Hanging Out with Sir Winston, Just 78 Years Too Late

I’m not sure that I called this Meridian Magazine article of mine to your attention, although it was published roughly two weeks ago:  “What Are the Seven Churches in the Revelation of John?” It isn’t coincidental that the article appeared at roughly the same time that I was actually visiting the churches addressed by John the Revelator in Acts 2-3.

Today was focused mostly on Churchill’s War Rooms, which include both the underground complex that housed the principal British government command center throughout the Second World War and a museum devoted to the life and career — particularly but not only during his wartime premiership — of Sir Winston Churchill.  We have wanted to tour the War Rooms for quite a while, but have somehow never had the opportunity until today.

We thoroughly enjoyed the several hours that we spent in the War Rooms and the museum, which are located not very far from Westminster Abbey and Parliament.  I’ve long been intrigued by the personality and the career of Winston Churchill, and I’ve always been interested in the history of World War Two.  (Growing up, I owned an abridged and richly illustrated copy of his history of the war, and I spent many hours with it.). Moreover, I kept thinking how much my father would have enjoyed the War Rooms.  Before going over to the continent of Europe with the Eleventh Armored Division of General Patton’s Third Army, Dad was stationed for a while in High Wycombe, roughly midway between London and Oxford.  I believe that I’ve mentioned this here before, but he commented to me more than once that, sadly, he had never seen London with its lights on.  It was always under blackout restrictions during the time that he was stationed nearby.  So one of my serious regrets is that I never got him back to London to see it as it is has been since those dark days of the Second World War, and to take him around to some of his old haunts.  I thought that I would, but, well, I didn’t.

At one point, a volunteer guide was explaining photographs of the London Blitz to couple of relatively young blond women.  Mostly, the images were of damage to the city from German bombing raids and perhaps also from later V-1 “buzz bombs” and V-2 rockets.  “Where are you from?” he asked them.  “We’re from Kyiv,” one of them replied.  One is living in exile in Germany, but I didn’t hear where the other is living.  It is disturbing to realize that, for no justifiable reason whatever, this kind of horrible history is repeating itself.  Hearing that the two women were from Kyiv brought that thought very acutely to my mind.

Once more, Jonn Claybaugh has contributed a useful set of notes in the service of those followers of the Interpreter Foundation who are students or teachers of the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  This new item appeared today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  Come, Follow Me — New Testament Study and Teaching Helps:  Lesson 46, November 6 — 12:  Hebrews 7–13 — “An High Priest of Good Things to Come”

And also, not to be overlooked:  The New Testament in Context Lesson 46:  “An High Priest of Good Things to Come”: Hebrews 7-13

For the 15 October 2023 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, our discussants Bruce Webster and Robert Boylan concentrated on New Testament lesson 46, “An High Priest of Good Things to Come,” on Hebrews 7–13.

Their conversation has now been archived, freed from commercial interruptions, and made available to you (via the link above) at your convenience and free of charge.  (The other segments of the October 15 radio show can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-october-15 -2023.)

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard weekly on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640.  Or, if you live outside of the Salt Lake Valley (in the United Kingdom, for example), you can listen to it live and unrehearsed on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

 

I posted this yesterday.  However, just in case Everybody’s WC and his boardmates missed it, I’m posting it again:

I’ve been mildly puzzled for years now about the hostile personal fixation that some pseudonymous folks over at the Peterson Obsession Board seem to have on me.  Well, I finally have a clue with regard to one of them — the one that I’ve identified here as Everybody’s WC — who claims that he hates me because of a multiyear crusade of defamation and slander and ceaseless personal attacks that I conducted against his best friend in an attempt to get that friend fired.  Having seen the stress, the hurt, and the frustration that his friend and his friend’s family suffered over those years, Everybody’s WC has concluded that I am, in his words, “pure evil.”

That would be a somewhat understandable reaction, I suppose, if a bit overwrought.  But I have literally no idea what he’s talking about.  I can think of no such case.  Even after searching through all of the dim recesses of my mind, I can’t think of any instance in which I’ve ever sought to have anybody fired.  Moreover, I can’t even imagine myself doing such a thing.  What on earth does he have in mind?

I really would like to know.  Seriously.  So I invite him, or some surrogate for him, either to contact me privately or to post something here in the comments section so that I can understand his accusation.  As it is, I haven’t the foggiest idea.

 

Posted from Bankside, London, England