Richard E Kelly

If you have a couple of spare hours next Saturday, you might want to check this out…

I’ve been invited to be a guest on an open telephone conference call moderated by Rick Fearon at “Six Screens of the Watchtower” on Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 7:00 PM (EST).

You can get specific information about how to join in and listen to the call at Six Screens of the Watchtower – Conference Calls. Access to the call is free (except for your own long distance call charges, if any), and you will have the ability to participate during the question and answer segment.

Here is the site’s official announcement:
“Richard Kelly author of the book “Growing up in Mama’s Club” will be our guest this Sat. Sept. 26, 2009 7PM EST. What can happen when a child is forced to adhere to strict religious ideology that he or she is unable to comprehend or believe? “Growing Up In Mama’s Club – A Childhood Perspective of Jehovah’s Witnesses” answers that question by disclosing the rare insights of a boy and his day-to-day life experiences grappling with religious confusion for over sixteen years.”

Six Screens of the Watchtower is a good source of information about Jehovah’s Witnesses and the history of the Watchtower Society. It has a wide readership and its bi-weekly conference calls are attended by hundreds of former and current Jehovah’s Witnesses. The website has an audio collection of many of their past calls, many of them that you might find interesting and want to listen to at your leisure. I recommend that you take a few moments and check out Six Screens of the Watchtower.

If you have time, be sure to listen in on Saturday. I’d love to read your comments and impressions of the show.

Instructions on how to join the call:
Call (712) 432-8710. When asked for pin number use #9925. It’s easy to participate. When you come into the conference, you may have to hit *1 to unmute yourself. The conference call takes place every two weeks on Saturday night at 7pm EST.

I originally submitted this article on JustOneOpinion.com on August 6, 2009.
I’m republishing it here for the benefit of the readers of my blog. This is the second in my series about mostly unknown but true facts about the Bible.

“Not only are most Americans ignorant of the contents of the Bible, but they are also almost completely in the dark about what scholars have been saying about it for the past two centuries” reports Bart Ehrman, a well respected professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina. In his book, Jesus Interrupted, Ehrman shares many well-written and revealing truths supporting his assertion. A few of them are:

• The Old Testament consists of thirty-nine books written by dozens of authors over at least six hundred years. And Moses did not write the first five books. In fact, it is hard to know if he ever existed.
• The New Testament was written by sixteen or seventeen authors over a period of seventy years. Only eight of the twenty-seven books are written by the people traditionally thought to be the authors. Most of the books are written not by apostles, but by later writers claiming to be apostles

Continue Reading »

I originally submitted this article on JustOneOpinion. com on May 30, 2009.
I’m republishing it here for the benefit of the readers of my blog.

When l was growing up, I was taught that the Bible was the inspired Word of God; that God put His thoughts into the minds of writers like the faithful prophets and apostles to make it historically inerrant. I was told that it’s God’s book with no mistakes and no contradictions – and that’s what most American Christians still believe today

As it turns out, that’s not what’s taught in mainstream Christian seminaries. Scholars have made significant progress in understanding the Bible over the last 200 years and the results of their studies are regularly and routinely taught to university graduate students and prospective pastors.

In Bart D. Ehrman’s book, Jesus, Interrupted – Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them), the author reports that not only are most Americans ignorant about the contents of the Bible, they are completely in the dark about what scholars have been saying about it for the past two centuries. This is what motivated Ehrman to write this book.

With this bold claim driving me, I decided to check it out. Ehrman’s excellent writing skills make his book easy to read and it’s definitely an eye opener. But still, it gnawed at me as to why this information is not more widely known; it gives credence to Will Rogers’ quote, “It’s not what we don’t know that gives us trouble; it’s what we know that ain’t so.”

So I’ve decided to share with our readers some of what I’ve learned from Ehrman’s book in this and future articles. Continue Reading »