Category Archives: History

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

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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 PĂ©rotin, 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 PĂ©rotinitis, as it’s such good stuff.

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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.

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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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