The House Of Yahweh (www.yahweh.com) is a rather interesting little religious sect. I won't call them a cult, because they are not. They really aren't any crazier than the more enthusiastic Pentacostal sects, just more Jewish.
They do believe that Jesus (excuse me, Yeshhua) was the son of God(Yahwah, sorry.) and the messiah; and also that he rose from the dead. But their are little differences. They believe he was executed on a Wednesday instead of Friday, and that he was hung on a straight pole instead of a cross. Why do they consider these differences important? Well, they're kind of vague about that. By the way, Jesus isn't divine either, just the son of God.
They are especially big on clensing true monotheism of Pagan influences. This means no Halloween, no Easter, no Christmas, which they have correctly surmised are nothing but inventions of pagan (European) holidays retrofitted into Christianity. They do celebrate Passover, Yom Kipper, etc. (No word on Haunakah) They also insist on using the original Hebrew when refering to God, Jesus, or any biblical prophets. Any other common name for the diety is spawned from European (pagan) sources and therefore bad. They seem very confident that their grasp of aincient Hebrew is better than everybody else's. This is questionable, but never mind.
All in all, nothing remarkible, certainly nothing dangerous. There is no reason why these people should not be allowed to keep kosher in peace. Even better, they are in the minority. Therefore they are used to being surrounded by people who disagree with them. This certainly gives them a leg up on the country WASP.
But than they had to go and pull this shit. On Sunday night, a very well dressed and polite man handed a HOY newsletter to random students in the NU student union. I was one of them. We all accepted the free gift in a polite Midwestern manner, complete with thank you sirs. Even those who spent five minutes mocking the contents before throwing the letter away included the sir.
In this letter, the sect's leader, Yisrayl Hawkins predicts that nuclear war will start on September 12, 2006. He bases his prophecy on several biblical passages describing unspecific catastrophes of one type or another. Needless to say, there are no specific dates given in any of the cited verses. Hawkins believes that the end is coming soon because this is "the greatest time of sin and trouble ever." No one who understands what went down between 1900 and 1945 would say such a thing.
Worst of all, Hawkins doesn't give any advice on what we should do about the coming apocolypse. He simply says his followers have a sacred duty to warn the world. Very well, I appreciate your warning and take it under advisement. What should I do about it? Does your group have any mandate to save the mortal skins of nonbelievers? Because otherwise, I can't just jump onto your bandwagon now. It's a matter of integrity, you understand. Better to burn in hell and stay honest. Plus, there is the simple fact that I just don't believe you. If you really convinced me, I would drop out of school and spend my life savings on a homewrecker of Hennesey and three top shelf, Las Vegas hookers. Now imagine if I do that and you turn out to be wrong. You really should be more careful (and specific) about predicting the end of the world.
It's just sad how a sect so unique could stoop to the old nutcase cliche of setting a specific date for the end of the world. There are, of course, several sects in every religion who are entirely concerned with the creation and destruction myths of their respective faiths to the exclusion of the moral meat. But the HOY should be too young and obscure for that. They're not even well known enough to be villified for being "outside the mainstream" yet. Really Hawkins! "The end is nigh!" How tragically bland, like Gandalf singing Amazing Grace over shitty canned organ music.
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