The more the merrier?

I have recently seen a few adverts for "Christian Services". One such advert attracted my attention as it was about prayer. Now I am not good at prayer, it is one thing that always slips my mind and so anything that helps, I like.

This, however, was a little strange.

There is a company with whom you sign up using SMS, you then send them a prayer request and they will send the request to lots of other people, lets say 200 other people. In return you have to agree to pray for the next 5 requests that you receive as a text message.

The idea is, I guess, that when you are in a crisis you will almost instantly have a few hundred people praying for you.

This is what Jesus said:

But you, when you pray go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is on the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
Matthew 6:5-6

So we see that our Father sees in secret. Since He not only sees in secret but he knows our needs before we even know them. Matt 6:7 says "...for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

Yet it is good to pray in groups, to share ones needs with God's people.

Does it some how make a difference if lots of people pray for something? Are you more likely to receive whatever answer you would like if this happens? Is it better to have 10 or 100 or 1000 people pray for you and your needs or is it fine just to pray yourself?

Offended?

Rowan Atkinson-Williams has today decided that 'Christian doctrine is offensive to Muslims'. It must have taken all the power of his mind to figure that out. Of course it is offensive to Muslims. I deny their prophet, their god and their koran. I believe that their religion is false and leads only to destruction. Obviously their doctrine is also offensive to me, they deny Christ's deity, they deny the trinity and they deny Christ's work on the cross and His resurrection.

Here is the original article from the Daily Mail (sigh).

His solution:

"an alliance between the two faiths for 'the common good'."

What is the common good? He does not say.

I don't have much more to say on this at the moment.. Maybe after a cup of tea.

SKOOLZ OUT 4 SUMMAH

Well that's it, the first year of LST study has come to an end and it only seems like yesterday that I was a newbie there.

Some great lecturers have been Tony Lane for Doctrine. Tony is a sold guy who is professor of historical theology who specializes in Calvin (yay!). Sonja Jackson for Cross Culture and Mission, hew enthusiasm for mission and her experience really were fantastic. Alison Lo, OT lecturer, fantastic walk through the Covenant with her and she gave me good marks for my essay. Chris Jack, Discipleship. Chris brought Luke 14 down on the class with a punch, shocking some, comforting others. Finally my fantastic Formation tutor, Conrad Gempf who may even be reading this.

Thanks to everybody else at LST as well from Phil in the bookshop to the maintenance guys, the kitchen staff, admin and everybody else. See you next term!

TULIP

I have just finished listening to Piper's fantastic 9 part series on TULIP. It's available HERE

Well, what can you say? It's fantastic. Well worth a listen, even if you're not a Calvinist.

New Tribes

We were blessed with a visit from some missionaries that we support who work for New Tribes Mission. They are living with the Inapang tribe in PNG where they have translated the scriptures into their previously unwritten language, Itutang.

They report that they recently had 80 (Yes EIGHTY) baptisms.

Their story is nothing short of amazing and we were praising God that even in the remotest part of the world He has sheep that He sent His Son to die for.

Doctrine is like Jenga

A good friend commented yesterday that Christian Doctrine was like a wall. You can take some bricks out and the wall still stands.

Thinking about this further, perhaps it is more like jenga. You can take some bricks out of a jenga tower and it will stand, albeit precariously. But some bricks support the whole tower and, if you remove them, the tower collapses. But even if you take away too many bricks that are not that important, you still loose the tower.

So, what jenga bricks can you take out of the tower of doctrine before everything comes crumbling down around you?

Fourty days of the purpose driven left behind prayer of what would jabez do

I was listening to Phil Johnson's fantastic review of The Prayer Of Jabez and I wondered what the latest evangellycal fad was today.

Now don't get be wrong, some of these fads actually do bring people into the church (the hidden church), they spurn people to good works and prayer. But they are faddish and they don't last. The question is, do they leave any good legacies behind or just spiritual casualties as Phil Johnson feared.

What's the latest fad where you are? Post a response and let me know!

The Lords Supper

We had a great talk in our house group last night about the Lord's Supper.

One member of our group pointed out that the typical British Baptist way in which we 'do' it was really quite, well, orchestrated. We have plates of bread and little individual glass cups of juice (the wine).

Whoever leads communion talks a little about what it is all about and invites believers only to take part. The leader then leaves a couple of minutes for confession and contemplation. Just when you're getting into this, before the Lord you are interrupted by the bread coming around. This can get complex with some confusion over where the plates of bread go next.

