augustmarsblog

  What Are Our Limits? The question is somewhat ambiguous, because it gives rise to an obvious question: In what regard? Are we considering limits in our powers to control the physical world? Or are we considering the limits of our knowledge and understanding? First, regarding our abilities to perform miracles, we have Jesus's assurance:  "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do , he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father." ( John 14:11-13) When talking to his disciples about faith, he said: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt , not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done”. There apparently is no limit to the miracles that can be accomplished by faith that is not thwarted by doubt. He said to them, “For truly I tell you, ...

  CHAPTER ELEVEN BELMONT PRESBYTERIAN I don't know how it happened that my parents, both of whom had been raised in other denominations, happened to become Presbyterians. There must have been something special about Belmont Presbyterian, because they had their choice of churches in Southeast Roanoke. It was not a large church, by today's standards, but it had achieved a measure of fame in church circles because it had paid off a sizeable mortgage during the lean years of the depression by a voluntary commitment of the congregation to tithe. It was located on Ninth Street, about halfway down the North side of Belmont Hill, an easy half-mile walk from our house, which was on the other side of the hill. For our family, Sunday services began at home with the radio tuned to the Charles E. Fuller Old Fashioned Revival Hour, which always began with the choir belting out "Heavenly Sunshine". For some reason that program always irritated me; probably because I couldn...

  The Order of Melchizedek All of the male descendants of Levi were by birth dedicated to the priesthood, but Aaron was the initial High Priest in the priestly order of Levi. Only the high priests were permitted into the Holy of Holies. The priests offered animal sacrifices for the expiation of the sins of the nation. In the Book of Hebrews, Paul points out that Jesus also played a priestly role, but not like that of the Levites. He devotes the end of chapter 6, and the entire 7 th chapter to convincing his readers that Jesus was a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. First, Paul references Gen. 14:18. “ Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.' “ Then, Paul references Psalm 110:4. “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: 'You are a priest ...

  When God Appears in Dreams God is a spirit and has no physical shape. And yet, for teaching purposes, the Holy Spirit gives us dreams in which God appears symbolically as a man whose figure is appropriate for the lesson being taught. In my dreams of this kind, He was most often represented by a likeness of my natural father, but always in a context that only made sense by interpreting the figure to be the heavenly Father. For example, in the first dream of this type, He was the foreman of a stevedore crew that was unloading the cargo of fruit from a ship that had just docked. I had already learned that, in my dreams, the ocean symbolized the sea of spirit, and fruit symbolized the fruits of the Spirit received in this world from the true world of spirit. But in other dreams God appeared as a man, cast in a role appropriate to the message being conveyed. In the first dream of this type, I was talking to the superintendent in charge of the construction of a large bui...

  When and Why It Began There is one problem that must be dealt with before one can even desire to place his life in the hands of the Holy Spirit. It is not a concept that is easy to accept. A quick, shallow reading of the Garden of Eden story seems to indicate that God is punishing Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. But God does not punish, as we saw in the post on “The Mystery of Sin”. The one who instills punishment is the One who opposes God. We may call him the Devil, or the Ego since Christ is the Spirit of unity, and the Ego is the spirit of separation. So, what happened in that episode of the Garden of Eden. The Devil convinces Adam and Eve of the existence of evil, by telling them that the existence of evil is the god-like knowledge. They now think that their nakedness is evil, and that God will punish them for it. It is , in a sense, a stroke of genius, because it seems to assure an eternal separation from God, stoked by...

CHAPTER TWELVE SCHOOL DAYS For me, starting to school was not the dreaded experience that comic strips make it out to be. Many of my friends were already in school, and somehow I looked on it as a kind of promotion out of babyhood. So it was only with the slightest trepidation that I trudged up Morningside Hill in my new brown corduroy knickers. One of the things that I remember about that first day was the smell of new crayons. Each of us was given a small box of them, together with a clean sheet of paper, and instructed to draw and color a picture. I drew a tree on a green hillside (shaped like a circular arc) against a blue sky. The trunk and limbs of the tree were brown, and it was covered with blossoms created by dotting the paper with my pink crayon. Another thing that I remember about that first day was that I fell in love. Her name was Lillian, but her parents had nicknamed her "Billy", because they had wanted a boy. How ironic! The reason that I had noti...

                                                                    Hazardous Experiences     Even the modest requirement that I be home by mealtime would often be relaxed if I could provide a good reason ahead of time. I took full advantage of this freedom. On our frequent weekend visits to Granddaddy Barger's farm, I would roam freely through the woods, over the hills and meadows, being chased by wasps or an angry cow, getting shocked by an electrified fence, riding a horse bareback and being thrown off, cracking walnuts and hickory nuts with a rock, jumping off the rafters of the barn into the hay below, discovering delicate wildflowers in the deeply shaded woods.     At home in Roanoke I usually played with my cousin Billy and with another friend whose nickname was "Foo". ...