Church Blog (Page 99)

If you haven’t seen the 1985 movie ‘Back to the Future’ more than once, you have more than likely had opportunity to. The premise of the story easily catches the imagination. ‘What would I do if I could go back in time?’ Of course, going back and participating in the events of your parent’s youth only heightens the imagination’s anticipation. One of Director, Stephen Spielberg’s jokes was the car used: The DeLorean—with the gull-wing doors. You’ll recall that it disappeared…

Once upon a time, men went forth to navigate new worlds with little more than their eyes to the heavens and their hands ready to take soundings off the sides of their ships. Today a captain can plot a safe course electronically. Nearly 200 years apart, 2 ships came across the same reef. One in 1827 and the other in 2011. The 1827 encounter was a near miss. The highly relieved Captain d’Urville instantly named the reef after his still-intact…

I contend that you will struggle to find any teaching in the OT that commends polygamy. It is one of those things that sounds good, until it isn’t. And by then, it’s too late. Sarah, having given up hope of having children, decided to make her Egyptian slave Abraham’s second wife, and her surrogate. It sounded good, until it wasn’t. And by then, it was too late. When pregnant, Hagar had thoughts above her station and Sarah’s mistreatment of her…

David was on the run from his father-in-law. King Saul’s relentless pursuit of the man who would be king was fuelled by blinding jealousy. Jonathan had warned David. David had fled. But hunger and need for weaponry caused him to look to Ahimelech the priest for help. Ahimelech had obviously heard the talk on the street. David was radioactive. To go near him was a death sentence. Thus, he approached David trembling. He gave David bread and the sword of…

I have asked a lot of people if they have read George Orwell’s famous book, ‘1984.’ Many say that it was a High School requirement, but they really didn’t get into it. Of course, I am never surprised. Who could get into such a bleak story? You are all the while wondering if a happy ending is even possible. I have read it, and I am here to tell you that there was never supposed to be a happy ending.…

Fred Dagg’s song, “You don’t know how lucky you are,” loses a lot of its satire when I compare my life in New Zealand with that of those living in Syria. Since 2011 Syria has been in the grips of a savage civil war. 5 millions of its citizenry have fled into refugee camps in neighbouring countries and it is estimated that upwards of 400,000 people have been killed. Caught up in all of this is the small Christian population.…

There’s a story about preacher boy who was invited to a dinner for the old-timers who had long graced the local pulpits. Having been warned that the length of their sermons and prayers were legendary, the young preacher set in for a long day. It was during the rather lengthy prayer of thanks for the food that he could no longer contain himself. Seeing all the gray heads bowed resolutely around the table the young preacher quietly took to his…

To this day Ethiopia remembers the evangelist Philip as the man of God who preached the gospel to their first convert. We know him as the Ethiopian eunuch from Acts 8. This man was the treasurer of Queen Candace and a proselyte (a non-Jew who had converted to the Hebrew faith). My guess is that it was a prayer for insight into the Messianic passage (Isaiah 53) that brought Philip (sent by God) to his chariot to explain the passage…

Famine and siege were upon Samaria. The Aramean army was at the gates and the helpless king was in despair. Food had become so scarce that desperation had set in. Just think, back in better times no one could have imagined that a donkey’s head would command the outrageous price of 80 shekels. And that wasn’t the worst of it. It is in 2 Kings 6-7 that we find the prophet Elisha in the starving city. The king knew that…

The most notable event of 79AD was the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on the 24th of August. Its explosive impact was so great that it buried the cities of Herculaneum, Stabiae, Oplontis, and the one best known to us, Pompeii. It is said that the amount of thermal energy released was equivalent to 100,000 times that of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. Two months earlier, on the 23rd of June the Emperor Vespasian died. Less noteworthy to us, but at the time…