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Some Pastor Murray Questions and Complaints

Question/Comment: 

----- Original Message -----
From: Emailer #239
To: Paul Stringini
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2014 10:16 PM
Subject: some "Pastor" Murray questions... and maybe a rant or two :)
Hi there,
I found your website while doing some research on Arnold Murray. I have, we'll say, a "distant relative" (though not as distant as I would like) who is eyebrow-deep in Murray-anity (feel free to use that if you like!). I checked out AM's teachings because of her, and after about 3 months of what I can describe as "fervor" (I really feel God wanted me to see the truth) of comparing his teachings with my Catholic Bible and my husband's "Companion Bible" (given by said relative), I not only got to know the actual Bible a lot better :) but I thoroughly rejected AM as a teacher of truth. Unfortunately, this relative is so indoctrinated with AM's teachings - she of course believes she's one of the "elect", has made countless calculations about the end times (all the while saying "but no one knows the day!") et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. Anyway - of all the teachings I've found by AM and my relative, everything seems VERY heavy in old testament (with the exception of Revelations, of course), so to my main question for writing:
  • Does AM do any studies of the Gospels (If so, Jesus' teachings are very lacking in my relative's repertoire...) and if he does, how does he reconcile Jesus' teachings of love and forgiveness with his obvious un-love for certain ethnicities?
  • I heard on the Genesis tapes (actually cds) at one point when he's trying to prove that Genesis 1 and 2 are separate creations at one point he mentions the "Y","P", "E", and "D" that his criticizers would try to use to discredit him, but that he wouldn't go into it "because it doesn't matter anyway" - does he ever explain what those are to his followers? My Catholic Bible informed me of them (as being separate oral traditions that were used and compiled into the Torah), but AM acts like they're heresy or something...(I don't know how familiar you are with it, but here's a link to what my Bible says about it: Catholic Bible
  • If Satan's "seed" created this race of "children of Satan", is AM trying to imply that they are inherently evil because of their biological heritage, or is he implying that Satan can create evil souls that go into those bodies?
And now I have just a few (of many) instances where I would like to just vent my rebuke of AM's teachings to the ether (and internet) - I'm not necessarily looking for a response, but please feel free to comment if you wish!:
  • ok, so AM teaches that Gen 1 and 2 are separate based on "adam" vs "ha adam", and that Adam was white 'cause the root of "adam" means ruddy, and the other races were made in Gen 1. Well, that doesn't make sense 'cause the "adam" in Gen 1 is the exact same word as the adam in "ha adam" in Gen 2, so that would mean that even if there was a separate creation (which I don't believe btw), EVERYONE is white because the same word has the same root! So NOW where did the other races come from? Nuff said! :)
  • Since God created Satan, then wouldn't Satan's children also be God's children (or grandchildren, etc. if you will), making the whole Kenite point moot anyway?
  • I don't know if this came from AM's teachings (so let me know if it did...), but some of his "students" insist that when Jesus says "love thy neighbor" He only meant fellow Jews/Christians, and that it doesn't apply to people of other faiths. I guess they missed the point of the "good Samaritan" story - Samaritans were not Jewish (and certainly not Christian in Jesus' time :) and not even looked upon by Jews as equal men ), and yet the Samaritan did what the other two "men of the book" would do! For that matter I guess they missed the point of the "treat others the way you would like to be treated" lesson too.
Ok, I've rambled enough, I guess I'll let you get back to real life (and hopefully responding at some point!) Thank you for your time!

Sincerely,
Emailer #239.

PS - I feel it somehow necessary to inform you that while I have a Catholic Bible, I'm not actively participating in any denomination of faith. I was raised Catholic, and my grandmother gave it to me for my "confirmation". I don't think I ever opened it up beyond the "family tree" section in the front to record my family's history, but it must be Providence 'cause I used it extensively during my "fervor" period. I consider myself a "Christian" in that I believe in the teachings of Christ, and if that's all I get out of the Bible, I think I've got the best part of it! :) Thanks again for your time!

My Response:

----- Original Message -----
From:  Paul Stringini
To:  Emailer #239
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: some "Pastor" Murray questions... and maybe a rant or two :)
Hi Emailer #239,  Thanks for writing,
  • Does AM do any studies of the Gospels (If so, Jesus' teachings are very lacking in my relative's repertoire...) and if he does, how does he reconcile Jesus' teachings of love and forgiveness with his obvious un-love for certain ethnicities?
Yes, Murray does studies for all the New Testament books. If it seems he is heavy on the Old Testament it is because that while he teaches the whole bible, many of his special doctrines require a lot of Old Testament Support.   His followers tend to want to show people the unique aspects of Murray's teachings, so that requires them to use the OT a lot.  I remember that I had an attitude sort of like "Hey, we know all that love and forgiveness stuff.  What we need is to understand the rest of the stuff in here."  So that is how you get that impression, but I do think they de-emphasize the core elements of the faith which is a bad idea.
 
