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I draw your attention to the sixth chapter of Galatians for our study in the word tonight. What a joy and thrill it is to be able to share in this subject. That's why I say if I don't get done, it'll be because I get excited about it and just don't get finished, and we won't worry about that because there's not a better subject to talk about. Glorying in the cross, glorying the cross. The key verse that we'll look at tonight is verse 14 of Chapter 6, "But God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified in unto me and I unto the world."
Now as we saw last time in our study of the book of Galatians, there are only two religions in the world. The religion of human achievement and the religion of divine accomplishment. One is the religion of salvation by works, the other is the religion of salvation by faith. One depends upon what man does. The other depends upon what God did. Now of these two religions, most of the world is banking on the religion of human achievement. Most of the world is banking on the possibility that man can reach the highest plane of potential destiny by his own good deeds, by his own activity, on his own merit.
Now you say, well, John how could you say there's only two religions in the world when there are so many. No, there are only two. It's just that one category of them comes under so many different brand names. The religion of human achievement comes in many, many forms, but it is the same religion. You see there's a basic conflict involved in the whole structure of the universe that first became apparent in the fall of Lucifer, and it hasn't changed.
Satan, himself, when he was Lucifer, the highest of the angels, wanted to be higher than God and he determined that by self effort he would become the equal to God. And so the conflict began. He invented at that point the whole religion of self effort. Immediately when God created men on the earth, Satan passed on the religion of self effort, and the first one to be involved in it was Eve. And Eve was induced to want to be like God. And Satan told her a simple effort on her part would make it so. All she had to do was disobey God and eat of the fruit and it would happen and she did and it didn't happen.
And then there was Cain. Cain, instead of coming to God on the basis of God's standards, decided that he would bring to God the sacrifice of that which he had produced. Again, the religion of self effort. Satan did it. Eve did it. Adam did it. Cain did it. And God rejected it every time. He threw Satan out of heaven. Threw Eve and Adam out of the garden. And he spurned and rejected the offering of Cain. And it is the very same religion going on today. You either accept what God has provided for salvation or you endeavor to provide something on your own. Those are the only two religions in existence.
Now just to verify this to you, I checked the current religious list of those religions which seem to be the most dominate or popular in our culture. And every one of them falls into the same category. Let me list them. And some of them you'll be familiar with and some of them you want. The mighty I am teaches salvation by works. Mormonism, teaches salvation by works. Islam, salvation by works. The Urantia Foundation, which incidentally has a 2,100 page book, teaches salvation by works. The One World Family, teaches there's no need for anybody's salvation. Everybody's already perfect. Jehovah's Witnesses, salvation by works. Spiritualism, salvation by works. The Association for Research and Enlightenment, alias Edgar Casey, salvation by works. Divine Light Mission, salvation by works. You say what's that? That's Guru Maharaji, a little guy who sits on pillows and holds flowers. Oaspi, which is a very strange eastern a cultic religion, salvation by works. Herbert W. Armstrong, Garner Ted Armstrong and the Radio Church of God, salvation by works. The Great White Brotherhood, salvation by works. Astera, salvation by works. The Unification Church of Reverend Moon, salvation by works. Christian Science, salvation by works.
Do you see what I'm saying? Every one of those is the same thing. It is also interesting to note that all of those religions that I've name for you claim to have come originally from spirit beings, from supernatural spirit beings. From revelations, from angels or spirits or extraterrestrial beings. The mighty I am movement was dictated by a Spirit. Mormonism came from Moroni an angel who interpreted some golden plates. Islam dictated by Gabriel the angel. Urantia, 23 extraterrestrial beings by automatic writing dictated the book of Urantia. One World Family, extraterrestrials originated all of it. The Jehovah's Witnesses, angels of different ranks controlled the first witnesses. The Association for Research and Enlightenment all initiated by psychic forces through automatic writing.
The Divine Light Mission, the guru had a spirit voice that told him three times what he was to say. The Great White Brotherhood was dictated by a spirit by the name of Azeriel contacted through a medium. Oaspi is a proliferation of mediums and spirits. Armstrongism which you may not have associated with this, came from angelic revelations to Mrs. Armstrong. Astera, Astera was from spirit sources through telephonic inspiration. The Unification Church came from spirits which dictated and some of those spirits were named Jesus. Christian Science special revelations to Mary Baker Eddy.
Now, I want you to notice something, all of those religions come from spirit beings. I think that's interesting. All of them come from angelic or spirit sources. You say what's so interesting about that? Because it indicates to me that all of them have a demonic source. They aren't even the invention of men people. They are the religion of Satan under all different names.
In 2 Corinthians Chapter 11 in verses 13-15, the apostle Paul says, that you can expect that the Devil will appear as an angel of light and you shouldn't be shocked when his ministers appear also as angels of light. In other words, they are involved in false religion. And do you want to hear something interesting about all of those that I named to you? Listen, none of them accept the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. None of them accept the unique biblical identity of Jesus as deity.
All of those religions believe in salvation by works, deny the uniqueness of the Trinity and deny the biblical construction of the deity of Jesus Christ and all of them come from spirit being sources. They're all Satan's religion under different names and different brands in order to appeal to a cross section of cultures and people, but it's all the same thing. Now, I hope you understand that just by the little insight, no matter what it's name apart from biblical Christianity, which is from God, all other systems are satanic and damning. Satan's in a rut. There's no other option. You either believe in salvation by what God has done or the only other possibility is salvation by what men have done.
And Satan is going on and on with the same old stuff. You're okay on your own, you can do it, you don't need a Savior, etc., etc. God refused Satan's system when he introduced it and kicked him out of heaven. God refused it when Adam and Eve offered it up and kicked them out of the garden. God refused it from Cain, and He's still refusing the system that says you can save yourself or your good deeds will reach God.
Now clearly the New Testament boils down to this, you either accept the finished work of Christ on the cross or you do not accept it. That's the whole issue. In fact, it's crystallized, I think, in Philippians 3:18as well as any where in Scripture. "For many walk of whom I told you often and now tell you weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ." Now notice, anybody who is in opposition to the cross, verse 19, "will end in destruction." It's the next verse. You have the friends of the cross and the enemies of the cross and everybody in the world is in one or other of those two groups.
And all of those who are not the friends of the cross are the enemies of the cross. Jesus said "you're either for me or," what, "or against me." And all of those who are the enemies of the cross their end is destruction. There are only two systems in the world. In 2 Thessalonians verse 8 of Chapter 1, Paul says, "That the Lord Jesus will come from heaven in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God," now listen, "and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is the gospel? Read it in 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus Christ was crucified for our sins, raised again for our justification. That's the gospel. If you do not accept the cross and the resurrection of Christ, you do not obey the gospel and it says for those who do not obey, they shall be punished with everlasting destruction.
There are only two possibilities. Satan has masked his same old lie of salvation by works, a denial of the Trinity, a denial of the unique deity of Jesus Christ in all different forms, but it's the same thing. One of those forms that Satan uses is Judaism. And I say that not in denial of the Old Testament, because before the cross, Judaism was the truth. After the cross, Judaism without a Messiah became as pagan as the worship of a totem pole. Now the Judaisers who are the real culprits in the area that we've been studying in reference to the Galatians had come in behind Paul and taught the religion of human achievement. Oh yes, they were very subtle about it and they said, you know, you have to believe in Jesus Christ, that's fine, and in His work, but you must also be circumcised and keep the law. And they had a salvation by works.
Listen, if you add anything to pure grace, anything to faith, it ceases to be what it is and it becomes works. And so Paul in the final appeal of the book of Galatians sets these two religions in contrast. And it's a last kind of appeal to the Galatians. It's saying look, there are only two options. The end of verse 13, "you either glory in the flesh," or verse 14, "you glory in the cross." That's all. That's the only choice. And you can't mix them. And we've seen that again and again through our study of Galatians for a long, long time as we pursued it.
Only two roads, the Judaisers were teaching glory in the flesh, be saved by works, Paul was teaching glory in the cross, be saved by grace through faith. They never mix. You either believe that you're going to meet God and be approved God and enter into God's heaven and receive God's blessing by what you have done or you believe you're going to have all of that by what He has done. And if you believe it's what he has done and what you do together, you've missed it. It's one or the other.
And so the final verses, verse 11-18 divide themselves easily into two parts. Point one is works glorying in the flesh. Point two is faith glorying in the cross. Now last time we considered point one, glorying in the flesh. Verse 11, "You see how large a letter I've written unto you with mine own hand. And as many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised." You see they're still operating and glorying in the flesh. They want to put on a big display in the flesh. They're constraining you to be circumcised.
The reason they it is they don't want to suffer persecution. "For neither they themselves," verse 13, "who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh." False religion is fleshly. It's motives are to show off spiritually, verse 12. They want to make a fair show in the flesh to avoid persecution, verse 12, and to cover up their sin, verse 13. They don't even keep the law themselves, but they think if they can show everybody how wonderful they are proselyting, nobody will notice how disobedient they are. Religion's a great cover for sin. We went into that in detail last time.
