Oi me lads and lassies!
ChurchMouse here, but where I’m at I’m not sure, probably America in a sanctuary city safe from NAD recrimination for whacking mad NAD President Jackson’s tail, administered by yours truly, a wee rodent. WHACK!
Most recently, the whole SDA world rattled, quaked, and shook when the Fall Council issued its now-famous compliance document. Indeed it was a time of turmoil and possibly a shaking time (time will tell), especially for the NAD, the epicenter of after-shocks.
All this seismic upheaval has been well and copiously reported here by Messrs Wagoner and Read and other authors and profusely commented on (“load more comments”) by Fulcrum friends, preempting all other topics.
The ever observant ChurchMouse chose Fulcrum7 (not Spectrum) as his fount of information. Mr. Mouse read attentively if passively.
But he suddenly perked, went bug-eyed, his mouse ears twitched when he beheld and heard, hardly believing his eyes or ears, a video of mad-NAD president Jackson at the YEM (Year End Meeting) addressing a roomful of aroused NADsters, as at a political convention acceptance speech or base-goading rally. Only the confetti and balloons, the mass-produced mass-waved signs, and choreographed feet stamping were missing.
Jackson’s oration was, as Fulcrum labelled it, a tirade. It was NAD’s Elder Jackson’s shtick, but it could have been reverend Jackson’s, another hyper-activist of the same name of an earlier era.
Not quite. As the Mouse remembers the Reverend Jessie J, he was of basically gentle of visage and mild of manner despite frenzy-coaching by drama professionals.
Never a smile, unrelieved glowering brow, countenance relentlessly scowling, our J seemed just naturally and wholly fired up, not acting but being convincingly normal. It was natural that he would, without missing a beat, break forth in a snatch of a song, “Days of Wine and Roses,” crooning really rather sweetly, reminding me of the very early Jackson Five, whereupon the rant resumed, without missing a beat, to aver compellingly that the days of Wine and Roses are over. About the only thing missing was a Michael Jackson moonwalk.
Actually he did do kind of moonwalk — seeming to move forward while moving backward, giving the illusion of defying anatomy and gravity. Standing steadfastly for WO while levitating the manhole hiding the body of rejected and trashed basic SDA doctrines and belief in the Spirit of Prophecy; now prideful of our expanded world-wide church and now chastising those many converts for accepting embarrassing imperial colonization but not advanced American Culture; now yearning for unity while lobbing hand grenades; now a homily and now a threat -- all without missing a beat. It’s a bit raucous out there.
If the expanding apostolic church was beset by controversy, back then over male circumcision, now for the NAD it’s female ordination. And now compliance in doctrine or policy is denounced with more genuine and compelling zeal than sin, which hasn’t been mentioned in a fortnight.
Presidential by current standards if not by Abe Lincoln’s, and without poetic fortitude like Luther (“here I stand; I can do no other, so help me God”), J was downright defiant, (“we simply won’t”). Some might see NAD arrogance while the NAD sees GC arrogance. Although Christlike in forthrightness (Christ’s hypocritical vipers became persecuting papists), not a hint of Christlike meekness or Biblical surrender much less cooperation is heard — suggesting a Bible hadn’t been cracked for years.
So there J sits hard at the dais, parading his tirade to standing ovations. Therefore, and as social justice requires, and inasmuch as he is only a fiction less real than Mickey, churchMouse is singled out to administer Fulcrum7’s 7-force token, symbolic, metaphoric lambasting, delivered with tears in the voice, hopefully evocative of tears of contrition. W H A C K !
Cheerio,
ChurchMouse
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