Prophecy Days 1 - 3: Will I ever stop spelling it as "Profecy"?

Days 1, 2, 3 completed, days 4 – 34 (something like that) left to do. Here are some thoughts and highlights from Bible Prophecy 2007.

Day 1 I was able to bring two friends along with me; a roommate, Dan, and a mutual friend, Jeremy. We all pilled into my car and drove the 1.5 minutes to the church and found that the church parking lot was full. We found when we got inside that there was about 75-90 people in attendance in a room with the capacity for 200 or so folks. So, either it was a small parking lot, or some people were going one to every two cars. We parked across the street next to the library and proceeded to cross the street. Jeremy felt something stuck to the bottom of his shoe and put his hand down to investigate. It was dog poop and his hand was now its second victim. The grass became a makeshift paper towel, but it didn’t really do the job. We get to the door and they were hand shakers; to the extreme. You can’t come within 6 feet without a trigger going off in their heads to stick their arms out in your general direction. Luckily for me, I got the hand shakes in before Jeremy, but Dan was not so lucky. Needless to say, this was not the desired beginning.

Day 2 and 3 I attended by myself and walked to the church; the journey now became 20 minutes. I managed to avoid any similar messes and hoped to God they had all washed their hands since Day 1. By Day 3, I was pretty close to being on a first name basis with the greeters, which was nice. My name is difficult to catch in crowded areas.
“Claybon? Clinton?”
“Clay-ton!”
I went with Clay.

The atmosphere of the seminar, i.e. the visuals one encounters in the sanctuary, were directly out of the Sunday school classes of 1985 – 1989. I remember those classes vividly. Jesus was still white, tigers make frequent appearances, the disciples and ZZ Top might be the same people, and the Bibles, like the cars of the previous decade, are huge. However, the Bible is still the same now as it was then, so that’s good.

The sessions are split into three parts. There’s a rapid fire, let’s read through some Bible passages pertaining to the importance of prophecy as fast as we can part, a musical interlude part, and a “This is the prophecy topic tonight” part. Part one progresses like a 20 minute cram session before a final exam, part two progresses like a glacier made of molasses, and part three progresses like your normal 30 minute sermon. Needless to say, my preference would be to maintain a constant velocity through the whole night rather than accelerate in order to then decelerate only to then accelerate again but not as quick a pace as before; it’s just more fuel efficient.

As far as content is concerned, it’s nothing new or outrageous in a heretical way, but the pace is so quick one has little time to digest what’s being fed. Also, obvious questions that could be raised about the truthfulness of statements are going unnoticed. This is to be expected since the assumption going in is that these things are truth and they are being presented, not that these things are being presented and you are to make a judgment on whether or not they are true. I would prefer the later for discussion sake, but this seminar is not a discussion. One thing that can be said about the majority of the attendees, they really love Jesus. At least, they really love the idea of Jesus. They really hoot and holler whenever He does something or is going to do something or did something in the past. This is where, I think, I need to focus if I’m going to learn to love these people. Find out what qualities about Jesus they love so much and what they’d be willing to do for Him in order to see what I have in common with them.

I’ll be going back tonight for round 4, and tomorrow night is the topic that included Bible mathematics, so that should be exciting. I’m bringing my calculator. I feel at least one person in the room ought to have one. Anyway, stay tuned for more updates, and again, if anyone would like to join me on any of the scheduled nights, let me know.