Author Archives: admin

Evangelical Biblical Illiteracy

Walking With Giants Posted on by

David R. Nienhuis writes in Modern Reformation of the problem of biblical illiteracy in America.

Among the general population, although 84% of Americans regard the Bible as important in helping them make decisions in everyday life, only half can name even one of the four Gospels, only a third are able to name the individual who gave the Sermon on the Mount, and only a minority can identify the first book of the Bible.

But the situation is also worrying among self-confessing evangelicals. …

What church-goers think of the Bible

Walking With Giants Posted on by

In 2008, research conducted on behalf of the Bible Society asked church leaders and ordinary church-goers (i.e. non-leaders) from across England and Wales about their atittudes towards the Bible.

The main findings, as summarised on the Evangelical Alliance’s Slip Stream web site, are as follows:-

Leaders

  • 98% of church leaders believe the Bible is divinely inspired and 47% think that is free from errors.
  • 90% of leaders say that the Bible actively challenges them to live in a way which runs counter to the present culture in Britain
  • 76% leaders associate Bible poverty with “our own land where the Bible is no longer at the centre of public and family life” and 90% think that the church should work towards a society that takes the Bible more seriously.
…

The Bible: ‘the book of the covenant’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Tim Ward explains how and why we can regard the Bible as a unified covenant book, notwithstanding the huge diversity found within its sixty-six separate writings.  How can it be said that God’s covenant is communicated in the narratives of Chronicles, say, or in the wisdom sayings of Proverbs?

‘Commandments declare the stipulations of the covenant.  Prophecy and epistles, in particular, expound and apply those stipulations in specific contexts; they are, in effect, the covenant preached in different contexts. …

A primer on Hebrew poetry

Walking With Giants Posted on by

It was a great eye-opener for me to learn, many years ago, the rudiments of how Hebrew poetry works.  I have found that this greatly assists in the appreciation and understanding of many parts of the Bible.

Hebrew poetry is characterised

  • not by rhyme (phonetic agreement; parallelism of sound)
  • or by rhythm (metric agreement, parallelism of time)
  • but by thought-parallelism.

Among the several varieties are:-

1.  Synonymous parallelism

The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple

(Psalm 19:7)

Deliver me from my enemies, O God,
Protect me from those who rise up against me.…

Six reasons why many Jews reject Jesus as Messiah

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok, a distinguished Jewish scholar, has set out six reasons why Jewish people continue to reject Jesus as Saviour and Messiah.

1.  Jesus did not fulfil the expectations of the Old Testament prophets, and of the rabbis.  He did not restore the kingdom of David, nor gather the scattered people of Israel, nor restore all the laws of the Torah, nor rebuild the temple, nor did he renew the entire creation.

2.  Jesus’ claim to enjoy a special relationship with God (Mt 11:27; Jn 14:6f) contradicts the Jewish conviction that all people are equal before God.…

The Bible is for ordinary people

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Donald Macleod writes:-

It was one of the great achievements of the Reformation to give the Bible back to the people, stressing that ‘not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means’ could attain to a sufficient understanding of the scriptures (Westminster Confession 1.7). Today, we need to get back to this. The Bible is not targeted at experts, yielding its meaning only to priests or scholars. You don’t need rows of commentaries to understand it.

…

The Holy Spirit and the Bible

Walking With Giants Posted on by

It has been said that ‘the Bible without the Holy Spirit is like a sun-dial at night.’

J.I. Packer has written:-

‘The Spirit’s witness to Scripture is like his witness to Jesus, which we find spoken of in Jn 15:26 and 1 Jn 5:7. (cf. 1 Jn 2:20,27) It is a matter not of imparting new information but of enlightening previously darkened minds to discern divinity through sensing its unique impact – the impact in the case of the Jesus of the gospel, and in the other case of the words of Holy Scripture.…

Christ and the Bible

Walking With Giants Posted on by

The Living and the Written Word

Christ and the Bible – the Living Word and the written word – are sometimes placed in opposition to one another.  The Living Word is (rightly) magnified, but (wrongly) at the expense of the proper honour that is due to the written word.  In fact, the very high view that we should have of the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures is inculcated by Christ himself.

John Stott reminds us that we should not think of Christ, the living Word, and Scripture, the written word, apart, for they witness to one another:-

‘Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance—to a degree quite extraordinary in so ancient a book—and that the secret of both is in Jesus Christ.

…

The waning influence of the Bible

Walking With Giants Posted on by

The Folio Society offered its fifty thousand members a list of fifty books and asked them to say which had exercised the most significant influence on their lives. When the votes were counted, pride of place went to J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy, The Lord of the Rings, which was judged the most influential book. The Bible came in at number thirty-five, sandwiched between Don Quixote and Flaubert’s novel of provincial adultery, Madame Bovary. Writing in the Bible Society’s magazine, TransMission, Dan Beeby commented, “Ironically, rejected by many as legend and myth, the Bible lost out to fable, fantasy and fiction.…

“Baptism in the Holy Spirit” – a separate stage of salvation?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

A key question in debates about the ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’ is whether this describes a separate stage of salvation or not.

Some have argued in the affirmative.  For instance, Pentecostal leader Ralph Riggs asserted that:-

The baptism with the Spirit is a work of the Holy Spirit distinct from and subsequent and additional to His regeneration work. A man may be regenerated by the Holy Spirit and still not be baptized with the Holy Spirit.…