All Things Seen & Unseen

It's Pentecost Today! (Well yesterday it was anyway!) You know, the day the Church of 120 in the first century got its first dose of the Holy Spirit with power . Being brought up in the AoG in the 50s and 60s we knew Acts 2.1-4 off by heart because we heard and we sang it often. In the church I was in, the choir used to sing a rendition of this passage and I can hear that choir's recital coursing through my heart's memory as I write this. This filling with the Holy Spirit equipped the Church for service and the service was for the salvation of those around. It was not just for the edification of the apostles and disciples but for the salvation of others. That's the whole business of the gospel which is 'the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes' (Rom 1.16). But Pentecost had been celebrated and still is within the Jewish community. Pentecost (denoting 50th day) was the 50th day after the Exodus reaching to the giving of the Law at Sinai. Th...

My good friend Jeanette has done it again with a blockbuster sermon that I wish I had written or been present to hear. Preachers get a lot out of preparing a sermon and it's a shame that much of that work may just go out into the air and not be grasped. However, I still believe in preaching and value it over 'dialogues', 'hi-tech' displays etc. which entertain more than they inform. Preachers are not entertainers so it can be hard to understand, in our western world which is 'entertaining itself to death', a phrase based on the educator's Neil Postman's graphic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, that preachers are not sent for that purpose. Someone has said that only recently have Christians had to ask themselves the question for the first time in history, how much time they should spend entertaining themselves! Anyway, enough of my ranting for Jeanette's sermon is spiritually entertaining and refreshing.