S-2 PAST WITNESS FILES
- John Shelby Spong - Jimmy Stauddy - Isaac Stavely - H. Steinthal - James Stewart - Timothy Stewart - William Still - Sohaib Nazeer Sultan - Emanuel Swedenborg
==john shelby spong=============
John Shelby "Jack" Spong (June 16, 1931 – September 12, 2021) was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church, born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He served as the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey from 1979 to 2000. Spong was a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator, and author, who called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines. He was known for his progressive and controversial views on Christianity, including his rejection of traditional Christian doctrines, his advocacy for LGBTQ rights, and his support for interfaith dialogue. Spong was the recipient of many awards, including 1999 Humanist of the Year. He was a contributor to the Living the Questions DVD program and was a guest on numerous national television broadcasts. Spong died on September 12, 2021, at his home in Richmond, Virginia, at the age of 90.
Dec 30, 2021: Religion News: Observers, detractors and preachers of religion who died in 2021
Bishop John Shelby Spong. The progressive theologian was the first to ordain an openly gay male priest in the Episcopal Church, in 1989. Spong died on Sept. 12 at age 90.
He eventually ordained three dozen LGBTQ clergy in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey, and made sure any diocesan church seeking a new priest interview at least one woman candidate.
The author of more than a dozen books, including “Living in Sin: A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality,” he would draw hundreds of people during his book tours. He defended his rejection of miracles and denial of Christian doctrines such as the resurrection of Jesus and the virgin birth.
“We’re space-age people,” he told Religion News Service in 2013. “All I’m saying is that the world the Christian church was born in is not the world we live in, and if you confine it to the world it was born in, Christianity will die, because that world is dying.”
Bishop John Shelby Spong. The progressive theologian was the first to ordain an openly gay male priest in the Episcopal Church, in 1989. Spong died on Sept. 12 at age 90.
He eventually ordained three dozen LGBTQ clergy in the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey, and made sure any diocesan church seeking a new priest interview at least one woman candidate.
The author of more than a dozen books, including “Living in Sin: A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality,” he would draw hundreds of people during his book tours. He defended his rejection of miracles and denial of Christian doctrines such as the resurrection of Jesus and the virgin birth.
“We’re space-age people,” he told Religion News Service in 2013. “All I’m saying is that the world the Christian church was born in is not the world we live in, and if you confine it to the world it was born in, Christianity will die, because that world is dying.”
John Shelby Spong
Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history. --John Shelby "Jack" Spong
Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order.
--John Shelby "Jack" Spong
Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order.
--John Shelby "Jack" Spong
==jimmy stauddy=====
Nov 19, 2009: Picayune Item: Rural Miss. church mourns stabbing death of pastor
Authorities said Tuesday that no one had been arrested in the slayings of the Rev. Jimmy Stauddy and his caregiver, Martha Stoker. Stauddy, 69, was a retired Grenada police investigator and had worked in the Greenwood office of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. He had been a minister more than four decades and in 2002 became pastor of Minter City United Methodist Church, a congregation of about 20 in Leflore County.
Authorities said Tuesday that no one had been arrested in the slayings of the Rev. Jimmy Stauddy and his caregiver, Martha Stoker. Stauddy, 69, was a retired Grenada police investigator and had worked in the Greenwood office of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. He had been a minister more than four decades and in 2002 became pastor of Minter City United Methodist Church, a congregation of about 20 in Leflore County.
==isaac stavely=====
Sept 2, 2022: Michael AG Haykin: Desiring God: A Meal for the Journey
“May these precious seasons make me fruitful.” These words, found in the diary of a certain Isaac Staveley, who worked as a clerk for coal merchants in London during the 1770s, were written after he had celebrated the Lord’s Supper with his church, Eagle Street Baptist Church, in 1771.
