RE: [asa] Isolated humans

For one who takes the Bible more literally than most, I think possibly
we have a hint when Christ said, "You must be born again."

Might this mean continual opportunities? I saw this when it aired on
ABC. This is the story in the Daily Courier:

By <mailto:jkroeger@tribweb.com> Judy Kroeger
DAILY COURIER
Thursday, April 15, 2004

James Leininger, 6, of Lafayette, La., loves airplanes.

"He has always been extraordinarily interested in airplanes," said
James' mother, Andrea Leininger, by telephone from their Louisiana home.

Lots of kids love airplanes, but James' story is unique. He has memories
of being a World War II fighter pilot from Uniontown -- Lt. James
McCready Huston, shot down near Iwo Jima in 1945.

At 18 months old, his father, Bruce Leininger, took James to the
Kavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas, where the toddler remained
transfixed by World War II aircraft.

A few months later, the nightmares began.

"They were terrible, terrible," Andrea said. "He would scream, 'airplane
crash, on fire, little man can't get out!' He'd be kicking, with his
hands pointing up at the ceiling."

When James was 2 1/2 years old, he and Andrea were shopping and he
wanted a toy airplane. "I said to him, 'Look, it has a bomb on the
bottom' and he told me, 'That's not a bomb, it's a drop tank.' I had no
idea what a drop tank was."

Neither of the Leiningers have ever served in the military, nor are they
involved with aviation. Until James began showing an interest in planes,
they had nothing aviation-related in their home.

Andrea's mother sent her a book by Pennsylvania author Carol Bowman,
called "Children's Past Lives." The Leiningers started using Bowman's
techniques of affirming James' nightmares and assuring him that the
experiences happened to a different person, not the person he was now.
"It helped. The nightmares stopped almost immediately," Andrea said.

However, the memories did not stop, but they do not come up all the
time.

"I was reading him a story and he got a faraway look," she recalled. "I
asked what happened to your plane? 'Got shot,' he said. Where? 'Engine.'
Where did it crash? 'Water.' When I asked him who shot the plane, he
gave me a look like a teenager, rolling his eyes, 'the Japanese,' like
who else could it have been?

"What little kid knows about the Japanese," she asked. "He said he knew
it was a Japanese plane because of the red sun. My husband and I were
shell-shocked."

James provided other information. He said his earlier name was James, he
flew a Corsair and took off on a boat called the Natoma, and he
remembered a fellow flyer named Jack Larson.

Foods can set James' memories off, too.

"I hadn't made meatloaf in 10 years, so James had never had it," Andrea
said. "When he sat down, he said, 'Meatloaf! I haven't had that since I
was on the Natoma.' When we were getting ice cream one day, he told me
that they could have ice cream every day on the Natoma."

Bruce began researching his son's memories and discovered a small escort
carrier called the Natoma Bay, which was present at the Battle of Iwo
Jima. Twenty-one of its crew perished. Bruce also discovered that only
one of the Natoma's crew was named James, James Huston.

James Huston's plane was hit in the engine by Japanese fire on March 3,
1945, went down in flames and sank immediately. Flyer Jack Larson
witnessed the crash.

James Huston was born Oct. 22, 1923, in South Bend, Ind., and lived in
Uniontown during the 1930s. His father was James McCready Huston Sr., of
Brownsville, and Daryl Green Huston, who was born in New Geneva and grew
up in Uniontown. James was the only son.

According to Lt. Huston's cousin, Bob Huston of Flatwoods, the elder
Huston started several newspapers and published 13 books. He was living
in Brownsville when two Navy officers informed Huston of his son's
death.

"I didn't know James," Bob Huston said. His parents were divorced, "but
I knew his father. He stayed with us in Brownsville. James was on his
50th mission and would have come home if he'd lived another five
minutes."

The Leiningers have been in touch with Bob Huston.

"I knew what happened to James (Huston)," he said. "I was excited to
hear from them (the Leiningers). The boy's mother was flabbergasted when
all this happened."

Andrea believes that her son is the reincarnation of Lt. James Huston.
"There are so many little things. I believe in reincarnation now."

Her husband, Bruce, remains skeptical. "He started researching to
disprove what James was telling us, and ended up proving it all," he
said. "I think he believes that James Huston's spirit has manifested
itself in our son somehow."

The Leiningers have been in touch with Natoma Bay veterans, too.

"We didn't tell the veterans for a long time," Andrea said, "but
everyone has a story about having had a spirit visit them. James'
sister, Anne Barron, was in California talking to him the day he was
killed. Anne believes James' story, because he has provided so much
information that only her brother could have known.

"Families of the 21 men who were killed are talking to each other,"
continued Andrea. "It's brought them together."

The Leiningers plan to attend this year's Natoma Bay reunion and bring
their son, James.

Andrea doesn't know why this has happened.

"If he did come back, why? Maybe it was so my husband could write the
book about the Natoma Bay," she said. "It helped turn the tide of the
war in the Pacific and was one of the most highly decorated carriers,
but it hasn't received much recognition."

She said her husband has been working on a chronology of what's happened
to James and is researching the book. "He has flight plans from the
missions and has spent a year and a half on research. In the
introduction, he's writing about how he found out about the ship."

