4/21/2020 - Infinity Gauntlet

“But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” 1 Timothy 6:11-12

This week is going to be a crazy week. I have so much planned and going on. If this week goes right, I will have posted a devotional (this), 3 YouTube videos, a podcast, finish 4 individual drawings, a graphic flier, finish an old art project, and start a new project that I thought of 2 years ago. I am currently living the creative life that I have always wanted to, shout out to Big ‘Rona. 

My first YouTube video was posted yesterday, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PONo7ODdx3Y. On YouTube I am running/created a series called the Quarantine Tapes. The Quarantine Tapes is something where I will be going through my daily quiet times and basically doing a mini devotional to it. I am currently reading through Luke, then John, and then Revelations. I planned on these three books first because it correlated to the research that I am doing for a book I plan on writing (more on that later, don’t want to spoil that now). I plan on posting 2 more this week, tonight and Saturday night.

The direction of these devotionals I will being running through a series I thought of when creating a Bible Talk, the Infinity Gauntlet series. I will obviously explain all that in this post. Like I said before I plan on rerunning my podcast back up. I really don’t have a direction for that yet. I think I might combine the two (the devotionals and YouTube videos), but I have a couple of days to figure out what I am going to do for that.

The planned schedule for the future is I will be posting a devotional every Monday at 9am, a YouTube video every Tuesday and Saturday at 7pm, and a podcast every Friday at 9am. Pray with me that this will actually happen. I have also deleted the Twitter and Instagram for the Flying Truth. I might bring them back in the future, but right now with doing so much I wanted to keep the platforms tight and take some load off my plate. Plus, I see it based on the crowd aspect in the fact I will be posting and sharing the blog posts through my personal social media platforms which have more of a greater following. And to be honest, when I created The Flying Truth (Truth Behind the Word) I saw it more as a team thing, but it turned into a me thing (which happens). 

If you had the Infinity Gauntlet, what would happen when you snapped your fingers?

“But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day — and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” – 2 Timothy 4:5-8

As an athlete I do and did so many things prior to a game in order to prepare to do my absolute best. I would obviously have practice days before, as well as practice before the game (batting practice, groundballs, I/O, warmups), look at opponent stats and prior games, listen to hype music, I would get “game ready”, among other things. Then essentially once the game started, nothing changed. It was just a faster paced and more concentrated practice. During the games I would key in on the other team’s tendencies, the coaches’s signs, the catcher’s signs and movements, the pitcher and other players tips and tendencies, and the same thing with the umpires with where the strike zone was going to be for that day. I was constantly making adjustments. 

I did and do all these things in order to win, get the glory and/or the trophy. I hated losing, I hated losing more than I loved to win.

This is what we all strive for, the victory. Paul in 2 Timothy, talked about how he got the prize. He obtained the Crown of Righteousness. The Crown of Righteousness is what we all strive for, the is the end goal for life. The Crown of Righteousness is the participation in the second coming, being resurrected in heaven. The Crown of Righteousness is the key to our house in heaven.

Paul obtained the Crown of Righteousness by fighting the good fight, finishing the race, by keeping his faith. 

“But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” – 1 Timothy 6:11-12

The good fight is this, life. The good fight is earning and gaining salvation. It is not in any sense going to be easy, it is like an actual fight. It is something we prepare for daily. We can’t stop fighting even if we hit the mat. We have to keep going until we hear the final bell. In this fight there is no knockout, the only way you can win is by judges’s decision. The good news is we serve those judges, that Judge. We serve the ultimate Judge. He is a judge that judges fairly and perfectly. So, fight! Take hold! We are not only in this alone, we have the ultimate sideline coach. We have Jesus in our corner bandaging us up, throwing Vaseline on our cuts, and draining our blood.

We win this good fight by pursuing righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. The amazing thing is that these are all attributes of Jesus, the one that we should be modeling our life from. The one that is in our corner.

If you had the Infinity Gauntlet, what would happen when you snapped your fingers? 

You are probably wondering why I have put this question in here twice now. It is a very sane observation and question, it is one I would be asking myself, too. Don’t worry I am here to answer it. This is a question that sparked and created the Bible Talk (that this derived from). This is the question that came to my mind, five months to the day, while I was working out. I was taking my steps to do my squats when it came to my head. I wondered why such a random question came to my head. So, I wrote it down and said this would be a perfect ice breaker for a Bible Talk. Then I thought a little more and thought it could be a cool theme for a Bible Talk. However, I had no idea how I would turn it into a Bible Talk, but then the Spirit answered with 1 Timothy 6:11-12. Before I go into the devotional more, would you believe when I asked the question in Bible Talk, there was a handful of people that didn’t know what the Infinity Gauntlet was; I KNOW THE NERVE OF SOME PEOPLE. If you are among those people, we are in quarantine; you got all the time in the world to catch up on some great movies.

