OT SS Lesson #10
Though it’s only an “additional teaching idea” in Lesson 12, Jacob’s ladder has captured my imagination due to some conversations I’ve recently had with Christian evangelicals.
Many lament that Christmas has turned into a commercial gift-giving holiday. However, the Bible shows that gift-giving happened right after the birth of Christ. The Book of Matthew tells of 3 gifts the Wise Men gave: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Prof Deirdre Good of the General Theological Seminary in New York tells us the meaning of these particular gifts in Mystery of the 3 Kings: “The gift of gold is for royalty. The gift of frankincense is for divinity. The gift of myrrh is for death.”
Everyone is familiar with the Twelve Days of Christmas. It’s a funny song where the gift-giver gives strange gifts of “lords a leaping”, and various birds, including turtledoves and a “partridge in a pear tree.” (Really, who would want all those birds?) With the 12 days of Christmas, it seems the gifts are given the 12 days before Christmas. The Bible tells us of the first gifts given in celebration of Christ’s birth by the Wise Men, and one tradition holds that the Wise Men visited 12 days after Christ’s birth. January 6 is celebrated in some parts of the world as 3 Kings Day.
In my endless search for connections between faith and music, I came across a stark and beautiful sight last month. First of all, I finally bought a Sleep album after knowing about them for years. Sleep is a sludgy, brutal Doom/Stoner Metal band from the early ’90s, and I really can’t explain why I love them so much. But that’s beside the point. I was reading about their history, and discovered that one of their original guitarists, Justin Marler, had left the band to become an Orthodox monk.
David W. Bercot, a Texas attorney and Evangelical Christian, embarked on a quest to discover what Christians believed and practiced before the Nicene Creed. What he learned caused him to seriously re-evaluate his beliefs, to eventually change his religious affiliation, and to present his findings and analysis in his book Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up. Although the book represents a critique of mainstream Evangelical Christianity in light of the teachings of the Early Church Fathers, Bercot’s analysis has surprising and thought-provoking application to Mormonism as well. While some may see Will the Real Heretics Stand Up as evidence that Joseph Smith successfully restored many Early Christian doctrines and practices, others may see the overlap between Early Christians and Mormons as the predictable result of Mormonism’s historical connection to the Campbellite Restorationist movement.
Loading ...