That discovery, through a toddler's fascination with airplanes and
nightmares, has led to a segment on national television.

ABC contacted Carol Bowman about her work on children's past lives and
James Leininger's experience was the most verifiable, Andrea said. "And
we agreed to share his story."

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/news/s_189477.html

Dick Fischer

Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association

Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History

 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/> www.genesisproclaimed.org

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of David Opderbeck
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 8:48 PM
To: Merv
Cc: Randy Isaac; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Isolated humans

A recent book on this is Terrance Tiessen's "Who Can Be Saved." I
haven't read the whole book -- honestly, this is an issue that bothers
me as well, and I'm more than a little afraid to dive into it too much.
Tiessen argues for what he calls an "accesibilist" view, which seems to
be somewhere in between exclusivism (the traditional evangelical
position) and inclusivism (a position associated with open theism and I
believe John Sanders and Clark Pinnock -- I have Sander's book "No Other
Name" on this issue but also have been afraid to read it, and I have not
yet picked up a copy of Pinnocks "A Wideness in God's Mercy.")

If I understand the gist of Tiessen's argument, he suggests that God
somehow can give everyone a chance to respond to the gospel. None of
these views are universalist, but the accesibilist and inclusivist
positions have drawn lots of fire from conservative quarters. Tiessen's
book, BTW, was blurbed by Christopher J.H. Wright, Director of John
Stott's Langham Fellowship, who wrote a fabulous book on missions called
"The Mission of God." Wright's thesis essentially is that missions
ought to be more holistically focused on all aspects of the Kingdom.

But ultimately, particularly with respect to people who lived before
Christ or who otherwise had no contact with the gospel, is this another
place where we simply have to presuppose and trust that God is loving,
just, knowing, true, and good, and limit ourselves to what is right
before us?

On 11/2/07, Merv <mrb22667@kansas.net> wrote:

I have heard Christians (including young-earthers) speculating that
perhaps Christ reveals himself to them in his own way (maybe even after
physical death) and that all will have a chance to accept or reject him
one way or another. Admittedly this is extra-biblical speculation for
the express purpose of preserving our sense of appropriate divine
justice in just these questions. I'm not aware of any passages that
refute the possibility, and once Paul uses an interesting premise (I
Cor. 15:29)
asking rhetorically why else would somebody be "baptized for the dead"
as he is making another point. Perhaps some extravagant Catholic
traditions have grown up from these kinds of hints. But I think in the
end, it does come down to trust. We have a sense of justice that must
be at least in part God given, and if we can't trust God to do the
ultimate right thing by everybody, then, well, we've got bigger problems
than nit-picking about who's in and who's out.

You're right about the missions dilemma. Interestingly enough many
Calvinists have always been strong on missions which always seemed
ironic to me, since they of all people could have the motivation to sit
back and say it's already all been pre-ordained by God and we can't save
anybody. But they don't try to look at that side of it. They just see
the command "Go and make disciples ..." and consider that to be their
marching orders. The results are in God's hands. Even though I'm not
a Calvinist, I think that's a spiritually well-grounded and Biblical
approach to all this. I also like C.S. Lewis' approach with the
Calorman who, to his own surprise, wound up in Aslan's paradise despite
his life spent in apparent worship of a different god. "No good deed
done for Tash is done for Tash but is done unto me, and no vile deed
done in my name is done for me but is done for Tash" --or so I think
the words went. (I know works don't save... but they are the evidence
of salvation.)

If a native never hears the direct news, perhaps he still responds to a
revelation that is given to him beyond what is available in "natural
theology". And whatever name he gives it, if any, it may well be Christ
at work in his heart. Which preserves the essential doctrine that only
Christ saves. ("Fourth Wiseman" by Henry Van Dyke is a wonderful
story.)

--Merv

Randy Isaac wrote:

The question I have is not a new one, and has been hashed around a lot,
but it does still bother me. Hitchens referred to it in his book and
debate as well. How do we understand the notion that the gospel of
Christ's incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, with all its
soterial implications, is the unique path for reconciliation to God when
a significant portion of the human population did not even have the
possibility of hearing about the gospel?

Coming from a very mission-minded church, I've always heard pleas for
"reaching those who have never heard" the gospel, with the
responsibility on our shoulders to heed the great commission to share
the good news. Somehow, the fact that a significant part of the world
could not be reached for many centuries with any technology available
no matter how zealous we may be, seems to put a different twist on it.

If "original sin" dates back to the common human ancestral community,
however that occurred, how is it that there is no commonly available
gospel? The thread on natural theology revealed several different views
of whether and how much we could learn about God through nature. I
didn't hear anyone argue that we could learn about salvation from
nature.

The standard answers I grew up with seemed to revolve around God's
accountability for humans being set relative to the amount of
information/revelation we had so that all were without excuse. That's
where Romans was usually cited. That of course led to the inevitable
retort that we should leave indigenous people in their ignorance. Which
didn't help matters.

Far be it from any of us to question why God did it this way or claim
"God surely wouldn't have done that" or the like. Yet, I confess it does
leave me with a most uncomfortable feeling. Yes, I suppose I should just
be content with "that's the way it is" but....

Randy

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Received on Sat Nov 3 00:15:18 2007