Strange, but not so true

Found in an old No Longer Children Newsletter:

Strange, but not so true

“Heidi” wasn’t from Interlakken

“We always had a good laugh about the “Heidi” Mo letters. Being Swiss, we knew perfectly well that the fictional character Heidi from the book by Joanna Spyri has absolutely nothing to do with Interlaken and the Bernese Alps, neither does “Grandfather,” but rather they come from the southeastern part of Switzerland, near a village called Mainfeld. – Lisa, Switzerland.

No Apartments in Heaven

In the verse “In My Father’s house are many mansions,” David Berg told us the word “mansions” means something like apartments. He even had Eman Artist draw a detailed design of what the Heavenly City would look like filled with apartments, which we got out by the 1000s on colored posters. Well, here’s a bible dictionary study on the word “mansion” and its Greek root that shows how much Berg limited the meaning and how tripped off his perception of Heaven is:

“Mansion: The English word occurs in Scripture only in Jn 14:2, “In my Father’s house are many mansions” (RVm ‘Or, abiding places’; RSV ‘rooms’). Its retention is an archaism, for the modern connotation of a house of some dignity is quite lacking from the word as used by Tyndale (1525), apparently from the Vulgate mansions, ‘abiding places.’ The Greek word (mone), like the Latin, means (1) the act of abiding, (2) a place of abode. In the NT it occurs also in Jn 14:23, where ‘maker our home’ is Greek idiom for ‘abide.’ Hence the thought in Jn 14:2 is simply that there is ample room for the disciples in the Father’s house.”

Jesus was not illegitimate

The idea that Mo spread about Joseph not wanting to shame Mary when he found out she was pregnant is a face. The Jewish tradition of “betrothal” is that once a couple are betrothed, they are considered as more or less married. Pregnancies were not such a tragedy and shame if it occurred while a couple was betrothed, and they didn’t treat it as such a terrible thing as Mo used to tell us. (Source: “Jesus & His Times” condensed in Reader’s Digest.)
---Barbara (Jubilee Little Chamber) Canada

Familiar Spirits

The COG’s use of the term “familiar spirit” was someone being “buddy-buddy.” However, the Biblical definition is a spirit of divination or conjuring up of spirits of the dead (I Sam. 28:7-9).
-- Tore Klevjer (Abel); Australia