All Things Seen & Unseen

In my last post about the charity collector, I mentioned something of importance that I would like now to talk about further. Using My Story With Apologies I enter the realm of personal experience hesitantly, knowing that it is open misunderstanding. (At least one good friend of mine doubts whether I actually know the Lord even now simply because my experience is different from that of others!)

I was speaking with one of the mall charity collectors at our local shopping centre who frequently buttonhole shoppers with pleas to sign up for contributions to all manner of causes.  We got onto the topic of belief in Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Who did she think He was? After the collector told me that she wasn't a Christian, she also told me that all religions were the same because they all have a belief in one supreme god.

The title of this post takes its cue from a book written by Tom Smail (1928-2012) on the first person in the Trinity, God the Father, a study, which I heartily recommend. Smail had a Church of Scotland background but later entered the Anglican ordained ministry; he was evangelical, and charismatic (but with reservations later in his career ) in churchmanship. He was a learned theologian and a godly man who wrote with care about church teachings-practices which he believed were becoming lopsided in emphasis.

'Then the preacher said the most provocative words that church congregations need to hear and act on today. The most significant piece of 'furniture' or fitting in this building are :   the doors through which you will all leave at the end of this service and go out into the world.' I ended with the above words in my last post. I'm a bit crabby at the moment. Yes, I know, good Christians are not supposed to get irritable , fractious , fretful , cross , petulant , pettish , crabbed , crotchety , cantankerous , disagreeable , miserable , morose , peppery ,  edgy , impatient , querulous ; etc but I am.  I think my crabbiness has to do with the fact that the visible, institutional church doesn't get it! But then I have to remember that for many years I didn't get it either until a rude, Dutchman woke me up out of my dogmatic slumber.  So I have nothing to boast about. None of us does. The church is in such a parlous condition in Australia that none...

A church minister recently related this experience. He said, he heard another church minister ask his congregation, 'What is the most important piece of furniture in the church building?' You might think, the questioner went on, that it's the church's lectern because it's the place where the holy Scriptures are read.  But you'd be wrong. You might think, he continued, that it's the pulpit where the Word of God is preached or the Lord's table from where the 'spiritual body' and 'spiritual blood' of our Saviour are dispensed. But, you'd be wrong. By now, the whole congregation is wondering where is all this going? What could be more significant than any of these items that have been mentioned?

The Great Divide in Australia is a term for a range of mountains separating the Eastern Australian coastline from the outback. This range is the third largest in the world. The Great Dividing Range is a fitting metaphor for The Great Divide (the sacred-secular divide) in Christian consciousness and action exposed in a 30-page booklet written by Mark Greene of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (licc) ( http://www.licc.org.uk/ ). The Sacred-Secular Divide (the SSD) Greene seems to assume we all know what the SSD is. I'm not so sure.  In any case to put it briefly, it is the deep division, between things regarded as sacred : morals, prayer, church attendance, Lord's Day, bible studies, serving in the church, church worship, evangelising 1 ; as opposed to secular (profan e) things such a work, school, univ ersity, recr eation, holidays, clubs, TV, novels, politics, or dinary family matters, gardening , and workaday week . Of course, a legitima...

Introduction Last time we examined Free Grace Theology (FGT) and how, according to this theology, we receive salvation . FGT maintains that we receive it on the basis of belief-in-Christ alone. Significantly, FGT distinguishes be tween the 'call to believe' and the 'call to follow' (see Free Grace Theology ) arguing that for salvation it is only necessary to believe on the Lord Jesus (e.g., Acts 16.31), that is, to answer the 'call to believe'. Lordship Salvation In opposition to FGT is Lordship Salvation (LS) 1 which believes that the 'call to follow' Jesus Christ is part and parcel of the 'call to believe' (Matt 28.19-20; Rom 1.5, 16.26; etc). LS is convinced that discipleship is an inherent part of true belief in Christ as Lo rd . Hence, o ne of the major teachings of LS is that being saved-by-grace-through-faith is always followed by works (Eph 2.8-10; Jas 2.17-20). The two (belief, a nd good works) will inevitably go together b...