text:
For our study this morning we come to the closing portion of the seventh chapter of Acts, and this is not only the closing of the seventh chapter of Acts, but it's the closing of the life of Stephen. This is a very dramatic and a very interesting and a very instructional part of the Word of God. I think very often it is passed over and kind of filed because, as so many passages, we know a little bit about it, therefore, we think we know everything about it.
And even I find myself having difficulty narrowing it down. There is much theology that can be taught from this, and I'll just trust God that we'll get back here again and again as days go by and not try to do it all this morning. But in these verses that deal with the stoning of Stephen, what hit me most dominantly as I read it and reread it and read it and meditated on it and studied it, what I kept seeing, and I always look for some common factor that ties a passage of Scripture together, so that we can consider a reigning thought or something to hang our thoughts on, the thing that kept coming up was the tremendous contrast that weaves through this passage, the contrast between a Spirit-filled man dying and the hate-filled mob killing him.
Everything here is contrast. And the contrast is extreme. It appears almost to be the contrast between heaven and hell, if I could put it as extreme as possible. And the real victim of this passage is not Stephen. He is no victim at all. He wins. He dies, but he dies the victor. They live. They live the loser. The mob is the tragedy. Stephen's was the victory.
Now, you remember the circumstances, and if you have not been here the last couple of weeks and heard the sermon of Stephen and that which brought about the need for that sermon, then you're somewhat at a loss to get into this with all the intensity that's really in it. But let me just pick up some of the pieces so that you kind of feel your way into the text with a little bit of a running start.
The early church has grown. In the time of their growth, they have run into certain organizational problems. They therefore needed to select seven men who could handle some of the administration. They were men who had to be highly qualified spiritually, full of the Holy Ghost. They were men who needed to have good reputations, those kind of men who would be chosen by their peers to rule over them.
And of those men, one was chosen by the name of Stephen. He is listed first, indicating he may have been the first one chosen. He was ranking in terms of spiritual life. He was not a Jewish...I should say, he was not a Palestine Jew. He was a Grecian Jew. That is, he was a Jew that lived outside of Palestine. He was selected to be a key to the structure of the early church.
Now, he spent himself in preaching in synagogues in Jerusalem, but synagogues that were run by foreign Jews. When foreign Jews came to Jerusalem, they went to their own synagogues, where they could hear their own language. And so Stephen began to extend the gospel to these foreign Jews by preaching in these synagogues.
Well, he ran into a lot of reaction, and it was negative. And they came after him with accusations. They said, "Stephen, by offering us this Jesus Christ, and by giving us this new covenant, you're guilty of blaspheming God, Moses, the law and the Temple." And that's the big four in Judaism. You don't blaspheme those.
And so they indicted Stephen for blasphemy, and they brought him to trial before the council. And in the chapter that we have just begun to study, chapter 7, he gives his great defense. He defends himself to the council. And all through chapter 7 he is defending himself, but not only that. At the same time that he gives his defense, he indicts Israel for the execution of Messiah, and he also presents Jesus as Messiah. By the time he is done with his defense, they are on trial. He has accused them of blasphemy.
He says, "I believe in God," in effect, in his sermon, "you don't. I believe in Moses, you don't. I believe in the law, you break it all the time. I believe in the Temple, if you'd have believed in the Temple, it wouldn't have been destroyed. You're now on your third temple. Guess who doesn't believe in the Temple? God has to keep wiping it out." And so he turns the tables completely on them and indicts them, and it's a building thing.
It just kind of builds. And you can see first there's a little agitation. Then there's a little more agitation. Then there's steam, and then there's smoke and then there's fire, you see. And so when you come to chapter 7, verse 51, Stephen climaxes out by saying, "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears." What he means by that is, "You won't bow to God, and secondly your religion is only external."
"You do always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them who showed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom you now are the betrayers and murderers, who have received the law." You have no excuses. You knew the truth "by the disposition of angels," and you haven't kept it.
And so the thing climaxes out in a fantastic indictment where they are the blasphemers, not Stephen. And it's a masterpiece of a sermon. And by the time that comes out, they are in fury. They are in frenzy. And contrasted to their fury and their rage and their frenzy is the majestic calm of Stephen. He stands there serene, absolutely in control, sustained by the Lord, while they are torn into shreds. And so that's the picture of contrast that begins to weave itself through these few verses.
And really what it boils down to, in a general sense, is the contrast between a hostile, Christ-hating world and the gentle, loving, Spirit-filled servant of God who confronts that world. The world gives its worst. The Christian shows his best. Stephen had confronted the world boldly, dynamically. He said the things that needed to be said, even though they were painful, even though they hurt. Even though he knew they were going to cost him his life, he said them because he was expendable for the sake of the truth. They killed him, but God glorified him.
Now, let's follow these contrasts. And if you follow along with us in the text and on that little piece of paper, I'm sure you'll be able to see what is unfolding in this most dramatic picture.
The first contrast between the Christ-hating mob and the man of God is the contrast between full of anger and full of the Holy Spirit. Verse 54, "When they heard these things," and I think that Stephen's sermon was interrupted before it was ever finished, "when they heard these things," you see, they always prided themselves on their obedience to God, worship of God. "We love the law. We love the prophets," and all this. And he had just torn that to bits. "And when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart." That means they were sawn in half.
You see, at first when they listened to him, "Oh, yeah, he's right, sure," and they were nodding, probably, because all he was doing was reciting their history. And they had to agree. And he did that purposely, to keep their attention. But then as the drift of the argument became clear, their interest began to change, and pretty soon it turned into horror, and then it turned into fury. And they were cut to the heart by now. They were sawn in half. The great saw of conviction had ripped them right through the middle, and they knew everything he said was true, and they were ripped apart.
And, you know, in this kind of a rage, it says in verse 54, "they gnashed on him with their teeth." They began to grind their teeth at him. This is the picture of rage mixed with frustration. They didn't know how to give vent to their wrath. And so they just stood there and ground their teeth at him. And, you know, I couldn't help but read that, "they gnashed on him with their teeth," and think they were already in a little bit of hell. Because that's how many people are going to spend forever, just grinding their teeth in fury at God.
You say, "What makes you think that?" Listen as I read Luke 13:28. I'm going to read several passages. Write them down if you want to look them up later, but don't try to follow. I'll go a little quickly. Jesus, speaking to Israel, Luke 13:28, "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and you yourselves thrown out."
See, the Jews had waited all along for the kingdom. They had dreamed of the kingdom. The King came, offered them the kingdom, and what did they do to the King? They killed the King. They forfeited the kingdom. Jesus says, "You're going to spend forever grinding your teeth at God when you see you didn't get into the kingdom."
And in Matthew we have it again, in chapter 8 and verse 12. Listen to these words. They're fearful words. "But the sons of the kingdom," you know who that is? That's Israel, the rightful heirs to the kingdom. "Shall be cast into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Then you go on in Matthew to chapter 13, and you have it all over again. Whenever you hear something once in the Bible, it's absolutely important. Whenever you hear it repeated over and over again, it is extremely important. Matthew, chapter 13, and verse 42, well, 41, "The Son of Man shall send forth His angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom all those that offend and them who do iniquity and cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." You know, hell's going to be full of mad people, angry people. Verse 50, "and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
Chapter 22 of Matthew, verse 13, Jesus isn't finished. He says, "Then said the king to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, cast him into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'" You find it again in chapter 24 of Matthew as He's still talking about the kingdom. Verse 51, "shall cut him asunder, appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Hell is going to be full of people forever gnashing their teeth at God in fury. And these people were already so hell-oriented that they were already that far along that when they faced the truth of Christ again, they got mad. And you know something? This tells us a little bit about the kind of anger it is, because they could've repented. But they didn't. It's not the kind of anger that leads to repentance. It's the kind of anger that remains bitter and hateful.
You say, "Well, isn't it true that if people go to hell, if they were given a second chance, wouldn't they want to get out?" I don't believe they would. If a man won't respond to the loving grace of God, he'll never respond to God's judgment. It'll only make him mad. He'll only hate God all the more.
You say, "Is there any evidence for that?" I believe there is, in the Book of Revelation. This is a footnote, but let me maintain it for a moment. In Revelation, chapter 9, verse 20, and I'll read several verses from Revelation, it says, "And the rest of the men who were not killed by these plagues," and that means a third of the world. It just has talked about the sixth trumpet during the Tribulation, when a third of the world is going to be killed by fire, smoke and brimstone. And then he says, "They were not killed, yet repented not." Verse 21, "Neither repented they of their murders, sorceries," that's pharmacia in the Greek. It's the word for drugs. "Nor of fornication," sexual sin, "nor of their thefts."
You see, even after the horror of judgment, when God wipes out one-third of the earth, they're not going to repent. They're only going to get mad. In Revelation 11:15, "The seventh angel sounded. There came voices from heaven saying, 'The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.' The four and twenty elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshipped God and said, 'We give thanks.'" And all this praise is going on. And verse 18 says, "And the nations were angry." They get mad.
But the classic example is in chapter 16, when final great devastating judgment pours out of God on that great Tribulation population. It says in verse 8, "And the fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire." The sun's going to burn the skin right off men. "And men were scorched with great heat," listen to this, "and repented?" No. "And blasphemed the name of God. And they repented not to give Him glory."
Verse 10, "And the fifth angel poured out his bowl upon the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues for pain." Absolute pitch black all over the world. You say, "They'll repent then." It says in 11, "And blasphemed the God of heaven and repented not." If grace and love don't bring repentance, judgment never does. It only makes them mad.
Jesus had offered grace upon grace upon grace. Stephen came along and said, "You've rejected it so long, you've had it." And that only made them all the more furious, and so they began to grind their teeth. Hell is going to be full of people who are very, very angry.
