The Art of Radio. Improved

(c) Whoever owns "Futurama" now

One of the amazing things about a pocket logic is that it not only makes 'phone calls, but it also provides a gateway to the past. There are myriad "radio" channels available, not just through the Clear Channel whoredom of iHeartRadio. TuneIn is more...eclectic, serving as a gateway to things like Live365, with its huge spectrum of stations, run by just folks instead of a ratings computer. I found several vintage Art Bell stations, apparently running CBC recordings of  his Coast to Coast and Dreamland shows. I crashed this afternoon and napped whilst listening to an episode featuring an "Andromedan contactee", who stated that the first thing the aliens did when he was safely stowed aboard the stellar light-dirigible or whatever conveyance they used, was to show him video(?) of all his past lives.

As Jack Benny would say, "Hmmmm".

It does not surprise me anymore that the entire Universe (apparently) is antagonistic to the teachings of the Gospel, of Jesus and His apostles. The writer of Hebrews tells us "It is appointed to man once to die, and after that, the judgment." We, each of us, receive the matchless gift of life, and daily, the opportunity not to bite the fruit. At the end of life, we Give Account as to our lives, especially as to our fealty to God's Son and His grace to us.

Enter our Space Brothers, who reliably flit about in their saucers, lightships, and vimana, preaching the G-O-O-O-O-O-D Word of endless reboots! I am SO surprised! We have no worries as to acquitting ourselves well for the One with Whom we have to do. Just live our lives and *reset*. Except that for the Hindu in the "developing world", who finds near endless rebirths in their impoverished world to be at least as potent a horror as the Christian Hell.  No Western "I wanna come back as a kitty!" No Hollywood "My Mother the Car" (which is almost as potent a horror as the Christian Hell). Just rebirth after rebirth of spiritual evolution, from roach to rat to ape to untouchable to priest to banker to roach....which can happen, because you do not retain knowledge of your past journeys, or lessons learnt. But this is the joy that the Pleideans or whomever have to share with us (just ignore their glowing red eyes...).  Sagan forbid that we hew to the madness of belief in a God Who reveals His will, makes covenant with mankind, teaches us how to live optimally in fellowship with Him and our neighbors.

In short, the wisdom of the Trackless Void is the same as that hewn from the fetid jungles, home to poverty and "unfairness".

Sign me up!!

ADDENDUM:

The thing that actually set me off on this was Art burbling the standard reincarnationist cant of "Well, you know that originally reincarnation was in the Bible, but men voted it out."

Head: EXPLODE.

I hear this so often. Early church leaders HID A VITAL TEACHING to control the PEE-pul. "But...but...John the Baptist is Elijah!!!" Elijah never died, therefore he could not reincarnate. John went in the "spirit and power of Elijah", in short, he fulfilled Elijah's ministry.

"But...but...JESUS SAID YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN!!!". His conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 makes clear the spiritual nature of the rebirth, denying Nicodemus' idea of being physically born a second time. John later denies actually being Elijah. He was a type of Elijah (Elijah being the antitype).

Mark C. Albrecht is his Intervarsity Press book Reincarnation:  A Christian Critique of a New Age Doctrine, writes on pages 41 and 42:

Did the original Bible get censored? The charge made by Head and Cranston is a common one, but it is based on an erroneous view of early Christianity. The debate about the date of the New Testament composition has now been largely resolved and laid to rest by the consensus of New Testament scholarship. The overwhelming majority of biblical scholars — both liberal and conservative — now date the writing of the entire New Testament in the latter half of the first century. John A.T. Robinson, a noted British scholar of liberal persuasion, believes that the New Testament canon was written by A.D. 70. Although most scholars would date the Gospel of John and the Revelation twenty years later, we may be quite certain that the entire New Testament was either written by eyewitnesses to Jesus' ministry or compiled from eyewitness accounts. Such origins strongly support the historical validity of the Scriptures, especially the four Gospels.

   During the first and second centuries the Gospels and Epistles were widely disseminated among the Christian churches of the Mediterranean world. After a short time there was considerable consensus about which writings were inspired and original and which were not. The criteria employed by the postapostolic church were three:

1. Apostolicity. Was the material written by an apostle? If not, did the writer (for example, Luke) have apostolic sanction? This sanction sometimes took the form of secondhand writing; that is, it may have been produced by an apostle's understudy, disciple or even an amanuensis (scribe).

2. Doctrinal orthodoxy. Did the writing contain the true teaching of the apostles? This could be determined quite easily through comparison with other apostolic writings and the oral tradition perpetuated in apostolic circles.

3. Public reading. Those documents which were consistently read as divine revelation in the majority of the churches in time came to be accepted as inspired. Thus by the end of the second century the canonical writings had gained widespread acceptance.⁶ From an early date they were often quoted side by side with the Old Testament as Scripture (see 2 Peter 3:16).

Which tends to put a nail into the inflated teaching of the reincarnationists. Another point is that these teachers cannot on the one hand impugn the veracity and accuracy of the canon, and then on the other refer to Biblical proof-texts to support their teachings.