144,000 IS the Magic Number

The Moderator, Mr. Robert Duncan had much to say during an interview with the Church Times.  For example, let's begin with this wonderful statement:

"Bishop Duncan echoed the insistence of the Primates that theirs was not a breakaway movement. “I’m a cradle Anglican. My grandfather was a boy chorister. ."  

 It is my humble opinion that the only birthright we have coming into this world is sin.  We are born with sin and only when we are baptized do we then revert to one of God's own people.  I did not know nor did I think that we are born to be Anglicans or Catholics or Presbyterians or whatever -- in fact, we are baptized Christians.  

Mr. Duncan goes on to say,

He said that he had given a progress report to the GAFCON Primates. His Church had 100,000 members in 700 congregations in 28 dioceses. On any given Sunday, there were about 80,000 worshippers, about ten per cent of the numbers in the Episcopal Church, “and growing all the time”.

 Can some one please help me out -- when did any church, let alone the Anglican Church, become his?  I thought all this time the Church belonged to Jesus.  Now I am beginning to understand why Mr. Duncan thinks so highly of himself, it is his church!  

Then, Mr. D goes on to add,

The creation of the ACNA had meant that the United States now had two parallel Anglican provinces, Bishop Duncan said, and this was “not altogether comfortable”, as the meeting of all the Primates in Alexandria had admitted.

 So, we now have two Anglican provinces in North America?  Must be true, the head of the whole church, Mr. Duncan has declared it to be so! 

Here comes the kicker:

It was clear that Bishop Duncan thought that Anglicans in the United States were more sharply divided than elsewhere. “You really have two religions. You have one that believes as Anglicans always have believed, that Jesus is the only way to salvation, and you have another led by our Presiding Bishop of TEC [the Episcopal Church], who says ‘That would be to put God into a small box.’ One is classic Christianity. One is actually not Christianity, at least not in the way that classic Protestantism, classic orthodoxy, or classic Catholicism would recognise it.

 

Not only does Mr. Duncan believe that the church is his but he has now determined who has received salvation and who has not.  I have no idea what in the world now possesses Mr.Duncan and his brood of vipers.  Clearly, women are lost or at least make no theological sense, LGBT people are lost, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindi, Jainists, etc are also lost.  Everybody but Bob Duncan, a few 100,00 people who follow Mr. Duncan, a couple of has been bishops, several primates in the Global South -- maybe 144,000 is the right number? Holy Smokes, the Jehovah's Witnesses must be in!