The Trip Home

We stopped at the Danish Windmill in Elk Horn, Iowa on the way home.

Here’s what our backyard garden looked like when we got home. We’ve got pumpkins and cantelope.

More pictures have been posted on my Facebook page.

Father’s Day in Moline

Here’s a picture after an evening of backyard fun on Father’s Day.

A Visit to John Deere

Here are a few pictures from our trip to the world headquarters of John Deere, where Kari’s mom works.

Some Casteels on Nightline

As I mentioned before, my family attended a screening of The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry while we were at the Foursquare Convention in Anaheim. Nightline was also there filming for a segment about Christian films that they aired last night.

You can see my family sitting in the front left corner of the auditorium (house left/stage right). My mom is shown wiping her tears after a moving scene and my dad offers to help promote the film in Phoenix.

Watch the segment Box Office Busters from ‘Godlywood’ by clicking this link

The Kids Meet the Captain

Grace, Joel, and me with Gavin MacLeod at the 2009 Foursquare Connection in Anaheim.

My family got to see a special screening of Mr. MacLeod’s new movie, The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Gospel

From the Confessional Statement of The Gospel Coalition.

6. The Gospel
We believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Utter folly to the world, even though it is the power of God to those who are being saved, this good news is christological, centering on the cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has not been proclaimed if his death and resurrection are not central (the message is “Christ died for our sins . . . [and] was raised”). This good news is biblical (his death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures), theological and salvific (Christ died for our sins, to reconcile us to God), historical (if the saving events did not happen, our faith is worthless, we are still in our sins, and we are to be pitied more than all others), apostolic (the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles, who were witnesses of these saving events), and intensely personal (where it is received, believed, and held firmly, individual persons are saved).

Death By Crucifixion

This is an excerpt from Crucifixion in the Ancient World by Dr. Richard P. Bucher.

The ancients considered death by crucifixion to be not just any execution, but the most obscene, the most disgraceful, the most horrific execution known to man.

What form did a normal crucifixion take? First came the flogging or scourging. The flogging was usually done by two soldiers using a short whip that had several leather strips of different lengths. Tied to these were small iron balls or sharp pieces of sheep bones. The victim was stripped of his clothing and his hands were tied above him to a post. The back, legs and buttocks would then be flogged until the person collapsed. With the back and legs thus torn open there would be extensive blood loss.

Next the condemned man was made to carry his own cross to the place of crucifixion outside the city walls. The condemned man typically carried the crossbeam across his shoulders, shoulders that had just been ripped open by the flogging. This crossbeam would have weighed from 75-125 pounds.

When the victim reached the place of execution, by law, he was given a drink of wine mixed with myrrh. This was intended to be mild narcotic that would deaden the pain. It is significant that Jesus refused this drink. The criminal was then stripped naked, thrown to the ground on his back with his arms outstretched along the crossbeam. The hands would then be nailed to the crossbeam. Then the victim, now nailed to the crossbeam, would be hoisted up so that the crossbeam was attached to the upright beam. Finally the feet were nailed, one on top of the other, to the upright beam with another iron spike.

The pain of crucifixion is not difficult to imagine. In addition to the excruciating pain from the nails, the position of the crucified on the cross led to marked interference with normal respiration, especially exhalation. The crucified person could not exhale properly and this eventually would lead to painful muscle cramps. Furthermore, adequate exhaling required the crucified to lift his body by pushing up on the feet and rotating his elbows. This, of course, resulted in searing pain in both feet and hands. Lifting of the body to properly exhale would also painfully scrape the scourged back against the rough wooden cross, probably reopening wounds and causing more bleeding. On the cross every breath would be an agonizing affair and finally in combination with exhaustion would lead to suffocation.

Death by crucifixion did not come easily. There the crucified would hang, naked, the object of jeering and ridicule, powerless to remove the insects that landed in their mouth, eyes, and open wounds, exposed to the elements, unable to eat or drink. Crucifixion in the ancient world, as the ancients themselves tell us, was the most disgraceful and agonizing execution known to man.

And this is the death that Jesus Christ died. All this our Savior did for us, to save us from our sins.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6-8).

