I have nothing to discuss with Shofarians. This fool wants to discuss Shofar’s official position on doctrine while his leadership was actively engaged in trying to poison my marriage with utter crap last week!!!

The leadership he is trying to defend are filthy and how they raise their money and what they spend it on despicable.

I have nothing to say to one of them while they defend the May’s or their doctrine.

On baptism, on taking people into rooms alone and convincing them they are demon possessed and of course Fred is the only one who can exorcise them, on letters from outside of Shofar, one in particular where so called heathens had to feed a student whose parents could no longer trust him with money because it all ends up in the May’s and their leaderships pockets, on insulting my close friends and telling them they are possessed by demons of homosexuality from the pulpit. Tell me when to stop…

Before you try and say one more word to me, pay me the small respect and collect the list of virgins I apparently slept with when I was a member of Shofar from Lucille May. All the gory details are on my personal website http://www.acidalex.com/fan_base/shofar3.html She has suddenly lost the urge to be my wife’s best friend and made it a condition that I repent to all these women before either her or her husband will accept me as a Christian.

Don’t even think about playing your bullshit childish games with me sonny. Say what you want to say and say it finished, nobody is interested in your conspiricies.

My money, all the buildings I use and my influence and what I control, like Peter said in Acts – are all MY OWN. So don’t play games with me. More than that, everything belongs to my unborn son Robert Alexander Lovejoy through a trust fund.

Fred May is in control of Oude Molen, he ordered Partick (the guard at the gates) to bar my wife coming to one one of your closed meetings…I don’t care how or why – it is Shofar’s under Fred’s control for “the gospel” and it is a filthy disgrace.

You Shofarians scream that you are so involved with the Kayamandi community through Prochorus. Then tell me why I have never seen a couple of bus fulls of black folks ever join you there for one of your braais and sing songs? I was a nosy neighbour remember – for about two years. The only people ever to go to meetings in Mill House are rich, almost exclusively white folks in fancy cars and the inside of the main house, according to Natasha – is simply stunning beyond belief.

All for the glory of Fred May.

What is it, you don’t like the idea of Oude Molen being – Oude Molen Orphanage???

Are you a Shofarian or a Christian? Or do you want me to respond to Lucille’s May’s last message to me:

Remember what I said 2 u in the shop, Al. Just a final friendly warning – u r messing w God, not w us. I would not continue to do that if I were you. “Behold t goodness AND SEVERITY of God”. I’m changing my cell no now so I won’t receive any more of u’r threats. Luv. L

I however like Hugo’s approach of focussing rather on the points we agree on than a pointless doctrinal agrument.

Thank you for informing us about the context of your hermeneutical model.

I would like to make some observations which are in no way menat to be facecious or sarcastic, so I encourage you to take them seriously.

Why Fred May can have the exclusive use of a wine mansion that could actually house over a hundred orphans.

Manipulation of facts. Mr. Lovjoy, do please revise. I have physical evidence that you know the actual truth about the oude molen premises.

Yet, a church like Shofar will preach water baptism as central to salvation,

This is again not true.

Note:

John’s baptism is merely the choice of celebrating that publicly.

This is exactly what the church’s official doctrinal position is.

Actually, I do have something to ask. I’m just not sure how to ask them. *ponder*… how’s this?:

Would you say, from your perspective, people that are effectively following the teachings of Matthew 18, without ever having heard of the Bible, or do not care much about “religion”, are on the right path? (Do you think there are other people also teaching this path?)

(An answer like “yea, good for them. Those that aren’t against us, are for us…” would be pretty cool…)

An outsider looking at the debates between Christians hears various interpretations and various emphases from various groups. Often they are following Matthew 18 already, of their own accord. Get them involved with a particular Christian group, and they start losing that focus, being distracted by anti-homosexuality and anti-abortion sentiments (this is the stereotypical caricature of American evangelicalism). Do you think they are better off living a Matthew-18 focused life? (The atheist’s sentiment “without religion, good people do good, bad people do bad. It takes religion to make good people do bad” springs to mind. Note that I don’t agree with the sentiment.)

I will teach them to my son.

You come across as very certain of your interpretations. Many diverse groups of Christianity are very certain of their interpretations, and feel strongly about the parts they place emphasis on.

I do like your emphasis on Matthew 18. I’ll keep it in mind.

When I was in Bible College back in another lifetime we had a lecturer who once gave us a lecture on Christ’s triumph when he rode into Jerusalem. He pointed out that Jesus sent his disciples into the city gate and told them to follow a man carrying water to a house where he would find a ass tied up outside the house. They were to ask to borrow the ass and book the upper room of the house for supper.

All very innocuous until one considers that men in the Middle East do not carry water. This is evidenced by the woman at the well whom Jesus tided gently into serving him with some to drink. Someone culturally, He was forbidden to even speak to in that communal public place frequented only by women.

His conclusion was that the men in the house were celibate; therefore they had no women to fetch and carry water for them. Therefore they had to belong to a sect of priests called the Essenes. This intrigued me so much that from then on I made it my business to find out as much about the anthropology, politics and economics of the time as possible – to clarify my exegesis and better put myself into the writer’s frame and world view.

