Religious Thought for the 21st Century

In the previous two posts we considered first if Yiye Aviila was a false prophet, and then we did the same with Billy Graham. Today we shall look at an imposing religious figure of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Rev. Sun Myung Moon is for his followers the True Father that restored the original position that Adam lost. After having received the mission from Jesus to continue the work he began 2,000 years ago to establish the foundations for the Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth, Rev. Moon invested his entire energy to realize that vision. However, that was not after first having rejected the mission. Why? Rev. Moon believed that if he gave his word to Jesus he could never go back on it. He had felt an urge in his youth to dedicate his life for the betterment of humanity. He did not have to pledge to God that he would do his best if he took the initiative on his own. When Jesus asked him personally to take on the mission to change the world, he had to determine to do it live-or-die. ...

On our previous post, we asked the question: Was Yiye  Ávila a false prophet? By looking into what scripture says about who is a false prophet we could readily see that the Latino Billy Graham was far from being one of them. He dedicated his life to serving Jesus by calling people to repent and accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. He also spent a lot of time educating the converted to lead saintly lives.  How about Billy Graham himself? Who Was Billy Graham? National Archives of Norway, CC BY 4.0, courtesy of wikipedia Practically the whole world knew this evangelist. He was born in 1918, converted to evangelical Christianity at age 16 and already by 1950 he was a national personality. It would not pass 10 years for him to have international acclaim.  According to his staff, more than 3.2 million people have responded to the invitation at Billy Graham Crusades to "accept  Jesus Christ  as their  personal savior ".  As of 2008, G...

Yiye Ávila,  one of the most influential preachers in Latin America, referred to by many as the Latino "Billy Graham",  took on the subject of the imminent return of Jesus on the clouds and the rapture as the center of his preaching.  From his pulpit at his church he would repeatedly ask his members "te va a llevar a ti?" "Is Jesus going to take you?" He had just told everyone that Jesus was coming soon. He had told everyone that Jesus was going to take him up in the rapture. He felt extremely confident that his live of total dedication to bring thousands to Jesus and to let God use him as an instrument of healing others demonstrated that his faith met the requirements for he to participate of the rapture. He wanted to urge people to reflect upon their own lives. His questioning may have sound very powerful to the ears of many Pentecostals but the reality set in one day when on   June 28, 2013, Yiye Ávila died from cardiac arrest at the age...

The Bible contains many important sections where the narrative uses symbols to convey a message in a coded or hidden manner. For instance, Joseph continuously interprets dreams by providing a meaning that eliminates the supernatural or surreal  sense of the dream and transforms the dream into something that we can take practical action to prevent or realize. The most famous one is the interpretation of the Pharaoh's dreams of the seven skinny cows and the seven fat cows. Joseph's Interprets Pharaoh's Dream Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing [CC BY-SA 3.0  (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons The discovery of Hieroglyphics recounting dreams and their interpretations validates the historical value of this story from Genesis in them stories tell of priests interpreting Pharaoh's dream. Throughout history, different cultures attributed a special meaning to dreams, believing that they convey special messages hidde...