April 26, 2022 - Good Morning! It’s Tuesday, April 26.
Today we focus on an interesting word - the word "cipher". Two thousand years ago, when the New Testament was written, the new Christians used the Roman numeral system. We still use it today, at least a little. Maybe you have a clock with Roman numerals on it. But that old system has one big problem - it has no way to represent the number zero.
About a thousand years ago, Europeans began to use the Arabic numeral system. The Arabic word for zero is “sifr”, from which we get our word cipher - something that has no value or power. The very concept of zero was so mysterious to those Europeans that the word also began to denote a secret code.
We musicians have our own vocabulary. To us, the word cipher also means an organ pipe that sounds without a key or a pedal being depressed. That’s a big problem! And that was our problem on Easter Sunday morning. Our organist turned on the organ and suddenly our sanctuary was filled with the sound of a freight train’s horn! On Easter Sunday!
It's a big problem when Christians try to talk for God, but outside of His Word, and without His power. Last weekend, 23 of our church members read through the New Testament. I was the last reader and, two verses from the end of the Bible, I read these words -
I testify unto everyone that hears the words of this book, if anyone adds to these words, God will add to them the plagues that are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of this book, God will take away their part in the book of life.
Something to think about!
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
