Articles
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Call him Jesus – but who is he?
Joseph must have woken up from his dream with a spinning head. His fiancée was going to have a baby – he already knew that, and he knew he was not the father. In his dream an angel told him that the child was from the Holy Spirit.
Matthew tells us that this was to fulfill the scripture that referred to a child called Immanuel. But this child was not going to be called Immanuel – he was to be called Jesus (or Joshua). But in some way he was Immanuel.
Was he really God with us? And does that mean he was also God? Luke also tells us that it was the Holy Spirit who caused Mary to become pregnant. He says the child will be called the Son of God.
But in what sense?
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Who do you believe?
I still remember the first and only time I saw Santa Claus and his sleigh. I was lying in my grandparents bed after sunset as the sky was changing from red to dark red. I could see out of the window the tops of the shop buildings half a mile away when the sleigh slowly came in to land on the top of the shops. I don't remember anything after that as I must have fallen asleep.
I have not told this story to many people. I did tell it to a close relative this week who, to be honest, didn't believe me. She had a variety of rational explanations for me: I was dreaming; imagining it; reconstructed memory; wishful thinking ... etc.
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Sometimes adultery seems easier
Does adultery seem like a good idea at times? The Tuesday Bible study group got on to the topic this week. Not ordinary adultery, you will be relieved to know, but adultery of a different kind.
We ran into the passage that described the followers of Jesus as “those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins.” (Rev 14.4). Quite a puzzling statement at first sight since nowhere does the bible encourage everyone to stay unmarried (multiplying and filling the earth would be quite difficult if that was the case, quite apart from what appear to be various sexist and gender assumptions).
One passage that sheds light on it is Ezekiel 23. A pretty gross and explicit portrayal of unfaithfulness.
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Catholic?
Early in the 4th century a dispute arose in Alexandria because of a teacher called Arius. He tried to state a Christian doctrine of God in a way that Platonists could understand. He started with the idea that the supreme God is one and that therefore Christ could not be eternal in the same way as God. Christ was not equal to the Father and had been created by the Father out of nothing, even though he was the highest of all God’s creatures.
The dispute spread until the Emperor Constantine called a Council of the church at which he would preside – at Nicea, near his headquarters in Nicomedia.
At the Council in Nicea in 325 Constantine (probably at the suggestion of Bishop Hosius of Cordova) proposed the clause, that the Son was “of one substance” (homoousios) with the Father.
Unfortunately the debate did not go away and a new Emperor, Theodosius, who did not agree with the Arians, called a Council in Constantinople in 381.
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Not like us?
The terrible carnage in Paris has raised again the question of bias in reporting. Many on Facebook have been overlaying their profile pictures with the colours of the French flag. Others on the other hand have asked why they didn't also use the Lebanese flag colours or those of Kenya, or Syria for that matter (the day before the Paris attacks bombs in Beirut killed 44 people, in April 147 people people were killed at a university in Kenya).
The debate is partly about news media basing their reporting on what the audience wants to see or read. Nowadays there are fairly accurate measures of audience response. Generally, it seems, people respond more to stories about “people like us”.
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- Written by: Dale
- Category: Weekly Reflections
What Hope?
Will the church in Syria disappear? Has the gospel been silenced in Iraq and Iran? Are we in another period when things look black for the Christian church? What are we to make of these pressures against the gospel?
One thing to do is to look back at times when this kind of thing has happened before. Any time will do since this kind of thing has been happening from the beginning, and before the beginning.
What we see, both in the pages of the Bible, and in the history of the church, is that God keeps on working.
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- Written by: Administrator
- Category: Weekly Reflections
Before you pray: Whom do you know? 2 (Continued from last week)
Knowing God and having fellowship with him, to use John's term, means we must live in the light. Darkness and sin will always destroy our fellowship with God, since God is light and there is no darkness in him. If we are to associate with him, we too must live in the light (1 John 1.1-10). That means we have to be honest about our sin. Living in the light provides the place for the cleansing from sin. Living in the darkness multiplies the sin.
It is from within this fellowship relationship that we learn what God is like. This is the context for facts. The more our fellowship with God deepens, the better we know the kind of God he is. And consequently the better we know how to pray. Our minds become attuned to his way of thinking, we understand better how he operates, we have clearer insight into his purposes, and this knowledge helps us pray.