It’s astonishing how Scripture surprises you every time you read it, even after a lifetime of familiarity.
Continue readingI wrote before on Jonathan Edwards, work on Religious Affections. I observed how Edwards, the preacher at the heart of the Great Awakening in America, gives a very astute account of the difference between truly spiritual emotions (to use our modern parlance), and those associated with merely human passions, often associated with false conversions, and occasionally even with the demonic. Careful reading of his arguments dismisses much of what passes for direct experience of God in the Charismatic movement now. My own piece ended with a sobering assessment of just how high a proportion of Edwards’ own experience of “surprising conversions” was revival as a psycho-social phenomenon rather than a truly spiritual one.
Continue readingA conversation with a younger brother at church yesterday came round to Charlie Kirk and the Christian presence at the Unite the Kingdom march recently. He’s been a dissident over COVID and related deceptions, but has been asking himself recently whether Christians should be involved in politics at all, or whether the Kingdom of God ought to be seen as a completely different kind of kingdom.
Continue readingMainstream Evangelicalism has become increasingly Pentecostal and less Evangelical over the years, as I have repeatedly pointed out. But though this theological drift from our Reformation roots has failed to deliver revival or even increased numbers in church over the 55 or so years since it began to bite, it continues to fascinate and spread. Why?
Continue readingThe day before yesterday, President Trump introduced a 1½ hour briefing by the heads of all his health agencies, in which they summarised their efforts to get to the bottom of the appalling increase in autism across America (and indeed the West), from a one-time incidence of 1:200,000 to around 1:50. According to Trump, in California that rises to 1:12 male children. It can no longer be explained by increased detection or overdiagnosis.
Continue readingTommy Robinson (real name etc etc) last week pointed out that there hasn’t been a day in the last fifteen years when he hasn’t been preparing for a court case – even when he has been in gaol. Now is no exception, despite the massive success of Unite the Kingdom last Saturday week, and I’m writing this for readers in distant lands and those in the UK who haven’t kept up, essentially to ask you to pray (or whatever other action seems appropriate) for his court case in October.
Continue readingNo, they are relevant, honestly!
I have downloaded, and am currently reading, The Great Secret of Islam by the French popular historian Odon Lafontaine (and you can too – searching on his name will take you to the free download site). The book is one attempt at an up-to-date synthesis of the evidence that the standard narrative of Islam is complete fiction, and that Islam actually began as a Messianic Jewish Christian sect linked to Arab imperialism beginning in the seventh century.
Continue readingIt was, I suppose, predictable that, in the light of the gaslighting on MSM about the Unite the Kingdom rally on Saturday, Elon Musk’s dramatic interview with Tommy Robinson would be spun by Labour as a call to seditious violence. Once I would have marvelled at their crass incomprehension of what he actually said, but now I see it as quite deliberate misdirection of the majority of people who didn’t actually hear the interview.
Continue readingThere were many different issues and moods amongst both crowds and speakers at the London Free Speech Festival yesterday. The most revolutionary voice was probably that of Elon Musk, whose message was that we probably don’t have another four years to replace this government (and the Uniparty structures around it) before too much damage has been done to personal freedoms and the economy. People in sleepy villages (like mine) need to wake up, he said, and act to bring about such change. It’s difficult to interpret that in any other way than as a call to revolution.
Continue readingI have in mind the Toronto Blessing and similar phenomena in my title. Thinking in some recent posts about the singing of Bethel songs in non-New-Apostolic-Reformation Evangelical churches, I’ve thrown around the names of a few of the “big players” that many conservative believers think should be avoided, such as Bethel, Elevation, and Hillsong. But it’s instructive to look at some of the most popular “worship songs” not emanating from those sources.
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