On 23 July 2006, I was baptized by Pastor Rob Davis in Silver Lake, Highland, Illinois, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I gave a short testimony, detailing what I understand about baptism: in baptism I identify with Christ’s death and resurrection. In baptism I publicly repent and [...]
The third baptism that wasn’t, usually wasn’t even called a baptism. I was part of a “Hebraic Roots” movement that believed that the Jews and their traditions held the key to understanding the New Testament, and hence we interpreted John’s baptism, and the baptism of people in Acts and onward, in light of Jewish [...]
The second baptism that wasn’t was when I was, oh, eleven or twelve, I would guess. I no longer remember exactly when that was. We had left the LCMS for a Southern Baptist church, and it made sense for me to step forward in consonance with my newly Baptist theology and present myself [...]
I thought I’d diverge a bit and talk about four baptisms, three of which weren’t. Or to call up shades of Daniel: “two were but were not, one is but is not, and one is, and is still to come.”
About thirty-four years ago some guy in a collar got my forehead wet. [...]
In response to my email, Mr. A wrote the following (his responses are in all caps this time; people in our ministry often had a problem with following conversations and set aside the usual quoting traditions):
On 3/5/04 10:14 AM, “Charles Sebold” <csebold@livingtorah.org> wrote:
> My answer to this would be as follows:
>
> 1. John isn’t [...]
In response to Mr. A’s email:
On 12 Adar 5764, Mr. A wrote:
> My input will need to be from a different angle. When I first heard
> the teacher teach this idea, I had to “wipe the slate clean” so to speak and
> ask myself if I would come up with the same conclusion if [...]
Ed. — this post must have been messed up when I did a subsequent edit, so this is the second time I am putting it up. My comments are likely not the same as they would have been when I scheduled this post, days ago.
At this point Mr. A jumped back in, in response [...]
In response to the teacher’s email:
Subject: Re: [Old Ministry List] Re: Mary vs. Israel
From: Charles Sebold
To: Teacher
On 10 Adar 5764, the teacher wrote:
> Charlie you have not upset me in any way and I am not trying to
> upset you or not answer you. my point is that in light of the other
> Gospels that [...]
In response to my last email:
Subject: Re: [Old Ministry List] Re: Mary vs. Israel
From: Teacher
To: Charles Sebold
Charlie you have not upset me in any way and I am not trying to upset
you or not answer you. my point is that in light of the other Gospels
that His mother was not there at the crucifixion. The [...]
In response to the teacher’s email:
Subject: Re: [Old Ministry List] Re: Mary vs. Israel
From: Charles Sebold
To: Teacher
On 10 Adar 5764, the teacher wrote:
> Charlie I know that you are taking that Greek class and are using it
> as they do, but it is not used in Greek as him except by those that
> do not [...]
In response to my email:
Subject: Re: [Old Ministry List] Re: Mary vs. Israel
To: Charles Sebold
From: Teacher
Charlie I know that you are taking that Greek class and are using it as
they do, but it is not used in Greek as him except by those that do not
grasp the fact that the word is used to describe [...]
In response to the teacher’s email:
Subject: Re: [Old Ministry List] Re: Mary vs. Israel
From: Charles Sebold
To: Teacher
On 10 Adar 5764, the teacher wrote:
> The second problem with the use as being the mother of Yeshua is
> that the Greek word autou has been misused by most all schools and
> non-Greeks. It is not a word [...]
In response to my email:
Subject: Re: [Old Ministry List] Re: Mary vs. Israel
From: Teacher
To: Charles Sebold
The second problem with the use as being the mother of Yeshua is that
the Greek word autou has been misused by most all schools and
non-Greeks. It is not a word that means him. It means here or
there. Secondly if this [...]
My response to the last email:
From: Charles Sebold
Subject: Re: [Old Ministry List] Re: Mary vs. Israel
To: Teacher, Mr. A
I would like to respond to this.
> On Mar 2, 2004, at 10:45 PM, Mr. A wrote:
>
>> I want to clarify one item in what I have written in my notes
>> below. Is the [...]
Now I need to describe the rules of engagement for this chapter of the testimony. I am anonymizing all the emails that went back and forth, except for my own statements. The cast of characters will be noted by letters, except for myself and the teacher.
The first salvo went out to our email [...]
This will likely be the most arcane and detailed series of posts in the testimony. I will try to put a summary paragraph at the end for those who are not willing or able to follow the twists and turns ahead. I don’t blame you, frankly, but the fact is that this chapter [...]
I realize that posting is very much hit-or-miss lately, but I have been working over a number of things I want to talk about:
I want to finish the testimony, or at least get started on the “Mary vs. Israel” post in earnest
I really really want to take on universalism, and use this forum to get [...]
In preparation for the next post of my testimony, I have had to read old emails. The whole next post is devoted to an email dialogue between me and the teacher, and we’ve been editing it to remove things that would identify the parties involved, and to figure out how we’re going to present [...]
Somewhere about this time I got the two books I ordered after listening to the Calvinism debate on “The Bible Answer Man.” One, as I have mentioned before, was Norman Geisler’s Chosen but Free. This book, although I didn’t know it at the time, was a response to R.C. Sproul’s book Chosen by [...]
There is simply no way that I will do justice to either Allen (the author of Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright) or Capt (author of several books, but particularly in this case Missing Links about the Behistun Inscription and other ancient clues to the whereabouts of the Ten Tribes) in a weblog post. It [...]
By Charles Sebold
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Tagged British Israelism, Christianity, dispensationalism, Greek, Hebraic Roots, Israel, J. H. Allen, Jews, racism, Raymond Capt, Sebold's Law, Testimony
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I have previously mentioned the ministry’s beliefs in Anglo-Israelism (aka British Israelism), the idea that one can identify with some certainty some or all of the “lost ten tribes” of the Northern Kingdom of Israel as Great Britain and the United States. At first blush it might seem incredible to my readers that we [...]
It had been a couple of months since I had invented my own version of compatibilism (a way of resolving the apparent conflict between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will), and the darkness in which I drove home every night was a lot like the darkness ahead for the ministry. It was frustrating that nobody [...]
If one takes the commandments of the Bible seriously, particularly the “repent” and “believe” commands, then one must assume that human beings have the ability to choose to obey these commands.
The above statement carries with it a presupposition and an ambguity:
Presupposition: God never commands what is impossible.
Ambiguity: Must we assume that all human [...]
The Holy Spirit, great Workman that He is, patiently assembled the building blocks of my future one at a time in my heart. I had now learned enough about the teacher’s hermeneutic failures that I had come to a place where I didn’t automatically trust him anymore. I had seen enough evidence of [...]
As I was saying, once I set aside commentaries I found myself in a bit of a jam. The only Christian commentary that the teacher trusted was A.T. Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament, and as time went on we found that he rejected the most important parts and misunderstood the rest of [...]
