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I think of Eric Liddell. The movie Chariots of Fire depicts how his sister Jenny tried to persuade Eric to give up his running, and go to China with her to be a missionary. He said, "No, God has made me fast and called me to run." It would have been wrong at that point to be a missionary. Of course, Liddell had other opportunities to take up the cross. At the 1924 Olympics in Paris, he would choose to forfeit his chance to win a medal in the 200 meter dash, something he very much wanted to do, because he believed the Lord did not want him to race on Sunday. Then a number of years later, he would take up the cross quite literally and go to China as a missionary where he would later be killed by the Japanese.
[Odd Laws Still on the Books, Citation: Robert W. Pelton in The Door. Christian Reader, Vol. 33, no. 5.]
Young girls are never allowed to walk a tightrope in Wheeler, Mississippi, unless it’s in a church.
In Blackwater, Kentucky, tickling a woman under her chin with a feather duster while she’s in church service carries a penalty of $10.00 and one day in jail.
No one can eat unshelled, roasted peanuts while attending church in Idanha, Oregon.
In Honey Creek, Iowa, no one is permitted to carry a slingshot to church except police.
No citizen in Leecreek, Arkansas, is allowed to attend church in any red-colored garment.
Swinging a yo-yo in church or anywhere in public on the Sabbath is prohibited in Studley, Virginia.
Turtle races are not permitted within 100 yards of a local church at any time in Slaughter, Louisiana.
As we begin this new series on the Bible I thought I’d share some Biblical Bloopers with you. These are s-lightly skewed scriptural insights from children of Christian and Jewish faiths:
- In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, God got tired of creating the world, so he took
the Sabbath off.
- Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.
- Noah’s wife was called Joan of Ark.
- Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night.
- Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is
bread made without any ingredients.
- The Egyptians were all drowned in the desert.
- Afterward. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Amendments.
- The First Commandment was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple.
- The Fifth Commandment is "Humor thy father and mother."
- The Seventh Commandment is "Thou shalt not admit adultery."
- The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed
him.
- Solomon, one of David’s sons, has 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
- When Mary heard that she was the mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta.
- When the three wise guys from the east side showed up, they found Jesus and the
manager.
- Jesus was born because Mary had an emaculate contraption. St. John, the Blacksmith,
dumped water on his head.
- Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which is "Do one to others before they do one to
you."
- The Bible says a man is only supposed to have one wife. This is called monotony.
©1998 John Boy & Billy Inc.
GET SOME REST!
Our most notorious industrial accidents in recent years—Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the fatal navigational error of Korean Air Lines 007—all occurred in the middle of the night. When the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian A300 airbus killing all 290 people aboard, fatigue-stressed operators in the high-tech Combat Information Center on the carrier misinterpreted radar data and repeatedly told their captain the jet was descending as if to attack when in fact the airliner remained on a normal flight path. In the Challenger space shuttle disaster, key NASA officials made the ill-fated decision to go ahead with the launch after working twenty hours straight and getting only two to three hours of sleep the night before. ...
D. It’s like an incident that Benjamin Franklin told about. An English minister was once ordered to read a proclamation issued by King Charles I. After a period in which the country had observed strict blue laws on Sundays, the king issued a decree urging people to return to participating in sports on Sunday. Most church leaders refused to read this proclamation. But to one congregation’s amazement, their minister read the king’s decree. But he followed the pronouncement with these words, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” And he added, “Brethren, I have laid before you the commandment of your king and the commandment of your God. I leave it to you to judge which of the two ought to be observed.
