Amazingly Awful or Awfully Amazing?

Amazingly Awful or Awfully Amazing?

 

In all the history of the world, you live in this now. Amazingly Awful, and/or Awfully Amazing!!

 

In oh-so-many ways the Lord's angels, as well as the accuser’s servile underlings, are rolling down the fence line forcing those who have lived on it in a perpetual state of indecision or neutrality-off. To one side or the other.

 

On-the-fence usually refers to one who has yet to choose a side—often thinking they can please both. But the time has arrived when on-the-fence is not an option. 

 

"Then the Angel told me:…if the Gentiles repent, it will turn out well for them.…if the Gentiles harden their hearts against the Lamb of God, I will afflict them.

 

"The time will come, says the Lamb of God, when I'll bring about a great and awe-inspiring work among mankind, one that will be everlasting -- one way or the other -- either to convince them, resulting in peace and life eternal; or to give them up to their hard hearts and blind minds, bringing about their slavery and temporal and spiritual destruction, under the accuser's enslavement…" (COC 1 Nephi 3:XXVI)

 

The use of the phrase one way or the other followed by either-or emphasizes the imposition upon us to make a choice and should awaken us to our situation. Not our awful situation, but a situation that the Lord wants to make sure we understand confronts us. 

 

One way or the other asks which of two possibilities will be chosen?

 

Either/Or insists that we face the inescapable and unavoidable reality that we must choose between two alternatives. Even a non-choice is a choice.

 

C.S. Lewis, in the preface to his book The Great Divorce, aptly describes what lies before us in this passage: “It is still ‘either-or’. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven, we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”

 

Joshua, in what is considered one of the most famous statements in the Old Testament, lays it out this way.

 

Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve — whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell — but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. OC Joshua 5:5

 

Joshua, Israel's political and religious leader after Moses, is urging the people of Israel to choose between serving God or serving themselves. He tells them to put away the gods of their ancestors and serve the Lord. He then says that if they refuse, they should choose whom they will serve, whether the gods of Terah or of the Canaanites. He concludes, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

 

One way or the other and Either/or

 

You have an Amazingly Awful, or Awfully Amazing choice, the consequences of which are eternal. 

 

Choose Well!

 

Signed

 

John The-Not-So-Beloved

Alea iacta est? -- Have we Jumped the Shark?

In 49 B.C. when Julius Caesar, at the head of his armies, crossed the Rubicon River between Italy and Gaul he has been said to have shouted the phrase, Alea iacta est, a Latin way of saying “The Die is Cast.” That expression, either in the original Latin or in translation, is used in many languages to indicate that events have passed a point of no return. With that crossing, Caesar was irrevocably committed to a course of action that precipitated a war against Pompey and the Roman Senate. That civil war ultimately led to Caesar's becoming dictator for life. 

 

We have a modern equivalent used to express a similar sentiment for The Die is Cast or passing the point of no return; “Jumping the Shark” or “Jumped the Shark.”

 

The idiom "jumping the shark" or "jumped the shark" is a phrase coined in 1985 by radio personality Jon Hein in response to a 1977 episode from the fifth season of the American sitcom Happy Days, in which the character of Fonzie jumps over a live shark while on water-skis. The stunt was so unlike the Fonz, outside the Happy Days world, and such an exaggeration of the sitcom’s original purpose that it marked the beginning of the end for Happy Days. They had crossed the Rubicon, a point from which there was no return to the summit of the program’s popularity.

 

Just as in the case of Caesar, it would take some time for the process to play out to its end, Happy Days would never be the same. It could not be redeemed.

 

Speaking of Happy Days, what say ye? Has our Babylonian culture Jumped the Shark or Crossed the Rubicon? Have we reached the point of no return and are just waiting a couple of seasons for the Lord’s plan to play out? 

 

For most, ‘Happy Days’ is quickly becoming a memory with Babylonian repentance being the only clear path back to the summit. Not likely.

 

Is the die now cast?

 

What say ye?

 

Signed

 

John The-Not-So-Beloved