In the rest of this diary, Staveley makes it evident that the celebration of the death of the Christ at the Table was a highlight of his Christian life. In the evening of March 3, he recorded that he and fellow members “came around the table of our dear dying Lord to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body, show his death afresh, to claim and recognise our interest therein, to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body as happy members of the same family of faith and love.” How many today view the Table this way?
“May these precious seasons make me fruitful.” These words, found in the diary of a certain Isaac Staveley, who worked as a clerk for coal merchants in London during the 1770s, were written after he had celebrated the Lord’s Supper with his church, Eagle Street Baptist Church, in 1771.
In the rest of this diary, Staveley makes it evident that the celebration of the death of the Christ at the Table was a highlight of his Christian life. In the evening of March 3, he recorded that he and fellow members “came around the table of our dear dying Lord to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body, show his death afresh, to claim and recognise our interest therein, to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body as happy members of the same family of faith and love.” How many today view the Table this way?
==Dr H Steinthal=====
Heymann or Hermann Steinthal (16 May 1823 – 14 March 1899) was a German philologist and philosopher. He studied philology and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and was in 1850 appointed
Privatdozent of philology and mythology at that institution. He was influenced by Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose Sprachwissenschaftliche Werke he edited in 1884. From 1852 to 1855 Steinthal resided in Paris, where he devoted himself to the study of Chinese, and in 1863 he was appointed assistant professor at the Berlin University; from 1872 he was also privat-dozent in critical history of the Old Testament and in religious philosophy at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums. In 1860 he founded, together with his brother-in-law Moritz Lazarus, the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, in which was established the new science of comparative ('folk') psychology, the Völkerpsychologie. Steinthal was one of the directors (from 1883) of the Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund [de], and had charge of the department of religious instruction in various small congregations.
Privatdozent of philology and mythology at that institution. He was influenced by Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose Sprachwissenschaftliche Werke he edited in 1884. From 1852 to 1855 Steinthal resided in Paris, where he devoted himself to the study of Chinese, and in 1863 he was appointed assistant professor at the Berlin University; from 1872 he was also privat-dozent in critical history of the Old Testament and in religious philosophy at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums. In 1860 he founded, together with his brother-in-law Moritz Lazarus, the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, in which was established the new science of comparative ('folk') psychology, the Völkerpsychologie. Steinthal was one of the directors (from 1883) of the Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund [de], and had charge of the department of religious instruction in various small congregations.
Dr. H. Steinthal Files
It is surprising how the evidences of divine wisdom and fore- sight thicken about him, who has once commenced to observe them. The defect of one of the smallest members of the hu- man frame would have rendered all the skill with which the rest was constructed abortive, and have made man’s creation a failure. Without the eye, for instance, mankind could not have subsisted. Without the tongue they would have remained for ever in a state of idiocy or barbarism. There is no more elementary truth in human advancement, than that mind must be acted on by mind in order to its culture and development. The material world furnishes an abundance of objects for every sense, and its phenomena afford endless food for reflection. But in order that the spirit may be brought to act upon what is thus furnished for it, it must be roused and stimulated by spirit. “ Iron sharpeneth iron,” said the wisest of men ; “ so a man sharpened the countenance of his friend.” A man isolated from his species from the first moment of his being, would of necessity be scarcely lifted above the brutes. Only by intercourse with his fellows can he be humanized. Hence language, the medium of intercourse between man and man, is the great humanizer ; and without the gift of speech civilization and culture would be impossible. How sublime in its simplicity, and how grand in its results, is this conception of making thought audible, and opening thus, through the medium of an outward sense, communication between mind and mind ! These invisible, intangible, immaterial, mysterious agents within us can thus be brought in contact: the thoughts, ideas, feelings, knowledge, experience of one can be forthwith imparted to another. The man of hoary hairs can put the stripling, in the outset of his course, in possession of that which he laboured long years to obtain. The man of earnest thought can stamp his impress upon those around him, and waken in them an activity like his own. Set free by the faculty of speech, man’s spirit no longer lives alone, shut up a prisoner in solitary confinement in its mortal cell. The doors are thrown wide open and the man is set in living connection with all around him. Knowledge no longer streams in barely through his single perceptions, or is the product of his single reflections. The eyes of those around see for him : their minds think for him ; for their experience and their thoughts can now be added to his own. And his intellectual power and wealth grows without limit, as the tiny drop, by kindred drops falling thick and fast around it in a summer’s shower, forms first a rill, a rivulet, a brook, a river, and at last a flood.
