I was recently chatting to someone in my family about various things, and in the course of the conversation they mentioned a singer from the 1950’s that they remembered their parents listening to. Now, I forget who the singer was, but when I said I hadn’t heard of them, I got the reply, “Oh well you wouldn’t, it was before your time!”
Continue reading “Before My Time”What is Prophecy?
Guest Post by Theologian Dr Rob Knowles in response to a question about prophecy, what it is and how it functions, and the roll of Scripture within it…
1. I have spent many years in the thinking of Anthony Thiselton, and so am very interested by his views, not least on prophecy (note the spelling here!).
2. The best place to look for Thiselton’s views on this subject, which I regard as authoritative, is in his large commentary on 1 Corinthians: see, Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to The Corinthians (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000). A good place to start is p. 829, which I quote in my book, Relating Faith.
3. In my email response to you, I cite the relevant pages in my book, Relating Faith, where I write on this subject. These pages are: pp. 118 – 126, and pp. 138 – 142.
4. Broadly speaking, my view is that prophecy is either an anointing of the Spirit or a gift of the Spirit, depending on which form of prophecy is in view.
5. I believe that the biblical prophets had a unique anointing that nobody else has had since the closing of the canon. Michael Heiser, an Old Testament scholar, points out that all the biblical prophets had been visited by the second person of the Trinity personally, in the flesh, so to speak.
Continue reading “What is Prophecy?”Keeping in Step with the Spirit
Guest post by Theologian Dr Rob Knowles from a Theology Night session in 2014.
Keeping in Step with the Spirit
What does it mean to “keep in step with the Spirit”? In Galatians 5:13-26, Paul writes the following:
13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Continue reading “Keeping in Step with the Spirit”“The heretic is a man who loves his truth more than truth itself” G. K. Chesterton on Reading
“The highest use of the great masters of literature is not literary; it is apart from their superb style and even from their emotional inspiration. The first use of good literature is that it prevents a man from being merely modern. To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as to spend one’s last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned. The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns. Literature, classic and enduring literature, does its best work in reminding us perpetually of the whole round of truth and balancing other and older ideas against the ideas to which we might for a moment be prone. The way in which it does this, however, is sufficiently curious to be worth our fully understanding it to begin with.
Continue reading ““The heretic is a man who loves his truth more than truth itself” G. K. Chesterton on Reading”Thoughts and Wotnot #2
Not my own but very helpful and thought provoking…. See the end for credit(s)….
The palaeogenetic fallacy: the mistake of young people who assume that just because a grumpy old fart is sounding off again, what he says has got to be wrong. Even a broken grandfather clock is right twice a day.
Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God is a Pauline game-changer. There are only three excuses for not reading it: (1) you have underdeveloped biceps (as you will be unable to elevate the book to make ocular contact); (2) you have manual osteoarthritis (as you will be unable to flip from the text to the endnotes without risk of irreversible damage to the articular cartilage); (3) you have less than six months to live.
“Whose side is God on?” we are tempted to ask in all kinds of conflicts, but his answer is always the same: “Not yours.”
Continue reading “Thoughts and Wotnot #2”THE HOLLOW MEN Not With A Bang But a Whimper Poem by T. S. Eliot
THE HOLLOW MEN
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Ca: I Speak Jesus
We buried a friend today. She was a wonderful, beautiful woman of God and full of life before she was taken from this world into her promised rest. Her name is Caroline but we called her Ca, and she was our dear beloved friend.
The song she loved in her last days and weeks was ‘I speak Jesus’ – and when you listen to this song (over 20 million people have) – you get to understand what was important to our Ca.
I was so honoured to read the eulogy today and this song reflects her utter trust in Jesus Christ, her love for God our Father and her zest for life.
Glory to Jesus Christ.
Prochrist
After writing a post yesterday about a book I’m reading called ‘Antichrist’ – a friend asked me with deep concern if I was alright, given my reading material.
I thought it was a fair enough question from a concerned friend, but it also showed a very big problem, namely, why is it assumed that someone is not alright because they are reading such a seriously minded book.
Continue reading “Prochrist”Antichrist
I have recently started reading a book by Eastern Orthodox writer G. M. Davis called ‘Antichrist – The Fulfillment of Globalization‘. It’s a chunky thug at nearly 400 pages, and it’s so insightful from what I’ve read so far that it forces me to put the book down for a while to ponder the ramifications and claims I am reading.
Continue reading “Antichrist”
Gralefrit Theology 