{"id":411,"date":"2014-04-10T22:35:51","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T22:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/?p=411"},"modified":"2014-04-10T22:35:51","modified_gmt":"2014-04-10T22:35:51","slug":"sower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/sower\/","title":{"rendered":"Parable of the Sower"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/pdf\/sower.pdf\">a story that divides its hearers<\/a>. Some receive it gladly, perhaps because it confirms their belief in a universe where many will not be saved, or where the destinies of souls are predestined, or in a Jesus who is as hard and unforgivingly principled as they strive to be themselves. Others take offense at the suggestion that their loving Jesus would purposely leave in the dark a crowd that came out in great numbers to hear his Good News for them, and do what they can to prune or graft the story to fit their theological sensibilities.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all a mystery to me, and all I can do is, like Rod Sterling of the old Twilight Zone TV series &#8211; and there&#8217;s definitely something &#8220;Twi-lit&#8221; about this situation where disciples who thought they were following a teacher who wanted to teach or a savior who wanted to save suddenly found themselves faced with something quite different, and even disturbingly alien &#8211; all I can do is &#8220;submit it for your approval.&#8221;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a story that divides its hearers. Some receive it gladly, perhaps because it confirms their belief in a universe where many will not&hellip;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/sower\/\" title=\"Parable of the Sower\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineskinproject.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}