And yet the sphere of man, though thus vastly widened by the gift of speech, is still narrow and contracted. Speech has opened communication for us with a little circle just around us, those whom we personally meet. If we would gather up the experience of men in other lands, and add their thoughts to our own, we must, like the wise men of ancient times, Pythagoras, Plato, Herodotus, travel far and near. But few can do this jand how few of their species can he personally visited, even by those who do possess ability to travel ! From how large a part of the race are we necessarily cut off! And then the men of past generations are buried in the dust. Are they by con- sequence lost for ever to the world ? And have all their earnest thoughts and zealous labours, and careful observations been sunk irrecoverably like lead in the wide waste of waters ? Have all the genius, and the intellect of former days vanished thus, leaving no trace behind ? And must those of each age be in this way lost to their successors ? Who will give to the absent a tongue, and to the dead a tongue ? We need an instrument to annihilate for us time and space, and to prevent this monstrous waste of intellectual power and acquisition; to take the evanescent thought, and to convert it—not into an equally evanescent sound that dies away upon the ear as soon as it is uttered, but give to it a permanent and tangible and portable form. We need some magic wand, some potent spell to give immortality to thoughts ; to bring around us the great and good of this and of every land, of this and of all past ages, and bid them talk with us at our own homes, and unlade all the wdsdom they have gathered at our feet ; to put our minds into living contact with all the world at once, and all who have ever lived, so that all their rich furniture of cultivated thought and pure and elevated taste, and ripe judgment and matured experience, the intellec- tual treasures of mankind gathered through long ages, may be displayed before us. This would sound like some wild dream of enchantment, had it not all been realized, and that by a method as simple in its principles as its results are magnificent.
You can sit in your library, in your easy chair, with your fire blazing brightly on your own hearth before you, and you can there converse with men of every age and every clime. You can travel back long centuries before the Christian era, and can stand face to face with Moses and Solomon and Isaiah. Or you can sit at the feet of the Son of God himself, or talk with his apostles of all that they were commissioned to make known of the salvation he achieved. Turn to Grecian antiquity ; and the father of history will tell you all that he could learn in his long journeys and careful observations of the state and origin of ancient empires. Blind old Ilomer will sing again for youhis immortal song. Demosthenes will thunder as of old at the rostrum. Socrates and Plato and Aristotle will entertain you with their profound and elaborate inquiries. Or Rome will send you her historians and poets and orators and logicians and philosophers, all ready in their turn to communicate to you their maturest thoughts, their most brilliant conceptions, and their gathered stores of knowledge. Still seated by your own cheerful fireside, you can follow down the stream of time, and summon around you, at your bidding, the rare, commanding intellects of each successive age—those who have toiled most and achieved most in any favourite department of thought or learn- ing—till you come to the busy, bustling present. And then, if you choose, you can take up the newspaper of to-day, and learn what twenty millions have been seeing and hearing and thinking and doing yesterday, from Maine to Louisiana—in fact, what has, within a few weeks, been taking place all round the globe. You have, thus, the whole civilized world put into your service; looking out for you, listening for you, labouring to increase your stores. The astronomer, with his telescope, be he at Harvard, at Greenwich, at Berlin, or at Washington, is deter- mining for you the magnitudes and movements of the stars. The chemist is experimenting for you in his laboratory. The geologist is examining for you the structure of the earth. The traveller is inspecting for you the manners and the sights of foreign climes. The antiquarian is digging for you among the hoary ruins of Nineveh and Thebes. The orator, the metaphysician, the poet, are busy, each with their several labours, that they may increase the stores of your intellect, or add to the refinement of your taste. You have all the intellect of the world, all the eyes and ears and fingers of ancient and of modern times laid under contribution : the entire results of their labours are at your service. Instead of picking up scanty bits of knowledge by your single observations, with no