Cire Perdue

Cire Perdue is the French word used to describe the process involved whereby a wax cast is constructed from the artist's original bronze or brass sculpture. Often the same process is used in statuary repair, heated wax can be dripped into a crack or flaw and through this cire perdue method a perfect replica is produced. As with all artwork, only the most trained/educated eye can detect the difference.

Such is the importance of outward beauty, beauty which any eye can see. It is inward beauty that is more difficult to detect. Looking at the great works of Michaelangelo such as David, alone at a great museum in Florence, the marble seems so real. It has been said that after Michaelangelo finished his famous statue of Moses, so real, so perfect, he hit statue with his hammer and said, “speak to me.” The great artist said that each large block of marble contains someone just waiting to come out. The artist does not produce ugliness, whether with the chisel and hammer or the artist's brush, he wants reality, but the reality of beauty, the customer does not pay his money for ugliness, in craftsmanship or reality. In art, as in life, one desires balance, style, class.

Religious history shows us that believers desired the best. Until this day, the greatest building ever built, Solomon's Temple, just to read of its dedication, the music involved, the sacrifices involved (22,000 oxen slain, sheep without number), or even St. Paul's in London, (one that you can still see to this day), we can understand why, as children, we wore our best clothing to church on Sunday. Even in the poorest eastern North Carolina town, the church house, with stained glass windows, carved woodwork, was pointed to with pride. Many of the attendees might have come from barren homes but they did not approach God's house in a casual way... modest dress, careful behavior, appropriate music. Everything showing honor to the Creator of the universe.

Can you even imagine going for a job interview, going to a wedding, a funeral, wearing casual clothes? God deserves, and expects our best. Everything we do, our dress, our behavior, our worship, is all for His glory. (1 Corinthians 10:31) I am told that some churches allow attendees to wear shorts, flip-flops, even let them bring drinks. I was told that in one black church in town, signs were on the vestibule door leading to the sanctuary that said, “no eating or drinking beyond this door”. One man told me of a church where a young man, wearing shorts and flip-flops was holding a dip cup in which he spat from tobacco. What is wrong with the men of this church, do they have a shoestring for a backbone?

One woman came to my house for a job, her husband was an assistant at a local megachurch. it was his job as one of 31 assistant pastors just to the lighting system in rhythm with the drums and brass of the church music. I said to her, “do you have an organ or piano, as do most old-fashioned churches?” She said, “no, we do not want a conventional church, we want music that will attract the younger set, music that they can move and dance by during the service.”

At the University Cathedral in Los Angeles where Dr. Gene Scott was pastor for so many years, if he saw one person whisper to another, or any unnecessary movement, he asked an usher to immediately escort the person out of the building. Children attended services in the main sanctuary only when they reached the age of twelve, from the age of twelve until marriage, they were required to sit with their parents. Those under the age of twelve had their own special service. God's Word was real and important to this preacher, church service was not a time of entertainment, a social gathering, it was a time for study, learning, harmony instead of cacophony.

Traveling the world, I attended many church services, many denominations. On Easter Island, Pacific Ocean five hundred miles off the coast of Chile, in the Catholic church on Sunday Morning, all the women were well-dressed, they all had flowers in their hair and over their outerwear, everything about the service was glorious.

Scripture talks much about longsuffering above everything else, our habits, our sins of omission and commission, our ungratefulness, our faithlessness. God is longsuffering in our attitude of worship to Him. A person as ugly as a fencepost can go to church clean, dressed in his best with a humble attitude of worshipfulness in living and in giving. The most important measure of our worship is our giving, returning to God a portion of that which has been given to us. The tithe is the Lord's whether we give it or not. 1/7 of our time is the Lord's whether we give it or not. Our longsuffering Lord expects us to remember Him as often as possible at His table. We can use cire perdue patchwork put on paint or other makeup, we can pretend and disguise but the inner man will always expose the outer man.

Conjurer

Near the farm on which I was reared, a small crossroads town, lived a conjurer, “I never saw the woman, only heard about her.” One man who lived nearby told me that large, out-of-state cars, would come to this simple farmhouse, stay for a while and then leave. One, a car with a Maryland license plate, stopped him on the road and asked for directions to the nearby city where they could get motel accommodations. He was brave enough to ask the occupants of the car why they were in the community. “We had an appointment with the conjurer, my mother in the back seat has cancer, we are looking for a cure.”

