What Does 1 Trillion Dollars Look Like?

[Pictures and idea from this site.]

To get a good mental concept of 1 Trillion Dollars, let's start with 1 Hundred Dollars.

Now if we stack up 100 of those bills, we get Ten Thousand Dollars.

Not a bad sum of money, but lets get stack of those going and make our way up to One Million dollars.

Not as big as you thought it would look?  That is how big 100 stacks of those $10,000 bundles would look like.  Now, let's jump up to $100 Million dollars.

But now I want to go ahead and jump up to One Billion dollars... are you ready for it?

That isn't anything though, compared with our national debt.  We are now up in the trillions... would you like to see what One Trillion Dollars looks like?

Here you go...

Preach Christ or Go Home—And Other Spurgeon Quotes on Christless Preaching – Justin Taylor

[I stole this post from Justin Taylor: Between Two Worlds.  Please visit his blog! Always Great Stuff!]

Guest Post by Tony Reinke

The very idea of a “Christless sermon” appalled Charles Spurgeon. It was a plague he confronted repeatedly (and vividly) in his own sermons. Although sometimes overstated to make his point, his words are a healthy challenge today over 100 years after his death. Here’s a small collection of colorful quips:

“The motto of all true servants of God must be, ‘We preach Christ; and him crucified.’ A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching.” [7/9/1876; sermon #2899]

“Leave Christ out? O my brethren, better leave the pulpit out altogether. If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ’s name in it, it ought to be his last, certainly the last that any Christian ought to go to hear him preach.”[undated; sermon #768]

“Leave Christ out of the preaching and you shall do nothing. Only advertise it all over London, Mr. Baker, that you are making bread without flour; put it in every paper, ‘Bread without flour’ and you may soon shut up your shop, for your customers will hurry off to other tradesmen. … A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution. However grand the language it will be merely much-ado-about-nothing if Christ be not there. And I mean by Christ not merely his example and the ethical precepts of his teaching, but his atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made for human sin, and the grand doctrine of ‘believe and live.’” [10/23/1881; sermon #1625]

“I know one who said I was always on the old string, and he would come and hear me no more; but if I preached a sermon without Christ in it, he would come. Ah, he will never come while this tongue moves, for a sermon without Christ in it—a Christless sermon! A brook without water; a cloud without rain; a well which mocks the traveler; a tree twice dead, plucked up by the root; a sky without a sun; a night without a star. It were a realm of death—a place of mourning for angels and laughter for devils. O Christian, we must have Christ! Do see to it that every day when you wake you give a fresh savor of Christ upon you by contemplating his person. Live all the day, trying as much as lieth in you, to season your hearts with him, and then at night, lie down with him upon your tongue.” [3/6/1864; sermon #558]

“Sooner by far would I go to a bare table, and eat from a wooden porringer something that would appease my appetite, than I would go to a well-spread table on which there was nothing to eat. Yes, it is Christ, Christ, Christ whom we have to preach; and if we leave him out, we leave out the very soul of the gospel. Christless sermons make merriment for hell. Christless preachers, Christless Sunday school teachers, Christless class leaders, Christless tract distributors—what are all these doing? They are simply setting the mill to grind without putting any grist into the hopper. All their labor is in vain. If you leave Jesus Christ out, you are simply beating the air, or going to war without any weapon with which you can smite the foe.” [2/11/1866; sermon #3288]

“The Spirit of God bears no witness to Christless sermons. Leave Jesus out of your preaching, and the Holy Spirit will never come upon you. Why should he? Has he not come on purpose that he may testify of Christ? Did not Jesus say, ‘He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you’? Yes, the subject was Christ, and nothing but Christ, and such is the teaching which the Spirit of God will own. Be it ours never to wander from this central point: may we determine to know nothing among men but Christ and his cross.” [5/30/1880; sermon #1540]

“Where there is nothing of Christ, brethren, there is nothing of unction, nothing of savor, and a man is quite right not to attend such a ministry as that. Leave Christ out of your preaching, and you have taken the milk from the children, you have taken the strong meat from the men; but if your object as a teacher or preacher is to glorify Christ, and to lead men to love him and trust him, why, that is the very work upon which the heart of God himself is set. The Lord and you are pulling together.” [4/17/1887; sermon #2409]

“Christ not only supplies the necessities of his people, but he gives them abundant and superabundant joy in the luxuries of his grace. You do not really preach the gospel if you leave Christ out; if he be omitted, it is not the gospel. You may invite men to listen to your message, but you are only inviting them to gaze upon an empty table unless Christ is the very center and substance of all that you set before them.” [6/16/1878; sermon #2787]

Cool Weird Disconcerting

North Korea's military parade in slow motion.

