York City apartment, where he lived with four women. Nevertheless, for the next 16 years, the sect was a dismal failure, until the day Teed received an invitation to lecture in Chicago. For some reason, many middle-class ladies in that city liked his message. Soon, he was living with 126 (mostly female) followers on a pleasant country estate, apparently in celibate bliss, although rumours swirled about his attachment to Mrs Annie G Ordway.

However, Teed had bigger plans. The Spirit sent him to Florida, where he persuaded an old German immigrant that not only was the Earth concave, but that he should sell Teed 300 acres of prime real estate for 200 dollars. Teed summoned 24 Koreshans from Chicago to Florida, where they commenced building the “Guiding Star City” in anticipation of the arrival of 10 million converts. Things were looking up. The Koreshans had their own post office, sexually-segregated dining halls, and a bunch of nice houses. They even had time to conduct experiments that apparently proved Copernicus wrong, and that the Earth really is hollow. However, then, alas, it all went awry… although it had nothing do with guns, underage sex, or the FBI. Koresh/Teed got involved in local politics, and this unnerved his neighbours as a couple of hundred Koreshans could affect the outcome of elections in so sparsely-populated an area. In 1906, a street fight broke out between the Messiah and a man named Colonel Sellers. Teed received a drubbing, suffering nerve damage, and afterward was often in excruciating pain. In 1908, he died.

The Koreshans believed in reincarnation, but Teed proclaimed that he’d resurrect himself without having to go through all that time-consuming malarkey. The faithful duly waited for three days, by the end of which Teed was rapidly decomposing. Therefore, the Koreshans planted him in the ground, had a schism or two, and then limped on into the 1960s, at which point the last handful of surviving Koreshans gifted their property to the state of Florida. It’s a feeble story, really. This Koresh had no guns, he committed no crimes, he just died, and, then, the community he’d founded slowly petered out. Of course, this is a much more common fate for messianic groups than the fiery annihilation of his namesake’s organization in 1993. A charismatic leader persuades a few people for a little while… then, it all just vanishes. It’s better that way. Look… the people of Florida even got a nice park out of their Koresh.

To learn more about the Koreshans, read David Standish’s fun book Hollow Earth (Da Capo Press, 2006)

17 April 2013

Daniel Kalder

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/columnists/20130417/180695525/Transmissions-from-a-Lone-Star-The-Other-Koresh.html

 

16 September 2012. The “State” of Mormonia… Abandon Hope, All Ye That Enter Here…

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The above map shows the concentration of “English-background” people (WASPs) in the USA. I found something interesting in it, and I’d like to point it up to you. Look at Utah, Idaho, Colorado, California, Arizona, and Montana… and see the black and purple areas… this is “Mormonia”, a “country within a country”. In these areas, polygamy is winked at, there’s a higher percentage of “militia” groups than in the rest of the country, and the secular government kisses the naked bum of the Mormon cult. There are more anti-government nutters here than anywhere else… the danger to our country doesn’t come from Muslims, East Indians, Mexicans, or blacks… the main recruiting-ground for terrorists in America is amongst “white-bread WASPs”… as Timothy McVeigh illustrated abundantly.

Although the Mormon cult puts its nets out far and wide, in the USA, the vast majority of its adherents are WASPs. That is, they’re an “invisible minority”… they’re people who’re at odds with the greater society, but as most of them live in a region (“Mormonia”) relatively isolated from the main centres of the USA, they’re overlooked. They’re “nice”… they’re “prosperous”… so that lulls people to sleep. The Mormon cult is one of the dippiest ones out there… why, they believe that they’re going to be “gods” of other worlds after they die! I kid you not. They aren’t Christians, the Church condemns the Mormon cult as anti-Christian, and that should end the matter for all Orthodox believers.

You see, this is important, for the Republican Party nominated a member of the Mormon cult to be their presidential candidate. This cult has no relationship to real Christianity… it doesn’t matter how “nice” and “prosperous” they are. Only a superficial and ignorant person would call them “godly”… they’re cultists, albeit a large and successful cult. Orthodox people should be aware that the konvertsy are indifferentists who ally themselves openly with sectarians and Mormon cultists… thus, potentially, cutting themselves off from the actual Church.

You see, “birds of a feather flock together”… so, if they cluster about these people, that tells me that their Orthodoxy is highly-questionable at best. I can see this… am I alone? I hope not…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 16 September 2012

Albany NY

Founder of the Moonie Sect Died

Jesus and the Money-Changers

Boris Olshansky

2006

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Now, here’s what we have to do with sectarians… you can’t talk with them… simply guard the Church against them and their heretical lies.

