‘What Makes Us Different’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

“Come Ye Sinners” (Norton Hall Band): Andrea has provided the lyrics in her blog post.

By Andrea Schwartz on the Chalcedon blog, “What Makes Us Different” reminds us that the fallen world hates Christ and hates Christians and Christianity–and it doesn’t matter!

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/what-makes-us-different

Only Christianity offers healing and forgiveness to sinners–and we’re all sinners. We don’t have to scramble to rack up good works, only to fall short by one or two. Jesus Christ has paid our bill: paid it on the cross, paid in full.

Antichrist’s Jive ‘Christians’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

The clever men at Oxford

Know all that there is to be knowed.

But they none of them know one half as much

As intelligent Mr. Toad!

When Mr. Toad brags about his intellectual attainments, we think it’s funny and we laugh, because it’s only Mr. Toad, a fictional character. But it’s not so funny when the real, live clever men at Oxford and other dives of “higher education” do the same.

Biblical Archaeology Magazine this month is advertising a book, Jesus and After, produced by the savants at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “What lies at the bottom of the highly stratified Biblical texts from the First Century?” one asks.

Answers Stephen W. Durrant from the University of Oregon:

“The author has accomplished something rare in this outstanding book… Freed from such ‘stumbling blocks’ as the doctrines of blood atonement and bodily resurrection, the original Christian teaching shines forth with simplicity and directness.”

“For the preaching of the cross,” observed St. Paul, “is to them that perish foolishness” (I Corinthians 1:18).

So the doctrines of blood atonement and bodily resurrection are stumbling blocks? Stumbling blocks to what–getting your doctorate in “Religion”? Winning the approval of an unbelieving fallen world?

“Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead,” Paul continues, “how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain… If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (I Cor. 15:12-14, 19).

So these sophomoric twaddlers wish to go back to some supposed “original Christian teaching” that does not provide any cleansing from sins because it jettisons the blood atonement, and does not provide any hope of resurrection–what’s left? “Be nice”? “Sharing is caring”? What kind of shabby excuse for Christianity would that be?

Seest thou a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope of a fool than of him (Proverbs 26:12).

This is the kind of plop that gets taught at our seminaries, and this is why we have “clergy for choice” and “feminist clergy” and all the rest of the smorgasbord of crapola served up by left-wing pseudo-Christianity.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

That ought to make it easy to spot the fools.

 

 

 

‘More on My Writing Methods’ (2012)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

The good old stuff

I’ve refined my technique (I hope!) during the seven years since I wrote this–and where did that time go?

More on My Writing Methods

One is always working to refine one’s technique. But one thing hasn’t changed: if you want to be a writer, you still have to listen to other writers. Agatha Christie and Edgar Rice Burroughs are still there to back me up.

Anyway, after seven years of working at it constantly, my literary voice is more my own, and mine only, and someday maybe new writers will try to learn from me.

That’s a rather humbling thought.

Encore, ‘Our God Is an Awesome God’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

This is the hymn that insisted on being posted this morning: I must have a need for it. Our God is an Awesome God, by Michael W. Smith. Note that all he has to do is play the first few notes and the whole audience starts singing. I wish I’d been there!

Our God truly is an awesome God, and more than equal to the challenge of even this profoundly evil age. We need an awesome and mighty Redeemer–and we’ve got one.

Zzzzzzz….!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Something distracted me from my routine, this post is two hours late, and consequently must compete with the Stupor Bowl half-assed, er, halftime show… So be it.

Cats and dogs are extremely creative when it comes to falling asleep. Note the dog running in his sleep. When I do that, my wife doesn’t like it.

More Artificial Stupidity

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

I’ve just got to pass on this anecdote, while it’s fresh in my mind.

My sister Alice works for a doctor who has become enamored of hi-tech gadgets; so he acquired some kind of computerized dictaphone to take his notes. Part of Alice’s job is to listen to the blather on the dictaphone and try to decipher it.

At a certain juncture, the doctor spoke into the dictaphone, “I told the patient to see Alice.” The computer recorded it as “I told the patient to Cialis.”

Cialis is an erectile dysfunction drug. The patient does not have erectile dysfunction. What the patient needs is another doctor–preferably one who doesn’t rely on a computerized dictaphone.

