365 Albums 106-120

1. Five Bridges The Nice 1970
2. Trinity Ekseption 1973
3. It's only just begun Solution 1980
4. Hymns and sacred songs Leigh Nash 2011*
5. Unforgettable Fire U2 1984
6. Boof! Tony Remy 1994
7. Pilgrimage Wishbone Ash 1971
8. John Barleycorn must die Traffic 1970
9. Ricochet Tangerine Dream 1975
10. The Chieftains 7 The Chieftains 1977
11. Rise Gabrielle 1999
12. Instrumental Hymns Thijs van Leer et al 1996*
13. Hergest Ridge Mike Oldfield 1974
14. Trilogy Emerson Lake & Palmer 1972
15. Lonesome Road Doc & Mere Watson 1977

(* Suitable for Sunday playing IMHO)

Blog of the Week 8

Micah Thomas 1778-1853

The first oil painting that I ever saw
Was of a man who had lived long before.
Micah Thomas his name, the people said,
Who for many years back had been quite dead.
Yet in his day, God's people he had led,
Serving as principal of a college
Filling young men's hearts with holy knowledge.
This blog is now here to elucidate
Who he was and why to appreciate
What he did on earth, his point of view,
One sev'n sev'n eight to eighteen fifty two.

As the above doggerel reveals the first oil painting I ever saw was of Micah Thomas. I must have been four. It hung in the main Sunday School hall of the chapel where I was eventually converted. You can see it on the blog clip. Micah Thomas was the principal of the Baptist College that preceded the one that later moved to Cardiff. I began the blog in 2012 It can be found here. There are 56 posts there. There have been a modest 5000 hits or so, 

Most popular post on the blog is the first part of an article by E W Price Evans in the Baptist Quarterly in 1951. You can find it here. .

Irving Steggles and Peter Golding

Death is a constant theme these days more than ever. In recent weeks I have heard from South Africa of the death of Irving Steggles. A Facebook page has been set up that can be found here. I myself have written

I count it a privilege to have known Pastor Irving Steggles. I only knew Irving in these more recent years when he was in South Africa, although I was aware of him from the time he began in the seminary and became pastor in Chippenham. He was a gentleman, a man of prayer and vision, a kind and courteous man of God, eager to see men and women of all backgrounds won to Christ. He will be sorely missed, especially in South Africa but also here in London and elsewhere in the UK. We should be thankful for all that the Lord did through him and pray that the work may go on even though God’s servant is now with his Lord, which is far better.

Peter Golding much older I would guess, was for long years pastor of Hayes Town Chapel and a member of the Westminster Fellowship, my main contact with him. He had been a Pentecostal in his younger days but had come to clearer views of the truth chiefly through Dr Lloyd-Jones, of whom he always spoke admiringly and warmly.

Faithful servants they have now attained to their eternal rest by the grace of God.

Lord's Day April 26 2020

We began with some hymn singing via zoom as is our pattern these days. We then listened to what I prepared on the previous Friday carrying on with 2 Corinthians. I decided to put headings up for the sermon's various points but didn't put the reading on the screen apart from the reference. The Youtube recording is about an hour and can be accessed here. An audio version is available here. In the evening it was again live on zoom and we looked at another psalm, Psalm 103. Again just a  prayer a reading and the sermon, followed by a little chat. We seemed to be down in number. I'm losing track but I think this must be the sixth Sunday of doing this so it's a habit now. Who knows when it will be over.

Midweek Meeting April 22 2020

We zoomed again last night for prayer and Bible study and it was okay. A friend from Spain joined us so that was lovely (once we managed to get his volume levels right). I took us to an obvious place - Philippians 4:4-7. I found some nice illustrations for joy and peace, which I will add at the end. We prayed as a group and that went okay. Need to work on the self-benediction at the end, however.

JOY

In his book In God's Underground the Christian pastor Richard Wurmbrand from Romania who they put in solitary confinement in the sixties writes about joy like this

I found that joy can be acquired like a habit, in the same way a folded sheet of paper falls naturally into the same fold. "Be joyful," is a command of God. John Wesley used to say that he "was never sad even one quarter of an hour." I cannot say the same of myself, but I learned to rejoice in the worst conditions.