So Paul says, first of all there's that kind of religion. The kind that glories in the flesh. The kind that praises itself. Glory to me in the highest. That's the religion of human achievement. You can do it on your own. You can do good deeds. You can earn God's favor. But as against that, beginning in verse 14, that's where we want to start. We have the other option, faith, glorying in the cross. Now here stands Paul and all true Christians. Here's the religion of grace. Now notice folks, you can't glory in both. And he says to the Galatians and to us "I desire that you would join me in glorying in the cross. God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ."
Notice the phrase, "God forbid." In the Greek magenata, is a strong negative. It doesn't say God forbid in the Greek. That's not a literal translation. It says may it never be. That is a very strong negative. It's as if he said, no, no, no, no. Absolutely, positively, no, never. The same construction is used repeatedly in Romans Chapter 3 when God's character is in question. Paul says, "I will never no, no, no, never in no way under no circumstances at all glory in the flesh, but only in the cross." You say, hah, he was probably such a crumb that he had nothing to glory in.
I wasn't that way. If you knew me, you'd understand why I glory in the flesh. I'm a wonderful person. Well, let me show you something. Philippians 3, Paul had something to glory about. If you're going to glory in the flesh, he says, I'll stand nose to nose with you and match you. I was super religious. I did a lot of little spiritual goodies. Chapter 3, verse 1, "Finally my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you to me indeed is not irksome, but for your it's safe. Before of dogs, beware of evildoers, evil workers, beware of the concision." These are the Judaisers. People going around telling you have to be circumcised. "For we are the circumcision. That is the true circumcision to worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence," what, "in the flesh." They're going around saying we're the true children of God, because we have had a physical operation.
Paul says, no, no. We are the true ones. We rejoice in Christ, we worship God in the Spirit. Now he says if you want to talk about confidence in the flesh, verse 4, "I might also have confidence in the flesh." That's right. I can stand up and tell you about my flesh. "Because of what my appearance gave me in terms of Jewish heritage and because of what I myself attain. Why do you realize that if any other man thinks that he hath reasons for which he might trust in the flesh, I have more reasons? Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel. Of the tribe of Benjamin," one of the good tribes, "and Hebrew of the Hebrews. Why as touching the law I was a Pharisee." Super conservative, legalistic. "Concerning zeal I persecuted the church. Touching the righteous which is in the law," what's that next word, "blameless." Man I really...I got down to the nitty gritty of that law and I kept it.
Now if you want to talk about the flesh, I'll match you. If you want to say well I've been so wonderful and I've done all these religious things, won't God accept me, I'll stand on that ground and I've done just as many things as you've done or more. Now you want to know what I think of all that stuff? Verse 7, "But what things were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ. Ye doubtless," and you're going to hear some strong language. "Ye doubtless and I count all things but loss." You can take all of that stuff and chuck it he says. Every bit of it means nothing. "For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I've suffered the loss of all things and I count them but refuse, dung," is the word.
You can't come up with a worse possible concept than that of the valuelessness of something. Worthless, refuse, excrement, nothing, less than nothing. That's what you can do with all that stuff. It means nothing. "That I may win Christ and be found in Him not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ. He says, you can take all of that self-righteous legal stuff and chuck it. I only know this, that I want to win Christ and attain His righteousness through faith.
"I just want to know him," verse 10. Now you see he...this is where Paul is. He says, if you're going to talk to me about religion of the flesh, I've been there folks and it doesn't cut it. It has no way to bring a man to God. He says, "God forbid." "God forbid that I would ever glory in the flesh." It's worthless, useless. "I count it but loss that I may appropriate Christ by faith. That I may just believe and receive the free gift of God."
Now notice verse 14 in Galatians 6 again. No, no, no, no, may it never be that I should glory. What does glory mean? What do you mean when you're going to say you're going to glory? It means to praise or honor or worship. I'll never honor anything but the cross. I'll never praise anything but the cross. I'll never praise my own works. I'll never praise my own flesh. And that's what these legalistic Judaisers were doing, praising their own flesh. The only thing I'll ever praise, the only thing I'll ever honor, the only thing I'll ever worship, those are synonyms for glory, is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know something, I know a lot of people here tonight that feel that way. I feel that way. Don't you? I don't look to myself for my own righteousness. I have to look a long time and wouldn't find any. I just glory in the cross. We sang some hymns of the cross. I could just feel my heart being lifted when the choir was singing Halleluiah For The Cross. Because that's it. You say, well I don't understand that. How could a man honor a torture instrument. I don't understand how Christians can get so excited about this cross. Why does the Christian symbol have to be such a horrible thing and what's so important about the death of a man who died 1,900 years ago? And what kind of an effect can such a death, 1,900 years ago, have on anybody alive today? Wasn't it just heroism? Wasn't it just a great example of self-sacrifice? Wasn't Jesus just sort of a misguided religious patriot who got in a little deeper than he wanted to? Why do we glory in the cross? Why is Paul saying oh I praise the cross, I praise the cross? Why do Christians where a cross around their neck? Why do they have a cross on the wall?
What is all this cross stuff? It's a little morbid, isn't it? Why do Christians honor the cross? We can answer that can't we? Because you see it was the cross that was the act of divine accomplishment that brought to men the salvation that human achievement couldn't bring. What happened on the cross has lasting effects for the salvation of every man and every age who believes. In fact, unless a man puts his faith in Jesus Christ, unless he has been redeemed by what Christ did on the cross, he has no chance of knowing God and knowing salvation. The cross is the crux of the religion of the divine accomplishment.
When Jesus hung on the cross with His last breath, He said, "It is finished." What was finished? The accomplishment of redemption. He died to bring us salvation we could never obtain ourselves. We couldn't do it. We couldn't do it. Now let me expand on this so you'll understand. Let's first of all start with God. God is God. Now unless you accept that, you're in real trouble. God is God. And you know who God is? God is the one who runs the universe? Watch this one. God makes all the rules. Think about it. All of them. Now one of the things about God is that God is holy. He is without sin. He is without iniquity. He has no flaws. He is perfect. And you know something, the heaven that He occupies is just as perfect as He is. And Revelation says there will be nothing that will ever enter His heaven that would defile His heaven. Okay? And it's His heaven. And He's calling the shots.
Therefore, unless a man is as holy as God is holy, he'll never enter into God's heaven. That's what the Bible says. In fact, in Matthew 5:48, Jesus looked at the people and said, "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." Now you say oh that's quite a standard. That's God's standard. Now God's justice demands that you stick by His laws. God has another law. The law is this. "The soul that sinneth, it shall," what, "die." New Testament version, "The wages of sin is death." Romans 6:23.
So God says heaven is only for absolutely holy individuals and anybody who's unholy is going to die, not just physically, but spiritually and eternally. God will judge sin with death. In Romans 1:18, it says "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness." All of it. Now many people find it hard to understand that God is judge. And so they just chuck that and then they just come up with their own standards. The best way to illustrate this perhaps would be to say it this way. Let's suppose you go to a football game. You know, you've got an afternoon off on a Saturday, so you go down to the coliseum and you want to see a football game. And you come up to the window and the ticket thing on the window says the tickets are $5.00 for the seat you want. And you say to the man in booth, "do you know something, sir, I know both of these teams very well. Neither one of them can play worth $5.00. They couldn't give me a game worth $5.00. I'll pay $2.00, no more."
Now you may really hold your point of view well, but you know something, you're not going to have any luck with that guy at the gate. He is not interested in your argument. You either pay your $5.00 and go in and watch the game or you go home. Because it's not your prerogative to fix the prices. You can either take it or leave it. You can't modify it. But somewhere along the line, Satan has caused people to believe that though God has set absolute standards you can dicker around and modify God's standards. You can't do it.
It's God's heaven. It's not yours. He lays down the terms of admittance and you come to the gate and start offer Him $2.00 and He's not going to be interested in you at all. He does not modify the entrance requirement for heaven. And you're never going to impose your conditions on God, yet people all over the world do this all the time. This is a fundamental error and it means that you refuse, listen, you refuse to take the character of God seriously. Now, the first fact to consider in the religion of the cross is God's estimate of the situation and His laws are decisive. He says sin is an affront to me, it'll never enter into my heaven. It'll be dealt with with death.
God is displeased with sin. No one will ever defile his heaven with sin. You scratch your head and you say well, we've got a problem. The first thing a man has to do is realize he's a sinner. Second thing he wants to do is if he's a sinner, he wants to realize that he can't get into God's heaven. Well, that's a problem. So Satan comes along and says hey, you can modify that, sure. Maybe the Bible doesn't really mean that. That's a hard line, super fundamentalist view. Why God is a great loving God. And so they write the Bible.
