Saturday Ramblings

I have returned from my conference and I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot about it over the next couple of days. I took 12+ pages of notes I have to read through and sort out, but I do have a few initial thoughts.

James White is a very good communicator. I really enjoyed his seminars and learned a lot from him. His talk on evangelizing to Catholics was especially good and entirely Biblical. He is a man that is not afraid to back down from a fight and I respect him for that. Many people don’t. I made sure to introduce myself and tell him that I read and enjoy his blog. Then I left lest I sound like a fan boy…

Rich Ganz gave some great talks on Judaism and evangelizing to Jews. He tried to teach us a bit about the Jewish mindset in order that we could understand where they are coming from in a religious context. I’ll write something about this next week, I think. The friend who accompanied me this weekend is Jewish and I think he found Rich’s talks pretty interesting.

The one thing that held true with all the talks was an emphasis on the fact that only Christianity (and Protestant Christianity, to be exact) offers a true assurance of pardon to people. Catholics may commit a mortal sin which would remove grace until they confess and are absolved of their sin. Muslims, even the greatest Muslim, Mohammed himself, have no assurance of their place in eternity. Jews are much the same. So time and again we were told that as Christians we can offer peace to people - the peace that only God offers and only God can guarantee to us.

I went in that church as one who was spiritually thirsty. I came out refreshed. It felt so good just to drink from the Word of God for an evening and a day.

And now on to other subjects…

The NFL can begin the season on a Thursday and even change the time of a game in order to avoid hurricanes, but the season doesn’t truly begin until Sunday. I look forward to kicking back on the couch for a few hours tomorrow afternoon. It promises to be a good day of football. A couch, a good book, a football game and a glass of Coke makes for a great day. Throw in a plate of nachos and it just got even better. To be honest, my Scottish Presbyterian conscience bothers me a little bit in watching the game on Sunday, but I suspect that may mostly be legalism.

I do believe that is all I have to say. I am going to sit down with my notes and try to put together some thoughts to write about next week.