Heart and soul of the Duggars and their ilk.
Centered around the last verse in the malevolent book of Malachi:
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers … Malachi 4:6
ATII leaves out the last words of the verse:
or else I will come and strike the land with a curse
A verse with a curse! How blessed!
Meet me below:
The book of Malachi is very short and filled with curses and demanding of only the right kind of blood and sacrifice, for example, excerpted from Chapter 1:
... Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals ... Edom may say, "Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins." But this is what the LORD Almighty says: "They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD.... a son honors his father, and a servant his master... If I am a father, where is the honor due me? You place defiled food on my altar. But you ask, 'How have we defiled you?' ... When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? .... When you bring injured, crippled or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands? says the LORD. .. Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king, says the LORD Almighty, and my name is to be feared among the nations. If I am a master, where is the respect due me?" says the LORD Almighty...
Malachi closes with a major curse:
Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire, says the LORD Almighty. Not a root or a branch will be left to them.
A very strange god to worship. Yet, ATII admonishes:
DRAW NEAR TO GOD
I found the link between the Duggars and ATII in
Salon:
I could’ve been a Duggar wife: I grew up in the same church, and the abuse scandal doesn’t shock me
... Unlike most of the writers covering the Duggar sex scandal, I was raised in Advanced Training Institute (ATI), the fundamentalist Christian organization with which the family is affiliated. Joshua Duggar’s confession of sexually molesting young girls in his family’s home when he was a teenager didn’t surprise me, nor should it surprise anyone with any intimate knowledge about this organization, because ATI’s theological beliefs and practices cultivate an environment where women and children are more vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse. Ironically, the same theological beliefs and practices at the heart of this scandal are the same beliefs that created the Duggars as a media phenomenon, and drew viewers and fans to their TLC show “19 Kids and Counting.”