[The graphic used for this post is of the cover of the book “Anti-Semitism” by R. B. Thieme, Jr. which represents the views and beliefs I had on the Jewish Question that I learned from his teaching during the time I was one of his devout followers. I claim fair use of this image.]
[Preliminary comment about the God Virus theory of Dr. Darrel Ray. I have written about Dr. Ray’s work in previous blog posts. I have found his God Virus theory explained in his book to be very helpful to me. You know how fundamentalist Christians will often say something like, “we don’t hate the sinner, we hate the sin.”? Well, I can now say or think an analogous thing when I reflect back on spiritual leaders and teachers who indoctrinated me with wacky ideas that have taken me a lifetime to unravel. It is harder to have anger and bitterness toward them when you realize that they are just vectors for a virus that they had themselves been severely infected with. So I think the God Virus theory is good for how it helps to explain the way religions and movements (and even movements that are atheistic) operate and function and behave. So if you choose to stay in a religion or movement, you can be more discerning and pick one where the viral aspects are less severe, malignant, but instead benign. I am no expert on this, but viruses actually play an important role in biological life. They are probably necessary for life. In other words, if you could somehow eradicate all biological viruses on this planet, the entire ecosystem would probably collapse and all life would die.]
FAMILY AND RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND IN BRIEF
I come from families with a lot of fundamentalist Christian culture. My parents met in a fundamentalist Christian church. That is probably true for many of my aunts and uncles as well.
I am glad that my parents never gave me the turn or burn gospel threatening me with going to hell if I did not believe, but I managed to pick this message up on my own through the years listening to different pastors and evangelists give the gospel.
I was raised going to Peninsula Bible Church (PBC) in Palo Alto California. Although I did not understand all of these terms at the time, I have since come to realize that the teachings were of the evangelical, dispensationalist, Zionist, fundamentalist variety. The head pastor of PBC when I was growing up was Ray Stedman, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, a seminary very well known for its spreading of Dispensational Christian theology as made very popular in the United States with the Scofield Reference Bible that first came out in 1909.
When I was a senior in high school with a troubled life and seeking answers and seeking God, I was kind of at a cross roads. In my own thinking I think I was open to seeking God in my own way. When I thought about the idea of hell it did not seem to make sense to me. So I might have been open to exploring things outside of the fundamentalist bubble I was raised in at this time, if I had gotten exposed to the right kind of information. But instead, when I expressed my seeking to a good friend of mine, he said I should talk to his mother.
GOING OFF THE DEEP END – HOW I CONTRACTED THE R B THIEME JR GOD VIRUS IN 1974
So it turned out that his mother was a hard core follower of a particular Bible teacher who had a tape ministry where people would listen to his teaching on reel to reel audio tapes. This teacher was Robert B. Thieme, Jr. of Berachah Church, Houston Texas. R B Thieme Jr was also a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary of about the same vintage as Ray Stedman, but Thieme took his teaching to a much higher level of dogmatism and condemning others who do not believe as he does. He probably would have looked at PBC as an apostate church even though his teachings were similar in many ways. Anyway, unfortunately, I ended up swallowing everything from Thieme, hook line and sinker, and became a hard core follower of him. Looking back on it now, the way I describe what happened to me is that I allowed an operating system to be installed on the computer of my soul, and that operating system had one or more viruses in it. I guess it was no different than the way that many people are taken in by so called cults. I would further describe that I was so trapped within the Thieme belief system that even if I encountered something in his teaching that did not make sense, I could not shake by belief that this man was one of only a very few individuals in the entire world who taught true Bible Doctrine. It was his way or the highway.
You have probably heard of Hal Lindsey, the author of the book from the 70’s The Late Great Planet Earth. I believe that Hal Lindsey was also a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, and he also spent some time as a follower of Thieme and attending Berachah Church. Thieme also made it into the news when George H. W. Bush was running for president, since Dan Quayle and especially his wife’s Marilyn’s family were hard core followers of Thieme.
Webster Tarpley wrote a book with the title “George Bush The Unauthorized Biography” that ended up being available for free on the internet (I think you can still find it) where he covered some revealing information about Thieme. Many years ago I ended up getting a printed copy of the book, and the part about Thieme had been sanitized quite a bit, but I believe the original is still available on the web, Tarpley’s web site being the first place that I would check.