Now, I believe that these leaders were apostates. I believe that these leaders were past feeling. I believe they were so hard, they were rocks. I believe they were damned by their continuous willful rejection, and now they were locked in a judicial kind of blindness. You see, when you willfully reject, willfully reject, willfully reject, then God moves in and judicially blinds.
In the case of Israel, it's reiterated in Romans, chapter 11, verses 7 through 10, and that's a very familiar passage and one which we should note with great care. In Romans 11, verse 7, it says, "What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded." Somebody blinded them. "As it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber." You say, "Did God blind Israel?" Absolutely. But only after they willfully blinded themselves. Just like Pharaoh. It says, "Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart, Pharaoh hardened his heart," bang, "God hardened Pharaoh's heart."
You see, grace runs its course, and then it runs out, and God moves in judicially and confirms that blindness. "God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, ears that they should not hear. And David said, 'Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompense unto them. Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back always.'"
These people had heard the truth. They had heard Jesus. They had seen His miracles. They had heard the apostles. They'd seen their miracles. They'd heard the witness of the early church, the message and the miracles of Peter and John, the message, the miracles of Stephen. They had seen it all, and they had rejected and rejected and rejected. And Stephen here is simply now not inviting them anymore, but indicting them. And the point of his sermon here is to bring about judgment. That's why you don't hear any invitation in it. It's indictment. It's giving a basis for judgment.
And they reacted as all people do to judgment. They got mad. They got mad. You see, even Paul said, "It is the grace of God that bringeth," what? "Salvation." Judgment upon an apostate only makes him all the more angry. And yet, in all their fury, they were at least direct enough, as we shall see in a moment, to maintain some kind of logic in the execution of Stephen. And so they got mad. They gnashed on him with their teeth. The storm in all of its fury begins to break on Stephen's head.
In their madness, they were speechless with rage. They couldn't even find words to give vent to their burning hatred. All they could do in their frenzy was grind their teeth, an expression of impotent rage, of inexpressible frustration. And I don't think this was a sudden outburst. I think it was a growing thing that gradually grew higher and higher as Stephen continued to speak, and actually it never died away until Stephen lay before them, horribly mangled, blood-spattered and dead.
You see, these dignitaries had never quite faced such a prisoner as Stephen. He spoke like a judge, not a prisoner. He seemed to be an accuser rather than the accused. And he hit the nail right on the head. He hit them right where they lived. And he was right on. And they didn't want anybody to expose and unbare their sins. And so they reacted satanically.
You'll remember that Herod killed John the Baptist because John pointed to Herod's sin and rebuked him for it. You'll remember that the Pharisees nailed Jesus to a cross because He demanded...He denounced, I should say, and exposed their hypocrisy. The Jews reacted in the same manner toward the apostles. Stephen was the first of multitudes of men who, in their unflinching exposure of the sins of others, have died for it. And so they were mad, full of anger.
You know, the Bible warns people like this. If you're getting to the place in your life where you just get mad when somebody tells you about Christ, you're standing on the brink of judgment. The Bible says in Hebrews 3, "Harden not your hearts. Don't be hardened to the deceitfulness of sin lest you obtain an evil heart of unbelief." So they were hard.
But, in contrast, I love this, they were full of anger, but Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit. Look at verse 55. "And he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven." Isn't it a beautiful contrast? They were completely ripped apart. They were torn up. Stephen was together. He was full of the Holy Spirit.
And I like this thing. It says in verse 55, "But he, being." It's saying this, "But he, being continually full of the Holy Spirit." Stephen didn't have to make any adjustment in his life to die. You see? He didn't have to get it all together in the last moment. It had been together for a long time. He was being full of the Holy Spirit. He was full of the Holy Spirit in chapter 6. That's why they chose him. He's still full of the Holy Spirit in chapter 7.
And that's what Paul was saying, you see, in Ephesians 5:18. When Paul gave the command, he said this: "Be filled with the Spirit." The actual Greek is, "Be being kept filled with the Spirit." Be being. We are to be continually being controlled by the Spirit. And that was Stephen. He was full of the Spirit all the time. It wasn't some sudden shot. It was a preexisting, permanent state.
Some people would tell us that if you're filled with the Spirit, you do ecstatic things. If that were true and you obeyed the Scripture, then you'd be doing nothing but that all the time, because this is not a sudden shot experience. It is that which is to be the continuous pattern of the life of the Christian. Unfortunately for most of us, we yield and then we don't yield, we yield and then we don't yield, and it's kind of a rollercoaster thing. But Stephen was being full of the Holy Spirit.
And to be filled with the Spirit, beloved, we've talked about this many times, let me just say this, means to be controlled by the Spirit, yielded to Him. That's all it means. And Stephen was controlled by the Spirit. And because the Spirit was in control, you see, the normal reactions didn't take over. You see, the Spirit was in control. And so he responded in a godly, trusting, faithful fashion. He didn't respond in the flesh. He responded in the Spirit. And I'll tell you, that's his strength and that's our strength.
There's another thing that comes to my mind here that I want you to see that I think is important. I believe, and this is a footnote, but it's important, I believe that there's a special work of the Holy Spirit for a Christian in a crisis. All right? You got that much? I believe there's a special work of the Spirit for a Christian in a crisis.
And I believe that we do not have to think, now, watch this one, we do not have to think, "I cannot get into a real tough situation, I can't really face the world and be bold and forceful for Christ because I'll never be able to hack it." I believe it is just at that point that the Spirit of God is doubly poured out in a double portion upon you.
You say, "Where do you get that?" Well, if you know me very well, you know I got it out of a verse somewhere, and it's I Peter 4:14. It says this. "If you be reproached," and he's talking about slamming yourself up against the world, against the system, and saying what's true, "If you be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are you." Now you say, "You're kidding. Who's happy? Why would you ever be happy?" Because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. In other words, there's some special divine intervention of the Spirit of God.
Have you ever heard anybody talk about dying grace? I used to wonder. I have read literally thousands of pages of historical information on the death of Christians and the death of martyrs, everywhere from the early church right on through to the present day, when people were being martyred in China, when people were being martyred in other places in our current, modern world for the cause of Christ. And in reading all of this, I have never one time read of a Christian who died a raving, screaming maniac. Have you?
There is something that God does in, I believe, the willing death of a believer in the face of persecution, that grants to him the adequacy to die giving God the glory. And I think that's what God bestowed upon Stephen in a double sense. So I'm saying that to say this. Don't ever shirk from being bold in the world for fear that you don't have the resources to handle it. It's at that point that God pours out a double portion of His Spirit to make it adequate.
So many times we look at the extreme situations as to how we've performed in the minimal situations. And, you know, if we did that, we'd certainly all be defeated, because we blow it so many times. But I believe it's when we really hit the world, and we are totally helpless and at the mercy of them, that God intervenes.
The apostle Paul had so much going for him, and yet he knew this. He said, "It's when I am the weakest that I am truly," what? "Strong." It's when I get into a situation I can't do anything about that God just pours His strength into me. You see? So he says, "You know what I get excited about? I don't get excited about being healthy. I get excited about being sick. I get excited about my infirmities. I get excited about persecution. I get excited about being beaten up. That just gets me excited, because when I am weak, then I am strong."
And I believe it is at that point that when a Christian will face his world, just believe God, that if you'll go out there and be bold in the world, He'll give you the Spirit of glory to rest upon you so you'll be adequate. Now, when I say confront the world, I was talking about this in a convention I was in in Portland. This one fellow came to me afterwards, and he said, "When you mean confront the world, do you just mean keep talking about Jesus all the time, like if a guy in my shop swears, I run over and say, 'Don't swear, because the Lord isn't pleased,' and that I just run around and do that? I mean, is that what you mean?" And I said, "No." I said, "You would just really become obnoxious if you did that."
Here's what I mean when I say boldness. I mean this. Number one, plan to create opportunities to communicate Christ. Okay? Number two, when the opportunity comes, here's the key, don't water down the message. You got it? Be bold in the presentation. Stephen didn't run in there, knock down the doors of the Sanhedrin, and say, "All right, you guys, shut up, I've got something to say." He was invited. He spoke in response to their questions. So did Peter. You earn the right to say something, and when you say it, boldness is saying what must be said.
When you confront the world, you speak the truth. It's so easy to water down the thing and make it into nothing. We need to speak the truth. And Stephen spoke the truth. And Stephen received, I think, a special, let's call it special grace, for this occasion. You trust God for it. Stick your neck out. Be bold. Let the world hit back. And watch how God sustains you. I promise you He'll do it. So don't shirk the responsibility because you don't feel adequate. When you're in your worst mess, you're strong.
All right, so the contrast is so exciting. Here are they, full of anger, and here is Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, calm, collected, stable, serene. A second contrast comes out of that: spiritual blindness and spiritual sight. They can't see anything. He sees everything.
Now, let's first of all look at his spiritual sight. It's so good. Verse 55, here he is and they're just grinding their teeth and he can see the fury coming. And what does he do? The circumstances are pretty rough. The first thing you want to do in a tough situation is get your eyes off the tough situation. True? If you've got a bad situation, don't look at your situation. Look up. And that's exactly what he did.
"He, being full of the Holy Spirit," what's the next two words? "Looked up." That's good. If you run around looking down all the time, you're never going to get over your problem. Stephen looked up. You say, "What was he looking for?" I know what he was looking for. I know very well what he was looking for.
You say, "How do you know?" Because I read in Acts, chapter 1, verses 10 and 11, these words. In verse 9, Jesus ascended into heaven. It says, "And while they looked steadfastly, He went up. Two angels appeared in white," verse 11 says they said this, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus who is taken up from you shall so come in like manner as you've seen Him go."
