L2L-009 Four Vignettes

In this episode I discuss four topics: Topic 1. An insight about the 7 letters to 7 churches in Revelation 2-3, specifically regarding the wording of the greeting in the final letter, the letter to the church "of the Laodiceans" rather than the church "at Laodicea." (This is the phrasing in the KJV, and not necessarily other translations, but my insight seems to be backed up by the original Greek). Topic 2. Whether or not rewards for works are retroactive, or put another way, does a lifetime of good works that show love to others go rewarded or unrewarded after a deathbed profession of faith? Although I only touched on Abraham briefly while reading James citing it in James 2, a good study would be to study the faith vs. works in the life of Abraham, specifically when he was asked to sacrifice Isaac. In Abraham's example, his faith was made perfect by his works. My question is whether works can be made perfect by faith after the fact. Topic 3. An incident on Facebook regarding an apostate former high-school classmate of mine. Topic 4. How social networking is a gnostic heresy, sort of. The normalization of non-fleshly interaction is degrading the quality of our face-to-face interactions. In the deception-riddled world of today, it is not hard to come to the conclusion that in developing new conceptions about human interaction to make sense of "technologized" human relationships, the various neo-gnostic new-age philosophies (which would deny the flesh, etc) will gain a foothold. We should be careful not to join the anti-flesh bandwagon, but rather seek to put flesh in its proper context, in balance with the spirit, through Christ.