Lady Margo, Mrs. Chumley (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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As we enter Chapter CCXXXIII of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, we find Lady Margo Cargo trying to adapt to her new role as the wife of Constable Chumley, to whom she was accidentally married two chapters ago. She has yet to discover the constable’s first name. So have we.

“This must be undone!” Lord Jeremy Coldsore declares. It had been his plan to marry Lady Margo, the richest widow in Scurveyshire, and so save his ancestral home, Coldsore Hall, from a growing legion of creditors.

“Germy, ol’ hoss, we’re runnin’ out of places to hide the bodies,” says Jeremy’s friend, the American adventurer Willis Twombley. Twombley has been shooting creditors and hiding them around the hall and grounds. “If we don’t marry Lady Margo, we’re sunk.”

Meanwhile the constable goes about his duties and enjoys his evenings at The Lying Tart as if he weren’t married at all. It may be he has forgotten the incident. But then–

“I believe I’m with child by the constable,” Lady Margo confides in Twombley. “Dr. Fanabla says it’s all in my head, the marriage has not been consummated, and why don’t I just shut up about it–but I can’t!”

“Why don’t you jist get the marriage annulled?” asked Twombley. “I’m sure the vicar will be happy to do it for you.” He is not aware that the vicar has relapsed into more conniptions. “And if he can’t do it, Lord Germy can: he’s the justice of the peace, ain’t he?”

“But I gave my word to the constable!” cries Lady Margo.

Later, over enormous tankards of ale at the pub, Twombley tries to persuade the constable to disavow the marriage. “Mayhap the furthin be thwall a-beedle,” replies the constable. He has begun his  correspondence course in mole-ology and is preoccupied by it.

Lord Jeremy is almost frantic. “We’ve got to get that so-called marriage annulled by the next chapter at the latest! Or, as you said, old boy, we’re sunk!” He could, of course, declare the whole thing null and void, and have the assistant justice removed from his post and thrown in jail; but at the moment he is too upset to think clearly.

 

‘Underestimating the Power of God’

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This is a recent Chalcedon blog post by our president, Mark Rushdoony, and it would be hard to say it better than he does: “Evil will self-destruct, not triumph, and the Kingdom of God will fill the earth.”

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/underestimating-the-power-of-god

Don’t you love the way the Sadducees, in Luke 20:28-33, tried to trap Christ with a smart-aleck Charlie High School question about seven brothers who each in turn had the same wife: and which of them would have her in the resurrection? But Jesus taught them that their question was only made possible by their altogether faulty notion of God.

This is why we have to walk by faith and not by sight.

And no one ever said it would be easy.

Is the Bible Ambiguous?

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A reader asks, “How can we conform to Scripture that we all interpret in different ways?” And, “How do you know your Christianity is the right one among all others?” And when I replied that the Bible is the right Christianity, she said I’d dodged the issue.

Well, let me try again.

First, just because people insist on imposing their own emotions and opinions on it doesn’t mean that Scripture has no meaning. St. Peter: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:20-21).

In other words, the Bible is delivered to us, by the Holy Ghost, as objective truth. No one has any business subjecting it to any private interpretation. An extreme example of that would be “Clergy for Choice,” blaspheming by their celebration of abortion as “doing God’s work.” Or those who perform same-sex parodies of marriage. Or bless adulterous unions. If any of those “interpretations” is anything but blatantly wrong, then words really have no meaning and we might as well give up trying to communicate with one another. Those “interpretations” flatly contradict the plain language of the Scriptures.

Second, I kind of lost patience with that turn of phrase, “your Christianity.” In our stupid colleges and universities we learn that there is no true truth, but only “your truth” and “my truth”–and whoever has the most power, their version of the truth prevails.

The Lord Our God did not intend for us to live that way. He is a Person who created us, who loves us, who made us in His image, yet by no means the same as Himself; who is all-wise, all-righteous: and He is our objective truth; He is the starting-point for all that we can ever know to be true. So if there is any “my Christianity,” that would be a form of self-worship. There is no yours or mine. We are here to seek God’s will, and to do it.

All right, we can’t. We do insist on bending, folding, spindling, and mutilating the absolute truth communicated to us by God. If we did not do that, we would not need a Savior: there would have been no reason for Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to come into this world in the flesh. 

Now, just because we never arrive at 100% of the absolutely true meaning of the Scriptures does not mean that we always come away with nothing. Sanctification is not a wave of a magic wand. It is a process. It takes a lifetime. It is accomplished in stages by the Holy Spirit, and the sovereign will of God.

All powers on the earth are under God and will be held accountable to Him, and be judged by Him.

Those who are satisfied with their own bizarre and heretical “interpretations” of Scripture had best enjoy it while they can.

