I’m writing this from my mom’s place in TN. I had a good drive down. It’s a 6-hour trip, but the roads were good and the weather was nice. On the way I listened to a couple audio presentations on CD. One was about the causes of the American Civil War (the significance of slavery, culture, political power, etc.), and the other was about how Christians in America in 1776 justified the war to split with Great Britain. Both were really interesting. I may write more about them later. (I had earlier finished another CD in the same series, about the relationship between Puritans and native Americans. I learned so much from that—history that you don’t hear in today’s anti-Christian, anti-European academic world.)

When I got here, it was just my mom and me. We had a good vegetarian holiday meal. Yummy.

Now I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend….

For a time [during the French Revolution], executions by guillotine were a popular entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators. Vendors would sell programs listing the names of those scheduled to die. Regulars would come day after day and vie for the best seats. Parents would bring their children. By the end of the [Reign of] Terror the crowds had thinned drastically. Excessive repetition had staled even this most grisly of entertainments, and audiences grew bored.

Guillotine – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Can you imagine that? This was at about the same time the United States declared its independence as a nation — not that long ago.

An estimated 18,000-40,000 people died by execution during the Revolution, many only because they were suspected of anti-revolutionary (or even excessively pro-Revolutionary) ideas, without any trial.

The fine folks over at Vision Forum have launched an interesting website: Behemoth.com. I’m kind of a fan of Vision Forum because they have such cool stuff and high Christian values.

Behemoth.com, which opened earlier this month, is a place to buy conservative Christian media in digital format. Their movie and music sections look really good. And every day they have free items available for download as well.

The kind of topics you’ll find here include:

• Church history
• Creationism
• Church standards
• Government
• Parenting
• Courtship and dating
• Classic children’s books that promote a Christian worldview

Some of their children’s products are fiction, and a bit on the trivial side. But there are lots of gems in there as well. It’s worth checking out.

Providentially, my friend Diana was leading a group of Bible workers at Battle Creek, and she invited me to come. The timing was perfect, since if I had waited any longer, their evangelism series would have been over, and I would have lost my “inside connection.” Thanks, Diana!

The drive there would have been about 7.5 hours, except for a little mishap. Near Effingham, Illinois, a police car came up behind me, and flashed its lights. I was driving exactly the speed limit, so I couldn’t guess what would be the problem. He pegged me for two things: not having a front license plate (my saving grace was that I had the missing plate in the car, having intended to put it on as soon as I could visit a dealership), and my back plate was half off! I could hardly believe it. We walked around to the back of the car, and as I was fiddling with the plate to see if I could reconnect it, the other screw popped out, and the whole thing fell to the ground! (The screws were the ones that came with the car, but they were definitely non-standard.) The officer was friendly, though, and didn’t fine me for anything. He told me where to go to get it fixed, which I promptly did. The whole episode cost me maybe 30 minutes.

When I arrived in Battle Creek, the night’s evangelism series was in progress at the local SDA academy, so I went directly there. The evangelist was Ted Struntz, someone who I’d never met, but indirectly knew: He was the father of a girl I knew in academy and whom I had done LE work with one summer (Julia). Also, it just so happened that I sat down, without realizing it, next to David and Marie Tenold, who had been staff at Oklahoma Academy when I was a student there. Also, Marie had been my work supervisor for two years. The night’s message was good, and it was encouraging to hear that quite a few non-SDAs were attending and interested in baptism. Besides Diana, I also bumped into someone else I knew that night: Phil Mills.

The Bible workers were staying right at the Historic Adventist Village, and they let me stay with them. I had a nice, comfortable room to myself, on the second floor. The room had eight windows, four each on two adjacent walls—really nice.

Sabbath morning I went to the Dime Tabernacle, the main SDA church in the area. There was a large painting behind the pulpit, Heinrich Hoffman’s “Christ and the Rich Young Ruler”—one of my favorites—which I thought was cool. I joined a Sabbath school class taught by Jerry Finneman, which was really good. The sermon was by the evangelist, and was part of the series. Later, at lunch, I met a couple more people I know: Doug Carlson, an associate pastor who previously was the pastor at my grandma’s church in Edenville, and Ranger Jim from Kids’ Time on 3ABN! He was showing off a hummingbird and a chipmunk, both of which were in large glass jars.