assist- tance and no stimulus, nothing but the natural and uninstructed workings of your single powers, you have here gathered into one accessible and available mass the combined labours, experience, and reflections of the greatest sages, most profound thinkers, and acute observers. This is what our fairy has achieved. The fairy’s name is Writing—her magic wand,the pen. Her office is to record thought; no matter how that record be made, so that it be brought into a permanent, accessible, intelligible form, for the use of other men and other times. This alone gives permanence to intellectual achievements, and makes progressive advances in knowledge and civil- ization possible. But for this, the acquisitions of each generation would be buried with it, and an increase of knowledge from age to age would be as impossible as it was in the old mythology, for the daughters of Danaus to fill with water their casks without a bottom. --Dr. H. Steinthal; The Origin of Writing; 1854
And yet the sphere of man, though thus vastly widened by the gift of speech, is still narrow and contracted. Speech has opened communication for us with a little circle just around us, those whom we personally meet. If we would gather up the experience of men in other lands, and add their thoughts to our own, we must, like the wise men of ancient times, Pythagoras, Plato, Herodotus, travel far and near. But few can do this jand how few of their species can he personally visited, even by those who do possess ability to travel ! From how large a part of the race are we necessarily cut off! And then the men of past generations are buried in the dust. Are they by con- sequence lost for ever to the world ? And have all their earnest thoughts and zealous labours, and careful observations been sunk irrecoverably like lead in the wide waste of waters ? Have all the genius, and the intellect of former days vanished thus, leaving no trace behind ? And must those of each age be in this way lost to their successors ? Who will give to the absent a tongue, and to the dead a tongue ? We need an instrument to annihilate for us time and space, and to prevent this monstrous waste of intellectual power and acquisition; to take the evanescent thought, and to convert it—not into an equally evanescent sound that dies away upon the ear as soon as it is uttered, but give to it a permanent and tangible and portable form. We need some magic wand, some potent spell to give immortality to thoughts ; to bring around us the great and good of this and of every land, of this and of all past ages, and bid them talk with us at our own homes, and unlade all the wdsdom they have gathered at our feet ; to put our minds into living contact with all the world at once, and all who have ever lived, so that all their rich furniture of cultivated thought and pure and elevated taste, and ripe judgment and matured experience, the intellec- tual treasures of mankind gathered through long ages, may be displayed before us. This would sound like some wild dream of enchantment, had it not all been realized, and that by a method as simple in its principles as its results are magnificent.
You can sit in your library, in your easy chair, with your fire blazing brightly on your own hearth before you, and you can there converse with men of every age and every clime. You can travel back long centuries before the Christian era, and can stand face to face with Moses and Solomon and Isaiah. Or you can sit at the feet of the Son of God himself, or talk with his apostles of all that they were commissioned to make known of the salvation he achieved. Turn to Grecian antiquity ; and the father of history will tell you all that he could learn in his long journeys and careful observations of the state and origin of ancient empires. Blind old Ilomer will sing again for youhis immortal song. Demosthenes will thunder as of old at the rostrum. Socrates and Plato and Aristotle will entertain you with their profound and elaborate inquiries. Or Rome will send you her historians and poets and orators and logicians and philosophers, all ready in their turn to communicate to you their maturest thoughts, their most brilliant conceptions, and their gathered stores of knowledge. Still seated by your own cheerful fireside, you can follow down the stream of time, and summon around you, at your bidding, the rare, commanding intellects of each successive age—those who have toiled most and achieved most in any favourite department of thought or learn- ing—till you come to the busy, bustling present. And then, if you choose, you can take up the newspaper of to-day, and learn what twenty millions have been seeing and hearing and thinking and doing yesterday, from Maine to Louisiana—in fact, what has, within a few weeks, been taking place all round the globe. You have, thus, the whole civilized world put into your