The Communists believe that happiness comes from material satisfaction; but alone in my cell, cold, hungry, and in rags, I danced for joy every night. Words alone have never been able to say what man feels in the nearness of divinity. Sometimes I was so filled with joy that I felt I would burst if I did not give it expression. I remembered the words of Jesus, Blessed are you when men come to hate you, when they exclude you from their company and reproach you and cast out your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! I told myself, "I've carried out only half this command. I've rejoiced, but that is not enough. Jesus clearly says that we must also leap."

When next the guard peered through the spy-hole, he saw me springing about my cell. His orders must have been to distract anyone who showed signs of breakdown, for he padded off and returned with some food from the staff room: a hunk of bread, some cheese, and sugar. As I took them I remembered how the verse in Luke went on: Rejoice in that day and leap for joy - for behold your reward is great. It was a very large piece of bread - more than a week's ration.

I rarely allowed a night to pass without dancing, from then on; although I was never paid for it again, I made up songs and sang them softly to myself and danced to my own music. The guards became used to it. I did not break the silence, and they had seen many strange things in these subterranean cells. Friends to whom I spoke later of dancing in prison asked, "What for? What use was it?" It was not something useful. It was a manifestation of joy like the dance of David, a holy sacrifice offered before the altar of the Lord. I did not mind if my captors thought I was mad, for I had discovered a beauty in Christ that I had not known before.

PEACE

Helen Roseveare who served the Lord in the Congo in the fifties at the time of great unrest and many troubles wrote of a time when rebel soldiers were present and starting at one end of a large room, were taking women away one by one and bringing them back after they were finished with them. Her first impulse was to hide and try not to have to bear this humiliation again. Then she thought of Jesus. He put himself forward as a substitute for us. The fellowship of his sufferings - she moved to the front, to try to protect some of the other women from undergoing a new trauma they might possibly have escaped so far. She later wrote

Together we learned why God has given us His name as "I AM" (Exodus 3:14). His grace always proved itself sufficient in the moment of need, but never before the necessary time, and rarely afterwards. As I anticipated suffering in my imagination and thought of what these cruel soldiers would do next, I quivered with fear. I broke out in a cold sweat of horror. As I heard them drive into our village, day or night, my mouth would go dry: my heart would miss a beat. Fear gripped me in an awful vice. But when the moment came for action, He gave me a quiet, cool exterior that He used to give others courage too: He filled me with a peace and an assurance about what to say or do that amazed me and often defeated the immediate tactics of the enemy.

Don't miss that in Christ Jesus either. It is not your prayer or mine that ultimately does it but Jesus Christ alone.

Day Off Week 17 2020

The great news for all of us is that I have finally finished Hilary Mantel's mammoth third volume in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy The Mirror and the Light. It's a bit too long I guess (over 800 pages - imagine writing a book over 800 pages long! :-)). Spoiler alert - he dies. it all comes a bit suddenly near the end. May be there should have been some hints but then I suppose she expects us to know how it ends.  I am sure you can quibble with things in the book but on the whole .... review to follow, perhaps. I also made a proper stab at Dominion by Tom Holland, which has been hanging around since Christmas. It turns out to be quite different to what I expected. The art project went a step further forward. Might finish it next session. We also watched the last Julian Fellowes' The English Game on Netflix I think. (We also just finished his Belgravia). It's more melodrama than drama but works quite well. The crisis is allowing me to get things done I might have taken longer over I guess so I suppose there's some good in it.
PS I spot a theme here - meddling with history: Hilary Mantel and Julian Fellowes making slight changes to keep us entertained, me mainly in order to circumnavigate my limited skills and Tom Holland from the best motives trying to give us straight history in a quite popular form but inevitably getting things wrong at certain points (mainly because he is wedded to current scholarly opinion).

Banner Article Part 2

The second part of the Banner article on Proverbs can be found in the May issue.

Blog of the Week 7

Richard Bernard Puritan

A Puritan lived name of Bernard

A preacher he was, very learned.

He also wrote much

On pi'ty and such

But now by most people he's spurn-ed.

