What About the 60 Million?

I keep getting crosswise of some of my brethren with some of the things I believe about God. My walk with him leads me to believe even more strongly in His mercy. For instance, I believe God will give to saved parents, the babies that were lost to abortion here on Earth. God says he formed us in the womb and knew us before we were even born. Our God is a jealous God, not willing that any should be lost. Therefore, I believe that all aborted babies will be taken home to be with us in Heaven. Me I want the angels to round up at least six or so that we can raise in a loving home, enough that we can have our own flag football team or extra crew for the schooner my kids and I are going to build in the New Earth.

Stephen responded to my assertion that aborted babies would not be lost with this: "This is unconditional immortality which is not a teaching of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and leads to spiritism."

 

So let me ask, "How do you explain our teaching that babies like the ones spoken of in the passage below from Ellen White will be restored to their mothers' arms at the Second Coming and even the motherless babies will be taken by Jesus to the tree of life?". After all, this baby clearly has not reached the age of accountability. Is there some kind of free pass for these babies if their parents belong to the right church. How is that fair to those who never had any chance to decide whether or not to follow Christ?

I have real trouble, Stephen, believing that God is that hard-hearted. We also believe (along with notable Protestant theologians like John Wesley) that many will be saved who never heard the name of Christ but were seeking Him without knowing His name:. 

 

Among the heathen are those who worship God ignorantly, those to whom the light is never brought by human instrumentality, yet they will not perish. Though ignorant of the written law of God, they have heard His voice speaking to them in nature, and have done the things that the law required. Their works are evidence that the Holy Spirit has touched their hearts, and they are recognized as the children of God.” - Ellen G. White

 

Strict conditional  salvation is almost as heartless as the doctrine of an ever-burning hell. God is love and He knows His children. He knows our frame, He knows we are dust, according to Psalm 103:14. God does not wish that any should perish, but that ALL should have eternal life (Matthew 18:14, ). That the God of infinite love, who carefully formed each of those fearfully and wonderfully made, but aborted babies in their mothers' womb and knew what they would one day be, will not finish His work, especially when there would be millions of us willing to raise those perfect babies in a perfect world. For that matter, I believe God will give me my dog back if I ask Him. Would a Father deny his child something that would only do him or her good. Would he not do ultimate good for the lost children who were victims of the holocaust of the unborn? Sixty million dead masterpieces created by God in sixty million wombs will not be wasted I believe.

 

I do not hold to the brand of religion that treats salvation as some kind of magical incantation. Many Christians (or Hindus, pagans or Buddhists for that matter) believe that you have to say the right words and perform the right rituals to get into Paradise. I met a Church of Christ pastor once who told me that because the preacher didn't say "In Jesus' name," but said "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," my baptism was no good. I disagreed. I asked him, "Do you think God doesn't know who his son is?"

 

My acquaintance with God tells me He does what He does, not through magic and incantation. He does what He does because his nature is supernatural or above our 3 dimensional plane of existence. He exists outside of time and is the Alpha and Omega, or as scripture says He lives in the present, the past and the future all at once. God knows who will be safe to take to heaven and the new Earth because He sees tomorrow the way we see today. It's not magic and definitely doesn't require incantations, waving magic wands or giving special powers to people the church hierarchy deigns to "ordain". He picks folks He knows, like Deborah, Gideon, Joseph, David and Simon Peter who can do the job He has for them to do. 

 

People keep trying to stuff God into a conceptual box so they can (a) understand Him with their limited intelligence and in a way that they approve of His actions and (b) figure out how to game the system so God is somehow forced take them to heaven. These folk lack faith. They don't quite trust God to make good decisions, or at least decisions they approve of, unless they have some leverage. Ah, but if we say the right words and perform the correct rituals, He will be forced to let us into Paradise, won't He?

 

Well, no! Remember Christ's description of the judgment - all those folks complaining that they did miracles, preached to the masses, built Crystal Cathedrals and God told them flat out, rituals and incantations and successful fund-raising and all, "I never knew you." God just doesn't fit in those kinds of boxes nor have those kinds of limitations. A lot of that kind of thinking is left over from the long discredited Last Generation Theology - an Adventist theologian's answer to an ever-burning hell for scaring people into the pews and into line with the "authorities". At the core of Adventism, is a kinder gentler, more forgiving picture of the character of God than many strong-willed Christians are quite comfortable with.

 

Timothy objected: "This is the unconditional love and nature of God. If there is a first life, then there is a soul, and the second life depends on our submission and accountability. A baby in the womb is life and has no accountability. 

