Only in the Gospel -- FPC sermon excerpt
A cigarette butt tumbles in slow motion into a pool of gasoline, creating an enormous fireball.
Just about everybody has seen this. It’s an ear-splitting, eye-brow-singeing, cinematic spectacle. Guaranteed to please the action-adventure crowd.
It’s also largely make-believe — one of the many things that happen only in the movies.
Richard Tontarski is an expert in forensic fire at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms research lab in Beltsville, Maryland. He became interested in the link between cigarettes and gasoline because arson suspects frequently claim that a gasoline fire was started by accident. They say things like, “My girlfriend was smoking, I accidentally threw gasoline on her, and she burst into flames.”
Yeah, right. A likely story.
So Tontarski and his colleagues went to great pains to create fireballs. It’s fun work, if you can get it. They dropped burning cigarettes into trays of gasoline. They sprayed a fine mist of gas at a lighted cigarette. In more than 2,000 attempts, the gasoline did not ignite. No fireballs.
Tontarski can only guess why, reports an article in The Guardian (February 27, 2007). He thinks that perhaps the layer of ash on the tobacco prevents ignition, or that gasoline vapor naturally moves away from the hottest part of the cigarette.
Please, do not do any research on this topic yourselves. Instead, enjoy watching fireballs in the safety of the movie theater.
There are plenty of things that happen only in the movies, and they should never be confused with real life. The Nostalgia Central website lists 40 of them, such as:
- In the movies, it is always possible to find a parking spot directly outside the building you are visiting.
- The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.
- Plain or even ugly girls can become movie-star-pretty simply by removing their glasses and rearranging their hair.
- Anyone can land a 747 as long as there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
- And, in line with the cigarette-and-gasoline phenomenon: Cars will explode instantly when struck by a single bullet!
Is this true? Only in the movies!
Reading the Bible is sometimes like going to the movies, in the sense that we encounter stories that don’t quite ring true. A man leaving 99 sheep to look for a lost one, or a woman throwing a party to celebrate the finding of a lost coin? Does anyone actually do that?
It seems unreal … like in the movies, when one person starts dancing in the street, and then suddenly everyone else starts to dance along with him. And they know all the steps!
The lost sheep and the lost coin. These are things that happen only in the Gospel.
But maybe stories from Scripture point to a deeper truth, one that is even more real than our day-to-day lives. Perhaps the stories of the Gospel are God’s truth, not human truth.
Just about everybody has seen this. It’s an ear-splitting, eye-brow-singeing, cinematic spectacle. Guaranteed to please the action-adventure crowd.
It’s also largely make-believe — one of the many things that happen only in the movies.
Richard Tontarski is an expert in forensic fire at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms research lab in Beltsville, Maryland. He became interested in the link between cigarettes and gasoline because arson suspects frequently claim that a gasoline fire was started by accident. They say things like, “My girlfriend was smoking, I accidentally threw gasoline on her, and she burst into flames.”
Yeah, right. A likely story.
So Tontarski and his colleagues went to great pains to create fireballs. It’s fun work, if you can get it. They dropped burning cigarettes into trays of gasoline. They sprayed a fine mist of gas at a lighted cigarette. In more than 2,000 attempts, the gasoline did not ignite. No fireballs.
Tontarski can only guess why, reports an article in The Guardian (February 27, 2007). He thinks that perhaps the layer of ash on the tobacco prevents ignition, or that gasoline vapor naturally moves away from the hottest part of the cigarette.
Please, do not do any research on this topic yourselves. Instead, enjoy watching fireballs in the safety of the movie theater.
There are plenty of things that happen only in the movies, and they should never be confused with real life. The Nostalgia Central website lists 40 of them, such as:
- In the movies, it is always possible to find a parking spot directly outside the building you are visiting.
- The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.
- Plain or even ugly girls can become movie-star-pretty simply by removing their glasses and rearranging their hair.
- Anyone can land a 747 as long as there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
- And, in line with the cigarette-and-gasoline phenomenon: Cars will explode instantly when struck by a single bullet!
Is this true? Only in the movies!
Reading the Bible is sometimes like going to the movies, in the sense that we encounter stories that don’t quite ring true. A man leaving 99 sheep to look for a lost one, or a woman throwing a party to celebrate the finding of a lost coin? Does anyone actually do that?
It seems unreal … like in the movies, when one person starts dancing in the street, and then suddenly everyone else starts to dance along with him. And they know all the steps!
The lost sheep and the lost coin. These are things that happen only in the Gospel.
But maybe stories from Scripture point to a deeper truth, one that is even more real than our day-to-day lives. Perhaps the stories of the Gospel are God’s truth, not human truth.
posted by Henry Brinton | 2:16 PM
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