I will take them!

Great reminder of the gospel from Guy Davies - http://exiledpreacher.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/sinners-for-sale-gifts-to-share.html

The agents of death and their attempts to silence the truth

I note that the agents of death, as is their usual tactic, are using the US election result to proclaim that everybody who does not agree with them must leave the debate now.

When the agents of death have an electoral setback, their friends in the press say "it's time to re-group and try again". But when they have an electoral advance, they say "now it's time for those who disagree with us to shut up and never utter their view-point again; it's permanently out-of-date, abolished, and you must never again let it echo in the halls of the sensible and wise". That seems to have worked, sadly, on the UK electoral scene - there's now a pro-abortion consensus across the political spectrum because, you know, not being in favour of the death of innocents is, well, swivel-eyed; or so we are told. And we're told it so often - it must be true...?

Time to re-publish a blog post from just over four years ago:

Two of the US presidential candidates were recently asked if life begins at conception or not. In case you just arrived from another planet, the significance of this question is that if life does begin at conception, then abortion can only be classified as murder. Here are their answers:

Barack Obama: This is something that I have not come to a firm resolution on. I think it’s very hard to know what that means — when life begins. Is it when a cell separates? Is it when the soul stirs? So I don’t presume to know the answer to that question. What I know, as I’ve said before, is that there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life and that that has a moral weight to it that we take into consideration when we’re having these debates.

Hillary Clinton: Potential for life begins at conception. . . I am a Methodist, as you know. My church has struggled with this issue. In fact, you can look at the Methodist Book of Discipline and see the contradiction and the challenge of trying to sort that very profound question out. But for me, it is also not only about a potential life — it is about the other lives involved. And, therefore, I have concluded, after great concern and searching my own mind and heart over many years, that our task should be in this pluralistic, diverse life of ours in this nation that individuals must be entrusted to make this profound decision, because the alternative would be such an intrusion of government authority that it would be very difficult to sustain in our kind of open society.

Both candidates are, their voting records show, strong supporters of a right to abortion. Senator Obama has even put on record, in the Illinois  Senate, his support for the right to kill disabled babies even immediately after birth, as well as before it.

There are many things that we could say about the above two answers. There's one point I wanted to make though. It's to take a step back and point out that the answers both show that pro-abortionists are badly losing the intellectual debate. Both candidates, when all is trimmed away, say "I don't know" in answer to the question "does life begin at conception?" That means, they also don't know if abortion is immoral and if modern states are turning a blind eye to the murdering of millions of the most vulnerable every year. It means they don't know if abortion is on the one hand an important human right, or on the other hand the greatest moral atrocity of modern times. They're both campaigning to become the most powerful person in the world, but this fundamental question... well, they're not decided. Hmmm.

Why does this mean that pro-abortionists are losing the debate? Because, a generation ago, they confidently exclaimed that life did not begin at conception; at that point we were just dealing with a blob of cells. This was the whole basis for legitimising abortion - at that point, we were told, there was nothing more than an unwanted growth in the womb, which could be dealt with however we pleased - even up to 18, 22 or 26 weeks, depending on what figure you felt like plucking out of the air when you got out of bed this morning.

That position is now untenable. Babies have been born, and survived, at less than 22 weeks. Babies have been born, and died, younger than that - and nobody dares say they weren't real babies whilst they were struggling for their little lives. Modern technology has allowed the most amazing insights into the baby's life within the womb, showing their highly developed existence even at half the number of weeks mentioned above. Through modern scientific answers, we know that once a baby has been conceived, all it needs is protection and nourishment to make it into the outside world: there are no fundamental subsequent stages in its existence that can be pinpointed as "the beginning of life" rather than at conception. That's leaving aside the moral and philosophical arguments.

In the light of these answers, pro-abortionists have it tough. It's become increasingly untenable to say "that thing's not alive, so it's OK to hack it to pieces - it's not a moral issue!" They're now reduced to saying we don't know. If at this stage you can't work out which side of the debate is in the right, you're in real trouble...

Discipleship is cross-shaped

We must remember this: discipleship is cross-shaped.

If you're experiencing the cross, then it's not because of where you are. It's not because of the people around you. It's not because of some particular circumstance.

It's because discipleship is cross-shaped. If you were in a different place, with different people at a different time and being a faithful disciple there, then you'd find the cross there too.

So don't wish to be elsewhere, with others, etc. Submit to the cross, and believe in the Lord who is nailed there with you - and in his resurrection also.

Those won't be needed any more

I was singing "Thine be the glory" yesterday, which includes these lines:

Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away,
Kept the folded grave clothes where Thy body lay.