 

I think God is quite able to raise up murdered children freed from the stain of sin. Adam and Eve,had they not been tempted could have lived eternally. Why not an unstained infant? If a child is knit together by God in the womb and another person ends the life that God has carefully created the child is unstained; murdered before the child has even been able to commit his first sin. Why would anyone think God would not object to having His babies killed without having had a chance to experience His love and choose life. 

 

Stephen objected. "You did not limit it to babes as in the picture. You included the unborn. There is no such teaching in Adventism."

 

Again I think such an idea is woven into the very Scriptures. An unborn child is a baby and a human. At least that's what God says about it. The idea that a fetus is a "clump of cells" is a progressive fiction and for that matter downright satanic. God sees the end from the beginning and knows the choices the little human being would have made. I firmly believe that God does not just toss out 60 million human beings that Satan killed before they had a chance to know Him. I'm sure there are "progressives" out there who would cheerfully stand beside the lake of fire with a pitchfork, shoveling babies into the flames. They are collectivists and think everybody ought to share in the same fate. I cannot imagine the God of infinite love being that cruel. You may face eternal death (Ecclesiastes 9:5) for your own sins, but innocent babies should not be lumped in that "collective".

 

Our founding fathers didn't have millions of abortions in their day; scarcely a handful. Ellen G White also said we'd discover new truth in the years to come. I think what is unique about our church is we really do believe God is loving and merciful. Unborn children are no less His children than the Hottentots who have never heard Jesus' name. I think we are learning more about Him as the years go by. When somebody puts forth beliefs about God's character that paint Him as harsh and unkind, it doesn't sit right because the God you know isn't merciless. Now if you choose to reject Him okay. You get removed from the universe permanently as you expected. But the innocent who were made by God, knit together in the womb by God Himself, have been murdered before they can make any such choice. You wanna tell me God abandons His handiwork because the devil decided to kill it before it was finished?

 

I don't think so! What kept me out of the church till I was 17 was the harsh picture of God that the Last Generation theology proponents were peddling. Then I met the actual Jesus and rejected the "only if you are a rigid, strong-willed Christian capable of Earthly perfection." bunk they were peddling. You can't tell me God will abandon 60 million plus innocent children as well. And they ARE innocent. And they are children. That settles it for me!

 

The idea that an unborn child is not a "soul" until he draws his first breath outside the mother's womb is messed up. God breathed into Adam and he became a living soul. He was a fully formed adult at the time. The idea that a "fetus" hasn't drawn breath and hasn't a soul, reveals a profound lack of knowledge of biology. When a baby is formed in the womb (knit together by God no less), he or she is ALREADY BREATHING. Its mother breathes and imparts oxygen and food to the child through the umbilical cord, an incredible design by God to see that the "clump of cells" gets oxygen and food. So, in essence, the child is breathing from the moment God begins to form it in the womb. 

 

God is merciful and he knows us from the moment of conception. Salvation is not a crap shoot where you win if the roll of the dice is in your favor. God is, as I said, not willing that any should die, but that all should be saved. Why do you think he waited until now, when there are more people alive than have lived and died throughout the whole history of the world, to finish the Gospel commission and come in the clouds? He waited for telecommunications, transportation, the Internet, rockets and satellites to allow the Gospel to reach every kindred tongue and people, that He might take home the absolute most numbers of people He can without their seeing death. God hates death. He longs for that moment, that twinkling of an eye when he changes us, gives us immortality and takes us home. There are, we are told, going to be more people on the Sea of Glass to celebrate God's triumph than we can number. God is not exclusive. He is inclusive. He wants every person in His kingdom who is safe to turn loose in the universe with both eternal life and free will (intact so that we may reflect His image). 

 

I find nothing in this that conflicts with the picture of a loving merciful God who would give His son to make sure we have the greatest chance of sharing eternity with Him. He's our Father and what Father is going to abandon more than 60 million babies aborted or miscarried? Are you prepared to tell a mom who miscarries that God doesn't care about her lost baby and won't give it back to her in heaven? Not this father! One of the founders of our church described little babies in heaven being restored to parents. I'm a parent and I will gladly take a whole flock of those babies.Sometimes I think that pernicious doctrine that infants lost cannot be saved comes from cranky old Christians that don't like the idea of being bothered by a lot of rambunctious infants and toddlers running around and walking on their grass. 

 

This I know. Jesus loves us, child, adult or old person, rich or poor, red, and yellow, black or white and carried every one of us in his heart when he went to the cross. I will not cheapen his sacrifice by telling people that Jesus won't accept anyone who doesn't say that canned phrase about "accepting Jesus" or isn't baptized with the correct words by the properly credentialed church official. God is love. PERIOD!!!! You cannot convince me otherwise. I know him too well!

