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Wednesday, May 22, 2019

THE CROSSES OFF HIGHWAY 107

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  "The cross is that high symbol of sacred service, the devotion of one's life to the welfare and salvation of one's fellows. The cross is not the symbol of the sacrifice of the innocent Son of God in the place of guilty sinners and in order to appease the wrath of an offended God, but it does stand forever, on earth and throughout a vast universe, as a sacred symbol of the good bestowing themselves upon the evil and thereby saving them by this very devotion of love."
THE URANTIA BOOK 
P2019:1   188:5.9 
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This post will take a while to complete - it's mainly images from a large collection of crosses interspersed with quotes from a number of sources about "the cross."
The collection will be on exhibit weekends this summer at a

 large home in the Magdalena, New Mexico area, and
 open by appointment after the first of the year.
Postscript - The exhibit/sale went on, off and on, through
the whole year, and ended on the Feast of St. James
(Santiago), July 25.  
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 “It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master:
no path of redemption can make a detour around it.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar

  Unless You Become Like This Child
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 “Even on the cross He did not hide Himself from sight; rather, He made all creation witness to the presence of its Maker.”
  St. Athanasius
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"Although Jesus did not die this death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mortal man nor to provide some sort of effective approach to an otherwise offended and unforgiving God; even though the Son of Man did not offer himself as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of God and to open the way for sinful man to obtain salvation; notwithstanding that these ideas of atonement and propitiation are erroneous, nonetheless, there are significances attached to this death of Jesus on the cross which should not be overlooked. It is a fact that Urantia has become known among other neighboring inhabited planets as the 'World of the Cross.'"
The Urantia Book
P2016:6, 188:4.1  
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When we walk without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we proclaim Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly. We may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, all of this, but we are not disciples of the Lord. Pope Francis
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/pope_francis_521203?src=t_cross

"When we walk without the cross, when we
build without the cross and when we proclaim
Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of
the Lord. We are worldly. We may be bishops,
 priests, cardinals, popes, all of this, but we are
not disciples of the Lord."
Pope Francis
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“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community 
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“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With the rational respect that is due to it, knavish priests have added prostitutions of it, that fill or might fill the blackest and bloodiest pages of human history."
 Letter to Thomas Jefferson, September 3, 1816
John Adams
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The exhibit is too big to let fade, so we're
 opening for three weeks during the holiday
 period - from Nov 22 to Dec 15, 11 till 5 daily,
including Thanksgiving Day.
We're working on a video about all of this,
and in time will post it on our Youtube channel.
It's an interesting subject to say the least,
and for many, a sacred and often highly personal
element of faith and worldview.
  I hope we can do it justice. 
Feb 24 - Have the first 2:38 of the video done -
see it here:
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From THE URANTIA BOOK

On millions of inhabited worlds, tens of trillions of evolving creatures who may have been tempted to give up the moral struggle and abandon the good fight of faith, have taken one more look at Jesus on the cross and then have forged on ahead, inspired by the sight of God's laying down his incarnate life in devotion to 
the unselfish service of man.
The triumph of the death on the cross is all summed up in the spirit of Jesus' attitude toward those who assailed him. He made the cross an eternal symbol of the triumph of love over hate and the victory of truth over evil when he prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That devotion of love was contagious throughout a vast universe; the disciples caught it from their Master. The very first teacher of his gospel who was called upon to lay down his life in this service, said, as they stoned him to death, "Lay not this sin to their charge."

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PLEASE come see the exhibit if you're in our
neck of the woods. We'd be happy to open up
if we're around, and of course there's no charge,
nor do you need to feel obligated to buy anything.
And we even have some freebies, for all.
The home is on the market, so this is a
"limited run" for the exhibit. But we'll keep it up
until it's time to get ready for a new owner,
and we're continuing to add new elements.
Call or e-mail info is on the poster above.
The more lead time you can give me the better,
but if you're just passing through town give it a try.
Hasta la vista!
Postscript - The exhibit/sale went on till July 25,
the Feast of St. James (Santiago).  The home was sold.  Here's a "wrap-up" from my Facebook page:
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Sunday, April 8, 2018

ANOTHER JOHN THE BAPTIST

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Sooner or later another and greater John the Baptist is due to arise proclaiming “the kingdom of God is at hand” — meaning a return to the high spiritual concept of Jesus, who proclaimed that the kingdom is the will of his heavenly Father dominant and transcendent in the heart of the believer — and doing all this without in any way referring either to the visible church on earth or to the anticipated second coming of Christ. There must come a revival of the actual teachings of Jesus, such a restatement as will undo the work of his early followers who went about to create a sociophilosophical system of belief regarding the fact of Michael’s sojourn on earth. In a short time the teaching of this story about Jesus nearly supplanted the preaching of Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom. In this way a historical religion displaced that teaching in which Jesus had blended man’s highest moral ideas and spiritual ideals with man’s most sublime hope for the future — eternal life.
 And that was the gospel of the kingdom.
THE URANTIA BOOK
170:5.19 (1866.2)
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