The gospels of Luke and John record that when Peter and the beloved disciple came to see the tomb, they saw the grave clothes lying there.

Jesus hadn't taken them with him. He wouldn't be needing them again. Left behind; all the vestments of death, left behind. The burden of sin; the wrath of the Father; the sorrows, the woe - left behind. He lives!

About ME!

Normally I browse the Internet in a text-only web browser. I began that after first moving to Kenya - the Internet was chronically slow where I lived, and that was the only way to load a web page and read it in a sensible amount of time.

The Internet has got faster since then, but I've not felt any need to change. It had advantages - you got to see the text, only the text, and that helped me to focus on what the writer was actually saying. And these days, even the Telegraph seems to believe that its readers can't survive unless there's lots of lovelies to gawp at whilst reading the rest of the news.

Well, right now I'm somewhere with very fast Internet, and I turned images on. I turn to a few evangelical Christian bloggers...

I won't name names; that would be unhelpful and detract from the generality of the point. But I do wonder just why I need to be assaulted with the offer of reading so many pages titled "About Me", or be confronted by such prominent, highly stylised pictures of the preacher, projecting to us just the same kind of images as we see in the self-help books - you know, the "I'm great, I'm competent, trust me, I can really lift you up" type. Is that really the image we're wanting to project as preachers? Are we not meant to be saying "Here's Jesus" - and getting ourselves out of the picture as much as possible?

I think that when you browse without the images for long periods of time at once, you get a fresh appreciation for how much far developed the modern quasi-cult of imagery has advanced. It seems to have advanced by degrees, but now reached quite a level. Even evangelicals apparently feel the need to invest time and effort in image-projection. I thought we were heralds and spokesmen? What herald or spokesman needs to - or should? - invest in image projection? I'm not making an argument for being scruffy - that also detracts from the message. But, but, but...

If you're a Christian blogger, then blog something worth saying. And don't then distract from that with stylised, slick images of yourself, trying to project your competence, coolness or whatever through your sharp suit, nice smile, good teeth, etcetera. You're not personally as interesting as you think you are. I came to hear about Jesus. Stuff a normal photo on a side-page if you must. But otherwise...

Have something worth saying that's a word from the Almighty God, and then you won't need to spend time on projecting your image.

Two more "Reformation in Kenya" papers

Sadly, we can have true experience of Christ, and yet it can decline. We can feed on him, a good, satisfying meal – a feast! – and yet then live off the memory of that feast, instead of coming to dine again. Through the difficulty of the spiritual warfare, through the deceitfulness of sin, and through the dullness of our own hearts, we can confuse our own outward activity, and perhaps success, in ministry, with inward Christian experience and progress. Terrifyingly, God can actually “bless” us with outward success to test if that was actually the thing our hearts desired. Or was it rather the case that we have the Spirit that amidst the ruins of outward disaster is content to sit, wait, rejoice in him and say, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places” (Habakkuk 3:17-19).

I've just uploaded another couple of papers (this is taking rather too long) from my series on Reformation in Kenya - http://david.dw-perspective.org.uk/da/index.php/writings/reformation-for-kenya/. The above quote is from the opening paper.

Is refining coming?

I am neither a prophet nor the son of one.

However, we can all know from Scripture that at times, God refines his churches when they become lazy, backsliding, worldly, proud, etc.

Such times are clearly coming in the West, as Christianity moves from being a comfortable social choice to a troublesome one.

What about Kenya? The outward "church" is corrupt to the core; a den of greedy, grasping leeches masquerading as pastors whose main job is to suck money from gullible people and/or gullible foreign donors. The people are promised miracles and a life of ease. The donors are told about wonderful church growth, and if they visit they get shown hordes of smiling people filling the benches or expressing gratitude for aid hand-outs.

I've said to people here often that God will not allow his name to be blasphemed like that forever. Times of refining will come. Are we sitting back and enjoying the view - ready to fall when times of testing come? Or are we seeking and serving fervently, and being the kind of believers who will be ready to survive such refining?

A new feature on the scene in recent months has been militant Muslims, throwing grenades into churches near the border with Somalia.

Such now seems to have progressed to particular areas (where Somalians live) in the capital, Nairobi. There's been another one this weekend: http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Child+killed+in+Sunday+school+terror+bombing+/-/1056/1521354/-/s1r6r2z/-/index.html

People are now beginning to think that *(in some places) it might actually be dangerous, rather than an automatic ticket to the blessing of an easy life, to go to a church. Is refining coming in the near future, or are they just isolated incidents to warn the true church, so that there's more time to be ready? The vast bulk are not ready, but those who have enough spiritual heart and head to read the signs of the times have enough to know what to do. Please do pray for the Kenyan church.