It could be worse. He could be a general giving orders to our missile system. Betcha the computer would have a lot of fun with that [cue to Terminator music].

By Request, ‘How Great Thou Art’ (Ron & Kelly)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Joshua requested this unusual, soothing performance of the classic hymn, How Great Thou Art, by Ron and Kelly. Instead of singing it, they let the music sing: and let the work of God’s own hands testify to His wisdom, power, and love. Because we are made in His image, we can respond to it–even without words.

The Expedition Under the Wading Pool (‘Oy, Rodney’)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

Introducing Chapter CCLXVI of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular writes–

Whoa! Hold it! What happened to Chapters CCLII through CCLXV? That’s fourteen chapters missing!

Ms. Crepuscular explains, “A few readers may be confused by the absence of the intervening fourteen chapters. Well, I removed them from the story because nothing happened in them. Really, we are all better off going directly to Chapter CCLXVI.”

Somewhere in the missing chapters, Lord Jeremy has organized an expedition to go under the vicar’s backyard wading pool and rescue Lady Margo Cargo so that he and she can have their wedding. In fact, Lady Margo is languishing in the Plaguesby jail; but no one in Scurveyshire Town knows that.

Pressed into service for the expedition, whether they wish to go or not, are fifty bearers to carry supplies and equipment, a dozen armed askaris for defense–

Where in Scurveyshire did they find askaris?

“In all those famous expeditions to find the source of the Nile,” Lord Jeremy explains, “bearers and askaris are a must. For our purposes, a dozen Scurveyshire lads with slingshots and rakes will have to serve. We don’t have time to order a dozen genuine, authentic askaris from Zanzibar, where they are always looking for work.”

Handicapped by having two left feet, Lord Jeremy cannot lead the expedition in person. This job he has given to Constable Chumley, admonishing the bearers and askaris to obey the constable’s every command as if their lives depended on it. “And probably they do!” he adds.

The constable’s first command is, “Arree, sumble yer batpins and grith bair lunnies!” Everyone just stands around staring at each other. A few shots from Willis Twombley’s Colt revolver, fired judiciously around their feet, get them moving. One by one, following Constable Chumley, sixty-two men march under the wading pool and disappear from sight. A dreadful calm descends on Scurveyshire.

Meanwhile, back in Plaguesby, Lady Margo does some more languishing in jail before that hamlet’s chief magistrate, Tom Squim, the Great Conquering Khan of Plaguesby, offers to let her out if she will marry him and help him to found a dynasty rivaling, he says, the Plantagenets. She scornfully rejects him. “The Plantagenets are highly overrated,” she sniffs.

“We have ways of making people get married, here in Plaguesby,” he sneers. He does not reveal what those ways are.

Memory Lane: ‘The Adventures of Gunga Ram’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

When I was five or six years old, I used to get up awful early on Saturday morning so I could watch Andy’s Gang on our old black-and-white TV, with this little screen that was like a square porthole. And one of the highlights of the show was a serial, “The Adventures of Gunga Ram.”

Gunga Ram was a boy in India who had lots of cool adventures, mostly because he was helping the local maharajah out of assorted tight spots. These were taken from a movie called Sabaka, made in 1953 and converted into a serial in ’54.

What I wouldn’t have given to be friends with Gunga Ram! Complete with elephants and tigers, and even the odd cobra or two.

Some of this antique TV lit up my imagination, big-time. Jungle Jim! Ramar of the Jungle! Soldiers of Fortune! Fury! Wow, I couldn’t get enough of it! I wanted to know all about these places that served as settings for the stories on TV, and the people and the animals that really lived there, and the history, and the language–!

Oh, I know now that Sabaka only plugged in stock footage of India, the young actor who played Gunga Ram was Italian, most of it was shot around Los Angeles, and African lions don’t live in the jungle, after all–and Indian elephants aren’t normally found in Africa, even if they’ve got rubber attached to their ears to make them look like African elephants. Yes, I know it was all make-believe.

But I enjoyed it!

Inspiration Sunday!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Psalm 46 is one of my favorites. I like it even better in the King James Version.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.   Selah.”

Thank you, Allison. We are not alone.       –LD