But the Bible says, "The wages of sin is death." And God set the standard. And the Bible says, you see that sin can only be put away by death. Hebrews 9:22says, "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin." God is a loving, yes. And He wants to forgive sin, but He can't arbitrarily forgive sin. He's got to deal with it. God can't just say well, I know I don't like sin, but I'll just go forgive all of you any old way. Sin must be paid for. God cannot arbitrarily forgive without doing something to take care of the offense of sin. So God looks down on the world and He says I love you. I love you, but I'm going to have to punish your sin. I have two choices. I can just damn you for your own sin. Or I can have a substitute take your place. And so the love of God forgave you, but the justice of God crucified Jesus Christ. Do you see? Because somebody had to pay for your sin.
God's choice was to let every man pay his own penalty and suffer eternal death in hell or to offer a substitute who would die in the place of man. And Jesus came to die and the reason he came to die was because somebody had to die for your sins and mine. And it was the act of God when the Son died on the cross to take care of sin so that He could offer forgiveness to those who would accept it.
Jesus didn't die because He was a sinner. He never committed a sin. 1 Peter 2:24says "That He in His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree." He bore our sins in His body. He paid our penalty. 2 Corinthians marvelous verse, Chapter 5, verse 21, listen, "For He hath made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Christ became our substitute. Christ took our place on the cross. Beloved, it was the act of the love of God that sent Jesus to die on the cross. The love toward us that was also the act of the justice of God that made the penalty be realized.
That's why Paul glories in the cross. You see, watch this, because the cross provides for the expiation or the covering for sin or the removal of sin better. The cross provides for the removal of sin, something that no man could ever provide for himself, no matter how good you are, no matter how religious you are, you could never be holy as God is holy until Jesus died on the cross, paid the entire penalty for your sin and God when you believe in Christ imputes to you the very righteousness of Christ and God looks at your as righteous as He sees His own Son. Marvelous miracle. This is love.
And God's love is meaningless if the cross is meaningless. You know, all these liberals say, well God loves us and it's so wonderful how he loves us and oh when Christ died on the cross that was a nice wonderful display of God's love. But they're not willing to admit that a man needs to be totally redeemed by the cross. They want to allow for a salvation of works. Let me show you how stupid that is. The same liberal who gets up and preaches about the love of God and also preaches that you can save yourself has got a real problem.
Say I'm sitting on a pier one day. And I'm enjoying the sun and I'm getting tan and having a great time reading a book which would be great for me, I enjoy that. Feeling the warm sun and all of a sudden somebody runs down the pier and jumps into the water to prove his love for me and drowns. I don't get the point. That isn't the death of love. That's the death of stupidity. I'm sitting on the pier. If, however, I am caught in a riptide and my life is in danger and someone dives in and rescues me, that's a revelation of love. Now mark it, the greatness of the risk is the measure of the love. The essence of the redemption is what makes the love meaningful. If God's just sending Jesus Christ as sort of a great pageant, a great meaningless piece of pageantry, then it's stupid. If the cross did not need to be accomplished to redeem me, then God's doing dumb things. But 1 John 4:10says that "He sent His son to be the covering for our sins."
God loves us and we are in danger, beloved, and God rescues us from hell in the death of Christ. It isn't just a nice little display of meaningless love. That would be stupid. God isn't in the business of putting on meaningless pageants. No, it isn't just the death of Christ. It's the fact that He died for sin. That He took my sin. That He took my place. That He paid my penalty that says God loves me. Paul said in Romans, "God commends His love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." And friends, Christ's death on the cross is the only way of man's deliverance from death and to hell. You say why so the only way, because God said so. The words of Peter were these, "neither is there salvation in any other. For there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." Acts 4:12.
John looked at Jesus, John the Baptist, and said, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world." Jesus was the one sacrifice to take away sin. The writer of Hebrews in Chapter 9, verse 26 "For then He must often have suffered since the foundation of the world. But now once in the end of the ages hath He appeared," this is Christ, "to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." And verse 28 says, "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." To put away sin, that's why he died. Not just a meaningless display of love. He died for sin. He died to bear the penalty of sin. And Hebrews 10:5, Jesus says in a conversation with the Father, "Sacrifice an offering you would not, but a body you prepared me and burnt offering and sacrifice for sin you had no pleasure." There was no fulfillment in that. There was no salvation in those things.
But when Christ came, He came to be offered. Verse 10, "We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." Verse 12, "This man after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever sat down at the right hand of God." That's why He died, for sin. Romans 4:25, Paul said, "He was delivered for our trespasses." 1 Corinthians 15:3, "He died for our sins." Galatians 1:4, "He gave Himself for our sins." Romans 6:10, "The death that He died, He died unto sin." Romans 8:4says "God sent Christ in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin."
Paul summed up the message and he went to the Corinthians and he said, "we preach Christ crucified." He died for sin. He died for your sin and my sin. I'm so glad, people, that I'll never have to stand for my sin. I'll never have to face God with the record of my sin. Do you know why? God already took care of all of it through Jesus Christ. I don't believe that a Christian is ever going to be punished for sin. Do you know why? Jesus already was punished for my sin, right? Yes. Paul in his life with so much glorying in the cross that he reached the determination which he expressed in 1 Corinthians 2:2. "I determine not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." All his message was, to know nothing but the cross, nothing but the cross. Exalt the cross, exalt the cross. That's everything.
I remember when we had...I told you about this a long time probably. We had high holy day services and we used to let the temple down the street use our church, the little chapel. And this was a...they did this quite frequently. Then we remodeled it and put in that cross. They came down and I'll never forget the terror of all of them when they arrived and saw the cross. Oh it was horrible. They draped sheets all day before the holy days, sheets covering the cross. Paul says, "I glory in the cross." How stupid, how foolish to turn your back on the one thing that takes away sin.
So it was one of Paul's fundamental convictions that apart from Christ, nothing could come out right ever. Man left to himself is doomed. This is a moral universe and God made it so and sinful man reaps the reward of sin. His only hope faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Well, go back to Galatians 6 and let's see some things. Paul gives some reasons for glorying in the cross. I've given you the general reason. Paul gives some specific ones and they're not just theological and...they are theological, but not just, they're very personal to him and to me and to you. He says in effect, you know why I glory in the cross? Three reasons, are you ready for this?
Reason number one, the cross changed my relationship to the world. The cross changed my relationship to the world. Now the one thing that I think people face today is a terrible pain of being locked into the world's system. If you're here tonight and you don't know Jesus Christ and you're sitting and listening to this, think about your life. Have you ever realized that your life is just sort of an endless, meaningless, circle? People today face purposelessness. I always think of the words of Mrs. Malay who said "Life must go on. I forget just why." Meaningless.
And then you life is not only meaningless, but it's guided by passion, which is such a cruel, cruel master as Oscar Wilde said. I had a young person come to me, he was only 18 years old and he unbeared his heart and just poured it out and said, "I'm so sick of the filth in my life and the sin in my life and the ugliness of my life. Can God help me?" About 18 years old. Do you ever get sick of having your mind in the gutter all the time and seemingly unable to get it out of there. That's how the world works. Your thoughts are low thoughts, selfish thoughts. Your life doesn't seem to go anywhere. And then there's another thing that I think haunts people in the world, it's the past. You can't seem to get free from your sin. Do you know something? The Bible says you never have a clear conscience. Guilt just bangs away all the time. You can't forget the past. You have no sense of forgiveness.
And another sad thing that people in the world never realized. Life seems to be just a whole pile of frustrated dreams. And Paul was like everybody else. He got sick of those things. And you know, he said, I'm so excited about the cross, because when I came to the cross in faith and accepted what Jesus did, look, the world was crucified to me and I to the world. He said, I died to that entire system. I and the world parted company. That whole evil system controlled by Satan stopped being the thing that dominated my life.
Do you know the fantastic thing about Christianity and it's not pie in the sky, it's here and now. It's here and now. And you say in what sense? In the sense that right now, standing here, I have a sense of divine consciousness. I know that God is alive that Christ is mine, that the Spirit lives in my heart and I sense the moving of God in my life and that's exciting. I know what I'm here for and I know where I'm going when I done doing what I'm here to do.
Paul says "The world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." You say what's the world, John? The world is the word kosmos. It's used basically in the Bible to refer to Satan's system. His system of sin and false religion, that sums it up. Paul's saying in effect, man, do you know what's so exciting? To be dead to the whole system of false religion. Man, I'm just tuned out to it and I'm tuned into the truth. And to be dead to that whole world of sin, that whole hassle. What is Satan's world, Satan's system? It's the one that promotes his goals, promotes his aims, promotes his ends and promotes his desires? You say well, is everybody in that world? Yes, 1 John 5:19, "The whole world lies in the arms of the wicked one." The whole bunch of us before we knew Christ. The whole system is cradled in Satan's arms. He lulls the world's system to sleep and everybody's a part of it.