Where did Jesus go? What do you think Stephen was looking for? He was looking for Jesus. You know who he saw when he got up there? Jesus. Look at it. Verse 55, "Looked up into heaven." Heaven just opened up for his view. God pulled back the curtains, "and he saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." He saw what he was looking for.
I mean, the situation got tough, so he looked to the Lord. That's the only place to look. He had sight. Well, he'd always had pretty good spiritual sight ever since he met Christ, but this was something like he'd never had. I mean, there are only a few in Scripture that actually got a glimpse right into heaven. Ezekiel saw the glory of God. Isaiah saw the glory of God. Remember, in chapter 6 of Isaiah, "The year king Uzziah died I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and his train (of his robe) filled the temple." And he goes into that fabulous thing. The cherubim were there, and all that deal.
Paul saw heaven. He was taken up into heaven, II Corinthians 12. And dear old John on the Isle of Patmos. He had one vision of the glory of God. It was something else, wasn't it? Read it in chapters 4 and 5 of the Book of Revelation. So there've been a few that saw the glory of God, and here's Stephen. And he looks up, and he sees the glory of God. You see, God only manifests Himself in His glory, light, the Shekinah Glory of God. He saw that Shekinah Glory, and to the right of the Shekinah was Jesus, standing. He saw what he wanted to see. He didn't look in vain. God gave him a glorious revelation.
You say...well, something interesting here. And that is the fact that in the Book of Hebrews, it says, "After Christ had accomplished redemption, He went to heaven, to the right of the Father, and He sat down." You say, "What's He doing up?" Well, He sat down in terms of redemption, but He always gets up when His children get in trouble. Somebody said He stands up to help the saints and welcome them home. Maybe He was standing up ready to greet Stephen, as well as help him.
He is seated in terms of His redemptive work. It is accomplished. He is standing in the sense of His sustaining high priestly work. That's still going on, you see? So He gets up to help His own. Stephen looks up and He's standing up. That indicates action, doesn't it? He didn't look up and see Him sitting there resting. He saw Him standing up. "Stephen, I'm coming to your rescue."
So Stephen had spiritual sight. What a vision. And he just lost all the consciousness of what's going on around him. I mean, he was so absorbed in looking into heaven it was absolutely fantastic. Here's the glory of God, and Jesus is standing on the right hand.
And you know something, he got lost in the deal and he started to yell. Stephen. And you know what he yelled? It's terrific. Verse 56, he said, "Behold." You know what that means? "Hey, you guys, look at this." And the only people around are his enemies, and they're in a frenzy. "Look at that," he says. "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." And that did it. I mean, they could take so much, and that was the coup de grace. That was the final straw. They absolutely lost themselves at that point.
You say, "Why?" Listen to this. These words were familiar words to that council. What Stephen said took their minds right straight back to a conversation they had with another prisoner. They had this other prisoner one time on trial. And the same group here, and the trial was in the same place, most likely. They had accused Him of blasphemy, too. And they brought in false witnesses, and the false witnesses didn't come across. And there wasn't enough evidence to kill this one.
So the high priest finally just said to this other prisoner, "You tell me plainly. Are You the Messiah?" And do you remember what that prisoner said? "I am." And in Mark 14:62, this is what He said after He said, "I am." "And you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of the Almighty." Who said that? Jesus said it. And they said, "Real funny. You, seated at the right hand of God?" He says, "I am the Messiah. You'll see Me seated at the right hand of God." And they killed Him for such blasphemy.
You know what Stephen says? "You know what I see? I see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God." Oh. That's what they killed Jesus for claiming. Now Stephen verifies that it is true. No wonder it says in verse 57, "They stopped their ears and screamed and ran after him." You see? Stephen had hit the nail on the head.
And, of course, they had to kill Stephen. I mean, they either had to kill Stephen or admit that they were wrong in killing Jesus, right? Because Stephen is making the same claim for Jesus that Jesus made for Himself, that "I am who I claim to be, and I have a seat on the right hand of the Father, and I'm going there." And they killed Him for saying it, so they've got to kill Stephen for saying it, too.
Oh, they were furious. It was blasphemy that Jesus even said He'd be there, and Stephen says, "I see Him, and He is there." That's the first statement in Scripture presenting Christ at the right hand of the Father. He said He was going back there, and here's proof positive. He's there. He's there. Stephen saw Him there. Whenever the believer gets in trouble, He gets up. He must be up a lot. That's okay. One of these days, He can sit forever. And so they were furious.
This was the most blatant, final blasphemy. And unless they were willing to admit their former decision regarding Jesus was wrong and they had, in fact, killed their Messiah, they had to kill Stephen. And so Stephen had spiritual sight and they were stone blind.
Verse 57, "Then they cried out with a loud voice." They just started screaming, you know, just yelling. They couldn't stand this. And they slammed their hands over their ears. That is not exactly open-mindedness. "And they ran upon Stephen with one accord." They were together on that one. Blind, blind, blind. Jesus called them blind leaders of the blind, and they would both fall into the ditch. They always resist God's truth, verse 51, always, always, always. And here they hear God's truth again, and what do they do? Slam their hands over their ears. Now, that's ridiculous.
You say, "If you were arguing with somebody over a cause, and there were valid points on your side, and the guy did that, you'd think he was an idiot." They didn't want God's truth. They never had wanted God's truth. They'd resisted the Holy Spirit all along, killed God's messengers, killed His Messiah, rejected His law. This is par for the course.
At the end of the Book of Acts, the apostle Paul makes some statements that are so interesting in regard to this. Paul says, really, taking it from Isaiah, in Acts 28:26, quoting Isaiah, "Go unto this people and say, 'Hearing you shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing you shall see and not perceive.' For the heart of this people is made fat, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed, lest they should see with their eyes.'" They close their own eyes. "And hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." They close up. They don't even want to know the truth. And so God confirms them judiciously in their ignorance.
And so they didn't hear, and they were classic apostates. They were what II Peter 2:20 says when it says they had known the truth but they had gone back. They were dogs returning to their vomit. II Peter 2:22. They were, Hebrews 6, people who knew the truth, seen the miracles, been a part of all of it, and they had rejected it, and they had fallen away and it was impossible to renew them to repentance, seeing that they crucified the Son of God and put Him to an open shame.
They were wild. They were derisive. Their reason was gone. They saw only fury. It says, "They ran." The word is "rushed." Interesting, here's a footnote for you. The word "ran" is the same word exactly that's used of the pigs that were demon possessed that ran off the cliff in Mark 5. It's also the very same word used in Acts 19 of the mad rush of the mob at Ephesus upon the Christians. They were a demonic mob. In fury, they just ran at Stephen. And so the contrast.
And that led to the next contrast, death and life. They were killing. For them, it was death. But for Stephen it was life. They thought they were killing him, but it was only just giving him a little trip into eternal life. Verse 58, "They cast him out of the city, and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul."
Now, there are several legal things they did. Leviticus 24:14 said that you had to be stoned outside the city, so they had the presence of mind to take him out of the city. Secondly, Leviticus 24:16 said stoning was the punishment for blasphemy, so they were right on that count, at least determining that this was blasphemy. The third thing was that you could never execute anybody unless you had two or three witnesses, and apparently they managed to get two or three guys that would be the witnesses.
Deuteronomy 17:7 says, "The hand of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people." So the man who witnessed had to be the executioner as well. That's a very wise law. People thought twice before they accused somebody.
Now, how did they stone him? Well, the Mishna, the Jewish codification of law, tells us. There's a little paragraph here, and I'll read it to you. "The drop from the stoning place was twice the height of a man. It was a precipice of about 10 feet plus. Rocks below. One of the witnesses pushes the criminal off from behind so he falls face forward onto the rocks. Then he is turned over on his back. If he dies from the fall, that is sufficient." That's for sure. "If not"...that's what it says. "If not, the second witness takes a large stone and drops it on his heart. If this cause death, it is sufficient. If not, he is then stoned by all the congregation of Israel." Now, that was the method of stoning.
Well, they wanted to do it up, and do it up right, so they stripped for action. The witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet. They took off whatever might bind them so they could really let it fly. This gives you a little idea of the fury of these people. It wasn't just to kill him. It was to vent the fury that was in them. This is how much they hated everything he stood for. And it wasn't really Stephen they hated. Who did they really hate? They hated Jesus. And Stephen was doing what Paul said. He was filling up in his body the afflictions of Christ. And so they stoned him.
Verse 59 says, "And they stoned Stephen." Notice that the man who was standing there was Saul. The fact that he was the guy standing in the front where they put their garments is a fairly good indication that he may have been the ringleader in the whole thing. And since Stephen had been arguing in the synagogue of the people from Cilicia, and Paul was from Cilicia, it's very likely, as we said before, that he was arguing with Paul, and that Paul, being the kind of activist that he was, was probably heading up this whole reaction to Stephen. And so they killed him.
Death satisfied them. They wanted death. But for Stephen it wasn't death. It was life. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead," what? "Yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." There's no death. It's simply going from one thing to the next. And as I've said many times before, if you're a Christian, the biggest change has already happened. Death isn't going to be as big a change as your salvation was. Think about that.
You say, "Well, I thought when you died your spirit went into limbo." I don't find any verse in my Bible that talks about limbo. There is no limbo. Somebody said, "Well, don't you go to purgatory for a while?" You find the word "purgatory" in the Bible and you will be one in all humanity who found it. There is no limbo in the Bible. There is no purgatory. You say, "Well, what about soul sleep?" You can't find soul sleep in the Bible either.
Stephen looked up in death and he said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." And there's no answer that says, "See you in a thousand years." Stephen knew who waited for him, just like Jesus knew who waited for Him on the cross, when He said, "Father, into Thy hands," what? "I commend My spirit." Stephen knew who was waiting. He saw Him up there. Don't tell me that the believer's going to look to Jesus in an hour like that and then be separated from Him for some vast period of time or going to have to earn his way into His presence. Don't tell me that. That's foreign to all of Scripture.
