We began last Lord's Day with communion and then I preached from Ephsians 1:7-10, which is really rich territory. In the evening I preached 2 Chronicles 7 and again there was a rcih vein to mine. Numbers were typical - decent in the morning but down to seven in the evening. Several were ill and some were absent for other reasons.
The similar phrase 'Worldly Christianity' is one used by Bonhoeffer. It's J Gresham Machen that I want to line up most closely with. See his Christianity and culture here. Having done commentaries on Proverbs (Heavenly Wisdom) and Song of Songs (Heavenly Love), a matching title for Ecclesiastes would be Heavenly Worldliness. For my stance on worldliness, see 3 posts here.
10 Livery Halls Where Dissenters Once Met
When thrown out of the national church, dissenters needed to find places to meet. Many chrches in London were able to hire the halls connected with the Livery Companies. For more detail and other examples see Walter Wilson's multi-volume work on dissenting churches.
- Cutlers Hall, Cloak Lane (Independent)
- Glovers Hall, Beech Lane (Baptist then Independent)
- Haberdashers Hall, Gresham Street (Presbyterian)
- Joiners Hall, Thames Street (Baptist)
- Lorimers Hall, Fore Street (Baptist)
- Pinners Hall, Old Broad Street (Independent)
- Pla(i)sterers Hall, Addle Street (Independent)
- Salters Hall, Cannon Street (Presbyterian)
- Tallow-chandlers Hall, Dowgate Hill (Baptist)
- Turners Hall, Philpot Lane (Baptist)
GBM Annual Meetings 2024
Grace Baptist Mission is perhaps unique in being very much a church based missionary society. Part of the way this plays out is that once a year they have a day of meetings, usually in London. I always enjoy the meetings if I can get to them. That's where I was last Saturday. Sorry not to have reported sooner.
It was good to be there in the very convenient and adequate Friends Meeting House near Euston Station. The pastor was there and Ellen and it was nice to see many old friends, including some former members.
The first part of the day is taken up with a business meeting where all churches involved are able to send delegates (I was there to represent Childs Hill). Our chair is now Tom Forryan, formerly pastor at Hitchin. This year's meeting was a little more protracted than usual as the committee wanted to make two changes. One was a change to the doctrinal basis. They wanted to make clearer where we stand on gender issues. This was flagged up some time ago and was accepted by the churches. More difficult was a change to the constitution aimed at streamlining things. Not everyone was entirely happy with this but the change was passed by majority vote.
The rest of the day was taken up with meetings at which the various missionaries spoke, closing with a plenary worship meeting at which the preacher was Jason Murfitt, currently working on the island of Madeira. We took the opportunity after the delegates meeting to go and hear Reuben Saywell. As he warned me, it was more or less what he had had to say in Childs Hill but it was good to hear it again and to see one or more new slides and to hear questions asked. Nice to see Cathy and their latest child too. The family have now returned to The Philippines and we pray that the encouraging work will continue to go forward.
We then went to hear Andrzej Kempczynski from Legionowo near Warsaw in Poland. His wife Monika was also around. Again it was encouraging. They have a lovely new meeting place (the local library) and have joined the Baptist denomination, which brings some advantages.
After this there was a plenary session with Nathan and Urpha Javed. Nathan pastors an Urdu/Hindi speaking congregation in Bradford and most of them were there to sing to us in the style they use there. There were also testimonies from Nathan, Urpha and others and lots of slides on the screen.
After all this I was rather overloaded and as we had family visiting back at home I skipped the final session. Among those I did not hear - James Hammond (Bordeaux), Adrian & Abigail Yeboah (Amsterdam) Phil & Carolyn |Reid (West Africa).
Perhaps you will want to come next year and see what God is doing in different places.
10 Amazing things about grace according to John Newton
- Saves wretches - that saved a wretch like me!
- Brings back the lost - I once was lost, but now am found,
- Heals the blind - was blind, but now I see.
- Brings about conviction of sin - 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
- Comforts us - and grace my fears relieved;
- Sustains us - Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come: 'tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
- Brings us to heaven - and grace will lead me home.
- Is revealed in the Word - his word my hope secures;
- Is guaranteed by God - he will my shield and portion be as long as life endures
- Secures heaven for us - Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, and mortal life shall cease: I shall possess, within the veil, a life of joy and peace. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine; but God, who called me here below, will be forever mine
Lord's Day October 27 2024
Sat listening in the morning which ws food, listening to my assistant Eddie on how marriage pictures the gospel. Good congregation. Lots away (in USA, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc). Eight kids in Sunday School (there were none last week). Only seven of us in the evening. I preached from Psalm 119 on ways Scripture is pictured.
10 People with a Surname that is an English County
- Sarah Lancashire, Actor
- Susan Hampshire, Actor
- Victoria Derbyshire, TV and Radio Journalist
- Natasha Devon, Radio Journalist
- David Essex, Musician
- Judith Durham, Musician
- Jack Wiltshire, Sportsman
- Peter Norfolk, Sportsman
- Bruce Kent, Political Activist
- G Leonard Cheshire, Pilot and Philanthropist
Fakers, Forgers and Phoneys by Magnus Magnusson
I came across this book and bought it and then forgot about it until finding it again recently. It is really well written and great fun. Magnusson (he of Iceland and Mastermind, the father of Sally; he died in 2007) looks at 16 main forgers or fakers, although he mentions several others en passant. He divides them into four types - art forgeries (Tom Keating, John Drewe and John Myatt, Han van Meegeren, the Cottingley fairies); archaeological frauds (Piltdown Man, Glozel, the Vinland Map, the Cardiff giant); impostors and hoaxers (the Tichborne claimant, Ellen and William Craft, the chess playing Turk automaton, George Psalmanazar); and literary forgeries (Thomas Chatterton, James Macpherson, Iolo Morgannwg, William Henry Ireland). Like all journalist he makes one or two mistakes (eg thinking Hammersmith is Hampstead at one point). Interestingly, although those who made money enjoyed it that was rarely the main reason for the fraud. Also, not all the frauds seem to have been that good but if people wanted to believe then they would. In most cases the suspicious could see right through the fraudster. The girls who claimed to see fairies seem to have still believed they had seen them even though they knew their photographs were faked.
The Beatles in 100 Objects
Having read and enjoyed the Welsh history book using 100 objects I looked around to see what else there was of that ilk and dound this Beatles book. I have read quite a few Beatles books over the years adn this was as enjoyable as the others, not spoiled by the large number of typos and one or two minor errors. It is a very good way of going through the story. The objects were guitars, records, bits of paper, etc, supplemneted by photographs and gave a freshness to the story, which I love going over partly for nostalgia sake. One reference prompted me to seek out and watch an interview they once did with David Coleman on Grandstand of all programmes.
Midweek Meeting October 23 2024
We're coming towards half term here so I did a one off from Psalm 119, looking at the time references in verses 20, 44, 55. Quite stimulatim and challenging and not long. Good time of prayer to follow.
Needham on Dabney at the Evangelical Library
As intimated, we had a very good time with Dr Nick Needham who gave the second of this Autumn's lunch time zoom lectures for the Evangelial Library. About 20 tuned in. It will be up on YouTube in due time. He poke about the Civil War and Dabney's very southern and today unacceptable views on slavery. Perhaps the most interesting part, however, was atthe end where he touched on three areas where Dabney and other 19th century American Calvinists questioned the 17th century scholastic Heritage of Turretin and others.
First, thhere was the doctrine of concursus, that is the view that God exerts an almost physical energy in causing sinful actions albeit without causing the sin in those actions. Dabney and the 19th century American Calvinists rejected this as a subtle distinction that created more problems than it solved. It was better, they argued, to say that God allowed rather than in any sense causing sinful actions and to leave room for n elment of mystery,
Secondly, they rejected the scholastic view of divine simplicity. The scholastics said that God's essence and his attributes were identical. Dabney and the others regarded this as an extravagantly philosophical notion with little or no biblical grounding. this view risked destroying any real or meaningful distinction between the various divine attributes, potentially making God into a sort of pantheistic essence in which all differences were dissolved
Thirdly, and perhaps most interestingly, they rejected the scholastic doctrine of God being woihtout passions. The scholastics taught that all biblical ascriptions of emotion to God shouold be understood as figures of speech. What they really described were simply pure acts of divine will. For example, if God is said to love us, this does not denote any emotional affection of loving. It is just a metaphor denoting God's act of will aimed at bestowing good upoin us. Hodge reacted especially strongly to this, arguing that it ripped the very heart out of the whole biblical revelation of God, turning him into a sort of big brain in the sky devoid of feeling. Dabney shared Hodge's view. His critique was not barely negative. he proposed a positive alternative. Although God does not have emotions in the way that we do, since our emotions are continually ebbing and flowing and continually subject to change. Yet there is in God's nature a genuine, meaningful divine equivalent or counterpart to human emotion. Dabney called these divine emotions active principles. That is not passions in the sense of fluctuations or agitations but affections of his will actively distinguishable from the cognitions of his intelligence. They are truly ooptiv (ie expressing a wish or a desire). However anthropopathic the statements made concerning God's repenting, his wrath and pity and pleasur, his love or jealousy, we should do violence to Scripture if we deny that he means to ascribe to himself active affections in some mode suitable to his nature. Allied to this Dabney also rejected the scholastic view that God can in no sense be said to react or respond to his creatures, that all God's choices, attitudes and actions flow exclusively from his unmoved will. This is simply unbiblical for Dabney, who aargued that the most that can be truthfully said is that God's creatures cannot cause him to do anything, as though he responded by sheer reflex, whether he wnted to or not. However, Dabney went on to say that if we are faithful to Scripture we must affirm that the actions of creatures can truly be said to be the occasion if not the cause of divine attitudes and
actions. Our sins really do occasion God's displeasure; our misery really does occasion God's compassion. Yet the divine displeasure and compassion are willed by God rather than extorted from him. Dabney says the Scriptures mean what they plainly say. Some seem so afraid of recognising in God any susceptibility to a passive nature that they virtually set Scripture aside and pin to God, whose activities of intelligence and will are so exclusively from himself that even the relation of objective occasion to him is made unreal and nothing is allowed except a species of coincidence or pre-established harmony. They are afraid to accept what the Bible seems so plainly to say - that God is angry because men sin.
Dabney stood very firmly in the stream of 19th century American Calvinism that was ready to weigh in the balance the scholastic Calvinism of the 17th century and find it seriously wanting in several ways. In this Dabney shows us how a 19th century reformed theologian, following the example of the 16th century reformers, could practice a critical reverence toward tradition even his own confessional tradition.
A Busy Monday
Monday was a very full day. Things start quite early these days. There were other things to do in the morning as well and then at 1 pm we had the next Evangelical Library lunch time lecture from Nick Needham on Robert L Dabney. An excellent piece of work. I will give a full report soon. I am sorry not more were able to hear it. After that we had a committee meeting and that was worthwhile. Finance continues to be an issue. Things are healthy enough at the moment but on current trends, it won't be long before we are in trouble. Current trends are making it difficult. Then after that I met up with a pastor friends of mine from West London and we visited a home in Golders Green where a couple are troubled about recent phenomena in the home. It turned out that Ihad met the lady before in another connection. We talked and then we prayed |(me in English, my friend in the family tongue). They kindly gave us gifts even though we were there only a short time/ I hope this will lead to further contact and a spiritual blessing on the famiily. It was nice too to have a coffee and catch up with my friend who I first met years ago through EMF
As I walked home through the park, there was a glorious sunset. My mother used to tell me that God was too good to me (she feared I would take it for granted). God certainly is very good. Then after tea I had a Bible study on salvation with two Iranian kurd refugees who come to the church. One of them has recently been transferred to Luton nd had caught the train to Cricklewood. I am encouraging hiom to attend a church in Luton but he like us, he says. anyone I was able to pass on part of the gift I'd just received to hm to cover his significant costs. The Bible study was okay bit all in translation. Their English is not great and my Farsi non-existent.
I then relaxed watching University Challenge (Cardiff beat St Andrews - not a Celt in either team!). We also watched a bit of TV - DI Ray and the ITV News.
Lord's Day October 20 2024
Preaching morning and evening last Lord's Day morning and evening. Ephesians 1:4-6 in the morning and 2 Chronicles 6 in the evening, preceded by communion. Loads missing in the morning and no kids. Good to look at the important subjecy of election. How we need revival.
10 suggestions from Edith Cherry on how to keep going as a Christian
- Rest on the Lord. We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender
- Remember you are not alone. We go not forth alone against the foe but in Thy Name, O Captain of salvation!
- Be strong in his strength. Strong in Thy strength, Jesus our Righteousness, our sure Foundation
- Be safe in his love. Safe in Thy keeping tender, our King of love
- Go in his Name. We rest on Thee and in Thy Name we go, in Thy dear Name, all other names above
- Go in faith. We go in faith, our Prince of glory
- Depend increasingly on his grace. Our own great weakness feeling, and needing more each day Thy grace to know
- Be positive and joyful. Yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing
- Know that the Battle is his. Thine is the battle
- Go on for his praise and your blessing. Thine shall be the praise and we shall rest with Thee through endless days
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