All Are Included (Clarifying Our Theological Vision, Part 1)

Our meeting last May 19, Friday was cancelled due to my being late. I got stuck in traffic as I drove from the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) to the venue at the ReThink Community Hall in Santa Rosa, Laguna. My apologies to all.  We were able to resume our regular meeting last Friday, May 26.

Essentially  we completed the part on what is meant by “All are included” in Part 1 of Dr. Gary Deddo’s essay, Clarifying Our Theological Vision

Questions were raised on the issue of salvation and the seeming emphasis on a person’s response. Hopefully, these questions will be clarified and answered as we go along and complete reading Part 1 and Part 2 of the essay.

Here’s the video of that session. I made a mistake again — I’m a neophyte videographer haha! — and so the video will only last for about 30 minutes and the rest of the session will all be audio. Have fun listening:

Clarifying Our Theological Vision, Introduction

To accommodate others who are interested to join our discipleship class, we have moved our regular schedule from Wednesday to Friday every 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. We had a bit more attendance than usual last Friday. So it seems like Friday is a good time to have these sessions from now on.

Last time we had just completed Part 1 of the booklet/article, The God Revealed in Jesus Christ. We were supposed to continue with Part 2 beginning last Friday but due to the importance of another topic which is fairly recent, I have decided to discuss with the class the essay of Dr. Gary Deddo on Clarifying our Theological Vision, Part 1. I just thought that this is timely and should be discussed right away. We will just continue with Part 2 of The God Revealed in Jesus Christ  at a later date.

We started last Friday’s class with prayers for those who are sick among us like: Max Fabricante and Rex Olandesca. Then I shared with the class Dr. Joseph  Tkach’s Introduction to Dr. Gary Deddo’s essay before we proceeded with the main topic. We were only able to discuss the earlier part on the subject of All are Included. The topic generated comments and questions relevant or related to the topic and without realizing it we were not even able to finish quoting and discussing all the supporting verses that were cited in the essay. One and a half hour just flew so quickly haha!

We will continue next meeting. Before we ended I shared to the group Dr. Gary Deddo’s videoclip where he discussed the topic on universalism and double predestination. I did not anymore ask the class to ask questions or make comments after the video otherwise we would have ended up at midnight haha! Here’s the video:

Thanks Meralco for Trimming our Trees!

I really appreciate the Meralco maintenance crew who without fail have been visiting our trees in the community and trimming it every 3 or 4 months for free hahaha! I just love to see them work cutting the branches and twigs that may cause harm when it touches their high tension electrical wires above us. I heard it’s about 34,000 kilovolts!

Of course, they are actually just trying to take care of their high tension electrical lines. But I’m sure glad to see them taking care of these things to keep the community safe from electrical hazards especially when there are typhoons. Their machines can really cause a lot of noise in the neighborhood though. But that’s OK, once in a while. Thank you Meralco folks!

The God Revealed in Jesus Christ, Part 2

Last night, we had the lowest attendance so far. There were only 4 of us. But just the same, we continued with our study of the Word for the 11th time. For this session, we continued and finished Part 2 of the booklet/article, The God Revealed in Jesus Christ.

Having to study the material more thoroughly because I need to teach and share it has actually given me more understanding and deeper insight in the process. Also the questions raised and/or comments made by the group members during our past ten sessions have sharpened and enhanced my view about the Incarnational, Trinitarian theology that I hold on to. Although I have read most of the articles many times some years ago, I thank the Lord that he has given me the joy of gaining more and more understanding about this good news of God’s life and love for all humanity and all of his creation.

It was once again another fun time to study the Word of God. Here’s the video of this session:

The God Revealed in Jesus Christ, Part 1

We continued with our study of the article, The God Revealed in Jesus ChristOnce again we had a lively discussion although we were only a few who attended. It was exciting to see that we were all growing in understanding about our Triune God. For this session, we were able to finish part 1 of the booklet. We will continue with Part 2 in the next session.

Unfortunately,  I also forgot to turn on my camera for video recording so — my apologies. Thankfully, I was able to turn on my iPhone for audio recording. For the first part of this session, I shared with the group an excerpt of Dr. Gary Deddo’s video in 2010 where he shared his thoughts about figurative language and the afterlife.

I have so many material that I want to share so I’m giving it to the group bit by bit as time permits. So here’s the audio/video recording from last week’s session: