New Covenant Fellowship - Glendora, Calif.

bible
Verse of the Month
Psalm 133:1:

"How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!”

Ticas family
Commentary
My Village...and Yours

Thank you for your kind invitation to join you here for Cinco de Mayo.

Some of my members are from Puebla outside Mexico City where the battle happened on May 5, 1862 and speak of it often. But Pastor Neil is right. The Fifth of May is celebrated with much more gusto here in the United States than it is in Mexico itself. Mexico puts great stress on Mexican Independence Day every September 16.

In fact around 15 September we host a special service to highlight the international diversity we have in our churches. People from El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina and elsewhere dress up in their native costumes with dancing and special foods. It is a great day and with all these immigrant people coming to us for church we sometimes have as many as 139 children for the Blessing of Children which we do twice a year.

J.R. Martinez

The U.S. Army's J.R. Martinez was caught in a bomb explosion in Iraq in 2003 which necessitated three years of treatment and 34 minor/major operations. More well known for winning Dancing with the Stars just recently, he went on to become Grand Marshall of the 2012 Rose Parade.

Though little reported, while he was in the burning Humvee he caught a vision of his devout Salvadorean mother back in the States being given a ceremonial flag, which happens when soldiers die in battle.

Then he saw a vision of his deceased sister whom he had never met but recognized from family photos telling him, "Don't worry, mom needs you, you're going to get out of this." J.R. did and he has gone on from strength to strength as well as serving as a case history that our prayers for our young men and women in battle need not ever seem futile.

***

'Nearer My God To Thee'

Many churches sang "Nearer My God to Thee" on April 15 because legend has it that this was the last song played by the Titanic's gallant orchestra before the great ship went down on that date in 1912.

The evidence is conflicted but according to Snopes.com, the band leader, Wallace Hartley, had told a close friend years before that this was the last song he would play if he was ever found on a sinking ship.

One other piece of evidence is somewhat heart-grabbing: no band member survived that awful night. It is confirmed fact that they stuck to their post, played ragtime and popular tunes all the while the great ship was slowly going under. Kudos to James Cameron for preserving that moment in his 1997 film.

The triumphant words convey what many experienced that night: "So by my woes to be/Nearer my God to Thee/ Nearer my God to Thee/Nearer to Thee."

Thomas Torrance
Sermon
'Raised Bodily" - What Jesus' Ascension Means to Us

May 17 is Ascension Day. But first, I have a confession to make this morning.

For years I taught and wrote publicly that at the resurrection Jesus was changed from flesh to spirit.

And yet in his writings the disciplined Scottish theologian, Tom Torrance (pictured) mentions how on his last visit with the legendary Karl Barth in 1968, Barth leaned over to him and said very forcefully, “Mark well, bodily resurrection.”

Barth was alluding to the fact I was missing all those years. I was unaware of the Biblically-revealed nature of Jesus Christ’s resurrection body, what Christian teachers have explained over the centuries as Jesus’ “glorified body.” You can read that in Philippians 3:20-21 and see it described as a “spiritual body” in 1 Corinthians 15:44.

What is going on here, and why is this important?