This was given at the little church I preached at in Lynnville, IL on February 8, 2004… It is ‘noted’ as ‘_02’ because I posted the manuscript on this site many years ago…
The Scripture is from 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11…
“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurances of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”
In our younger days, whenever my friend Henry or I had any serious project to work on regarding any of our vehicles, we always wound up doing it in the garage at his house outside of Edwardsville, IL. There, we pulled and overhauled engines, replaced clutches, and rebuilt front-ends together. Small jobs, like replacing brakes or installing a new 8-track could easily be done in an afternoon, but the more complex jobs usually found us working late into the night.
In those days, KMOX would broadcast the ‘Radio Mystery Theater’ at, I believe, midnight, and we would take a break to pay attention to the drama being ‘built’ before us! Now, radio shows, by necessity, require the listener to ‘believe’ in what they are hearing… and in the dim light provided by a single trouble-light and two small bulbs mounted on the rafters, one in each bay, it was easy and fun to let ourselves become engrossed in the story as it played out on the ‘TV screen’ of our minds… that is, our imaginations.
As most of you know, the words that I opened with come from the very first page of H. G. Wells’ classic ‘War of the Worlds’. It was published in 1897; just three years after a Bostonian named Percival Lowell founded a major observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed. People at this time tended to believe in the possibility that Mars supported some kind of sentient life. Even as late as 1938, when Orson Welles presented the story as a radio-play, many people who had missed the introduction readily believed that the earth was being invaded by Martians and panicked!
Henry used to have an LP with a recording of that broadcast, and we were both fascinated by it… Orson had done an excellent job in transcribing the book into what an unsuspecting listener might well believe was an evening of music interrupted with a series of newsflashes regarding the apparent invasion of Earth from Mars. Henry and I both knew how to ‘see’ with our ears, and we loved to listen to stuff like that. Indeed, I still have a number of recordings of old radio shows that I would take and listen to in the truck once in awhile!
Television, on the other hand, has eliminated the need to ‘see’ with our ears… it has brought many things to ‘life’ for us over the years. Consider the antennae that sprung up from Uncle Martin’s head each time he needed to send a message… it was no longer necessary to ‘believe’ in something with your imagination… the special effects people could make it real! So much so that many of the younger generations may have very stunted imaginations… there is very little left for them to imagine that hasn’t been ‘created’ in some form or other in some film, TV series, or video game! And thus, our abilities to ‘believe’ in something unseen have diminished!
In noted astronomer Carl Sagan’s very popular PBS series and book of the early eighties, Cosmos, he uses both history and theory to build many of his hypotheses. In the chapter titled Blues for a Red Planet he tells of young Percival Lowell’s fascination with the planet Mars, and how over time it came to be his life’s work. He went into the deserts of Arizona and built what was at the time one of the most powerful telescopes on earth and dedicated most of his evenings to staring through it at the red planet while taking notes and drawing sketches of what he thought he saw. Let me read how Dr. Sagan summarized all of his efforts.
“Lowell’s lifelong love was the planet Mars. He was electrified by the announcement in 1877 by an Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, of canali on Mars. Schiaparelli had reported during a close approach of Mars to Earth an intricate network of single and double straight lines crisscrossing the bright areas of the planet. Canali in Italian means channels or grooves, but was promptly translated into English as canals, a word that implies intelligent design. A Mars mania coursed through Europe and America, and Lowell found himself swept up with it.
Percival Lowell’s notebooks are full of what he thought he saw: bright and dark areas, a hint of polar cap, and canals, a planet festooned with canals. Lowell believed he was seeing a globe-girdling network of great irrigation ditches, carrying water from the melting polar caps to the thirsty inhabitants of the equatorial cities. He believed the planet to be inhabited by an older and wiser race, perhaps very different from us. He believed that the seasonal changes in the dark areas were due to the growth and decay of vegetation. He believed that Mars was, very closely, Earth-like. All in all, he believed too much.
We have now sent reconnaissance satellites into orbit around Mars. The entire planet has been mapped. We have Landed two automated laboratories on its surface. The mysteries of Mars have, if anything, deepened since Lowell’s day. However, with pictures far more detailed than any view of Mars that Lowell could have glimpsed, we have found not a tributary of the vaunted canal network, not one lock. Lowell and Schiaparelli and others, doing visual observations under difficult seeing conditions, were misled—in part perhaps because of a predisposition to believe in life on Mars.”
The Life Application Commentary tells us that, “The truth never loses its power. People, however, often lose their grip on truth.” How true that is! Do you know what you believe? And how have your beliefs changed through the years… and why? The Easter Bunny… the Great Pumpkin… Tooth Fairy… someone suggested ‘wishing on a star’… these are all things that our childhood mind accepted but our adult mind does not. How about the concept of the man being the ‘master of the home’… or of one man’s right to own another? These were merely social issues that were in need of being changed! And of course there is the ever changing world of technology that sometimes forces us to change what we believe to be possible or not on an almost daily basis!
Is it any wonder that many people no longer know what to believe? Paul Simon once wrote,
“So you see, I have come to doubt
all that I once held as true.
I stand alone, without beliefs…
The only truth I know is you.”
In our lesson today, Paul is calling the Corinthians back to the truth… back to what they had been taught to believe. Matthew Henry’s Commentary says that…
“It is the apostle’s business in this chapter to assert and establish the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which some of the Corinthians flatly denied, Whether they turned this doctrine into allegory… by making it mean no more than a changing of their course of life; or whether they rejected it as absurd, upon principles of reason and science; it seems they denied it in the proper sense. And they disowned a future state of recompences, by denying the resurrection of the dead. That heathens and infidels should deny this truth does not seem so strange; but that Christians, who had their religion by revelation, should deny a truth so plainly discovered is surprising, especially when it is a truth of such importance. It was time for the apostle to confirm them in this truth, when the staggering of their faith in this point was likely to shake their Christianity. He begins with a summary of the gospel, what he had preached among them, namely, the death and resurrection of Christ.”
Let me reread the first two verses of today’s lesson, but this time from The Living Bible…
Now let me remind you, brothers, of what the Gospel really is, for it has not changed – it is the same Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and still do now, for your faith is squarely built upon this wonderful message; and it is this Good News that saves you if you still firmly believe it, unless of course you never really believed it in the first place.
Has your belief in what the Bible says changed over the years? It shouldn’t have! Oh, yes, our knowledge of historical accuracy has improved… our acceptance of social issues, such as the equality of women, has slowly taken place… but the Gospel itself has not changed! It had not changed then… and it is not changed today! The story is just as true and relevant for us as it was then!
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures… He was buried… He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures… He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve… after that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time… He appeared to James… then to all the apostles… and last of all he appeared to Paul also!
Believe it! Accept it! Live it!
In the 6th chapter of Isaiah God asks, “Whom shall I send?” Who indeed? For it is only through our reading His Word… it is only through listening to it with, more than our eyes and ears, our hearts… it is only through accepting and believing and feeling what we have read… that we can become the true Christians that we are expected to be. Only then will we see the work He expects us to do. Only then will we be able to stand up and reply, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!”
scluebbert 