To: Whomever it may Concern
From: Myself
Re: Evangelism

It seems a strange thing indeed, that people would expend so much energy and time co-ordinating plans to, in effect, spam the OT forum with topics that they certainly know will incite heated arguments in which many hateful things will be said.

This thing seems stranger still when one considers that several of the principal co-ordinators have stated, repeatedly, that they have "nothing to say" in the Christian Union, despite the fact that some of them have been repeatedly invited back into membership thereof. They evidently have all manner of things to say to the atheists and non-Christians in the OT forum, thus provoking a debate that will be, for many, an occasion of sin (because of the utterance of hateful things). But for their fellow Christians, they have not a word at all to spare, which is curious.

This letter, then, stands as an open invitation from myself to the various members of the CWU who have a passion for evangelism. Obviously, they feel that the CU is peopled with lost, misguided Christians...which would make for a great opportunity for evangelism, would it not? Does not Christ desire the lost lambs to be returned to the fold?

Or is it more important, and more entertaining, to muse about how quickly a thread that has denegerated into a shouting match was locked? Is it more fun to plot occasions of spamming? To test the patience of moderators? To drive an even bigger wedge between people who are likely hurting, in many terrible and intrinsic ways, and the love of Christ?

Update, with particular attention given to this: This wasn't actually intended as a personal attack on the CWU, but rather an observation as to what I see as the questionable evangelistic efforts of the members of that union. How is Christ served by staging debates in which the most probable response of people is bitterness? How is Christ glorified by turning people even further away from Him?

This is also representative only of my opinion, not of that of the CU. Though I would desire to see the lost members of the CU fold return to it, ultimately I'm talking off my own cuff here; the CU is only involved tangentially, and I am not speaking (at present) in my capacity as one of her officers.

I'd like to respond to a couple of points made against what I said here.

He obviously doesn't like our obedience to the Lord's command, known as the great commission.

Mark 16:15, "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

This is an odd chastisement to read from someone who vowed, openly (although the moderators have since deleted the discussion in which the vow was made), that he had nothing to say to the members of the CU. Perhaps the CU has been stricken from the list of "every creature"?

For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church harshly persecuted the saints, such as Tyndale and numerous others that brought the Bible to the common man. (And Protestants/Evangelicals have persecuted more than their share of Catholics over the centuries as well. There is blood on everyone's hands here. Also, Tyndale did not "bring the Bible to the common man" -- by the time he wrote his error-ridden translation of Scripture, several common-language Bibles were already widely available.) They stopped at nothing to prevent the common man from having direct access to the Word of God. (In fact, they were so opposed to the idea, that in England they even passed a law mandating that every household had to have a Bible, and bade every man go out and purchase one from a local bookseller.) The possession or private reading of the Bible was dealt with swiftly and harshly.(See previous.) They had to prevent the common man from knowing that God has said that salvation is through God's grace alone (which the Church already teaches), through faith alone, (flawed human faith is salvific, apparently) in Christ alone (because the Church never taught anybody about that Jesus guy before Luther came along) and not through obedience to the traditions and dictates of the Roman Catholic Church. (Because we all know that Christ gave the apostles and their successors absolutely no authority as leaders of the community of faith.)

And here's the kicker:

My response to this officer of the CU is no thanks to his suggestions. We will trust in the Lord and be obedient to the Him rather than the whims and feelings of any man.

So all that quoting of Matthew 28 and Mark 16 was just window dressing, I guess. I posed a simple enough question, which has not yet been answered, and so will ask it again. Here is a group which seems to expend an inordinate amount of energy attempting to witness for Christ in the OT forum, yet will not expend so much as one keystroke's worth of energy on a group of Christians they consider to be lost and misguided. Does that make even the slightest bit of sense?