I have just come back from Kirk and post Kirk brunch with my boys. During the prayers for others, we prayed for two son in-laws: one is having major surgery to clear cancer (which he developed but one year after marrying the daughter of one of the elders) and the other has just been diagnosed.

This week I’ve been dealing with this. It heavily reminds me that life is short, that our 20 year plans can be destroyed in an instant, and we live in this world by grace. The ideas we are taught about having rights and dignity are comforting lies — any woman who has given birth knows that dignity is not a thing that is there: and there is very little dignity in post chemotherapy vomitus.

The sermon today was about Jesus leaving a bunch of people at Simon Peters house who needed healing.

Mark 1:29-39

2 Timothy 2:14-21

I’m going to start this with a quote from David Murrow’s new posting at Boundless.

If you’re looking for a church with young, single men, they’re generally harder to find in small, traditional congregations, and easier to find in megachurches. This is no accident: These jumbo congregations work hard to make guys feel at home. Megachurches have nixed many of the feminine cultural elements ingrained in traditional churches: group hugs, handholding, emotive displays, personal testimonies and prayer-and-share. They’ve removed the banners, quilts, curtains, doilies and flowers from their worship spaces. Some have zapped every “Jesus is my boyfriend” song from their worship sets.

Megachurches are into excellence – and so are men. Guys love a challenging sermon that doesn’t stray into condemnation or moralism. They like mind-stretching discussions and healthy debate. Men appreciate a nice facility that’s well kept.

Now, this is half correct. Getting rid of theologically dubious songs (particularly the latently homoerotic “Jesus is my boyfriend” ones) is obvious. Cutting down praise and worship works. Professional music and non frilliness work for Western males, as any bar owner knows.

But if you don’t deal with some of the issues that beset men things will go horribly wrong. We (even in the church) do not want things discussed and emoted on. We want to solve things — and help. Not be hugged or cried over.

We want to see our children, not be shamed from attending church by the sisterhood who have decided that the breakdown of our marriages was all our fault. And we don’t want to date the women who have destroyed three other men, but still see themselves as righteous.

In short, we want equal preaching. We are prepared to correct our lives. But we want to know that we will not be the only people held accountable by the leadership. It is quite easy to market a church to men. It is a lot harder to make it safe for men:. the current dating and sexual environment, which allows rapid and easy separation and divorce (of the person, but continuing access to the ex’es chequebook via alimony and child support)  has to be confronted.

Because divorce is destroying the middle aged men and women in the church. And here I speak as someone who has been divorced. The church needs to stand for the vows people have made… in the congregation. There need to be prayers for the married people, and teaching that destroys the memes of entitlement, selfishness, false self sacrifice and non biblical submission that seem to take strong men and remove their spine: gentle, godly women and make them consumed with bitterness and hate.

In short, we need to change. As a church. My boys do attend church: but our church is making some of these moves. For the current path of accommodating the fashions of this world will lead to the loss of effective witness against the idols of the age. And we will be held accountable, for we have not done our duty. We will have been neither salt, nor light.

Yesterday the news from the family got worse. I told the boys, I then had to tell my ex-sife directly so that she did not get it distorted from the boys… I takled to the people involved: I we were cracking quite bad jokes at each other and discussing gossip. . I used the goodwill and networks I have built up to get those I trust to pray, giving enough details that they can pray wisely.

Then the boys distracted me by looking at odd computer equipment, I read camera reviews (from ones that I would like to buy to medium and large format cameras) and I did a LOT of photo blogging.

The trouble is that I can name the coping styles I used, and grade them. I am trained tn them. The biggest challenge yesterday was dealing with people who do not have such a vocabulary, where the simplest and correct action is not to share, It will harm them and you.

For no one said that this life was going to be easy in Christ.

Hebrews 12:12-24

¹²Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, ¹³and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

¹⁴Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. ¹⁵See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled. ¹⁶See to it that no one becomes like Esau, an immoral and godless person, who sold his birthright for a single meal. ¹⁷You know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, even though he sought the blessing with tears.

¹⁸You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, ¹⁹and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. ²⁰(For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.” ²¹Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”) ²²But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, ²³and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, ²⁴and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

In our anger and grief, in our rage, in our hope: we must still act wisely. We must not let ourself be ruled by our emotions. In the end, love is a choice. Saying the words of peace is a choice.

And if you cannot work out what to do, do what needs to be done today. Our life is made of the choices we make habitual. If our emotions are in turmoil our body may help as we move and do. At times we will be polite and not fully truthful. But none of us ever is, for our hearts are desperately wicked, and we lie to ourselves about this.

