Ken Johnson on what to do with Cultist - and a comment of mine

From Ruckman's errors - and giving a correction · Ken Johnson on what to do with Cultist - and a comment of mine

I'll be transscribing a few early minutes of this video:

After the Flood
Ken Johnson | 2.XII.2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcFwM4c_avM

Perhaps it is not all that great in the rest, I was starting to see it to see the alternatives for my own view on After the Flood.

But he starts video with saying he got saved at 12, then started to want to have the right confession, and went to early Church Fathers.

He then says he saw early Church Fathers up to c. 200 or 250 AD had one doctrine "and then it started to change" ... I would not agree with that, I think it is a question of the Mexican in Edinburgh effect : they start writing more stuff that gets better preserved and they start bringing up subjects which they had always thought the same things on, but which they hadn't bothered to mention the first 200 years in books we still have. And Ken Johnson coming to them as a stranger, finds they "start" doing strange things, like that Mexican in Edinburgh sees his correspondent starts wearing a skirt or drinking grappa spoiled with some smoked wood (kilt and whiskey, it is really peat smoked grains that ferment before destillation, and traces of grape taste comes from whisky barrels previously having served for sherry - not from the liquid itself being grape based). And they can't believe the man or men they knew previously from writings that hadn't mentioned some things and start revealing them had been doing them all along.

BUT, here is the very good remark, he gets into how early Church Fathers exposed Pagan gods:

2:13 "and what they did simply is very logical"
2:16 "I wouldn't have thought about it, but they went back and [found] actual Roman"
2:21 "or Greek historical records of these people when they were kings and"
2:23 "queens a few hundred years after the Flood, where"
2:26 "they died, where they're buried, what kind"
2:29 "what kind of bad things if they did at all, and then you"
2:31 "go witness to people, why do you worship Zeus, you"
2:33 "know he did this, well yeah, you"
2:36 "know he's buried in their backyard, people go there every"
2:38 "year and make a pilgrimage [?]"
2:41 "so why do you worship a dead man in a grave?"
2:45 "become a Christian! - And I thought that was really interesting, very, very"
2:48 "effective, we could do kind of the same thing"
2:50 "with our cults today, you know: Why"
2:54 "do you follow Joseph Smith and Mormonism? How"
2:56 "did he die again? He was in jail"
3:00 "and he was lynched - what's the story behind that?"

Guess what the Catholic writers have been doing about Luther and Calvin?

Back before Iohannes Calvinus, of original French name Jehan Cauvin, started preaching "reform", one Jehan Cauvin in where he arguably was from was convicted of Sodomy, but found guilty with attenuating circumstances, so not executed to death, but branded. There was a guy who was suspecting John Calvin in his lifetime, he went from Geneva to Noyon to get the story, came back, Calvin denied, but people were divided and demanded he take a wife, which hitherto he hadn't (even while attacking clerical celibacy).

Some Calvinists would say "that was another Jean Cauvin" - possible. Some would say "the guy who went to check can't have done it, he would have had to go through Catholic / Papist country" - like John Calvin he was born as a Papist and therefore knew how to show up like one. Some would say that the Englishman who reported this after leaving England was dishonest - to himself, possible, he had some reasons to hate reformers, as he had to leave his country persecuted by a new Protestant régime, so he could have been overconfident in any bad report he could have found. But to others? No, he had sacrificed a bit too much - unless you would want to say he had something else to hide, and that is of course backfiring on Calvin. I unfortunately misplaced the reference to that Englishman.

If I were a Calvinist, I'd deal with that like Lutherans deal with Luther : "look, he's not a perfect model, he's not a saint in the Catholic sense". Or I'd try to show that after having a background of homosexuality, his making a marriage with Ydelette de Bure was kind of a triumph of grace.

But this is the genre background to why Catholic writers often collect accusations against those founding the sects of the Reformation.

When it comes to post-Reformation sects, I don't need that. John Wesley and William Booth were wrong on many things, but they had one great excuse : like Mohammed and Joseph Smith, they never ever were involved with the Catholic Church as practising members, so they did not have full access to the full truth in the first place and therefore had less responsibility when it came to twisting it. One could even make a case they were partly going closer to Catholic and to fully Christian than the Reformers were. But as non-Catholics raised in anti-Catholic traditions, Wesley, Booth and Joseph Smith had one great excuse for getting somewhere else than to the Catholic truth. A complete excuse? Well, some would say "in the end, certainly not, they are in Hell". I am less sure, but either way ... saying Wesley and Booth were ignorant is also using the same meme in a different shape as saying "Zeus is dead, he's buried on Crete".

Also, great thanks for saying that when I am myself saying "Romulus was a man" or "Hercules was a man" I am not a Pagan Romulus worshipper or Hercules worshipper. Ditto for Odin and Thor. Up in Sweden they may be ancestry, they never were gods, except as part of a sinful charade, one which probably the False Prophet and Antichrist might try again.

Most of the video, I haven't seen it yet, and I suspect that while it may contain some error here or there (not sure yet) it will be of historical import and not of directly theological import.

Next seconds are not bad either, telling the Watchtower Sect that while they are against Pyramidology, Charles Taze Russell was for it.

That approach is more useful perhaps when dealing with Novus Ordonians ... we remaining Catholics and they both believe St Augustine is a saint, we can show he was a Young Earth Creationist and they are against (at least many Novus Ordonians are) Young Earth Creationism. We and they agree St Robert Bellarmine was a saint, it is well known he judged Giordano Bruno in part on his being "relative Heliocentric" and he condemned a book by Galileo (but did not try the man himself, but tried the book in his presence) because it was absolutely Heliocentric. Yet they (nearly all) are relative Heliocentrics and will have nothing to do with Geocentrism.

Those who do accept (at least socially in others) Young Earth Creationism and Geocentrism, on my view they are only half bad, even if one could call them Novus Ordonians over using Novus Ordo Missae. Conversely, those who genuinely don't, even if they use Latin Mass ... well, they are kind of Novus Ordonians in disguise.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Visitation of the Bl Virgin
to Elisabeth
2.VII.2018

PS : "I unfortunately misplaced the reference to that Englishman." - I tried to recover it among the 39 hist involving "Calvin" on Assorted Retorts blog./HGL

PPS, looking on at video, just after his reference to dialogue with JW, he reveals he's baptist, so, I am now going to link this to previous one./HGL