Apologetics Answers
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
 
Anton Hein: Evangelical "Psychic"?
In his latest post to the AR-Talk lists, as well as his Web site comments about me, Anton Hein seems to adopt the role of an Evangelical "psychic," able to divine my thoughts, opinions and conclusions from a brief posting to the list, to wit:

"An article I’ve written about the controversial book “Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions” appears in the March/April 2004 issue of LIBERTY Magazine, a bi-monthly religious freedom publication of the North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It should be available on the magazine’s Web site, http://www.libertymagazine.org, shortly.

"For those who can’t wait for the Web — or don’t want to — I’m happy to send a free PDF file of the article and the issue cover. The scan is less-than-perfect (which I shall try to fix later today), but still readable. All who e-mail me OFF LIST are welcome to a copy.

"Mark Kellner
"mark (at ) kellner.us
"http://www.kellner.us"
===end of post===

Mr. Hein, in response, writes the following on AR-TALK:

===begin quote===
For the background to Mark Kellner's activism in favor of the Local
Church/Lord's Recovery, and against the _Encyclopedia of Cults and News
Religions_, by John Ankerberg and John Weldon, see:
http://www.apologeticsindex.org/l40.html#harvesthouse

and

http://www.apologeticsindex.org/k04.html

The book is, of course, controversial only in the eyes of the Local Church -
a cult of Christianity with a track record of legal threats.

Copies of the book can still be purchased via Amazon.com:
http://tinyurl.com/jln5

I heartily recommend this resource, and suggest you buy it before the
intolerance and ill-advised behavior of cults and their defenders makes it
impossible.
===end quote===

Mr. Hein's certainty -- that ECNR is *only* controversial to those who are members of the Local Churches (which I am not, by the way) -- is an astonishing leap of thought that presumes near omnipotence on his part. Can ANYONE else find the book controvesial? Or do they have to join the Local Church first?

Also, Mr. Hein asserts that it is MERELY the "intolerance and ill-advised behavior of the cults and their apologists" that will cause this book to go off sale. That would obliterate the possibility that: (a) the book is (in my opinion and perhaps that of others) a poorly written, poorly edited product; (b) that it contains libelous statements which will be found as such in a court of law and (c) that under the rule of law there may be penalties extracted. Nope -- none of these will apply. Rather, it's just the all-powerful "cults" and "their apologists," to which latter group Mr. Hein has elected me. (I can't be a dedicated journalist, I suppose, or a defender of human rights and religious freedom. No, sir, Mr. Hein says I can only be a cult apologist.)

As mentioned before in this blog, Mr. Hein -- who sets his own rules and standards for what is and isn't "kosher" to him apologetically -- has decided both on the matter of ECNR and the Local Church. Nothing will persuade him, it appears, and he doesn't even have to examine the issues at hand to render -- or retain -- his viewpoint.

That's not exactly a "Berean" attitude (Acts 17:11,NIV), is it? More important, is it how Mr. Hein would want others to judge him and his views?

Oddly enough, Jesus of Nazareth had some words which Mr. Hein might want to ponder: "Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults--unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own." (Matt. 7:1-3, The Message, online at http://tinyurl.com/yv5f8)


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