This is an illustration of the second half of C.S. Lewis' sermon 'The Grand Miracle', which was a quick summary of Chapter 14 of his Book called 'Miracles'. What does Christianity tell us about death, selectiveness, and vicariousness? The sermon was given during Easter Season in the final year of WW2 in 1945. Notes below:
(0:16) 'Every year God makes a little corn into much corn: the seed is sown and there is an increase. And men say, according to their several fashions, 'It is the laws of Nature,' or 'It is Ceres, it is Adonis, it is the Corn-King'. But the laws of Nature are only a pattern: nothing will come of them unless they can, so to speak, take over the universe as a going concern. And as for Adonis, no man can tell us where he died or when he rose again. Here, at the feeding of the five thousand, is He whom we have ignorantly worshipped: the real Corn-King who will die once and rise once at Jerusalem during the term of office of Pontius Pilate' (Chapter 15, Miracles, C.S. Lewis).
(0:29) Bergson's Modern and Western Type of 'Nature' religion or 'Life Force' religion: "We take over the existing trend towards 'development' [popular evolution] of increasing complexity in organic, social, and industrial life, and make it a god" (Miracles, Chapter 14). "In much modern thought about the survival of the human species, Death is the greatest of all evils" (Miracles, Chapter 14).
(1:16) Lassitude (physical or ?mental ?tiredness), delicacy (fragility or politeness), and compassion (empathy with others).
(1:49) "I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures that, in a moment, can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, wife, and children stand afraid and start [are startled or alarmed] at us" (Thomas Browne, 1642).
(1:55) 'We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call 'ambivalent.' It is Satan's great weapon and also God's great weapon: it is holy and unholy, our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which he conquered' (The Grand Miracle, 'Miracles' book).
(3:08) Romans 8.19-25 "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration...in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from
its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies..."
What are the first fruits? Before machine planting, corn was sown by hand so only some corn seeds would start life at a perfect depth and would ripen at a slightly earlier date than the bulk of the crop. Also fruit trees produce some of their crops much earlier than the bulk of the harvest. So this fruit was your first 'sample crop' of the coming harvest year.
(3:36) Christ applies Psalm 82.6 ('You are gods, you are all sons of the Most High') as being said by God to those "to whom the word of God came" (John 10.35) – and this is a direct reference to all the Children of Israel in 1Kings 18.31: "Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the LORD came saying, 'Israel shall be your name' ". So we can't then limit "you are gods" to just the judges or leaders mentioned in the Psalm, as the word of God came to the entire nation at Mt. Sinai and they all heard it with their own ears. But, of course, those 'gods' who rejected and disbelieved the word of God (both leaders and people alike) died shamefully like men (Ps. 82.7, Jer. 16.4). Christ for a little time, having been made less than the angels because of the suffering of death, tastes death for every son who believes - bringing many sons to glory, to make Himself complete with us (see Heb. 2.8-9, and in 2 Peter 1:3-4 'they become partakers of the divine nature').
(3:51) Crocuses are small white, yellow, or purple flowers that grow in English gardens in the early spring.
(4:17) Summer 'pomps' are summer's 'splendours'. Think of a wild English garden or the countryside in Oxfordshire in midsummer.
(4:47) Handel's "Messiah", 'The Trumpets shall Sound' by Phil Driscoll. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15.52-53).
Hi. I really love your Work! Thank you!
Have you ever thought about animating the Essay ‚Is Theology Poetry‘?
For me it is one of the greatest apologetic answers on the subject of worldviews and is still giving answers to the Great questions of our time. Maybe it Could be a next fruitful project?;)
I would really appreciate it!
@hudosjdicicidi Says:
Hey, did you take down your "The Funeral of a Great Myth"? I've been looking for it but cannot find it.
@thomasmacejko5450 Says:
glad your channel is still active and that older videos that had been taken down are reuploaded. The audio quality is lacking some fine tuning on the voice track, what setup are you using (mic and audio interface/DAC)
@NeroLobo Says:
I just found the channel. Very well done. Cheers.
@46pippi Says:
Fantastic!
@Paulthored Says:
The Anti-Nature Religions, seem to recognize that giving oneself over to ones desires...
Is clearly wrong.
But lack a good path to then follow, save the simple idea of denying completely ones desires.
@sennest Says:
Wonderfully done and illustrated!!🙏🙏😎👍👍 Yet again another brilliant job of inspiration! Thank you!
@tobetrayafriend Says:
Brilliant as always...makes you think
@JS-kv2xt Says:
Oh, YES!
A new CS Doodle video!!
@CSLewisDoodle Says:
More from Lewis on Jesus' other miracles: “There is an activity of God displayed throughout creation, a wholesale activity, let us say, which men refuse to recognise. The miracles done by God incarnate, living as a man in Palestine, perform the very same things as this wholesale activity, but at a different speed and on a smaller scale. One of their chief purposes is that men, having seen a thing done by personal power on the small scale, may recognise, when they see the same thing done on the large scale, that the power behind it is also personal - is indeed the very same person who lived among us two thousand years ago. The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words, some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and others prophecies.
God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus every year, from Noah's time till ours, God turns water into wine. That, men fail to see. Either like the Pagans they refer the process to some finite spirit, Bacchus or Dionysus [Roman and Greek gods of the wine making] : or else, like the moderns, they attribute real and ultimate causality to the chemical and other material phenomena which are all that our senses can discover in it. But when Christ at Cana makes water into wine, the mask is off. The miracle has only half its effect if it only convinces us that Christ is God: it will have its full effect if whenever we see a vineyard or drink a glass of wine we remember that here works He who sat at the wedding party in Cana.
Every year God makes a little corn into much corn: the seed is sown and there is an increase, and men, according to the fashion of their age, say "It is Ceres [a Roman god of corn], it is Adonis [a Greek god of Corn], it is the Corn King [a pagan English god of corn]," or else "It is the Laws of Nature". The close-up, the translation, of this annual wonder is the feeding of the five thousand. Bread is not made there of nothing. Bread is not made of stones, as the Devil once suggested to our Lord in vain. A little bread is made into much bread. The Son will do nothing but what He sees the Father do. There is, so to speak, a family style...” (Miracles Essay, C.S. Lewis)
@jg36 Says:
Thank you for making these, you’re doing great work!!
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