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TeacherAide The First Epic SESSION 16 ILLUSTRATING THE POINT
Man’s “Toothache” Is a Nail in the Head Construction worker Patrick Lawler thought he had a toothache. For almost a week, he tried painkillers and ice packs to reduce the swelling. When nothing he did brought relief, he finally went to the dental office where his wife works. Only after the dentist took an x-ray did Patrick learn the true source of the toothache. He had a four-inch nail in his head. When the dentists reported their discovery to Patrick's wife, she thought they were joking. But the x-ray revealed the truth. The nail had entered through his mouth, just missing Patrick's right eye. The incident occurred six days earlier. Patrick was working with a nail gun that backfired. Although one of the nails shot into his mouth and embedded itself, Patrick didn't realize it. He merely complained of a toothache and blurry vision, and even tried ice cream to soothe the pain. After the nail was discovered, surgeons at a Denver hospital successfully removed it through four hours of surgery. Although it is a "pretty rare injury," one neurosurgeon admitted, "this is the second one we've seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn't actually realize the nail had been embedded in their skull." A wrong diagnosis only leads to a wrong remedy. In the spiritual realm, unless we recognize the deadly reality of sin, we will never turn to the only solution, which is found in Christ. Source: “It’s a Pretty Rare Injury”, Sydney Morning Herald (1-17-05)
“Gladiator”: Power of Jesus’ Name Set in A.D. 180, Gladiator tells the story of General Maximus Decimus Meridius (played by Russell Crowe), who was about to be given reigning authority in Rome by the aging emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Before this could take place, however, the emperor's son, Commodus, killed his father in order to establish himself on the throne. He then ordered the murder of Maximus and his family. Maximus escaped, and the movie follows him as he is sold into slavery, becomes a nameless gladiator, and finally seeks justice against wicked Emperor Commodus. The turning point comes late in the movie. After Maximus wins a great battle in the Coliseum, Emperor Commodus decides to meet this unknown gladiator face to face. The crowd watches as the emperor in full pomp strides with his soldiers onto the sands of the Coliseum. The emperor asks the simple question: "What is your name?" Maximus, streaked with blood and dirt from the battle, takes off his helmet and says: "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, general of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next." The crowd erupts with a deafening roar, while the emperor visibly shakes under the weight of the true identity of a man he thought was a mere slave. The emperor flees the Coliseum, only to face defeat and death later at the hands of Maximus. Elapsed time: 01:29:09 to 01:33:08 (DVD scene 16). Content: Gladiator is rated R for violence. Gladiator (Dreamworks, 2000), rated R, written by David Franzoni, directed by Ridley Scott; submitted by Bill White, Paramount
THE MORE YOU KNOW
Near Death Experiences and Hell- I came across a book written by a cardiologist at the University of Tennessee that corroborates an important aspect of the biblical message. In the course of their emergency room work, Dr. Maurice Rawlings and his colleagues interviewed more than 300 people who claimed near-death experiences. What made Rawlings' study distinct is that the interviews were not conducted months or years later but immediately after the experiences had allegedly occurred while the patients were still too shaken up in the immediacy of the moment to gloss over or to re-imagine what they had experienced. Nearly 50 percent of them reported encountering images of fire, of tormented and tormenting creatures, and other sights hailing from a place very different from heaven. In follow-up interviews much later many of these same people had changed their stories, apparently unwilling to admit to their families, maybe even to themselves, that they had caught a glimpse of something like what the Bible calls hell. Dr. Rawlings concludes, "Just listening to these patients has changed my life. There is a life after death, and if I don't know where I'm going, it is not safe to die." Daniel Meyer, "The Light at the End of the Tunnel," Preaching Today No. 238 Barna Research has issued its results from a research poll on the topic of heaven and hell. The results are interesting. Heaven
Hell
THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SAY
“There are two hundred and fifty-six names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I suppose this was because He was infinitely beyond all that any one name could express.”- Billy Sunday “The man who denies original sin believes in the Immaculate Conception of everybody.” -G. K. Chesterton “The secret of grace is that it can be all right at the center even when it is all wrong on the edges.”- Lewis B. Smedes “The repeated promises in the Qu’ran of the forgiveness of a compassionate and merciful Allah are all made to the meritorious, whose merits have been weighted in Allah’s scales, whereas the gospel is good news of mercy to the undeserving. The symbol of the religion of Jesus is the cross, not the scales.”-John Stott “We are ever being born, or dying, and the thrill of choosing which is ours. Only once must we be born without our own consent. Only once must we die without our own permission.” - Calvin Miller
ILLUSTRATING
THE POINT
“Pearl Harbor”: Trusting the Father’s Orders The movie Pearl Harbor tells of the events leading up to and immediately following the Japanese attack on the U.S. on December 7, 1941. The film follows the fictional lives of two fighter pilots, Raph and Danny, who have been inseparable friends since childhood and are stationed at the same base in Hawaii. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Raph (Ben Affleck) and Danny (Josh Hartnett) are called into Colonel Jimmy Doolittle's office. They have succeeded in downing seven Japanese planes. Doolittle (Alec Baldwin) stands behind his desk and addresses the cocky pilots somberly. "You've both been awarded the silver star. You're just about the only pilots with combat experience. I need you for a mission I've been ordered to put together." Raph and Danny look nervously pleased. Doolittle looks them over carefully. "Do you know what 'top secret' is?" he asks. Raph responds with a wry smile. "Yes, sir! It's the kind of mission when you get medals, but they send them to your relatives." Ignoring the remark, Doolittle continues, "Top secret means you train for something never done before in aviation history and you go without knowing where you're going. You do it on that basis or not at all." Honored to be asked, yet unsure of what they are committing to, both men agree to go. In many ways, God recruits us to follow him in the same way that Doolittle recruited these pilots for this mission. God trains us in ways unique to us to fulfill unique purposes, and we know little or nothing about where we are going. We go on that basis, or we don't go at all. [The mission, called Doolittle's Raid, was to attack Japan by air. It was successful and affected the course of the war. In the movie, the two pilots live through the attack, but both are forced to crash-land their planes in China. At this point, Danny is ambushed and killed by Japanese soldiers who have invaded that part of China. Raph survives.] Elapsed time: Measured from the beginning of the opening credit, this scene begins at 2:19:35 and last approximately 45 seconds. Content: Pearl Harbor is rated PG-13 for profanity, violence, and sexuality. Pearl Harbor (Touchstone, 2001), rated PG-13, written by Randall Wallace, directed by Michael Bay;
THE MORE YOU KNOW
THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SAY
“Marriage can be whatever you define it as. For example, I don’t feel like I need a piece of paper that says I own her and she owns me. I think signing a piece of paper doesn’t mean anything in the eyes of God or in the eyes of people. The thing is, if you are together and you love each other and are good to each other, make babies and all that, for all intents and purposes you are married.”- Actor Johnny Depp “Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.”- Erma Bombeck “Just as a servant knows that he must first obey his master in all things, so the surrender to an implicit and unquestionable obedience must become the essential characteristic of our lives.”- Andrew Murray “Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the ones who loves that one.”- Oswald Chambers “It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.”-Thomas Carlyle “There’s nothing in this world more instinctively abhorrent to me than finding myself in agreement with my fellow-humans.”- Malcolm Muggeridge
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