Comments or thoughts?
Comments or thoughts?
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Watching it right now, thanks Dale. I've read some of Ray's stuff, I might not agree with his theology, but I can't discount his passion. Thanks for posting this.
-Jim
To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through.
Garrison Keillor
Wow! Thanks Dale, what an incredibly powerful and moving piece.
I had read a couple of Ray's books and I must admit that his advocacy for in your face evangelism just didn't sound like the best way from my perspective. This piece really shows how how a strong presentation of reality will make some folks think.
I can't shake what the blonde girl said about Hitler. That one person couldn't make a difference, many would need to rise up. Ray's comparison with Hitler and the holocaust is dead on.
-Jim
To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through.
Garrison KeillorPost Thanks / Like - 2 Thanks, 0 Laughing
Yes, thanks Dale it certainly was powerful and diquieting too that young people have forgotten this evil monster so soon!
I only got to see the video presentation a short way through (Sorry I have a lot more things to do today)......
but one thing I was concerned about was the question: "If you had Adolf Hitler in your sights, or his pregnat mother prior to his birth, would you proceed to kill him or her?"
I really wonder if we accomplish anything by trying to stop evil with another evil?
St. Paul wrote in Romans 12: 21: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good!" Paul no doubt had in mind our Lord's discourse in the Sermon on the Mount where the Lord spoke against violence but rather advocated "turning the other cheek".
If I had a time machine, I might be tempted to do a lot of different things.
Perhaps I might try and prevent the first world war from occurring? But where do you start there..... in Germany, France, Serbia?
But then I might have tried to go back to when Hitler was not yet established and to persuade the British and French leaders of the extreme danger which Hitler would become to the whole world and ask for decisive and early intervention to stop him? But would that only defer the rise of that type of evil, and have it rise elsewhere in say: the USSR, or amongst the Fascists in France or of perhaps a greater nightmare scenario for the world among a growing Fascist movement in the British Empire where the Royal Navy already ruled the seas.
How would you stop it when behind it all there is always an insideous evil force always working behind the scenes in every human heart that opposes righteousness, peace and joy?
Yet, we need to be reiminded of the danger which political fanatics can become to the whole world..... hence the message of the video..... LEST WE FORGET!
Post Thanks / Like - 1 Thanks, 0 LaughingBob Hunter - "thanks" for this post
I am very fond of Lark news, and I don't particularly like Kirk Cameron.Originally Posted by Todd Erickson
Just watched it . Thank for Sharing Dale. I had heard others equivocate likening the Holocaust to abortion, But Ray here quite clearly and passionately makes a solid case for the same and it appears opinions are changed. Had this had led off as blatantly anti Abortion clip i would have never have watched it. Good use of leading with showing an appalling ignorance of Hitler on hand and then engaging in dialogue equating Hitlers Holocaust with abortion. It looks like Ray has only a few more years left to use this logic as more and more of society don't know who Hitler is or what the Holocaust was.
"And as we pass the collection plate, please give as if the person next to you was watching."
-Rev. LovejoyPost Thanks / Like - 2 Thanks, 0 Laughing
I am not sure why you chose to share this news story about someone else unless you condemn this video as bad because of guilt by association.
If so then we are all guilty by association...to something or someone.
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Methodology. If we have to go to a group and convince them that our methodology has meaning before we can use it to convey a message, we may need to question whether the methodology has real merit, rather than taking it as a sign that the world is rejecting us.
And most of Comfort's stuff deals with confronting kids who don't know better.
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Not being a expert on Comfort's stuff. In fact I haven't ever seen his stuff before this 180, I just threw it out there to see what people think of it. It in some ways reminds me of EE from decades ago in the sales closing and Socratic methodology he uses. I use Socratic method in Sunday school from time to time but haven't ever seen anyone use it effectively on the street before. Mindful of the fact that in any approach to a group of strangers one will have various results, no one size fits all approach exists. But if you plant seed and some falls on good soil...you get a harvest. The prevailing thought today is "don't waste seed on the path, the rocks or the thornpatch" and as a result no one plants seeds much these days. How many times have we thought...pearls before swine? Yet I am always amazed of the changes I have seen in hardened criminals when the gospel of love, forgiveness and hope is presented through our actions and with the prayers we offered before and the anticipation we feel as we trust that God is in fact going to use us to meet someone where they are and help them.
I can't follow what you're saying here. If this gets those "kids who don't know better" to think twice about what they've always accepted, it's a good thing. Those "kids who don't know better" were lost before being confronted by this man with the mic (I don't know anything about Comfort).
Comfort's "way of the master" series essentially goes up to people on the street and says "have you ever lied" etc. If they have, then they've violated the ten commandments and are bound for hell. Do they want to go to hell? No? Well, Jesus can save them...