The dictionary definition of a conjurer is a sorcerer, or one who performs magic. Using that definition, there are conjurers all around us, particularly in places of government. Desperate people do desperate things, someone dying with cancer will go from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital, Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, died in Mexico. Many Americans seek treatments on foreign shores, not permitted here. My great interest in life, an interest which led me to study for many years, the healing arts. Still, to this day, my mental deliberations between the sanity of science, and the sanctity of divine intercession. I believe in divine healing, there is not one doubt in my mind, that God cannot heal, more than there is a doubt in my mind that God can cleanse a heart from all unrighteousness (Isaiah 53, etc.). The healing of a mind, the healing of a body, begins with healing of a heart. All over the world, I have witnessed the supernatural, often the mystical.

In Togo, west Africa, I visited a large fetish market...a place where you buy amulets, body parts, bones, etc. The voodoo culture is very prevalent all over Africa, entire voodoo villages. The voodoo religion came to the Caribbean early in the slave trade, and is called “Santeria”. Mrs. Obama's mother, Ms. Robinson, who lives with them, is a follower of Santeria. Mrs. Robinson had voodoo witches cleanse the White House before they moved in. Most people would be surprised at the followers of Voodoo or Santeria in your own community, putting a hex on you, or some other curse.

I bought a box of old books at an auction, in the large box was a smaller box containing Voodoo magic equipment: a jar of fish eyes, a jar of small bones, a jar of dirt of some sort. I thought seriously of using some of these “helpmates” against some of my nosy neighbors. But I did not know the words or the attitude with which to put out these things. Believe it or not, atheists consider Christians just as ridiculous in our prayer life, in our New Testament ordinances (baptism, Lord's Supper). Many have told me, in debate, that we whisper to an ether God. Why not bow to a Catholic idol, or kiss a bishop's ring? It is only when you have learned to have the courage of faith to defend the hope within you (1 Peter 3:15), that you are ready “to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love”. I truly believe most Christians are just playing games with God, or with themselves.

Does God hear the prayers of the starving millions in Ethiopia and India? Powdered and perfumed, sitting on padded pews in an ornate, air-conditioned sanctuary, listening to a paid, trained-voice choir, accompanied by a highly-paid organist, rushing out of the sanctuary to a magnificent, technically equipped automobile, fussing to meet friends at an expensive restaurant, gorging themselves with expensive served foods, while thousands are hungry, not only around the world, but just across the tracks in the same town in which they live. Is this really Christianity? Praying and reading out of the prayer book just a few minutes ago, did it really reach the ears of a sovereign God? Or have we just conjured up beautiful thoughts in our own mind, for own on good, a product of habit and contrived happiness.

I did not agree with very much with what he said or his lifestyle, but he was one of the greatest minds, greatest Bible teachers I have ever heard. Dr. Gene Scott Ph.D, Stanford University, pastor of a large congregation in Los Angeles, heard around the world in short wave, came down with prostate cancer. This man was a multimillionaire, rode to his church in chauffeured limousine, but he believed God would cure his prostate cancer, did not have the surgery or the treatments to cure it. His funeral was held in the cathedral he served. Some years before, he had married a showgirl from Las Vegas, who had never seen a Bible, she is now pastor Melissa Scott, having taken over his ministry. She studies and preaches, wears a roman collar, and his canned sermons are play continuously on radio.

You will remember, that the magicians of Pharaoh were almost as good as the blessed acts of Moses. God does use broken, damaged cisterns, Saul was chosen because he was the tallest man in the kingdom. Perhaps, only God knows, Oral Roberts, Jim Baker have contributed in God's eternal plan.

We often hear about the letter and spirit of the law. God knew what he was doing when he designed the human mind, a vast cosmos. It is from this cosmos that comes every invention, every sheet of music, all written words, (thank God so many minds are exceptional), it was from the mind of Arthur Penn, director of many movies, the greatest, Bonnie & Clyde, that much storytelling emanates. Movies, soap operas, imagination is great until it becomes a detriment...monopolizing your time, becoming a substitute for your behavior.

Around 1970, “Big Pharma”, “Big Agri-Industry”, began putting fructose, corn syrup into 95% of everything we eat, this addictive substance, causing 50% of the population to have type-2 diabetes, which will cause 1/3 of all children to have type-2 diabetes, is a nutrition catastrophe. Until around 1980, most cattle providing our beef supply were fed on grass, they moved around, had muscle, today feed lots are full of cattle being fed corn, fast-eating, fast-fattening, a nutrition nightmare...much like people sitting, watching TV or computer all day: fat, lazy, never moving, never realizing that government can better train fat, lazy, indolent people. Not only a nightmare for the human diet, but the diets of your pets, hog and cow feed at one time had molasses; now, fructose, from genetically engineered corn.

For 2000 years, problems of pain and suffering in the world, minds of men change because hearts of men have been changed. My answer to conjurers, faith healing, scientific progress, everything else, the prayer given by our blessed Lord Himself, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)