He did it.
John Templeton was from the small town of Winchester, Tennessee, the son of a poor cotton farmer. He went to Yale, graduated near the top of his class in 1934, became a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and eventually the founder of the Templeton Growth Fund. He was a brilliant man, extremely successful and a generous philanthropist. Despite becoming a billionaire, he lived frugally and lived quietly in a fairly modest home in the Bahamas.
He also had a keen interest in reconciling science and faith in the pursuit of ultimate truth, and collected books on the subject. He wanted that work to continue, so he built a library outside of Sewanee, Tennessee, where his books would go after he died, with apartments where scholars could come and study. It was completed in 2000, the year that our family arrived at Sewanee, where I went to seminary.
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The Chasm Crossed
This week’s parable is, without question, the scariest. It includes dogs licking sores, death, and eternal punishment in a place filled with eternal flames and endless thirst. The indictment for not having a truly godly heart is clear. People know better, but apparently choose to ignore or at least minimize passages like this from Deuteronomy that are consistently in the law and the prophets.
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Why Church?
It is so good to see you! You could be just about anywhere else right now. You could be curled up with your jammies enjoying your second cup of coffee. You could be golfing or fishing or hunting whatever is in season. You could be out to brunch or at the beach. You could be catching up on a few loose ends at work that really need to get resolved. But you are here. It is so good to see you!
Those watching online could be watching anything else right now. Some of them will be watching later, but even so they could be watching anything or nothing at all. They could be on a hike or bike ride. They could be reading a book, which I gather is where a lot of movies come from. Or you could be doing nothing. It is so much easier to do nothing than something. But here you are!
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