Nightclub Disaster: A Parable of Hell
Thursday, February 7th, 2008In a moment, suddenly, the very plastic and synthetic trappings that encouraged a false gaiety, a pseudo excitement, are turned by a pyrotechnic spark into an inferno of relentless and devastating flames.
Some Comments on Netanyahu’s Election in Israel: A Prelude to Coming Disaster?
Thursday, February 7th, 2008While the upset victory of Benjamin Netanyahu may astonish, shock or delight one faction or another, what significance can it hold in effecting any real change in Israel’s perilous situation?
The Necessary Death and Resurrection of Israel
Thursday, February 7th, 2008As with the prophetic “son of man” of this dread and glorious chapter, so also are we, the “prophetic” people of God, required to be set down in the midst of a valley full of dry bones.
The Mystery of the Wisdom of God
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Paul is now going to reveal the mystery for which reason all things were created. This mystery has nothing to do with anything that we can recognize as being valid or relevant for the church. It has not even to do with the world or the benefits that men in the world will receive.
Teaching: A Moral Vocation
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Teaching touches the lives of students in those things that have to do with moral questions: questions of meaning and questions of value. What is really true? What is really desirable? What is real? What is reality itself? Whether you are conscious of it or not, you are touching all of these questions every day, in one way or another; therefore, it is important that you become conscious of it and you need to ask yourself what do I consider moral, true, righteous and good? To be truly moral, one must be heedlessly ruthless against one’s self-indulgence in favor of what is right, no matter what the cost or consequence to one’s own comfort or that of others.
A Message for the Earnest Seeker
Thursday, February 7th, 2008In much the same way as the Shekinah glory lights the holiest place of all, so also are we ‘lighted’ to the degree that first the natural (open daylight at the brazen altar), and later the ‘religious’ (the seven-branched oil-fed priestly serviced Menorah) gives way finally to the unaided Presence of God alone. T. Austin-Sparks […]
Lying Signs and Wonders: Deceptions of the Last Days
Thursday, February 7th, 2008I would appreciate your sympathy as I try to address a subject that is already dividing many of God’s people into defensive and opposing camps. One is put into the uncomfortable, if not dangerous, even in raising elementary cautions, of seeming to oppose to what in the eyes of many is holy and of the Spirit of God.
The Lord’s Coming in the Clouds
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Without in any way questioning the literalness of this eschatological glory, I suspect, as is often the case, that it contains an allegorical and spiritual meaning as well perhaps a necessary principle pertaining to the coming of any revelation of the Lord in fullness: namely, a ‘coming’ or revelation of the Lord that must, somehow of necessity, be preceded or accompanied by ‘clouds.’
Israel’s Restoration:
Thursday, February 7th, 2008The eternal wisdom of God, demonstrated through the Church, as the necessary prelude to the Messiah’s coming
A Further Guide for the Perplexed
Thursday, February 7th, 2008However faint the spiritual condition of Jewish people, the cry of the Shema is familiar to all. How often have we taken refuge in it, and used it as a bulwark of rejection when the uncomfortable question of an alien Jesus is pressed upon our consideration. Persuaded of the un-Jewishness of the matter, and unwilling for a religious polemic that is threatening or disquieting, we return to the fundamental tenet of our monotheistic belief-though if the truth were known we are not that avid for that ‘God’ either-to put an end to the whole unwelcome matter. Then, comfortably assured we have righteously affirmed our Jewishness, we turn again to the more serious issues of life, which in fact constitute our idolatry and chronic rejection of Him who calls.
God Crucified
Thursday, February 7th, 2008We shall be the victims of such compromise as the intensity of the temptations increase enormously as we come deeper into the end of the age, and increasing to the degree to which we have not really appropriated the Cross of Jesus Christ!
God as a Factor in the Secular Affairs of Men
Thursday, February 7th, 2008I don’t know if anyone has noticed lately, but God, so long restricted to mere Friday through Sunday religious acknowledgment, is threatening to become a factor in the more serious affairs of men where He is usually excluded.
Esteeming the Presence
Thursday, February 7th, 2008I have for a long time been secretly irked in my inner man with the growing preoccupation of many of God’s saints to desire the ‘presence’ of God.
Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Few of us, even as Christians, realize the continual danger that this ultimate temptation constitutes. It is the delicious area of being ‘as God’ – judging and deciding, usually about others, those delicate and intangible things that can only be known by Him who alone is Judge.
David’s Cry for Mercy
Thursday, February 7th, 2008The Lord wants to pull out all the stops and touch a subject that has suffered chronic and historic neglect: the Cross, which is central to all that I will be sharing about the crucifixion of Jesus, His death and atonement, and sin and righteousness.
Crying Wolf
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, is quoted by Eric J. Greenberg in a September 19, 2003 article of the Jewish Week as citing Mel Gibson, producer of the film The Passion, as “spouting classic anti-Semitism.” My personal fear is that a too frequent reiteration of that cry will ironically serve to provoke the feared phenomenon itself.
Contemporary Worship: The Malady of the Church
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Whatever is self-initiated, however well-meaning the motive, is not of God. He alone is the Creator-King who disposes from the Throne what He wills when He wills.
Apostolic Conversion
Thursday, February 7th, 2008I believe that the Lord’s heart is on the subject of conversion. I’m very fond of saying, “Many saved, few converted.”
Anti Semitism: A Little Considered Root
Thursday, February 7th, 2008From time to time one reads of how Jewish commentators are chafed by the world’s holding of Israel to a higher standard or account. Their irritation evidently stems from a secular and rational mentality that does not regard Israel as in any way exceptional with regard to other nations, and therefore not deserving of any criterion for judgment than that by which all other nations are held.
Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth:
Thursday, February 7th, 2008While it is true that Jesus enjoins us in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38) not to requite others who have requited us, and that while we must not require ‘retaliation,’ may God for the purposes of righteousness and cosmic justice not require it of Himself?
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