Jamie123

One lyric I puzzled over for years was from the theme song to Top Cat. It sounded to me like: "Presentelactual (?) close friends get to call him TC, providing it's waiting for tea." Years layer I found out it was: "Whose intellectual close friends get to call him TC, providing it's with dignity." By the way, when I was a kid, the show was renamed Boss Cat in the UK, because of a name clash with a brand of cat food. An additional "Boss Cat" title card was added, and it was written "Boss Cat" in the TV listing, but it was still sung "Top Cat" in the theme song, and the character was called "Top Cat" (or TC) in the show, and us kids always referred to the show "Top Cat" so it was a bit pointless really.

I once started reading a book called The Bloodline of the Holy Grail by Lawrence Gardener, which argued that Moses was the same historical character as the Pharaoh Akhenaten - the father of King Tut - who preached monotheism. According to Gardener, he was overthrown and fled into the desert accompanied by his followers who called him "The Mose" - which (so Gardener claimed) means "the heir". Forty years later their descendants re-entered history as the Israelites. I got about 1/3 of the way through before I realized it was trash* and stopped reading - though from the blurb on the back, his main thesis is that the surviving Jacobites (descendants of the Catholic James II of England (VII or Scotland)) are not only the rightful heirs of the British throne, but are also the descendants (and heirs) of Jesus. I still have the book somewhere. *Just to give you an idea, he'd make some totally unsubstantiated statement in chapter x. Then in chapter x+1 he'd refer to the same "fact" and give it a nice scholarly-looking reference. When you looked up the reference, it would point you back to the same statement in chapter x.

I think James White meant it as a kind of reductio ad absurdum (he is as anti-abortion as any LDS). His alternative idea was that God has his Elect (and presumably also his Reprobate) amongst unborn children. I find this idea almost as disturbing as the alternative... P.S. Although now I think about it, I have heard other evangelical preachers (not James White) explain away the massacres of large numbers of people, including many children, at the hands of the Israelites, as God sending the children to heaven (rather than letting them grow up with their reprobate parents and go to hell). I was never very convinced by that argument either.

I'd be interested in hearing your ghostly tale! Here's my own ghostly tale as upfront payment: (I turn off the lights and shine a torch up at my face.) We were staying at my grandparents' house on the Isle of Wight. The Island is a ghostly place to start with, and though I've been there more times than I can count (the most recent being this past summer) this is the only ghostly experience I can remember having there. Anyway my brother and I (we were kids at the time) had been picking apples for our grandparents from the tree in the garden. We loved doing this (it was a very tall and exciting tree) but we had the added incentive that our grandfather paid us. After one one day's climbing and picking he gave us 50p (which must have been the equivalent of about $10 in modern US money). A lovely bright shiny fifty pence piece: As we were getting ready for bed (we shared a double bed - and my brother always kept me awake half the night complaining about my snoring) I asked my brother if he had the 50p piece safe. He went through all his pockets and couldn't find it. I went through all my pockets and couldn't find it either. We stood side by side by the bed, totally perplexed. Then I felt something brush past my shoulder. The 50p coin shot between us plopped onto the bed. No one else but us was in the room. So that's the ghostly tale of the fifty pence piece. Over to you now...

And of course all little children go to heaven (assuming they die before they reach a certain age). I think most Christians would agree with this, though I do remember watching a video by James White (that notorious Calvinist!) arguing that if that were true, abortion clinics were doing the greatest service for the Kingdom of God!

How cute!

Reminds me of The Pit and The Pendulum. (Spoiler: he gets away!)

Scary pumpkins frighten the whillies out of me...

Cats, generally speaking, do understand about reflections. If you place a mirror in front of a cat, tap on it and say "who's that in there?" the cat will take no notice. I have seen youtube videos where a cat mistakes its own reflection for another cat, but I've never known a cat to do it in real life.

I was in two minds whether to mention this, but most scholars think Isaiah 52 ought to end at verse 12. Isaiah 52:13-15 and the whole of 53 are collectively called the "fourth servant song" or "the song of the suffering servant". The chapter/verse system we use today was devised in 1227 by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. Something, I suppose, must have prompted Langton to put the chapter division where he did, and "modern scholars" are not necessarily right.

Isaiah 53! I totally love it!

Yes indeed - I got that point. What I'm saying is that perhaps the custom was so well understood by Jesus' listeners that he didn't need to explain it. We on the other hand do need an explanation as we usually bring our own party clothes. (I'm being my own interlocutor here - the poor man's Paul!)

I've been thinking about this on and off all afternoon, and I think I could offer another insight: that Jesus deliberately made this story ridiculous in order to give it shock and surprise value. It is not something that would ever actually happen in the real world. We have a king - not just a rich man, but an actual king. Kings, in those days, were not people you trifled with. You certainly did not kill a king's servants - just for fun - just because they came to summon you to a feast. It was an idiotic thing to do and the result was inevitable. Yet it was exactly what the Israelites had done. Could they really be surprised by how God had dealt with them? It's the same with the parable of the vinyard (Matthew 21:33-41). Would you send your son to reason with a bunch of cut throats who'd already murdered half your servants? I don't think you would! Yet God loved the Israelites so much that he'd done exactly that! And the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). For a son to ask for his inheritance while his father was still alive was a supreme insult. And for the father to welcome his son back with joy after he had squandered it all on prostitutes - that was just plain ridiculous! Yet that is the extent of God's love for his children. We accept the oddness of these stories with a shrug because we're so used to them. There could be value in recognising their silliness as part of their intended effect!