How does he reconcile Jesus teachings?  He would not see it as necessary, he has his own take on love.  Murray applies his "un-love" as you call it, mainly to the ethnic Jews(he refused to call them Jews to avoid criticism). According to Murray, the Jews/Kenites  are the children of the devil, for him, this explains why they were the enemies of Christ. Cain was "so 'ornery"  because his father was the Devil. Murray takes the words of Jesus against his unrepentant enemies and applies them to the race of Kenites (the ethnic people generally called Jews)  But even Murray will say that it is possible for a Kenite to repent.  Though since their problem is racial I do not even understand how he comes up with that.  If Satan fathering a child with Eve is an abomination,  I don't see how that can be fixed by the abomination "repenting."  It is like telling a retarded kid to repent of being retarded so he can be smart.  Very confusing, I had a Jewish lady who was in love with a Chapel student write me for help over that very issue:  How does she repent of being a Jew?  And if Jews are not to be presumed to be Kenites (ha ha I jest severely, because Murray absolutely taught that the Ethnic "Jews" were all Kenites) when a Jew believes in Jesus, what further repentance do they require?  It is convoluted garbage.
 
Honestly though, I see Murray as actually being very heavy on the "love and forgiveness" angle to a fault.  For example, Murray teaches that everyone who has ever lived will live in Christ's millennial kingdom and have an opportunity to choose to love God instead of Satan. He claims that in this world people really don't have a chance to hear the truth.   He does not believe in eternal torture.  Though I don't know that annihilation is actually preferable to eternal torment.
 
So, to be fair, Murray talks plenty about love, (he calls the bible "our Father's Love-Letter to us") and teaches a loving and forgiving Christ, but it love his way. So it tends to be the abusive and overbearing sort of love.  It is rather complex, but Murray manages to teach a very soft Christianity while creating disciples that are rude and obnoxious.  They will gladly forgive any sin, just repent and follow their doctrine. See?  Wasn't that easy?  What they lack is patience and longsuffering with those who do not see things as they do.  People who don't agree with them are "stupid"  That was the way Murray was.  I get a lot of "We'll set you straight in the millennium, punk!"  They take glee in telling me "It's ok, your just blind, so don't freak out, we'll teach you in the millennium"  Yeah, with an iron-toed boot in the rear.
 
They supposedly understand that people are blinded to the truth, but they then go ahead and abuse them anyway, as if they could help being blind.  It is a very odd thing. 
  • I heard on the Genesis tapes (actually cds) at one point when he's trying to prove that Genesis 1 and 2 are separate creations at one point he mentions the "Y","P", "E", and "D" that his criticizers would try to use to discredit him, but that he wouldn't go into it "because it doesn't matter anyway" - does he ever explain what those are to his followers? My Catholic Bible informed me of them (as being separate oral traditions that were used and compiled into the Torah), but AM acts like they're heresy or something...(I don't know how familiar you are with it, but here's a link to what my Bible says about it:
I'm familiar with the whole YPED stuff, and I think it is basic bunk.  YPED is generally taught at Universities and other such places where actual belief is discouraged.  Yes, technically...one may believe YPED and still be a believer in Christ , but then we are saying we do not believe Christ when he testifies that Moses wrote the Law.    
 
Mark 1:44 And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.
 
They do not believe that Moses was actually responsible for the Torah, so based on linguistic characteristics they try to reverse engineer the books of Moses into separate sources.  That is purely speculation based on the presupposition that Moses did not write the Torah. The original purpose of YPED was to undermine the authority of scripture. 
 
No actual YPED manuscript writings exist anywhere.  The oldest copies of the Torah contain the complete Torah.  So the YPED sources are purely hypothetical.  A bunch of guys sat around and decided they thought it made more sense than the idea that Moses wrote the Torah.  It was a tool of the German school of "higher critics" originally intended to undermine the scriptures.  Many of the original "higher critics" did not even believe that Jesus Christ was a real person that lived.
 
Murray refers to them from time to time (the higher critics and their theories) but he does not seem to know much about them.  They are not really Murray's critics either, they are the critics of the bible.  Murray is just creating enemies out of thin air.  He never addresses his actual critics.
 
  • If Satan's "seed" created this race of "children of Satan", is AM trying to imply that they are inherently evil because of their biological heritage, or is he implying that Satan can create evil souls that go into those bodies?
    •  
    That would be one I could not tell you the answer on.  I do think he implies that they are inherently evil, but then he goes on to say they can change, so that must mean they are not inherently evil.  Editorial Comment:  Murray does explicitly teach that Cain's "ornery" nature was the result of being physically descended from Satan.
     
