Remonstrance

Check it out!

For the past 600 years God pulled off a Hidden Advent in China, according to a new religion called The Church of the Almight God and it’s now available on the Web.

Ok, it is a hideously ugly Web site, but it does come with a million new words from God! You gotta love the Web - each week you can get the latest available translation delivered in English - straight from the original Chinese language! For Chinese language scholars, the original writings in the native tongue appear side-by-side with the English (the translators acknowledge their imperfections, thankfully, because the English is horrendous).  Here’s something we should research: is it a million new Chinese words or English words?

So what’s God’s new million words called? “The Voice From the Throne.”  Ominous! This time God provided a Forward to the new book! (But then he left out the dedication page!) Another convenience: The Voice comes in articles, not books like the last time.

Here’s what The Voice says to humanity - put this on the refrigerator, it makes a great memory verse:

No matter what, you should not intentionally contradict the word while you clearly know it is the truth.

The Voice is so strict - no intentional contradictions, “No matter what!” (What will Randy Campbell do now?)

Ok, so here’s something amazing - in the Chinese Advent, God either lost or forgot his name, because now it’s just “God” - but not Jesus Christ, according to The Voice:

This is a duty for all who are waiting for the return of Jesus on white clouds. We should remove the scales from our spiritual eyes and not become entrapped by those words that mount the clouds and ride the mist. You should carefully consider the actual work of God, and examine the practical aspect of God. Don’t always forget yourselves and drift on all day long, always expecting that the Lord Jesus, sitting on a certain white cloud in heaven, suddenly descends to be among you to receive you who have never known him, nor seen him, nor known how to obey his will. You had better think about something realistic!

Having refuted those “words that mount the clouds” about Jesus, The Voice says the Hidden Advent is “the practical aspect of God” - which means that someone or something has been moving around in China for the past 600 years - yet without any outward appearance!

Therefore, with respect to whether or not it is the flesh that God’s Word has become, the key rests with his substance (work, word, nature, and many other aspects), but not with his outward appearance.

“The key” is flesh without “outward appearance.” Ingeniously irrefutable! This explains why there’s no pictures! Bogus Bummer! I so wanted to see if the Hidden Advent looks like a hippie or not…

Ah, not to worry, The Voice says later, because the Hidden Advent does have flesh after all!

If the flesh does not possess the substance of God, then he will certainly not be the Word of God that has become flesh. There is no doubt about this point.

That clears up the doubt! (But where’s the pictures!?) If this all sounds confusing, here’s why:

Millions of voices are calling out to you, but it is hard to arouse your heart and your spirit.

I swear, The Voice has been to my house when it’s filled with Kyle’s teenage friends!

It’s really quite impossible to fathom the Hidden Chinese Advent because it’s a real mess, The Voice explains:

We should all be aware that people who are of flesh have all been corrupted by Satan.

An apt description of the Hidden Chinese Advent, wouldn’t you agree?

(PS: Don’t I get some stars for this?)

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It was a dark and rainy night…

But it turned out to be an amazing night. Joel’s been bugging me for a while to check out “The Dive” at KSU, which is run by Campus Crusade for Christ (CC4C). It was about 20-30 people when we were starting our KSU Bible Study, but now they’re almost 200 people, meeting in a really cool auditorium.

I met Rick, the paid staffer running the ministry. They apparently have 5 additional staffers, Rick said. (That’s what we need!) He was familiar with Xenos and my brother Den, and he likes us.

They’ve placed our group on their Web site:

It was their meeting that arrested my attention. It was energized by excited and driven Christians, student-run from beginning to end. These were people willing to take a chance to serve the Lord by standing up there on stage to jam, act, teach, testify, MC, and more.

No, it wasn’t a well-polished production, and mistakes were made as expected from undergrads – but what carried the meeting was their determination to serve, their imagination and creativity and variety of gifting at work.

Boy, I was zapped by it. I got the fever! We should and could hit that campus with all our Xenos muscle like CC4C is doing. It rocked my world when it suddenly hit me we were loaded with powerful gifting, opportunity and spiritual muscle in our college group. For several years the Lord has been quietly building a repository of spiritual critical mass down there, and we could tear up that campus!