The Infinity Gauntlet holds 6 Stones; they are the Mind, Power, Reality, Soul, Space, and Time Stones. Paul calls us to put on 6 different Attributes; they are righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

The Soul Stone is powered by the user’s mastery of reality, it can preserve the soul to allow for life after death. The Reality Stone is powered by the user’s mastery of time, it can allow a person’s access to the multiverse. The Mind Stone is powered by the user’s mastery of soul, it can grant telepathy or intelligence. The Power Stone is powered by the user’s mastery of mind, it can make a person more physically powerful. The Time Stone is powered by the user’s mastery of space, it can allow a person to travel through time. The Space Stone is powered by the user’s mastery of power, it can allow teleportation through space. When it comes to the Infinity Stones, there is no particular order, but they all need each other to be the most powerful thing in the multiverse.

According to Williams Barclay:

The virtues and noble qualities set before Timothy are not just heaped haphazardly together. There is an order in them. First, there comes "righteousness," dikaiosune. This is defined as "giving both to men and to God their due." It is the most comprehensive of the virtues; the righteous man is he who does his duty to God and to his fellow-men

Second, there comes a group of three virtues which look towards God. Godliness, eusebeia, is the reverence of the man who never ceases to be aware that all life is lived in the presence of God. Faith, pistis, here means fidelity, and is the virtue of the man who, through all the chances and the changes of life, down even to the gates of death, is loyal to God. Love, agape, is the virtue of the man who, even if he tried, could not forget what God has done for him nor the love of God to men.

Third, there comes the virtue which looks to the conduct of life. It is hupomone, The King James Version translates this patience; but hupomone never means the spirit which sits with folded hands and simply bears things, letting the experiences of life flow like a tide over it. It is victorious endurance. "It is unswerving constancy to faith and piety in spite of adversity and suffering." It is the virtue which does not so much accept the experiences of life as conquers them.

Fourthly, there comes the virtue which looks to men. The Greek word is paupatheia. It is translated gentleness but is really untranslatable. It describes the spirit which never blazes into anger for its own wrongs but can be devastatingly angry for the wrongs of others. It describes the spirit which knows how to forgive and yet knows how to wage the battle of righteousness. It describes the spirit which walks at once in humility and yet in pride of its high calling from God. It describes the virtue by which at all times a man is enabled rightly to treat his fellow-men and rightly to regard himself.

The Crown of Righteousness is our Infinity Gauntlet. Those 6 Attributes are our 6 Infinity Stones. Thanos needed all the Infinity Stones in order to complete his goal and win his game, which was bring “salvation” to the universe (destroying half of all the life in the universe). The Avengers needed all the Infinity Stones in order to complete their goal and win their game, which was defeat Thanos and bring all of life back to normal. The same is for us, we need all 6 of the Attributes in order to go through our daily battles fight the good fight and obtain the final goal (obtain the Crown of Righteousness).

The Infinity Stones and the 6 Stones to the Crown of Righteousness require skill, patience, and sacrifice in order to obtain them. Thanos had to sacrifice his someone he truly loved, his daughter Gamora, in order to obtain the Soul Stone. Black Widow had to sacrifice herself in order for Hawkeye and the rest of at the time living Avengers to obtain the Soul Stone. Dr. Strange, on the planet Titan, while Ironman, Spiderman, Drax, Mantis, and Star Lord were fighting Thanos was peeking into the future. He saw and looked at 14,000,605 different scenarios, and only 1 of them led the ultimate defeat of Thanos and that was because he sacrificed the Time Stone. Jesus did the same thing. Jesus sacrificed himself in order for us share in his grace. He sacrificed himself in order to obtain the Crown of Righteousness.

Obtaining the Infinity Stones, wielding the Infinity Gauntlet and obtaining the 6 Attributes to the Crown of Righteousness was and is not an easy task. While doing these things you will obtain battle wounds and battle scars. The Hulk, Thanos, and Ironman were badly burned and injured after using the Infinity Gauntlet. Ironman was not even strong enough to survive after snapping his fingers. Every day is a new battle, and each day will come with its ups and downs. Those downs will cause us to scar. However, those scars define us and help tell our story (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfTeRTpyiw0).

We obtain the 6 attributes of Christ, the 6 Attributes of the Crown of Righteousness, by living. We do it through Bible study, prayer, fellowship, and most importantly living like Jesus. We can’t do this alone. Thanos had an army in order to obtain all the Infinity Stones. The living Avengers and the other superheroes need every single one of them in order to obtain all the Infinity Stones. The whole MCU was needed in order to defeat Thanos.

We have to take it one Stone, one Attribute, at a time. We have to be focused on gaining ground and be willing to sacrifice. We have to be willing to sacrifice time, “friends”, self, and etc. Dr. Strange sacrificed the Time Stone in order to save the universe. Jesus sacrificed himself in order for us to live. Jesus died the death we deserved and then defeated it by resurrecting.

Fight and take hold. Let’s start with the Stone of Righteousness.

If you had the Infinity Gauntlet, what would happen when you snapped your fingers?