On Video: A Night Landing on Runway 25L in Los Angeles

This is a video of a 737-800 (the same aircraft type I fly) landing at night on Runway 25 Left in Los Angeles (LAX). It is filmed looking through the Heads Up Display (HUD), which is a clear acrylic screen that folds down in front of the captain (also on our aircraft). The instrument indications are projected onto the HUD screen, with the focal point at infinity (so the HUD and the runway are simultaneously in focus), allowing you to view the instrument readings and the runway at the same time without having to look down at the instrument panel. You can hear the crew making their normal calls, plus the chatter on the radio (such as the control tower air traffic controller issuing clearances - that's the female voice), and the synthetic voice of the ground proximity warning system automatically calling out altitudes. There's a lot going on in those last 1,000 feet!

Remember When... We Were Still Counting?

Remember when we were still counting? I'm not that keen on revisiting those days, but they serve as a reminder of how not to do it.

The Ablaze! counter disappeared when the LCMS website was redone a while back. The once often-heard maxim "hell is hot and time is short," combined with snapping fingers, disappeared at about the same time.  Evangelizing the world is an important task, and how you go about that task is equally important. Maybe the whole "movement" was actually designed by Rev. Bill:

photo credit: Thomas Hawk

Notice the Difference?

Irenaeus, 2nd century Church father, who wrote Against Heresies:

     "On account of His infinite love He became what we are, in order that we might become what He is."

Lorenzo Snow, fifth president and prophet of the Mormon church:

     "As man is God once was, as God is man may be."

The King Tut Exhibition: Going, Going…

Cheryl and I went to the King Tut exhibit in Seattle last week, more properly called "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs." It was fantastic. If you remember the original King Tut exhibit in the ‘70s, this one was more than twice as large. The exhibits include not only over 100 objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb, but also artifacts from many other Dynasties, representing 2,000 years of the shifting sands of Egyptian history. Included in the exhibit are King Tut’s solid gold sandals, which were on the corpse, gold finger and toe coverings, and a statue of Thutmose III, one of the kings who oppressed the Israelites, and possibly the Pharaoh of the exodus.

I didn’t take a whole lot of photos, but I’ll paste a few of them below. Flash photography wasn’t allowed, and there were too many people to use a tripod. That combined with poor lighting and a hand-held camera results in blurry photos. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Feel free to download any of them. You may use them elsewhere as long as you ascribe credit. The first photo is designed to be used as wallpaper.

Part of the money raised by this tour is being used to complete the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza. Once the museum is completed (scheduled for 2015), these artifacts will likely never leave Egypt again. Seattle is the last stop on the tour. The exhibit is open until January 6, 2013 at the Pacific Science Center (located to the left of the base of the Space Needle).

A composite of three photos of the gold funerary mask of Psusennes I, (1039-991 BC; 21st Dynasty), whose tomb was discovered intact at Tanis in 1940. Psusennes was the only pharaoh to have been buried in a silver sarcophagus (inlaid with gold). You might think that’s sort of a letdown, but silver was much more rare than gold at the time, so his was an even grander sarcophagus.

Queen Nofret, sculpted in granodiorite, now lacking her original crystal and obsidian eyes. She was the consort of 12th Dynasty Pharaoh Senusret II (also known as Senwosret II or Sesostris II; 1899 – 1878 BC).  You can see the huge illuminated Tutankhamun statue over her shoulder in the next room.

A conopic stopper made of calcite in the likeness of King Tutankhamun (1332 – 1323 BC; 18th Dynasty). The mummified organs of the kings were place in four canopic jars and sealed with stoppers. The jars were placed inside a partitioned canopic chest with four compartments, one each for the stomach, lungs, liver, and intestines, the organs of course being needed by the owner in the afterlife. 

One of Tutankhamun’s canopic coffinettes. In Tut’s case, one coffinette was nestled inside each canopic jar. This one contained Tut’s stomach. Note the inscriptions on the inside of the coffinette. The coffinette is made of gold and inlaid with carnelian, lapis lazuli, and colored glass. For a very interesting description of the coffinette, go here.