service; looking out for you, listening for you, labouring to increase your stores. The astronomer, with his telescope, be he at Harvard, at Greenwich, at Berlin, or at Washington, is deter- mining for you the magnitudes and movements of the stars. The chemist is experimenting for you in his laboratory. The geologist is examining for you the structure of the earth. The traveller is inspecting for you the manners and the sights of foreign climes. The antiquarian is digging for you among the hoary ruins of Nineveh and Thebes. The orator, the metaphysician, the poet, are busy, each with their several labours, that they may increase the stores of your intellect, or add to the refinement of your taste. You have all the intellect of the world, all the eyes and ears and fingers of ancient and of modern times laid under contribution : the entire results of their labours are at your service. Instead of picking up scanty bits of knowledge by your single observations, with no assist- tance and no stimulus, nothing but the natural and uninstructed workings of your single powers, you have here gathered into one accessible and available mass the combined labours, experience, and reflections of the greatest sages, most profound thinkers, and acute observers. This is what our fairy has achieved. The fairy’s name is Writing—her magic wand,the pen. Her office is to record thought; no matter how that record be made, so that it be brought into a permanent, accessible, intelligible form, for the use of other men and other times. This alone gives permanence to intellectual achievements, and makes progressive advances in knowledge and civil- ization possible. But for this, the acquisitions of each generation would be buried with it, and an increase of knowledge from age to age would be as impossible as it was in the old mythology, for the daughters of Danaus to fill with water their casks without a bottom. --Dr. H. Steinthal; The Origin of Writing; 1854
==james stewart=====
War Your Way to Heaven
The world needs this Christ, not the pretend one of low expectations and groveling suggestions. Men are ready for a Leader who will unhesitatingly claim the last ounce of his followers’ courage and fidelity. . . . This is no time to be offering a reduced, milk-and-water religion. Far too often the world has been presented with a mild and undemanding half-Christianity. The Gospel has been emasculated long enough. Preach Christ today in the total challenge of His high, imperious claim. Some will be scared, and some offended: but some, and they the most worth winning, will kneel in homage at His feet. (James Stewart, Heralds of God, 26–27)
(Desiring God 7/16/24) READMORE>>>>>
The world needs this Christ, not the pretend one of low expectations and groveling suggestions. Men are ready for a Leader who will unhesitatingly claim the last ounce of his followers’ courage and fidelity. . . . This is no time to be offering a reduced, milk-and-water religion. Far too often the world has been presented with a mild and undemanding half-Christianity. The Gospel has been emasculated long enough. Preach Christ today in the total challenge of His high, imperious claim. Some will be scared, and some offended: but some, and they the most worth winning, will kneel in homage at His feet. (James Stewart, Heralds of God, 26–27)
(Desiring God 7/16/24) READMORE>>>>>
==timothy stewart=====
Dec 30, 2021: Religion News: Observers, detractors and preachers of religion who died in 2021
The Rev. Timothy Stewart. The president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention was the first top leader of the historically Black denomination from its international region.
Stewart died Sept. 17 at the age of 64.
He had served three years of his four-year term and presided over the August virtual annual session of the denomination that was home to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Stewart had been pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in his native Nassau, Bahamas, since he was 25. He also was a civic leader, serving as a board member of the Bahamas Development Bank, a member of the Bahamas Juvenile Panel and a chaplain to the country’s House of Assembly.
He led the PNBC’s fundraising efforts when Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas in 2019 and supplies were needed for its devastated islands.
In the storm’s aftermath, Stewart told RNS he did not feel his faith was being tested “I believe that this tragedy gives me an opportunity to affirm my faith and to apply my faith,” he told RNS. “In spite and in light of what has been a very tragic, very horrendous situation, we are forced to still see the grace of God.”
The Rev. Timothy Stewart. The president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention was the first top leader of the historically Black denomination from its international region.