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Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean billionaire founder of the sect called the “Unification Church“, died on Sunday in the 93rd-year of his life. His sect gained wide popularity in the 1970′s and 80′s. According to the BBC, the largest number of his followers lives in the USA. In 1984, the US government accused Moon of tax evasion and sentenced him to 18 months in prison. He was released a year later, after mass protests organised by American religious groups. In the 1970s, France expelled “Reverend” Moon on charges of “brainwashing” potential supporters.

Sun Myung Moon, a Korean dissident, who proclaimed himself the Christ, founded the so-called “Unification Church”, better known as the Moonie sect, in the middle of the 20th century. Currently, his sect has several million followers. Posing as a legitimate religious body, the sect is active in interfaith activities.

3 September 2012

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=47463

Editor’s Note:

There’s not much difference between the Moonies and the so-called “Evangelicals” of the Manhattan Declaration. They’re all autogenetic anti-Church bodies with no real ties to traditional Christendom. Truly, there’s not much to choose between a Moonie, a JW, an Adventist, a Pentecostalist, a Mormon, or a “Southern” Baptist. Do you know why they’re so similar? Look at how they hate one another deep-down. They’re all deniers of Christ’s Church… and that means that they deny Christ.

In comparison with such Anti-Christian conventicles, Orthodox, Catholics, and Reformation Protestants do have much in common and can get on in peace without compromising their principles. Mind you, we have our differences… and they’re not unknown. Yet, we don’t poach on each other and we carry on civil human discourse (as is right and proper). It’s one thing to talk to proper Christians… that’s God’s own work. It’s quite another to snuggle up to Sectarians… that’s evil and of Satan. We are better off without Paffhausen and Gillquist… their attempt to ally Christ’s Church with anti-Christian sectarians failed… thank God.

To decent Christians… “The gate is open (but you knew that)!” To sectarians and “Evangelicals”… “No dialogue is possible; we can only have a “saving monologue” with you. God watch over you… what I said wasn’t said in hate… but it WAS said in all truth”.

BMD 

Romney is Another Obama… The Only Difference is that He’s a Mormon

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Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts formally accepted the Republican presidential nomination. His final speech on the last day at the Republican National Convention in Tampa FL met with a storm of applause. As one watched the convention, it was easy to get the impression that Romney was already president. The question of whether America is ready to elect its first Mormon president is still open. It happens in politics, just like in business, that a product becomes more popular due to the scale of its advertisement. However, the advertisement doesn’t change the product’s quality. This is Romney’s main problem. Even Romney’s rather unusual “confessional orientation” doesn’t matter as much. Why not elect a president from the ranks of the LDS movement? After all, four years ago, America elected its first Afro-American President, Barack Obama.

Sergei Mikheyev, the director general of the Centre for Political Status, said, “The fact that Romney’s a Mormon will play a certain role in the election, but this role won’t be decisive. The religious views of the voters themselves are likely to have an influence on their choice. Let’s be frank, the Mormons’ reputation is a bit tatty, but at the same time, there are many undisclosed Mormons amongst famous and influential people in the USA. In any case, America is a country of sects, although they wear many different visages. That’s why America, where everything intermingles, turning into an undreamt of mélange, may elect a Mormon as president”.

Romney’s main problem is that he’s a “hard sell” to most Americans. He can be inconsistent, and very few people are able to discern where one Romney, the moderate centrist, ends, and the next one, the radical rightwinger, begins. Hardly anyone notices a fascinating fact. Just before the last day of the RNC in Tampa, the American press published an opinion poll of likely Republican voters, which revealed an interesting fact… Romney’s one of the most unpopular GOP candidates in the past 30 years! Even George W Bush was better “liked”. Bush, by the way, didn’t receive an invitation to the RNC in Tampa; he had to be satisfied with an “appearance” via a video link. It was too problematical for them to claim the legacy of the last Republican President. The Democrats, by the way, at their convention, will give much attention to Bill Clinton.

Compared to Paul Ryan, the favourite of the Radical Rightwing Tea Party and “conservatives”, Mitt appeared quite “moderate” at the convention. On the one hand, Ryan’s candidacy will attract Teabaggers, but on the other hand, it greatly disappoints moderates and “independents”, who may stay home on Election Day. Romney needs all the help that he can get in this election campaign, but his ratings numbers are abysmal. His “approval” numbers run from 15 percent all the way up to 40 percent. It’s been a struggle for him to get even that. In the end, if we average out the polls, they show that Obama beats Romney by anywhere from 1 to 8 percent. If we factor in that the contenders for the White House in the last four elections were separated by a difference of 1 to 6 percent (Obama’s margin in 2008), then, it appears that Romney may have a slight chance to win 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