We then pass the little individual glasses of wine around. When everybody is served, we drink it together.

All this is, of course, fine. But it seems that this is all carefully orchestrated, organised to fit into the service schedule.

So I am wondering, how do you do the Lords Supper? Does anybody have any ideas about changing this?

I think it would be nice to make something more of this celebration of Christ, without making it contemporary or anything like that.

The rise of theophobia

With all this talk of homophobes and islamophobes, I have found a new word. I googled for it and it seems ot have been used a little before.

The word is..

Theophobe.

I object to the rise of theophobia!

Ideas have consequences

I just saw this video on another blog:

It is a great example of how atheistic ideas have real life consequences, as do all ideas.

Atheists may say that their atheism is neutral, that their world view does not point anybody in any directions. But in fact, like any other idea, it most certainly does. The problem is that it points to pointlessness, the atheist has no basis for their rationality or for their morality.

Indeed, you could argue that atheism leads to fatalism. Lets try this now..

The universe just happened, we do not know why, it just did.
The universe is comprised of particles, atoms, molecules, energy.
These components of the universe interact in what, according to the atheist, should be deterministic ways.

So lets say that you could know the current state of the whole universe, in the way that you can know the state of a domino layout. If you had this knowledge then you should be able to predict the outcome of the universe, in the same way that you can predict that if you start the domino layout falling at one end, it will eventually reach the other end.

This is fatalism.

Now the more scientifically inclined atheist will say that Quantum Randomness can add some uncertainty to this. OK, so lets say that it does. If you have uncertainty then the universe is chaotic and random.

So then the universe is capricious.

Either way, be the universe fatalistic or capricious, the atheist has no basis for condoning or condemning anything as it was either bound to happen or it just happened randomly.

Hope you enjoyed the video!

Who works it all for good?

I was greatly blessed last Sunday to preach on Romans 8:28-30 at Twynholm. Here it is.

Further to what I spoke on, I thought I would add the following thoughts:

After much thought on the whole issue, I find it difficult to comprehend a notion of God without complete sovereignty.

God's providence includes the sustaining of the whole Universe. Without God's continual work, the Universe would not be. We know that prophecy comes to pass, that God had a plan of redemption before time, that He can ordain events to come to pass as He wishes. I do not see how this can be so without Romans 8:28 talking about God's complete sovereignty over all things.

How can we have confidence in prayer, confidence in salvation, or confidence that we will be be in heaven without a Sovereign God who holds all of these things in His hands?

Have you heard of the butterfly effect? It is the idea that a butterfly flapping it's wings in Peru can cause a storm in London. The premise is that even tiny changes can have massive effects. Lets say that a moth landed on lamp of the Virgin Mary's Gandmother's lamp, it caught light, fell on the floor and burnt the house down, resulting in her death. This would mean that Jesus would not be born to Mary. What if the birth went wrong? What if Mary didn't want a child and decided to have an abortion? Or if a robber killed the teenage Jesus for money?

If you look at the whole string of things that must have been exactly so for Christ to be born, for the prophecy to be fulfilled, you will get an idea of just how much does have to be exactly right for things to come to pass as prophesied. If God were not in control of the will of Mary, causing her to want to carry the child, if He were not in control of the moth that thankfully did not land on Mary's Grandmother's lamp, then the only alternative is that the Universe is subject to Quantum Randomness (google for it!)

Our sovereign God is in the driving seat of life, he is in control of Quantum Randomness, and on this solid rock I can have my faith in Him, in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.

Did Christ bear the punishment for our sin?

This is the title of the seminar that I am leading soon. I am arguing for the side of Penal Substitution. Note, this debate is not about whether PS is the ONLY motif of the atonement, but whether PS is actually true at all.

Naturally, this question springs from Steve Chalke's book "The Lost Message of Jesus" and the surrounding debate within Evangelical circles in the UK. However Chalke's book is hardly the start of the questioning of PS. Many before Chalke questioned this doctrine and many have joined with Chalke in denying it.

I still have plenty of reading to do in order to solidify my case for PS and even more to find out what the objections are in order that I may refute them in my opening talk.

Mormons?

I was just talking with a Mormon chap. He was very nice (see earlier blog entry).

However it struck me that, whilst we were talking about theology, we really could not have a debate about it at all. It would be rather like my debating theology with somebody who believes in little green men from Mars. Their doctrines are so, well, ridiculous that there really quite simply isn't any room for debate, doing so it tantamount to madness.

