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From PBS.org: Living in Virginia breaks through stereotypes to discover the vibrant and colorful Appalachian charm by visiting with residents of the mountainous regions of Virginia and West Virginia. They describe their need for self-sufficient traditions and practices due to communication and travel challenges. Scholars discuss the history of the region, as well as social and cultural aspects of Appalachia. Logic On Fire is the official documentary film presenting the life and legacy of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The influence and impact of the Doctor's ministry is still growing on an international scale. There are literally millions who are conversant with the Doctor's name, but are not so familiar with the man himself. Media Gratiae intends to make Logic On Fire as an access point for a very broad international audience to be introduced to the Doctor; and we want that introduction to come from the ones who knew and loved him best. We will be traveling through the United States, England and Wales in 2014, interviewing the Doctor's family, (including Lady Elizabeth Catherwood, Mrs. Ann Beatt, and Dr. Lloyd-Jones’s six grandchildren), as well as his closest living friends and associates. Among the most careful of international contemporary evangelical preachers, one would be hard pressed to find a man who doesn’t list the Doctor near the top of his influences. We intend to show something of the Doctor’s legacy by adding brief comments from an array of these men on the impact that the Doctor has had on their own lives and ministries. In doing so, it is my prayer that the Lord would be pleased to continue to use his faithful servant, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, as the means of bringing many more of His people to a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. There appears to be no end to America's present-day fascination with Appalachia. The contemporary intrigue with the region can be identified by a quick browse through the television shows that are currently airing or have been aired within the past few years. If you live in or are from the mountains, perhaps a sense of satisfaction and regional pride develops upon contemplation of this present-day “discovery.” “Finally,” you say, “we are being recognized by mainstream America. It’s about time.” But the contemporary fascination with Appalachia is not a new phenomenon and neither is it all beneficial. From the earliest explorers of the region onward to movies such as Deliverance, Appalachia has regularly been portrayed in American print and media as “a strange land” filled with “peculiar people.”
*The conference will be held on November 14-15 at Randolph Street Baptist Church, 213 Randolph Street Charleston, WV 25302. For conference and registration information, click here. I really enjoy short documentaries, particularly those that highlight some interesting piece of life in Appalachia. Salt of Kanawha is one of those documentaries. The short film is a seven minute account of one family's attempt to revive a once thriving industry in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia. Though I would contend that the God of the Bible is the Creator of all things (including the components involved in the production of salt) and not mother nature, the video is nonetheless quite intriguing. The image that forms the background to this blog is an image from what was once a vibrant coal mining community called Tom's Creek. As the picture portrays, that once thriving little community has been passed over by time and is now overshadowed by modern coal mining structures. Driving through Tom's Creek, one can see remnants of old coke ovens occasionally jutting forth from the greenery while a rusty and lonesome tipple stands feebly behind the tree line next to the road.
Tom's Creek is a short distance from downtown Coeburn in Wise County, Virginia. My grandmother on the Kilgore side of the family spent some of her younger years living in this small coal mining town. She has described Tom's Creek to me as "a good place to live. You knew everybody. Everybody was pretty good people...For the most part they were good, honest, hard working people." From baseball to the company store, Tom's Creek as explained to me by my grandmother was a place of camaraderie and community. She speaks of Tom's Creek as one who knows; one who experienced firsthand life in a coal camp. Presbyterian missionary to the mountains, Edward O. Guerrant (1838-1916), knew something of Tom's Creek, too. Guerrant was born between the bluegrass and the Appalachian foothills of Kentucky. He was trained in medicine, fought for the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and eventually entered seminary at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. It was at Union that Guerrant sat at the feet, so to speak, of the well known southern Presbyterian theologian R.L. Dabney. As Mark Huddle notes of the two men, "Guerrant and Dabney...established a close personal and professional relationship that lasted throughout their lives." The impressing of divine things on the hearts and affections of men is evidently one great and main end for which God has ordained that His Word delivered in the holy Scriptures should be opened, applied, and set home upon men, in preaching. And therefore it does not answer the aim which God had in this institution, merely for men to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; because, although these may tend as well as preaching to give men a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the things of the Word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men's hearts and affections. God hath appointed a particular and lively application of His Word to men in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of the things of religion, and their own misery and necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; and to stir up the pure minds of the saints, and quicken their affections, by often bringing the great things of religion to their remembrance, and setting them before them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been instructed in them already (2 Pet. 1:12, 13). And, particularly, to promote those two affections in them [of] love and joy." |