billy clyde

On July 4, 1976, there was a Calfiornia limb meeting at some hotel in Fresno. I was on a summer outreach thing with about 10 others, traveling from town to town, staying for a couple of weeks, camping out, witnessing, trying to get classes together. I remember going to Visalia, Monterey, Yuba City, San luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and some other places. It was a miserable failure but we had a good time, right up to the point when the limb leader took off with one of the girls in our group, leaving his wife and child behind. But that's another story. Back to the Bicentennial stuff in Fresno. The featured speaker was LCM. This was the occasion when I started questioning his sanity. He went on and on about all the conspiracy stuff from "None Dare Call it Conspiracy", including the fact that the CFR, Bilderbergers, Commies, Trilateral Commission, Rockefellers, Warburgs, Colonel House, Woodrow Wilson, the Federal Reserve with their paper money, etc., had fiendishly plotted to complete the overthrow of the United States on that very day, our 200th anniversary, by replacing the U.S constitution with...I don't remember what. Perhaps the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? And if it wasn't for the Way Ministry blah blah blah. Anyway, I remember being very thankful that none of our outreach group had actually talked anyone into coming to this meeting. It was the first time I had seen Craig in 'classic' form. It was highly entertainig of course, but he was completely off his rocker. Silly me. I had gone expecting a Bible teaching. Earlier that year I had gone on one of John Sommerville's wilderness survival things (I don't know if it was called LEAD yet) a three day cross-country skiing trek somewhere in Yosemite. This was just plain miserable with no redeeming qualities. Three days freezing our asses off, eating lousy food, listening to a bunch of crazies talking about how the commies were going to kill us all. I think I actually gave them some money for this. Anyway, those are some of my memories of that patriotic year. Hadn't thought about those things in a long time.

Friends, concerning the two natures of Christ, which this thread started out being about, I offer you the following, from the writings of Ephraim the Syrian, a fourth century Christian. I hope you find it edifying and enlightening, as I did. "A Confession of the God Who Became Man In Jesus Christ the Lord: He who is from God, God the Word, the only begotten Son of the Father, of one essence with the Father, Being from Being, ineffably begotten of the Father without a mother before all ages--the very same is born in the last days to a daughter of men, to the Virgin Mary without a father. God is born incarnate, wearing flesh borrowed from her, having become man, which He was not, and remaining God, which He was, in order to save the world. And He is Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father and the only begotten of His Mother. I confess One and the Same as both perfect God and perfect Man, in two natures, united in one hypostasis or person, recognized as indivisibly, unconfusedly and unchangeably God Who was clothed in flesh, animated by an intelligent and rational soul, and came to resemble us in every way except sin. One and the Same is earthly and heavenly, temporal and eternal, both with and without beginning, timeless and subject to time, created and uncreated, suffering and free of suffering, God and Man and perfect in both. One in two natures, as both Unitary."