That’s ok. Nobody else listens anyhow.
There’s a letter to the editor from a former colleague who moved to Hendersonville.
He’s the one involved in the Muslim thing I discussed a while ago.
Tony came up with a statement you may have heard before, but I haven’t .
I’ll call it “tony’s law”.
“The decline in a democracy accelerates when the number of voters on the take from the government exceeds the number of voters being taken from by the government.”
Morning Chas.
Finally finished the book order, over 3700 dollars. A lot of Christmas gifts for some soon to be happy children. Including my grandchildren.
It took the whole day until dark, I didn’t even have time for a walk.
Good Night all.
There’s a 2 year old on my lap who got up too early and would rather be looking at cat photos on FB– where she did see a fab photo of her other grandmother, too.
I another busy day. I took a 45 minute time out about 4 yesterday so we all could survive.
Janice, from yesterday evening, the soundtrack to ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ is wonderful because it was composed by Ennio Morricone, the latest in a long line of great Italian composers (the reason why Italian is the language of music). I love Morricone’s music. He is most famous of course, for the ubiquitous theme to ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’, which even transcribes well to ukulele:
We went up north today since Art surprised me by saying he wanted to see some mountains. 🙂 So far it’s not sunny, but I remain hopeful. He wanted to beat the stormy weather.
Kare, I hear you. Living in southern Ontario means that ‘up north’ could be referring to places as far south as Sudbury (it is always funny to visit there and hear people talk about where I live as being ‘down south’) or Ottawa, or it could mean going up as far as Thunder Bay or Timmins or it could even mean taking the train to Moosonee near James Bay. Ontario doesn’t extend as far north as Saskatchewan does, due to Hudson’s Bay, but one can always go further north in Canada (unless you are on the tip of Ellesmere Island) 🙂 I can also go further south in Ontario. People in Windsor, Ontario love to joke about how they can go north to the U.S., as Windsor is the southern Canadian sister city to Detroit.
Mumsee, I’m not sure why we say ‘down east’ as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are further north than we are, but I think we refer to the east coast as ‘down east’ because of the historical Upper and Lower Canada. Southern Ontario used to be called Upper Canada, and the area of Quebec used to be called Lower Canada. Makes no sense from a north-south perspective, as we go north to Quebec. However, the terms were in relation to the St. Lawrence River. Southern Ontario was upriver – since the St. Lawrence flows from Lake Ontario – and Montreal and Quebec City are down river. Since we travel through Quebec to get to the eastern provinces, my guess is that is where the down direction came from. After all, since the earth is a sphere spinning in space, who is to say north is not down, and south is not up 😉
Way cool ukelele ensemble, Roscuro. I enjoyed that video.
First Arrow is down south in Missouri right now, hubby and two children drove out west this morning for a couple hours, Second Arrow lives out east a few hours from here, and the other two children and I are centrally located, with me about to head upstairs after I get off the computer in the basement.
Up is north, right? So I’ll be headed north in a minute or two, and we’ll have all the directions covered here. 😉
We’re all over the place, and none of you can escape us — bwahahahaha. 😛
We’ve had discussions on eschatology on here numerous times, and I’m still not sure what I really believe about the end times. There was something about this article I got in my email this morning that has me wondering…the title was a little — disconcerting? off-putting? I’m not sure how to describe it.
Sounds like Randy Alcorn’s description to me. It makes sense to me. It encourages me. I won’t know for sure until I get there but it is the way I lean.
6 Arrows, I agree with the article you linked insofar as we will live not in heaven, but in the new earth, as described in Revelation 21 & 22:
“And I saw a new heaven and new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.”
However, the text I just quoted eliminates the author’s assertion that the earth will simply be remodeled and restored. He quotes selectively from II Peter 3, as that chapter makes abundantly clear that the earth is going to be completely consumed, repeatedly describing the destruction of heaven and earth by fire using the words “dissolved” and “melt”. Yes, we will be resurrected physically, and like Adam and Eve, we will actually walk with God on the earth. However, the new earth will be different than Adam and Eve’s world. One difference is listed in the text I just quoted – there will be no more sea. Another difference is in even greater contrast to Adam and Eve – after the resurrection, Christ tells us, there will be no marrying or giving in marriage (Matthew 22:30). Revelation 22:2 describes how we will eat of the Tree of Life, the other Tree in the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve did not eat of and had to be protected from after they sinned (Genesis 3:22). C. S. Lewis speculated that Adam and Eve were in a time of testing, and if they had passed the test, they could have eaten of the Tree of Life and things would have changed for them. It was just speculation on his part, but he recognized that there was a difference between the world as it was created before the Fall and the world as it will be in the New Heaven and Earth.
Ricky, I first saw the version of The Hunchback with O’Hara as a young teen, and I really liked the story, which ends happily. It was a bitter disappointment to discover later that Victor Hugo’s book ends tragically. I think my favorite film of O’Hara’s would be <I<How Green Was My Valley – opposite Canadian actor Walter Pidgeon 🙂 Although her accent is more Irish than Welsh, O’Hara managed to capture the feelings of a young Welshwoman trying to survive in a mining community during the Second Industrial Revolution.
Karen, I fear the book might be a disappointment, similar to the way The Hunchback of Notre Dame was. During Hollywood’s Golden Age, they had a talent for taking good stories out of books and telling them without a lot of the smut that was in the books. For example, the strong language and off-colour innuendo in To Kill a Mockingbird are cleaned up remarkably in the film without losing the powerful impact of the story. The novel of How Green Was My Valley, while it is filled with beautiful lyrical prose that echoes the Welsh accent and has touching scenes of the grim realities of mining life, also has some sexual content which increases as young Hugh grows up (the film is very compressed in time while the book spans about a decade). I tried reading the book long before I saw the film, and it put me off watching the film for many years (as was the case with To Kill a Mockingbird).
I was very happy to discover that the films are like those old school editions that they used to publish of mid-twentieth century novels which took out all the sex and swearing. Actually I was introduced to How Green Was My Valley from an excerpt about the strike in my father’s old high school reader. I was introduced to a lot of books through those readers – I recently showed a friend who went to public school our collection of old readers, which spans about seventy years of Canadian school, and she said, “Why can’t we have things like this in school now?”
