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Jon Touchstone

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About Jon Touchstone

  • Birthday 11/21/1961

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  1. Hi, WordWolf. I honestly wasn't following everything of what you were going on about, but I did find something you said mildly amusing -- that is, that you quoted someone else -- i.e., "A witty saying proves nothing."-Voltaire -- to make the point that I shouldn't quote someone else. That's good stuff there. ;) As for your's and Steve's question about Momentus, you'll need to ask someone else. I haven't got the slightest idea of what that's about. Take care.
  2. Yes, you are absolutely correct. It is a 200-year-old paper. Irrelevant? Ummm, not so much, but I understand why you dismiss it as such. Ralph, you once were one of the finest and brightest. As I noted to you in our previous exchange, I was a fan. What happened to you? Is this how you're following "the Boss" these days? Is this what you, walking out the Lord's business 30 years later, look like? When he tells you to make your calling and election sure, is this what you do - hang out in chat rooms, bullying and insulting people? Have you forgotten, or does it even matter to you any longer, that the Lord hates bullies? When the Lord tells you to walk as he did, with lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, I'm curious - what courses through your grey matter? Do these verses get a chance to bump around in your soul a little, or do you just summarily dismiss them as irrelevant so you can get back to railing on your brethren? Is venom and derision all you have left? As for my qualifications, I suppose you're right. I have no theological qualifications ... outside of the holy spirit the Lord gave me and the Bible in my hand. It certainly is very humbling. The wonderful news, however, is that I'm among very good company, since these were precisely the qualifications of most of those biblical characters we know and love. I'm sure glad that the Paul didn't hold Peter to the same standards of authenticity that you seem to want to hold me to, brother. The funny thing is, I was under the impression that a person's true credentials come from Jesus, since the Bible teaches that "... it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends." As I recall, you used to teach this very thing, once upon a time. Do you now disagree with this, Ralph? If so, why?
  3. Yes, you have the sermon correct, Rocky, but I think you missed Channing's point. Please see below: "I need not express to you our views on the subject of the benevolent virtues. We attach such importance to these that we are sometimes reproached with exalting them above piety. We regard the spirit of love, charity, meekness, forgiveness, liberality, and beneficence, as the badge and distinction of Christians, as the brightest image we can bear of God, as the best proof of piety. On this subject, I need not, and cannot enlarge; but there is one branch of benevolence which I ought not to pass over in silence, because we think that we conceive of it more highly and justly than many of our brethren. I refer to the duty of candid, charitable judgment, especially towards those who differ in religious opinion. We think, that in nothing have Christians so widely departed from their religion, as in this particular. We read with astonishment and horror, the history of the church; and sometimes when we look back on the fires of persecution, and on the zeal of Christians, in building up walls of separation, and in giving up one another to perdition, we feel as if we were reading the records of an infernal, rather than a heavenly kingdom. An enemy to every religion, if asked to describe a Christian, would, with some show of reason, depict him as an idolater of his own distinguishing opinions, covered with badges of party, shutting his eyes on the virtues, and his ears on the arguments, of his opponents, arrogating all excellence to his own sect and all saving power to his own creed, sheltering under the name of pious zeal the love of domination, the conceit of infallibility, and the spirit of intolerance, and trampling on men's rights under the pretense of saving their souls. We can hardly conceive of a plainer obligation on beings of our frail and fallible nature, who are instructed in the duty of candid judgment, than to abstain from condemning men of apparent conscientiousness and sincerity, who are chargeable with no crime but that of differing from us in the interpretation of the Scriptures, and differing, too, on topics of great and acknowledged obscurity. We are astonished at the hardihood of those, who, with Christ's warnings sounding in their ears, take on them the responsibility of making creeds for his church, and cast out professors of virtuous lives for imagined errors, for the guilt of thinking for themselves. We know that zeal for truth is the cover for this usurpation of Christ's prerogative; but we think that zeal for truth, as it is called, is very suspicious, except in men, whose capacities and advantages, whose patient deliberation, and whose improvements in humility, mildness, and candor, give them a right to hope that their views are more just than those of their neighbours. Much of what passes for a zeal for truth, we look upon with little respect, for it often appears to thrive most luxuriantly where other virtues shoot up thinly and feebly; and we have no gratitude for those reformers, who would force upon us a doctrine which has not sweetened their own tempers, or made them better men than their neighbours. We are accustomed to think much of the difficulties attending religious inquiries; difficulties springing from the slow development of our minds, from the power of early impressions, from the state of society, from human authority, from the general neglect of the reasoning powers, from the want of just principles of criticism and of important helps in interpreting Scripture, and from various other causes. We find, that on no subject have men, and even good men, ingrafted so many strange conceits, wild theories, and fictions of fancy, as on religion; and remembering, as we do, that we ourselves are sharers of the common frailty, we dare not assume infallibility in the treatment of our fellow-Christians, or encourage in common Christians, who have little time for investigation, the habit of denouncing and condemning other denominations, perhaps more enlightened and virtuous than their own. Charity, forbearance, a delight in the virtues of different sects, a backwardness to censure and condemn, these are virtues, which, however poorly practiced by us, we admire and recommend; and we would rather join ourselves to the church in which they abound, than to any other communion, however elated with the belief of its own orthodoxy, however strict in guarding its creed, however burning with zeal against imagined error." -- William Channing, 1813
  4. "... we think that zeal for truth, as it is called, is very suspicious except in men whose capacities and advantages, whose patient deliberation, and whose improvements in humility, mildness, and candor, give them a right to hope that their views are more just than those of their neighbours. Much of what passes for a zeal for truth we look upon with little respect, for it often appears to thrive most luxuriantly where other virtues shoot up thinly and feebly; and we have no gratitude for those reformers who would force upon us a doctrine which has not sweetened their own tempers or made them better men than their neighbours." -- William Channing It would be good for some on this site to consider this as they go about their Christian lives. Ridicule is not a fruit of the spirit. Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 1 Peter 3:8-9
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