In 1945 several men fled to Christ in the face of the enormity of their sin. Major Henry Gerecke, a Lutheran army chaplain had been appointed to the accused at Nuremberg. His work was recorded by F T Grossmith in his book The Cross and the Swastika.
When Gerecke prepared the Lord’s table, the guards walked out. He reported it in this way: ‘I shall never forget the sight of those three big men kneeling, asking that their sins be forgiven. So convincing was their bearing that the guards said to me, “Chaplain, you’ll not need us. This is holy business.” And they walked out.’ The Cross and the Swastika by F.T. Grossmith is well worth the read – you might need a box of tissues. Some sound recordings are available. There is also a BBC Radio four production, Nuremberg: The Trial of the Nazi War Criminals, which references the work of the chaplain but looks at the trial from a different perspective.
Sound recordings of Gerecke’s work are [temporarily] available here:
Chaplain Corps 5 min: Gerecke introduces himself and provides the background to his appointment
The Colonel 6 min: The work of finding the lost sheep commences
Now Coco is not a geologist, but thinks he can tell the difference between a sandy beach and a hardened sedimentary rock face. He would ask geologically minded readers, please, to come to his assistance and correct, or provide better, or even good, explanations of the data. He would also ask such readers to forgive his ignorance to use the proper geologic terminology, or jargon, for what he wishes to describe, just as Carney may be forgiven for using the correct forms of English.
Soft material is laid down by water and over the years it hardens, and further layers are deposited on top, which themselves then harden. Coco understands that the traditional explanation for sedimentary layers that are not found in horizontal layers is that the rock layers have been folded by some later folding event, perhaps the movement together of tectonic plates, or an uplifting event such as gave rise to the great mountain ranges and in particular to the Alps in which these footprints have been found, followed by abrasion.
The prevalence of cracking in the sediments may give an indication of the plasticity or otherwise of the rocks at the time of the folding event. Cracks are visible in the photograph. Are these cracks subsequent to the folding, and due to more recent weathering, or are they original?
We should consider what happened to the sediments that would have been attached to the sediments that we can now see in the mountains. Where are they? Before the folding event they would have been at one. It is said that they may have been scoured away by other events occurring after the folding, as poorly illustrated in the diagramme.
Is that what we see here? An event has occurred which lifted the sediments; a subsequent event took away part of the rock and left the edges of sedimentary layers exposed; some time later the prosauropods came skipping along to left their footprints in the now exposed layers of sedimentary rock. Does that sound a possibility, or is it another just-so story so beloved by the old agers?
We must consider that when the tracks were left, this exposed surface, however it came to be exposed, must have been soft, at least plastic, in order that footfall would leave footprints. If the sediments had been laid down over long ages, then would they have been even remotely in a condition which we could call plastic when our dear sauropods visited it? Perhaps the absence or otherwise of cracking would provide us with a clue.
What however is fairly clear is that these are not footprints left in a sandy beach (or even a muddy on, as shown in the video, of “Footage supplied by the team of scientists [to] show the scale of the footprints and a recreation of how they were formed”. Sandy beaches, as we observe, lose their evidence of the crossing of large mammals and reptiles at almost every tide. Perhaps on a windy sandy beach they may even be lost to sight before the tide arrives. And yes, Coco is aware that sauropods may have been reptiles not mammals, but as a living one has not been able to be examined in the modern era the hypotheses that they were reptiles is perhaps no better than the hypothesis that they were mammals, unless you believe the just-so stories about footprints on a sandy beach being fossilised.
All of that said, and whilst he does not believe the story provided, Coco still cannot tell you how the footprints actually came to be embedded in the rocks now exposed in the Alps. As Holmes was supposed to have said: Once you have eliminated the possible, the only explanation left is the impossible. There was a flood. The sediments were laid down, folded and abraded quickly, and were still soft when our sauropod pod arrived.
It was an amusing tale in the published by the BBC Council’s clean-up warning for St George’s crosses but also the co-incidence with an article published by the LICC that prompted Coco. We do so easily see the gnat, but fail to notice that there is a camel in our beaker of notoriously middle-class or upwardly-mobile freshly ground and brewed, steamed, iced, skinny, but extra hot, caramel latté (Coco’s judgement on that drink: ☹).
One writer comments that in Genesis 6:1–4, the reader encounters one of the most challenging passages in all of Scripture to interpret. In this article Coco seeks to challenge that thesis by pleading that a plain reading of the text is all that is required.
There are several articles available on the internet explaining who the sons of God are of whom Moses makes mention in Genesis 6. Two of these may be found here:
As one who only knows one thing about poker, that it was the second thing a cowboy did after he had entered the bar, I have heard it said that it is quite unlike any other card game. In any other game, if you don’t know how to play, you can still play. In poker, if you don’t know how to play, don’t.
That was the situation in Augsburg. It has been repeated many times since in different contexts, perhaps famously when one nation left an economic bloc it placed its cards face up on the table, and secondly more recently when a new president stretched out his arm to an old enemy – but that game is not yet over we must wait to see what the outcome is.
The following post may provoke a response from the censers(sic!), and a lockdown which is far from useless, though perhaps needless, may be imposed here, after which you shall be glad never to hear from me again.
It was an interesting discussion about the place of Luther in European and in particular German history, and his continuing influence that prompted me to write, for whilst the conversation was informative, offering perhaps a different perspective than you would be given by an O-level syllabus, there appeared to be a contradiction in it. You may want to listen, or watch for yourself, to judge the matter more carefully
Coco had only visited the site in order to check whether British or US spelling was being used to describe the class of medical facility which are called health centres, and not to examine whether fake news were being promoted, and whilst the video may contain much accurate information about the response of the government to the outbreak of covid-19, it began on a rather bad foot.
It is a quirk of time zones that today means different things in different places, and the tomorrow of GMT, may be the today of a different zone, though unlikely at this late hour to be the yesterday of any less further west than Hawaii.
With that in mind then, and understanding that already ten hours of today have elapsed where today is today, please kindly take note that that today is the day when some would have us to believe that nothing happened, but many interesting and disturbing things did happen on this day, some being so recent as to only achieve the silver Jubilee of their decadary this year.
We need only think of George III of Hanover, who was born on this day in 1738 to understand its importance for the later potential unification of the Saxon peoples of northern Europe, but for a closer personal connection an unnamed, for fear of infringement of the GDPR, lady was also born on this day failing to see the coronation of our late Queen by perhaps a mere thirty five hours.