 

So people with mental disabilities get the lake of fire too? Downs Syndrome? Autism? So, give me a list of people who will be excluded from heaven by God who gave his only begotten son, because they are mentally impaired or didn't manage to get born. I have no doubt that women who have lost babies prior to that age of "accountability" will get her babies back. My infant brother will be restored to my mother's arms. And I will get my football team of unwanted "clumps of cells".

 

The only thing I've found that shows the Old Testament God as particularly harsh penalty-wise, was his response to the pagan practice of sacrificing babies to Molech. The Israelites got up to that sort of thing on the ancient hilltop shrines and grove temples. God REALLY REALLY hated infanticide and I don't think he blamed the babies for it. I sure wouldn't want to be the people who did that stuff when I stand in the judgment.

 

That misconception of God as an angry god, comes from his harsh "fatherly" punishment of the Israelites and pagans for their evil practices. The Aztecs used to slaughter and butcher more than 26,000 captives annually. The Canaanites, Israelites among them, ran up similar annual numbers and you don't want to know what horrors were perpetrated in those pagan temples and groves. The Mexican pyramids have special channels to capture the blood runoff. Canaanite, Greek, Roman, Druidic and Egyptian temples were worse than today's serial killer lairs. They believed that the more the victims screamed, the better the harvest would be. The pagans murdered hundreds of thousands to make the crops grow - the victims' crime being that they were still virgins. 

 

Hey, if you slaughter tens of thousands of my children, I'm going to be pretty angry with you too and for good reason. I'd probably go medieval on you with an "automatic" weapon if you were murdering my babies. Nowadays, we only need protest the slaughter and we get treated like criminals for speaking out about it. 

 

I suspect God is pretty angry with us for the 60 million we've allowed to be slaughtered because Margaret Sanger and her ilk thought people of color were human weeds that needed to be plucked up from among us (her words spoken to a KKK women's group back in the 20s). I don't much blame God for allowing that batch of willful sinners back in ancient Israel to be punished. The interesting thing is that God didn't rain down fire indiscriminately on folks to stop it. He simply backed off and let evil people destroy other evil people as evil people are wont to do. Seems He is doing the same with us. We've already ginned ourselves up a nice plague to thin the numbers. What are we going to do next? A nice nuclear war with Russia? A newer more deadly strain of CoVid? We could have that soon. A university lab in Boston has already combined original Covid and the Omega variant and created a Covid strain with an 80% kill rate in rats. We're still sending money to research labs in China and they certainly don't like us. Even our progressives don't get a pass from them. 

 

God will shorten the time to Christ's coming else no flesh would be saved. The wages of sin is death. God doesn't have to hand you a paycheck. The devil auto-deposits it in your account. Forgive the length of this post, though. It's a subject that riles me up! Too many people have joined with Satan to harm the innocent and the faithful. Knowing God for more than 50 years, I believe God will make all things new and right and just - not the social justice being peddled by today's unchurched, but justice actual and true given us by our Father in Heaven.

© 2022 by Tom King

 

Forbearance and Unity

Ted Wilson Wrestles With the Unity Backlash from the Women's Ordination Vote

In the wake of the kerfuffle over the 2015 San Antonio General Conference and subsequent measures to "promote unity" by the General Conference administration, GC vice president Tom Lemon, chair of the Unity Oversight Committee, made remarks about the issue. Lemon spoke about the different entities he'd met with since the last Annual Council—in North America and elsewhere. In all these meetings, he said, he didn’t find "one person who gave any hint… [of] rebellion." The attitude was "we are children of God, and we are in this thing together…." "I heard an understanding of mission and commitment to mission that would warm your hearts." Lemon saw no evidence of the rebellion, which evidently GC president Ted Wilson fears. As a result, it appears that Lemon resigned as director of the church's Unity Committee apparently under duress, although any information as to why he resigned was not forthcoming. This sort of thing does not increase confidence in President Wilson out here in the hinterlands. His reelection to a third term in 2022 was unusual as GC presidents for generations have limited their terms to two, further creating concerns that the Wilson was setting up a dynasty in Silver Springs, especially those who remember how difficult it was to dislodge his father Neal Wilson. Messenger to Adventism, Ellen G White weighed in on the matter of controversial decisions being made at the GC in response to discontent in the field over the 1888 General Conference.