Sabbath afternoon I took the official tour of the village.

William Miller’s prophetic chart, on display in the visitor center:

The pulpit in a church where Ellen White spoke:

Garth Stoltz, Village Director:

The Whites’ home:

An early edition of Early Writings, published in Battle Creek:

The dining room in their home:

Where Ellen would write jounal entries, manuscripts, and letters (these are not the original items of furniture, but are similar to what she would have used):

Copies of her writings (pretty good penmanship!):

A carriage similar to what the Whites would have used:

That evening we returned for more of the evangelism meetings. Later back at the village, we had a long discussion about women’s ordination; it lasted past midnight! Although the five or so of us most involved in the discussion had deep-seated opinions on this subject, the entire exchange was very civil, and I came away with greater perspective on the subject.

The Bible workers:

In front of David Hewitt’s home:

On Sunday we all went out to eat at a pancake place. This was mainly in honor of the Bible workers for all their hard work, and was paid for by Pastor Russell from Andrews who had oversight of them. But they invited me along. It was a good meal! But my stay was over all too soon!

I left soon after we got back from the restaurant, but on the way home I stopped at this cemetary in Battle Creek where many SDA pioneers are buried:

The tombstones of James and Ellen White:

On the way home I passed these vehicles. I took this while driving, so it’s a bit blurry. But if you look closely, you can see the car on the left is one of those models that can be driven in water. You can see two propellers under the bumper, and it has a high exhaust pipe to keep the water out. The other truck is towing a log cabin!

I recently finished reading the book, Christianizing the Roman Empire (AD 100–400), by Ramsay MacMullen (Yale University Press). In it, the author traces the means by which Christianity—a minor, persecuted sect—rose to power, and eventually to domination, within the Roman Empire. I found his account sometimes challenging to my preconceptions, but also fairly even handed and well documented. In some instances MacMullen comes across as sympathetic to the Christian cause, while at other times he takes a more critical view. It is obvious, not only from this book but also from other historical works, that much of the criticism leveled at Christian political power playing in those early centuries is well deserved. I could not help but feel some sympathy for the pagans at each advancing step towards their defeat.

Of course, it deserves stating that, as the author concludes and as all Seventh-day Adventists know, paganism was not truly eradicated. Instead it was slowly absorbed into the Christian Church. I had long wondered how this came about. While there were undoubtedly many factors at play, one prominent factor was that, in the pagans’ eyes, joining the church was a matter of cultural, political, economic, and sometimes even physical survival. From the viewpoint of the leading Christian leaders, it did not matter whether “in pretense or in truth” a person joined the church; it was enough that they were in.

There are many interesting points brought out in this book, including what we know from historical sources of how Christians evangelized in those days. In some respects they followed the model Jesus had given: helping the poor, ministering to the sick, spreading out from population centers to more remote regions. Yet, if the author is correct, in other respects they veered far from the true path. It appears there was a strong reliance on miracles (healings and exorcisms mostly), and that an acknowledgment of the power of the true God and Jesus Christ was counted as genuine conversion, irrespective of a knowledge of the “present truth” or of Scripture per se. In fact, it appears that the great majority of conversions involved no discipleship or Biblical instruction until after the fact, if at all.

Another fascinating point is how Christians were viewed as “atheists” because they rejected the pantheon of gods from the pagan world. From the pagan standpoint, a religion that observed only the one supreme, transcendent God was essentially atheistic, because the pagans did not believe such a God was personally involved in our world. That is, to reject all the pagan gods was, essentially, to reject personal gods. This eventually played into the Christians’ favor, when it became apparent that all the pagan gods combined were not sufficient to withstand the Christians’ religious attack. Thus, in some degree, the Christians became the champions of a superstition-free religion, apparently the only true religion. (Of course, the influx of pagans managed to bring some superstition into the Christian church.)