A frontal view of the coffinette, which is twelve inches tall.  Tutankhamun is holding the familiar royal sceptres of flail and crook, the flail representing the king as provider of food for his people, or administrator of law, while the crook representing the king as shepherd of his people.

Kings Khafre (2518-2493 BC; 4th Dynasty) and Menkaure (2488-2460 BC; 4th Dynasty), builders of two of the three pyramids at Giza in the Fourth Dynasty.

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"My Protestant Kid Can Beat Up Your Pentacostal Kid"

"My Protestant kid can beat up your Pentecostal kid," at least if hippocampus size has anything to do with it. A study done last year at Duke University Medical Center found that the size of the hippocampus (which is located in the medial temporal lobe of your brain, under the cerebral cortex) is larger in Protestants who did not have a "born again" experience as opposed to those who reported a life-changing religious experience, or Catholics or unaffiliated older adults. The subjects of the study were initially recruited for a larger study on the effects of depression in the elderly.

To determine the answer to the more relevant question, as a follow on study, I think they should examine the brains of the researchers, to determine how a study about elderly depression could morph into a study on the relationship of born-again experiences to brain size. Their data might be very conclusive.

You can read the details here.


photo credit: Mo Morgan

Frank and Brotherly Rebuke

Quoting from Dr. Kurt Marquart’s presentation at the 2003 Annual Symposium on the Lutheran Confessions at Concordia Theological Seminary titled “Fellowship in the Former Synodical Conference”:

The point here was, mutual recognition in oneness of faith, doctrine, and confession. Oneness in the one faith once delivered to the saints in the Apostle’s doctrine. And without such agreement there could be no joint mission work. But with it there is full communion in the church’s work and life and worship, including frank and brotherly rebuke of St. Peter’s fear-induced lapse into a hypocritical practice – and Paul rebukes him publicly, and this precisely in order that the purity of the Gospel proclamation might be safeguarded. And please note too that the public offense against the Gospel by St. Peter demanded prompt public correction, not endless secret negotiations.

The Ten Commandments, Old Style

From A Good Book, by N. H. Newport, published by Wilcox and Brown in 1834:

The "Little Ordination": What is It? Pastor Weedon Explains

Pastor Will Weedon, in Part 8 of the Issues, Etc. series on the historic liturgy, explains the salutation and it's significance in the Divine Service. Another great segment:

A Horrific Consequence of Abandoning the Historic Christian Liturgy

In a segment on the May 30, 2011 Issues, Etc. show on the Athanasian Creed, Pastor Wilken and Pastor Will Weedon discuss the abandonment of the historic Christian liturgy and its consequences. Pastor Wilken asks Pastor Weedon to react to two different studies by the Barna Group which found that the majority of American Christians do not believe the Holy Spirit is a living force or entity. Listen to Pastor Weedon’s insightful response:



As the Athanasian Creed confesses,

¹Whoever desires to be saved must,     above all, hold the catholic faith. ²Whoever does not keep it whole and     undefiled will without doubt perish     eternally. ³And the catholic faith is this, ⁴that we worship one God in Trinity and     Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the     persons nor dividing the substance.

This is a sobering thought. How many contemporary worship services have you been to where the Trinity was rarely, if ever, mentioned? It’s certainly unlikely you’ll see the Trinity taught in the praise songs. So do we worship one God in Trinity? And if not, what does this mean? The Creed certainly answers: Those who don’t worship one God in Trinity “will without doubt perish eternally.” As Pastor Weedon points out, the Trinity is everywhere in the liturgy -- certainly one more reason to keep the liturgy intact. You can listen to the entire Issues, Etc. segment here.

The Life Cycle of a Church – Two Different Narratives

Sketch One:

Sketch Two:

Personally, I prefer the second narrative. The first one seems like a bit of a straw man argument, and not very descriptive of the actual life of most churches. Oddly, I've been a member of nine different LCMS churches, several in big cities, two in really little rural towns. None of them are in danger of "dying." A church following the second approach cannot be dying, because there Christ is present, giving His good gifts that sustain life, not just for this life, but also for the life to come.