“In no conference should propositions be rushed through without time being taken by the brethren to weigh carefully all sides of the question. Because the president of a conference suggested certain plans, it has sometimes been considered unnecessary to consult the Lord about them. Thus propositions have been accepted that were not for the spiritual benefit of the believers and that involved far more than was apparent at the first casual consideration…. Many, very many matters have been taken up and carried by vote, that have involved far more than was anticipated and far more than those who voted would have been willing to assent to had they taken time to consider the question from all sides” ( EGW 9T, p. 278, italics supplied).

Unfortunately, what appears to be the defining issue of the present administration thus far has been the General Conference president’s failure to report the findings of the Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) to the 2015 General Conference Session after paying hundreds of thousands of dollars of tithe funds on the project that was to solve the issue once and for all. But the findings of the carefully selected committee were out of harmony with his ideas on the topic. A large majority of the Glacier View gathering of the best SDA theologians in the world had said that Scripture did not forbid the ordination of women. Wilson and those who supported him did not agree and Wilson did not allow the study report  to be presented at the San Antonio session before the divisive vote was taken. He failed to mention that a super majority (62 for and 32 opposed) of the TOSC and nearly all of the concurrent world division reports favored permitting divisions the option of ordaining women. One result has been ongoing turbulence in the denomination and the three-year search for the proper way to punish noncompliance. 

Ellen White noted that “the very beginning of the great apostasy was in seeking to supplement the authority of God with that of the church” (GC pp. 289-290).  We need to pray for our church, its General Conference president, and the members of the General Conference Executive Committee that they might think twice (or a dozen times) before voting into policy “laws” that will take all of us down a well-beaten historical road; a road that has always led Christianity to some very unchristian practices done in the name of Christ. Many incarnations of Christ's church have confused spiritual unity with ecclesiastical compliance. May God help His church!

Sister Ellen became troublesome to the GC following the 1888 General Conference and was invited to go to Australia for much of a decade. Mrs. White made the most of the "opportunity" and left the church administration to work out its issues with God's guidance. When she returned to America, she championed the creation of union conferences to decentralize church authority. She counseled that shifting decision-making authority further afield would make the work out in the field more effective and responsive to issues that sometimes occurred half a world away from Battle Creek, the GC headquarters at the time. The creation of union conferences helped loosen the authoritarian grip of the leadership. And once God burned down the press building in Battle Creek, the GC admin decided God was displeased. As a result the General Conference moved from what had become an Adventist quagmire to Silver Spring.

Recently, a new issue as flammable as the Righteousness by Faith controversy post 1888, has risen. Much heated rhetoric over women's ordination has been delivered from pulpits, discussed in the aisles of our churches after services, in church-sponsored conferences, over church potluck tables, and in magazines and publications approved, disapproved or tolerated by the General Conference. Prominent Adventist theologians have weighed in on both sides of the issue. Seemingly harsh actions that have been taken at the General Conference have troubled the saints in North America. Enforcement committees have been proposed by the GC Executive Committee that seem to have the power to disband whole unions or local conferences that do not hew to the theological positions of the General Conference executives. The GC position is that the matter was settled in San Antonio. Other SDA leaders have questioned the San Antonio actions as the product of a flawed and even manipulative process. Some folk charged with examining the issue, like Tom Lemon, have found themselves removed for not vigorously supporting decisions originating in Silver Springs.

We stand on the precipice of momentous events in Earth's history. Of course the devil is going to seek to divide us. We see it happening in the secular world as the political prophecies of Revelation are working themselves out on the nightly news. Is squabbling over issues of whether authority should reside in Silver Springs or in the congregations of the saints something inspired by God or by some force outside the church seeking to divide us when we should be working tirelessly side by side to reach the world. Should we be putting bureaucratic burdens upon the army of the Lord. Ought we instead to use every tool in our arsenal, every resource available to us to complete the Gospel commission? Certainly, establishing a veritable Adventist FBI to root out heresy as defined by church managers won't unite the church. A Unity Conference didn't do much to put the GCs fears to rest either.

Ellen White, during a similar upheaval in our history said, "The church may pass resolution upon resolution to put down all disagreement of opinions, but we cannot force the mind and the will, and thus root out disagreement. These resolutions may conceal the discord, but they cannot quench it and establish perfect agreement. Nothing can perfect unity in the church but the spirit of Christ-like forbearance” (EGW, Ms 24, 1892, italics supplied).

At a time, when we are currently the fastest growing denomination in the United States if not the world, it probably delights Satan to stir up division in our midst. Lucifer is a master at using authority to overturn our actual agreements among the brethren. Then he tries to convince us that we who run roughshod over our brethren are thereby more sanctified than those they suppress. My prayer is that we may resist the devil when it becomes evident that he is among us, that he may flee from us. In this way we may truly have Christian unity, not just submission to human authority. In God's church, it is He who is our Lord, who is our direct guide and savior.