It's selling people a problem, and then a solution for a problem. It's not precisely the Gospel, and both Cameron and Comfort have known for their willingness to be known for their righteous judgement of others. I just have problem with the overall method. I don't think that being saved to guilt is really salvation from anything.
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Agreed, and it makes me a little uncomfortable as well. Then again most everyone else's method is going to make us uncomfortable just because it isn't our own method. I can remember bringing a friend to an Easter production at a church in Maine that I had only been to a couple of times. At the end of the production, the pastor gave a pretty lengthy altar call where he was bearing down pretty hard. I remember praying for my friend and asking God to perhaps rein in this fellow a bit. Back came a pretty strong sense that I should let this fellow do what God was calling him to do and mind my own business. On the ride back to the house, my friend remarked that the pastors call had a great effect on him, he had been thinking on the things of God for a while now, this pastor had pushed him over the edge and it was time to get serious. My friend has been a Christian for a little over five years now, and I'm a little more trusting of methods that are different from what I would use.
I'm also thinking that this video reveals to some extent that we are living in a post Christian world. Young folks haven't been exposed to the gospel as in days gone by, our influence is pretty sparse in comparison to 40-50 years ago. Our laid back approach is clearly not working very well, one thing I've noticed over the years when I've spent time with folks who were evangelized on the mission field is that they are forthright and just plain blunt when they share the gospel. I'm willing to give Comfort space to work in the way he feels called.
-Jim
To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through.
Garrison KeillorPost Thanks / Like - 2 Thanks, 0 Laughing
All I know is that what saved me wasn't preaching like that, and that all of the people I know who are anything like me flee this sort of Gospel preaching, which is why I tend to err on the side of wooing and praying rather than beating.
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Same here Todd, and I tend to err in ways similar to yours. My witness tends to be wooing and hopefully contagious excitement.
Yet there is more that what would or has captured us.
-Jim
To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through.
Garrison Keillor
Could you share your testimony with me and what method persuaded you to accept Christ as savior and repent of your sins. I would likie to know and it might also help others to know how you were born again.
My experience was more along the line of an evangelist's altar call method preceded by years of church attendence as a kid with my family and a time of youthful rejection of the gospel.
I've been in the church pretty much all of my life.
My dad always used to read bible stories to me at bed time and sing a song with me. When he asked me if I wanted to accept the Lord into my heart when I was 6, there wasn't really any question about it, it was all a "when". Even though, in order to get baptised, I had to answer the question "Do you really believe that if you died tonight, you would be in heaven"?l
As I grew older, I began to ask more and more questions about things that didn't seem to fit or work about how we did church verses how people acted, how church seemed to be full of people wearing masks and gossiping and doing their best to get away with stuff while putting on a good face. I also, as I got older, got more and more depressed, intellectual, and introverted.
I went through two years of Baptist college in a corn field, and two years at a reformed college in Grand Rapids. The Baptist college occasioned a lot me throwing myself at concrete wall and screaming "why?" to God with no particular response.
For the next 5 years or so, I went to church because, as a christian, I went to church. I didn't belong there, I didn't get along with or connect to people there, I mostly couldn't have reasonable or meaningful conversations with them, but I was supposed to go. Prayer was fleeting and rote and empty. I eventually moved away from home at least partially to find a church for myself, and go there because I chose to go. I lived in constant frustration.
I met my wife on the internet, and through a series of circumstances, found ourselves in a place where we needed a place to live but didn't have one, and the Lord said "move back to AR". So I did.
I have seen God take all sorts of strange, bundled, disparate bits in the last decade and make wonderful things out of them, like my sterility leading to my adopted children, my marriage leading to internal discipleship, my current church leading to exposure to a bunch of authors...
I have begged God to kill me at times, but he hasn't yet, so one has to assume he has a reason for me. I've lived my life surrounded by people have been harmed and scourged by the church, and I have also been harmed and scourged by the church, to the point where I have little trust left for them, though I'm no longer entirely bitter.
I do not have hope, or joy, or peace. I definitely don't have surety. I've grown so wary of manipulation and sales techniquest that the only thing I know how to do anymore is pray when it comes to mind. I suspect God is listening, though I have no idea what He does with it.
It's not much of a testimony. *shrug*
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Sounds like you perhaps went to Calvin here, Todd.
You mention authors ... does that mean you tend towards such creative endeavors, too?
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
~ Stella Adler ~
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It takes a great deal of maturity to accept that trying to eliminate all risk eliminates life.
~ Susan Lapin ~
Thank you Todd for your candor and transperancy. I know it couldn't have been easy to open yourself up like this. Again, thank you.
You can be right or you can be in relationship
Why do we forget and over look the oppression and sanctioned killing of the Russians before and during and after Hitler's rule? Hitler was not the only one who was doing this.
"Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek."Post Thanks / Like - 2 Thanks, 0 Laughing
Heh. Absolutely. I think I've posted poetry here before.
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