Don't tell me that the little girl that I read about on her deathbed talking to her parents just in the moment of death expressed to her parents that she saw the face of Jesus, and His arms were outstretched to receive her. Don't tell me that that isn't the true hope that a Christian has. Don't tell me that I'm going to go to some strange place for X number of years in oblivion. What for? It's purposeless.
The apostle Paul said in II Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 8, "Absent from the body is present with the Lord." And I love what he said in Philippians 1:23. Listen. He says, "For I am in a strait between two. I'm trapped. I've got two good things." He says this. "I have a desire to depart and be with Christ," which is far better than the other alternative. You say, "If you depart, where are you going to be?" With Christ. There's no gap. There's no lost time, lost space interval.
They were killing him, but look at it. Stephen was calling on God and saying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." What is the spirit of a man? It's just the immaterial part of him, the inner man. It's just all I am without my body, which, believe it or not, is a whole lot. It's the real me.
I mean, you can cut off my arm and I'm still the real me. You can cut off my leg and I'm still the real me. You keep going, you're going to get to me. But I am the immaterial me that lives in a body. But even if you kill the body, you haven't killed me. And it's the real me, with all my consciousness, that is going to go into the presence of God. There's just going to be one thing subtracted from the real me, S-I-N. Hallelujah. And I'm going to be with Jesus.
This week, we've had some dear friends go to be with the Lord. Pearl Genette, a young 16-year-old by the name of Janet Stewart who came here last Sunday to spend Christmas with her family and with us here at Grace and then that evening went to be with the Lord. And Charles Gray's funeral the other day, we knew where he was. He's with the Lord. We have that hope.
And so Stephen gives us even greater hope by saying, "Lord, receive my spirit. I'm coming." And the Lord's standing up ready to receive him. Don't let anybody tell you there's any such thing as purgatory. There's not. Nor any other waiting place. And so he was entering into the eternal life that he hoped for in his heart.
And that leads us to the last contrast. Death and life, and then hate and love. Oh, they were such a hating mob. They hated him so much, because they hated Jesus. They were venting such venom and fury. Their hate is seen in just the way they stoned him. They took their clothes off so that they could blast him. And you'll notice that it's interesting that it says in 58, "and cast him out of the city and stoned him," and it's in the linear tense. And it's also linear in verse 59, "they kept on stoning him." Which means the fall didn't kill him, and the first stone dropped on his heart didn't kill him. That meant the whole crowd got in and just kept pummeling him with stones. They hated him.
But I want you to see the contrast of the love in the heart of this man. "And he kneeled down." He somehow got himself into a praying position under all that. "And cried with a loud voice." He shouted it, and I think he probably not only wanted God to hear it, but he wanted them to hear it. "And he cried out, 'Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." God, be merciful to them. See, boy, that's something. That's something. You'd think the guy would say something else besides that.
You know, there was an old prophet in the Old Testament, II Chronicles 24, by the name of Zechariah, son of Jehoiada. And Zechariah was both prophet and priest, and he got into a little trouble, and they...the Jews decided to kill him. This is just another one of the prophets they killed. And they killed him between the altar and the sanctuary in the Temple. So they were really uptight at him. They didn't even have the presence of mind to drag him out of town. They did it right in the Temple.
And as Zechariah was breathing his last breath under the stones, you know what he prayed? II Chronicles 24:22, here was his words. "Jehovah, look upon it and require it," which being interpreted means, "God, get them." Now, that's a similar circumstance, but a very opposite prayer. I like the grace of Stephen, don't you? Stephen says, "Father, forgive them." Hey, a Christian can only love like that. You know that? Only because the love of Christ was shed abroad in his heart.
When George Wishart, who was a wonderful Christian, was to be executed for his faith, the executioner hesitated, because he had such a magnetic and beautiful character that he resisted killing him. Wishart, the historians tell us, went over to his executioner and kissed him on the cheek. "Lo, he said, here is a token that I forgive thee." And the execution was done.
Jesus did the same thing, and Stephen does it here. What a testimony. All that hate, and in Stephen's heart is only love. That's the character of Christian love. It loves indiscriminately. It doesn't depend on the attitude of the other one. Would to God we could all die like that. Would to God we could all live like that.
And then I like the way it ends. "And when he had said this, he," what? "Fell asleep." Isn't there a beautiful peace about that? And they were still alive, but grinding their teeth, and would spend all eternity doing it. He just fell asleep in the arms of Christ.
I love Stephen. Now I love him much more after these last few weeks. And I think I've discovered why I love him so much. And it's the same reason I love Paul so much. It's because he's so much like Jesus. Jesus was full of the Spirit, and so was Stephen. Jesus was full of grace. So was Stephen. Jesus was boldly a preacher. So was Stephen. Jesus was lovingly forgiving. So was Stephen. Jesus gave His life for others. So did Stephen.
When somebody tells me, "Be like Jesus," that's hard for me to be. To be like Jesus, it's too...it's too far. So I'm not going to say to you, "Be like Jesus." I'm going to say, "Be like Stephen." That at least brings it down to where we are. Do you know what the apostle Paul said? "Be ye followers of me as I am of Christ." You see, Paul knew there had to be an intermediary step.
Someone always comes up and says, "Well, your problem is you're following man. You should be following Christ." Oh, I hate that statement. That's a dumb statement. Be like Stephen. Stephen was like Jesus.
There was a man who'll never forget it. Verse 8, or chapter 8, verse 1, and Saul was consenting unto his death. There stood that man. You know something? From Stephen came Paul. From Paul came the world. Augustine said, "The church owes Paul to the prayer of Stephen." Stephen was expendable for Paul. Watch this. Paul was expendable for the world. Let me ask you something? For whom are you expendable? Let's pray.
Father, we thank You for Stephen. God, I ask myself the question, for whom would I give everything I am and have? For whom would I live and die, that they might hear, that they might know the Christ? Stephen gave everything, and through it there came Paul, and through Paul I came to You, and all of us did, because he wrote the Word that led us to you. So I thank you for Paul and I thank You for Stephen, and I want to be like both of them, because they were like Jesus. Give me their courage and their boldness. Give that to all of us. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.
This article is also available and sold as a booklet.
This sermon series includes the following messages:
Please contact the publisher to obtain copies of this resource.Publisher Information


text:
…here's a LINK to the Hawaii version of our life.
Yes, I see the date of my last post….but we've been busy. Here's the scoop… we finally did it. On March 1st my Sweet Husband and I along with our aged cat, moved to the Big Island of Hawaii.
There are sooooooo many things that we've done and life these past few weeks have been such a whirlwind that I'm just now getting around to telling you all about it. However, you will need to make a transition to our new home. We decided to start with a new and fresh blog, one that will chronicle our many adventures. Here's a link to the new blog, ask any questions that might come up, not sure if we can answer them, but ask anyway.
aloha, Mitch and Carla
Cardboard Box Hack
Way back in October when we thought we had sold the house, we (my Sweet Husband actually) started packing our belongings.
We He were was about 80% packed when the buyer backed out (!@%$%$@!!) and we were left with unpacking those boxes, which resulted in a shitload of empty flattened boxes. At this same time we had sold off a bed resulting in a mostly empty guest room. Empty except for all of those boxes.
After the sale fell through we decided to get through the holidays and then look at putting the house back on the market come January. Sure we could have left 80% of our stuff packed, but we kind of like to use it. As we all know, a house either shows well empty of everything, which is not an option for us, since we do live here, or decorated/staged with a full range of furniture. Another option was to simply close off the one room full of boxes, not letting anyone in OR we could transform it into THIS:
Don't believe me? Check out that sweet night stand. It's fake too. A flattened box on two stools covered with a small table cloth….genius!
Still not convinced? We think this is a really good use of random outdoor furniture cushions, plastic containers and bedding.
I've been fooled a couple of times myself. I started to sit down to put my shoes one day and had to stop myself in mid plop. I think I even saw a cat indentation a day or so ago. The lesson here is, if you have a unhealthy love of cardboard boxes, you could adorn your house with cardboard furniture or at the very least, build a fort for the grand kids, kids or cats.
2013…can't get here quick enough for me!
January 2012
We started out the year with an epic snowstorm. We of course LOVED it and stayed at home. Some of our friends actually took this time to have a baby…whoa there! Still really glad that wasn't us, for many many reasons.
As in January's past we traveled to the city by the bay to participate in the Fancy Food show. The highlight of the trip was biking across the Golden Gate Bridge and having nice warmer than Seattle weather to bask in while having lunch outside in Sausalito.
We had such a nice time, and even though I was a weenie and had to walk my bike a few times, I would do this ride again…gladly.
February, March 2012 for us were pretty quiet. I turned a stunning 53 years old, and we celebrated 11 years of marriage…both of which are excellent milestones in my book. It was the beginning of the second year of Sweet husbands hand injury, he spent a lot of time at physical therapy with little or no improvement.
Some time in March Sweet Daughter was trying to decide whether she would register to study in Italy for August and September. Sweet Husband and I took this as a way to get our carcasses back to Europe and finally travel there together….oh, and we'd see the girl while she was there. We had both been to Europe, but never together. I was looking forward to going as an adult and being able to do 'adult' things, like drink and what have you…like go places I wanted to do. My past trips had been awesome, but were very restrictive since I was under the broad broad wing of a conservative college group.
In April 2012 I changed to a new job. This was an exciting time. I had new products to sell, new places to travel and all those new things that go along with a career change. At this time same we turned the house upside down and danged if we didn't find enough loose change in the couch to purchase tickets to Europe, all under the guise to see our daughter at school in Italy. Please note that I haven't even gone to visit her on the U-dub campus that is less than 5 miles from our home. So exciting….to be in Europe again.
