Other Gods - "The Uglification of God", Conflict Resolution and Lee Vendon

Monday, Day 7, was another full day of classes.  We had three instructors: Ty Gibson, James Rafferty and Lee Vendon.

Ty started of the morning with a class on the different worldviews or religions/belief systems out there in this world.  He concluded that all the belief systems breakdown into 2 basic paradigms of reality: SELF as center or OTHER as center.  God is seeking to save us out of "self as center" motives into "other as center" motives.  

Recapping our previous classes we learned that God is in a love relationship with the Son and Holy Spirit, and this existed before He created.  As God loves the Son and HS, so does the Son consciously love the Father and HS and the HS also loves and is always mindful of the Father and Son.  As God expanded the circle to include His created beings, sin broke this circular relationship of love, to which God has been attempting to bring His people back throughout the ages.

Majority of this world has a misconception of God that has been perpetuated since Lucifer sinned.  Almost 4 billion people (made up of Muslims, Catholics and most Protestants) believe in eternal torment.  Another 1 billion (atheists) are reacting to the eternal torment concept by saying if God is like that, I don't believe in (that kind of) God.  As Ty put it, atheists are reacting to the "uglification of God".  So, considering I also do not believe in a God who will burn people for eternity, I, too, can call myself an atheist.  For those of you who have seen Ty's Digma video on this, it will be familiar.  If not, check it out here: http://www.digma.com/atheist-too/

Then Ty went on to review the 5 belief systems in the world (naturalism/materialism, pantheism, deterministic theism, appeasement theism and benevolent theism) which reflect the different worldviews out there, and with which we need to be familiar so we can outreach effectively.

Next up was our first class with James Rafferty.  He spoke on resolving conflict in the Spirit of Christ, based on his book Ministry of Reconciliation.  He gave some history on how he and Ty became Adventist, disfellowshipped and then reconciled with the church to the point where they are now, which is working closely with the conference.

James broke down the principles for reconciliation into 3: spiritual, restoration and spirit of meekness.  And even these three can be summarized into making sure your life and actions are in harmony with God before taking any action.  For those interested in the book for the specifics: http://www.lightbearers.org/resource/ministry-of-reconciliation/.

The afternoon meeting was conducted by a guest lecturer Lee Vendon, full-time evangelist for the Upper Columbia Conference.  He spoke Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning.  More to come about his classes...