And our character comes to fpre in a time of crisis. If you don’t practice the disciplines of prayer, study, living in peace and  acting by choice when times are good, you will act rashly and harshly in crisis. At the time you need help, it will be lost to you: and people then will not return to help, even if you. like Esau, repent in tears.

Haley is back blogging, after the sudden death of her father. A commentator there linked to Matthew Parris, who talks about how the void those who die leave is a form of meaning.

Quite simply, he has left a space that will never be filled; therefore he is, paradoxically, still here because the space is still here, and I can feel it all the time. The gap Dad left is not a vacuum, a void, a soft area of low pressure to be filled. The gap is hard-edged, chiselled by him into my life, measured by his worth, and ineradicable.

With this realisation has come another: that this sorrow is not itself a cause for sorrow. Regret is not a cause for regret. We ought to be sorry. We ought to regret. Death is not a ‘wound’ to be ‘healed’ or a ‘scar’ to ‘fade’. Once someone has been in the world, they have always been in the world; and once they have gone their absence will be in the world forever, part of the world; in Dad’s case part of mine. This is a good thing.

There is a time for therapeutic language, to talk about healing, understanding, reconciliation, and even that most horrible of words, closure. But there is a time not to do this. Not to say this will go away, this is not happening. Some pains need to be borne.

And we need to be able to talk about these things, not censor them. We must stop being silent, or speaking in euphemisms. For we are being asked to place chains around our thoughts, whips to our Soul, as Nick Cohen points out. Max Dunbar, in his review of this book for 3 AM magazine, describes how this happens.

Everyday corporate censorship is subtle and discreet and insidious. England is the laughing stock of the free world thanks to its libel laws, which allow every quack, fraud, oligarch, shakedown artist and pederast to silence criticism for big payouts. Cohen’s chapter on libel is a sorry parade of wealthy and respectable scumbags: the Icelandic bank Kaupthing sued a Danish newspaper for its investigations into the bank’s links between Russian oligarchs and tax havens; Saudi banker Sheihk Khalid bin Mafouz sued American writer Rachel Ehrenfeld, who linked him with Islamist terror; fugitive director Roman Polanski sued Vanity Fair in England (he had to appear by videolink to avoid being picked up and extradited for child rape).

Many of the cases had little connection to the UK. Rachel Ehrenfeld’s book Funding Evil sold twenty-three copies here, through Amazon. But England has the most litigant-friendly libel laws – it places the burden of proof on the defendant. Rich litigants with multinational business interests will contrive a UK connection to win the right to a hearing, and judges are happy to oblige. Win or lose, a libel case can bankrupt most defendants. Most people will retract and apologise rather than take up a great struggle and even greater risks.

What is important is not so much censorship as pre-censorship – whips in the soul. Cohen argues that ‘with censorship in all its forms’:

[...] you should not just think about the rejected books, newspaper articles, TV scripts and plays, but remember the far larger class of works that authors begin then decide to abandon. The words that were never written, the arguments that were never made.

Do you believe in freedom of speech? Are you sure? You’re a talented writer, a good professional, you have something to say, a story to tell, a warning to give, a truth to expose. But are you sure you want to risk your life, your job, your home, your relationships? Are you sure you want to go through all of that just to write?

The threat is of the random example rather than the boot upon the neck. Consider the case of the unfortunate Paul Chambers, who tried to catch a flight to Belfast from the East Midlands in 2010. On the day of the flight, Chambers learned that the cold weather had closed the airport. His jokey tweet – ‘Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!’ – resulted in an arrest, an anti-terror conviction, the loss of two jobs and a £1,000 fine.

It is the same with religious censorship. You never know what might set the fundamentalists off – so best not to talk about faith at all, except in the most reverent and prescribed tones. We are seeing the slow transfer of rights from individuals – living, breathing individuals, with cares and needs, and hopes and dreams – to the ideology, the belief system, the concept, the community and the group.

And the government does not help us here. We may, in New Zealand, not (as yet) have a tree trade agreement with the US — and this is for practical, not moral reasons, for we have one with China — but the HuffPo commentators note that Kim Dotcom of Megaupload should be extradited because the test in the US is “balance of probabilities”.  Now I am no lawyer, but the NBR today had (behind a paywall: I read the dead tree version of this so can’t link) a simple defense. The treaty for extradition between the US and New Zealand lists the crimes for which one can be extradited: and (unlike a similar treaty with the UK, it appears that “racketerring” and fraud are not listed in that treaty.However, the fascists federales have frozen all the Megaupload accounts, which apparently is leading to the server companies stating they will delete files in the Megaupload servers. It would be interesting to see how the feds defend due process if, say, a companies records, or medical records, were on those servers and they are now gone.