We struggled with when to fly and arrange schedule so we could meet in the right place and not be a pain in the ass to her, but also have adequate time….blah blah blah. Our best option was to fly into Milan and then fly out of Rome. I had a food show in Oregon to work around as well as the child's schedule in two different cities to deal with. Our best option turned out to leave early in the day, change planes in Chicago, fly to Helsinki and stay over night. Wait a minute….our friends Cindy and Ari live in Finland and not to far from Helsinki, so we arranged to meet up with them and hang out before we headed off to Milan the next day. Our plans were set into motion, tickets were purchased for our trip and the planning continued, hotels/destinations/museums/lots of walking.
May 2012 brought to me a lot of traveling and more physical therapy for Sweet Husband on his injured hand. I flew. I drove. I drove some more and I actually purchased a new vehicle so my driving would be more comfortable….and so I could haul around more crap. Thanks for the pic of me and my car, Royce, I jacked it from you. 🙂
June 2012 Before I changed jobs, it had been on my itinerary to travel to New Orleans for a Food show in early June. However once I made that change it wasn't necessary for me to go, which meant that Sweet Husband wasn't going either. For the record, we've been shut out of trips to New Orleans 3 times now…..I guess we'll go some time on our own dime, but it's really more fun when someone else is paying.
The weather started to get really nice in June and we took every opportunity to work in the yard and make it nice and presentable for weekly Open Houses. Our house was still for sale and we were seeing more activity with inquiries and visits. Every Sunday afternoon for the past several months we cleaned feverishly in order to open our doors to the public to find a buyer. The Real Estate market in Seattle has been on a slow rise and in our neighborhood it's coming back faster, because it's a very desirable area. More on that later.
July 2012 With everything in tip-top shape, we ushered in the 4th of July with the usual bang and pop. Frankly I don't recall what we did…maybe had a few guests over, but I know it was low key, as I had to work the next day. What I do know is, our we were about 6 weeks away from our trip. Yippee, clapping of hands!
Sweet Daughter had been with us over the weekend for her birthday. Sweet husband and I had been doing our daily walks in our hilly neighborhood in preparation for our walking tour of Europe. We were both excited about the prospect of perhaps losing a bit of weight while walking in European cities. We had both experienced weight loss on our past trips which was due to the large amount of walking. Therefore we purchased the best walking shoes we could afford and we were breaking them in for the trip.
On July 29th, five weeks before we were to travel to Europe, the three of us were doing our evening walk. I don't know about your family, but my husband and daughter have always played well together. Today was no different as they challenged each other to race up the hill. I was in no mood to run….ever! So continued my brisk walk and to my surprise as I rounded the corner going up the hill, was my Sweet Husband sitting on the ground holding his left leg. He heard a 'POP' and then went down in writhing pain. I felt sick for so many reasons…had our new insurance kicked in yet? Would we still get to go to Europe. And what the hell was wrong with my husband. I turned my fat little body toward home to get the car. We scurried off to the ER to very quickly find out he had ruptured his Achilles tendon and the recovery often took up to 8 months. He would be in a boot for at least 6 weeks and then in rehab for….well until now and then some. The very short story was yes, the insurance had kicked in on July 1st, but we hadn't gotten cards yet. They showed up on August 1st with the activation date of July 1st printed right there. Secondly our trip to Europe was cancelled, not postponed, just cancelled. For some reason, I had purchased trip insurance so we weren't out the money on the flights and we had only prepaid for one nights hotel, and I got that back as well.
I really think we were numb at this point…and sadly disappointed. Sweet Daughter was still going to Europe, in fact she was going a couple weeks before school with her mother, so she was going to have a grand time. We were shut out again from a trip that we had been looking forward to. However we turned our attention to getting Sweet husband healed. The Monday after the accident he had a hand appointment, so I drove him there. While he was there the same doctor that he saw for his hand, scheduled his surgery for the heel repair the upcoming Wednesday. In hindsight with all of the billing insurance nightmares, it may have been easier to go to a separate doctor where they wouldn't even have a chance to mess up the billing. But the good side was the surgery was swift and the healing could begin.
August/Sept/Oct 2012, the weather continued to be awesome. We actually had one of the nicest summers in recent history and the sunny days stretched into 90 plus days. As fall approached so did the Open Houses. We were even starting to get offers. We got three offers in one weekend, but they were lower than what we wanted to go. And then out of the blue, a woman that had been through the house several weeks previously and loved it, made an offer that we could live with. The papers were signed, the ball was rolling and we started packing. Well actually we started purging and packing. Multiple trips to the Goodwill and pieces of furniture that we wanted to unload were sold off. We were set to close on October 31st when the buyer backed out. My suspicions were that she found another house and put an offer on that one. Don't ask me how i know this, but she closed on another house on November 15 and it wasn't ours. Oh well. live, learn, adjust.
So if you're keeping track:
- New Orleans–SHUT OUT
- Trip to Europe–SHUT OUT
- House sold—SHUT OUT
November 2012 With the disappointment of not selling the house and NOT going to Europe behind us we concentrated on getting Sweet Husband better. He made an appointment for a second opinion on his hand and we're still in limbo on that one. MRI's-inconclusive, more weird blood tests scheduled for after the first of the year to see if there is an infections. I say weird blood tests, because it's a 3 day exercise….more on that later.
Sweet Husband continues to get more and more strength in his legs and we've both been going to the gym since I have a little bit more time on my hands. What do I mean by that?
December 2012 The new ownership of the company that hired me,came in and started doing the things that new managements do. New people were hired, plans were made, pow-wows were held. Positions were eliminated…mine specifically! Yep, after 9 short months having been hired to grow the Retail business of soup manufacturing they decided to go in a different direction and NOT go into retail after all. And thank you, this could have been avoided all along. I didn't NEED to take a new job, I had a perfectly fine one that I didn't need to leave. My last day was December 13th. It really sucks to get let go two weeks before Christmas. Maybe it's the Disney gene that I've acquired but that seems rather Scrooge like to 'eliminate' someones position just before Christmas.
Sooooooo, if you're still counting:
- New Orleans–SHUT OUT
- Trip to Europe–SHUT OUT
- House sold—SHUT OUT
- New job– SHUT OUT
- Bad attitude–SHUT OUT
TODAY, December 31st, 2012 With all of that said, I can assure you that I'm still very happy and grateful in my life. It's that Disney gene again, but we'll bounce back….that's what we do. And as my Sweet Husband says, now we're just down to one obstacle that is keeping us from moving forward, and that is getting the house sold. And do you know what? The real estate market is on the rise and the new signs have been ordered. Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and all the days that follow, are all new and full of their miscellaneous adventures. I'm grateful for everything we have and all the lessons learned, I've nothing to complain about. It doesn't take a very long glance in a different direction to see someone far worse off than me.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Technically, three bearings, and it begins with that original cutlass bearing. Looking back, that should have been the first sign that some unusual headaches would await us down the road. Back when we were buying Annabel Lee, the initial attempt at a sea-trial revealed a severely worn cutlass bearing, and the seller needed to replace that as one of the conditions of the sale. Simple enough? Apparently not, as days stretched into weeks and we were told the mechanic he'd hired to do the work was having difficulty locating a proper sized replacement. In truth, being that it was October and haul-out season was in full swing, we believed the delays were more a case of this job falling on the low end of the mechanic's priorities, and being that it wasn't our boat yet, things were out of our hands. Eventually a bearing turned up, I'm told, when the seller discovered he had a spare he'd completely forgotten about aboard. But the job was completed, the sea-trial and survey wrapped up, (including an inspection of the work by the surveyor, who completely overlooked the fact that the mechanic had installed the rudder tiller upside down, which led to another string of headaches, but that's not today's topic.) We've learned several lessons from that experience, including the realization that if no one could locate a bearing for a boat with a 1.75″ shaft, that might be a cause for consideration.
Move ahead a bit and we find ourselves working out various other mechanical kinks, including a stuffing box with a worn inner cutlass bearing (yes, they do exist) and numerous steering issues, including a rudder with (among other things) a bit too much play from a worn lower bearing. As with everything else on this boat it took some doing, (and thoughts of dynamite for more than one reason,) but ultimately we removed both the stuffing box and the rudder bearing with the innocent and simple intention of replacing both bearings… and that's where things got interesting.
Let's start with the rudder.
Yes, this is the rudder on a 32′ powerboat. But as with everything else on this miniature ship, it is overbuilt. The rudder blade itself measures 20″ wide by 34″ high, and if you take the shaft into consideration that brings the total length to 59″. There's even a removable deck plate in the cockpit that allows you to insert a manual 'emergency' tiller onto the squared end, should the hydraulics fail. Details like this are among the reasons this boat, despite the work she needs, impressed me to begin with.
Tiller and upper assembly (with soda bottle to catch hydraulic fluid as we replaced the ram with blown seals.)
Rudder tube leading to lower bearing.
Above: Upper assembly removed.
Lower bearing housing coming out.
Above: Lower bearing housing removed.
Above: You might think there would be a set screw or two to keep the bearing from spinning, but there were none to be seen. Still, the bearing didn't wouldn't separate from the housing until we resorted to a hydraulic press.
Ultimately it turned out there was a set-screw concealed under layers of caulking/???, and not only was it hammered into place as not to EVER back out, but the head was also ground down. Two strong men and a whole lot of persuasion later and…
The tube is clear. And here's the first bearing I'm trying to locate. It seems to be made of some hard composite.
And that brings us to the stuffing box.