Everybody, read Ephesians 2:1-3, everybody. We all were like that, Paul says. Operating on the premise of the flesh and the lust guided by Satan. You say well, isn't the system smart? No, the system's stupid, because it can't know God. 1 Corinthians 1:21, Paul says, "The world by wisdom knew not God." So no matter what the system knows, what Satan's evil system knows, it can never lead a man to God. 2 Peter 1:4says, "it corrupt." And 1 Corinthians 11:32, says, "it's going to be judge."
But you know what happened? This is wonderful. The day that you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you have an entirely new consciousness. And all of a sudden you die to the whole evil system. And you are alive to God. It's as if you've been transmitted into a new dimension of life. Paul puts it this way and I'll give you several passages, but one in particular by the statement of Paul that is really exciting. Philippians 3:20, listen. "For our citizenship is in heaven." Paul says, you know what? I actually exist as a heavenly being. You know when you start to thinking about it, that is true. Everything we love is in heaven, right?
Our Father's there. Our Savior's there. Our home is there. Our reward is there. I mean, that's home for us. And we sense the moving of God and we're alive to God. Something that natural man is not. Our citizenship, our manner of life is heaven. The whole book of Ephesians is based on that principle where he talks about the fact that you've been blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies. We're in another dimension of consciousness. We know God. "A person without Jesus Christ is dead," Ephesians 2:1says. He doesn't know God at all. He's dead. Insensitive to God is what it means. We know God. Oh how exciting.
Jesus prayed, you know, remember that in John 17 just to point a couple of verses. His beautiful prayer, John 17:6, "I have manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they were and thou gavest them to me." Isn't that tremendous. Salvation is taking you out of the world and giving you to God. What a blessed thought. Verse 11, "And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world. I come to thee Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me that they may be one as we are one." He says, you took them out of the world in a spiritual sense, in a physical sense they're still having to live there, so take care of them Father.
We still knock around in the system. We're not a part of it. It's one thing to be in the world, it's something else to be of the world, right? It's just like the difference between having your boat in the water and having the water in your boat. Paul says wow, I glory in the cross because you know what the cross cut me off from the world made me alive to God. And you know what the world to Paul was? You could just put it this way, by whom Judaism is crucified to me and I to Judaism, because the system that he was trapped in was Judaism. And for every man the system is different. For some people it's religion. Some people are trapped in Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc., etc. Some people are trapped in alcoholism. Some people are trapped in drugs. Some people are trapped in sex. Some people are trapped in an ego trip. Everybody's got a trap in the world, and it's all the system manifesting itself in different ways. But the cross changed all of that.
Paul says, in fact, I am crucified with Christ and after that happened, nevertheless, I live yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. It's a new life. It's a new I. It's Christ living in me, a new consciousness. And in Romans 6 he said, "when I put my faith in Jesus Christ, it's as if I died with Christ and rose and walked in newness of life." Remember that? The Christian, when he receives Jesus Christ and puts his faith in Christ's death on the cross, he dies with Christ and he rises in new life. A spiritual miracle. God transcends the ages the moment you believe, He places you back into Christ. You die, you rise again. That's God's marvelous miracle. You die to the law. You die to sin and you die to the world and you rise to live in God's world, God's realm.
Now I think there's two little angles and just to give you the cleanest exposition of the phrases. "By whom the world is crucified unto me." I think he's referring to historical fact. Referring to his union in Christ's death. Positional statement. The world is crucified unto me. I'm dead to the religion of human achievement. The system is a dead issue. Verse 24 of Chapter 5 says, "They that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." This is the historical fact that when he was united in Christ's death, the whole system became a dead issue.
And you know in 1 John Chapter 5, verse 4, "Whatever is born of God overcomes the world." And this is the victory that overcomes the world even our faith. The only way you can overcome the system is through faith. "Who is he that overcomes the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God." To believe in Christ's person and work on the cross is to overcome the world and Paul says when I was united in Christ, crucified with Christ, the world died.
All my old life died. Sin became a dead issue. The law became a dead issue. The world became a dead issue. And then I think he adds this. And I unto the world. That's the practical side. Not only did a positional miracle take place, but practically folks, I haven't got any interest in the system myself. It's not just a question of the miracle itself, it's the question of his attitude. I've got no interest in the system anymore. I just glory in the cross.
You know, he warned the Colossians. He couldn't believe it, but some of the Colossians, this is amazing is the same as the Galatians. Some of the Colossians that accepted Christ and were still interested in the system, just like the Galatians. They accepted Christ and they were saying oh should we be circumcised. Circumcision was part of the system, part of the world. They were actually playing with the world. Paul says look, when the world was crucified to me friends, I was crucified to the world too.
When the miracle took place, my attitude changed. What's wrong with you people? And to the Colossians he says the same thing in Colossians 2:20, "If you be dead with Christ, then what are you doing with all these little rules, touch not, taste, not, handle not." They had all kinds of little Jewish rules. Forget all that stuff and he says in Chapter 3 of Colossians, "If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth." Drop all of the features of the system. You don't need any of it.
So he was positionally separated from the world by the death of Christ and practically he had lost all of his taste for the world. So Paul says, I glory in the cross because it changed my relation to the world. You know something, you will either die to the world or you'll die with it. 1 John 2:17, second thing, Paul glories in the cross secondly because the cross did what the flesh couldn't do. Boy he really worked hard with his flesh. He did everything a Jew could do and it didn't him a bit of good. Every possible spiritual activity there was, he did it. No way out.
Verse 15, "For in Christ Jesus," almost hear sigh, "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision, but a," what?, "a new creature." Oh boy is that exciting. Worldly systems like circumcision are meaningless inconsequential, accomplish nothing. I always think about the guy, the fighter who used to get in and cross himself before the first round. Some guy says does it do any good? The other guy says, it does if he can punch. Apart from that, not a lot.
Well, that's the same thing with circumcision. It doesn't mean a single thing. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nothing helps he says. But oh it's so exciting. I struggle with all that stuff and then finally I realized in Christ Jesus, I could be a new creature. That's exciting folks. You know what the frustration of the self effort system is? The frustration of the self effort system is that it is completely incapacitated by the self that's trying to make the effort. That's bad.
So you know what God does? He makes new creatures. So Jesus said, you must be born again. You've got to start all over. You know Nicodemus came to Jesus. He was a great man. He was a leading teacher in Israel, maybe THE teacher. Marvelous man, knew the word of God and the Old Testament. And you know, he could have come to Jesus and perhaps he could have said, you know I've done this and I've done that and I've done this and I've done the other and I know the word and blah, blah, blah, and all my spiritual things and I'm a very godly man and devout man and pray and what shall I do? And the Lord says well, let's see do three of these and four of those and you're all right.
Christ said, Nicodemus, you know what you've got to do? Be born again, start all over again, chuck the whole life. It doesn't matter what you've done. It doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. Not the slightest. You're going to be in the same hell as the people who did a lot of things that you didn't do. But 2 Corinthians 5:17says, "If any man be in Christ he's a new creature." I like that. You know, new creatures are made to fit heaven. Old creatures can't go there. God's got to get all the sin out.
Yes, new creatures, oh what a blessed thought. Paul says, you know, all that circumcision, uncircumcision never did anything, but Jesus made me a new creature. That's why the cross is something to glory about. So Paul glories in the cross because it changed his bondage to the world to freedom and his frustrating sinful flesh to a new creation. Thirdly and lastly, he glories in the cross because it brought him salvation and all its benefits. Verse 16. "And as many as walk according to this rule, peace on them and mercy and upon the Israel of God." Notice this, you say where do you get salvation, John?
Well, let me show you something. You see those two words peace and mercy? Those two words tie up the idea of salvation. First one is peace. Did you know that every man is born into this in conflict with God? You're a child of disobedience right? So you're rebelling against God. You're a child of Satan. You're of your father the Devil. So you're a part of the warfare against God. You're a sinner, so you're alienated from God. You're a citizen of hell, so you can't occupy God's heaven. You're really in trouble, every man. You're at war with God.
In other words, there's got to be an absolute reversal. The war has to end and you have to become at peace with God. And so Paul says, "As many as walk according to this rule peace with God." That's the positive side of salvation. You know something, it's exciting when you become a Christian and know you're on God's side. You're His child. Look at the second word, mercy. Mercy from God. What is mercy? Mercy is forgiveness. Now this is it folks, watch. Two sides of salvation. Peace is the positive, mercy is the negative. Peace is establishing the right relationship with God. Mercy is God forgiving all the rest. The positive side, the negative side.
What's he really saying? "As many as walk according to this rule, salvation is theirs." A right relationship with God, that's the positive and the doing away of all the sin, that's the negative. You say oh boy who gets in on that? Verse 16, "As many as walk according to this rule." You say what rule? I thought wasn't of law. It isn't of law. What's the rule? What's the principle? Let's translate the word kanon, principle, or standard. What is the principle? Only two principles by which a man can live. You either glory in the flesh or you glory in the cross.
