Church #13. McLaurin Memorial Baptist Church

Welcome back! So this is Baptist Church round 2 for me. As much as i enjoyed the first one i went to I was still hungry for more and this place did a pretty good job of feeding me. 

As you may notice i actually remembered to take a photo this time. The roof draws a strong resemblance  to an upside down boat and makes me think about what it must have like to be inside Noah's ark. One way or another, it was impressive. if you look on sides you will notice that they still had their Christmas garland hanging up ( but at least they are ready for next Christmas) mixing well with the palm trees in the front left hand corner . I didn't get a photo of the stain glass squares ( left side wall). They were very simple in nature, like a simple modern art piece composed of rectangles in the primary colours. I refer to this as "poor man's stain glass". But in all fairness, the true stain gals art pieces are stupid expensive. The back of the church has a large black backdrop that i find strong resemblance of something that one finds in a theater and a white stone set of statues before the alter (Jesus and his apostles.)

The demographics of this place surprised me a bit, 55 people-ish.i think only half the population was actually seniors and the rest was a mix of people of a very of ages and races including teens kids, parents, 20-soething year olds, etc. 

We had one young African lady come up and speak ( dressed in a lovely black dress with neon pick scarf and matching high heels.) The theme of her speech was focused on the concept of "Jesus the Redeemer" and it was powerful. One of her focuses was to encourage the crowd to put up their hands and "Proclaim My Redeemer Live!" and to always glorify god and to always put up our love an faith to him no matter how hard life becomes to know god is with us always. She quoted the story of Job. For those of you that don't know, in that day, Job was the most fully committed worshiper and follower in all of god’s world, and loved by god. One day god and Satin are having an argument and Satin claims that the only reason Job fallows god is because he has given him such a good life here on earth, if that was taken away that Job would disown god. God takes up Satins challenge and says that Job's faith is true and unyielding and that Satin can do whatever he wants to him, but may not harm his body. So Satin goes to work and destroys everything in Job's life. Crops die, children die, goes bankrupt, losses the house, you name it, it happened. ( never mind Job's wife that nagged him daily just to disown god to make all this madness stop) and at the end of it all when Satin had mess up and burnt everything in his power to make Job's life hell. At the very end when he had literately lost everything. Job looked to heavens and declared that he knows his god loves him and that he is on god’s team. After that the devil gave in, and god slowly healed his situation, more children were born, a new house was built and life slowly went back to the way it was. 

She also mentioned the footprints, hang on let me got my fridge magnet... 

And of those of you with week vision I will type it out again. The Lord said "My precious child, I never left you during your time of trial. Where you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you." One of my favorite bible quotes.

Then we had the leader of the church come up and speak. We got a very long and in depth history on King David and how he united the 12 tribes of Israel. So When David united the regions he needed  to pick a city to rule out of  and the one he had at the moment was not that great. He had a good amount to pick from, but in the end he decided that Jerusalem was the best spot. It had its perks, it had a good military deference, fresh water and all the standard stuff but the interesting part was that it was a RELIGIOUSLY AND POLITICALLY NEUTRAL CITY. Unlike all the other cities in the region it was not ran by Israelite s or other very religious groups, but buy Canaanites, a neutral group. So it pretty much made it the Sweden of the Kingdom of David. So you know where he went.

There is a lot of info in here, but I tried my best to sum it up nice and easy. So the Israelite s get in there and build a massive temple in the city to house god’s spirit and replace the tabernacle (aka. Giant portable tent used to house all religious ceremonies and act as the house of god. Moses had many conversations directly with god just inside and outside the tabernacle). So in short the Israelite s are thrilled. They have everything they could possibly want. Their enemies have been shot down, they have been delivered into the promise land flowing with milk and honey and falafel. ( just kidding) :P They live in this amazing city and have built the most amazing temple to hold their god( and everyone is talking about it) and Zion was home bro.

Meanwhile there are a few people at home that are not out getting drunk, and those were the profits (Isaiah etc.) of the time. Since being delivered to this paradise on earth the people of Israel knowing that they are “God’s Chosen People” decide to throw all moral and responsibility to the wind and Jerusalem pretty much turns into sin city Los Vegas. The few thinkers of the time were noticing this and starting writing and telling people that this is not the way to go and that bad things will come down on the city. The people of coarse totally ignored  these warnings believe that they were “god’s chosen people” and in their mind, immune from all consequences ( even thou before entering the kingdom Moses warned them a MILLION TIMES not to mess this up) . Que Act 2. Babylonians walk in overtake the city, temple gets destroyed,  Israelite s get dragged out of their kicking and screaming wondering on how god allowed this to happen *face palm.

So after the population of Jerusalem was dragged off into exile, they started reading the writing of the profits of the time and realizing that god does not dwell in a single temple or the tabernacle, or just in one city. God is within all. Forever changing the perspective’s of the ancient Jewish people.

I was surprised to see the worship band up there because according to the service list they were only supposed to be playing at the earlier service that day ( which I slept over) so that was fun.

Now for a spiritual fun fun-time family fact. Jesus and John the Baptist are related. When marry was pregnant she when to visit her cousin Elizabeth, thou being a good bit older then her, was also pregnant at the time. Mary gives birth to Jesus, Elizabeth gives birth to the person we know as John the Baptist. So not only was Jesus baptized by a distant family member, he was also likely very similar in age. The more you know.