Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Barron - What's In a Name?

Donald and Melania with their Barron.

Some were startled to learn that Trump's youngest son was named Barron, because it sounded like Baron at first, as if the parents giving away titles of nobility.

Not quite. The Hiltons, by J. Randy Taraborrelli, notes that Conrad Hilton's son Barron became friends with Donald Trump when Trump bought the Hilton hotel in Atlantic City. Subsequently, Trump named his last son after Barron Hilton.

But where does the Barron name come from? The family tree shows that Conrad's first wife was Mary Adelaide Barron.

 Roland Bainton was a liberal United Church of Christ minister,
but he believed in faithful research in the original documents.


Research
Research is like putting a vast jigsaw puzzle together. Large and small pieces have their place. Usually most of it cannot be put together, but if most of the parts are together, the overall picture makes sense.

Research means gathering random and conflicting information and theories, because errors and mistakes get published. Some people advance ideas that serve their interests.

One communications speaker told us about latent errors, such as when he told people that logs are left in water "to soak the rocks off." The audience looked at him with puzzled faces as he went on to say, "Sure, people throw rocks in the forest. Some stick to the trees and get into the bark. They have to be soaked off so the rocks don't hit the saws and break them." He slowly realized that a tall tale he heard as a child was lodged in his brain and came out just like that.

Unlike any other field, we have a clear, plain, final voice of the Truth in the Scriptures. No other original book has been so perfectly preserved and kept as written. Anyone can use a trustworthy translation and apply the revealed Word to the issue and resolve the problem in time.

Other textbooks are so obscure for the beginner that their information is hidden by the academic skills needed to interpret it. But the Bible has the Holy Spirit as its interpreter, so every sincere believer can be taught the meaning of the Word of God.

Assaults against the Gospel and the Scriptures will continue until the end of time, and now that includes manipulating and disfiguring the New Testament text itself. But that is only an effect of the Faith taking root, Satan's constant opposition to Christ, and Jesus being conveyed to us by the Word and Sacrament. The battle against the Kingdom of God will never have a truce until the end of time.