North Korea's Military parade in Slow Motion from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

[HT: Free Tech 4 Teachers]

Train Wreck

Just read an amazing blog post over at the Ligonier Ministries blog. I didn't realize this, but R.C. Sproul was in a train wreck several years ago. The excerpt on the blog comes from Sproul's book, The Invisible Hand.

Train Wreck by R.C. Sproul | Ligonier Ministries Blog

Chilean Miners' T-shirts

On the Front of the Chilean Miners' T-Shirts:

'Gracias Senor' - which means – 'Thank you Lord.'

On the back of the Chilean Miners' T-Shirts:

Psalm 95:4, which says, "In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him."

You can read more of the story on the CNN website: The story behind the Chilean miners' Jesus T-Shirts – CNN Belief Blog

The Impossibility of Invisible Disciples

From Justin Taylor's Blog:

"Discipleship is as visible as light in the night, as a mountain in the flatlands. To flee into invisibility is to deny the call. Any community of Jesus which wants to be invisible is no longer a community that follows him."

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Infinitely Perfect Righteousness

"We can begin each day with the deeply encouraging realization, I'm accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ."

-John Owen

Don't Waste Your Life (Review)

I just reviewed the book, Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper, over at the Christian Audio site. (I love that site!)

Here is the review:

Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper was an absolutely amazing book.

He begins the book with a little bit of a personal back story to the topic of the book. He goes into detail about one particular event from his childhood regarding the conversion of an older man and the tears that man shed as ye cried, "I've wasted it, I've wasted it!"

Though there is great joy in the salvation of any soul, and in many ways the soul that is in its last days on this earth, there is still that sorrow from a wasted life.

The reality of a wasted life leads to the question of, "What is a wasted life?" and "How can I keep from wasting my life?" These questions became important to John Piper, they are important to me, and they should be important to you.

I highly recommend this book as it shares Pastor Piper's unraveling of these questions in his own life and his compassionate explanations for the sake of the reader's life.

My reviews are never as long as I want them to be... but that doesn't mean that I don't really love this book.  Please consider getting this book.  It may save you from a wasted life.

What do I think about the prosperity gospel?

I think I agree with John Piper.

I enjoyed this quote...

I couldn't find the original posting of this to verify its authenticity, but if this really is him, it makes me like him even more.

“I loved being your president. But frankly, I’m having the time of my life not being your president. I do not miss the limelight. I have zero desire to be in the press. I have zero desire to be on your TV screens. Eight years is enough of that.”

~ George W. Bush

[HT: Reepicheep]

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe was a completely enjoyable book. After I finished listening to this book, I ordered a hard copy of the book so I could go back through it taking better notes. [Audio Version available here]

It is exactly what it sounds like: a book on Christian Doctrine. It is different than most theology books that I have read. Specifically regarding the format of the book and the breakdown of the topics. Everything is from the perspective of what God is doing. I loved this approach because it gives way for the bigger scope of the Bible.

Though there were a few points and conclusions that I did not agree with, most of those disagreements were left on the sidelines so I could enjoy the great agreements on the big-picture topics!

I highly recommend this book both in hardback and in audio! The Christian Audio version left me feeling like I had just sat down to listen to a direct personal interview with Driscoll and Breshears.

TV: The Great Life-Waster

Here is a very true and very convicting quote from the book Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper.  This is the book that I am currently listening to on my way to and from school.

Television is one of the greatest life-wasters of the modern age. And, of course, the Internet is running to catch up, and may have caught up. You can be more selective on the Internet, but you can also select worse things with only the Judge of the universe watching. TV still reigns as the great life-waster. The main problem with TV is not how much smut is available, though that is a problem. Just the ads are enough to sow fertile seeds of greed and lust, no matter what program you're watching. The greater problem is banality. A mind fed daily on TV diminishes. Your mind was made to know and love God. Its facility for this great calling is ruined by excessive TV. The content is so trivial and so shallow that the capacity of the mind to think worthy thoughts withers, and the capacity of the heart to feel deep emotions shrivels. Neil Postman shows why. 

"What is happening in America is that television is transforming all serious public business into junk... Television disdains exposition, which is serious, sequential, rational, and complex. It offers instead a mode of discourse in which everything is accessible, simplistic, concrete, and above all, entertaining. As a result, America is the world's first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death."

The entire book is available as a downloadable pdf through the Desiring God website. Click here to download the entire book.  If you want to listen to the book, click here to go to the Christian Audio version.