"God forbid that I should glory except in the cross." "And as many as walk according to that principle are saved." That's what he says. There's only one way you'll ever have peace with God and the mercy of God to cover all your sins and that's when you walk according to this principle. "I glory alone in the," what?, "cross." You say John, you mean anybody who walks according to that principle? Anybody. You say you mean it doesn't matter how bad you've been? It doesn't matter how bad you've been. Paul said, "He saved me and I'm chief sinner." It doesn't matter how bad. That's an open invitation to every man to walk by this principle.
And then I love this little note; he says at the end of verse 16, "and upon the Israel of God." You say who's the Israel of God? The true Jews. True converted Jews and this is a little invitation to the Judaisers to get it on. True Jews. True Jews are going to walk according to this principle he says. Now his closing words. Verse 17, "Henceforth, let no man trouble me for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."
What's he saying? Maybe he's talking to Christian. It's possible. Maybe he's saying Christians, don't add any more trouble to me. You know, the very fact that you listened to those Judaisers grieves me, breaks my heart. I've got enough pain. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Some of them I got when I was with you Lystra when they stoned me and left me for dead. I mean, I've endured so much in carrying the gospel, you don't trouble me anymore. Let this letter settle the issue, will you please. And don't let me hear any more hassles about your wandering faith. But maybe he's talking to the non-Christians. Maybe he's talking to the Judaisers saying look guys, leave me alone. Don't hassle me. You're big on marks. I've got marks. You're big on physical scars. I've got them, the scars of Jesus Christ, not just circumcision. Don't question my authority. Don't question my loyalty. I have the scars of Jesus to prove my loyalty.
Maybe he meant it for both groups. You say John, in what sense can he say that I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus? What does he mean by that? Is that like St. Francis of Assisi, he's got stigmata in his hands? No, the word is stigmata here, but that isn't what he's saying. What are the marks of the Lord Jesus? I'll tell you what they are. Simply this, every blow that Paul every took as a Christian was really coming against Jesus Christ and he had the joy of taking it. In 2 Corinthians 1:5, he says, "The sufferings of Christ abound in us." "The sufferings of Christ abound in us." In 2 Corinthians 4:10he says, "I'm always bearing in my body the dying of the Lord Jesus." In Colossians 1:24, he says, "I fill up the afflictions of Christ." What does he mean? He means that when the world wanted to get Jesus, they couldn't get Him, because He was gone, so they got Paul instead.
Listen, anytime the world persecutes a Christian, they're persecuting Jesus. And when you take a blow for his sake, it's really one meant for Him. Remember when Paul was on the Damascus Road, Jesus said to him, "Saul, Saul, why persecute us thou Christian?" What did he say? "Why persecutist thou me?" Any persecution of a believer is the persecution that comes to Christ. It's meant for Christ. He's not here. The world can't hit Him, so they hit us instead. We take the blows meant for Him. Paul says what a thrill to take the blows meant for Him when He took the blows on the cross meant for me.
Don't hassle me. I'm a true apostle. I've got scars to prove my diligence in bringing you the gospel. I've got scars to prove my loyalty to Jesus Christ. Let this letter end it. "Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen." I like that ending. That's a sermon. Grace, not law, of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Not external, internal. Man has a choice. Live by the flesh or by the cross.
Lily Douglas in Christus Phuturous writes, listen to this, very provocative. "Reason cries if God were good, he could not look upon the sin in misery of man and live. His heart would break. The Christian points to the cross and says God's heart did break. Reason cries born and reared in sin and pain as we are, how could we keep from sin? How can we be blamed? It is the creator who is responsible. It is God who deserves to be punished. The Christian kneels at the foot of the cross and whispers. God took the responsibility and bore the punishment. Reason cries, who is God? What is God? The name stands for the unknown. It is blasphemy that's saying we know it. The Christian kisses the feet of the dying Christ and says we must worship the majesty we see. True reason glories in the cross."
A letter was written to the Melbourne Daily paper this is what it said. "After hearing Dr. Billy Graham on the air, viewing him on TV, and reading reports and letters concerning him and his mission, I am hardly sick of the type of religion that insists my soul and everyone else's needs saving. Whatever that means. I have never felt that I was lost, nor do I feel that I daily wallow in the mire of sin. Although repetitive preaching insists that I do. Give me a practical religion that teaches gentleness and tolerance that acknowledges no barriers of color or creed that remembers the aged and teaches children of goodness and not sin. If in order to save my soul I must accept such a philosophy as I have recently heard preached, I prefer to remain forever damned." End quote. And he will, because that's every man's choice. Let's pray.
Father, we thank You that the cross provides salvation for every man. The only condition is faith. We pray Lord that no one would leave this building tonight without coming to the cross. That no one would glory in human effort. No one think himself good enough to enter Your heaven on his own conditions, but that every man would acknowledge his own sinfulness, fall at the foot of the cross, and find out that everything that reason cries was fulfilled at the cross. Your heart did break. You did bear the responsibility and the punishment. God suffering for human flesh. Speak to hearts tonight Father, by a simple act of faith we just pray that they would invite Jesus Christ into their life to be their Savior. They would turn from the religion of human achievement to the one of divine accomplishment for Your glory in Jesus' name, amen.
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The stencils you use for printing are only as good as the coating procedures you follow to produce them. Here you
By KIWO Technical Support Department
Fine detail can be taken to mean any artwork in which the finest elements are equivalent to the width of two threads and two mesh openings of the particular mesh fabric being used. You can test this concept by laying your film positive right on the screen and looking through a 50x microscope to see how many mesh openings and threads your finest design elements span. If your smallest dots or lines are not much larger than two threads and two mesh openings, you have fine detail. With such details, if you do not have enough EOM, the threads will create a dam around open areas in the same way that a stencil does. In halftone printing, such low EOM leads to dot loss as the highlight dot is cut into pieces by the threads (Figure 2). (Figure Reference: With insufficient EOM, the mesh in open areas of the screen can make direct contact with the substrate during printing. As a result, the knuckles of the mesh serve as dams that prevent ink from spreading through the entire open area. The result is dot loss and poor dot reproduction.)
Stencils with low EOM also likely suffer from high Rz values. The incomplete gasket caused by high Rz allows the ink to push beyond the image edge and leak into the valleys of the stencil. This results in dot gain. At the same time, the low EOM leads to dot loss and sawtoothing. High Rz and low EOM are both the result of poor coating techniques. However, these conditions can be eliminated by observing the screen-coating pointers we'll consider in the next section.
All stencils must have some EOM for proper printing. But, a stencil can be too thick as well. For many printing inks, stencils perform well with an EOM that is between 10-20% of the mesh thickness. For finest detail printing, including four-color process, the EOM should not exceed 10% of the mesh thickness. If the stencil becomes thicker, problems such as ink piling, skipping, and skewing can occur when printing with UV ink. Moreover, highlights may not open up, and ink transfer becomes difficult. For excellent printing on most substrates, the stencil will also need a low Rz value (approx. 6 microns if possible).
The coating process
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Telescope, device used to form magnified images of distant objects. The telescope is undoubtedly the most important investigative tool in astronomy. It provides a means of collecting and analyzing radiation from celestial objects, even those in the far reaches of the universe.
Galileo revolutionized astronomy when he applied the telescope to the study of extraterrestrial bodies in the early 17th century. Until then, magnification instruments had never been used for this purpose. Since Galileo's pioneering work, increasingly more powerful optical telescopes have been developed, as has a wide array of instruments capable of detecting and measuring radiation in every region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Observational capability has been further enhanced by the invention of various kinds of auxiliary instruments (e.g., the camera, spectrograph, and charge-coupled device) and by the use of electronic computers, rockets, and spacecraft in conjunction with telescope systems. These developments have contributed dramatically to advances in scientific knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the universe as a whole.
This article describes the operating principles and historical development of optical telescopes. For explanation of instruments that operate in other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, see radio telescope; X-ray telescope; and gamma-ray telescope.
Refracting telescopes
Commonly known as refractors, telescopes of this kind are typically used to examine the Moon, other objects of the solar system such as Jupiter and Mars, and binary stars. The name refractor is derived from the term refraction, which is the bending of light when it passes from one medium to another of different density—e.g., from air to glass. The glass is referred to as a lens and may have one or more components. The physical shape of the components may be convex, concave, or plane-parallel. This diagram illustrates the principle of refraction and the term focal length. The focus is the point, or plane, at which light rays from infinity converge after passing through a lens and traveling a distance of one focal length. In a refractor the first lens through which light from a celestial object passes is called the objective lens. It should be noted that the light will be inverted at the focal plane. A second lens, referred to as the eyepiece lens, is placed behind the focal plane and enables the observer to view the enlarged, or magnified, image. Thus, the simplest form of refractor consists of an objective and an eyepiece, as illustrated in the diagram.
