What was expunged from official histories?

[colinlindsay]

I read recently that the early Christians in the catacombs actually killed spies and informers and apostates as they came across them. (RichardWurmbrand - Sermons in Solitary Confinement)
I don't find this impossible to believe nor do I find it something to judge them for.

Also I read that not every Christian went in a holy state to the lion or the gladiator. I'm not talking about cowardice or denial but the fact that some decided that their last night on earth was going to be spent illicitly. (for example find some comfort in the arms of another). Again I'm not judging.

A third and more recent thing was that during the time of the Covenanters and the early Church of Scotland there was lots of prophetic and miraculous goings-on which later sanitised presbyterian versions omitted.

 

[david01]

Who knows? As they say, to the victor belongs the history.

 

[colinlindsay]

Hello dabid,

Yes, I agree.

But in the case of the covenanters, there is extra documentary evidence that there were prophets and there were words of knowledge and there were healings. (See Jack Deere's "Surprised by the power of the Spirit")

These documents were sidelined.

In my Church of scotland upbringing, I always assumed that tongues had died out and even that they were always spurious and slightly dodgy even in NT times.

Imagine my suprise when my minister showed me a CofS by-law (or code of practice) which was intended to suppress glossolia in the services!

 

[david01]

Although it is widely believed that the gift of "tongues" was restored by the modern Pentecostal movement at the beginning of the twentieth century in Los Angeles, this is far from true. Joseph Smith claimed it, among many others, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Before that, in the late eighteenth century Mother Ann and her followers, commonly known as the Shakers, practiced it. In the late seventeenth century a schismatic group from the Lutheran church in Germany practiced a form of it. They later migrated to the United States, eventually settling in Iowa where they established the Amana Colony. Their utterance were carefully recorded and accepted as divine utterances from God. Thus, it is not at all out of the question that the Covenanters in Scotland would have engaged in the practice, as well.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

I'd like to see a shred of document or archival evidence for any of that.

 

[colinlindsay]

Thus, it is not at all out of the question that the Covenanters in Scotland would have engaged in the practice.
< < I'd like to see a shred of document or archival evidence for any of that. > >

Well, more than a shred comes from that statute shown to me which came from the earliest Calvinistic establishment period in Scotland. It was not a modern restriction, as tongues hadn't been practiced for centuries. Pity, I can't remember more about it.

Must look up what Jack Deere found out.

 

[david01]

As for the evidence from the Amana Colonies, I suggest you pay a visit there and ask to see the recorded utterances. They were carefully written down in a form of Low German which many of us would be unable to read. However, the books still exist, as does the church.

 

[ArnautDaniel]

I read recently that the early Christians in the catacombs actually killed spies and informers and apostates as they came across them. (RichardWurmbrand - Sermons in Solitary Confinement)
I don't find this impossible to believe nor do I find it something to judge them for.

Also I read that not every Christian went in a holy state to the lion or the gladiator. I'm not talking about cowardice or denial but the fact that some decided that their last night on earth was going to be spent illicitly. (for example find some comfort in the arms of another). Again I'm not judging.

A third and more recent thing was that during the time of the Covenanters and the early Church of Scotland there was lots of prophetic and miraculous goings-on which later sanitised presbyterian versions omitted.

To put it simply -

When you have a large enough group of people, it becomes more likely that more and different things happen.

Did these sorts of things ever happen among some Christians.

Certainly.

Were they frequent or the norm?

That is a different question.

 

[colinlindsay]

< < Were they frequent or the norm? > >

These things don't cause me to lose my faith. We're talking about fallible human beings.

I just want to know if there are any other examples of histories or biographies being sanitised.

I can live with Christians, warts and all.

 

[ArnautDaniel]

< < Were they frequent or the norm? > >

These things don't cause me to lose my faith. We're talking about fallible human beings.

I just want to know if there are any other examples of histories or biographies being sanitised.

I can live with Christians, warts and all.

In some sense every single history you are ever going to read is "sanitized".

Every historian makes a choice to include some things and exclude other things.

 

[david01]

Yes, even John said that if everything were written about Jesus, the whole world could not contain the books (John 21:25).