You see, this is a time when things are changing: the credit driven bubble of the last two decades is slowly being allowed to degrade, devalue, and disappear, and the truths of the 1950s are becoming just nice myths. We need to argue. We need to seek truth, and not hide from it. Cat Valente, after describing her cats, dogs, chickens and island off Maine… was supposed to be writing about future focuses SF but instead wrote this.

To be honest, Brave New Worldseems kind of cute to me these days. At least the oppressive government thought to hand out Soma so trod-upon people wouldn’t be so goddamn miserable! Our governments just say: suck it up, epsilon assholes. Might as well be stamped on our coins.

It’s tough to say everything’s going to be ok. Living at the end of one way of life and the beginning of another sucks. Most people just want to be fat and happy and do some meaningful work, have kids, and die. Except for dying, the ability to do all of that is up in the air these days. And that’s where we are. Industrial life is in its death throes and it isn’t pretty or fair. Daddy Tolkien will tell us it was no treat living in the just-post Industrial Revolution, either. After all, we all know our history: what follows Revolutions? Usually, Terror.

That’s why, I think, there’s been a small but concerted effort to “bring back” optimistic SF in the last few years. We’re looking for ways to know it’ll all work out without mass extinction or widespread horror. The trouble is that massive technological change is not optimistic for some people, it’s frightening. Terrifying. And not just mainstream “mundanes,” or else what is the recent newfound love of the 19th century all about? What else has driven half my generation back to spinning wheels, knitting needles, preserving jars, and livestock? Everything is uncertain–let’s go back and pretend it’s still possible to live in the Shire.

But, folks, Tolkien did not live in the Shire. He lived in Oxford between two wars, and during what became the Cold War. He attended to his research, the sacraments, and wrote after the vegetable patch was weeded, the children fed, and the marking done. His generation was moulded by Christianity — from Belloc to Lewis — such that the intellectual leaders made a forest, not a few trees standing. In crisis, Post modernism does not work. But, as I am experiencing today, a church, even one distributed by email, does.

I’ve had some bad news about the health of a close relative who lives at some distance in the last 24 hours. To find that someone is seriously ill when he is younger than 30 is incredibly challenging

This was in this morning’s lectionary. I don’t know hwy I found it comforting, but I did.

Hebrews 12:3-9

³Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart. ⁴In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. ⁵And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children — “My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; ⁶for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.” ⁷Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? ⁸If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. ⁹Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them

One of the problems here is the distance and the other things that go on. There is a sense that one should drop what one is doing and disappear to be with him. But… I have boys just started at school/ I need to give suppoert and practical assistance. I have already invoked the prayer chains in my church and my parent’s church.

Whaleoil on why women make bad choices Chur is local slang. Mokopuna is Maori for children.

All the Chur-derellas out there in the heaving, pathetic underclass are thinking they are going to marry a Prince and have many mokopuna and live happily ever after. Sadly for them the fairytale of Chur-derella is a nightmare that ends in pain.

The good Captain has some excellent linkage today as well. Following around… it looks like at least one trial of distance learning has succeeded.

This past fall Thrun and Peter Norvig, research director at Google (where Thrun also works, designing cars that drive themselves), teamed up to teach online and free of charge one of their regular Stanford courses, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, not just to Stanford students but to anyone who wanted to take them. Not only would the online students sit through Thrun and Norvig’s lectures, but the two instructors would test them via quizzes and written assignments, grade their work, and assign them a class ranking. Only Stanford students would be eligible to receive Stanford credit for the course, but non-Stanfordians would receive a “statement of achievement” that, together with their grades and class rankings, could be used to demonstrate that they had mastered the Stanford-level material in the course.

Thrun and Norvig’s bricks-and-mortar course, designed for graduate students and advanced-level undergraduates, had always been one of Stanford’s largest and most popular, with nearly 200 students from a range of disciplines signing up every time the two instructors offered the course. But the enrollment in last fall’s online version was exponential: 160,000 students from 190 countries registered, with about 20,000 of them completing the coursework and receiving grades that were generally on a par with those of the 175 Stanford students who took the bricks-and-mortars version.

My issue with this is marking. It takes me about 90 minutes to mark 30 students essay questions each quarter… per question. When I have to (every second or so year) mark final written exams (where the class approaches 400) it takes me a few days. After around 90 minutes the quality of my marking decreases.  The only way I can see you can grade 20 000 people is by using computers… and multi-choice tests simply do not tell you if someone has mastered the task at hand. (It tells you that they can remember the book, which is another thing). Teaching might scale, but training and mentoring does not.  Stanford may have a bunch of graduate students they use as slave labour to mark things, but my workplace thinks that is (a) exploitative (b) decreases the quality of feedback (to the teacher and student: you know how well you taught by the answers you get).

The other limiting factor, in medicine (and nursing) — and I think also in apprenticeships — is access to hands on time doing the job. You have to make the students part of the clinical team who take histories “for real” and do procedures “for real” under supervision (initially, but they should be able to do this well without you checking everything before they sit finals). That is the true limit to class sizes — the number of services that can support students and use them to improve the quality of care for patients.

Another link is to Dr Helen, who talks about Nagging being toxic. Will S. used this to produce a word study on nagging, on which nothing good is said about the practice. Elspeth, who read the same article, expands on this.

My husband recently shared with me a conversation he had with a gentleman at work. This husband said that his Bose headphones are his best friend. That there is  no way he could live with his wife without them. She nags him all the time. He puts them on after dinner in his office and cranks them up even though he knows it’s bad for his auditory health. They are his refuge from her nagging.

Several other men joined in to share the sentiment. Since my husband works in a male-dominated field, the men often feel free to say what most every man is thinking but would never say in mixed company. Out of the 9 men present, only my husband and one other married man testified that they could not relate to having a nagging wife. They were both greatly envied for their good fortune. It goes without saying that this talk did nothing to make the 2 single guys look forward to married life.

Elspeth simply does not accept that this is appropriate wifely behaviour, and she has been consistent on this for a while. The commentariat (mainly women) noted that they did not like being nagged… and most of them had learned not to do it. Which is one of the reasons I enjoy TC.

[As a complete side note, WordPress spells American. I spell British. WordPress needs a plugin that spells the Queen's English correctly. And handles my deviations into pompous, indeed querulous, erudition]

Onto some hopeful things. In this time of economic difficulty, there are people who continue to have the human impulse of charity.

While all I’ve said above is the usual (of my experience), there have also been instances of amazing grace and Christlike giving that have blown us away. At our darkest, deepest time of need, when we had lost our home and were moving into our current two-bedroom house with five children, a dear Christian sister offered my college age daughter to live with her, rent free. Months later, a group of friends insisted we go out to dinner with them, and before we could make any excuse, they made clear the meal was “on them”. When we hesitated, they made our presence seem so desired, we couldn’t say no. That evening, I saw my husband more relaxed, and truly enjoying himself, than I had in months. Another dear brother gave us a very large sum of cash to help us get through. He and his wife said said they so loved us, and wanted to help, that it was an actual ‘relief’ for them to give to us. That was a while ago. When I recently mentioned the gift to this same friend, he looked confused, and then said, “Oh. I completely forgot about that.” He FORGOT?!?!?! Didn’t hold it over us, or didn’t judge us, didn’t shame us. Just helped, and then forgot about it. But not about us, as they are dear friends.

Bonald has just given me a warning about what to expect if the photo blog takes off. (This site uses WordPress but is hosted elsewhere, and costs me a multiple of $30 a year, but the photo blog is “free”, and there is a risk it will be hit by advts. as Bonald was).

“I’ve just paid WordPress 30 bucks to keep the porn off my site for a year.” So much for “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it”!

I’m glad he did do this, because his discussion of the rhetorical tactics in dealing with contraception is masterful.  Now, I disagree with him about contraception itself being a total evil: it is a relative one. Humanis Vitae argues, as Bonald did, that the use of artificial contraception is an offense against natural law and increases the moral hazard of young women and men engaging in immoral acts. As the limerick says.

There was a young lady named Wilde

Who kept herself quite undefiled

By thinking of Jesus

and social diseases

And the fear of having a child.

I see some uses for hormonal manipulation:(a)The control of symptms within the menstrual cycle, including pain, heavy bleeding, acne, and the symptoms of oestrogen withdrawal during menopause. (b)The spacing of children, so women recover properly from pregnancy (c) the prevention or amelioration of the consequences of sexual assault (the morning after pill) (d) At times the management of moods — although alternatives exist.

However, there is a risk. And that is that people will see sex (of any type) as safe.  It is not, for it is an intimate act in which any bacteria you have will travel to the other. It is designed to make children, which indeed is one of the reasons for Marriage in the first place, as the Bard said

The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

Now, when the pill was released, it was given to married women only, and the Catholic Church advised against it (as it had other forms of contraception, such as condoms). It took the sexual and feminist revolution to open the floodgates, which lead (in part) to the current raunch culture. So there is some good in contraception, but a moral hazard.

