Category Archives: History

Revival v. Revivalism

In the past I’ve expressed scepticism about the whole concept of Christian “revival,” suggesting that this non-biblical word became fixed in the Evangelical mindset in a particular form through the atypical spiritual, sociological and psychological example of the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. I wrote about this in Prophecy Today in 2003, in two articles which I later re-posted on The Hump, here and here.

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The blood is the life thereof

To follow on from my recent piece on the Mosaic Law, I got to thinking about the way that the apostles and elders recommended (rather than imposing!) some minimal parts of the Jewish law on their gentile brethren at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. Given that the contentious issue was a keystone of the Old Covenant, circumcision, these stipulations were not the most obvious components of the torah to retain. You will remember that the stipulations were these:

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Tyndale House and me

No, that’s TYNdale.

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To save Judaeo-Christian values, or to be saved?

To the Messianic Judaism that informed my last post, I must add, firstly, a book I was recently lent on the importance of Christian Unity. The author, to me, seems a confused individual in that in stressing the centrality of unity, he condemns on nearly every page all those Christians who don’t, those who are lukewarm, those who aren’t really Christian (by whose definition?) etc.

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Music, the universal language

When I was at school, I borrowed a balalaika (souvenir of a Russian school cruise) from another kid, in order to play a self-penned song called Boris and his Balalaika, which used the only three chords I knew on guitar in 1969. I reckoned it couldn’t be harder to play on three strings than six, and would be more authentic for the youth club social.

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In the end greatness means God’s law

With the recent revelations of the horrible corruption of USAID, a number of “awakened” commentators, broadly supportive of the Trump revolution, have lined up to express caution lest the president’s own team dismantle Deep State evils only to construct their own. This is a sign of political health – if from the start one’s supporters are critical friends rather than starry-eyed worshippers, then the checks and balances of a political entity are operating.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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