Resurrection Sunday 2013...

From Vox Day's blog...

CHRIST IS RISEN

"On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” 

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” 

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”  Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”--- John 20:19-29

The other day, Moonshadow wrote: "I'm looking forward to your Easter blog post. My circumstances are difficult and I'm in need of some hope. My trust in God has been sorely tested over the years, but it still remains."

One of the great misconceptions of the various flavors of Churchianity is that Jesus Christ is some sort of icon, a magic token that will Make Your Life Better so long as the proper incantations are uttered. The Prosperity Gospel proclaims that Jesus will give you a bigger house and a nicer car. The Liberation Theology declares that Jesus is a divine socialist who came to redistribute wealth on the basis of everyone's needs. The Feminist Gospel asserts that Jesus will relieve women of the oppressive burden of household and sexual drudgery. But regardless of his particular flavor, the Churchian is known for neither his love nor his faith, but his tolerance and his conformity.

This is not Christianity.

We are, all of us, infected by the Churchian disease to some extent. We have all listened to women pastors tell us how safe they feel cuddled in Jesus's strong and protective arms, to televangelists with slicked-back hair promising miracle cures and new jobs, to priests who promise that if we only endorse homosexuality with sufficient enthusiasm, the Church will rise in the estimation of the world and both pews and coffers will be filled again to overflowing.

This is not Christianity.

Christianity is about the Divine becoming Man amidst blood and animal (dung).  Christianity revolves around an innocent man rejected by his people, despised by the elite, declared a criminal by the court, and murdered by the government under the false color of law. Christianity describes a world that is fallen, sinful, and ruled by an evil, sadistic, prideful, immortal liar.

We Christians today are weak. We are soft, fat, and flaccid in our faith. We are the beneficiaries of the greatest explosion of global wealth and one of the longest periods of peace in the history of the world, and we are quite understandably daunted by the sober realization that this Golden Age is rapidly coming to an end. We are lotus eaters, hedonized if not entirely hedonistic, and the soothing whispers of Mammon have enervated our will, our strength, and even our faith. We are the sad and pathetic heirs of the Church Militant, an embarrassment to our predecessors and eminently unworthy of our Lord and Savior.

And yet, we are who we are. We, who worship Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, are the remnants of the victorious Divine Invasion.

On this day many centuries ago, there was little more than twelve frightened and despairing men.  From that small and unprepossessing foundation, the Risen Lord Jesus Christ constructed a Church that brought the Good News to all mankind, that civilized barbarians around the world, that remains the oldest and greatest human institution, and that, despite its corruption and decadence, continues to resist the every-hungry Gates of Hell.

If God could do that with men like Peter, the denier, and Thomas, the doubter who believed only what he could see, what can He not do with those He has blessed because we have not seen and yet have believed?

Jesus never promised us a rose garden on this earth, ruled as it is by the wicked prince who killed him. He promised that we would be hated. He promised that we would be condemned. He promised that we would see our families and our nations divided. He promised that we would be persecuted. He promised wars and the rumors of wars. And yet, somehow, when what he promised comes to pass, we find ourselves troubled and our faith shaken by the very things that should serve to confirm it.

It is not hard to see why so many people of every culture and creed around the world are frightened and losing hope. If you are not concerned, deeply concerned, about the state of the world today, you are either in denial or you are not paying attention. The rule of law is dissolving and the collective illusions upon which our civilization depends are rapidly fading away.  We have lost our trust in our institutions, in our traditions, in our icons, and in our leaders. We have lost our confidence in the certainty of the Worker's Paradise, in the exceptionalism of America, in the inevitability of the shiny, sexy, secular scientopia, and in the idea of peace on earth through the good will of the globalist bureaucracies.  We have lost our faith in Progress.

We are rapidly coming to understand that there is no hope to be found in Man or the things of Man's making. But the truth is, the observable historical reality is, there has never been any hope but one. And the foundation of that hope is precisely what we Christians are celebrating today: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He is Risen! Christ is Risen!

1 Timothy 4:1-9

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.  For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. 

If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained. But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. 

   

From the words of St. Patrick who, by the way, was a Scot, not Irish, and didn't invent green beer...

"So that whatever befalls me, be it good or bad, I should accept it equally, and give thanks always to God who revealed to me that I might trust in him, implicitly and forever, and who will encourage me so that, ignorant, and in the last days, I may dare to undertake so devout and so wonderful a work; so that I might imitate one of those whom, once, long ago, the Lord already pre-ordained to be heralds of his Gospel to witness to all peoples to the ends of the earth." - Patrick

...have a happy, blessed and safe St. Patrick's Day...

 

Yes...it has been awhile, hasn't it?

Been in a bit of a course correction, map setting mode spiritually of late.  I have no patience for anyone who cannot see what is going on around us, making me rather enthusiastic dinner company to have around.  But...the purpose of this blog has always been to propagate the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the modeling community, and it is in that vein that I shall continue to run.

I have not been without projects being done in the interim, just haven't had the gumption to post about them or set up my diorama to get good pictures.  So, in pictures that would make Pulitzer sob like a school girl, I shall post what I have of upcoming projects that I will do as I get better pictures in the coming weeks.

First up, an HO scale 1951 Varney yard switcher repower...the locomotive came to me for repairs, only to be further devastated by the Postal Service...


 Next up...an HO scale circa 1990s Bachmann Spectrum Dash 8-40C that sports a fuel tank I scratchbuilt from sheet styrene and bits from the scrap box...


Then a junkbox HO scale Marx Hustler gets a makeover....


Not to forget the many gifts that keep coming in from fellow modelers around the country...





 In short, it's been a tough start spiritually this year, but a blessed one.  As the demands of a closer walk with my Saviour wrest with the demands of this temporal life, my hobby and little farm grow and fit into the future in the way God wishes it, leaving us to marvel at His works in our lives and rest secure that the future is not so bleak so long as one keeps their eyes on The Great Shepherd...

Blessings, grace and peace to you and yours...

We Shall Rejoice Together In Him

Looking to him whom they pierced, the whole house of Israel will weep bitterly. And now, dear brethren, it will tend to increase the blessed sorrows which will then sweep over Israel, to think how the Lord has had patience with them, and still has never cast them away. To this day they are as distinct a people as ever they were. They dwell alone; they are not numbered among the people. Persecuted almost beyond conception, poor Israel, for many a century, has been the butt and jest of those - I shame to say it - who called themselves Christians, and yet despised the chosen people of the Lord. Alas! the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, have been esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter! “How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel!” They have for centuries endured a terrible chastening; they have been turned upside down, and wiped as when a man wipeth a dish, but still they stand waiting for a vainly expected King. They would not have their true King, Jesus the Son of David, and they have no other - where is there any king of the Jews? The scepter hath departed from Jacob, and the lawgiver from between his feet, for Shiloh has come, even he who, as he did hang upon the cross, was thrice named, “King of the Jews.”

Jesus is the sole and only King of the Jews, and they are preserved and kept alive notwithstanding a thousand influences which threatened to make them lose their nationality; they shall yet be gathered again, and their restoration shall be the fullness of the Gentiles, and we and they shall rejoice together in him who hath made both one, and broken down the middle wall or partition, so that there is now neither Jew nor Gentile, barbarous Scythian, bond nor free, but we are all one in Christ Jesus.

 From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Mourning For Christ," delivered July 1, 1877.