Shock and Awe!

Inspired, I started quickly jotting these “Deep Thoughts” on my Palm – when suddenly, over the loudspeaker I hear, “KEITH MCCALLUM!”

What? I look up, surprised, and behold! An auditorium of eyeballs were peering at me, and my buddies are all pointing their fingers at me and saying, “Go on up there! Go on!”

I figured out the MC had selected my name (at random, supposedly) from a bucket of visitor names (we graciously filled out visitor forms earlier, as asked), and I was now the big “prizewinner!”

So there goes a grey-haired old man followed by 400 student eyeballs and 200 smiles or smirks as I take a deep breath and boldly stride up there to claim my prize. It was a gift certificate for a Starbucks coffee.

Whoopy.

“Here, sit down,” the MC said, “Tell us all about yourself - Do you ever go to Starbucks?”

“Sure, all the time, whenever I’m tired or need a cup of coffee,” I stammer. ()

“Well, I see here it says you’re a graduate student, right?” he said, holding up my Visitor Form where I had circled the “Graduate” option.

“Um, no, not really,” I said, and looked out at the masses (oh boy, now they’ll think I’m just a lying scumbag…) “Well, see, what I thought it meant was to circle the highest level of education completed or something like that…”

“So you’re not a student?” the MC asked, looking surprised at me.

“Well, no, but looking now at this place, it’s all starting to come back to me now…” I said. “And it’s not a pretty picture.”

“Well, what are you doing here? How did you get here?” he asked, clearly teasing me. (Should I tell him we’re spying?)

“I was just tooling around here and there, and those guys right up there come up to me…” I said, pointing at Joel, Alex, Joe, Jake and Eric, who start waving their arms wildly so everyone sees them, “…and they say, ‘come on with us, Old Man, and check out this place!’ So, they drag me along, and here I am.”

The MC stares at me incredulously for a moment, then with a smile, “Well, that’s great! Thanks for coming!” Everyone claps, and I’m released to go back to my seat.

“Why didn’t you tell them you were from Xenos and something about us?” the guys ask me later.

Good question, but I had a good answer: “And tell them we’re checking them out, and, ‘Hey, by the way, come on over to our place instead!’” I said.

“Hey, c’mon everybody! The party’s at College Avenue!’” Jake said.

“And besides,” I added, “what a let-down if they found out their ‘grand prize’ went to some old Preacher Man instead of some worthy seeker…”

Everyone thought that one over for a minute, then: “They probably thought you were some street bum we dragged there and now they’re praying for you,” someone else said – I think it was my kind friend Alex.

Well, I didn’t really lie to 200 people. Truthfully (in a very general sense), I was just doing my thing and these guys kept bugging me to check it out…and that’s the scoop!

BUT THERE’S MORE…!

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Today our KSU group is so completely different than the 2001 meeting in that tiny apartment. We tried meeting at the Student Union, but we started with so few (actually, just 3) students, the large, empty room was absurd. Eric, Eric and Mark scored an apartment for us to meet in, and we quickly outgrew it and moved to Lake Street, and from there to College Ave.

But I forgot why we were meeting off-campus, and tonight I regained my perspective: when we were just starting, a living room meeting made perfect sense, but now with attendance around 40, a living room has proven to be impractical.

What we need to do is move back on-campus.

Spacious and comfortable facilities are everywhere down there, and now we have the people to fill it up and make it work. Even more, we have a strong Body of Christ at KSU waiting to flex its muscle – I say let’s do it!
A Revolution Within Reach!

Street Interviews, Jay Leno-style, asking funny or unexpected questions, the way Leno stuns those college students with simplistic questions about history or politics they should know, like, “Who was the first president of the USA?” We should hit the streets with shockingly funny questions, and then add some meaningful but related questions to give the interview some significance.

Instant Movies: we have a rich repository of Columbus videos, and we can either redo them KSU-style, or mix some KSU scenes and acting into the video. I’m thinking of their “Heaven” video which relied on expensive props – by using theirs as a base, easily add our KSU touch, and kick out the videos.

