quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
Doug Spaulding~

You've fallen for a cult. Why have you intellectualized the scriptures into oblivion and the historic Christianity into mishmash? I was, myself, in a border-line cult. Lot of good and honest people caught up in a single personality. Cults expound something seemingly so dramatically real and genuine that we are drawn into a world that has fringes of untruth and a framework most rotten.

You'll have to work all this out yourself, of course. I see the biggest trap Spong has set up is the sexual one. It is the most disillusional producing one to be engulfed by.

===DITTO!===

quote:

Originally posted by Salamander:
===DITTO!===

You just watched Ghost, didn't you?

Interesting piece I came across whilst browsing the wiki.


Edgar C. Whisenant was a Bible student who predicted the Rapture would occur in 1988, sometime between Sept. 11 and Sept. 13. He published two books about this: 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988 and On Borrowed Time. Eventually, 300,000 copies of 88 Reasons were mailed free of charge to ministers across America, and 4.5 million copies were sold in bookstores and elsewhere. Whisenant was quoted as saying "Only if the Bible is in error am I wrong; and I say that to every preacher in town".

Whisenant's predictions were taken seriously in some parts of the evangelical Christian community. As the great day approached, regular programming on the Christian Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN) was interrupted to provide special instructions on preparing for the Rapture.

The predicted Rapture did not occur.

Following this 1988 debacle, Whisenant followed up with later books with predictions for various dates in 1989, 1993, and 1994. These books did not sell in quantity. Whisenant continued to issue various Rapture predictions through 1997, but gathered little attention.


This is what is known as "passing your sell-by date"!

I wonder if his second book featured eighty-nine reasons.

DS~

I worked for a printing company in Anaheim that had for one of its customers, an old fuddy-duddy fellow (well, I'm trying to be kind)...who had this ministry of predicting the 2nd coming of Christ and printed this newsletter-magazette every couple months telling advocates to send in money now to get the message out before it's too late. He used to back date the newsletter at the print shop to look like he was more right on in the news than it appeared. My old boss put up with him because I figured they were old friends from way back, but my old boss would just laugh it off in some ways, thinking the old guy couldn't make that much trouble anyway at his age.

Bytheway~
I had lunch this week with two Jehovah Witnesses. One of them worked for 40+ years as NASA and knew every single astronaut. He was really interesting to talk with. But when we talked religion, we are light years apart. You see, the Jehovah Witness believes Jesus already came back the second time in 1914.

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
You see, the Jehovah Witness believes Jesus already came back the second time in 1914.

That certainly has a kernal of truth in it.

President Russell authored the six-volume series, Studies in the Scriptures. Early editions predicted that Armageddon would culminate in the year 1914.

Various statements assuring the accuracy and authority of their predictions were issued, such as "We see no reason for changing the figures — nor could we change them if we would. They are, we believe, God's dates, not ours. But bear in mind that the end of 1914 is not the date for the beginning, but for the end of the time of trouble."

In contrast, Russell also wrote regarding his expectations: "We are not prophesying; we are merely giving our surmises ... We do not even aver that there is no mistake in our interpretation of prophecy and our calculations of chronology. We have merely laid these before you, leaving it for each to exercise his own faith or doubt in respect to them."

Larson E. Whipsnade meets Arius.

quote:

Originally posted by Braling II:
Larson E. Whipsnade meets Arius.

A WC Fields movie character meets a heretical figure in the early Church (for those who are in the dark)...

____

I went for the throat at the Jehovah Witness lunch, since I have gone around the block so many times with these fellows that it always proves a waste of time. The 1914 Christ- came -back attack didn't work, because they had a complicated rebound I just didn't want to get absorbed into. It would be stepping into quicksand. I only had a 2 hr. lunch. But my other confrontation, on the incident of the burning bush, provoked a response that was downright silly. The incident goes like this:

In the Old Testament, Moses came upon a burning bush, a bush on fire that was not burnt-up by the fire. It just...burned. And out of the bush came a voice that said, I AM the I AM. God was speaking to Moses, and what God said was that God IS. That is to say, he is in the present-tense,. Always! Even in the past and future. He is not past, or future, but is always AM. The past present and future always is Present-Time with God.

Now Jesus makes a reference to himself in the New Testament. He says that he is the I AM that spoke to Moses.

So when I brought this up (since Jehovah Witnesses do NOT believe Jesus is God)... that NASA fellow had the amazing gumption to say that...Moses got it wrong back then.

I didn't have a rebound on that one. It sort of stood on its own wobbly legs.

Ask the Bishop:


Q: Having read two of your books, I finally have answers to several questions that have troubled me for years. But now I have some new ones, two of them of immediate importance:

1. My very fundamental Seventh Day Adventist Church: How do I fit in when I no longer fit in?

2. Prayer: How do I now pray? To whom? About what? For what? How do I express my gratitude, my sorrows, my joys?

Though I feel that a great burden has left me now that I feel you have given me permission to understand God and Jesus in the light that I have seen in the distance for a long time but was too afraid to reach for, I also feel very much an outsider and alone. How do I deal with this?


A: Thank you for your letter. I assure you that in the Christian life there is no such thing as a time when questions will cease and you will arrive at answers that will endure forever. Christianity is a journey, not a religious system into which all truth can be fitted.

To your questions, only you can decide whether you can continue your pilgrimage inside the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Normally I encourage people to remain in their households of faith as change agents. However, that is based on the assumption that a particular household of faith is open to change. Churches are frequently security systems and change will destroy them, not transform them. This is particularly true for those parts of the Christian Church that are built around a single issue or a single ethnic group. Such churches are themselves not likely to survive.

In terms of prayer, this format is not nearly large enough to address those concerns. First you need to develop an understanding of God other than the supernatural parent figure who lives above the sky and is waiting to come to your aid. Christian prayer is not an adult letter to Santa Claus. Second, you need to understand the nature of the world in which you and I are living. It is not a world of miracle, magic and divine intervention, but a world of order, natural law and precise mathematical formulas that enables us to predict with total accuracy the tides, the time of sunrise and sunset and even eclipses of the sun and moon. We can send spacecraft to the moon and to the planets as far out as Jupiter because we know the laws by which such things as motion and gravity operate. Prayer must take place in that kind of world.

Enjoy your quest for truth.


- John Shelby Spong

Doug Spaulding!

Oh, there is another Bishop, you know...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKcxm-VhxUw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF0oxNlhRLQ&NR=1

quote:

Originally posted by Salamander:
Oh, there is another Bishop, you know...

I know. There are many bishops.

Sheen, the RC bishop - I am familiar with him.

I doubt if Bishop Spong would agree with more than 10% of what Bishop Sheen has to say here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiT9p7o0bxA

Thanks, Nard.
Much thanks.

An eschatological theologian, eh? To each his or her own.

He reminds me of Reagan - charismatic, good in front of the camera and good with an audience.

But weighing the value of the words? I think my bishop's outweighs yours.

JESUS SEMINAR is a group that Bishop Spong is a member of. Here's what Jesus Seminar is about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQUzGgZbfxs