Speaking of courage, here’s Daniel Hannan voicing his views on Prime Minister Brown during Mr. Brown’s visit to the European Parliament on 24th March.
Note, this session was only two days ago, and already the YouTube video has 750,000+ views.
Archive - March, 2009
Courage or Fear?
At the beginning of the year, I was encouraged by Carl Beech, to weigh up whether I was making my decisions out of courage, or out of fear. And you know what? That thought stuck with me.
The question is a personal one and really is between each of us and the Lord. For me, travelling, living out of suitcases, teaching in countries where perhaps people are hostile to the message of Jesus, my own fears may not be the same as for other people.
So where is my fear? What about, ‘Will Jesus come through with finances for me?’ Nah, YWAMers are known to live by faith, right? But looking at some of my decisions, I know that I can make a call based on whether or not I can pull it off financially, regardless of what I believe Jesus is saying. Where is the courage there?
I’m reading a book right now (for the second time, it’s just that good) called ‘Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England‘. It’s the story of a small group of MPs who, despite massive opposition from their parties and against the press and popular opinion, sounded the alarm bells about Hitler and Nazi Germany and fought for their cause with strength and much courage. They weren’t liked. Their message wasn’t appreciated. They were called ‘warmongerers’ and they clashed against the mood of the time. But they knew their job, their duty, and they courageously put their careers (and sometimes even their lives) on the line to get the work done. Without them, I shudder to think what would have happened to England and Europe as a whole.
Carl got me thinking, and on this subject I’ve been dwelling for a while, and will be for a while to come. How are we making our decisions? Out of courage, rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ who is King over all? Or out of fear? Fear of man, our shortcomings, our limitations. Here’s what Carl says:
The Disaster of the Church in Great Britain
In studying the Reformation recently I am amazed at the work of God who in His faithfulness kept the church – His bride – on track. Now, historically I became queasy when Christians started talking about brides and bridegrooms outside of weddings. I have pictures of women (and, sadly, men too) thinking that they’re the bride and Christ is the bridegroom, which is just weird. But recently I’ve began to appreciate the idea a little more.
Ephesians 5:25 shows a man how he should love his wife: the same way Christ loved the church (i.e. became man, lived a life of rejection, humiliation, stress, pain and ultimately death). In essence, to man-up is to become Christ-like. A husband is to give his life for his wife, which is what Jesus did for the church. Which, as a side note, is one very good reason for believing in the church and not saying nasty things against it. Because in the words of one my professors, “The one way to really get a guy angry is to start sounding off against his bride.”
And Jesus did give himself for the church. He is in relationship with us, and he cares. So it’s no wonder that we had a Reformation, when we look at it from Jesus’ perspective. From our perspective, it’s nothing short of a miracle that the church could get back on track after doing an excellent job of losing it. But Jesus takes the relationship quite seriously. In his sovereignty he steered us back in the right direction.
Now, the Reformation started almost 500 years ago. Where are we today? I think of England. A once mighty, holy, pious nation that sent out missionaries to the ends of the earth and stood strongly for Jesus. I think of Scotland, which – after the efforts of John Knox – became known as a bastion for Biblical Christianity, in to which men were born that later went on to help shape the theological foundations of the United States. We barely find a shadow of the past alive today. Why? What happened? What disaster took place? Francis Schaeffer says this about the evangelical church in general …
“Here is the great evangelical disaster – the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth. There is only one word for this – namely accomodation: the evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age.
…
And let us understand that to accommodate to the world spirit about us in our age is nothing less than the most gross from of worldliness in the proper definition of that word. And with this proper definition of worldliness, we must say with tears that, with exceptions, the evangelical church is worldly and not faithful to the living Christ.”
Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster
Francis Schaeffer wasn’t really accepted in England all that much, from what I can gather. By his time, perhaps, too many leading Christian intellectuals were of a liberal persuasion and had already devalued the word of God and rejected truth.
What we need today is men who aren’t going to cowardly succumb to the age of the day. We need guys to take a stand against all the ridiculous nonsense coming from inside the church and put God back on the throne. The Bible, once more, needs to be elevated to it’s proper authority. Jesus needs to be proclaimed unashamedly and boldly, as King of all – and Christians need to start living as if He really is King of their lives. John Calvin correctly understood that if Jesus really is Lord, then He’s Lord of all. We need to grasp this truth once more. We also need to pray, hard. We need to pray for our nation and for God to move. What we need, is another Reformation.
The last Reformation came at a cost. Many men lost their lives, their jobs and were kicked out of their countries. The cost again will be high. But is it worth it? I suppose the only questions really is: is God worth it? Will we man up and “get in the game” or will we melt into compromise and worldliness?
Sometimes I become depressed. What a job we have before us! But my God is an unchanging God. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. His promises never change and His word is true. When our courage fails, He is faithful. But now is not the time to melt to nothingness. Now is the time to stand up and boldly, loudly, unashamedly preach Jesus, Lord of all. There is hope for my nation. I am still proud to be British. Into this nation I was born, and for it I shall pray. Jesus, come for your bride. Bride, we need to awake and get to it.
New Calvinism
The current edition of Time magazine has yet to published, but already responses are being formed to #3 on their list of What’s Next – New Calvinism.
Mark Driscoll was quick off the mark with an immediate response which was shortly followed up by a lengthier piece.
I appreciate the observation and reaction to a piece which contains both factual accuracy and glaring errors. True, New Calvinism does seem to be gaining momentum and is behind a strong Reformed movement in Christianity which comes at the right time to counter watered-down versions of the gospel. But then we look at what Time actually say about this ‘movement’ we see a tainted view that sees the New Calvinists as nothing more than a rehash of the old movement, which among other things was known for being a little cruel from time to time.
With news media evolving to set trends, rather than merely report on them, it’s important to keep an eye on what comes from these outlets and employ a little critical thinking of our own.
WordPress
smokegecko Thoughts has moved from Blogger to WordPress. This marks the final stage in transition. The reasons for moving it over are technical and boring, but let me say this: if you are thinking about blogging, before you start decide where you want to host your blog and why.
Sure, it’s easy and quick to set up with Blogger and jump right in, but will the service you start with be sufficient for your needs in the future? If you need to switch things up, the further down the road the more difficult it becomes and the more problems you’ll encounter.
There are many different arguments for differnt set ups out there, and a quick Google query will give many ideas. In short, I wanted to have my own solution that I had complete control over, that I could host on my own site. So, to that end, the best solution for me is WordPress.
The Septuagint
“In what language were the Scriptures written at the time of Jesus?” This question came up in the DTS recently, during the Apologetics class, and we looked at the answer last week.
During the intertestamental period (400BC to 0AD) the Jewish Scriptures were translated from Hebrew into Greek, and we call this translation the ‘Septuagint’ (from the latin word for seventy, septuaginta). There are different theories for why this translation was undertaken, but what we do know was that the Greek language was fast becoming a widespread language during the expansion of the Roman Empire.
So when Jesus came along we find that the Jewish leaders, and the Temple, were using the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures to teach from. When we see Jesus quoting the Old Testament (e.g. Matthew 4:4) he would have been quoting in Greek. Also, the writers of the New Testament were all writing in Greek (albeit in different forms) and would use the Greek translation of the Old Testament when making reference to or quoting from it.
More Information
The ESV Study Bible has offered an online trial version of their complete Bible for the month of March. Along with a stellar reference Bible there are several great articles. Two articles of use here are:
RefTagger
If you’re wondering how there are nifty pop-ups on my Scripture links, then wonder no more. The guys over at Logos have created a free tool called RefTagger which recognises Scripture quotes and then displays the passage in full in your bible version of choice.
RefTagger works with a variety of different platforms (I’m running Blogger in a subfolder here) all off of a snippet of code that you can easily paste at the end of your template. Once you’ve added the code to your template all you need to do is to cite a reference from Scripture and RefTagger does the rest, instantly attributing the correct passage to your citation.
For example, I can add any Scripture verse – say, 1 Peter 3:15 – and RefTagger will pick up on the use of Scripture and add provide the neat little overlay. Simple, easy and it adds value to the post!
Band of Bloggers
I’ll be attending the Band of Bloggers conference in Chicago when I come into town for Entrusted With The Gospel in late April.
I’m looking forward to learning some things about this blogging gig.
