Author Archives: admin

‘Being-towards-death’

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Perhaps it’s my dear wife’s recent brushes with death, or simply that fact that I have surpassed the proverbial ‘threescore and ten’ years, but my thoughts have been turning to the question of mortality.

‘Death’, writes Stephen Travis (I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus) ‘has become a subject of embarrassment, a matter of whispered uncertainties.’  Death has been removed from our everyday experience, transferred from the home to the hospital, from the neighbourhood to the newspaper. …

Stephen Travis: the case for conditional immortality

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In I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus (2nd ed., 1988), Stephen Travis outlines the following case for conditional immortality (‘annihilationism’):-

First, immortality of the soul is a non-biblical doctrine derived from Greek philosophy. In biblical teaching man is ‘conditionally immortal-that is, he has the possibility of becoming immortal if he receives resurrection or immortality as a gift from God. This would imply that God grants resurrection to those who love him. but those who resist him go out of existence.…

‘Your kingdom come’

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What does Christ mean, when he teaches us to pray, ‘Your kingdom come’?

According to Augustine (ACCS), we should not think of this petition as implying that God is not now reigning:

‘“Come”…is to be understood in the sense of “manifested to humanity.” Just as light that is present is absent to the blind or to those who shut their eyes, so the kingdom of God, though it never departs from the earth, yet is absent to those who know nothing about it.

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No heaven without holiness

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Hebrews 12:14 ‘Pursue…holiness, for without it no one will see the Lord.’

‘There is no imagination wherewith man is besotted, more foolish, none so pernicious, as this – that persons not purified, not sanctified, not made holy in their life, should afterwards be taken into that state of blessedness which consists in the enjoyment of God. Neither can such persons enjoy God, nor would God be a reward to them. Holiness is indeed perfected in heaven: but the beginning of it is invariably confined to this world’ (John Owen).…

Richard Baxter on the intermediate state

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Richard Baxter: The Saint’s Everlasting Rest (1650).  Abridged by Benjamin Fawcett (1759).

Baxter was suffering from a serious illness when he set down his thoughts on the blessedness of the life to come.

At the end of ch. 4, Baxter sets out his conviction ‘that the souls of believers do enjoy inconceivable blessedness and glory, even while they remain separated from their bodies.’

What can be more plain than those words of Paul? We are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home, or rather sojourning in the body, we are absent from the Lord.…

Why Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the Trinity

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‘Should you believe in the Trinity?’ asks this JW article.

‘IF PEOPLE were to read the Bible from cover to cover without any preconceived idea of a Trinity, would they arrive at such a concept on their own? Not at all.

‘What comes through very clearly to an impartial reader is that God alone is the Almighty, the Creator, separate and distinct from anyone else, and that Jesus, even in his prehuman existence, is also separate and distinct, a created being, subordinate to God.’

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Acts 21:17-36 – Dealing with difference (sermon notes)

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[Notes of a sermon preached at St. Andrew’s, Eaton (Norwich) on 4th May, 2025.  The introductory questions were posed with tongue somewhat in cheek.]

Acts 21:17-36

Are you a Calvinist, or an Arminian?

Do you think that the universe was created in six literal days a few thousand years ago, or did it begin with a ‘Big Bang’ nearly 14 billion years ago?

Do you prefer to sing traditional hymns, or contemporary worship songs?

In the current crisis in the Middle East, are your sympathies more with Israel, or with Palestine?…

The intermediate state

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The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on his way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

(William Walsham How, ‘For All The Saints’)

Alone (so far as I am aware) among our better-known hymns, this one distinquishes between the restfulness of the Christian’s state immediately following death, and the ‘yet more glorious day’ of our Lord’s return and the ensuing resurrection of our bodies, the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth, and the completed triumph and eternal reign of God.…

Time to kill the big idea?

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Following the lead of Haddon Robinson, a generation of preachers has been urged to detect the one ‘big idea’ in a passage of Scripture (the ‘exegetical big idea’) and then turn it into a proposition (the ‘homiletical big idea’) which will form the basis of the sermon.

It is time to subject this appoach to a bit of critical thinking.  I do so here with the help of: Abraham Kuruvilla, ‘Time to kill the big idea?…

Is anybody out there?

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What follows is based on part of ch. 2 of:

Spencer, Nick; Waite, Hannah. Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity. SPCK, 2024.

A couple of recent discoveries:

Allan Hills 84001 – a meteorite originating from Mars, discovered in Antarctica in 1984 and in 1986 found to contain ‘possible relic biogenic activity’.  (Most experts would now doubt this analysis).

51 Pegasi b – an exoplanet discovered in 1995 orbiting around a sun-like star.…