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Sighing and groaning

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‘It is a perversion of Scripture to demand that humans suffering the consequences of the Fall are to somehow bear up under it with a resolute grin-turned-grimace. The books of the Bible, all of which deal frankly with human suffering, know of no such stoicism. Job was not ashamed or afraid to express his grief to God (Job 3:24) and complained bitterly about his perception of divine indifference (Job 23:2; 24:12). The psalms, which beautifully reflect the full range of human emotion, are full of references to sighing and groaning (cf.…

Confused?

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A social worker in Nigeria once visited a youth in one of the back streets of Lagos. On his bedside table he found the following books: the Bible, The Book of Common Prayer, the Qur’an, three copies of Watchtower, a biography of Karl Marx, a book of yoga exercises, and – what the poor fellow evidently needed most – a popular paperback entitled How to Stop Worrying.

Stott, The Contemporary Christian, 296…

Quotes on suffering

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For philosophers, pain is a problem of metaphysics; for stoics, it is an exercise; for mystics, it is an ecstasy; for the religious, a travail meekly to be borne; for clinicians a symptom to be understood and an ill to be relieved.  (Charles F. W. Illingworth)

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.  (C. S. Lewis)

Mercy hath a heaven, and justice a hell, to display itself to eternity, but long-suffering hath only a short-lived earth.  …

The fate of the universe

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According to a recent BBC report, astronomers think that they now know what the fate of the universe will be.

Using a huge galactic star cluster as a ‘lens’ to observe the behaviour of light from distant stars, Professor Eric Jullo and his associates of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California studied the mysterious ‘dark matter’ that makes up 75% of the universe.

The scientists have come to the conclusion that the universe will continue to expand for ever (rather than, say, collapsing back on itself or going into an endless cycle of expanding and collapsing). …

Antony Flew, 1923-2010

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Antony Flew, the noted philosopher, died in April of this year.  Albert Mohler has a helpful post explaining why Christians can be encouraged by Flew’s rejection, at the age of 81, of atheism, but why we should also be warned by his rejection of Christianity.

Flew was the son of the Methodist minister, and until his mid-teens regarded himself as a conscientious, if unenthusiastic, Christian believer.  But reflection on the problem of evil (how can God be both all-loving and all-powerful?)…

God of the Gaps

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A ‘God of the gaps’ argument is one which states that if something cannot be explained by scientific evidence and reasoning that it must be attributable to God.

An early instance of this kind of reasoning is found in the work of none other than Isaac Newton, who, finding that he could not fully explain the movements of the planets, postulated that God made periodic adjustments to their orbits.

Probably the most significant modern version of god-of-the-gaps argumentation occurs in Intelligent Design theory. …

Justification and the Lord’s Supper

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John Stott comments on the teaching of the English Reformers, and their determination that their doctrines of justification and of the Lord’s Supper should be compatible with one another:-

They strenuously denied transubstantiation (‘the change is not the nature, but the dignity’ – Latimer), the real presence of Christ in the elements (‘his true body is truly present to them that truly receive him, but spiritually’ – Cranmer), and the notion that the mass could be a propitiatory sacrifice (for then ‘doth this sacrament take upon it the office of Christ’s passion, whereby it might follow that Christ died in vain’ – Ridley). 

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The Significance of the Last Supper

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According to I.H. Marshall, the Last Supper was a Passover meal, probably held one day before the official date.  But what significance did Jesus intend by it?

1.  The Passover Meal

There is every evidence from the Gospels that Jesus regarded this Passover meal as particularly important, and that he made careful arrangements to celebrate it undisturbed.

The Passover was a celebration of how God had brought the Israelites out of Egypt and set them on their way to the Promised Land. …

Machen and fundamentalism

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J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) was seen as an ally by the fundamentalists, but he did not accept the term for himself. According to John Piper, Machen’s criticisms of fundamentalism were:-

  1. the absence of historical perspective;
  2. the lack of appreciation of scholarship;
  3. the substitution of brief, skeletal creeds for the historic confessions;
  4. the lack of concern with precise formulation of Christian doctrine;
  5. the pietistic, perfectionist tendencies (i.e., hang ups with smoking, etc.);
  6. one-sided other-worldliness (i.e., a lack of effort to transform culture); and
  7. a penchant for futuristic chiliasm (or: pre-millenialism).
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