Similarly, by around twenty years ago – I had a huge library of Christian books on every topic imaginable. I’ve read McDowell and Lewis on apologetics (never got hold of Smith), I’ve read Nee, Spurgeon, Murray, McClung, etc, etc and freaks like Kenneth Hagin and his disciples Benny Hinn and Keneth Copeland. I taught myself rudimentary Greek (most of which I have forgotten) and began to read earlier very early writers like Augustine and perusing academic historical works focussed on hermeneutics outside of Scripture – in the writings of Romans, Greeks and Rabbis .

One day I found a thin little book by a post Renaissance monk named Tomas ‘a Kempis. He was a truly fascinating man in his short pithy musings on a life of piety and Christian contemplation. Some of the stuff was beyond bizarre – like how to flagellate yourself properly and apply the pain to sharing in Christ’s mortal suffering – but in the very middle of all of it, he gave me a piece of advice that I have applied since then to my singular approach to Scripture. In essence, from a modern perspective – he said: The only parts of Scripture to truly listen to are the red bits where Christ speaks, everything else is relative.

And so it is.

Today I have no Christian books except the Battle for God (I picked it up to brush up on my knowledge of Muslim fundamentalism last week), the six or seven Bibles I marked and read to pieces are also gone, I have one well made and unmarked Bible which is always on my desk and usually opened somewhere in the gospels. And when I read Paul, I go back there and look at his teachings through Christ.

Because of that, most of my theology is my own and I have had some fantastic sabbaticals, like three months 24/7 lockdown solitary in a French Speaking prison, with nothing except the Bible, a small amount of tobacco from a sympathetic chef every few days – and the fortnightly visits of a seventy year old nun, who in her early twenties was ministering succour to the victims of Nazi torture in the sealed State mortuary, which had been their dungeons below the prison.

Take something like Paul telling Timothy that Christ said a worker is worthy of his wages in context of ministry – this is why McCauley can live in an empty gazillion dollar house and drive a Ferrari he was “blessed” with by Jesus. Why Fred May can have the exclusive use of a wine mansion that could actually house over a hundred orphans.

See, Paul is actually quoting Christ, who was speaking about food and more specifically food sacrificed to foreign gods and idols as they embraced poverty to preach the gospel. It had absolutely nothing to do with pastors making money from the gospel, but unless one makes it one’s business to study ALL of Scripture – you will not find that out. Memes never do – the oke on stage thought for them already.

And only one cent raised in error by these greedy men – is fraud and theft, not simply material wealth – but theft of the gospel too.

Let’s move onto baptism. There is no place in Scripture where Christ preaches John’s water baptism for his disciples, on the contrary He preaches only His Own baptism for every believer, something I mentioned earlier in these blogs. He came to teach us how to measure – LIFE.

Yet, a church like Shofar will preach water baptism as central to salvation, which in actual fact is preaching death into salvation – which is supposed to release us into the adventure of our lives in Christ. John’s baptism is merely the choice of celebrating that publicly.

Take the evangelical foundation John 3:16. I refute that completely as the path to salvation – in favour of his later conversation with His disciples. Nicodemus was the equivalent of a semi-hostile dean of Theology in a State college meeting him in secret. For that academic to truly understand Christ, Jesus told him he would have to be born all over and learn every aspect of his vast education from scratch and he would still have to seek salvation.

In essence it was the theological stance of the Jew, hostile to Christ’s teaching, that being born a Jew by blood and serving God in His holy temple was the source of your righteousness automatically. Christ was telling the man that this was only an outward form that had to become an internal truth and the very core of how one lives life.

His disciples on the other hand were simple ordinary men – the you and me of their generation and when they asked him what the crux of the gospel was, in essence – who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? – He answered them very, very simply in Matthew 18.

Here and only here is where Jesus Christ gives
his disciples, and therefore the entire church, the very formula to being converted to Christianity.
And it doesn’t cost an ounce of intellect, no sinner’s prayer and someone who has never read nor can write can do it, while the huge Christian TV media, book and music industry cannot
motivate or tell anyone – how.

And according to Jesus – it is the ONLY path to salvation.

It is what I live and breathe, that is why arguing with people who label themselves non believers, agnostic, atheist, whatever is utterly pointless to me. The same applies to the origins and age of our world. In my opinion, they are merely people whom life has spared, until now, the desperate need to pray, because until you pray – you will never know God and Scripture will just be a contradictory book full of crap.

gracefully close this topic and will reserve my own conclusions as I depart this learned forum

I’m sorry to see you leave, but I understand. I was looking forward to your opinion, about either your question or mine. But I think I know how you feel about it.

I have my question, you have yours.

I did not expect the knives of didactic arts to be unsheathed so readily, and greet you Hellenic gentlemen – gracefully close this topic and will reserve my own conclusions as I depart this learned forum…but before I go, a last word…, nay, nay – more a tasty soupcon of the essense of history:

“History isn’t like that. History unravels gently like a old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propoganda, yet it always – eventually – manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It’s been around a long time”, Terry Pratchett – “Mort”

Dead Man Walking.