Very interesting - he glosses over the first two "nasty bits" - though of course they weren't relevant to his message. The speaker seems to read a lot into the story that's not there in the text. I've always thought it odd that the king should expect people grabbed at random off the streets to have their wedding clothes to hand, so it does seem reasonable that he should have provided them himself. But Jesus does not say this. The Calvinists* will say that God chooses some for salvation and others for damnation for reasons inscrutable for us: that whatever the man's reason was for not having a robe, he was simply not one of the Elect. On the other hand, perhaps the custom of a host providing robes for his guest was something the original listeners would have assumed. Also, it's interesting to hear "and he was speechless" considered. (Those words are usually brushed over.) Maybe this really is Jesus telling us that the man really didn't have an excuse - like "my robe is at home" or "I'm too poor to afford a robe" etc. Sometimes words which seem insignificant, or mere embroidery, do have a meaning we easily miss. *I use the word "Calvinist" in its modern sense. I'm well aware that John Calvin was not overly big on the idea of predestination.

It's fine I know you are teasing! 😁 To be honest I find it hard to differentiate between US accents. I can usually recognize a Southern accent from a Northern one - though I find it harder to tell Northern USA from Canadian. There are differences like ou>oo ( though I have met Canadians who say "ou" the same as me). Even when the "oo" is there, I rarely notice unless I'm listening out for it. The overall North American "twang" drowns it out. I suppose I recognize Brooklyn/Queens/Bronx etc. - though mostly thanks to Bugs Bunny. I have always found the accents of southern England (well to the west of London) somewhat similar to American. Some of my cousins grew up in Hampshire, and as a kid I always thought they sounded American. I have never confused any American accent with Australian though.

Or it could be just me... It's not a word I hear spoken very often so don't assume my way is the British way. By the way, Britain has as many regional dialects as the USA. A lot of Americans will, on meeting a Brit who doesn't sound like either the Queen* or Paul McCartney, assume he's from Australia. I grew up in Leicester, and though I never quite mastered the accent, I can usually recognize it: Leicestonian: "Ey up! Av come frum Ow-be an stopped at the Shew station on me way te Lest-oh." (The syllables "be" and "oh" are hard - like in "better" and "hotter".) Translation: "Hey up! (Hello). I've come from Oadby and stopped at the Shell** station on my way to Leicester." My sister in law has a very strong Leicestonian accent, and she was always being mistaken for an Australian. *I should say "the King" now, but I'm still not used to having a king. **The "L" sound nearly always changes to a "W" when it's in the middle or at the end of a word. I acquired this somewhat - for example I'd sometimes catch myself saying "uncuw" instead of "uncle".

At church today we had the "Parable of the Wedding Feast": Matthew 22:1-14, which is what I call "the nasty version". These are the "nasty parts": The wedding guests (or those who would have been the wedding guests) beat up and kill the king's servants. The king sends his soldiers to kill the murderers and burn down their city. (Isn't it a bit odd that they all lived in the same city? And what about the people living in that city who were not murderers?) When the king notices one of his guests not wearing a "wedding robe" he doesn't just have him ejected: he has him "bound hand and foot" and thrown out "into the darkness" with "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (*shudder*) The "nice version", Luke 14:15-23, is the same story (almost) but with the nasty bits removed. So what's going on? Did Luke base his account on Matthew's, but edit out the nasty parts? Or did Jesus tell the same story more than once, changing some of the details? Let's go with the nasty version... This mirrors Jewish history - God sent his prophets to the Jews, but they persecuted and murdered them. So God sent the Babylonians to destroy their nation and burn down their city. (Exactly what we've been talking about in the BoM reading group - what Lehi was running away from.) Then God opens his invitation instead to the Gentiles - but some Gentiles are no more worthy than the Jews, and are rejected in exactly the same kind of way. Perhaps I'm stretching the analogy a bit far, but there's a difference between murdering someone's servants and merely disregarding their dress code. There's no specific mention that the king had the improperly dressed guessed killed, though the disturbing words at the end might offer a clue. I've often wondered: does the "gnashing teeth" refer to some sort of hellish torment (the sort of thing Hieronymus Bosch might have painted)... ...or is it merely the frustrated teeth-gnashing of souls unable to get into heaven?

I would have pronounced it DIS-cul-PA-tory. But it's still a perfectly cromulant word.

I'm no expert on volcanos, but a quick Googling does show calderas are not typically perfectly round. This one is the Santa Ana volcano in El Salvador:

I remember when it was taken out of ours. I remember the vicar gushing over how the new hymnal had changed it to "Onward Christian Pilgrims" and how nice it was that the nasty warlike references were being removed. I asked him afterwards if all the "warlike references" were going to be removed from the Bible too. He didn't have a good answer to that.

Really? I used to like watching Knight Rider.

Or maybe they mined too deep for it and awoke the Balrog!

I always loved the old hymn When a Knight Won His Spurs. "Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed, 'gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed". Hardly anyone ever sings (or even likes talking about) that hymn nowadays. Too warlike. (Onward Christian Soldiers has gone the same way too. Such a shame. I like Onward Christian Soldiers.)

I never heard of "ziff" before. According to Wikipedia... Ziff (/zɪf/[1]) is an unknown material or item, probably a metal, mentioned in the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 11:3,8).