© 2022 by Tom King

Last Generation Theology Debunked

My pastor, Bob Stephan, posted this article by Walla Walla Biblical Studies emeritus professor Alden Thompson.  It answers the premise of M.L. Andreasson's Last Generation Theology and the often misused Ellen White quote about the church achieving perfection before Christ comes. He draws quotes by Mrs. White which clearly explain that it is only by grace and not our own feeble efforts that we are made fit for heaven. Christ work was finished at the cross. We do not have to finish the work in our own strength. God knows we are so damaged by millenia of sin that only His sacrifice and His power and forgiveness can save us. For more in depth information on this subject, check out George R. Knight's powerful book."End Time Events & The Last Generation." 

 

 

Ellen White’s Vision of a Flawed Final Generation 

By Alden Thompson, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Walla Walla University. 

Recently I came across some astonishing “last generation” comments from Ellen White in the chapter “Joshua and the Angel” in Prophets and Kings (582-592). As I pondered the chapter, I was startled but encouraged at how clearly Ellen White presents the case for a sinful people standing before God in the last days, but safe under the atoning blood of Jesus. 

I outline some of the key points below. (The italicization in the quotations are added by me.) 

Final perfect generation? 

First, I suspect the idea of a “final [perfect] generation” (aka Last Generation Theology) never would have caught on if some conscientious soul had not isolated a quote from Christ’s Object Lessons from the rest of Ellen White’s writings: 

When the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.” Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church. When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own.  – Christ’s Object Lessons, 69. 

I have concluded that Ellen White must have viewed this quotation in a corporate rather than an individualistic sense. In other words, Christ is wanting his church, the corporate “body of Christ,” to perfectly reflect his character, doing what Christ did to minister to the “least” of God’s children (cf. Matt. 25:40). Interpreting it in an individualistic sense with salvation overtones not only places an impossible burden on sensitive souls, but also overlooks key elements in Ellen White’s interpretation, both in Christ’s Object Lessons and Prophets and Kings.  

The rest of the story 

But now let me introduce you to a remarkable statement that I came across years ago. (This was when I was preparing the material for the Sinai-Golgotha series which was published in the Adventist Review (1981-82).) The chapter from Prophets and Kings entitled “Joshua and the Angel” is based on Zechariah 3:1-5, which depicts the attacks of Satan against Joshua the high priest. Let me first share the entire passage from Zechariah: 

Then he showed me the high priest Joshua standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this man a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was dressed with filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.” And to him he said, “See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel.” And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with the apparel; and the angel of the Lord was standing by (NRSV). 

In the narrative interpreting this passage, Ellen White makes this striking comment: 

But while the followers of Christ have sinned, they have not given themselves up to be controlled by the satanic agencies. They have repented of their sins and have sought the Lord in humility and contrition, and the divine Advocate pleads in their behalf. He who has been most abused by their ingratitude, who knows their sin and also their penitence, declares: “The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan. I gave My life for these souls. They are graven upon the palms of My hands. They may have imperfections of character; they may have failed in their endeavors; but they have repented, and I have forgiven and accepted them.” – Prophets and Kings 589. 

But this is the astonishing sentence in her interpretation of Zechariah 3: 

Zechariah’s vision of Joshua and the Angel applies with peculiar force to the experience of God’s people in the closing scenes of the great day of atonement (Prophets and Kings 587).  

In other words, this is a vision of a flawed people is a vision of the “last generation”!  

The final (flawed) generation 

And we must ask the question: What kind of people are these who find themselves standing before God (and Satan!) in the great day of atonement? 

Here are several excerpts from Prophets and Kings that indicate quite clearly that these are not people who stand in sinless perfection before God. No! Joshua was “clothed with filthy clothes” (Zech. 3:1). So were his people: 