In the Golden Age of Hollywood, they knew how to tell a story, & even subtly insinuate things, without having to go all out to show it. There is a famous rape scene (can’t recall the movie title) where it shows the man getting rough with the woman, then as he drags her to the floor, all the audience sees is her hand grasping a curtain, which then rips down. End of scene, but we know what’s gonna happen.
Recently, Lee & I watched two versions of 3:10 to Yuma. First we watched the newer version, with Russell Crowe & Christian Bale. A week or two later, we watched the 1957 version (which I had seen & enjoyed many years earlier), with Glenn Ford & Van Heflin.
The newer version was much more violent, with a sadder ending, but had better characterization. I still think the older version is my favorite, though.
One scene in the 1957 version caught my attention. The bad guy was flirting with the barmaid in the saloon. When we next see them, they are walking through a door back into the main saloon. She subtly brushes her dress with her hand, & he is subtly straightening a piece of his clothing. So adults would figure out what they were doing, but kids wouldn’t get it. And actually, an adult not paying close attention could have missed the implication, too.
If I seem to be dominating the thread today, it is because I have nothing better to do. I seem to have caught the flu virus my friend had (she also had a bacterial infection on top of it) and do not feel like going very far from my bedroom today. So if I’m talking too much, bear with me. Usually, I don’t talk this much to anyone except my mother 😀
6 Arrows, apparently that ukulele ensemble is made up of former heavy metal musicians from British bands. Maybe that is why they are ‘cool’ 😉
Some more Ennio Morricone: He composed the music for most of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns – which were mostly shot in Spain, which is why there is a faintly unreal appearance to the desert scenes as the flora is European, not American. When I first saw The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I was impressed by the dark irony of the scene where Eli Wallach runs through the graveyard looking for the buried money. Morricone’s music matched the mood perfectly – conducted by the composer himself:
I just skimmed through 5 Arrows 12:46
I don’t understand the problem Jesus said that we would dwell with Him.
“I go to prepare a place for you”
As Phos says, “A new heaven and new earth”
“Behold, I make all things new”.
Other matters of eschatology are important because we are advised to “watch”. However, we all have to wait to see what God has planned for us.
I also really liked How Green Was My Valley. Donald Crisp was superb as the father.
Two of my favorite actors were John Wayne and Victor McLaglen. They were huge men with even bigger personalities, but Maureen O’Hara held her own with both of them in both The Quiet Man and Rio Grande. Ford, Wayne and O’Hara had been wanting to make The Quiet Man for years, but the studios wouldn’t fund it. Finally, Wayne convinced the execs at Republic to fund The Quiet Man if the trio would make Rio Grande for Republic first. Both movies were classics.
I also have never read “How Green …” but enjoyed the movie. And I remember To Kill a Mocking Bird (the book) as being very much like the film, don’t recall noticing what roscuro noticed, but then it’s been a long time since I read it.
I’m feeling a little under the weather today, too. I should be doing a lot of things around here, but I’m not … Mostly reading and napping so far.
Karen, it is true that they found other ways of subtly indicating sexuality. I remember watching the film version of Ayn Rand’s dreadful novel, The Fountainhead, with Gary Cooper. Even the film was a bit much, and I have read reviews of the novel which indicates it was much worse. Hitchcock was the master of innuendo as well as suspense and horror; and Tennessee Williams’ plays and the films made from them (A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, etc.) were built on innuendo. But in films like How Green the parts of the book which are most objectionable are entirely removed because they were not necessary to the story the film tells.
In general I prefer the older to the newer of more than one film version of a story (Not too old, however, as there was a silent film version of The Hunchback made in the 1920s). There are some exceptions, like the recent Coen brothers remake of True Grit. Sorry, Ricky, it isn’t John Wayne fault in the old version, it is the little girl who acts Mattie Ross – Wayne apparently described her as a brat. The actress in the Coen brothers’ version not only shows the ‘grit’ one would expect, but she and the other actors also captures the way Americans spoke during the ‘Wild West’ era. That peculiarly ironic tone made from a mix of matter-of-fact directness with a vocabulary of words of several syllables was something that was lost by the 1950s; but you can read it in writings of the earlier era, such as O Henry’s short stories.
Donna, the plot and characters are exactly the same in book and movie. Again, it is the unnecessary content, mostly contained in speech in this case, which is removed. Mr. Ewell is much coarser in describing the supposed rape, for example, in the book, and Scout several times gets into trouble for her sailor-like words in the book. Harper Lee talks about developing sexuality in the book, and there was a scene between Dale and Scout in the book, which although nothing bad actually seems to happen, recalled the trauma of my childhood experience to me when I read it as a young teen. I only read the book once, but I still remember that scene. I’m not sure if it would stand out to me the same way now.
Roscuro, I agree with you about True Grit. The actress in the modern movie was much better than Kim Darby and Jeff or Beau Bridges was just as good as John Wayne. I missed Robert Duvall as Lucky Ned Pepper, but that was more than compensated for by losing the irritating Glenn Campbell.
Ricky, True Grit is the favorite novel of my eldest brother-in-law (I have three married sisters). He says the modern version is much truer to the original novel, which was written during that ‘Wild West’ era.
Roscuro, Though I shy away from modern movies, I respect the work of the Coen brothers. No Country For Old Men caught the “feel” of West Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is another movie that makes all Texans want to jump in their truck and head for our mountains.
The book of The Outlaw Josie Wales, was a classic
I enjoyed A Town Like Alice, but there was one scene that didn’t fit, and when I read the book, it wasn’t that way at all. So the book was better.
I’ve not seen much of the Coen brothers work, other than True Grit and part of O Brother Where Art Thou, but I admire their genius for capturing elements of U.S culture in their stories. O Brother‘s soundtrack alone is a treasure trove of Southern folk styles:
Survived the pumpkin outing, now to cook dinner. I don’t know how I managed to raise four children . . . we’re surviving on three adults to three kids and it almost works. Went to the library on the way home and everyone got a movie . . . Thomas the Tank is on!
Aj, the more I look at today’s header photo, the more I think it should be the theme of this time in your lives. God give you strength to mount up above on wings of eagles.
Forrest turns five years old tomorrow (at about 12:15am tonight). It is hard to believe our little guy is FIVE already.
Since Chrissy was here today (for helping to babysit this morning), Emily made the birthday cake this afternoon, & we had a brief celebration with cake after dinner. But Forrest won’t get presents from us until tomorrow. (He was with his dad & his dad’s family today, so he already got presents from them.)
His dad also took him to our town’s Trick or Treat on Main Street event this afternoon, so he had quite a full day, & lots of sweets.
I so agree with you, Peter. I also long for the days when we had no commercials about underwear, sex etc. The young people have no idea of the change in what is now allowed. 😦
Stellar night on TV — the original 1931 black-and-white Dracula.
Nina (scarf strategically wrapped around her neck) on the morning after a very bad dream: “It seemed as if all the life had been drained out of me”
Dr: “How long have you had those little marks?”
Ah, she perks up nicely, though, when the Count walks into the room … but it alarms the others when they notice his reflection curiously doesn’t show up in the mirror …
Morning all. Service this morning and then prayer for the Highlands team. I stayed home for a break tonight.
Should not have eaten that can of soup, who knows what was in it??
The sweetest little guy
has now turned five.
Look again and
you’ll see he’s ten
The years fly by
Catch them if you can
in photo moments
that in life are a blur
I am missing being in church and having that special worship and fellowship time. I hope Art will soon be better and I can resume some of my activities I have momentarily taken leave of so he can have extra rest and care time.
After our excursion yesterday he has not wanted to do much today. He may be worried that the tests this week might find a problem with his urinary tract, but he has not said anything about his worries. I have piles of laundry and housework to busy myself with when I am home. Th8ngs have gotten more backed up than I can deal with in short spans of time. And now leaves are beginning to cover the yard.
Pastor Steve pulled a trick on us this morning. He was preaching from I Cor. 2:6-16, Somehow, he got to Romans 8:28.
Then, the trick. It was such a mean trick, I thought I might pull it on you.
🙂
How about this ”Close your eyes.
Think about the thing in your life that is now worrying you the most.
Do you believe that God can make good come of that?”
“The Bible clearly says God can make it work for good.”
I was thinking about the opthamologist telling me that I may not pass the visual for my driver’s license next August.
God may arrange for me to pass, but I can’t see good coming from it.
We’ll see.
Romans 8:28 doesn’t say that all things are good, nor that all things work out. It says all things work together for good to those who love God, those called according to his purpose.
That means that the Christians being persecuted in Syria, have an ultimate good awaiting them.
Thanks for the responses on the article I posted (12:46 pm yesterday). It’s not that I necessarily found anything wrong with the article itself, it’s mostly that the title, “Six Reasons Why Heaven Is Not Our (Long-Term) Home” was a little jarring, when I grew up singing the hymn, “I’m But a Stranger Here; (Heaven IS [emphasis mine] my Home).”
Not that I elevate the words of a hymn above the words of Scripture; I don’t, nor do others I know who sing that hymn.
We haven’t emphasized teachings on the new heaven and the new earth as much in our church as I would like, and I myself need more study on what the Scriptures actually say about our life after we depart this world. I don’t always fully understand what’s literal and what’s figurative, either, in the Bible.
That’s why I asked for some input from folks here — lots of wisdom many of you have. 🙂
I do agree with the many who acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers here, and what the end times and the afterlife turn out to be like may be very different than we imagine!
Which fits under the category of seeing through the glass darkly, I believe.
I forgot the occasion, I think it was part of a test or something. But someone once asked, “If you could change any one thing in your life, what would it be.?”
My response? “Nothing”.
Lots of things were wrong, and I did wrong in my life, but I’m afraid that if I change something, it may change the outcome. There could be a different, possibly better, outcome in my life; but I’m satisfied that things have worked out. Not perfect, but good.
My prayer for each of you is that when you reach 85, you can be satisfied with the outcome.
I know You don’t have time to think about that now.
We used to have a saying at work. “I can’t drain this swamp till I clear out the alligators!”
6 Arrows – I believe we will spend eternity on the New Earth, but I refer to Heaven kind of in a general sense for everything that will come after death.
This discussion reminds me of a question I thought of a while back: Since God will be with us on the New Earth (that probably doesn’t need to be capitalized, but I feel like doing so 🙂 ), what would be the purpose of a New Heaven? (I realize any answers we come up with would be purely speculative.)
Roscuro, I haven’t been too much into heavy metal, but I have some rock roots that I haven’t totally rejected yet, so, yeah, maybe that is why I found that performance pretty cool. 😉
Karen, excellent question. There are a number of different aspects to the word heaven, and I certainly do not know the full answer. However, the end of Revelation echoes the beginning of Genesis (e.g. the Tree of Life). Genesis begins with the words “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. During the description of what God created each day, He repeatedly refers to heaven in relation to earth, such as when He separated the waters and created the sun, moon, and stars. The created heaven will be destroyed along with the created earth, as II Peter 3 tells us: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise…” (v.10). So, very simply and basically, when there is a new earth, there will be a new heaven.
Just as aside, I just noticed for the first time that Peter uses the phrase “as a thief in the night”, the same phrase Paul uses in I Thessalonians 5:2, in speaking of the Second Coming of Christ. Interesting.
6 Arrows @2:26: I know what you mean. You grow up hearing about going to Heaven when you die if you believe in Jesus, and then when you look at Revelation as an adult, you start to think that was a bit simplistic. I know there are some who believe that there are holding places, a sort of quasi-Heaven and quasi-Hell (some use the words Paradise and Gehenna), for those who have died throughout history. Some of them like to use the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man as proof. I don’t necessarily believe that. My father rightly pointed out that eternity is outside of time, and the idea of holding places is very time oriented. My father has wondered if we might actually all arrive at the same point. I’m not sure of that either, though it makes more sense. I guess it doesn’t really matter. All we need to know is that Christ is our salvation for eternity.
“Purgatory” comes to mind, too, as one of those “holding places” before moving on to something different, though I never believed in that. (Had only heard about it from Catholics.) Very time-oriented (and especially works-oriented, I would say).
Or do Catholics believe someone can remain in purgatory for eternity?
I guess I don’t know if anyone believes that, but you are right, Roscuro, all that matters is that salvation is through Christ, not our own works.
Romans 8:28 was given to me when my husband left me. It took me a while but I learned to see it as bringing God’s good to me. It was all part of His care of me. My husband left the Lord before he left us and God allowed him to leave us for our good.
My husband and I had a really lovely time celebrating our anniversary. Both of us took the entire week off work last week and went away for most of it (we have in the past gone away for three nights; this time it was five). Some really glorious weather, nice walks and nice time just to relax and refresh. And no health crises in his family (we prayed for that) while we were away.
At some point I’ll post a link to photos–but I took a lot of them and now I’m sorting them.
Oh yeah, and I didn’t read the threads this week (though I read some of the prayer requests, and skimmed one or two threads), so I don’t know anything that happened except that the route finally sold. (And Karen, I understand being disappointed about not getting enough for it–but the main point was getting rid of it, and he did so. We can rejoice in that!)
Good sermon today from a professor of apologetics at Westminster Seminary in PA — he was one of several participants the Christ & Culture event our church sponsored from Thursday-Saturday.
I missed it but will catch up with some of it when it’s edited and posted on our website/YouTube.
New family, biracial, was accepted into membership today, he’s a school administrator I believe (based on my memory of a brief conversation we had some time ago), and today in the Q&A SS time he said he’s come from what was a “progressive dispensational” background.
It’s not a classification I was familiar with, but found this online:
” … The greatest debate between those who hold to traditional dispensationalism and those who hold to progressive dispensationalism concerns the issue of David’s throne. In the Davidic Covenant, God promised David that he would never permanently cease to have a descendant sitting on the throne. Although there have been times prior to Christ’s coming—and presently there is no one sitting on David’s throne as king over the kingdom—this promise to David will be ultimately fulfilled by God when Jesus Christ returns to set up and rule the kingdom on earth (Revelation 19:11 – 20:6).
“The debate is this: progressive dispensationalism says that Christ is right now at this present time sitting on David’s throne and ruling. …”
We celebrated/acknowledged Reformation Day in our service today — and, of course, opened the service by singing “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” 🙂 One of my all-time hymnal favorites
Last night my husband was telling me the storyline of some movie, and I was teasing him a little with the “oh, it’s an action movie, can’t possibly be interesting,” so he was telling me it wasn’t the average action movie.
“For one thing, one character has insomnia.”
I said (teasingly, but sarcastically), “Wow, that sounds like a fascinating element.” I mean, I was teasing, but at the same time, how can a movie make insomnia interesting? He gave me a look and said, “Well, when he gets his memory back . . .”
I said, “Wait, you don’t mean ‘insomnia’—”
“Is that what I said?”
“Yeah, that’s why I said, ‘Boy, that would make such an interesting story.'”
He laughed and said, “Yeah . . . well, what’s the word I wanted? I forget.”
At which point both of us got laughing, since that was pretty funny too, considering the subject matter. (He was looking for “amnesia.”)
I have seen a pretty intense movie about an insomniac detective trying to solve a case.
In general, I’m not a fan of action movies or of the usual western or science fiction or fantasy. But add in some good characterization & a good story, & often a touch of humor, & I can enjoy a movie in any genre.
No time or brain to read and think about the Heaven questions. Just this: both Alcorn and the LCMS agreed on an “interim” heaven where you go after your soul separates from the body at death. Body goes into the ground to disintegrate, soul goes to interim heaven to await the final judgement.
My thoughts are, I expect to close my eyes in death and open them at the Final Judgment, not knowing anything about interim heaven. Comes out of–truly, I have no brain–Colossians? passage where Paul was reassuring the saints that those who have already died will be raised with the rest of those still living at the time of Christ’s return. They’ll go into the air, ahead of the living, and everyone will stand before the judgment seat. It is not purgatory, but that may be where the concept came from for the Catholics.
To bed with me while I can still semi-function. Hope this helped.
Michelle, how is that different from “soul sleep” (in which we will basically be unconscious for a while), which I believe one of the apostles repudiates (maybe the “absent from the body, present with the Lord”?) although I am pretty sure the Seventh Day Adventists teach that. It’s almost 1:30 in the morning Eastern time after a week of vacation/sleeping in other beds, so my brain isn’t functioning either. But my sister-in-law came under medical care of SDA folks when she was in her last days, and they taught soul sleep and she began to be concerned that it was true, and we reassured her otherwise from Scripture.
Wandering Views 
Good morning everyone.but Jo.
Good evening Jo.
Everyone sleeping in because it’s Saturday.
I did too.
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That was Chas, saying that.
I’ll bet you guessed.
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Chas here
I got an e-mail from a felljow Lion.
He wants me to add him to my “Linkedin” account.
(I didn’t know I had one of those.)
But, it said “Charles, I would like to be added….”
I deleted it. I knew he would never call me Charles.
I was on to a scam once when I got a call from “grandson” who was in trouble in Mexico.
He started out. “Grandpa……..”
He would never call me Grandpa.
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I’j talking to myself here, I see.
That’s ok. Nobody else listens anyhow.
There’s a letter to the editor from a former colleague who moved to Hendersonville.
He’s the one involved in the Muslim thing I discussed a while ago.
Tony came up with a statement you may have heard before, but I haven’t .
I’ll call it “tony’s law”.
“The decline in a democracy accelerates when the number of voters on the take from the government exceeds the number of voters being taken from by the government.”
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“bye for now.
😉
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Morning Chas.
Finally finished the book order, over 3700 dollars. A lot of Christmas gifts for some soon to be happy children. Including my grandchildren.
It took the whole day until dark, I didn’t even have time for a walk.
Good Night all.
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Chas you actually do have a LinkedIn account (under Charles), I just looked you up. You’re linked to Kim. It says you’re “retired at none.” 🙂
If someone wants to add you to their connections, it generates an automatic message — so that’s why you were called Charles.
How’s that laptop? I love laptops, it’s mostly all I use now.
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There’s a 2 year old on my lap who got up too early and would rather be looking at cat photos on FB– where she did see a fab photo of her other grandmother, too.
I another busy day. I took a 45 minute time out about 4 yesterday so we all could survive.
Time to cook breakfast, then it’s soccer!
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Janice, from yesterday evening, the soundtrack to ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ is wonderful because it was composed by Ennio Morricone, the latest in a long line of great Italian composers (the reason why Italian is the language of music). I love Morricone’s music. He is most famous of course, for the ubiquitous theme to ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’, which even transcribes well to ukulele:
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Good Saturday morning, all!
I guess that means I live “up north”. (From yesterday’s discussion). Although there is much more “up north” north of us.
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We went up north today since Art surprised me by saying he wanted to see some mountains. 🙂 So far it’s not sunny, but I remain hopeful. He wanted to beat the stormy weather.
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Kare, I hear you. Living in southern Ontario means that ‘up north’ could be referring to places as far south as Sudbury (it is always funny to visit there and hear people talk about where I live as being ‘down south’) or Ottawa, or it could mean going up as far as Thunder Bay or Timmins or it could even mean taking the train to Moosonee near James Bay. Ontario doesn’t extend as far north as Saskatchewan does, due to Hudson’s Bay, but one can always go further north in Canada (unless you are on the tip of Ellesmere Island) 🙂 I can also go further south in Ontario. People in Windsor, Ontario love to joke about how they can go north to the U.S., as Windsor is the southern Canadian sister city to Detroit.
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Mumsee, I’m not sure why we say ‘down east’ as Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are further north than we are, but I think we refer to the east coast as ‘down east’ because of the historical Upper and Lower Canada. Southern Ontario used to be called Upper Canada, and the area of Quebec used to be called Lower Canada. Makes no sense from a north-south perspective, as we go north to Quebec. However, the terms were in relation to the St. Lawrence River. Southern Ontario was upriver – since the St. Lawrence flows from Lake Ontario – and Montreal and Quebec City are down river. Since we travel through Quebec to get to the eastern provinces, my guess is that is where the down direction came from. After all, since the earth is a sphere spinning in space, who is to say north is not down, and south is not up 😉
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Way cool ukelele ensemble, Roscuro. I enjoyed that video.
First Arrow is down south in Missouri right now, hubby and two children drove out west this morning for a couple hours, Second Arrow lives out east a few hours from here, and the other two children and I are centrally located, with me about to head upstairs after I get off the computer in the basement.
Up is north, right? So I’ll be headed north in a minute or two, and we’ll have all the directions covered here. 😉
We’re all over the place, and none of you can escape us — bwahahahaha. 😛
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I think I have vertigo after reading Roscuro’s post at 12:25. 😀
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We’ve had discussions on eschatology on here numerous times, and I’m still not sure what I really believe about the end times. There was something about this article I got in my email this morning that has me wondering…the title was a little — disconcerting? off-putting? I’m not sure how to describe it.
Thoughts on the article, anyone?
https://tifwe.org/heaven-is-not-our-long-term-home/?utm_source=IFWE+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=f79a114c92-Weekly_Digest_v2_10_24_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8ffd80135f-f79a114c92-115663349&mc_cid=f79a114c92&mc_eid=c410953271
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Sounds like Randy Alcorn’s description to me. It makes sense to me. It encourages me. I won’t know for sure until I get there but it is the way I lean.
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We have lost Maureen O’Hara. She was great in How Green Was My Valley, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Quiet Man, Rio Grande and many others.
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6 Arrows, I agree with the article you linked insofar as we will live not in heaven, but in the new earth, as described in Revelation 21 & 22:
However, the text I just quoted eliminates the author’s assertion that the earth will simply be remodeled and restored. He quotes selectively from II Peter 3, as that chapter makes abundantly clear that the earth is going to be completely consumed, repeatedly describing the destruction of heaven and earth by fire using the words “dissolved” and “melt”. Yes, we will be resurrected physically, and like Adam and Eve, we will actually walk with God on the earth. However, the new earth will be different than Adam and Eve’s world. One difference is listed in the text I just quoted – there will be no more sea. Another difference is in even greater contrast to Adam and Eve – after the resurrection, Christ tells us, there will be no marrying or giving in marriage (Matthew 22:30). Revelation 22:2 describes how we will eat of the Tree of Life, the other Tree in the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve did not eat of and had to be protected from after they sinned (Genesis 3:22). C. S. Lewis speculated that Adam and Eve were in a time of testing, and if they had passed the test, they could have eaten of the Tree of Life and things would have changed for them. It was just speculation on his part, but he recognized that there was a difference between the world as it was created before the Fall and the world as it will be in the New Heaven and Earth.
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Ricky, I first saw the version of The Hunchback with O’Hara as a young teen, and I really liked the story, which ends happily. It was a bitter disappointment to discover later that Victor Hugo’s book ends tragically. I think my favorite film of O’Hara’s would be <I<How Green Was My Valley – opposite Canadian actor Walter Pidgeon 🙂 Although her accent is more Irish than Welsh, O’Hara managed to capture the feelings of a young Welshwoman trying to survive in a mining community during the Second Industrial Revolution.
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I forgot the link – this filmography of O’Hara has her own comments on a lot of the films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_O%27Hara_filmography
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How Green Was My Valley is one of my favorite movies. I should read the book someday.
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Karen, I fear the book might be a disappointment, similar to the way The Hunchback of Notre Dame was. During Hollywood’s Golden Age, they had a talent for taking good stories out of books and telling them without a lot of the smut that was in the books. For example, the strong language and off-colour innuendo in To Kill a Mockingbird are cleaned up remarkably in the film without losing the powerful impact of the story. The novel of How Green Was My Valley, while it is filled with beautiful lyrical prose that echoes the Welsh accent and has touching scenes of the grim realities of mining life, also has some sexual content which increases as young Hugh grows up (the film is very compressed in time while the book spans about a decade). I tried reading the book long before I saw the film, and it put me off watching the film for many years (as was the case with To Kill a Mockingbird).
I was very happy to discover that the films are like those old school editions that they used to publish of mid-twentieth century novels which took out all the sex and swearing. Actually I was introduced to How Green Was My Valley from an excerpt about the strike in my father’s old high school reader. I was introduced to a lot of books through those readers – I recently showed a friend who went to public school our collection of old readers, which spans about seventy years of Canadian school, and she said, “Why can’t we have things like this in school now?”
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Roscuro – I’ll keep that in mind.
In the Golden Age of Hollywood, they knew how to tell a story, & even subtly insinuate things, without having to go all out to show it. There is a famous rape scene (can’t recall the movie title) where it shows the man getting rough with the woman, then as he drags her to the floor, all the audience sees is her hand grasping a curtain, which then rips down. End of scene, but we know what’s gonna happen.
Recently, Lee & I watched two versions of 3:10 to Yuma. First we watched the newer version, with Russell Crowe & Christian Bale. A week or two later, we watched the 1957 version (which I had seen & enjoyed many years earlier), with Glenn Ford & Van Heflin.
The newer version was much more violent, with a sadder ending, but had better characterization. I still think the older version is my favorite, though.
One scene in the 1957 version caught my attention. The bad guy was flirting with the barmaid in the saloon. When we next see them, they are walking through a door back into the main saloon. She subtly brushes her dress with her hand, & he is subtly straightening a piece of his clothing. So adults would figure out what they were doing, but kids wouldn’t get it. And actually, an adult not paying close attention could have missed the implication, too.
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If I seem to be dominating the thread today, it is because I have nothing better to do. I seem to have caught the flu virus my friend had (she also had a bacterial infection on top of it) and do not feel like going very far from my bedroom today. So if I’m talking too much, bear with me. Usually, I don’t talk this much to anyone except my mother 😀
6 Arrows, apparently that ukulele ensemble is made up of former heavy metal musicians from British bands. Maybe that is why they are ‘cool’ 😉
Some more Ennio Morricone: He composed the music for most of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns – which were mostly shot in Spain, which is why there is a faintly unreal appearance to the desert scenes as the flora is European, not American. When I first saw The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, I was impressed by the dark irony of the scene where Eli Wallach runs through the graveyard looking for the buried money. Morricone’s music matched the mood perfectly – conducted by the composer himself:
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I just skimmed through 5 Arrows 12:46
I don’t understand the problem Jesus said that we would dwell with Him.
“I go to prepare a place for you”
As Phos says, “A new heaven and new earth”
“Behold, I make all things new”.
Other matters of eschatology are important because we are advised to “watch”. However, we all have to wait to see what God has planned for us.
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I also really liked How Green Was My Valley. Donald Crisp was superb as the father.
Two of my favorite actors were John Wayne and Victor McLaglen. They were huge men with even bigger personalities, but Maureen O’Hara held her own with both of them in both The Quiet Man and Rio Grande. Ford, Wayne and O’Hara had been wanting to make The Quiet Man for years, but the studios wouldn’t fund it. Finally, Wayne convinced the execs at Republic to fund The Quiet Man if the trio would make Rio Grande for Republic first. Both movies were classics.
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I also have never read “How Green …” but enjoyed the movie. And I remember To Kill a Mocking Bird (the book) as being very much like the film, don’t recall noticing what roscuro noticed, but then it’s been a long time since I read it.
I’m feeling a little under the weather today, too. I should be doing a lot of things around here, but I’m not … Mostly reading and napping so far.
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Karen, it is true that they found other ways of subtly indicating sexuality. I remember watching the film version of Ayn Rand’s dreadful novel, The Fountainhead, with Gary Cooper. Even the film was a bit much, and I have read reviews of the novel which indicates it was much worse. Hitchcock was the master of innuendo as well as suspense and horror; and Tennessee Williams’ plays and the films made from them (A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, etc.) were built on innuendo. But in films like How Green the parts of the book which are most objectionable are entirely removed because they were not necessary to the story the film tells.
In general I prefer the older to the newer of more than one film version of a story (Not too old, however, as there was a silent film version of The Hunchback made in the 1920s). There are some exceptions, like the recent Coen brothers remake of True Grit. Sorry, Ricky, it isn’t John Wayne fault in the old version, it is the little girl who acts Mattie Ross – Wayne apparently described her as a brat. The actress in the Coen brothers’ version not only shows the ‘grit’ one would expect, but she and the other actors also captures the way Americans spoke during the ‘Wild West’ era. That peculiarly ironic tone made from a mix of matter-of-fact directness with a vocabulary of words of several syllables was something that was lost by the 1950s; but you can read it in writings of the earlier era, such as O Henry’s short stories.
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I hate it when I mistype italics tags…
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Donna, the plot and characters are exactly the same in book and movie. Again, it is the unnecessary content, mostly contained in speech in this case, which is removed. Mr. Ewell is much coarser in describing the supposed rape, for example, in the book, and Scout several times gets into trouble for her sailor-like words in the book. Harper Lee talks about developing sexuality in the book, and there was a scene between Dale and Scout in the book, which although nothing bad actually seems to happen, recalled the trauma of my childhood experience to me when I read it as a young teen. I only read the book once, but I still remember that scene. I’m not sure if it would stand out to me the same way now.
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Roscuro, I agree with you about True Grit. The actress in the modern movie was much better than Kim Darby and Jeff or Beau Bridges was just as good as John Wayne. I missed Robert Duvall as Lucky Ned Pepper, but that was more than compensated for by losing the irritating Glenn Campbell.
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Ricky, True Grit is the favorite novel of my eldest brother-in-law (I have three married sisters). He says the modern version is much truer to the original novel, which was written during that ‘Wild West’ era.
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Roscuro, Though I shy away from modern movies, I respect the work of the Coen brothers. No Country For Old Men caught the “feel” of West Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is another movie that makes all Texans want to jump in their truck and head for our mountains.
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Header: I will mount up with wings as eagles.. I shall run and not be weary
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The book of The Outlaw Josie Wales, was a classic
I enjoyed A Town Like Alice, but there was one scene that didn’t fit, and when I read the book, it wasn’t that way at all. So the book was better.
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I’ve not seen much of the Coen brothers work, other than True Grit and part of O Brother Where Art Thou, but I admire their genius for capturing elements of U.S culture in their stories. O Brother‘s soundtrack alone is a treasure trove of Southern folk styles:
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I miss the days when Hollywood left more to the imagination, rather than being so explicit. So many shows would be much better without bedroom scenes.