The orange dust you see here is called 'Phillybond', a flexible stern tube sealant. It turns out that in addition to being bolted into the hull, the stuffing box was also threaded onto the stern tube, and sealed with Phillybond epoxy as well.
Another view, to show just how deep this is set in.
First round with hydraulics only managed to remove the very much crudded-up collar that (theoretically) directs water around the shaft, but not the cutlass sleeve.
This was going to require a bit more pressure…
And victory at last!
But why was it so hard to remove the sleeve? Perhaps another hidden set screw, also hammered down and ground smooth then covered under years of age?
There it is. And here it is, the reputedly non-existent inner cutlass bearing.
And not surprisingly, this bearing is the same inner and outer dimension as the outer cutlass bearing. The inner diameter of 1.75″ is easy enough. It's that outer dimension that makes things interesting. It's 62 mm or 2.44″, a size we've discovered is harder to locate than you'd first imagine. And that's where we are now, trying to track down two cutlass bearings with outer diameters of 62 mm.
We have a plan B and even a plan C, but ultimately the ideal would be plan A – replace these bearings apples to apples. Surely with all the trawlers and sailing craft coming out of Hong Kong during the seventies and eighties, ours can't be the only boat built with bearings of these dimensions.
Update: presently we may have located a Duramax bearing with an outer diameter of 65 mm and an outer wall thick enough to be machined down to 62 mm. It's a start but I'm still curious if there's anything that starts out at a closer fit.


text:
We're celebrating with Steve Palumbi, co-author of The Extreme Life of the Sea.
In 1837 Charles Darwin first speculated that atolls, ring-shaped coral reefs that encircle lagoons, formed by growing around volcanic islands that eventually sunk. It took 100 years to prove Darwin's theory of atoll formation correct. Why? Steve Palumbi explains in this video at his Stanford-based Microdocs site.
The Extreme Life of the Sea highlights other fascinating facts about these delicate yet enduring creatures. Black corals, Steve and his co-author Anthony Palumbi explain in their chapter "The Oldest", can be smashed to bits by the smallest waves yet have been known to live up to 4,600 years and are likely the oldest living organisms on the planet. Instead of becoming frail as they age like many other species, the longer black corals live the more likely they are to survive and reproduce.
The book is just now shipping to stores, but we've made the book's prologue available online to tide you over until you can get your hands on a copy.


text:
Mmmmm metal lunchbox art - great exhibition over at LaLaLand - my favorites are from Shag, Bigfoot1, and Amanda Visell.
Lancome has Le Magnetique - Star Design Nail Lacquer - literally you take the magnet on the bottom of the bottle to your nails before they dry, and *poof* science class meets manicure.
John Houshmand's urban headboard & bed frame made from recycled Maple wood.
Who doesn't love octopus! From Plush Play's line of collectible plush toys.
Siemens ultra-sexy SK65 Burlwood. Features full QWERTY keyboard & usb be drive. A woody you won't mind showing off.
Nike Maxsight by Bausch and Lomb - Tinted contact lenses to replace sunglasses for athletes.
Similar Diversity by Philipp Steinweber and Andreas Koller - a gigantic infographic visualizing the Holy Books of five world religions.
Secretly lusting for this tiny microSD USB reader/key gizmo by brando (only 11$)
Fancy apple "paperclip" - i mean "tool" for iphone
The 40cozy. Bringing a little class to the front porch.
WikiWorld is a series of cartoons by Greg Williams, inspired by Wikipedia articles.
REBELPACK STATIONERY by Assouline. 10 black note cards and envelopes lined in red with skull embossing. includes a skull notebook - Beautiful design and packaging.
FEATUREDIt's the last deal for NotCouture launch week. Get 25% off at our good ol' San Diego store, Raw Clothing!
FEATUREDGallery 1988 SF's latest show Skate Life: Skateboard Inspired Sculptures and Paintings by J. Shea and Freddi C - incredible mixed media murals (the shadows are awesome)
The raw organic style viewed through Blue Nature furniture
Hitotoki, a beautifully-designed literary site about moments in time at specific places in Tokyo--and coming soon, New York!
FEATUREDLive Surface - object and outdoor advertising photoshop template files that make great use of vanishing point to let you mockup your creative on these in seconds.
FEATUREDSymbaloo is a homepage with style and it will ROCK!!! [Editor's Note: it was interesting enough, i couldn't help ranting about it a little over at .com]
FEATUREDAxe's latest print campaign to "Get A Girlfriend" showing scenes of less than suave boys having a good time with their obsessions like giant lego sculptures, frog leaping contests, high scores at the arcade, a zillion boy scout badges, etc.
Italian manufacturer Piaggio, the maker of Vespa, is set to become the first company to release a hybrid drive scooter!
FEATUREDPreviously shown in #4116, Anna from Sub-Studio dives deeper and shows us more from the incredible Freedom of Creation.
Artist Crispin Jones' latest creation, Tengu, is an interactive USB face that changes expressions depending on environmental sound. And yes, you will be able to buy one for yourself.
Carl "the voice" is now in motion ! by yann le coroller - also check out the great show reel.
Whitelabel Interview Magazine: 40 Interviews with german Design Personalities. (in German!)
Now you can actually wear a stereolithography (3D printing)product.A watch Designed by Frederic Hakoune,the watch is really working, Just print your next watch in 50 minutes , Really cool !
Jack Spade releases a new wallet as an ode to their history of being robbed. It has 'Don't steal my fucking wallet' gingerly stitched across the front.
Fully working, manual record player made entirely of paper. Made by simon elvins
FEATUREDLayering transparencies, including vellums, acetates, tape and resin Brooks Salzwedel creates a sense of depth that is so surreal and mystifying.
a fine line between art and design. Brent Comber works with natural materials with an abstract feel to create sculpture, furniture, objects and more.
Esker House by Plasma Studio. Located in Innichen, San Candido, Italy, it's a new residence built on the top of an existant house. Featured in Plataforma Arquitectura as project of the week.
FEATUREDMore NotCouture launch week goodness! On Thursday we have a special discount at shopjake.com for you. If I could make that store my own personal closet I'd be in heaven... Get to shopping!
"A reincarnation of the classic wing chair... The foam adapts to our body shape and temperature ... WING is also the biggest single piece of bendwood ever used to create a chair." by Michael Malmborg
Airmail just got way cooler - especially with the flying pig one... This year's johnson banks post office at the V&A fete featured specially produced airmail letters.
This cardboard "boom box" from Suck UK even has fully-functional speakers. [Editor's Note : Suck UK seems to be listed at $0.00]
FEATUREDAnymails - your emails as an ecosystem of organisms... built on processing/flash - you MUST check out their videos.
Clever idea to sell a newspaper classified section. Ambient piece that interacts with people and objects on the streets.
10 Million. "Discovery Communications has announced the acquisition of TreeHugger.com for what is believed to be $10 million." Says TechCrunch. Congrats, Graham.
James Marshall (formerly known as Dalek) has a new show opening at Merry Karnowsky Gallery August 4th. There are images of his new work to check out
A new show opening in London on August 10th pins Andy Warhol up against Banksy.
Mac Jacob's Limited Edition Little Marc Box-the perfect newborn gift, complete with onesie and special Be@arbrickin bronze or turquoise. Limited release beginning August 27th at Colette.
FEATUREDBenjamin Hubert has some great concept designs using polystyrene - like these HUG pots... and some bird houses... and just some other great designs in general to check out.
wooliewall can be used as a space divider or wallboards. With sound-absorbing qualities.Design: Petter Knudsen T16
"Come Rain Come Shine" by Toot Boontje for Artecnica. Beautiful large lamp covered with a rainbow of colors!
SkullCandy headphones, also available in Desert Camo, Rasta.
FEATUREDNotCouture Launch Day 3! 20% off at Free People for the day ~ just a little something from us to you to help ease into all of these temptations over at NotCouture.
FEATUREDRediscovered Puma's collection by Marcel Wanders, and i'm craving the canopy and pool floater like no other.
at the intersection of art and language sits this gorgeous earthenware vase by canadian artist jessica lertvilai.
Miss Broome's Howdy Monsters are hilarious... and look like a great cell phone/ipod case to hang on the side of your purse. Also check out the myspace http://www.myspace.com/howdymonster


text:
|Development Impact
With offices all over the globe, we are where you are.
Contact an IFC office.
Housing Finance
Housing is a basic human need. Yet lack of adequate housing is one of the biggest challenges facing emerging markets today.
IFC is a leading international investor in housing finance, reaching clients in 46 countries. We pioneered the asset class, and our housing-finance investments span more than 30 years. Our goal is to help clients seize opportunities in housing finance, which has an estimated global investment potential of as much as $700 billion (Source: McKinsey).
A vibrant housing sector – in addition to helping to provide shelter – is vital for economic growth. Housing is a strong job creator. Studies show that for every home built, at least three jobs are created both directly through construction, real estate and finance and indirectly through manufacturing and services.
IFC works through financial institutions to build mortgage markets and increase access to finance for property construction and mortgages. IFC helps to create sustainable housing markets through direct investments and by working with financial institutions and regulatory agencies to improve the environment for housing.
Drawing on lessons learned from the global financial crisis of 2008, IFC focuses on investing in commercial banks and certain specialized financial institutions to increase the supply of mortgage finance and encourage global best practices.
IFC is also constantly developing new products and services in housing finance to help improve the livelihoods of those we serve. These products include microfinance housing finance, housing finance tailored for women, products compliant with Islamic finance and "green" mortgages.
To help fill the financing shortfall, IFC provides both direct investments and also seeks to attract third-party capital. We also take a leadership role to encourage investors to return to the market by encouraging more sustainable practices from the institutions in which we invest.
In fiscal year 2013, IFC had a committed exposure of $1.22 billion in 169 housing finance projects, and implemented 19 advisory programs around the world.


