Finding Hope Through Discovery in Bible Study

  The Great Awakening (Jesus as Our Sinless Mediator)   February 19 Larry R Evans   Introduction   Perhaps you recently read of a priest in Phoenix, Arizona who resigned because he had made a priestly mistake!  The mistake?  He incorrectly performed thousands of baptisms over several decades.  He had changed one word in the baptismal pronouncement.  When baptizing the infant he said, “We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.”  Did you catch what he said wrong?  He reports that he said, “ ‘I’  baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.”   As a “priest” he implied by using “ We ” that it was the community that baptizes a person, rather than Christ. It is believed it is Christ, in the person of the human priest, who presides at all sacraments – not the community and not even the priest.  The Arizona priest was horrified when he realized what he had done.  Apparently, it is believed that the baptisms were not valid. He said

February 5, 2022 Larry R Evans   Introduction   In October 1969, Samuel Beckett, an Irish novelist and philosopher, wrote a short play called “Breath.”  It is an understatement to say it was short. From the time the curtains opened to the time they closed was 35 seconds.  It could be said that the play has three acts.  (1) It opens with darkness and then the cry of a baby is heard. Next (2), as the lighting begins and gradually intensifies the sound of inhaling is heard.  What is seen now is trash, nothing but trash. (3) Then as the light begins to fade the sound of exhaling or a death gurgle is heard and then total darkness.  In 35 seconds Beckett summarized his view of life which is nothing more than trash. Such a view of life leaves nothing to imagine except despair and emptiness and many questions that such a perspective does not answer.   Two years ago, I invited Dr. Richard Rice of Loma Linda University to speak for a conference we held at Loma Linda. He is the author of an excel