The diameter of the objective is referred to as the aperture; it typically ranges from a few centimetres for small spotting telescopes up to one metre for the largest refractor in existence. The objective, as well as the eyepiece, may have several components. Small spotting telescopes may contain an extra lens behind the eyepiece to erect the image so that it does not appear upside-down. When an object is viewed with a refractor, the image may not appear sharply defined, or it may even have a predominant colour in it. Such distortions, or aberrations, are sometimes introduced when the lens is polished into its design shape. The major kind of distortion in a refractor is chromatic aberration, which is the failure of the differently coloured light rays to come to a common focus. Chromatic aberration can be minimized by adding components to the objective. In lens-design technology, the coefficients of expansion of different kinds of glass are carefully matched to minimize the aberrations that result from temperature changes of the telescope at night.
Eyepieces, which are used with both refractors and reflectors (see below Reflecting telescopes), have a wide variety of applications and provide observers with the ability to select the magnification of their instruments. The magnification, sometimes referred to as magnifying power, is determined by dividing the focal length of the objective by the focal length of the eyepiece. For example, if the objective has a focal length of 254 cm (100 inches) and the eyepiece has a focal length of 2.54 cm (1 inch), then the magnification will be 100. Large magnifications are very useful for observing the Moon and the planets. However, since stars appear as point sources owing to their great distances, magnification provides no additional advantage when viewing them. Another important factor that one must take into consideration when attempting to view at high magnification is the stability of the telescope mounting. Any vibration in the mounting will also be magnified and may severely reduce the quality of the observed image. Thus, great care is usually taken to provide a stable platform for the telescope. This problem should not be associated with that of atmospheric seeing, which may introduce a disturbance to the image because of fluctuating air currents in the path of the light from a celestial or terrestrial object. Generally, most of the seeing disturbance arises in the first 30 metres (100 feet) of air above the telescope. Large telescopes are frequently installed on mountain peaks in order to get above the seeing disturbances.
Light gathering and resolution
The most important of all the powers of an optical telescope is its light-gathering power. This capacity is strictly a function of the diameter of the clear objective—that is, the aperture—of the telescope. Comparisons of different-sized apertures for their light-gathering power are calculated by the ratio of their diameters squared; for example, a 25-cm (10-inch) objective will collect four times the light of a 12.5-cm (5-inch) objective ([25 × 25] ÷ [12.5 × 12.5] = 4). The advantage of collecting more light with a larger-aperture telescope is that one can observe fainter stars, nebulae, and very distant galaxies.
Resolving power is another important feature of a telescope. This is the ability of the instrument to distinguish clearly between two points whose angular separation is less than the smallest angle that the observer's eye can resolve. The resolving power of a telescope can be calculated by the following formula: resolving power = 11.25 seconds of arc/d, where d is the diameter of the objective expressed in centimetres. Thus, a 25-cm-diameter objective has a theoretical resolution of 0.45 second of arc and a 250-cm (100-inch) telescope has one of 0.045 second of arc. An important application of resolving power is in the observation of visual binary stars. There, one star is routinely observed as it revolves around a second star. Many observatories conduct extensive visual binary observing programs and publish catalogs of their observational results. One of the major contributors in this field is the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
Most refractors currently in use at observatories have equatorial mountings. The mounting describes the orientation of the physical bearings and structure that permits a telescope to be pointed at a celestial object for viewing. In the equatorial mounting, the polar axis of the telescope is constructed parallel to Earth's axis. The polar axis supports the declination axis of the instrument. Declination is measured on the celestial sky north or south from the celestial equator. The declination axis makes it possible for the telescope to be pointed at various declination angles as the instrument is rotated about the polar axis with respect to right ascension. Right ascension is measured along the celestial equator from the vernal equinox (i.e., the position on the celestial sphere where the Sun crosses the celestial equator from south to north on the first day of spring). Declination and right ascension are the two coordinates that define a celestial object on the celestial sphere. Declination is analogous to latitude, and right ascension is analogous to longitude. Graduated dials are mounted on the axis to permit the observer to point the telescope precisely. To track an object, the telescope's polar axis is driven smoothly by an electric motor at a sidereal rate—namely, at a rate equal to the rate of rotation of Earth with respect to the stars. Thus, one can track or observe with a telescope for long periods of time if the sidereal rate of the motor is very accurate. High-accuracy motor-driven systems have become readily available with the rapid advancement of quartz-clock technology. Most major observatories now rely on either quartz or atomic clocks to provide accurate sidereal time for observations as well as to drive telescopes at an extremely uniform rate.
A notable example of a refracting telescope is the 66-cm (26-inch) refractor of the U.S. Naval Observatory. This instrument was used by the astronomer Asaph Hall to discover the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, in 1877. Today, the telescope is used primarily for observing binary stars. The 91-cm (36-inch) refractor at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, Calif., U.S., and the 1-metre (40-inch) instrument at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wis., U.S., are the largest refracting systems currently in operation (see the table).
|aperture (metres)
|date observations began
|Gran Telescopio Canarias
|Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
|La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain
|Keck I, Keck II
|10, 10
|Keck Observatory
|Mauna Kea, Hawaii
|1993, 1996
|Southern African Large Telescope
|11.1 × 9.8
|Sutherland, South Africa
|Hobby-Eberly Telescope
|11.1 × 9.8
|McDonald Observatory
|Fort Davis, Texas
|Large Binocular Telescope
|2 mirrors, each 8.4
|Mount Graham, Arizona
|Mauna Kea, Hawaii
|Antu, Kueyen, Melipal, Yepun
|8.2, 8.2, 8.2, 8.2
|Very Large Telescope
|Cerro Paranal, Chile
|1998, 1999, 2000, 2000
|Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope
|International Gemini Observatory
|Mauna Kea, Hawaii
|Gemini South Telescope
|International Gemini Observatory
|Cerro Pachon, Chile
|MMT Observatory
|Mount Hopkins, Arizona
|Walter Baade, Landon Clay
|6.5, 6.5
|Magellan Telescopes
|Cerro Las Campanas, Chile
|2000, 2002
|Bolshoi Teleskop
|Special Astrophysical Observatory
|Zelenchukskaya, Russia
|Hale Telescope
|Palomar Observatory
|Mount Palomar, California
|William Herschel Telescope
|Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
|La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain
|Victor M. Blanco Telescope
|Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
|Cerro Tololo, Chile
|Anglo-Australian Telescope
|Siding Spring Observatory
|Siding Spring Mountain, New South Wales, Austl.
|Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope
|Kitt Peak National Observatory
|Kitt Peak, Arizona
|Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
|Mauna Kea, Hawaii
|La Silla Observatory
|La Silla, Chile
|Hooker Telescope
|Mount Wilson Observatory
|Mount Wilson, California
|Samuel Oschin Telescope
|Palomar Observatory
|Mount Palomar, California
|Yerkes Observatory
|Williams Bay, Wisconsin
|Lick Refractor
|Lick Observatory
|Mount Hamilton, California
Another type of refracting telescope is the astrograph, which usually has an objective diameter of approximately 20 cm (8 inches). The astrograph has a photographic plateholder mounted in the focal plane of the objective so that photographs of the celestial sphere can be taken. The photographs are usually taken on glass plates. The principal application of the astrograph is to determine the positions of a large number of faint stars. These positions are then published in catalogs such as the AGK3 and serve as reference points for deep-space photography.
Reflecting telescopes
Reflectors are used not only to examine the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum but also to explore both the shorter- and longer-wavelength regions adjacent to it (i.e., the ultraviolet and the infrared). The name of this type of instrument is derived from the fact that the primary mirror reflects the light back to a focus instead of refracting it. The primary mirror usually has a concave spherical or parabolic shape, and, as it reflects the light, it inverts the image at the focal plane. The diagram illustrates the principle of a concave reflecting mirror. The formulas for resolving power, magnifying power, and light-gathering power, as discussed for refractors, apply to reflectors as well.
The primary mirror is located at the lower end of the telescope tube in a reflector and has its front surface coated with an extremely thin film of metal, such as aluminum. The back of the mirror is usually made of glass, although other materials have been used from time to time. Pyrex was the principal glass of choice for many of the older large telescopes, but new technology has led to the development and widespread use of a number of glasses with very low coefficients of expansion. A low coefficient of expansion means that the shape of the mirror will not change significantly as the temperature of the telescope changes during the night. Since the back of the mirror serves only to provide the desired form and physical support, it does not have to meet the high optical quality standards required for a lens.
