Category Archives: History

To Ur is human, to dig divine.

When I wrote The Generations of Heaven and Earth I was concerned with the setting of the biblical Adam and Eve in history, which overlapped with their role in the ancestry of the present human race. This involved discussion of possible geographical settings for Eden, and for the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. This in turn raised the question of possible sites for a regional flood involving Noah.

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Prayers for peace

Christianity has always had an ambivalent attitude towards war, unlike Islam which is unambiguously a religion of peace… once all that is non-Islamic has been obliterated or subjugated by brute force, including the wrong kind of Muslims like the peace-loving Ahmadiyya and any daring to apostasize.

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Temporal resonances

I’ve just given my Stratocaster guitar to my granddaughter, having decided I’m unlikely ever to join another rock band. And in any case, I still have a Telecaster. It’s not a Fender Stratocaster, you understand, but a Japanese Tokai, though when it was made, in 1984, their quality was arguably better than the the CBS Fenders of the time, and certainly superior to Fender’s Japanese Squiers, one of which I bought in 1983, but was never entirely happy with.

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Gospel obedience and the Spirit

We have just celebrated the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and here I am writing yet another post on Pentecostal doctrine. Why? Because Charismatic teaching is still prevalent in Evangelical churches and denominations, and because in these crucial times it actually weakens the resistance of the Church to the increasing concerted attacks of the enemy, and blunts its offensive power. False teaching must inevitably debilitate the Church Militant.

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Jesus was not a failed prophet

Today is Palm Sunday, when the promised Messiah son of Joseph was acclaimed by his people as he came to Zion, but subsequently, in fulfilment of Scripture, was slain in saving them, and was even rejected by the nation (though ascending to God), leading to a new exile for Israel until the coming of the Messiah son of David as a conquering king, inaugurating the eternal kingdom of God.

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Before knowing your enemy recognise his enmity

In a comment on my last post, Ben links to an X post that compares Islam to Tolkein’s ring of power, arguing that whoever tries to control it will be controlled, and then destroyed, by it.

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Christendom has its advantages

I was recently in touch with a friend from my old church in Essex, which has now grown to over 1,000 weekly attenders. There were only about 80 when I joined in 1987, and it has grown steadily since. That doesn’t automatically mean it’s doing something right – Hillsong and Bethel were bigger, after all, and look what’s happened to them. But in this case it is, and it’s a cause for personal rejoicing.

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Luke – historian and literary stylist

Our church sermon and Bible-study series on the Book of Acts has reached chapter 12, and the miraculous escape of Peter from Herod’s prison.

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How did Evangelicals get so phrygian heretical?

Last week dealt another blow to the hypercharismatic movement, through a long (6 hour!) video by Mike Winger, exposing both the fakery and sexual and psychological abuse by yet another leg-lengthening false prophet, whose name I can’t be bothered to remember, and his relentless promotion as a prophet of God by the leadership of Bethel, Redding.

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The Torah of Mati

I’m re-reading Köstenberger and Kruger’s 2010 book The Heresy of Orthodoxy, which disposes of the unaccountably popular views of Bart Ehrman et al. that orthodox Christianity was always just one of many diverse versions of Christianity that evolved by oral traditions until (very postmodernly) the brute power of the orthodox suppressed the rest.

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