• “He does not claim that Israel is free from fault. In filthy garments, symbolizing the sins of the people, which he bears as their representative, he stands before the Angel, confessing their guilt, yet pointing to their repentance and humiliation, and relying upon the mercy of a sin-pardoning Redeemer” (Prophets and Kings 583-584). 
• “Because of their sins, they had been well-nigh consumed by Satan and his agents for their destruction” (p.584). 
• “Satan’s accusations against those who seek the Lord are not prompted by displeasure at their sins. He exults in their defective characters. . . .” (p.585). 
• “In his own strength, man cannot meet the charges of the enemy. In sin-stained garments, confessing his guilt, he stands before God” (p.586).  
• “As Joshua pleaded before the Angel, so the remnant church, with brokenness of heart and unfaltering faith, will plead for pardon and deliverance through Jesus, their Advocate. They are fully conscious of the sinfulness of their lives, they see their weakness and unworthiness; and they are ready to despair” (p.588). 
• “The tempter stands by to accuse them, as he stood by to resist Joshua. He points to their filthy garments, their defective characters. He presents their weakness and folly, their sins of ingratitude, their unlikeness to Christ, which has dishonored their Redeemer. He endeavors to affright them with the thought that their case is hopeless, that the stain of their defilement will never be washed away. He hopes so to destroy their faith that they will yield to his temptations, and turn from their allegiance to God” (p.588). 
• “But while the followers of Christ have sinned, they have not given themselves up to be controlled by the satanic agencies. They have repented of their sins and have sought the Lord in humility and contrition, and the divine Advocate pleads in their behalf. He who has been most abused by their ingratitude, who knows their sin and also their penitence, declares: ‘The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan. I gave My life for these souls. They are graven upon the palms of My hands. They may have imperfections of character; they may have failed in their endeavors; but they have repented, and I have forgiven and accepted them’” (p.589). 

Imperfection 

That last quotation stands out like a beacon light, for Christ himself declares to the court that his people “may have imperfections of character.” God’s people can stand confidently in court, not because of their sinless perfection, but because their lives are hid in Christ. 

When we compare the material from Christ’s Object Lessons with the material from Prophets and Kings, logically we must give the Christ’s Object Lessons passage a corporate interpretation, for Joshua and his cohorts as individuals have “imperfections of character.”  

These imperfect saints take refuge in their “clean” clothes, which are symbolic of their total trust in the grace of Christ. 

Therefore, we can conclude that if there is a “final generation,” it is a generation that trusts solely in the grace of Christ.  

And all the discouraged Adventists shouted “Amen!” 

Fallen Warriors: Cosmos Garza

Cosmos Garza

 Just 12 days ago, I lost my friend, Carlos "Cosmos" Garza to CoVid-19. We went to school together at Valley Grande Academy my senior year (1972).  Cosmos was a unique individual. He tried to grow a mustache like mine, but the poor boy had to settle for that sparse growth that actually became popular more than 30 years later. He was always up for some harmless goof or other.

When I came up with the idea for a Men's Liberation March during our annual spring picnic in the orange grove, Cosmos helped me make the signs. My other buddy, Dave Dameron whom we lost to CoVid last August helped me burn a pair of Fruit of the Looms on a pole. We had some very bossy girls that ran the place and the guys in the dorm were just about fed up with it. Cosmos, to his credit, instantly saw the value in the protest march as a way to harmlessly valve off some steam and was an enthusiastic participant. 

In college, Cosmos took up a new cause of the same sort. Several heretical Adventist groups, most notably the Branch Davidians (formerly known as the Shepherd's Rods). They would show up for camp meetings, evangelistic meetings or anytime a bunch of Adventists gathered at the school. Cosmos made it his mission to collect every piece of literature he could lay hands on when the came up to proselytize for whatever goofy new doctrine they were peddling. He had a box in his dorm room that he called his "heretical literature library". It grew to quite a collection.

My last communication with Cosmos was about his escapades as an anti-offshoot guerrilla. I can still remember him and some friends including me hitting the Davidians at the doors and engaging them in deep theological discussions and distracting them from passing what they laughably called "literature". Cosmos could hold the best of them in thrall long enough for the congregation to get to their cars and drive away unmolested. It was brilliant strategy and the Davidians were suckers for it.

Here is the last post I ever got from Cosmos:

You know I just reread your last message (from Aug 9) about the Branch Davidians .. Well the main guy that was always there, was Perry Jones with his 5 or six (or 7) very young blond-haired kids. I'd spend time talking to them to find out what they actually taught (& read their literature later on). 

Well one of Perry's daughters (Rachel, as a very young teen) ended up marrying Vernon Howell (David Koresh). Perry was the frontman and public relations man for the Branch Davidians. Well, Janet Reno had the ATF & FBI attack the New Mount Carmel Center. When they got a cease fire, Perry Jones came to the front door and was shot by federal agents. He refused to be taken in & taken to hospital. He died a few days later .. the 1st Branch Davidian member to be killed. 

