Category Archives: History

Let’s start with a contemporary endpoint: the belief that God routinely speaks to Christians, assuming they learn to listen. It’s the basis of Bethel’s supernatural ministry school, is seemingly common in YWAM training (see video linked in my comment under last post), and is apparently taught to kids even in mainstream youth camps like Spree SW in my area. Furthermore, it has become inherent in the common dictum that “prayer is a two-way conversation.” But in point of fact nowhere in Scripture are we taught to expect God to speak to us in our routine daily prayers, and certainly not at our command, so that a teacher cannot demand that … Continue reading →

Another week’s break between posts here, and once more it’s not because of sunning myself on the Jurassic Coast, nor even our upcoming Golden Wedding Anniversary this weekend (“…and it don’t seem a day too long…”), but because of further digging into the highly interesting history of my own Baptist Church. I spent a morning at the Exeter records office photographing the Church proceedings book we kept from 1653 until 1795, when it was borrowed by John Rippon, of hymn-collecting fame, and not returned for over a century. I spent most of the last week transcribing the archaic handwriting and spelling, correcting the chronological order, all garbled for several contingent … Continue reading →

My lack of recent posting is largely explained by research for a project on the Particular (ie Reformed) Baptist founders of my church, which is celebrating its official 370th anniversary next Sunday, from when its records began, though it is probably closer to 378 years old. Two of the main founders, William Allen and John Vernon, have a bigger documentary footprint than I’d realised, and were somewhat significant figures in the Parliamentary army during Britain’s Civil War. Allen became Cromwell’s Adjutant-General in Ireland, and Vernon his Quartermaster-General.

An ossuary discovered in Jerusalem a couple of decades ago once contained the bones of Joanna, daughter of John and granddaughter of Theophilus, high priest from 37-42AD, who was a son of Annas, and brother-in-law of Caiaphas, both implicated in the trial of Jesus. The discovery has led one apologist, Shane Rosenthal, to suggest that this Joanna might, in fact, be the same Joanna mentioned in Luke’s gospel, and only in Luke’s gospel, as a witness to the resurrection.

In complete contrast, both in subject and mood, to Debbie Lerman’s book, which I reviewed in my last post, my other recent reading has been a new monograph by T. C. Schmidt on the passage in Josephus’s Antiquities about Jesus Christ. Published by Oxford University, in an incredibly enlightened gesture Josephus and Jesus – New Evidence for the One Called Christ is available for free download here. Presumably it is thought to be of interest only to nerdy academics. Maybe that’s me.