NO BODY IN THE TOMB

What? No Body in the tomb?

Who ever heard the like?

Who can thus presume,

That One has risen

That One is no longer dead long?

Who ever heard that any successfully fled.

He is not here?

Why, this is where they stopped the bier,

This is where a sheet-bound Frame

From which such wondrous words once came

This is where they laid it down,

And sorrowfully, slowly, slumped back to town.

This has to be the lonely spot 

Surely, I’ve not “forgot”

The roll of the land, the look of the vale,

This is the place, lifeless and stale

That One’s precious Body came to rest

(What other point on earth is so blest?)

But the tomb is empty, there’s no Body in the grave

What ever do you suppose? – – –

Why, here are His grave clothes,

Here is the napkin they wound ‘round His head

These are the items so know with the dead

But He, the One who briefly wore them,

Is gone – you’ll have to store them.

He’ll never need graves clothes again.

He left them low, He did ascend

He showed Himself – Many did Him see

Life gave way to eternity!

The One who came the lost to save,

Has conquered Sin, Hell, and the Grave!

– eab, Mar. ‘08

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Word

“Which of you by taking thought

can add one cubit unto his stature?”

Mat 6.27

 

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N o !

Too “good” to go to hell?

The very concept flies in the face of God.

– eab, 8/16/14

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Tertullian – born

ON THIS DATE    

Tertullian is thought to have been born 4/27/c.155 (160?) AD at Carthage (now in Tunisia) to pagan parents; his father a Roman centurion, perhaps part of an African-based legion assigned to the provincial governor.  His works indicate he received a good Carthaginian education including (but not necessarily limited to) grammar, rhetoric, literature, philosophy. He later traveled to Rome possibly to further his training (although Carthage was second only to Rome in culture & education) & may have studied law while there.   

One thing he did “learn” in Rome was the way Christians were being executed. He saw the courage which sustained them as they faced hideous deaths.  This startled him into investigating their Belief & eventually led to his conversion to Jesus Christ 197-198(?).  He was definitely married (addressed two books to his wife) but her name is lost in the dusty past. Tertullian was the first Christian penman to use Latin as a writing language but of his 31 extant works at least 3 were written in Greek.

Tertullian definitely did NOT (nor the Roman Catholics) create the concept of a Trinity. At least 13 verses list All Three of the God-Head in one verse but he appears to first to pen “trinity” described as “One God in Three Persons” (classic trinitarian formula). He was unhappy with compromise he witnessed coming into the church & wrote against encroachments rather than producing a systematic theology. His honesty did not win him friends among the “Churchmen” & one source said he died (c. 225-240) “separated from full communion with the bishops of the Catholic Church” a positive (rather than a negative) assessment.

Tertullian Quotes:

“One Person in Two Natures” – describing Christ

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” – another of his famous phrases 

“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” – as pagan philosophies came – a question we still need to hear!

 

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Word

“Behold the fowls of the air:

for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns;

yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.

Are ye not much better than they?”

Mat 6.26

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That Spring Thursday night

 

O-o-oh someday I’ll see the King in His beauty.

Someday all heaven will dazzle my sight

Someday I’ll finish my last “daily-duty”

And it all began that Spring Thursday night.

– eab, 9/11/14 (part of a song)

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Bryan – converted to Jesus Christ

ON THIS DATE

Edgar A Bryan was converted to Jesus Christ, 4/26/1956, in the village of Bremen, OH.  It was at the old  Pilgrim Holiness Church, (in town) then pastored by the impressive J D (John Denver) Webb, Sr. (father of evangelist Orlow C Webb).  It was a Thursday night revival service.  The evangelist is not remembered but could have been Bro Howard Williams as the Williams were at Bremen more than once in those years.

Yours truly was raised (youngest of four) in the Christian home of Clyde D & Ruth E Bryan & knew better than to use “four letter” language around them, but had picked up a foul-mouth habit, which was practiced at school in Somerset.  The next day on lunch break four or five of us were returning to campus from eating “down town” when I, from habit used the word “h_ _ l.”  It was said without thinking but immediately I felt badly.  I told the rest of the guys to go on & as I walked slowly up the alley I asked God to forgive me – He did, restored the joy to my heart, & to God be the glory, I have never said that word “as a bad word” since.  I cannot testify that I never sinned after that Spring Thursday night but I can say it was THE major turning point.  Though at times I yielded to temptation the set of my soul was toward God & heaven.

That conversion kept me through the last weeks of the 7^th grade, all the 8^th grade, & propelled me toward God’s Bible School.  The decision to go there (some 140 miles of two-lane road away) was a mutual one between my God-loving parents & 14½ yours truly. All four years of high school were spent at God’s Bible School.  There I made many life-long friends.  There I participated in the famous Thanksgiving Dinners. There I held my first job (off campus) at Jewish Hospital.  There I attended my first IHC – never forgot the night I heard H Robb French. And, there I met my life-love, the former Martha M Scarbrough.

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Word

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life,

what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.

Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”

Mat 6.25

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Flexon Quote

“No man’s desire for heaven is any greater

than his desire for holiness.”

– R G Flexon, Quoted by Earl Newton in sermon, 2/8/94

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Word

“For if ye forgive men their trespasses,

your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

Mat 6.14

>> It does not get much more serious than this <<

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