(I guess I have to say this, but I am not Catholic, I’m reformed. But if you are Catholic, you cannot pick and choose. You have said you will follow the teaching, because you see the Roman church as the true church and believe they are guided by the Holy Spirit.  You cannot argue against clear teaching and say you are Catholic).

I’m going to finish this by quoting some very wise words from Ordo Amoris about the current meme that a man should court — ie. ask permission to see a woman for marriage without really having spent time with her.

I find it incredibly selfish that young girls expect these elaborate rituals and I wonder how many real men find that compelling.  As Anna said on Downton Abbey last night, “I’d rather have the right man than the right wedding,” and I would add the engagement to that.

Then perhaps the most controversial thing of all in the article is this:

“God has prepared one special person for you to marry. That’s right: Jesus is our heavenly matchmaker. You don’t need to actively search for a mate; simply pray and God will plop that perfect person down in front of you one day.”

I am a reformed Christian who believes in God’s sovereignty and yet I see that this attitude causes great mischief.  The worst thing is that it keeps young homeschooled girls from trying, from showing interest or even keeping up with themselves, even to think more highly of themselves than they ought.

This is not wise. In fact it sounds like a Christian version of Churl-rella.

Image from Panantheniac Amphora, courtesy BBC

Yesterday the younger son was in my office at work when I finally got away from the ward. He is not happy with his new Physical Education teacher, who made him do an endurance test: step-ups onto a high box, push-ups, burpees — to number, and to time. This morning he came into my room saying his legs hurt.

He has some sympathy. I’m back in the gym after the break, and despite walking most days, restarting any exercise programme is painful. (And I did warn him, when he chose to stay in the hotel room rather than go swimming and walking , that he would suffer around now. Pain is truly a teacher).

Today the writer of Hebrews uses an analogy of athleticism. You do not run a race in your suit, encumbered with a few kilos of gear. You run dressed lightly: in fact, in the time of the early church, the athletes were naked.  And there were enough Greek cities and Hellenized  Jews that the analogy would work.

Hebrews 11:32-12:2

Every day the word tries to distract us. We get caught up in what celebrities are doing, and we look at superficialities such as just telling men to be good fathers without looking at why the violence and divorce laws drive men away. A Pastor can be destroyed if his wife leaves him. And you cannot expect courage when you have trained it out of a man to make him a good Church Going Nice Guy.

Look at this list of people of faith.

Hebrews 11:23-31

23By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. 24By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward. 27By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king’s anger; for he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible. 28By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.

29By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. 30By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. 31By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.

Moses was a murderer. The Jews were idolators, cross-grained, disobedient. And Rahab was indeed a prostitute. God chose them anyway. But I can see that Moses would not be acceptable in a modern 20trh Century Church, nor would his sister Miriam the prophetess. Not would Jesus. Can you imagine any modern Pastor preaching this?

John 6:52-59

52The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” 59He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

This is one of those passages that have led to the Catholics talking about the saving power of the communion table. However, the thing about this is that it is an act, it is a choice. Our faith is shown by our actions. Like Moses, we have to choose Christ instead of the fleeting distractions of this word.

Nor should we let the church push us into a mold: of mild mannered sheep. We are Christ’s not the church. Most men, as part of their nature, have a somewhat wild, feral edge as well as an internal little boy. The feral edge, disciplined and trained, keeps us and our families in faith. (This is why men need to meet together. Men can confront the hard edges each person has — and we often do ti by doing a few tasks together. Most women simply do not “get it”.). The little boy comes out in our enjoyment of new toys, tools, and our hobbies. And in our appreciation of tbe beauty in this world: from trees to the sea to the woman beside us.

But it does not come out in being some kind of false “nice guy” who does not have problems. Being a man instead is about dealing with problems: the ones that result from our own errors and sins and the ones that happen around us. We are here to follow Christ, and ignore the demands of the world. And in many ways, the power structure of the modern church is part of the world.

[Quick note. I am not saying that we should abandon the church to make something new. Instead we need to use the church to meet as men, reclaim the structure (with leadership by men) and let God begin the process of correcting the church. For the wordly, divorce tolerating, female and queer led branches of the church will die. The branches who choose Christ and at present are opposing the spirit of this age, and will live.

Choose wisely. You can either follow Christ or be a good Churchian. You can’t do both.