Dr. Pepper has overtaken Pepsi to claim the #2 spot in the cola wars. Pepsi has been in second place to Coca-Cola almost every year since 1985 (except for a brief period from 2010 to 2013 when it was Diet Coke). There was a time that Pepsi was doing so badly they put the company up for sale and Coca-Cola had the opportunity to buy it, and cheaply at that. But their reasoning at the time was if Pepsi was that bad off they would do nothing and see if it would just die. Whoops.
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I have written before on the fact that denominations exist and suggested that Luke 9:49-50 may apply. The church exists all over the world and without being worldly minded people are products of their culture. There are many different flavors of Christianity and what one must believe to be saved is that Jesus is the Son of God, died for our sins and God raised him from the dead. Everything else is details; there may be important details but the facts listed in the previous sentence is what all Christians must agree on.
So the question has been raised regarding different positions on theology. There are Calvinists, Arminians, and those that claim neither position but believe all we need is the Bible. There are Christians that believe we should worship on the Sabbath and others that gather on what they call the Lord’s Day. There are three basic positions on when the rapture will take place, other sub-divisions, and those who do not believe there will be a rapture. There is so much disagreement that one must either conclude there Is no God or that he offers us much grace otherwise no one gets credit for doing everything correctly. Who is right, who is wrong, and more importantly how can we know?
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Negro League stats – If you are a baseball fan you have probably watched a few games this week, read an online or print article or perhaps followed this story for a long time. For the rest of you I will be brief because if you really cared you would know already; MLB has incorporated the former Negro Leagues stats into its official records. We know for a fact that the statistical record is incomplete. It took years of looking through old newspapers and microfilm for researchers to estimate they have 75% of box scores from Negro League games from the years 1920 to 1948. They only added to the official MLB numbers for players that played 60 or more games. There is a precedent for 60 games seasons but again, stat guys know already and non-stat people are not going to read more stats they don’t care about.
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Southern Baptists do not call women to pastor churches. That may surprise our Methodist or Presbyterian brothers and sisters but that’s a common facet of Baptist life particularly in the SBC. Except that a June 2023 report that analyzed a random sample of 3,847 SBC churches and found that 99 of them did have female pastors. The vast majority of those, 73 out of 99, serve in an associational role or are designated as the leader of a particular ministry. Seven “co-lead” with their husband but two of the 99 are identified as the “senior pastor” and nine simple as “pastor.” If we extrapolate those numbers from the random sample across then entire SBC, over 49,000 churches, there easily could be over 1,800 female pastors serving in over 1,200 churches.
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Perhaps the phrase “thoughts and prayers” has been overused in recent years in our society. There is some push back by critics who believe politicians, law enforcement, celebrities and media repeat the statement too often to feel like they are doing something when they really mean to do nothing more at all, beyond the press conference following a tragic event. That may or may not be a valid criticism depending on who says it and under what circumstances.
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Home of the Braves – This image was posted in one of the baseball forums I follow. People immediately launched into how fake it is, calling it bad Photoshop from before the time of AI. Someone said it’s not even shopped, it’s just two image put side by side because the two never played on the same minor league team at the same time. I know the socks don’t match, I can see the giant M on the caps, I have no comment on whether or not Chipper looks fat… but the simple fact of the matter is that the picture is real. Someone jumped into the comment thread with his autographed copy signed by both players:
The M on the caps, and the logo’s on the sleeve, are throwbacks to when the Braves were in Milwaukee. This is from Spring Training down in Florida back in 1996, when both players were in Atlanta on the MLB team. That’s the world we live in. Not knowing what you are talking about is no longer a barrier to having an expert opinion and expressing it loudly. This person’s autographed photo, along with the explanation he provided, should have shut down the argument but he was largely ignored and people continued yelling stupid things at each other. I recently watched a short video of a pickup truck backing out of the driveway, across the street, through the neighbors yard and then through the wall into the house. Someone in a European country asked what sort of polystyrene American homes are made of. I explained how frames are wrapped in OSB that keeps the studs in place and gives the vinyl siding guys something to nail into. A random person that doesn’t know me from Adam called me a clueless idiot and further said I knew nothing about building houses. I replied that I knew some things about building houses… from the time I spent building houses. That person just silently removed his comment but some people double down.
Continue readingIf I attend a big conference with a celebrity speaker or meet an author or musician I usually write a post about it. I didn’t post for nine months so instead of writing one post for each I’m going to run everything together, hopefully in order.
Life Surge Atlanta – those are the best pics I could get from our seats. Life Surge is not exactly what I would call Health Wealth and Prosperity gospel but some of it was a little cringy, I admit. We didn’t sign up for any courses in buying real estate, I went to hear some of these speakers close to home. Up top is Jonathan Roumie from The Chosen, Willy Robertson and his daughter Sadie.
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Last August we posted this image of Van Til with the headline Technical Difficulty. We asked our readers to please stand by. In the months since then The Master’s Table has been viewed almost 13,000 times, even while no content was added. Thank you for standing by.
I know what you’re thinking; earlier this week I said not to expect regular recurring features like Happy Monday and Satur-deja Vu. So if you were not expecting it… what can I say? Surprise!
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I re-entered the blogosphere yesterday with a rather weak statement by asking the question Are we back? I wanted to emphasize the soft launch aspect and point out that we are not trying to restart all the spinning plates that were going before. I have updated the Our Daily Bread and Bible Gateway features in the left-hand sidebar. That only takes a couple of minutes and it’s a good routine for me to start the day with; I have been updating the verse of the day on the Unity Baptist Facebook page this whole time. Our Daily Bread now has a daily video devotional you can subscribe to, so check that out.
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So when The Master’s Table went on hiatus last fall I was hoping that would last a few weeks and we would resume business as usual. After a week or two of not having the stress of Happy Monday and Satur-deja Vu bearing on me, I had a little bit of guilt because of how good it felt. I would often stay up late on Sunday or more likely get up early on Monday morning to meet a self-imposed deadline. Discussing theology, responding to headlines and reviewing books is easy when you can pop out a post every now and then when there are things to write about i.e. stuff I need to get off my chest. Cranking out those e-zines twice a week became a grind and like I say, I felt a little guilty about how good it felt to not be under the pressure to produce those on a regular on-going basis.
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The Master's Table 