The following audio snippet comes from a May Meeting discussion, I believe, and shows a clear intent to avoid criticism by keeping the teachings of the church hidden from public scrutiny. The idea under discussion was to avoid having written material get indexed by search engines and exposed to the “wrong eyes” on the Internet, the supposed “enemies of the cross of Christ.” This is just another way of silencing dissent; if your opinions aren’t published anywhere, no one can counter them with scripture.
Does anyone doubt that Paul would have loved for each and every one of his sermons to be published in audio, written, and video form on the Internet, if he’d had such technology? He would have loved it. He had nothing to hide, not even the “enemies of the cross of Christ.”
Paul would not have cared what his detractors would say about his words, because he was confident he was speaking the truth. The only reason to hide your tracks is if deep inside, you’re not confident you’re teaching the truth.
Audio snippet
How to hide information “sensitive to our interests” on the Internet (03:19)
Transcript
…the actual tapes ____Is there any thoughts… would we not even do that much, or? Just, you know, with the church library and just the titles and speakers…cause I was picking up maybe with (<name removed>) even that may be something others are not wanting others access to?
Go ahead <name removed>:
Remember, anything you put in a text format on a website can be searched by a bot. A bot is essentially a program that goes out on the web. When you type in a search in Google or Yahoo or something like that you put in a text string and it goes out and searches it’s locations that it’s designed to go out and search.
Throughout the internet there are bots that are running, searching everything and anything, any text string that they can think of and compiling their own databases of everything that’s out there…so anything placed on a website in a text string has the ability to be searched; whoever is doing it so….
If there’s anything that you don’t want to be gotten to by others…you know, if I’m sitting out there, and I’m Thomas John, and I’m doing a search on Gary Preman; anywhere Gary Preman’s name might come up in a text string will lead them to things that he has to say. And you know how she is…they are…they’ll take even the title of something and twist it. Enemies of the cross of Christ have very little scruples and morals concerning these kinds of things as they are so intent on their destruction and destroying somebody else. I’m not saying no; I’m just trying to give some information. If you want to put something up there like that that might contain the title or name or anything that we are going to consider sensitive to our interests – do it in a picture format where you would take your list or your thing that it is and you can hit alt/print-screen on your computer, and whatever is on your display now goes to the clipboard as an image in that sense, and you can edit out parts you don’t want and save as a picture, and then put the picture of that text on your website. Then it can’t be searched. There’s ways to do some of that without releasing information unknowingly.
Conclusion
Sunlight is the best disinfectant–or the best antidote, as the case may be. Truth doesn’t need to be afraid of a lie, yet they are clearly afraid of too much public scrutiny of their teachings. If we’re on the side of truth, our beliefs shouldn’t need to be hid under a bushel from anyone. Remember the old kids’ song?
This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine
I’m gonna let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
Hide it under a bushel, NO!
I’m gonna let it shine
Hide it under a bushel, NO!
I’m gonna let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
Proverbs 28:1 The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.
h/t to CB for portions of this post
On a Side note, I always sang that to my kids as "Hide it under a bush, Oh NO!" lol well my way works too :).
Thank your for this blog, I agree with you. Darkness tries to hide, so why is the Stanton COC trying to hide when they are supposedly "thee only light"?
That's funny! I never heard it that way. Growing up, it was "bushel"–you know, good old King James English! 🙂