 

Here are more resources on the death of Jesus:

• On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ
• Medical Aspects of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ
• Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die – download the free book by John Piper
• Evidence for the Resurrection – an audio or video lecture series by Josh McDowell

Calvinists and Arminians – Closer Than We Think?

Here is a quote from J.I. Packer’s book Evangelism & The Sovereignty of God.

It is instructive in this connection to ponder Charles Simeon’s account of his conversation with John Wesley on Dec. 20th, 1784 (the date is given in Wesley’s Journal):

‘”Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have sometimes been called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers. But before I consent to begin the combat, with your permission I will ask you a few questions… Pray, Sir, do you feel yourself a depraved creature, so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God if God had not first put it into your heart?”

“Yes,” says the veteran, “I do indeed.”

“And do you utterly despair of recommending yourself to God by anything you can do; and look for salvation solely through the blood and righteousness of Christ?”

“Yes, solely through Christ.”

“But, Sir, supposing you were first saved by Christ, are you not somehow or other to save yourself afterwards by your own works?”

“No, I must be saved by Christ from first to last.”

“Allowing, then, that you were first turned by the grace of God, are you not in some way or other to keep yourself by your own power?”

“No.”

“What, then, are you to be upheld every hour and every moment by God, as much as an infant in its mother’s arms?”

“Yes, altogether.”

“And is all your hope in the grace and mercy of God to preserve you unto his heavenly kingdom?”

“Yes, I have no hope but in him.”

“Then, Sir, with your leave, I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is, in substance, all that I hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree.”‘

On Preaching the Gospel to Yourself

In his sermon, Psalms: Thinking and Feeling with God, Part 2, John Piper quotes from the book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you” (pp 20-21).

John Piper adds this after the quote:

On this side of the cross, we know the greatest ground for our hope: Jesus Christ crucified for our sins and triumphant over death. So the main thing we must learn is to preach the gospel to ourselves:

Listen, self: If God is for you, who can be against you? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for you, how will he not also with him graciously give you all things? Who shall bring any charge against you as God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for you. Who shall separate you from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:31-35 paraphrased)

Learn to preach the gospel to yourself. If this psalmist were living after Christ, that is what he would have done.

Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes

Repost from a few years ago:

This one is great.

#14: The Eruption of Mount Edgecumbe
In 1974 residents of Sitka, Alaska were alarmed when the long-dormant volcano neighboring them, Mount Edgecumbe, suddenly began to belch out billows of black smoke. People spilled out of their homes onto the streets to gaze up at the volcano, terrified that it was active again and might soon erupt. Luckily it turned out that man, not nature, was responsible for the smoke. A local practical joker named Porky Bickar had flown hundreds of old tires into the volcano’s crater and then lit them on fire, all in a (successful) attempt to fool the city dwellers into believing that the volcano was stirring to life. According to local legend, when Mount St. Helens erupted six years later, a Sitka resident wrote to Bickar to tell him, “This time you’ve gone too far!”

Here’s one from close to home.

#22: Arm the Homeless
In 1999 the Phoenix New Times ran a story announcing the formation of a new charity to benefit the homeless. There was just one catch. Instead of providing the homeless with food and shelter, this charity would provide them with guns and ammunition. It was named ‘The Arm the Homeless Coalition.’ The story received coverage from 60 Minutes II, the Associated Press, and numerous local radio stations before everyone realized it was a joke. The Phoenix New Times’s joke was actually a reprise of a 1993 prank perpetrated by students at Ohio State University.

Get them all here.

Here’s a good one from The Top 10 Worst April Fool’s Day Hoaxes Ever.

#10: The Iraqi Ambassador’s Final Joke
On April 1, 2003, as thousands of American-led coalition troops stormed across Iraq, the Iraqi ambassador to Russia, Abbas Khalaf Kunfuth, held a press conference in Moscow. Many were expecting him to announce that Iraq conceded defeat. Instead Kunfuth chose this moment to hold a gag press conference. Holding up a piece of paper that he identified as a news flash from Reuters, he read aloud from it: “The Americans have accidentally fired a nuclear missile into British forces, killing seven.” Immediately the room full of reporters went silent with shock. Then Kunfuth grinned and shouted ‘April Fools!’ Only a few days after this unexpected moment of levity, the Iraqi government completely collapsed.