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.

World's Largest Church

In Seoul, South Korea, you can find the world's largest mega church with 830,000 members, the Yoido Full Gospel Church, founded and led by David Yonggi Cho in 1958. My only son, my only child, Dr. John Morris and his wife were SBC missionaries in South Korea for many years, they were very familiar with this mega-church.

There are many mega-congregations in America, the Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, with Joel Osteen as pastor, has 43,000 members. Osteen also has a large television audience. One of the fastest growing churches in America, which I attended while a student in Memphis, Tennessee is Bellevue Baptist Church, it's membership around 7,000. But, add all the mega churches together, and you will still not have the size of the world's largest church, the “church of Oprah”. Oprah Winfrey, writer of the “fifth gospel” (the gospel of Oprah), more dominant in world religion than all other preachers combined, influences more people than all others with her new age religious belief.

Her worship of new-age religions comes with the publication of any book pertaining to new-age philosophy. At the head of the list is Edward Tolle, and his book A New Earth which promotes the idea that God is a “feeling experience, not a believing experience.” Second on her list is Rhonda Burns, The Secret, Burns promotes the idea that it is all about you, that you are God, a new “positive thinking” philosophy. Third on the list is Marianne Williamson, A Course in Miracles, a philosophy of forgiveness in daily life. Oprah, one of the world's richest women, who lives in 7 homes, who lives with a man to whom she is not married, only has to recommend a book and it becomes an instant bestseller.

Oprah, whose money and influence helped put a Sunni Muslim, Obama, in the White House is a profitess who would make ancient Diana of Ephesus (Acts 19) or Jezebel of Jezreel (1 Kings 19) envious. The world is still impressed by numbers, especially in church it is better to make numbers count, instead of counting numbers.

I find that most people have reached a place in life that they doubt everything. The world, the flesh, the devil has so penetrated our being that we question the veracity of everything. You can put no truth at all in news reports, more fiction than fact. When did you hear a politician that you actually believed, one who would give a direct answer? When you meet anyone, politician, salesperson, teacher, preacher, you immediately try to decide: is this person real, or a phony? Is this person interested in me, or what they can get out of me? You want so desperately to trust people, you want so desperately to find an employee who wants to give honest work for honest pay. The greatest disappointment in life is your disappointment with people, even family, friends, those with whom you do business.

I met a Jewish realtor, I had fired my last real estate adviser, now this Jew knew the history of the Jewish people, the only people on earth dispersed all over the world, yet never lost their language, their laws, their belief system. He knew the laws as laid down by Moses in Deuteronomy chapters 28 and 29, yet he was willing to take advantage of a friend, a blind, fellow army officer for the sake of a commission from one of my tenants, Kevin. He even aided and abetted this tenant in the thievery of items from my property, the breaking of a lease. He had been well paid to help me, not the tenant. But, he was willing to risk his career for a real estate commission, his professional name in a small town.

It does not require much confidence, much daring to rob a blind person. I do not own a refrigerator that could hold the money I have been shortchanged over the past 50 years. I am not proud that I have been so “taken in” by thievery, even in my own house. One woman, Sheree, possesses almost as much of my stuff as I do, just taking my things right out of my front door. While I am working at the bottom floor, she and her friends were working me over on the upper floors. She and her husband had been disowned by the Jehovah's Witnesses and obviously thought God no longer cared about their lives and what they did.

Whether expensive things or cheap things, compared to your eternal soul, it is all junk. Whether it is friends, family, business, or play, God does not “slumber or sleep” (Psalm 121:4) God keeps a perfect score card.

The Principle of [Con-]Contradiction is the second of the three classic laws of thought: contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time. The world cannot be round and not round, Christ either rose from the dead or he did not rise from the dead, God is either truth or not the truth, right can never be wrong and wrong can never be right, evil can never be good, nor good evil. There are absolutes in life, the laws of motion are absolute, the atomic weights in the periodic tables are absolute, the notes of music are absolute whether you play a note on a piano in Moscow or Miami.

Atheists such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens (Hitchens now has throat cancer) would tell you that life is a matter of gray, not black or white. They still think you can put a square object into a round hole. Your handbook of chemistry and physics (CRC) is not a physician's diagnostic reference. God gave Moses, written in His own hands, tablets containing commandments, not suggestions.

Why make your relationship with God so complicated? It is so simple: sin's ruin and Christ's redemption, your only redemption, your only escape. Satan loves for people to use his ploys of lies, deceit and thievery/ God knows all about suffering, He knows all about thorns, He is boss, He allows what he wishes. Right now, in Russia, north of Moscow, the size of Portugal, the worst drought the country has even known. At the same time, in Peru (near Lima), 200 people froze to death, in China, the worst rain and landslides in history. One is walking on dangerous ground, breathing dangerous air, when he leaves God out of the equation of his life.