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Survived the pumpkin outing, now to cook dinner. I don’t know how I managed to raise four children . . . we’re surviving on three adults to three kids and it almost works. Went to the library on the way home and everyone got a movie . . . Thomas the Tank is on!
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Aj, the more I look at today’s header photo, the more I think it should be the theme of this time in your lives. God give you strength to mount up above on wings of eagles.
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Forrest turns five years old tomorrow (at about 12:15am tonight). It is hard to believe our little guy is FIVE already.
Since Chrissy was here today (for helping to babysit this morning), Emily made the birthday cake this afternoon, & we had a brief celebration with cake after dinner. But Forrest won’t get presents from us until tomorrow. (He was with his dad & his dad’s family today, so he already got presents from them.)
His dad also took him to our town’s Trick or Treat on Main Street event this afternoon, so he had quite a full day, & lots of sweets.
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Happy early birthday to Forrest. It is hard to believe he is that old. He is a cutie pie.
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I so agree with you, Peter. I also long for the days when we had no commercials about underwear, sex etc. The young people have no idea of the change in what is now allowed. 😦
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So who won the Pigskin picks?. It was another repeat winner. In 8 weeks we’ve had three repeat winners.
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Stellar night on TV — the original 1931 black-and-white Dracula.
Nina (scarf strategically wrapped around her neck) on the morning after a very bad dream: “It seemed as if all the life had been drained out of me”
Dr: “How long have you had those little marks?”
Ah, she perks up nicely, though, when the Count walks into the room … but it alarms the others when they notice his reflection curiously doesn’t show up in the mirror …
Boo.
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Happy Birthday to Forrest!
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FORREST!
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Morning all. Service this morning and then prayer for the Highlands team. I stayed home for a break tonight.
Should not have eaten that can of soup, who knows what was in it??
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HAPPY 🙂 BIRTHDAY
♡♡♡FORREST♡♡♡
The sweetest little guy
has now turned five.
Look again and
you’ll see he’s ten
The years fly by
Catch them if you can
in photo moments
that in life are a blur
So glad to know he is a well loved child!♡
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I am missing being in church and having that special worship and fellowship time. I hope Art will soon be better and I can resume some of my activities I have momentarily taken leave of so he can have extra rest and care time.
After our excursion yesterday he has not wanted to do much today. He may be worried that the tests this week might find a problem with his urinary tract, but he has not said anything about his worries. I have piles of laundry and housework to busy myself with when I am home. Th8ngs have gotten more backed up than I can deal with in short spans of time. And now leaves are beginning to cover the yard.
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Pastor Steve pulled a trick on us this morning. He was preaching from I Cor. 2:6-16, Somehow, he got to Romans 8:28.
Then, the trick. It was such a mean trick, I thought I might pull it on you.
🙂
How about this ”Close your eyes.
Think about the thing in your life that is now worrying you the most.
Do you believe that God can make good come of that?”
“The Bible clearly says God can make it work for good.”
I was thinking about the opthamologist telling me that I may not pass the visual for my driver’s license next August.
God may arrange for me to pass, but I can’t see good coming from it.
We’ll see.
Romans 8:28 doesn’t say that all things are good, nor that all things work out. It says all things work together for good to those who love God, those called according to his purpose.
That means that the Christians being persecuted in Syria, have an ultimate good awaiting them.
Hard stuff. But I believe it.,
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Thanks for the responses on the article I posted (12:46 pm yesterday). It’s not that I necessarily found anything wrong with the article itself, it’s mostly that the title, “Six Reasons Why Heaven Is Not Our (Long-Term) Home” was a little jarring, when I grew up singing the hymn, “I’m But a Stranger Here; (Heaven IS [emphasis mine] my Home).”
Not that I elevate the words of a hymn above the words of Scripture; I don’t, nor do others I know who sing that hymn.
We haven’t emphasized teachings on the new heaven and the new earth as much in our church as I would like, and I myself need more study on what the Scriptures actually say about our life after we depart this world. I don’t always fully understand what’s literal and what’s figurative, either, in the Bible.
That’s why I asked for some input from folks here — lots of wisdom many of you have. 🙂
I do agree with the many who acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers here, and what the end times and the afterlife turn out to be like may be very different than we imagine!
Which fits under the category of seeing through the glass darkly, I believe.
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Here’s that hymn I talked about.
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I forgot the occasion, I think it was part of a test or something. But someone once asked, “If you could change any one thing in your life, what would it be.?”
My response? “Nothing”.
Lots of things were wrong, and I did wrong in my life, but I’m afraid that if I change something, it may change the outcome. There could be a different, possibly better, outcome in my life; but I’m satisfied that things have worked out. Not perfect, but good.
My prayer for each of you is that when you reach 85, you can be satisfied with the outcome.
I know You don’t have time to think about that now.
We used to have a saying at work. “I can’t drain this swamp till I clear out the alligators!”
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Happy Birthday, Forrest!!
xoxox
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6 Arrows – I believe we will spend eternity on the New Earth, but I refer to Heaven kind of in a general sense for everything that will come after death.
This discussion reminds me of a question I thought of a while back: Since God will be with us on the New Earth (that probably doesn’t need to be capitalized, but I feel like doing so 🙂 ), what would be the purpose of a New Heaven? (I realize any answers we come up with would be purely speculative.)
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That’s a good question, Karen.
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And notice I didn’t provide an answer. 😉
Would love to hear others’ responses, though. 🙂
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Roscuro, I haven’t been too much into heavy metal, but I have some rock roots that I haven’t totally rejected yet, so, yeah, maybe that is why I found that performance pretty cool. 😉
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Karen, excellent question. There are a number of different aspects to the word heaven, and I certainly do not know the full answer. However, the end of Revelation echoes the beginning of Genesis (e.g. the Tree of Life). Genesis begins with the words “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. During the description of what God created each day, He repeatedly refers to heaven in relation to earth, such as when He separated the waters and created the sun, moon, and stars. The created heaven will be destroyed along with the created earth, as II Peter 3 tells us: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise…” (v.10). So, very simply and basically, when there is a new earth, there will be a new heaven.