Reflecting telescopes have a number of other advantages over refractors. They are not subject to chromatic aberration because reflected light does not disperse according to wavelength. Also, the telescope tube of a reflector is shorter than that of a refractor of the same diameter, which reduces the cost of the tube. Consequently, the dome for housing a reflector is smaller and more economical to construct. So far only the primary mirror for the reflector has been discussed. One might wonder about the location of the eyepiece. The primary mirror reflects the light of the celestial object to the prime focus near the upper end of the tube. Obviously, if an observer put his eye there to observe with a modest-sized reflector, he would block out the light from the primary mirror with his head. Isaac Newton placed a small plane mirror at an angle of 45° inside the prime focus and thereby brought the focus to the side of the telescope tube. The amount of light lost by this procedure is very small when compared to the total light-gathering power of the primary mirror. The Newtonian reflector is popular among amateur telescope makers.
Laurent Cassegrain of France, a contemporary of Newton, invented another type of reflector. Called the Cassegrainian telescope, this instrument employs a small convex mirror to reflect the light back through a small hole in the primary mirror to a focus located behind the primary. The diagram illustrates a typical Cassegrain reflector. Some large telescopes of this kind do not have a hole in the primary mirror but use a small plane mirror in front of the primary to reflect the light outside the main tube and provide another place for observation. The Cassegrain design usually permits short tubes relative to their mirror diameter.
One more variety of reflector was invented by another of Newton's contemporaries, the Scottish astronomer James Gregory. Gregory placed a concave secondary mirror outside the prime focus to reflect the light back through a hole in the primary mirror. Notable is the fact that the Gregorian design was adopted for the Earth-orbiting space observatory, the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM), launched in 1980.
Most large reflecting telescopes that are currently in use have a cage at their prime focus that permits the observer to sit inside the telescope tube while operating the instrument. The 5-metre (200-inch) reflector at Palomar Observatory, near San Diego, Calif., is so equipped. While most reflectors have equatorial mounts similar to refractors, the world's largest reflector, the 10.4-metre (34.1-foot) instrument at the Gran Telescopio Canarias at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain, has an altitude-azimuth mounting. The significance of the latter design is that the telescope must be moved both in altitude and in azimuth as it tracks a celestial object. Equatorial mountings, by contrast, require motion in only one coordinate while tracking, since the declination coordinate is constant. Reflectors, like refractors, usually have small guide telescopes mounted parallel to their main optical axis to facilitate locating the desired object. These guide telescopes have low magnification and a wide field of view, the latter being a desirable attribute for finding stars or other remote cosmic objects.
The parabolic shape of a primary mirror has a basic failing in that it produces a narrow field of view. This can be a problem when one wishes to observe extended celestial objects. To overcome this difficulty, most large reflectors now have a modified Cassegrain design. The central area of the primary mirror has its shape deepened from that of a paraboloid, and the secondary mirror is configured to compensate for the altered primary. The result is the Ritchey-Chrétien design, which has a curved rather than a flat focus. Obviously, the photographic medium must be curved to collect high-quality images across the curved focal plane. The 1-metre telescope of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., was one of the early examples of this design.
The Schmidt telescope
The Ritchey-Chrétien design has a good field of view of about 1°. For some astronomical applications, however, photographing larger areas of the sky is mandatory. In 1930 Bernhard Schmidt, an optician at the Hamburg Observatory in Bergedorf, Ger., designed a catadioptric telescope that satisfied the requirement of photographing larger celestial areas. A catadioptric telescope design incorporates the best features of both the refractor and the reflector—i.e., it has both reflective and refractive optics. The Schmidt telescope has a spherically shaped primary mirror. Since parallel light rays that are reflected by the centre of a spherical mirror are focused farther away than those reflected from the outer regions, Schmidt introduced a thin lens (called the correcting plate) at the radius of curvature of the primary mirror. Since this correcting plate is very thin, it introduces little chromatic aberration. The resulting focal plane has a field of view several degrees in diameter. The diagram illustrates a typical Schmidt design.
The National Geographic Society–Palomar Observatory Sky Survey made use of a 1.2-metre (47-inch) Schmidt telescope to photograph the northern sky in the red and blue regions of the visible spectrum. The survey produced 900 pairs of photographic plates (about 7° by 7° each) taken from 1949 to 1956. Schmidt telescopes of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and of the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia have photographed the remaining part of the sky that cannot be observed from Palomar Observatory. (The survey undertaken at the latter included photographs in the infrared as well as in the red and blue spectral regions.)
Multimirror telescopes
The main reason astronomers build larger telescopes is to increase light-gathering power so that they can see deeper into the universe. Unfortunately, the cost of constructing larger single-mirror telescopes increases rapidly—approximately with the cube of the diameter of the aperture. Thus, in order to achieve the goal of increasing light-gathering power while keeping costs down, it has become necessary to explore new, more economical and nontraditional telescope designs.
The two 10-metre (33-foot) Keck Observatory multimirror telescopes represent such an effort. The first was installed on Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii in 1992, and a second telescope was completed in 1996. Each of the Keck telescopes comprises 36 contiguous adjustable mirror segments, all under computer control. Even-larger multimirror instruments are currently being planned by American and European astronomers.
Special types of optical telescopes
Solar telescopes
Either a refractor or a reflector may be used for visual observations of solar features, such as sunspots or solar prominences. Special solar telescopes have been constructed, however, for investigations of the Sun that require the use of such ancillary instruments as spectroheliographs and coronagraphs. These telescopes are mounted in towers and have very long focus objectives. Typical examples of tower solar telescopes are found at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California and the McMath-Hulbert Observatory in Michigan. The long focus objective produces a very good scale factor, which in turn makes it possible to look at individual wavelengths of the solar electromagnetic spectrum in great detail. A tower telescope has an equatorially mounted plane mirror at its summit to direct the sunlight into the telescope objective. This plane mirror is called a coelostat. Bernard Lyot constructed another type of solar telescope in 1930 at Pic du Midi Observatory in France. This instrument was specifically designed for photographing the Sun's corona (the outer layer), which up to that time had been successfully photographed only during solar eclipses. The coronagraph, as this special telescope is called, must be located at a high altitude to be effective. The high altitude is required to reduce the scattered sunlight, which would reduce the quality of the photograph. The High Altitude Observatory in Colorado and the Sacramento Peak Observatory in New Mexico have coronagraphs. Coronagraphs are also used on board satellites, such as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, that study the Sun.
Earth-orbiting space telescopes
While astronomers continue to seek new technological breakthroughs with which to build larger ground-based telescopes, it is readily apparent that the only solution to some scientific problems is to make observations from above Earth's atmosphere. A series of Orbiting Astronomical Observatories (OAOs) was launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The OAO launched in 1972—later named Copernicus—had an 81-cm (32-inch) telescope on board. The most sophisticated observational system placed in Earth orbit so far is the Hubble Space Telescope (HST; see photograph). Launched in 1990, the HST is essentially a telescope with a 2.4-metre (94-inch) primary mirror. It has been designed to enable astronomers to see into a volume of space 300 to 400 times larger than that permitted by other systems. At the same time, the HST is not impeded by any of the problems caused by the atmosphere. It is equipped with five principal scientific instruments: (1) a wide-field and planetary camera, (2) a faint-object spectrograph, (3) a high-resolution spectrograph, (4) a high-speed photometer, and (5) a faint-object camera. The HST was launched into orbit from the U.S. space shuttle at an altitude of more than 570 km (350 miles) above Earth. Shortly after its deployment in Earth orbit, HST project scientists found that a manufacturing error affecting the shape of the telescope's primary mirror severely impaired the instrument's focusing capability. The flawed mirror caused spherical aberration, which limited the ability of the HST to distinguish between cosmic objects that lie close together and to image distant galaxies and quasars. Project scientists devised measures that enabled them to compensate for the defective mirror and correct the imaging problem.
Astronomical transit instruments
These small but extremely important telescopes have played a vital role in mapping the celestial sphere. Astronomical transit instruments are usually refractors with apertures of 15 to 20 cm (6 to 8 inches). (Ole Rømer, a Danish astronomer, is credited with having invented this type of telescope system.) The main optical axis of the instrument is aligned on a north-south line such that its motion is restricted to the plane of the meridian of the observer. The observer's meridian is a great circle on the celestial sphere that passes through the north and south points of the horizon as well as through the zenith of the observer. Restricting the telescope to motion only in the meridian provides an added degree of stability, but it requires the observer to wait for the celestial object to rotate across his meridian. The latter process is referred to as transiting the meridian, from which the name of the telescope is derived. There are various types of transit instruments—for example, the transit circle telescope, the vertical circle telescope, and the horizontal meridian circle telescope. The transit circle determines the right ascension of celestial objects, while the vertical circle measures only their declinations. Transit circles and horizontal meridian circles measure both right ascension and declination at the same time. The final output data of all transit instruments are included in star or planetary catalogs.
