The following post is from 2015:
I usually turn the volume up and listen intently to the lyrics when Gordon Lightfoot's hit song of 1976 The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald is played on the radio. We had just celebrated our bicentennial in America as the song was released. Bruce Jenner had won Olympic gold as 'the World's Greatest Athlete,' I shook Jimmy Carter's hand as he campaigned in Pittsburgh, and I was only weeks away from getting married. The Edmund Fitzgerald had sunk to its watery grave in Lake Superior less than a year earlier in November of 1975.
We call them hatches today but they were formally called hatchways. A ship's hatches were not sealed and when a storm brewed the crew spread a tarpaulin over the hatch and secured it down with what were called battens. Thus we have had the term batten down the hatches. In Lightfoots original release of The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, one lyric went "at seven PM a main hatchway gave in." The singer/songwriter was intrigued by the media coverage of the loss of the American Great Lakes freighter and thus the wreck was immortalized soon after the ship went down.
On another topic, have you by any chance noticed how Billy Graham seems to have been going off the deep end for the last few decades with book titles like Approaching Hoofbeats, The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and Storm Warning which was first published in 1995 and revised in 2010. He's even received some criticism for the severe tone in what has been billed as "his final work" Where I Am, Heaven, Eternity, And Our Life Beyond. One reviewer reported that it was "a significant shift from the approach he took after the first decade of his ministry..."
Billy Graham of course has not gone off the deep end. I think that many years ago I experienced a similar "significant shift." God seems to be removing veils as of late. You might be saying, 'Oh He's been doing that for the last forty-five years starting with Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth.' I agree somewhat but with a qualifier. Those early years and those books were dominated by events and how they might fit into Biblical end-times. We are still preoccupied today with events on earth and in the heavens. What is needed and what they cannot do is to mortify, and therein is the 'shift' noticed in Billy Graham's writing.
What we are seeing today in many ministers of the Gospel such as Billy Graham is an extreme soberness. Soberness in that these 'events' are no longer just a 'connect the dots.' This collapse in everything that we hold dear is more than unnerving! It should drive us to our knees. That others cannot see the full extent of what is happening in America and in the world should be no surprise at all.
I've used a number of nautical terms in these posts of over seven years. I'm adding another today. Batten down the hatches! I think it high time to batten down the hatches.....close off those areas where sea water can enter....secure the cargo and set a even ballast, for the waves in this coming storm will be merciless, the winds revengeful and the sea unforgiving.
We do have a safe harbor hemmed in by the mountains of the righteousness of Jesus Christ where we can tie onto the dock with 'cords of kindness, (and) with the bands of love' but we have sailed willfully into this tempest.....for we are as those of whom it is written in Psalm 107:
"Those who go down to the sea in ships,
Who do business on great waters,
(who) see the works of the LORD,
And His wonders in the deep.
For He commands and raises the stormy wind,
Which lifts up the waves of the sea....
Then they cry out to the LORD in their trouble,
And He brings out of their distresses.
He calms the storm,
So that it's waves are still....
Oh, that men would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
I usually turn the volume up and listen intently to the lyrics when Gordon Lightfoot's hit song of 1976 The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald is played on the radio. We had just celebrated our bicentennial in America as the song was released. Bruce Jenner had won Olympic gold as 'the World's Greatest Athlete,' I shook Jimmy Carter's hand as he campaigned in Pittsburgh, and I was only weeks away from getting married. The Edmund Fitzgerald had sunk to its watery grave in Lake Superior less than a year earlier in November of 1975.
We call them hatches today but they were formally called hatchways. A ship's hatches were not sealed and when a storm brewed the crew spread a tarpaulin over the hatch and secured it down with what were called battens. Thus we have had the term batten down the hatches. In Lightfoots original release of The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, one lyric went "at seven PM a main hatchway gave in." The singer/songwriter was intrigued by the media coverage of the loss of the American Great Lakes freighter and thus the wreck was immortalized soon after the ship went down.
On another topic, have you by any chance noticed how Billy Graham seems to have been going off the deep end for the last few decades with book titles like Approaching Hoofbeats, The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and Storm Warning which was first published in 1995 and revised in 2010. He's even received some criticism for the severe tone in what has been billed as "his final work" Where I Am, Heaven, Eternity, And Our Life Beyond. One reviewer reported that it was "a significant shift from the approach he took after the first decade of his ministry..."
Billy Graham of course has not gone off the deep end. I think that many years ago I experienced a similar "significant shift." God seems to be removing veils as of late. You might be saying, 'Oh He's been doing that for the last forty-five years starting with Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth.' I agree somewhat but with a qualifier. Those early years and those books were dominated by events and how they might fit into Biblical end-times. We are still preoccupied today with events on earth and in the heavens. What is needed and what they cannot do is to mortify, and therein is the 'shift' noticed in Billy Graham's writing.
What we are seeing today in many ministers of the Gospel such as Billy Graham is an extreme soberness. Soberness in that these 'events' are no longer just a 'connect the dots.' This collapse in everything that we hold dear is more than unnerving! It should drive us to our knees. That others cannot see the full extent of what is happening in America and in the world should be no surprise at all.
I've used a number of nautical terms in these posts of over seven years. I'm adding another today. Batten down the hatches! I think it high time to batten down the hatches.....close off those areas where sea water can enter....secure the cargo and set a even ballast, for the waves in this coming storm will be merciless, the winds revengeful and the sea unforgiving.
We do have a safe harbor hemmed in by the mountains of the righteousness of Jesus Christ where we can tie onto the dock with 'cords of kindness, (and) with the bands of love' but we have sailed willfully into this tempest.....for we are as those of whom it is written in Psalm 107:
"Those who go down to the sea in ships,
Who do business on great waters,
(who) see the works of the LORD,
And His wonders in the deep.
For He commands and raises the stormy wind,
Which lifts up the waves of the sea....
Then they cry out to the LORD in their trouble,
And He brings out of their distresses.
He calms the storm,
So that it's waves are still....
Oh, that men would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