Just as aside, I just noticed for the first time that Peter uses the phrase “as a thief in the night”, the same phrase Paul uses in I Thessalonians 5:2, in speaking of the Second Coming of Christ. Interesting.
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6 Arrows @2:26: I know what you mean. You grow up hearing about going to Heaven when you die if you believe in Jesus, and then when you look at Revelation as an adult, you start to think that was a bit simplistic. I know there are some who believe that there are holding places, a sort of quasi-Heaven and quasi-Hell (some use the words Paradise and Gehenna), for those who have died throughout history. Some of them like to use the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man as proof. I don’t necessarily believe that. My father rightly pointed out that eternity is outside of time, and the idea of holding places is very time oriented. My father has wondered if we might actually all arrive at the same point. I’m not sure of that either, though it makes more sense. I guess it doesn’t really matter. All we need to know is that Christ is our salvation for eternity.
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“Purgatory” comes to mind, too, as one of those “holding places” before moving on to something different, though I never believed in that. (Had only heard about it from Catholics.) Very time-oriented (and especially works-oriented, I would say).
Or do Catholics believe someone can remain in purgatory for eternity?
I guess I don’t know if anyone believes that, but you are right, Roscuro, all that matters is that salvation is through Christ, not our own works.
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Romans 8:28 was given to me when my husband left me. It took me a while but I learned to see it as bringing God’s good to me. It was all part of His care of me. My husband left the Lord before he left us and God allowed him to leave us for our good.
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I’m back! Did anyone miss me? 🙂
My husband and I had a really lovely time celebrating our anniversary. Both of us took the entire week off work last week and went away for most of it (we have in the past gone away for three nights; this time it was five). Some really glorious weather, nice walks and nice time just to relax and refresh. And no health crises in his family (we prayed for that) while we were away.
At some point I’ll post a link to photos–but I took a lot of them and now I’m sorting them.
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Oh yeah, and I didn’t read the threads this week (though I read some of the prayer requests, and skimmed one or two threads), so I don’t know anything that happened except that the route finally sold. (And Karen, I understand being disappointed about not getting enough for it–but the main point was getting rid of it, and he did so. We can rejoice in that!)
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Good sermon today from a professor of apologetics at Westminster Seminary in PA — he was one of several participants the Christ & Culture event our church sponsored from Thursday-Saturday.
I missed it but will catch up with some of it when it’s edited and posted on our website/YouTube.
New family, biracial, was accepted into membership today, he’s a school administrator I believe (based on my memory of a brief conversation we had some time ago), and today in the Q&A SS time he said he’s come from what was a “progressive dispensational” background.
It’s not a classification I was familiar with, but found this online:
http://www.gotquestions.org/progressive-dispensationalism.html
___________________
” … The greatest debate between those who hold to traditional dispensationalism and those who hold to progressive dispensationalism concerns the issue of David’s throne. In the Davidic Covenant, God promised David that he would never permanently cease to have a descendant sitting on the throne. Although there have been times prior to Christ’s coming—and presently there is no one sitting on David’s throne as king over the kingdom—this promise to David will be ultimately fulfilled by God when Jesus Christ returns to set up and rule the kingdom on earth (Revelation 19:11 – 20:6).
“The debate is this: progressive dispensationalism says that Christ is right now at this present time sitting on David’s throne and ruling. …”
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Hi Cheryl!
I missed you 🙂 And I know Misten missed you.
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Welcome back, Cheryl! I noticed you were gone, and I missed you, too!
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We celebrated/acknowledged Reformation Day in our service today — and, of course, opened the service by singing “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” 🙂 One of my all-time hymnal favorites
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Last night my husband was telling me the storyline of some movie, and I was teasing him a little with the “oh, it’s an action movie, can’t possibly be interesting,” so he was telling me it wasn’t the average action movie.
“For one thing, one character has insomnia.”
I said (teasingly, but sarcastically), “Wow, that sounds like a fascinating element.” I mean, I was teasing, but at the same time, how can a movie make insomnia interesting? He gave me a look and said, “Well, when he gets his memory back . . .”
I said, “Wait, you don’t mean ‘insomnia’—”
“Is that what I said?”
“Yeah, that’s why I said, ‘Boy, that would make such an interesting story.'”
He laughed and said, “Yeah . . . well, what’s the word I wanted? I forget.”
At which point both of us got laughing, since that was pretty funny too, considering the subject matter. (He was looking for “amnesia.”)
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Cheryl – Hi!
I have seen a pretty intense movie about an insomniac detective trying to solve a case.
In general, I’m not a fan of action movies or of the usual western or science fiction or fantasy. But add in some good characterization & a good story, & often a touch of humor, & I can enjoy a movie in any genre.
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Oh. And I meant to say that I have enjoyed movies in each of those genres with the attributes I mentioned.
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No time or brain to read and think about the Heaven questions. Just this: both Alcorn and the LCMS agreed on an “interim” heaven where you go after your soul separates from the body at death. Body goes into the ground to disintegrate, soul goes to interim heaven to await the final judgement.
My thoughts are, I expect to close my eyes in death and open them at the Final Judgment, not knowing anything about interim heaven. Comes out of–truly, I have no brain–Colossians? passage where Paul was reassuring the saints that those who have already died will be raised with the rest of those still living at the time of Christ’s return. They’ll go into the air, ahead of the living, and everyone will stand before the judgment seat. It is not purgatory, but that may be where the concept came from for the Catholics.
To bed with me while I can still semi-function. Hope this helped.
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Michelle, how is that different from “soul sleep” (in which we will basically be unconscious for a while), which I believe one of the apostles repudiates (maybe the “absent from the body, present with the Lord”?) although I am pretty sure the Seventh Day Adventists teach that. It’s almost 1:30 in the morning Eastern time after a week of vacation/sleeping in other beds, so my brain isn’t functioning either. But my sister-in-law came under medical care of SDA folks when she was in her last days, and they taught soul sleep and she began to be concerned that it was true, and we reassured her otherwise from Scripture.
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What? Can it be? 75!!!
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