Oprah Testimonies: We should do a regular segment, “Joe’s World” or where someone like Joe employs his dry but humorous interrogative style, but also steers the conversation into some spiritual depth – a Testimony, Oprah-style. But there are others with the gift of interrogation, and perhaps we should have a rotation of interviewers to keep up the spice.

Kick Out the Jams! We got some serious musicians now in fellowship. Someone like Jake should lead a group and turn the meeting into a music fest – strains of cool sound drifting through the Student Union would turn a Bible Study into a real event competitive with the Rathskeller in the basement.

How Should We Then Live? The KSU group needs to take a weekend retreat to understand this video series by Schaeffer. Fascinating and meaningful, we can then spread this material across multiple weeks of Bible Study like a “History Channel” segment that augments the teaching. This is not hard to do.

Scarlet Thread Documentary – it would not be hard to make a multimedia mini-series taking the Columbus Seminar Thread teachings (which were videotaped), and convert them into a Ken Burns Civil War-style documentary series, showing segments at each week’s meeting. It’s already a narrative, placed in history and known geography so the visuals are readily available. Joe said we add some reenactments too, but I don’t know about that…

Bruxy Cavey Road Trip – It’s time to take an overnight road trip to Toronto to see Bruxy’s church and watch how they pitch the anti-institution, pro-relationship Christian radicalism that would make so much sense at KSU. “Don’t follow the Bible, follow Jesus,” is one of his typically-inflamatory yet true and relevant slogans we should be using. Man, at Xenos we’re more Bruxy Cavey than Bruxy Cavey is! Why aren’t we putting it up front and center? Would KSU students get offended? I think not!

Panel Debates, such as “Intelligent Design or Evolution? You Decide!” We may not be able to get opposition panelists to show up, but we do have people who understand the Naturalist’s viewpoint enough to do a fair job of representing the view.

Chat-X or Letters to the X-Editor: We could follow up such panelist debates or teachings or movies with an on-line Chat Room where people can dig into it further, moderated by our KSU students – after all, this is how Sarah Debaugh got saved. Or people can e-mail objections and/or questions which we will faithfully read the following week at the meeting…

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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Look what’s happening out in the streets
Got a revolution got to revolution
Hey I’m dancing down the streets
Got a revolution got to revolution
Ain’t it amazing all the people I meet
Got a revolution got to revolution
One generation got old
One generation got soul
This generation got no destination to hold
Pick up the cry
Hey now it’s time for you and me
Got a revolution got to revolution
Come on now we’re marching to the sea
Got a revolution got to revolution
Who will take it from you
We will and who are we
We are volunteers of america

That was the problem with my generation: no destination to hold!

Currently Playing: Volunteers of America

Current mood: Angry

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Ok, here’s a refinement of the earlier KSU Invasion thoughts. (Moving from inspiration to implimentation.) Interestingly, Levi was thinking in parallel terms.

So here it is: we can publish two (2) “Underground Newspapers”: one in January, one in February. These will feature some controversial articles (i.e., Intelligent Design vs Naturalism), and some interesting articles (i.e., Symptoms of Depression, by Dr. Joel Hughes). Key features:

• Controversial articles will try to be very fair, and present our group as intellectually rigorous thinkers (e.g., Naturalism will be presented as having some apparent merit, but also it has problems).
• All articles will invite further investigation or comments to our KSU Underground Blog site, where people can post their opinions / objections.
• Place a button on the blog/Web site: “DISCUSS NOW!” which opens a chat room - or, “TALK TO US NOW!” which pages an “Operators are standing by…” who will dialog with the inquisitive person.

Of course, all these will point to our CBS meeting, and make it sound like an appealing place where intellectually credible and non-dogmatic thinkers assemble.

WHY DO THIS?

This is what we did in 1969 at the OSU Campus with The Fish: an Underground Newspaper which helped us to launch The Fish House, which of course became later known as Xenos.

So cool, ain’ no fool!

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