Why is the universe so big?

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A sceptic might argue: if God created the universe as a special place for humanity, then surely he made it vastly bigger than it needed to be.  What a colossal waste of space and energy.

There are something like 200 billion galaxies in the universe each containing, on average, about 200 billion stars.  But if the universe were much less massive than this then the early cosmos would never have been capable of producing by nuclear fusion elements heavier than helium (elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and so on that are necessary for physical life). …

Michael Harper, 1931-2010

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Michael Harper, a key figure in the charismatic renewal in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, died on January 6th.

He was a curate at All Souls Langham Place (London), serving alongside John Stott.  He left in 1964 to form the Fountain Trust, which was dedicated to spreading the charismatic message of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by speaking in tongues.  I believe that he was quite closely associated in those early days of the charismatic movement with the late David Watson, and that the two of them made an impression on the noted preacher and evangelical leader Martyn Lloyd-Jones.…

A Christian basis for befriending

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Here are some notes on a teaching session on this subject.

Aim

To explore together the biblical basis for befriending, and to discuss the place of evangelism in our friendships with those who are not yet believers.

Activity in pairs

Pair up with a person you do not know very well.  Spend a few minutes talking to one another about how you became Christians.

Teaching on friendship in the book of Proverbs

Constancy Some people are fair-weather friends, Prov 14:20; 19:4,6,7, but a good friend ‘sticks closer than a brother’. 
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Jonah – The Reduced Jonah

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It seems to me that the message of Jonah lends itself rather well to dramatisation.  Here’s an attempt to do that, using three voices.

JONAH: Friends, I want to speak to you about wickedness in the world today. I’m sure that you will agree with me that there are lots of extremely wicked and cruel people around. The world is full of cheats, and tyrants, and murderers, and liars. I think that God should punish these wicked people.…

The ethics of evangelism

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I found the following helpful outline of the ethics of evangelism in an unexpected source.

(1) We are Christians, called by God to honor Jesus Christ with our lives, abiding by biblically defined ethical standards in every area of life, public and private. This includes our efforts to persuade coworkers and others to believe the good news about Jesus Christ.

(2) Wherever we live and work, we seek to follow the mandate, motives, message, and model of Jesus, who still pursues and reclaims those lost in sin and rebelling against Him.…

Quotes on Evangelism

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“I care not where I go, or how I live, or what I endure, so that I may save souls. When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts…No amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition, of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep, impassioned sympathetic love for human souls.” (David Brainerd)

“We are content to be the keepers of the aquarium, rather than be fishers of men.”…

The importance of witness-bearing in preaching

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Michael Green puts it well, I think:-

I miss this note of witness-bearing in contemporary Christianity. Many preachers bring carefully prepared scripts which they read with greater or less skill and conviction. But rarely do they let you know that this stuff is their very life blood. Rarely do they allow their own discovery of Jesus, their own profound convictions about him, the difference he has made tot heir own lives, to surface in their address.

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The authority of the gospel

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James Denney (1856-1917) was a Scottish theologian.  In a day when liberalism was highly influential, he stressed the authority of the gospel of Christ, as the following quote shows:-

‘There is that in the Gospel with which no one is allowed to argue. All we can do is believe or disbelieve; to give it in our life the place of the final reality to which everything else must give way, or to refuse it that place.…

The life to come

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The ultimate destiny towards which all of God’s purposes are moving is ‘a new heaven and a new earth’, Isa 65:17; 66:22; 2 Pet 3:13. Here, we can only know and understand in part, 1 Cor 13:12. However, some things are clear.

The life to come will be:-

1. An embodied life. Just as the new earth will be different from the old, 1 Cor 7:31, so the new body will be different also. Still, our future life will be experienced by the whole person, not by some disembodied spirit, Rom 8:19-25.…

Heaven revisited

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Bishop Tom Wright is a firm and frequent critic (in Surprised by hope and other writings) of the idea that ‘salvation’ equates to ‘going to heaven when you die’.

What, then should we understand to be the meaning of ‘heaven’ in Scripture?  Several answers may be given to this question:-

1.  ‘Heaven’ can mean ‘sky’, or what we would understand as the rest of the cosmos apart from the earth, Gen 1:1.

2.  ‘Heaven’ can mean the abode of God and of those closely associated with God. …