This blog seeks to present material on the lesser known Puritan Richard Bernard. I began it in 2007. I can't remember the circumstances. Certainly Bernard's book on conscience was the first that made me aware of him.  It can be found here. There are just over 80 posts there, almost all from the early years when I began.  There have been over 50,000 hits. Again, I probably need to give it a little more attention than I do. 

Most popular post on the blog (over 4000 hits) is one on the Puritans. You can find it here. There a few links and things of general interest regarding the Puritans. Most of the links are still working but some are broken It's hard to keep up.

Lord's Day April 19 2020

Preparations were a minor nightmare but the recorded service that went out for Sunday morning seems to have gone okay and can be accessed on Youtube via our website. I preached on 2 Corinthians 1:1-11 which may be the start of a series. A bit longer than of late (36 mins). I was a little too close to the camera at times. There seem to have been a good number of hearers. Before that we got together to sing. In the evening we zoomed and I tackled Psalm 4. I also listened to the recorded service from Aberystwyth at 5 pm.

Midweek Meeting April 15 2020

We zoomed again this week and, as in the recent past, we probably had more people involved than in a normal meeting. I spoke from 2 Chronicles 7:13-16. This is a passage often mentioned at times like this. In the prayer time we decided to split into two groups (break out groups) which worked okay but needs work.

Day off Week 16 2020

I did have a sort of day off again this week. The main thing was reading more of Mantel (nearing the 700s now) and enjoying and some of Defoe on the plague, which is remarkably like our own times in many ways. I also worked on an art project I have in mind. We watched the first two episodes of Quiz. We ended up watching the live one on my computer which had buffering issues so not ideal. I saw the third and final one later and can say that it was interesting but sitting on the fence as it did, it was a little frustrating. A funny day really.

Recent celebrity deaths

There are times when it seems there are more celebrity deaths than unusual. We seem to be in such a time, although I suppose it's who you know. Most of the deaths are people of a good age. Some have been from Covid-19. I am thinking of people like Kenny Rogers, the country singer, in March. I remember buying his record Ruby as a child and miming to it with friends in a school concert.

Then there was singer and composer Bill Withers and Bob Andy of Bob and Marcia reggae fame. Bill Martin was not a name I thought I knew but martin and Coulter wrote Puppet on a String and Congratulations and much else. Also Eddie Large as he was known, the comedian. I'm sure he was hilarious although I had a fruitless search on youtube looking for evidence. Also Honor Blackman, the actress.

More recently, Tim Brooke Taylor has died. He used to live around the corner I'm told. The Goodies show was purportedly based in Cricklewood and I've often seen Bill Oddie round here. Brooke-Taylor, a very witty man was one of the writers of the famous four Yorkshiremen sketch. There was also Stirling Moss who I grew up to have the highest respect for. To give you an idea, the back of one of the tabloids had "F1's Ali and Pele". The obituary in The Times suggests he was a rather immature man but a great racing driver. Then there was Peter Bonetti, the Chelsea goalkeeper and a massive hero of mine as a child. More obscurely, the Dutch pianist Louis van Dijk has died. I am aware of him from his collabarations with Thijs van Leer from time to time.

These are the celebrities but many others are dying too such as veteran preachers and other men of God. Derek Prime, John J Murray and Norman Wells I trust you know about. All very sobering.

Weird Banner Givewaway

See link here. I presume this is genuine.

Latest Five Minutes in Church History

Useful five minutes on the current crisis and a past event from Steve Nicholls (in fact this is a series beginning with the fall of Rome and moving on to plague in Luther's time. The link is just to the site not any specific podcast).

Blog of the Week 6

J Gresham Machen

John Gresham Machen

Nicknamed Das (as in Madchen)

Thought that the liberals were sin'ster

And so started Westminster

There once was a teacher called Machen

He must have been blessed with quite thick skin

When his name they'd abuse

For anti-modernist views

He carried on preaching salvation

This blog seeks to round up material on J Gresham Machen, founder of Westminster Theological Seminary. I began it in 2008 after a week studying Machen at the London Seminary. It can be found here. There are about 150 posts there at the moments and getting on for 6000 hits. I probably need to give it a little more attention than I do.

Most popular post on the blog (getting on for 3000 hits) is the one on how to say the man's name. You can find it here.