This August 1, 2014, Tactics installment takes its cue from the John Bunyan classic, Pilgrim’s Progress, written in 1678. How many of you have ever read this famous and popular novel? I can say that I have. And while I enjoyed it, it is my opinion that it isn’t an “easy read”. At the end of this post, I will include a very brief overview of the novel to give you some insight as to why this book has remained at the top of everyone’s list of Classics ever since it was first put to print.*
One of the characters in Bunyan’s work is, Flatterer. Reading through Tactics’ excerpt, it should become fairly obvious that Tactics equates “Flatterer” with Wolf Bob Scott. Really, it isn’t a stretch to come to this conclusion.
In Bunyan’s story, Christian and Hopeful are “subtly” led astray by Flatterer. (Please note that “Ignorance” followed them on this wrong path) Flatterer befriends them using false light and a robe of “white” (to hide the evil within) and soon, “before they were aware” became so lost, blind, tangled up and ensnared (remember: where chaos and confusion exists, so does every evil work), “they knew not what to do.”
That’s when that white robe fell off and revealed a man “black with sin.”
But God! While trapped, the Shining One came to set them free, and put their feet back on the path to righteousness.
This allegory perfectly illustrates how wolves like Bob Scott and cults like Calvary Temple can dupe even the most determined Christian. All pilgrims like us wanted to do was to go to the “Celestial City”…Heaven. But, our paths were thrown off by Flatterers in the form of Bob Scott and Henchmen. Wondering how anyone can become ensnared by a man of sin dressed in a white robe, Bunyan offers this:
“He asked, moreover, if the shepherds did not bid them beware of the Flatterer. They answered, Yes; but we did not imagine, said they, that this fine-spoken man had been he. Romans 16:17,18.”
Bob Scott can be “fine spoken” (he actually isn’t fine spoken, but he talks a good game), and by that, I mean that he can take Scripture and twist it just enough to entrap and ensnare folks who only wanted to seek Jesus. Subtle and devious.
This wolf’s tactics have not changed one iota. Fast forward to February 2018, and Bob “The Flatterer” Scott still uses the same technique that Jesus warned of, and Bunyan wrote about centuries ago.
To anyone and everyone living in Northern Virginia communities and the surrounding areas, please do a Google search. Recently we had a member of the community reach out to us, saying that a “nice lady” from Calvary Temple had invited her and her child to a CT event. But she did a Google search revealing everything about Bob Scott and Calvary Temple. The bottom line? She kept her family safe.
Please…please do the same. Here we are over ten years later, still trying to warn everyone. Stay far away from Calvary Temple. It is not a church, but a cult, and it is run by a narcissistic flattering predatory wolf.
#exposecalvarytemple #PilgrimsProgress #BobScottIs #TheFlatterer #TheManBlackWithSin #ButGod #TheShiningOne #Jesus #DoAGoogleSearch #LetTodayBeTheDay #ForSuchATimeAsThis #Ezekiel34
*The English novel begins behind bars, in extremis. Its first author, John Bunyan, was a Puritan dissenter whose writing starts with sermons and ends with fiction. His famous allegory, the story of Christian, opens with a sentence of luminous simplicity that has the haunting compulsion of the hook in a great melody. “As I walk’d through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid me down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream.”
A “Denn” is a prison, and Bunyan wrote most of the book in Bedford county gaol, having been arrested for his beliefs during the “Great Persecution” of 1660-1690. He shares the experience of prison with Cervantes, who had the idea for Don Quixote while incarcerated in La Mancha. Like so many novels…, The Pilgrim’s Progress blends fact and fiction. As well as being the record of Bunyan’s dream, a well-known fictional device, it is also an archetypal tale – a quest, fraught with danger. Christian’s pilgrimage takes him through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair and the Delectable Mountains in a succession of adventures that keep the reader turning the page. With his good companions, Faithful and Hopeful, he vanquishes many enemies before arriving at the Celestial City with the line that still reverberates through the English literary tradition: “So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”
In Hollywood terms, the novel has a perfect “arc”. It also contains a cast of unforgettable characters, from Mr Worldly Wiseman to Lord Hategood, Mr Stand-fast and Mr Valiant-for-Truth.
More profoundly, as an allegory of state repression, it has been described by the historian EP Thompson as one of the “foundation texts of the English working-class movement”. Part of its uniquely English quality is a robust and engaging sense of humour that has cemented its appeal to generations of readers.
The Pilgrim’s Progress is the ultimate English classic, a book that has been continuously in print, from its first publication to the present day, in an extraordinary number of editions. There’s no book in English, apart from the Bible, to equal Bunyan’s masterpiece for the range of its readership, or its influence on writers as diverse as William Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, CS Lewis, John Steinbeck and even Enid Blyton.
Huckleberry Finn speaks for many readers when, recalling his Mississippi education, he says: “There was some books too… One was ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, about a man that left his family it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.”
The story of a man in search of the truth is the plot of many kinds of fiction, fromPortnoy’s Complaint to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. …Bunyan had a wonderful ear for the rhythms of colloquial speech and his allegorical characters come to life in dialogue that never fails to advance the narrative. Story is one thing. The simple clarity and beauty of Bunyan’s prose is something else. Braided together, style and content unite to make a timeless English classic.
By Robert McCrum, Associate Editor of The Observer, and contributor to The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/23/100-best-novels-pilgrims-progress)
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