    The question I always ask is this: "If they are great sinners because they are Satan's biological offspring, then what is our excuse?"
    • ok, so AM teaches that Gen 1 and 2 are separate based on "adam" vs "ha adam", and that Adam was white 'cause the root of "adam" means ruddy, and the other races were made in Gen 1. Well, that doesn't make sense 'cause the "adam" in Gen 1 is the exact same word as the adam in "ha adam" in Gen 2, so that would mean that even if there was a separate creation (which I don't believe btw), EVERYONE is white because the same word has the same root! So NOW where did the other races come from? Nuff said! :)
    He has all kinds of suggestions for that.  He used to suggest that the "moving creatures that have life" in this verse refers to the Asians. 
     
    Genesis 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, 
     
    I never heard Murray suggest the following, but I have heard it from people with similar views:
     
    Genesis 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
     
    They see the Blacks in there somewhere.  Don't ask me....'
     
    I believe that there is no "eighth day" and that Genesis 2 is Just an enlarged view of the creation of the first man on the sixth day. The first three verses of Genesis 2 probably should be part of Chapter 1. The context bears this out clearly.  This should be the beginning of Chapter 2 and this verse clearly sets the time frame as being "in the day they were created" i.e. before God rested.
     
    4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
    • Since God created Satan, then wouldn't Satan's children also be God's children (or grandchildren, etc. if you will), making the whole Kenite point moot anyway?
    And also they would be the Children of Adam, because Eve was taken out of Adam in the first place.  There are lots of places where logic would tell you to stop.  I fell for this when I was 19 and I didn't really know anything, but by the time I was 21 I was already getting uneasy with it.  I don't know how people continue in it for years and years, except that many of those people have peculiar personalities which may lend themselves to blind allegiance based on a cult of personality.  And that is basically what Shepherd's Chapel is:  A Cult of Personality.
    • I don't know if this came from AM's teachings (so let me know if it did...), but some of his "students" insist that when Jesus says "love thy neighbor" He only meant fellow Jews/Christians, and that it doesn't apply to people of other faiths. I guess they missed the point of the "good Samaritan" story - Samaritans were not Jewish (and certainly not Christian in Jesus' time :) and not even looked upon by Jews as equal men ), and yet the Samaritan did what the other two "men of the book" would do! For that matter I guess they missed the point of the "treat others the way you would like to be treated" lesson too.
    I can't put a finger on it but I used to be the same way so we must have got it from him.  I think he has a tape about who your neighbors are, I'll have to look it up.  It is kind of a weird way to be because they think we are all angels created in the world that was and are therefore all the children of God. 
     
    But Brethren are fellow believers, neighbors is everyone else, and that is including our enemies.  In fact, Jesus explicitly says "love your enemies"  so it is not like limiting your neighbors to fellow Christians gets them out of it. 
     
    The point about the Samaritan is as you say, and even more so, I like to point this out every chance I get.  The Jews looked down on and despised the Samaritans.  The man who was wounded in the parable can be presumed to be a Jew.  So the Samaritan looked at a member of a race who hated him and had compassion on that wounded Jew.  The good Samaritan "was neighbor to" the wounded man.  Notice also how that the Lord put the responsibility for being a "neighbor" on us by saying that the Samaritan was the neighbor.  The wounded man was not the one being a neighbor, the Samaritan was making himself a neighbor by showing compassion to an enemy.  The Samaritan was exemplifying "bless them that curse you."  It is interesting because they asked "and who is my neighbor" and you can guess that they wanted to find people to exclude.
     
    This reminds me of something I have come to realize about Murray-anity.  It has much more in common with the views of the unrepentant Jews of Jesus day than it does with the teachings of Jesus Christ.  This is odd but demonstrably true.
     
    Fell free to write with any other questions,  I may take time to respond, this is not my professional occupation, but I am at your service.
    Sincerely,
    Paul Stringini

    Emailer's Reply:

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Emailer #239
    To: Paul Stringini
    Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2014 4:39 PM
    Subject: Re: some "Pastor" Murray questions... and maybe a rant or two :)
    Hi again,
    Thanks for getting back to me and being as thorough as you can with answering my questions. I've come to the conclusion that my "relative" is a lesson in love and forgiveness for me :) I feel bad for her, but I agree with you that Murray's teachings attract a certain personality, and I believe it's the kind that needs to feel special in order to feel self-worth. I can definitely see the appeal of Murray's teachings to people like that - when he says "you might be one of the elect" and that they now know what the bible "truly" says and such, it makes those people feel special. I also agree with you about what you said at the end...
    This reminds me of something I have come to realize about Murray-anity.  It has much more in common with the views of the unrepentant Jews of Jesus day than it does with the teachings of Jesus Christ.  This is odd but demonstrably true.

    It seems to me that the "shepherd's students" that I have encountered are more OT  than NT in their thoughts and actions, so that would make them more Jewish than Christian (hence my question about whether AM teaches the Gospels ) :)

    Again, thank you for your time - God bless!

    Tiffany

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