Years, years later (maybe 2002), returning from some Conference meeting, my son & I drove to the center, stopped & walked all over the place. NO BODY was there at the time we went. My son picked up a VHS tape from their chapel that had written "PRIVATE - FOR ELDERS ONLY" on it. (It was a Fritz Springmeier tape on the 13 Bloodlines of the Illuminati and also one about the TRANCE-Formation of America with Cathy O'Brien [a rescued whistleblower survivor of the CIA's secret mind control program "MK-Ultra"]. (The tape) "traces her path from child pornography and recruitment into the program to serving as a top-level intelligence agent and White House sex slave." https://trance-formation.com]. 

PS. When in Waco, we stopped at a convenience store & my son Jon started talking to these 2 Sheriff's Deputies. He asked them if they had known David Koresh. They said "Oh sure! We all knew him. He was in town every week and we'd talk with him when we'd see him." Jon asked "Did you ever have to go to the compound?" They said, "Oh sure!" Jon: "Were there problems?" "Not really. Sometimes we'd get calls about the gun shooting, but since they're in the country, they have a right to shoot." Jon: "So if he was in town often, didn't the ATF or FBI try to get him then?" They smirked and looked at each other and said, "Look, they had Koresh under surveillance. Koresh was in town the day before it all broke out. They could have apprehended him then." Jon: "So do you think they really wanted it to be the big show that happened?" They looked at us with a face of "Well yeah!' but answered, "We can't really say what they wanted."

People somehow would talk to Cosmos and tell him all kinds of secrets. Even with all that, Pastor Garza was a well-grounded guy and someone you could count on. Some of our stuffier SDA "leaders" had some difficulty understanding Carlos, but there is no doubt in my mind that he was a thoroughly decent and likeable guy. Of the guys in the VGA dorm, Cosmos was the closest to a kindred spirit I knew and I had some really good friends.

So far my Academy senior class has lost 6 members dead and one is confined to a nursing home. Several are missing and we can't find them. We're planning a Zoom meeting to celebrate 50 years since graduation this coming May. Jesus is clearly loading up the bus to come and get us very soon. Some of our best and brightest, He's given them a skip day and they will next wake to see Christ in the heavens. For the rest of us, the next years could be rough, but I keep ever in my mind the idea that folks like Cosmos, Dave, my friend Hansi, my grandpa, my brother, and my own son whom we lost in 2006 will be waiting up ahead for us to catch up.

Sometimes, I think Jesus is giving the best of us a pass; taking it easy on them because they don't need the tribulation to finish polishing them up. They're already pretty shiny and they've gone on ahead of us. I look forward to catching up with them.

Just sayin'.

Tom King
© 2022

The Art of Christian Storytelling

 

The Master Storyteller

It is no accident that Jesus so often taught by telling stories. Parables are a powerful tool in witnessing to others. I'm pretty much a shut-in right now, so I watch a lot of live-streamed church services on Sabbath mornings. A majority of these stories are told by women. Many of them by older retired teachers and others comfortable with being up front. My church in Tyler, Texas has been bringing young men as well as women up front to do children's stories. Men are stepping up even more often. One of my favorite of our gang of storytellers was my son, Micah. Six foot four, close to 300 pounds, he knew how to tell a story and the kids loved him. 

Too often our churches do not train and nurture storytellers. Often it's whoever they can make guilty enough not to turn down an invitation to tell stories up front. Many churches even have a rocker up on stage in deference to our older storytellers so they couldn't plead physical disability to get out of telling the children's story. You have to hand it to those volunteers who give of themselves to our youngest members, but children's story is potentially one of the most powerful parts of the church service, and if you don't attend to it by building up the skills of your storytellers, you miss that blessing.

I'd like to offer them some help to better engage that wriggling mass of children who's attention they try to hold.  So, I'm planning to write a free e-book for people who tell the children's story in church. Greater storytellers than I have preceded me. There's a wonderful out-of-print book by Charles Spalding and Eric B. Hare called Christian Storytelling. It has a Kindle e-book version available on Amazon .In my book I want to deal specifically with how to do the children's story at church before the sermon. This sort of story has become a standard in many many churches, and it's a wonderful witnessing tool.

Thanks to Youtube and Facebook live streaming, many many churches put services online for members who are away on are homebound, disabled or simply drifted away from the church. My wife and I attend our old church back in Texas, because even though we are 3000 miles away, we get a glimpse of our grandson when he gets up front for the children's story. Our hearts are bound to that church in large part because of that brief story and the children sitting in a circle there at the front of the church. 

