Brotherly babies and baptismal bathwater

Last year I wrote about David Peterson’s Engaging with God and how it radically transforms our view of Christian assembly by showing that the New Testament never describes, or intends, such meetings to be for worship. Inasmuch as “worship” forms a part of Christian life, it is transformed from the Old Testament temple-locus of God’s presence, to the concept of Christ and his people being the temple and the priesthood, and therefore Christian living itself is our “spiritual sacrifice.”

Continue reading
Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to avoid Misinformation

A friend and Humpist from America (who was also a Cambridge contemporary) sent me this link to a new paper calling for the withdrawal of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID “vaccines.” It is not the first such report.

Continue reading
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science | 5 Comments

All that glisters is not gold

There’s a good deal of optimism amongst “conservatives” (a euphemism for “Far Right Thugs” to Mr Starmer, of course) about the breakneck speed of the turnaround under Donald Trump. I share it, and yet I wonder why I still seem to feel these are “bad times” rather than “good times,” and still less the start of a “Golden Age” as per the President’s inaugural rhetoric.

Continue reading
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Wot a pretty world we live in

The same day as someone said to me (not untypically now) that there’s not much good news about in Britain, someone contacted me out of the blue to point out a numerical error – or rather outdated information – in an old post. His update was actually a reminder that if we lift up our eyes to the natural world, we always see good news of abundance, variety and beauty.

Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 5 Comments

End times postponed – or not?

It’s strange how, as so many of us have noted, society seems to be divided into at least a couple of quite distinct and watertight realities. One is that fed to us by the mainstream media, and the other by alternative sources of one kind or another, seemingly with few connections between them.

Continue reading
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology | Leave a comment

Confusion over temples produces confusion over worship

In Chapter 16 of my Generations of Heaven and Earth I spend eighteen pages contrasting the Old Testament tabernacle/temple, based on the Genesis cosmic temple of Genesis 1 and emphasising the separateness of God from his creation, with the New Testament (and New Creation) temple in which all barriers are dissolved in the body of Christ.

Continue reading
Posted in History, Theology | 5 Comments

RIP Günter Bechly

I’ve been saddened to hear of the untimely death (in a road accident) of my favourite palaeontologist, Günter Bechly, over in Austria. You can see a report and an appreciation over at Evolution News and Views.

Continue reading
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature | 1 Comment

What the Bible should have said #28

Judges 20: a nation confronts gang-rape

4 So the Levite, the husband of the murdered woman, said, “I and my concubine came to Gibeah in Benjamin to spend the night. 5 During the night the men of Gibeah came after me and surrounded the house, intending to kill me. They raped my concubine, and she died. 6 I took my concubine, cut her into pieces and sent one piece to each region of Israel’s inheritance, because they committed this lewd and outrageous act in Israel. 7 Now, all you Israelites, speak up and tell me what you have decided to do.”

8 All the men rose up together as one, saying, “What you did was both illegal and rather gross. 9 All of us will go home. No, not one of us will stir from his house, but the whole of Israel must keep silent about this thing for the sake of its impact on community cohesion. 10 As for you, we will give you what you deserve for this outrageous act done in Israel. It’s eighteen months in solitary for you, Sonny…

Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 1 Comment

Religion without a covenant

Another holiday, and another Islamist atrocity. If reports so far are to be believed, the perpetrator in New Orleans was, once more, a recent convert seeking to prove his credentials by waging war on the infidels – meaning Christians, Jews, atheists, idolaters, and Muslims either apostasising or not sufficiently zealous. Since that includes most people in New Orleans, the indiscriminate slaughter is seen to be a feature, not a bug. It’s maybe not for nothing that in Genesis 16:12 the angel of Yahweh prophesies that Ishmael “will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”

Continue reading
Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Ox and ass before him bow…

Happy Boxing Day, all you labourers going from house to house for your Christmas boxes! Yes, very nice, thank you, driving over to Sussex to our daughter’s family. Missing our turning off the A30 in thick fog was a bit of a bummer, though.

Continue reading
Posted in History, Theology | Leave a comment