text:
@steverramirez on Twitter
PASADENA >> Stanford and Michigan State are old-school football teams.
The Cardinal and Spartans, in an era of spread and up-tempo offenses, are throwbacks who believe in power football, with a physical run games and dominating defenses.
Their style of play will be on full display when the Rose Bowl Game, "The Granddaddy of Them All" turns 100 on Wednesday, with a battle of wills between Stanford and Michigan State. Kickoff is scheduled for 2 p.m.
Stanford (11-2), which beat Wisconsin, 20-14, last year, is seeking to win back-to-back Rose Bowls for the second time in school history. The Cardinal last won in consecutive years in 1971-72, beating traditional powers Ohio State and Michigan, respectively.
Michigan State (12-1) is the Rose Bowl Game for the first time since 1988, when it beat USC, 20-17.
The Spartans and Cardinal are ranked Nos. 4 and 5, respectively, by the Associated Press.
"I think it's going to be physical," Stanford coach David Shaw said. "I think it's going to be old school football. When you used to watch the Rose Bowl years ago, you saw two teams cram it up there running the ball, and the team that could make some plays from the passing game and find a way to create field position on special teams is going to be the team that has an edge."
Stanford has used that philosophy of play to win the Pac-12 Conference the past two seasons and advance to its fourth consecutive Bowl Championship Series game, which tops the nation. The Cardinal use a physical offensive line, led by senior All-American David Yankey, with running back Tyler Gaffney providing the hammer. The senior, who sat out last year to play pro baseball, has rushed for 1,618 yards and 20 touchdowns. The Cardinal also features quarterback Kevin Hogan, who has thrown for 2,487 yards and 20 touchdowns, and receiver Ty Montgomery, who has 58 receptions for 937 yards and 10 scores. The junior also has two kickoff returns for touchdowns.
All-American linebackers Trent Murphy and Shayne Skov lead a defense that yielded 339 yards and 18.6 points a game.
"Stanford is a fast starting football team," said Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio, whose Spartans have won nine consecutive games, including a 34-24 win over then No. 2 Ohio State to win the Big Ten title. "We've got to play through the storm a little bit. Obviously the team that executes the best and doesn't beat themselves has the best chance to win, so I think that's a given that there's certain things that are critical to winning, especially turnovers and sacks and things of that nature that can affect you and put you behind the 8-ball.
"But I would say we've got to be balanced, we've got to win the line of scrimmage, which is tough. Against Stanford that's going to be a tough situation because that's where they're extremely strong. But I think it starts up front, especially this game. Basically when you play like we do, you've got to win the line of scrimmage and then we've got to come up with some explosive plays."
The Spartans will look to lean on running back Jeremy Langford, who has rushed for 1,338 yards and 17 touchdowns. Quarterback Connor Cook, who did not get the starting nod until late September, has thrown for 2,423 yards and 20 touchdowns.
Jim Thorpe Award winner Darqueze Dennard, who has four interceptions, and defensive end Shilique Calhoun, who has 14 1/2 tackles for a loss and 7 1/2 sacks, lead a defense, which is ranked No. 1 among FBS teams in yards allowed. The Spartans have yielded just 12.7 points a game. Michigan State will be without defensive captain and middle linebacker Max Bullough, who was suspended for violating team rules.
"They're big, physical," Gaffney said. "They stop the run. We're big and physical and we make the run happen.
"It's going to come down to who is going to crumble, who is going to stay strong."


text:
Spring can be one of the most beautiful seasons in your garden. After a long cold winter, the bright yellow flowers of winter aconites (Eranthis) let us know spring is on its way! They are one of the earliest flowers to bloom in the spring. Winter aconites are three to four inches tall and grow well in filtered light. Since they spread quickly, give them plenty of room to grow. Spring crocuses are the perfect addition to any budding garden. These petite flowers come in nearly 80 species and bloom in a variety of bright colors. A crocus is grown from a corm, which is actually a compressed stem, not from a bulb. As an early blooming flower, most crocus varieties are six-inches or less in height making it important to plant them in large numbers. Another great bulb for early spring bloom is snowdrop (Galanthus). The small white flowers with drooping petals are only three-inches tall and emerge in early spring. These small delicate bulbs need to be planted in mass, where they will be seen. The grape hyacinth (Muscari) perfectly complements the sunny spring daffodil. These brilliant blue flowers appear in April and May and grow to be six to eight-inches in height. Another early spring bloomer with blue flowers is squill (Scilla). These flowering bulbs only reach five to six inches in height. Squill will naturally spread out and fill in an area on its own. They bloom in March to April and are great in rock gardens, under trees, and as borders.
The flowers mentioned above are just a few of the magnificent blooming bulbs available for fall planting. Bulbs can be purchased locally at garden centers or through a mail order catalog. For best selection, buy bulbs early.


text:
In New York today, a smirking Faisal Shahzad was sentenced to life in prison for trying to bomb Times Square, while across the Atlantic in France, a counterterrorism operation resulted in the arrests of 12 men.
That followed a US drone strike in Pakistan yesterday that killed eight German citizens, all Muslims allegedly hoping to return to Europe and murder civilians in the name of their faith.
Those men, in turn, were connected to a British national and alleged co-conspirator killed by a US drone strike in Pakistan in September. Their plan, which appeared more aspirational than likely, given that all of the alleged plotters identified so far were thousands of miles from Europe at the time of their deaths, was allegedly to roam the streets of a major European city with small arms, similar to the attack in Mumbai two years ago that left 168 people dead.
Reason for fear, or optimism?
All of this and more has once again put a spotlight on fears that Al Qaeda is successfully reaching out to Muslims resident in the West, training them in Pakistan, and sending them home to carry out terrorist attacks. The US and European governments have fretted for years that so-called homegrown terrorists, with passports and language skills that make it easier for them to get around, could be behind the next major terrorist attack in a New York or London.
Those concerns are reasonable, since the last major attack in the West – the bombing of the London subway system in July 2005 – was carried out by British Muslims who'd received training in Al Qaeda-connected camps in Pakistan's lawless border region.
But Pakistani-American Mr. Shahzad was captured after his incompetently constructed bomb failed to explode, and was fingered by a Times Square vendor (himself a Muslim) as he bungled his way to a life sentence in jail, much like the failed British "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid (Mr. Reid had sought to detonate a high explosive with a match, something that is practically impossible).
The arrests in France – it isn't yet clear if the men were allegedly planning attacks themselves or were simply in the arms smuggling business and had ties to militants – followed an arrest of a French-Algerian in Italy. The police there then shared what they learned from that suspect with the French authorities. And the drone strikes that killed the alleged German and British plotters in Pakistan followed the detention of another man by the authorities in Afghanistan.
Fruits of improved intelligence
All this points to a picture of unsuccessful would-be jihadis on the one hand, and the dramatically improved policing and intelligence sharing that Europe, the US, and other states have developed since 9/11. In the US, Shahzad has been convicted for his crime, while the trial of four American Muslims who plotted to destroy a New York synagogue (using fake weapons supplied to them by the FBI in a sting operation) is in its closing stages.
Since the 2005 attack in London, Western law enforcement has been repeatedly successful in uncovering would-be attackers. Take the case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan resident of the US who went home to fight in 2008 and received training at an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan, then returned home on a mission to bomb the New York subway system.
He purchased chemicals from a beauty supply company that could have been used to assemble a bomb, but was arrested in September 2009 thanks to a tip-off from British intelligence agents who intercepted a communication between him and his Al Qaeda handler. Mr. Najibullah pleaded guilty to planning to attack the subway, and has since been cooperating with authorities.
None of this means that some day an attacker won't get through the net. As the old cliché goes, a terrorist only has to get lucky once. But given the scores of young Muslim men who have gone from the US, Europe, and across the Middle East to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq, and smaller wars in Somalia and Yemen, Al Qaeda's desire to reexport terrorism has largely been a failure so far.


text:
The Washington Post has repeatedly used its news section (e.g here and here) to hype fears about the budget dispute that it likes to call the "fiscal cliff." (Since the actual impact of waiting until after the end of the year to reach a deal is minor, most objective commentators would not use the term "cliff" to refer to the deadline.) If the consequences of waiting until after the end of the year to make a deal, when the politics shift to President Obama's favor, can be portrayed as sufficiently dire then the Post presumably hopes that it can force a deal that will be closer to the Republicans' terms.
It was pushing this line again today with a piece warning of a disaster if Congress does not pass a fix to the alternative minimum tax by the end of the year. The issue is that the tax was not adjusted for inflation for 2012 so many middle income households would be subject to the alternative minimum tax who were not intended to be hit by it.
The piece does its best to overstate the dire consequences for waiting after the end of the year. Most importantly it gives the number of people affected and then gives the average tax additional liability telling us in the second paragraph:
"Unless Congress acts by the end of the year, more than 26 million households will for the first time face the AMT, which threatens to tack $3,700, on average, onto taxpayers' bills for the current tax year."
In fact most of these 26 million households would face very limited tax increases, but some taxpayers may find themselves with a substantial increase in liabilities. The piece also warns that if Congress waits until after the end of the year to resolve the issue then refunds could be delayed by a month or two. It then informs readers that many taxpayers use refunds to pay essential bills like gas and electric bills and will risk having service disconnected if they have to wait longer for their refunds. Of course the refunds will go almost exclusively to families with incomes of more than $75,000 a year. It is not likely that many people in this income category are facing the cutoff of utilities.
The piece also raises the risk that many taxpayers may be subject to penalties for failing to withhold based on their higher liability. It would be a very simple matter for Congress to include a provision in any measure passed in January that exempted taxpayers from such penalties.