I think it was before the Thieme stuff that my friend’s mother had also introduced her sons and me to the John Birch Society (JBS). So I also started getting some introduction to conspiracy theory type stuff at this time through the JBS.
NOW FILLING IN MORE DETAILS PRIOR TO 1973
I want to describe what little introduction I had to Jewish information prior to the JBS and Thieme influence in my life, in other words when I was a kid growing up.
In so doing if I refer to someone being a Jew or Jewish I am simply referring to someone who was born into a family of cultural Jews, regardless of how devout they are in terms of any following of the religion of Judaism. And I would also include those who chose to go through whatever process they needed to in order to convert to Judaism, although I am only recalling one instance of this that I was personally aware of during my childhood.
There was a Jewish family in my neighborhood and I was good friends with one of the boys, and still am to this day. His family may have attended a reformed synagogue or temple to some extent. At PBC I was enrolled in the program called boys brigade which was kind of like a boy scouts for Christian boys. I remember when I was wanting to have my Jewish friend come with me to church as a guest on boys brigade night (Wednesday) the issue was raised as to whether this would be OK with his parents. I am not remembering for sure now whether he was able to come or not. But this perhaps was one of my first experiences of the exclusivity between Jews and Christians.
I did pick up on the concept of Jews being penny pinchers and the term to “Jew one down” as being to negotiate a lower price.
My childhood hero growing up was Herb Alpert, and his Tijuana Brass (TJB). I played the trumpet and piano growing up and I loved TJB music and playing it on my trumpet especially. I actually formed a group with three other boys where I played the trumpet, another played the trombone, and the others, drums and the piano, and we played TJB music. I did not know or learn until much later in life that Herb Alpert is Jewish. I suppose a lot of gentiles end up learning the same thing about other musicians, actors and actresses who they admired when young where their Jewishness was not readily apparent or emphasized.
I remember in junior high school where a female English teacher was in the process of converting to Judaism, and in her class there were at least a couple of Jewish kids who some felt she showed favoritism towards. I remember hearing the term anti-Semitism for the first time in my life being talked about a lot by a Jewish boy in the class.
I remember in high school being shown films of the massive heaps of naked emaciated dead bodies from Nazi WWII concentration camps. I don’t recall for sure whether the term holocaust was used. It might have been. I remember learning for the first time that the Nazis made soap and lampshades out of Jewish bodies.
I just have to throw in a little about the war culture I grew up in. As a young boy, what did we play in our neighborhood? Cowboys and Indians, army, or combat. In elementary school when we had drawing time, with my friends we would draw machine guns, tanks, and war planes.
After exposure to the JBS, the first conspiracy book I ever read was None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen. This was not an official JBS publication, as I recall, but it was certainly heavily used to help teach people about the international conspiracy and how it especially related to finance and banking, but the Jewish aspect of this was downplayed.
I recall that at JBS chapter meetings that I was attending sometime after I graduated from high school, a lot of people in attendance were readers of the publication “The Spotlight” but it was officially frowned upon by the JBS as being anti-Semitic. Eventually The Spotlight was closed down, in 2001 I think, but it later got resurrected as the American Free Press.
From a friend in JBS circles I also got exposed to the JFK assassination conspiracy literature, having read at least one of the many books on the subject by Harold Weisberg, one in the “Whitewashed” series. Also with this friend I attended a public showing of the Zapruder film at Stanford University when it was making the rounds.
R B THIEME JR TEACHING ON DISPENSATIONAL THEOLOGY AND ANTI-SEMITISM BECAME MY VIEW
From Thieme’s teaching I learned that even though Jews have for the most part rejected Jesus Christ as their savior and are on their way to eternal hell, that we must be very careful not to be anti-Semitic. After all, look what happened to Hitler. So anti-Semitism was taught to be a very serious sin. God blesses nations who are good to the Jews, like the United States. But in a sort of convoluted and twisted belief system, I came away with the impression that the Christian God was supposedly punishing Jews for their hardness of heart toward Christ with the holocaust. I guess as long as God is punishing His chosen people the Jews, it is OK, but don’t try to help God do this, or God will punish you for anti-Semitism. I think there was even a doctrinal term for this, God’s finesse judgment, where He uses evil to punish evil.
So this describes pretty much how my thinking was conditioned with regard to the Jewish Question prior to my awakening to 911 truth in January 2004. In my next blog post I will pick up at the point of my 2004 awakening and cover up to where I am now, in 2018.