Stewart died Sept. 17 at the age of 64.
He had served three years of his four-year term and presided over the August virtual annual session of the denomination that was home to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Stewart had been pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in his native Nassau, Bahamas, since he was 25. He also was a civic leader, serving as a board member of the Bahamas Development Bank, a member of the Bahamas Juvenile Panel and a chaplain to the country’s House of Assembly.
He led the PNBC’s fundraising efforts when Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas in 2019 and supplies were needed for its devastated islands.
In the storm’s aftermath, Stewart told RNS he did not feel his faith was being tested “I believe that this tragedy gives me an opportunity to affirm my faith and to apply my faith,” he told RNS. “In spite and in light of what has been a very tragic, very horrendous situation, we are forced to still see the grace of God.”
==william still===== |
William Still (October 7, 1821 – July 14, 1902) was an African-American abolitionist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a conductor of the Underground Railroad and was responsible for aiding and assisting at least 649 slaves to freedom towards North. Still was also a businessman, writer, historian and civil rights activist. Before the American Civil War, Still was chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, named the Vigilant Association of Philadelphia. He directly aided fugitive slaves and also kept records of the people served in order to help families reunite. He also advocated for temperance which motivated him to organize a mission Sabbath School for the Presbyterian Church. He was a member of the Freedmen's Aid Union and Commission, an officer of the Philadelphia Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored Persons, and an elder in the Presbyterian church (where he established Sabbath Schools to promote literacy including among freed blacks). William Still is best known for his self-published book The Underground Railroad (1872) where he documented the stories of formerly enslaved Africans who gained their freedom by escaping bondage. Still’s The Underground Railroad is the only first person account of Black activities on the Underground Railroad written and self-published by an African American. He hired agents to sell the book. His book went through three editions and was exhibited in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Still would continue to write. In 1874, he published An Address on Voting and Laboring where he justified his support for the reform candidate as oppose to the Republican candidate for mayor of Philadelphia.
May 7, 2023: Los Angeles Review of Books: A Historian Forgotten: On Andrew Diemer’s “Vigilance”
SOMETIME IN the fall of 1848, Henry Brown, an enslaved person living in Richmond, Virginia, made a decision. After watching slave traders carry away his wife and children, he vowed to escape to the North and raise enough money to buy his family’s freedom.
But how to do it? Escaping slavery was always dangerous, especially when fleeing from a city as far south as Richmond. His answer: a box. Against the advice of a white shopkeeper who agreed to help him, Brown decided on a far-fetched plan to pack himself inside a shipping crate and mail himself to the offices of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society at 107 North 5th Street in Philadelphia. The half-day voyage turned into a 27-hour journey, but Brown arrived safely, cramped but alive.
One of the men who welcomed Brown as he struggled out of the crate was a young Black office clerk named William Still. In the coming years, Still would lead Philadelphia’s local Vigilance Committee, an organization dedicated to stowing away hundreds, if not thousands, of freedom seekers as conductors on the Underground Railroad—the network of loosely aligned agents that illegally aided enslaved people as they escaped to freedom in the years before the Civil War.
SOMETIME IN the fall of 1848, Henry Brown, an enslaved person living in Richmond, Virginia, made a decision. After watching slave traders carry away his wife and children, he vowed to escape to the North and raise enough money to buy his family’s freedom.
But how to do it? Escaping slavery was always dangerous, especially when fleeing from a city as far south as Richmond. His answer: a box. Against the advice of a white shopkeeper who agreed to help him, Brown decided on a far-fetched plan to pack himself inside a shipping crate and mail himself to the offices of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society at 107 North 5th Street in Philadelphia. The half-day voyage turned into a 27-hour journey, but Brown arrived safely, cramped but alive.
One of the men who welcomed Brown as he struggled out of the crate was a young Black office clerk named William Still. In the coming years, Still would lead Philadelphia’s local Vigilance Committee, an organization dedicated to stowing away hundreds, if not thousands, of freedom seekers as conductors on the Underground Railroad—the network of loosely aligned agents that illegally aided enslaved people as they escaped to freedom in the years before the Civil War.