The principles taught by Spalding and Hare are essential, but there are some things you can do specific to upfront storytelling in church as opposed to campfires and sabbath/Sunday schools. One of the most valuable was Eric B. Hare's advice to tell your story to the youngest members of the group of children. A story for 4 year olds will hold the attention of the 10 year-olds, while a story for the teens will quickly lose the preschool kids. So often we see storytellers talking over the heads of the little ones as they squirm and poke each other. If you've ever heard the old records Eric B. Hare made of his stories, you see a master at work.  I've memorized his stories and made them my own and held the rapt attention of a gang of 2 to 12 year olds to the end of the story. The art of storytelling CAN be taught.

If you are reading this and you have some sage advice to impart to younger storytellers; if you have any stories or things that worked for you as a storyteller, I would love for you to message me and tell me all about it. I thoroughly believe that children are the future of the church and the weekly worship service children's story is the first step toward engaging our young people as participants in worship and outreach. I have witnessed a church transformed by determined effort by parents and grandparents to bring their children forward and up front. 

 

One of the best pastors I ever had was Ron Halvorsen. Ron filled the church week after week and even had 1200 people coming to prayer meetings on Wednesday. He got his hands on a fleet of yellow school buses and went out into the community and rural areas picking up children and old people to come to church. I went along on the buses and played guitar and we rolled out over the county singing at the top of our lungs, five year-olds to 95 year-olds.Storytelling was his secret though. Not only was Ron a gifted storyteller, he knew how to impart that skill to others.

We taught the teens in the church how to tell stories using great storytelling principles and filled up youth meetings and children's services and taught a generation how to witness through storytelling. Turns out the kids were gifted, creative and innovative and the church annex overflowed with kids every Wednesday night.

So if you have a contribution to make to the art and science of Christian storytelling, please drop me a note on Facebook Messenger or email me at twayneking@gmail.com. Meanwhile, if you are telling stories already, click on the link to the Spalding & Hare book "Christian Storytelling." It will transform your storytelling style.

© 2022 by Tom King

 

 

 

Confusion is His Game

Recently, we've all been bombarded by lies.  If it isn't the news media, it's our breathless brothers and sisters with the latest conspiracy theory. If it's not the Illuminati, it's the Bilderberg conspiracy, the Rothchild's, the Rockerfellers, the Merovingians or the Jewish bankers. People you thought were wise counselors seem to be led off down paths that all have one thing in common. They are paths that stray from the light and delve into dark places. Jesus is not the subject of these elaborate stories, though He may be mentioned as justification for such flights of fancy, but Christ is not the center of the story.

We need to be so careful here at the end, for Satan has had millennia to work out his schemes and he deludes himself that they are almost come to fruition. Over and over he's tried to make things work on this Earth the way he argued way back in the beginning that things ought to go. You don't have to go very far in Earth's history to see a pattern in which layers or hierarchies of authority between the people (aka, the masses, the proletariat, the collective) and some central Earthly authority. This is rather different from the single layer from human to God governance that Christianity teaches. Sadly, power attracts the corruptible and again and again, humans layer the church government with ever more and more elaborate hierarchies inserted between the Lord and his children.

All around us we see the signs that Christ's coming is imminent. But we are warned that "The devil our adversary walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."*  If we wish to survive the time of trouble ahead of us, we must be wary of the deceptions laid before us like so many land mines. 

Lucifer has been a liar from the moment he arrived on Earth. His first lie was, "You shall not surely die." That wasn't what God said, of course. But Satan deceives by flattery. He told Eve she could be like a god. He tells you that you are smarter and better than all the stupid schlubs around you. He tells you that you understand things no one else does, especially all those ordinary folk that are so much less "aware" than you are. Lucifer is a brilliant deceiver. 

Jesus says the truth shall set you free. It's a very good idea to go to the source of Truth and keep yourself regularly infused. When you are wandering about the world, beware. Before you latch onto some conspiracy theory, especially if it feeds your ego, remember, as the old spiritual puts it, "Satan is an evil charmer. Shut the door, keep out the devil."

Paul is even more direct with regard to spending time looking into dark places. "...it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says, 'Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.'”**

Seek the truth. If some conspiracy theory attracts your attention be very careful. Do not rush to attribute the events on the nightly news to some brilliant human plot to control the world. We have been told who is plotting against us. Much of what seems to be some diabolical plot, is simply the shared interests and the similar lusts for power of wicked people. It is also the stupidity of those steeped in vanity, sin and selfishness that creates what seems like a dangerous plot to harm us.

Angels stand behind us to lead us safely through the valleys of the shadow of death. We need fear no evil. For He is with us. His angels surround us. We need what is available to us in His Word and no other secret "truths". For in conspiracy theories, there be dragons.

© 2021 by Tom King

*   1 Peter 5:8
** Ephesians 5: 12-14