A MOTHER GOD CAN TRUST (audio)

The message for Mother’s Day is titled: A MOTHER GOD CAN TRUST.

Listen well.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/   

The podcast is on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anderson-graves-podcast/id918990482

 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email: BaileyTabernacleChurch@comcast.net

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Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar. 

Visit the ministry’s website at baileytabernaclecme.org

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Bailey Tabernacle CME Church

1117 23^rd Avenue

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401

BEYOND WHAT YOU KNOW

My great-grandmother used to say, “Some people know all and no nothing.”  This was the problem among the disciples on Resurrection Sunday.  They were so sure that they knew all they needed to know about what happened to Jesus that they almost missed the most important Truth in history.

Hear how they came to accept the Resurrection and learn how we can experience powerful revelation in our lives, even what God is doing goes beyond what we know. It’s a message for Easter and every day called BEYOND WHAT YOU KNOW.

Listen well.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/

The podcast is on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anderson-graves-podcast/id918990482

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

READ IT LIKE JESUS SAID IT: The Last Supper

Historians, theologians, and cultural anthropologists have studied the Last Supper with expert eyes.  But for just a moment, I want you to look at the Last Supper through the personal eyes of Jesus.

Imagine walking into the upper room and looking around at the disciples---- not just the 12, but all the friends and followers who could pack themselves in for the annual Passover meal.  Your mother is there. (We know she was close enough to be at the cross the next morning.)  So are James’s and John’s mother, Mary Magdalene, and the others who walked with you from Galilee down through Jericho.

Imagine seeing them there, happy, excited about what a great Passover it’s been so far.  Hear them chattering away, so relieved that finally----- finally the crowds in Jerusalem are giving You the recognition You deserve.   Hear their easy conversation, their jokes about the chief priests with their empty threats, but they won’t raise a finger against You because the city would riot.

Hear them speculating on what the Kingdom will be like because surely it’s near. It must almost be time.  They’re so happy.  They’re so, so happy.

You look around at them all, and you think, “This time tomorrow I’ll be dead.”

That’s what the Last Supper meant to Jesus.

Yes, it was the fulfillment of prophesy.  Yes, it was the bridge between the Old Covenant and the New.  Before the night is  done, Jesus will teach the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the Trinity, review the fundamentals of the New Testament Church, institute the practice of prayer in His name, and clarify the eschatology of the end times.

But on it’s deepest and most personal level, this seder meal that Jesus organized was His last chance to have all of His friends together before He died.

What would you say to your friends tonight, if you KNEW that you were going to die tomorrow?

From the moment Judas left the room in John 13: 30 until Jesus and the 12 headed out for the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane in John 18: 1,  Jesus talked.  For 4 ½ chapters John records what Jesus said.  Nearly a quarter of John’s gospel is occupied by this one conversation/ lesson/ sermon.

The Last Supper tells us what Jesus would say if He knew that He was going to die the next day.

Because He did.

This week, read John chapters 13-17 again.  Hear the voice of Jesus speak to you.  Hear His sorrow and His hope.  Listen to the Word like your Best Friend was talking and this was the Last Supper you would have with Him.

Listen well, because that’s what it meant to Jesus.

I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. (John 14: 30)

I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you (John 15: 15)

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

You can read more on Pastor Graves's personal blog at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com  .

If this message helps or touches you, please help support this ministry. Send a donation of any amount by check or money order.

Mail all contributions to :

Hall Memorial CME Church

541 Seibles Road

Montgomery, AL 36116

BIBLICAL RELIABILITY & THE MYTH OF SHAKESPEARE

On the bookshelf in my home office is a book titled The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.  This book claims to contain the word of a 16^th century British author.  However, the copyright date makes it abundantly clear that this book was published in 1980.  On top of that, further analysis shows that the book is the 3^rd edition, clearly a copy of a copy copied by an earlier scribe.

If my house was the main site of research into this alleged “Shakespeare,” and the third edition of his Complete Works was the only copy found in excavations, would we still believe in Shakespeare?

Would we conclude that since the oldest surviving copy was printed in 1980 then obviously its quotations were unreliable?    

Would professors of the Shakespearean mythos profess that our belief in Shakespeare as an author is far too literal since multiple editors writing hundreds of years after Shakespeare’s death had obviously added their own words to his plays?  

Would experts argue that the same man could not have written of honest witches in the book of Macbeth and of a peacemaking priest in the book of Romeo & Juliet? 

Would scholars applying critical literary analysis conclude that Shakespeare was a myth, that no one could have written that many plays in a time before laptops? 

Nah. 

Because obviously the copyright date doesn’t give the original date that a text was written.  It only tells when a particular company pressed another set of books.  Obviously finding a copy of an author’s words doesn’t tell us when his words were originally written down.  Obviously, finding copies made 100 years after the fact only proves that 100 years after the fact people were STILL making copies.  Obviously, a circa 1980 copy of Shakespeare’s words doesn’t mean that Shakespeare didn’t live and speak in the 1600’s.  It just proves that what he wrote was important enough for people to preserve it over hundreds of years as opposed to all the other things written during the same time period that have been ignored and lost to time.

Obviously.

Obviously?

Then why isn’t it obvious that the date of a copy of the gospels only tells you the date the previous copy was copied down?  It doesn’t tell us the date of the original eyewitness’s narrative.

Why isn’t it obvious that finding a 2^nd century copy of a copy of Jesus’ words doesn’t prove that Jesus was misquoted?  It just proves that Jesus’ words were important enough to keep repeating and sharing via the only printing method available----- hand scribed copies.

It’s obvious that only fool or a rabid conspiracy theorist would use my 1980 copy of Shakespeare to question the authenticity of the Bard of Avon?

However, if you use a single scrap of a single page which doesn’t even claim to be the original manuscript and just happened to not get lost with the millions of other undiscovered 1^st century scrolls  to claim that you know when the Bible was ORIGINALLY written down, you’re not a fool.  You’re not a rabid conspiracy theorist.   You’re a scholar and a theologian.

Obviously.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

If this message helps or touches you, please help support this ministry. Send a donation of any amount by check or money order.
Mail all contributions to :
Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116