02-09-2008, 05:49 AM
02-09-2008, 02:02 PM
Thanks for your work in bringing these articles to us, Bangalore.
Quote:
Alexander Dvorkin, an academic at Moscow's St. Tikhon's Orthodox University, defended the hard-line position, saying Russian society was unprepared for the wave of new faiths that arrived in the 1990s. "People in Russia were far more vulnerable than in other societies," which he said have "built-in immunities," to proselytizing. And he insisted the Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult. "Just ask them the next time they come to your door what happens to you if you attempt to leave."
Mr. Gillies said Jehovah's Witness followers are free to leave the church if they choose.
Mr. Gillies said Jehovah's Witness followers are free to leave the church if they choose.
Well...we've all heard from Mr. Gillies many times. He brings new meaning to "speaking out of both sides of the mouth." Insiders know that no one is "free to leave the church if they choose," as if the consequences are the same as choosing which vegetable to eat for dinner.
This is all so unfortunate and unnecessary. The good news of the kingdom isn't what's opposed in Russia...it's church machinery and the traditions of men. These so-called sects are themselves keeping the good news from the people by their insistence that it can't be delivered apart from those peripherals. The gospel would have been preached to the entire inhabited earth centuries ago were it not for the "machinations of the devil" that churches insist are prerequisite to "pure worship." Systematizing the good news makes it bad news.
Ego and greed and greed and ego. Nothing new under the sun.
gus