Category Archives: History

More on Christian politics for the times

It’s astonishing how Scripture surprises you every time you read it, even after a lifetime of familiarity.

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Christian politics

A conversation with a younger brother at church yesterday came round to Charlie Kirk and the Christian presence at the Unite the Kingdom march recently. He’s been a dissident over COVID and related deceptions, but has been asking himself recently whether Christians should be involved in politics at all, or whether the Kingdom of God ought to be seen as a completely different kind of kingdom.

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Why Pentecostalism is the universal Evangelical acid

Mainstream Evangelicalism has become increasingly Pentecostal and less Evangelical over the years, as I have repeatedly pointed out. But though this theological drift from our Reformation roots has failed to deliver revival or even increased numbers in church over the 55 or so years since it began to bite, it continues to fascinate and spread. Why?

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Surreality and Messianism

No, they are relevant, honestly! I have downloaded, and am currently reading, The Great Secret of Islam by the French popular historian Odon Lafontaine (and you can too – searching on his name will take you to the free download site). The book is one attempt at an up-to-date synthesis of the evidence that the standard narrative of Islam is complete fiction, and that Islam actually began as a Messianic Jewish Christian sect linked to Arab imperialism beginning in the seventh century.

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More on Comrade Musk

It was, I suppose, predictable that, in the light of the gaslighting on MSM about the Unite the Kingdom rally on Saturday, Elon Musk’s dramatic interview with Tommy Robinson would be spun by Labour as a call to seditious violence. Once I would have marvelled at their crass incomprehension of what he actually said, but now I see it as quite deliberate misdirection of the majority of people who didn’t actually hear the interview.

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Keeping the revolution velvet

There were many different issues and moods amongst both crowds and speakers at the London Free Speech Festival yesterday. The most revolutionary voice was probably that of Elon Musk, whose message was that we probably don’t have another four years to replace this government (and the Uniparty structures around it) before too much damage has been done to personal freedoms and the economy. People in sleepy villages (like mine) need to wake up, he said, and act to bring about such change. It’s difficult to interpret that in any other way than as a call to revolution.

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Affections meet passions

I’m working through Jonathan Edwards’ Treatise Concerning Religious Affections of 1746, which I downloaded in 1999 when thinking and writing about the then current Toronto Blessing and Pensacola Revival for Prophecy Today, but which i never actually finished.

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Luxury beliefs

A change of subject from the last few posts. I rarely watch the BBC’s stuff, but occasionally Mrs G. and I sit down to see something on archaeology or history, and most recently it was Fake or Fortune, a series in which art dealer Philip Mould and BBC general factotum Fiona Bruce investigate disputed works of art. Given the conventions of documentary-making, my guess is that unsung researchers do the actual investigating, whilst “the talent” reads the script convincingly. After all, with Fiona on the news every night and on Question Time every week, and trekking round the country with Antiques Roadshow, there must be little real opportunity for lengthy … Continue reading

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Proof, please

The articles I’ve been doing on the excesses of Bethel, and on the Charismatic Movement more generally, have attracted greater than average interest, as judged by the web stats. I’m not sure if this is because folks attracted by the titles were hoping to find the route to a more intense experience of the Holy Spirit (Charismatics always are), or whether readers are seeing the articles as the evidence that Garvey has finally lost his theological marbles – or whether, perhaps, people are finding resonances with their own with half-formed doubts that the increasingly experiential goals in their churches’ meetings are raising for them.

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Joining more dots on Charismatic spiritual gifts

One of the reasons for my embracing Charismatic theology back in the day, despite certain misgivings based on the problems it caused, was that the spiritual gifts apparently exercised by Charismatics were in the Bible. I was never really convinced by the cessationist explanations that they had been withdrawn by God because no longer necessary after the apostolic age. To put it more directly, the Bible did not teach that they had, or would be, withdrawn, making the claim mere speculation. It seemed to me that, for instance, prophecies like those of Agabus, warning of famine or of the imminent danger for Paul, would be as useful today as then, … Continue reading

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