One of the most accurate astronomical transit instruments in the world is the U.S. Naval Observatory's 15-cm transit circle telescope (see photograph). Other notable examples of this class of telescopes include the transit circle of the National Astronomical Observatory in Tokyo, the meridian circle of the Bordeaux Observatory in France, and the automatic meridian circle of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in the Canary Islands.
Another special type of telescopic instrument is the modern version of the astrolabe. Known as a prismatic astrolabe, it too is used for making precise determinations of the positions of stars and planets. It may sometimes be used inversely to determine the latitude and longitude of the observer, assuming the star positions are accurately known. The aperture of a prismatic astrolabe is small, usually only 8 to 10 cm (3 to 4 inches). A small pool of mercury and a refracting prism make up the other principal parts of the instrument. An image reflected off the mercury is observed along with a direct image to give the necessary position data. The most notable example of this type of instrument is the French-constructed Danjon astrolabe. During the 1970s, however, the Chinese introduced various innovations that resulted in a more accurate and automatic kind of astrolabe, which is now in use at the National Astronomical Observatories of China's headquarters in Beijing.B.L. Klock


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HANG TIME, Texas — It starts out like the beginning of an old joke.
You know, somebody says that as great as Bill Russell was in winning 11 championships with the Celtics, he'd have difficulty winning even one against today's class of NBA athletes.
Of course, goes the punchline, Russell will turn 79 on Tuesday.
But Antawn Jamison wasn't kidding when he told Dave McMenamin of ESPNLosAngeles.com that Michael Jordan could still play effectively in the league right now.
Jordan turns 50 on Feb. 17, coincidentally the day of the NBA All-Star Game.
"I wouldn't doubt that in the right situation with a LeBron (James) on his team or with a Kobe (Bryant) on this team, he could get you about 10 or 11 points, come in and play 15-20 minutes," said Antawn Jamison before the Lakers played the Bobcats on Friday. "I wouldn't doubt that at all, especially if he was in shape and injuries were prevented and things of that nature."
That's saying a lot, considering Jamison has Bryant on his team, and only averages 8.1 points per game in 20.5 minutes per game and he's "only" 36 years old.
Jordan averaged 20 points in 37 minutes per game in his 15th and final season in the league before retiring for good at age 40.
Would it ever happen? Could it ever happen? Other than Larry Bird actually sprouting real wings, is there anything you might imagine that is more preposterous?
Remember, it was Jordan himself who raised the possibility near the end of his challenging, often vitriolic speech at the 2009 Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
"One day you might look up and see me playing the game at 50," Jordan said. "Oh, don't laugh. Never say never. Because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion."
We know that on the court there were never any limits or fears to Jordan, only challenges — some real, some imagined — that he used to constantly lift himself to a higher plane.
That is precisely the reason I have a standing bet with my good friend Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle that was made when Jordan hung up his Wizards jersey. I said then I didn't believe His Airness was finished and one day we'd see him back on the court in an NBA game. At the start of each new season, Jonathan tries to get me to surrender. Then along comes word that the owner of the Bobcats showed up at practice one day in December to show them how it's done. Or maybe just to feed his ego.
But after taking on some of his kids — Gerald Henderson, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Bismack Biyombo — in a little one-on-one, it's always clear that the competitive spark is just below the surface and the skills are still there.
"He's still got it. He can still shoot," Henderson said. "I don't know about his defense, but he can still score."
Biyombo: "He's pretty good."
So we mark down Biyombo for understatement of the year, consider the opinion of Jamison and ponder the possibilities.
I once asked Hakeem Olajuwon, who just turned 50, if he thought he could still play in the league.
"Not full-time. But for a few minutes, yes," he insisted. " I'm in shape."
When a 50-year-old Clyde Drexler was asked the same question, he nodded his head. "Absolutely. I could go out there and run up and down the floor with those guys one night," he said laughing. "Then the next day I'd be in traction."
So what do we do with the Jordan question? Could he? Would he? Should he, as the old Nike slogan said, just do it?
I'll tell you one thing I'm not doing: Paying off Jonathan. Yet.


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Big Switch Networks Plugins for OpenStack Networking
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text: Little worlds inside clear acrylic spheres Posted by Miss Lyndall Phelps on November 25, 2012 • Comments (0) I've been doing some web research on particle detectors, they're all amazing. I love their subterranean quality, in that they're either under the ground, sea or ice. All rely on darkness in order for light to occur which indicates a particle has been detected. I definitely want to investigate working with light and the circular form (which is repeated in all detectors), hopefully in an underground location, if we can find one! Before our next meeting I want to experiment with making some objects that reflect my thoughts – little worlds inside clear acrylic spheres. Have just worked out how to include light, in a 'Heath Robinson' kind of way, using an LED light and watch battery, ingenious! Materials wise I'll use clear glass beads and diamantes, to play with the light; there's also something slightly naughty about using low tech materials to reflect cutting edge technology and research. I'm curious to know what Ben will think of them? Credit: IceCube Collaboration Credit: Propriety KM3NeT Collaboration. Source. Lyndall


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Table Talk
A petty officer is gunned down in a billionaire's Ferrari and the investigation leads the NCIS team to discover a link to a man Gibbs (Mark Harmon, right) was named after. Billy Dee Williams (left) guest stars as a World War II veteran, Leroy Jethro Moore. Photo: Cliff Lipson/CBS ©2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved


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I've loved Yayoi Kusama Dot exhibitions ever since learning of her work back in art school. This past summer we visited the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and I was excited to see her Mirror Room.
But this particular exhibit at the Queensland Art Gallery might be my favorite yet. It started off as a completely white room and she allowed kids visiting the exhibit to become artists themselves and completely cover the room in colored stickers. Absolute amazingness.
{top 3 images for Queensland Art Gallery by Mark Sherwood
bottom image by Stuart Addelsee}
all via inspiration lab
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Infinite Color + Play
6 comments:
- engagement rings said...
Wow, this is awesome!
- February 11, 2012 at 8:04 AM
- prom dresses said...
So dazzling, a great job!
- February 17, 2012 at 3:53 AM
- Adie Andrews said...
That is absolutely amazing, all those colourful spots how awesome. Greets chcek in report london
- March 6, 2012 at 3:04 AM
- Jessica said...
Wow! I dreamed of doing just that when I was a kid!
- October 9, 2012 at 2:22 AM
- mary lin said...
Very creative, i even can't believe it is true. The author must be very love life. As work from the picture out. Thank you so much for sharing! I can't wait to take a peek, love your blog and style
- October 24, 2012 at 4:09 AM
- 15 anos said...
It's surprising how people can get creative.Love this! Those are gorgeous!
- March 11, 2013 at 11:25 PM
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Full-Frame 35mm Slide Scanning at 6K resolution
Slide Transfer onto USB-Stick or Hard Drive
Your 35mm slides get scanned full-frame, and at exceptionally high resolution of 4400 dot-per-inch (no interpolation). That is: 6,048 by 4,032 pixels at 36-bit equaling 12-bits for each of the RGB colors. This equals a 24.6-megapixel resolution. Our uncommonly high 6K resolution has over 6,000 horizontal pixels and allows for image archival and improved image printing.


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Immerse yourself in the magic of remote rural Vietnam, between the coast and the mountains. This region of northern Central Vietnam is newly discovered by tourism, mainly due to the discovery of spectacular caves in the area. Take yourself on a trip into a photographer's paradise.
The Farmstay's French Colonial style accommodation opened in 2010, set in the idyllic surroundings of rice paddy fields on the edge of the famous Phong Nha–Ke Bang National Park, just off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It is the ideal base for wild adventures that you have only dreamed about… or simply take time to experience local village life or chill out in a hammock by the pool. And all of this at an affordable price.
We are a small hotel consisting of private double and twin rooms and family rooms, all with newly renovated private bathrooms, with some rooms adjacent to the swimming pool and others overlooking the surrounding rice paddies, farmlands and mountains.
We no longer have dormitories as they were moved to Easy Tiger Hostel in 2013.
The amenities and services at the Farmstay include:


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Watch Kate McKinnon's 'SNL' Debut as Penelope Cruz in Sofia Vergara's Pantene Commercial
While this weekend's episode of 'Saturday Night Live' was a big moment for host Sofia Vergara, it also marked the debut of new cast member Kate McKinnon on the show.
The 27-year-old, who first made a name for herself on the LOGO network's 'Big Gay Sketch Show,' impersonated Penelope Cruz in a Pantene commercial with Vergara. While the 'Modern Family' star is beloved for her heavy Spanish accent, it was Cruz who found the words difficult to pronounce.
All she had to do was read the script about all the harmful ingredients Pantene Pro-V doesn't contain, but she just couldn't pull it off. How embarrassing for Cruz, right? Seriously, who can't pronounce "alkyl benzene sulfonate" perfectly the first time? Sofia had no problem with her lines.
So, now that you've seen McKinnon in action, are you happy with the show's new edition?