Linda > Recent Status Updates

“Syria’s sponsorship of Palestinian guerrilla attacks became so pronounced that American officials abandoned their long-standing opposition to Israeli retaliations. ‘An attack from a state is an attack by a state.’”

Syria’s personal reason to escalate tension with Israel: internal division. “Often the gray boredom of radically socialist Damascus was broken by explosions and the crackle of gunfire... Ranking officers and even government ministers were routinely arrested, and death sentences handed down for a range of political crimes, from ‘spreading confessional bigotry’ to ‘hindering the socialist order’.”

“I learned much about cult methodology on the mission fields…the cults generally are happy to remain virtually anonymous until they have established a bridgehead. This is important in an area where a work has already begun or has been functioning for many years.”

“The persons deceived into believing false teachers…come from a wide cross-section of the Christian community. Sometimes followers…band together to form a tight-knit group that is based primarily on the prophetic scenarios…put forth by their leader. When the leader additionally incorporates heretical doctrine and enforces allegiance to heresy by his followers, an apocalyptic cult comes into being.”

“Scientologists announced the L. Ron Hubbard decisively ‘discarded the body’ to move on to the next level of research, outside his body. How this new research would become available to planet earth is left unsaid.”

Love this summary of repackaged occultism. “The only substantive difference between Hinduism and the New Age movement is that Hinduism is world denying while the New Age movement is world affirming. No ‘yuppie’ is going to adopt the Hindu tradition of abandoning all worldly possessions to go meditate under a cliff, gonna mountain, or in a cave.”

“Some murmur when trials befall them, and find in them only limitation, restriction, and death; others praise God in the trials, and find in them the pathway to enlargement, liberation and abundance of life.”

I love the Bring Back Reality bit. “‘Mt dear brothers!…all your knowledge of these nice Scriptural details would avail you nothing if, when the need arose, you did not know how to cast out demons!’ Today we have become too civilized, and as a result, we often close the door to God.” Agreed.

“The spiritualizing away of divine things is the desperate expedient of people who do not possess the reality. Many dear folk amass spiritual and prophetic truth only, I fear, to build for themselves with it an unreal world.”

Great insight on the double emphasis on the law given by Moses, and Grace and truth from Jesus. “Truth will always make demands, and Grace will always be there to meet them.”

All who call on the Name “are to depart from unrighteousness…When we see spiritual breakdown around us, we are to look to ourselves.”

As citizens of a foreign power, delivered from the usurper (Prince of Darkness), we are neither subject to that usurper any longer nor do we power any allegiance. Agreed.

“So on the night when Peter lay in prison, the church throughout Jerusalem got to its knees and prayed earnestly, and all Herod’s authority was as nothing before the response of heaven to that prayer. Another Kingdom had invaded his territory”. Couldn’t agree more, but this conflicts with the assertion that “man has been given power to make way for, or to obstruct, the power of God.” Hah.

“So for the building up of His Church, God emphasizes the ministry of the Word above the ministry of works. The Church is not to trust in miracles, for they may only lead to outward things. Israel in the desert constantly touched God’s works, but missed His life. So did the multitudes in the Gospels…”

“Many think that if nothing goes visibly wrong in the Church, then all is well. But to be thus unable to discern what is life and what is death is a fatal lack. We shall not know when we are being attacked.”

“Gifts are not to be dispensed with ….but to set the greatest store by them is still to ‘think as a child’ in spiritual things….To-day, many minister by gifts; comparatively few by life….Their display establishes faith, but with an increasing measure of spiritual life in the church, the need to depend on them becomes less, and so does the danger of pride that accompanies them.”

“Many, sad to say, pray prayers which have neither consciousness of sin nor love to God in them. One can only describe them as angels’ prayers, for they bear none of the marks of the prayers of God’s children.”

“To create an earthly thing is easy for us. If we are content with an outward, technical Christianity-a ‘movement’ based on an earthly foundation, with an earthly structure and organization-then it is quite possible to do the thing ourselves. But we have been apprehended for something utterly different from this.”

“May God have mercy on the clever people, who give with one hand what they take with the other!” Amen.

“No, as the fire will one day prove, work that is dependent on feelings or on the wind of revival is of little use to God. When God commands, feelings or no feelings, we must learn to do. Such values are costly…Only a high price buys costly stones. Many a time we shall want to cry out, ‘This is costing too much!’l

“What then is the Church? It is the structure of living stones founded upon a rock. And what is that rock? Here it is that we need to be very clear. It is a confession based upon a revelation of a Person.”

“God is not satisfied with single, separate Christians. When we believed on the Lord and partook of Him we became members of His body.”

Incorporates a quote from another book that really resonated, about the purpose of the Christian life. “Some people do not seem to have any earthen vessel; they are disembodied spirits, not human beings-or at least that is what they try to be! But to hold onto the ploughing whilst wiping our tears-this is Christianity, it is the transcending of the earthen vessel by the treasure within.”

The weirdness of the denial of evil (I.e. the only reality is that the unreality of sin, sickness, and death seem real) is heightened by Eddy’s replacement explanation of Malicious Animal Magnetism.

Interesting, the contrast of absolute idealism (denial of existence of matter) versus the inevitable “calculating materialist…thoroughly enjoy(ing) all the material comforts derived from denying their existence.”

My favorite parts about Christian Science thus far: (1) “there’s no warrant in common law and no permission in the gospel” for plagiarism, except when you’re recasting ideas from the sainted Dr Quimby, and (2) the death of third husband Asa from “arsenic poisoning mentally administered”. No surprise the autopsy expert/Dean of Bellevue Medical College had no real credentials.

Like the explanation of Mormonism as a masquerade of Christian principles “complete with an exclusive message, infallible prophets, and higher revelations” leading to a “polytheistic nightmare of garbled doctrines”. This “spiritual maze” has drawn away many intro a great deal of pain and trauma.

After using Scripture to combat the Mormon position on universal salvation, ‘free grace’ ending in earned perseverance of the saints, the triple-layered heaven, and celestial marriage…Kimball’s puzzlement over “how anyone could question our being Christians” rings hollow.

Making decisions cutting against convention - are they all good because they’re unexpected? “It was refreshing to hear a case for unpredictability in this age of careful career planning. It would be nice if it were true.”

“But how can you speak of loyalty to the firm when the firm is an amalgam of small and large deceptions and riven with strife and discontent? You can’t. And why even try? But now it was abundantly clear that the money game rewarded disloyalty. The people who hopped from firm to firm and, in the process, secured large pay guarantees did much better financially than people who stayed in one place.”