Irenaeus said, talking about Gnostic doctrines that he refuted in his work Against Heresies that to simply describe some of these doctrines is to utterly refute them as they are so ridiculous.

Nevertheless, some good men do debate Mormons over their beliefs and I believe that their work is important and furthers the cause of the gospel.

The "God is nice" Church?

During quite a good chat on #prosapologian (an IRC channel for reformed chat) the other day somebody who had connected and was reading the conversation said this:

<*****> Oh my. I am from a God is nice church ... this is too much for me. I'm going.

What is a "God is nice" church? This is what dictionary.com thinks the word 'nice' means:

1.	pleasing; agreeable; delightful: a nice visit.

2.	amiably pleasant; kind: They are always nice to strangers.

So their church believes that our Holy God is "pleasing; agreeable; delightful;amiable pleasant; kind".

Where is the space for:

Judge
Psalm 96:13
The Lord: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth.

Here is what Nahum the prophet wrote of this 'nice' God:

God's Wrath Against Nineveh

2 The Lord is a jealous and avenging God;
the Lord is avenging and wrathful;
the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries
and keeps wrath for his enemies.
3 The Lord is slow to anger and great in power,
and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.
His way is in whirlwind and storm,
and the clouds are the dust of his feet.
4 He rebukes the sea and makes it dry;
he dries up all the rivers;
Bashan and Carmel wither;
the bloom of Lebanon withers.
5 The mountains quake before him;
the hills melt;
the earth heaves before him,
the world and all who dwell in it.

6 Who can stand before his indignation?
Who can endure the heat of his anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire,
and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.
7 The Lord is good,
a stronghold in the day of trouble;
he knows those who take refuge in him.
8 But with an overflowing flood
he will make a complete end of the adversaries, [1]
and will pursue his enemies into darkness.
9 What do you plot against the Lord?
He will make a complete end;
trouble will not rise up a second time.
10 For they are like entangled thorns,
like drunkards as they drink;
they are consumed like stubble fully dried.
11 From you came one
who plotted evil against the Lord,
a worthless counselor.

12 Thus says the Lord,
“Though they are at full strength and many,
they will be cut down and pass away.
Though I have afflicted you,
I will afflict you no more.
13 And now I will break his yoke from off you
and will burst your bonds apart.”

14 The Lord has given commandment about you:
“No more shall your name be perpetuated;
from the house of your gods I will cut off
the carved image and the metal image.
I will make your grave, for you are vile.”

15 [2] Behold, upon the mountains, the feet of him
who brings good news,
who publishes peace!
Keep your feasts, O Judah;
fulfill your vows,
for never again shall the worthless pass through you;
he is utterly cut off.

No wonder she left the chat room!

College has started. Of course, the first thing I did when I got back was to check for my results from last year. Nothing. I keep telling myself that it's not about the grade you get and all that, but still, I want to know.

Well, just this week some results have arrived, but I'm not posting them here. I'll just say that I am happy with them all.

You may know that I am studying at London School of Theology. For some reasons, which I can understand, this school has a reputation of being liberal (whatever that means). Now, whilst some lecturers have their ways, I am happy to report that by and large the school is a solid evangelical school with most lecturers holding fast to the doctrines of grace. This was affirmed this week with some fantastic lecturer from Chris Jack on Discipleship.

Now Chris Jack is the Acting Vice Principal, Lecturer in Applied Theology, Chaplain. He is taking our lectures on Discipleship. These two fantastic lectures started with us looking at Luke 14, in particular the words "cannot be my disciple." These are strong words, so, lets look at what the conditions are.

You cannot be a discipls of Jesus Christ if:

• You do not renounce all that you have.
• You do not hate your own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even your own life.
• You do not bear your own cross and come after Jesus.

I'll not go into an exegesis of this right now, perhaps that's for a sermon some day. But this wishy washy easy Christianity we have today in the West hardly bears resemblence to this.

In Acts 11 we hear that the disciples were first called christians at Antioch. So a disciple is a christian is a disciple. Now look at what happens if we replace the word disciple in the statements above with the word christian.

It costs to be a christian doesn't it? Yes, grace is free. Salvation is free. But it would seem that the package is to be taken as a whole. There is no 8 day trial, no money-back gurantee and no optional extras that bolt on or that can be left behind.

This is something similar, I think, to this bizarre idea that Jesus Christ can be your saviour without beinnng your LORD. I am not sure where this idea came from, but it is rather absurd. You'll not find that in the Bible.

Enough for now.