God has caused you to become pastor to some souls here who are as valuable to Him as any in the world–your quiet persistence will be a sign that you believe God has a purpose of grace for this people, and that htis purpose of grace will be promoted, not by gimmicks, or stunts, or newe ideas, but by the Word of God released in preaching by prayer.
--William Still; The Work of the Pastor
--William Still; The Work of the Pastor
To be true pastors, your whole life must be spent knowing the truth of this Word, not only verbally, propositionally, theologically, ut religiously, that is, devotionally, morally, in worshipping Him whom it reveals, and in personal obedience to Him whose commands it contains, in all the promised grace and threat of those commands. To be pastors you must be ‘fed men’, not only in knowledge, but in wisdom, grace, humility, courage, fear of God, and fearlessness of men
--William Still; The Work of the Pastor
--William Still; The Work of the Pastor
William Still
It is to feed the sheep on [biblical] truth that men are called to churches and congregations, whatever they may think they are called to do. If you think that you are called to keep a largely worldly organization, miscalled a church, going, with infinitesimal doses of innocuous sub-Christian drugs or stimulants, then the only help I can give you is to advise you to give up the hope of the ministry and go and be a street scavenger; a far healthier and more godly job, keeping the streets tidy, than cluttering the church with a lot of worldly claptrap in the delusion that you are doing a job for God. The pastor is called to feed the sheep, even if the sheep do not want to be fed. He is certainly not to become an entertainer of goats. Let goats entertain goats, and let them do it out in goatland. You will certainly not turn goats into sheep by pandering to their goatishness. Do we really believe that the Word of God, by His Spirit, changes, as well as maddens men? If we do, to be evangelists and pastors, feeders of sheep, we must be men of the Word of God.
--William Still; The Work of the Pastor
--William Still; The Work of the Pastor
==sohaib nazeer sultan=====
Dec 30, 2021: Religion News: Observers, detractors and preachers of religion who died in 2021
Imam Sohaib Nazeer Sultan. The interfaith leader was Princeton University’s Muslim chaplain and the author of the 2004 book “The Koran for Dummies.”
Sultan died on April 16 at age 40 after a diagnosis of a rare form of cancer. Known for his faith-inspired compassionate view of life, he was a public lecturer and writer on Islam, Interfaith America noted. His interfaith work aimed to build bridges between Muslims and people of other faiths.
Prior to his Princeton role, Sultan was the first Muslim chaplain at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In a YouTube conversation with Vineet Chander, Princeton’s Hindu chaplain, Sultan spoke about the role of rahmat, or mercy or grace, in accepting death: “Nobody wants to leave this world, there are too many attachments. … Whether you’re 40, or 80, or 120, you never want to leave, but at some point, you have to leave. This is the way that God has decreed the way the world to be.”
Imam Sohaib Nazeer Sultan. The interfaith leader was Princeton University’s Muslim chaplain and the author of the 2004 book “The Koran for Dummies.”
Sultan died on April 16 at age 40 after a diagnosis of a rare form of cancer. Known for his faith-inspired compassionate view of life, he was a public lecturer and writer on Islam, Interfaith America noted. His interfaith work aimed to build bridges between Muslims and people of other faiths.
Prior to his Princeton role, Sultan was the first Muslim chaplain at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In a YouTube conversation with Vineet Chander, Princeton’s Hindu chaplain, Sultan spoke about the role of rahmat, or mercy or grace, in accepting death: “Nobody wants to leave this world, there are too many attachments. … Whether you’re 40, or 80, or 120, you never want to leave, but at some point, you have to leave. This is the way that God has decreed the way the world to be.”
==Emanuel Swedenborg=======
Emanuel Swedenborg (Swedish born Emanuel Swedberg; 1688 – 29 March 1772) was a Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell (1758).
