Dinner and a Theological Discussion

It got down close to freezing last night. So it was chilly in the RV this morning and our little electric heater struggled to warm it up.  We slept well, though.

Although the sun was shining brightly this morning, it was too cold to paint so we did some more furniture refinishing.  Whenever we finished a few chairs or a table, it would disappear and a few more needing finishing would show up in their place.

By noon, it had warmed up enough to go back to the chapel for some outside work.  First order of business, removing a post that appeared to be rotting all the way through.  This took a bit since it was fairly well secured to the stairway with lots of nails and several lag screws, but eventually it gave way and came out in a couple of pieces.  When it came apart, we discovered a very active nest of carpenter ants, which boiled out of the separated pieces and went skittering away in all directions.  No wonder it was so bad.

We were instructed to secure the remaining railings until a new post could be built, so we used some of the scrap lumber to tie everything together. 

There, I fixed it.  Good as new.

What 'new' should look like

Carpenter Ant damage

We also replaced a couple top pieces of the railings.

The carillon in the chapel keeps us well aware of the passage of time, as it bongs out the Westminster chimes every 15 minutes.  So when it bonged 3:30, we packed up the remainder of the scrap wood in the truck and knocked off for the day.

The women had the day off as they really had nothing for them to do.

Today we got to have dinner in the dining room of the training center, complements of The Cove.  It was a nice buffet-style dinner and one of the very few times in the past three weeks that we have eaten at a table that is more than 18 inches by 24 inches in size.  Our table had a tag on it that said “Campers”, so they had a table reserved just for us.

After dinner we were able to participate in the first session of a three-day training workshop featuring Neil Anderson, an author of many books, a theologian, and a former aerospace engineer.  With those credentials, he’s got to be good, right?

The session started with a few songs led by a talented young couple who played the piano, trumpet, and piccolo.

Neil Anderson’s session was titled Good Prevailing Over Evil. He talked about the natural and spiritual realms and Heaven and Earth and Satan and how we Westerners are more naturalists and other cultures are more spiritists.  I was having difficulty taking notes as he seemed to ramble a bit.

Meanwhile, Deb is madly searching through a book she was just reading and consulting the Bible app on her iPad.  She can detect theological problems as easily as I detect flickering lights.  And her antennae were focused.

As we were walking out, she began to unload what her antennae had picked up.  The power of Satan over the world.  The authority of Jesus over demons versus the authority that we have as Christians over demons.  The culpability of people for their sins.  What ‘deception’ really means.

We talked about it more driving back from the training center.  We had all piled into Mike and Bonnie’s crew-cab pickup, which seats five, so Deb was on my lap in the back seat.  It was a rather lively discussion and as it went on, my legs got quite sore from the cramped position and another person sitting on top of them.  I don’t know that we solved all the theological problems in the pickup, but it was a relief to use my legs when we finally got out.

Turns out she was not the only person who has problems with Neil Anderson.  Some authors that she found in her research afterward stated that, if you are Reformed, you will probably have problems with Neil Anderson.

It was an interesting evening, to say the least.