THE CROSS AND ANTICHRIST IN HISTORY
Massachusetts Bay Colony was the scene of "The Great Migration" wherein thousands of religious dissenters came over to the New World to make a new life for themselves in the company of "saints" and other Puritans. Right off quick they passed laws regulating social behavior and the observance of the Sabbath and the ministers went to great pains to condemn the traditional "idols" of the established church (not to mention Popery). In 1636, following a sermon by Roger Williams (who was later ousted from Massachusetts for being too liberal and went on to found the Rhode Island Colony) condeming the cross as a symbol of the Anti-Christ, the Governor of the Colony, John Endicott, ordered the Standard Bearers of the Colony to remove the St. Georges Cross from their flags. Before this was done, however, the Great and General Court hauled Endicott in for examination, found that he had "exceeded the lymits of his calling" and punished him by forbiding him from holding public office for one full year! Then they gave the Standard Bearers permission to devise any kind of flag they wanted and, without exception, they removed the crosses from their flags.
More than a generation later, the Puritans having lost some of their hold on the beliefs of the Massachusetts settlers, the St. George’s cross again began to appear on the flags.
SOURCE: THE NEW ENGLAND FLAG by David B. Martucci
http://www.midcoast.com/~martucci/flags/NEFlag.html
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing. And from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking and from that to incivility and procrastination."
The Pharisees and teachers of the law competed with one another in strictness. They had atomized God’s law into 613 rules and bolstered these with 1,521 emendations (Yancey 132).
We can see the length to which this went from the following facts. For many generations the Scribal Law was never written down; it was the oral law, and it was handed down in the memory of generations of Scribes. In the middle of the third century A.D. a summary of it was made and codified. That summary is known as the Mishnah; it contains sixty-three tractates on various subjects of the Law, and in English makes a book of almost eight hundred pages. (Barclay 129)
The Law as originally given by God was based on the Ten Commandments. The 1521 emendations from the teachers of the law had reduced the commandments to a legalistic code that completely disregarded the principles intended by God.
A good example of this can be seen in the treatment of the Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath and Keep It Holy. First, one of the things considered to be unholy on the Sabbath was work. Work had to be defined, and one of the things considered to be work was writing; but how much writing constituted work? Here is what the teachers of the law said: He who writes two letters of the alphabet with his right or with his left hand, whether of one kind or of two kinds, if they are written with different inks or in different languages, is guilty. Even if he should write two letters from forgetfulness, he is guilty, whether he has written them with ink or with paint, red chalk,...
In 1981 the movie, Chariots of Fire, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. This Hollywood film told the true story of a devout Christian, Eric Liddell, in a very positive way. I want to just show you a clip of the film. Eric has decided he must forfeit his chance to run in the 200 meter dash at the 1924 Paris Olympics because the qualifying meet will be held on Sunday. His coach, and some others, try to convince him to change his mind.......wow! It is great to see someone who is willing to hold to his convictions no matter what it costs. Yet, think about the stand that Eric is taking. He won’t participate in the race, simply because it is on Sunday. He believes that to run on Sunday violates the Biblical command, the 4th of the Ten Commandments...to keep the Sabbath day holy.
Many of us in this room probably would not agree with Eric’s position. We would have said, "Eric, lighten up a little. Is this really the mountain you want to die defending? It is just one race. There will be plenty of time to go to church before or after the meet. Your decision not to run may keep you from witnessing to others about Christ." Today most Christians see Sunday as just the day we happen to meet for church. Many feel there is really nothing special about the day and going to church on Saturday night or Wednesday evening is just as good. Who is right? Eric Liddell, and other Christians who have been zealous in their efforts to observe the Sabbath, or the many Christians today who have no qualms about playing, shopping, or working on Sunday? How important is the Sabbath?
"Today I am a horse, Dear God, did you have to make my poor old horse lose his shoe just before the Sabbath? That wasn't nice. It's enough you pick on me, Tevye, bless me with 5 daughters, a life of poverty. What have You got against my horse? Sometimes I think when things are too quiet up there, You say to Yourself:"Let's see, what kind of mischief can I play on my friend, Tevye?" Tevye pulls his cart farther down the lane, silently, looking toward heaven and continues talking, "As the Good Book says, Heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed. In other words, send us the cure, we?ve got the sickness already. I'm not really complaining---after all, with Your help, I'm starving to death. You made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, that it's no shame to be poor, but it's no great honor either. So what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?"
