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- The many-faceted Israel (2) 08/03/2026
- The many-faceted Israel (1) 06/03/2026
- Christian Replacement Zionism (or something) 03/03/2026
- Luke – historian and literary stylist 27/02/2026
- The generations of pre-adamic man 25/02/2026
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Author Archives: Jon Garvey
Tying a few (or a lot of) COVID loose ends
I’m reading Debbie Lerman’s The Deep State Goes Viral. It is deeply satisfying as it explains almost without remainder, with as much documentation as one is likely to get, all the nonsense of COVID, on which I wrote tens of thousands of frustrated words.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology
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Unsung saints
Two years ago I did a piece as an obituary to an old friend, Peter Loose, who though incredibly self-effacing made a great behind-the-scenes difference to many Christian enterprises both here and in the US. I described how I first got to know him in my home Bible Study Group based on the ordinary, if large, Baptist Church where we were both members. Today I hear news of the death of another member of that small (and unremarkable) group, whom I’ll call “K,” and although (or perhaps because) she had nothing like the kind of influence on the world that Peter did, I feel a eulogy is called for, because … Continue reading
Posted in Theology
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From Athens to Bedlam
Realising late in the day that I needed some holiday reading to supplement an Agatha Christrie novel, I hurriedly ordered the book that had been on my Amazon wish-list the longest, Prof. Stephen R. L. Clark’s From Athens to Jerusalem. To my surprise it went on the list as far back as July 2012, when I heard him speak at an Intelligent Design conference in Cambridge, hosted by the Philosophy of Religion branch of the Tyndale Fellowship. Time flies when you’re geriatric, doesn’t it?
Posted in Philosophy, Theology
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Goodbye, Old Stick
The day before yesterday I lost Uncle Ralph’s stick, whilst we were on holiday in Cornwall. A small, but significant, bereavement for me. Either I left it behind after the excitement of seeing a chough on the coast-path near Porthleven, or less plausibly someone nicked it from the open back of the car outside where we were staying. Either way, it’s drawn a sharp line under an eighty five year old story, and Uncle Ralph, aka Ralph Hopper, deserves to have his unsung death in World War 2 told, I think. As there is no longer an artifact to hang the tale on, I guess the web will have to … Continue reading
Posted in History
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Southport protests – silenced truth and spouted lies
The new report from the police, or specifically His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, has created a stir on the Internet, though not so far in the mainstream media, by concluding that there is not (and never was) any evidence of the involvement of Far-Right groups in the protests after the Southport massacre, and that most of the disorder involved angry locals, and not mindless thugs traveling in on buses and trains.
Posted in Politics and sociology
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More on Christian music and church music
Thanks to those wonderful YouTube chaps, I’ve just discovered the fascinating and surprisingly contemporary-sounding music of Pérotin, the thirteenth century composer of Notre Dame, Paris, who was the first to write choral music for four parts, eight centuries ago. I’m tempted to say I’ve developed Pérotinitis, as it’s such good stuff.
Posted in History, Music, Theology
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Is “moderate Charismatic” an oxymoron?
The reason for posing this question is that whilst the excesses of the “Hypercharismatic” megachurches are plain to see, and have been so for many years, they still seem remarkably attractive to the undoubtedly sane and generally sound Charismatics in most British Evangelical churches.
Posted in Politics and sociology, Theology
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The use and abuse of music
It has been truly said that modern revivals (of the Toronto Blessing sort, rather than the actual quiet revivals apparently going on in the UK or Iran) are not gospel revivals but music revivals. By that is meant that if you removed the loud and prolonged rock music from the proceedings, nothing would happen in the way of people falling on the floor, weeping, laughing hysterically and all the other features that convince people the Holy Spirit has turned up in force. I can well believe it.
Posted in Music, Theology
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Hump author shakes the world of biology
Not me, you understand! My friend Sy Garte, one of the original writers here, who has moved on to various platforms of his own, is the lead author of a significant new paper. I confess upfront that I became aware it of through the ID Discovery Institute’s Evolution News and Views rather than Sy himself. His co-authors are Perry Marshall, whose 2015 Evolution 2.0 sought to bridge the gap between conventional evolutionary theory and Intelligent Design, and Stuart Kaufmann, one of the leading systems biologists and an advocate of “natural” self-organisation. A philosophically diverse trio!
Posted in Creation, Science, Theology, Theology of nature
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Societal revival
My last blog picked up on the widespread talk of Christian revival in this country, and discussed how true revival is far broader than the usually-held idea, recalling the Great Awakening, of big meetings accompanied by spectacular spiritual and/or psychological phenomena. As was actually true in the eighteenth century too, the key thing was a general realisation that the current religion was failing, and a God-given hunger directed at biblical salvation in Jesus. The rest was contingent detail.
Posted in History, Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Theology
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