‘A Message from Sauron’ (2015)

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The bad guys today are so confident of victory, they don’t even try to pretend to be good guys anymore. They’re right out there where we can see them. For instance:

https://leeduigon.com/2015/11/03/a-message-from-sauron/

Their cunning plan is to transform the whole world into a boiling hell-hole with themselves ruling it like maharajahs.

Wise up, O men of God.

‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’ (with bells!)

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Now this is a way to start the day! A Mighty Fortress is Our God–with choir, trumpet, organ.., and handbells. It must take hours and hours of rehearsing, to get it right.

If this hymn doesn’t stir your soul, you’d better check to make sure you can still fog a mirror.

Performed by the choir at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Oak Harbor, Ohio.

The Joy of Paper Bags (if you’re a cat)

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It was famously reported that Thrasywhatsit asked Socrates, “So, Socrates–which do cats love more, cardboard boxes or paper bags?” Unable to reach a conclusion, Socrates fell down with pink foam bubbling from his ears and had to take a long weekend off.

The cats in this video leave no doubt as to the entertainment value of paper bags.

Too bad they don’t make them big enough for us humans.

Has Anybody Seen the Nandi Bear?

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It’s hard to write this up as Mr. Nature, because the Nandi Bear might not exist. But it’s been a staple of East African folklore for a very long time, and I am told there are people in Kenya who are absolutely sure the beast is real–and very much to be avoided.

It is described as something between an oversized hyena and an undersized bear. As far as scientists can tell, bears have never lived in Africa south of the Sahara. Ice Age hyenas were much bigger and stronger than today’s hyenas, and they ate mammoths and rhinos. Eating a human wouldn’t pose much of a challenge.

Is it possible that an incredibly rare, powerful, nasty relative of the hyena prowls the forests of Kenya? People do sometimes attribute unidentified, fatal animal attacks on humans to the Nandi Bear. Hard to study an animal when no one who ever sees it lives to tell the tale.

And then there’s the basic problem of cryptozoology: no specimens. Because if you do come up with a specimen–like when fishermen first caught a coelacanth–it immediately ceases to be cryptozoological and becomes just plain zoological! What’s a poor cryptozoologist to do? His situation is impossible.

Memory Lane: ‘Davey and Goliath’

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Remember this? Davey and Goliath, which ran on TV from 1961-1965 and again from 1971-1973, a Christian children’s show produced by first the United Lutheran Church in America and later by the Lutheran Church in America, it featured a boy and his talking dog, Goliath, and was created by Art Clokey, famous as the creator of Gumby. I’d have watched it if I’d known it was sort of like Gumby–although it was on Sunday mornings and most of the time, I’d be at Sunday school or church, so I didn’t get a chance to see it.

But once upon a time, American TV, plain old network television, used to have any number of Christian shows. This one sought to teach kids how to live as good Christians. That was before The Smartest People In The World realized children had to be protected from Jesus Christ. It’s surprising they never got around to banning Gumby, too.

What was it like, to find wholesome Christian programming on regular TV? We’ve come so far from that, it’s hard to remember.

But we haven’t entirely forgotten, have we? And maybe, someday, we can find our way back to it.

Love Wisdom

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From the “Unashamed of Jesus” blog: we are not alone.     –LD

‘Humanizing Christianity’

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Secularists love to pat themselves on the back for “humanizing Christianity.” Excuse me for a moment: this deserves an appropriate response.

What do they mean, they “humanize Christianity”? I think it means they invent a new-improved model–with Christ taken out of it and replaced by man-made idols, the State and Science, and humanist pseudo-sacraments: abortion, combating “Man-Made Climate Change,” same-sex “marriage,” sex change operations, hate speech trials, and every conceivable variety of fornication. They take away the judgment, take away accountability to God, and set up their political masters and scientific oracles as gods.

How does a secularist even know what’s right or wrong? Mostly they’re content to keep some of the moral law handed down to the human race by God, to the Jews first, and then the Gentiles. But no secularist can actually explain why it’s wrong to commit a murder. We can, but they can’t. For convenience’s sake they retain much of the law and tradition amassed over the centuries by Jews and Christians, who received it from a righteous and infallible God who is a person, who made them in His image, and who loves them.

Yeah, they made Christianity nicer. That’s why more people were murdered by their own governments in the 20th century alone–Red China, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and a host of others–secularist governments all–than were killed off by all the religions of the world put together in all the other centuries put together. This century is only 18 years old: give it time to come up with new and exciting deviltries all its own.

It is true that God endows all people, even atheists, with common grace, which is an inborn attraction to what is right and good. And so it was always possible for people who had never heard of God’s laws to keep those laws regardless. Common grace is the law written on our hearts. Humanity wouldn’t have survived for two hours without it.

The words of Jesus Christ and His apostles don’t need “humanizing,” and never did.

God defend us from being conformed to this fallen world.