However, looking at the Republican Romney-Ryan ticket, the “friends of Barack” should be satisfied… the facts are such that the chances of Obama’s re-election aren’t decreasing, but increasing. Unless the economy collapses, which is unlikely, it looks like he’ll be lucky again. It’ll be a replay of 2008, where he had the luck of being matched with John McCain, an unelectable old codger. This time, it’ll be a somewhat different kind of luck. Lucky for them, the Republican economic programme is so confused that it resembles a mushy concoction, a problematical mixture of unrelated ideas and programmes. On the one hand, they promise to cut taxes, reduce government, and boost spending on defence, on the other, they promise no cuts in Social Security and Medicare. How they could reconcile this on the basis of the current tax base, it’s difficult to understand. Nevertheless, the current election is all about the economy, jobs, and money in your wallet.

Many see Romney as a moderate conservative. When one takes into account that the American South is an especially-rabid hotbed of the Radical Right, as shown by its support for the so-called Tea Party movement, and that it’s the Baptist “Bible Belt” of America, where Mormons are thought of as worse than heretics or schismatics, it’s not so simple for him. If you averaged all the polls amongst American Christian believers {that is Radical American Sectarians, in real terms: editor}, it turns out that a quarter to a third of them aren’t ready to accept a Mormon in the White House. Whilst Mormons claim to be Christians, outside of their sect, members of the LDS movement still face a prejudiced and/or suspicious attitude. Mitt Romney isn’t just a simple rank-and-file Mormon… he’s former “clergy” of the LDS movement, the head of a ward (parish). I must say that Mormon “clergy” are more like businessmen than real clergy. Later, he became a bishop, the head of a stake (this includes several dozen wards).

Mitt shows signs of flexibility and political consideration. However, his Democratic rivals and opponents believe that he’s notorious for waffling, concealment, distortion, and God knows what else. For example, David Axelrod, who was the chief architect of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, who’s now one of the leading lights in his current election campaign, called Mitt a “charlatan”, saying, “He takes two positions on every issue, one more moderate, and the other on the Far Right, but that doesn’t make you a centrist. It makes you a charlatan”. Amazingly, even fellow Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry claimed (prior to Romney winning the GOP nomination), “[Mitt’s] a buzzard, a Fibber, and differs very little from Obama in his gutter ideology”. Indeed, everywhere, Mitt seems to say exactly what he thinks people want to hear. He’s a furious Tory in one state, a moderate in another, and politically malleable in a third. However, any road, he’s still a Mormon.

The only trouble is that he doesn’t present any real alternative to the Obama’s economic course. This delights Obama’s camp, for it makes it easier for Obama to compete against Romney. As Professor Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, said, “Romney doesn’t have much chance of winning. It isn’t because he’s a bad candidate, but because it’s difficult to defeat a sitting president, who has powerful administrative resources at his disposal. To do this, he should be someone outstanding, but Romney isn’t that. I think the strategy of the Republicans is only to give a formal opposition in this election; they’re focusing on seriously preparing for the next election, when Obama’s second term expires”.

Romney’s a graduate of Harvard Business School; he’s a lawyer, businessman, and politician, a very wealthy man, the head of Bain Capital, a major investment firm. In 2002, he was head of the Winter Olympics Organising Committee in Salt Lake City UT. He managed to eliminate waste in collected funds, and instead of a projected shortfall of 375 million USD (12.1 billion Roubles. 300 million Euros. 235 million UK Pounds), the Games gained a profit of almost the same amount. Mitt and his wife invested in about a million dollars of their own funds in the Games. When Romney was the governor of Massachusetts in 2003-07, he conducted an economic policy that was similar to Obama’s current economic policy. When he took office, the state treasury had a shortfall of 600 million USD (19.4 billion Roubles. 477 Euros. 378 million UK Pounds) to meet current outlays, and there was an estimated deficit of 3 billion USD (97 billion Roubles. 2.4 billion Euros. 1.9 billion  UK Pounds) for the following year. Yet, he raised taxation over expenditures by almost 700 million USD (22.7 billion Roubles. 556 million  Euros. 440 million UK Pounds). He solved his budget problems by closing tax loopholes for corporations, increased excise duties on petrol, and introduced higher fees for driving licences, gun licences, and marriage licences, and so on. By the way, his state was the first one to introduce a mandate that all citizens obtain health insurance. Obama was only able to do something similar on the national level after three years. In general, everything or most of the things that Romney did in Massachusetts, the Obama administration is doing now. Does America really need a second Obama, with the only difference is that he’s a Mormon?

31 August 2012

Andrei Fedyashin

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2012_08_31/Romni-vtoroj-Obama-tolko-mormon/