This is the sort of piece that makes it clear that Post would like to see the budget dispute resolved on conditions favorable to the Republicans. It doesn't belong in the news section of a serious newspaper.
Read more posts on CEPR »


text:
relationshit one, don't pick up the phone, you know he's only calling 'cause he's drunk and alone. two, don't let him in, you'll have to kick him out again. three, don't be his friend, you know you're gonna wake up in his bed in the morning. and if you're under him, you ain't gettin' over him. •• ALASKA (dua lipa _ new rules)
j'ai suivi ton conseil, je n'ai pas hésité à venir


text:
We have featured many photoshop brushes time to time, but today we going to feature a whole list of Free Photoshop brushes - the "crème de la crème" of photoshop brushes......link!!
mbFeatherTools is a production proven plugin for Autodesk Softimage (formerly SoftimageXSI) which features styling, animation....link!!
CGIndia bring you quite Useful and Free tutorial about how to create Digital Matte Painting using Adobe Photoshop....link!!
CGIndia bring you quite Useful and Free tutorial for 3ds MAX + V-Ray Users. These various free and Very detailed V-Ray tutorials are created by Orkut ERSOY.....link!!
Pixologic Inc., today announced the release of its latest plugin UV Master for ZBrush Windows and ZBrush Mac OSX. UV Master is a powerful…link!!
1280 x 768 IE
Contact: CGIndia Hosting Powered by Net4.in
Copyright © 2005-15, CGIndia - Some Rights Reserved.
CGIndia, Independent Online Publication; does not guarantees or endorse the accuracy, completeness or reliability
of any Article, statement, website Links, advice or other information displayed, uploaded or distributed through the web site.
CGIndia Interviewed Kevin Mannens; technical director on major flicks such as; G-Force, Alice in Wonderland, 10,000BC and The Chronicles of Narnia: prince Caspian etc. Kevin talks about his work, TD-College and also give some tips for.....Link!!
Focus On Character Artist and Animator Patrick Beaulieu , an Interview with CGIndia. Patrick says; Working with fur is really easy, there's a lot of plugin doing furs or feather... the complicated part is to use it correctly. Creating a great ambiance, lighting and realistic fur with 3D software is a big task. I put 20 % of my time working on the fur, orientation, style, size, length etc…And 80% working on my lighting and colors. To give a good feeling to your image, I really like to use backlight to add an edge light around the character, its help to read ........link!!


text:
Spine and Health Posture Chiropractors.
A warm welcome from the Spine and Health team. We are Posture and Pain chiropractors and have been caring for patients since 2001.
We fix your posture so you become pain free – and stay that way!
Most therapies only focus on treating your symptoms, where as we focus on treating the cause. We look forward to meeting you at one of our clinics.
Meet our North Sydney Chiropractors »
Meet our Crows Nest Chiropractors »
Chiropractic Services
Several factors cause poor posture such as stress, falls, and car accidents but the biggest contributor in today's society is the position in which we sit when using our computers.
Prolonged sitting can cause muscles that support the spine to weaken resulting in slumping of the upper back and potentially causing headaches, neck pain, jaw pain, shoulder pain, numbness or tingling in the arms and hands and pain in the shoulder blades. More »
Lifestyle choices can help reduce the likelihood of such complaints. Regular exercise, losing those few extra kilos we've gained over the years, improving work practices and concurrently reducing stress levels are all steps we have control over to improve our posture, well-being, pain (or susceptibility to pain).
If you have back pain come in and visit us at our clinics in North Sydney or Crows Nest. By correcting your posture we will be able to alleviate your symptoms and improve your overall well being. More »
Spine and Health's aim to eliminate underlying problems by doing an anatomical analysis of your forward head carriage and overall posture.
The neck is a delicate part of our bodies that is in constant use. It is made up of 7 small bones that are supported with, surrounded and attached by cartilage. We need to take care of our necks and we can do so by ensuring that we have correct posture.
We will not only be able to solve the problems of your neck pain but will also be able to come up with a long term plan to ensure that the pain does not return through diagnosis, treatment and education. More »
NEW Breakthrough migraine therapy that stops migraine pain in minutes
Imagine knowing you are about to get a migraine which can last for days to have it switched off in only a few minutes.
Did you know that migraines are nerve pains? The nerve that causes migraines is called the trigeminal nerve, which is a nerve that supplies your face and structures in your head. This new migraine therapy works by calming down the activity of this trigeminal nerve, and therefore stops your migraines.
When the therapy is applied during the onset of a migraine, the migraine is stopped dead in its tracks and does not develop.
Somewhat sceptical? So were we!
But we read the research, and the chiropractors of Spine and Health decided to get trained in this breakthrough technique.
The results? We and our patients were shocked, as migraine after migraine, we were able to give relief and switch of the pain of migraine.
So how does it work?
It's really clever research that addresses the major pain producing cause of migraines, which is over activation of the trigeminal nerve.
The neurology is somewhat complicated but by gently stimulating the nerve to the surface of your ear drum it calms down the over activation of the trigeminal nerve which is causing the migraine pain.
The ear drum nerve is stimulated by using gentle rhythmic air pressure (to the left or right ear or a combination of both, depending on the migraine presentation) to calm down the over active trigeminal nerve to switch off the migraine. The device to deliver this gentle rhythmic air pressure is called an otoscope, and has a special attachment (an insufflation bulb) for this unique therapy. It's gentle, non-invasive and free from drugs or manipulation.
So if you or someone you care for suffers from migraines there is now a highly effective therapy for relief that requires no drugs, surgery, manipulation or home exercises.
The best way to know if you can get migraine relief and stop suffering from this often debilitating condition is to come to one of our centres and receive a diagnostic consultation. If you fit the treatment criteria then treatment and relief from migraines can begin.
Do you have some of the following symptoms? If so you could be suffering from migraines.
- Headaches lasting 4-72 hours (untreated or unsuccessfully treated)
- Headaches with at least 2 of these characteristics:
- Pain on one side
- Pulsating quality
- Moderate or sever pain intensity
- Aggravation by physical activity
- During headache (either/or):
- Nausea and/or vomiting
- Aversion to light or sound
Migraines are a multifactorial problem.
Research shows that migraine sufferers have a dysfunction in their brainstem, which controls areas of pain control, balance, and blood flow regulation. Triggers for migraine can include foods, hormonal changes, emotional stress, fatigue, tight neck muscles, and trigger points and joints that are not functioning properly.
Furthermore people who suffer from migraines tend to have a habituation problem. That is, the average person can walk in to a loud room and after a while will not notice the noise because the body adapts and blocks out excessive noise. Migraine sufferers do not have this response and so things like noise and stressful environments can cause a migraine to be triggered.
The team at Spine and Health have found that the most effective way to reduce symptoms of headaches and migraines and also to reduce the likelihood of them being triggered is to restore normal posture.
As we can reduce your amount of forward head carriage we reduce the stress this extra weight places on the body and also ensure the communication pathways from the brain to each part of the body are open and flowing.
By working with you to restore your normal posture, and following healthy lifestyle choices, we can help to minimize your migraines and headaches and improve your overall health. More »
A bulging disc occurs when a disc is out of its anatomical position and it is possible to be completely unaware of it.
Alternatively if the bulging disc puts pressure on nerve roots we can have severe pain that radiates though the limbs, even causing paralysis of muscles and loss of bladder/bowel control.
If a disc itself is ruptured it cannot ever fully repair but we can manage it by ensuring your correct posture minimizes the load it must carry.
For every inch the head passes over the shoulders the effective weight of the head on the spine doubles. Depending on the scenario we can correct the positioning of the spine to encourage the disc back in to it's anatomical position.
Furthermore we can improve the body's posture so to maximize the effectiveness of the discs and reduce the weight they must bear. We have found over the years that this greatly helps our disc sufferers. More »
Apart from direct trauma and genetic disposition, other causes for arthritis can be the lack of use of joints and poor posture.
A joint is the meeting point of 2 bones that also involves ligaments, muscles, cartilage, a synovial capsule and of course the bones. A great way to prevent the onset of arthritis is to maintain movement of these components by leading an active life and having regular chiropractic treatments.
Early warning signs of arthritis include stiffness, particularly of a morning, and a constant feeling of needing to stretch a specific area of your body. If you think you have these signs please don't hesitate to contact us and we can do an anatomical analysis of your posture and assess if you should undergo treatment, which will slow down the progress of the condition. More »
Discomfort, pain and stiffness in the back can limit mobility. This will affect a person's sense of well-being, increase the risk of depression, and decrease their quality of life.
Lack of mobility will often result in and increased chance of falling in the elderly.
Did you know…. for 65+ year olds 80% of all hospital admissions are from falls and falling is the leading cause of death by injury!
Unfortunately 20-30% of people who fall will suffer moderate to severe injuries such as lacerations, hip fractures, or head traumas.
These injuries can make it hard to get around or live independently, and increase the risk of early death. Your Chiropractor from The Spine and Health Centre can talk to you about ways to avoid falling and talk to you about the best therapy available to improve your balance.
The best way to avoid falling is to eat well and keep healthy and keeping your spine healthy with good posture.
Posture and Balance are actually related and as posture improves, balance and coordination also improves.
Before Balance Treatment
Patient was falling over whilst playing lawn bowls, a game he was truly passionate about.
After Balance Treatment
Patient returned to playing Lawn Bowls without falling and then went back to playing Golf again!
How Posture and Balance are related
The joint of the body, particularly the spinal joints, give constant information to the brain about the bodies position in space.
When you look at poor posture you are actually seeing mis- information from the joints to the brain. Left untreated the results in poor coordination and balance.
To correct this problem the joints need to be gently manipulated to reset the information they send to the brain. The chiropractors Spine and Health are experts in diagnosing and treating poor balance issues.