Category Archives: Theology

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 →