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<\/a>\u00a9 Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Come, Follow Me<\/em> \u2014 Old Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 25, June 13-19: 1 Samuel 8\u201310; 13; 15\u201318 \u2014\u00a0\u201cThe Battle Is the Lord\u2019s\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Jonn Claybaugh has generously provided yet another concise set of helpful notes for students and teachers of the scriptures.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me<\/em> Old Testament Lesson 25:\u00a0 \u201cThe Battle Is the Lord\u2019s\u201d<\/em>: 1 Samuel 8\u201310; 13; 15\u201318<\/a><\/p>\n In the Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me<\/em>\u00a0Old Testament Lesson 25,\u00a0\u201cThe Battle Is the Lord\u2019s\u201d<\/em> on 1 Samuel 8\u201310; 13; 15\u201318, which has been extracted for your listening enjoyment and convenience from the 8 May 2022 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show, the discussants are Terry Hutchinson and John Gee.\u00a0 The complete show may be heard at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreter-radio-show-May-8-2022\/<\/a>.\u00a0 Moreover, the weekly Interpreter Radio Show can be heard live on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Today, we and our friends spent much of the day touring the Residenz, the former central Munich palace of the Wittelsbachs, who were the ruling royal family of Bavaria until just after the First World War.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very impressive place, even though it had to be considerably reconstructed in the wake of the Allied bombing raids that occurred during the last portion of World War Two.\u00a0 \u00a0The largest urban palace in Germany, it contains fully ten courtyards and 130 rooms.\u00a0 Plainly, as Gilbert and Sullivan might have said, it was, it was a glorious thing to be a Bavarian king.\u00a0 We also stopped in at the Cuvilli\u00e9s Theatre, which is now a part of the overall Residenz complex.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Afterwards, we had lunch at the Haxnbauer<\/a>, which several people had recommended to us.\u00a0 Most of our group ordered the \u201cHaxnburger,\u201d which one enthusiastic Bavarian had commended to us the day before.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Sauerkraut and mashed potatoes and bratwurst for me \u2014 the last two of them especially good.\u00a0 And, once again, Apfelschorle.\u00a0 A glorious beverage indeed.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Thereafter, we visited the Frauenkirche \u2014 more properly the \u201cM\u00fcnchner Dom\u201d (\u201cMunich Cathedral\u201d) or, officially, the Dom zu Unserer Lieben Frau <\/i>(the \u201cCathedral of Our Dear Lady,\u201d which dates essentially to the 1400s, although an earlier church had been built on the site during the twelfth century and although bombs inflicted heavy damage on it during the Second World War.\u00a0 Before pews were installed in the cathedral, it could accommodate\u00a0 twenty-thousand (standing) people.\u00a0 This is pretty astonishing, since late fifteenth-century Munich had only about thirteen thousand inhabitants and since the parish church of \u201cAlter Peter,\u201d which we visited and which I mentioned yesterday, was already available.\u00a0 Curiously, I was told that the Frauenkirche is constructed of brick because appropriate stone quarries were located too great a distance away.\u00a0 But there are plenty of stone buildings in Munich, so far as I can see.\u00a0 Including \u201cAlter Peter.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We walked back through Marienplatz, where my wife and I bought some delicious-looking fresh strawberries, apricots, and cherries.\u00a0 And, thus far \u2014 I know you\u2019re on the edges of your seats with anxious anticipation \u2014 the strawberries have indeed been delicious.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Just off from the Marienplatz, for the whole time that we were near the cathedral and in the general area, we heard numerous lusty young male voices roaring out such immortal musical classics as Manfred Mann\u2019s \u201cDoo Wah Diddy\u201d<\/a> and other such songs, always (so far as I could tell) in English.\u00a0 Plainly, and mercifully, it wasn\u2019t a group of recrudescent neo-Nazis out on the streets of Munich.\u00a0 No \u201cHorst Wessel Lied.\u201d\u00a0 But there were lots of policemen and police vehicles.\u00a0 \u00a0And more than a few young men who looked both British and, as some might say, three sheets to the wind or a little worse for wear.\u00a0 Why so many police and inebriated young Englishmen and such noisy singing?\u00a0 We found out that the English national football (soccer) team is in town for a UEFA Nations League match against Germany tonight.\u00a0 So, not to worry.\u00a0 Relax!\u00a0 It\u2019s just some visiting English soccer fans<\/a>!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I realize that my use of the term may jar some just a bit, but I\u2019ve always thought of the Restored Gospel as a form of religious humanism.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Please don\u2019t think of the common modern use of the word humanism<\/em> as shorthand for the more precise term secular humanism<\/em>. \u00a0That\u2019s not what I have in mind at all.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n What I do<\/em> have in mind is probably something more like the exuberant, newly confident Renaissance humanism of European history, when most humanists were still Christians. \u00a0(Erasmus of Rotterdam, for example, was a very serious<\/em> Christian.) \u00a0It had its own problems, of course, but it had also caught sight of something very important.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Why do I use the word humanism<\/em> with regard to my religious faith? \u00a0Because it seems to me so deeply opposed to many alternative forms of Christian and non-Christian religion that denigrate humanity. \u00a0Because it offers what to me seems, by many light years, the most spectacular vision of human destiny that can possibly be imagined. \u00a0Because \u2014 and, as I\u2019ve said before, I regard this as the central heresy of \u201cMormonism\u201d \u2014 it sees divinity and humanity as fundamentally akin, not opposed, and as points on a continuum rather than opposite sides of a dividing chasm. \u00a0Granted that we mortals are very far, in innumerable ways, from God, still, nevertheless, we have the innate potential to be like our Father \u2014 and that is precisely what he wants for us.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf within the short space of mortal life there are men who rise up out of infancy and become masters of the elements of fire and water and earth and air, so that they well-nigh rule them as Gods, what may it not be possible for them to do in a few hundreds or thousands of millions of years?\u201d (B. H. Roberts, The Mormon Doctrine<\/a> of Deity<\/em>, 35)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We all know that words like tolerance<\/em> and diversity<\/em> are extremely fashionable these days.\u00a0 But diversity and tolerance aren\u2019t actually all that popular in certain circles:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image by Allie Caulfield)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n