Emanuel Swedenborg Files
"When it is known that there is both an internal and an external man, and that truths and goods flow in from, or through, the internal man to the external, from the Lord, although it does not so appear, then those truths and goods, or the knowledges of the true and the good in the regenerating man, are stored up in his memory, and are classed among its knowledges (scientifica); for whatsoever is insinuated into the memory of the external man, whether it be natural, or spiritual, or celestial, abides there as memory-knowledge (scientificum), and is brought forth thence by the Lord. These knowledges are the "waters gathered together into one place," and are called "seas," but the external man himself is called the "dry (land)," and presently "earth," as in what follows. --E. Swedenborg 1668-1772
E. Swedenborg
And in the midst of the seven lampstands One like unto the Son of man, signifies the Lord as to the Word, from whom that church is. It is known from the Word, that the Lord called Himself "the Son of God," and also "the Son of man;" that by "the Son of God" He meant Himself as to the Divine Human, and by the "Son of man," Himself as to the Word, is fully demonstrated in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem concerning the Lord (L n. 19-28); and as it is there fully confirmed from the Word, it is unnecessary to add any further confirmation here. Now, because the Lord represented Himself before John as the Word, therefore as seen by him, He is called "the Son of man." He represented Himself as the Word, because the New Church is treated of, which is a church from the Word, and according to the understanding of it. That the church is from the Word, and that such as its understanding of the Word is, such is the church, may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem concerning the Sacred Scripture (Sacred n. 76-79). As the church is a church from the Lord through the Word, therefore the Son of man was seen in the midst of the lampstands; "in the midst" signifies in the inmost, from which the things which are round about, or which are without, derive their essence, here, their light or intelligence. That the inmost is the all in the things which are round about, or without, is shown in many places in The Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom; it is like light and flame in the midst, from which all the circumferences receive light and heat. "In the midst," has the same signification in the following passages in the Word:--
Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion; for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee (Isa. 12:6).
God is my King working salvation in the midst of the earth (Ps. 74:12). God doing mercy in the midst of the temple (Ps. 48:9).
God standeth in the assembly of God; he will judge in the midst of the gods (Ps. 82:1).
They are called "gods" who are in Divine truths from the Lord, and, abstractly, the truths themselves:--
Behold, I send an angel before thee; beware of his face, for My name is in the midst of him (Exod. 23:20, 21).
"The name of Jehovah" is all the Divine; "in the midst," is in the inmost, and thence in everything of it. "The midst" also signifies the inmost, and thence the all, in many other passages in the Word, where evils are also treated of, as in (Isa. 24:13; Jer. 23:9; Ps. 5:9; Jer. 9:4, 5; Ps. 36:1; 55:4; 62:4). These passages are adduced in order to show, that "in the midst of the lampstands" signifies in the inmost, from which the church and everything of it is derived; for the church and everything of it is from the Lord through the Word. --E. Swedenborg (1688-1772)
Cry out and shout, O inhabitant of Zion; for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee (Isa. 12:6).
God is my King working salvation in the midst of the earth (Ps. 74:12). God doing mercy in the midst of the temple (Ps. 48:9).
God standeth in the assembly of God; he will judge in the midst of the gods (Ps. 82:1).
They are called "gods" who are in Divine truths from the Lord, and, abstractly, the truths themselves:--
Behold, I send an angel before thee; beware of his face, for My name is in the midst of him (Exod. 23:20, 21).
"The name of Jehovah" is all the Divine; "in the midst," is in the inmost, and thence in everything of it. "The midst" also signifies the inmost, and thence the all, in many other passages in the Word, where evils are also treated of, as in (Isa. 24:13; Jer. 23:9; Ps. 5:9; Jer. 9:4, 5; Ps. 36:1; 55:4; 62:4). These passages are adduced in order to show, that "in the midst of the lampstands" signifies in the inmost, from which the church and everything of it is derived; for the church and everything of it is from the Lord through the Word. --E. Swedenborg (1688-1772)
