eChurch Blog

As a church in the western world, we have been on the losing side for such a long time, it is sickening. The church has been feminised beyond recognition, and yet as females God calls us to totally submit to man. So how does feminism get round this, by making it men female!! It is degrading to both man and women. And yet the scriptures tell us, “The kingdom of God will suffer violence and the violent take it by force”. We need our men to be men, we need warriors! We need men not to put on their Sunday face ‘mask’ of niceness, but put on their amour and not remove again until they also remove their fleshly tent. We need our men to stand in the gap and not fear, for life or limb.

However, I take heart that this will happen, as persecution will increase, and the great falling away continues we will be left with just a hardcore. Those that will not fear death, but willing give their lives for their Lord, as He died for us. I also believe that it is in this Spirit that revival will take place, and I am encouraged tremendously by the account in Daniel 2, particularly:-

“The Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom.”

Blessings

I have been taking a small break from church website developing today and have been looking at one of my favourite websites The Spurgeon Archives. I came across this lovely quote from Charles Spurgeon:-

“I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, “You are mine, and you shall be mine. I claim you for myself.” My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will.”

I love this quote, but from experience I know many Christians wouldn’t!

I’m being bold to say this but I am very Calvinistic in my theology, I do believe in predestination and feel that I could present a good case for this belief from the Bible, but in truth, it is just as much from my own salvation experience.

I was not raised in a Christian home and God was never mentioned and the Bible viewed as something akin to fable, myth and Chinese whispers. I believed that Christians were weak minded and probably self deceived. I did encounter some Christians growing up and they seemed to have an answer for everything, but none of their testimonies penetrated my mind which was set on the social sciences. I went to university to study social sciences and was amazed to find that these disciplines seemed to raise more questions than they answered!

From meeting Christians, I did envy their foolish thinking and in some senses wished I could believe as I certainly could see the benefit in believing in a God who you could pass responsibility over to and even remember saying that I wish I could believe (I think this is the most powerful prayer that there is), but I was far to intelligent to believe all of that stuff about God and Jesus Christ.

Much to my disgust one day my (then future) wifey invited Christians around and they spoke of the Bible (which I had never read) and explained the fall of the human race in Adam and it was like a light bulb going off in my head. In one moment I realised that the Bible had not been written by man and that it explained the dreadful state of human affairs.

It is amazing to me (even now) that I suddenly believed after all of the predjudices I had and can literally only explain this in terms of a Divine revalation.

I believe God had predestined me to believe and become one of His children. Do I understand all of this? Not really, but I do agree wholeheartedly with Spurgeon that God laid hold of me by His free grace and I was most certainly not deserving!

As this christian blog is only a week old I have been spending time promoting it on directories and search engines and it is great to see it being listed in Google and other search engines and blog directories….hooray, pretty quick I think!

Remember if you want a Christian blog (or website) set up for your church or ministry, please do contact me and I promise I won’t just develop and then run. I see this as also part of my work for the kingdom and so put as much effort as possible in supporting you and advising…

This is an interesting point, about satan and the temptation of our Lord. Someone suggested that the gift offered by satan of the kingdoms to the Lord was not his to give.

However I believe that he was his to give. Firstly, in the beginning man (Adam) had been given dominion and authority of the whole earth by God. But Adam believed and obeyed satan and not God. Thus placing satan as his god. Therefore satan took headship of man and all that man owned. God is just and always obeys His own laws, and so couldn’t just take back what had been gifted to Adam. And so authority of the world changed hands and this is why satan is referred to in scripture as prince and ruler of this world.

Secondly the Lord was truly tempted by satan offering him the kingdoms of the world, because this is what He had come to take back from satan, man and the earth, and by satan offering them to him, the temptation was that he could fulfill His purpose and that He would not have to go through the curse of the cross. For the temptation to be real, the offer of the kingdoms has had to be true.

Finally this is also a dimension of the Lord becoming flesh, only Adam could get back what he had lost and so the second Adam didn’t succumb to sin and therefore fulfilled the Law, thus taking authority of the world once again, and ushering in the kingdom of God, of which He would rule forever.

Watched a fantastic program last night called Newswipe. It’s a satirical look at news reporting and it is very funny and so true.

The program showed the history of news making and showed how in the 70′s and 80′s there was always a global bad guy (Soviets etc) and good guy in all conflicts and clashes. This changed however in the 90′s as communism crashed and news reporting couldn’t find any ‘good guys’ in the modern world. Every war and conflict had atrocities on both sides and so we are left with what the TV program called ‘oh dearism’. As we watch the terrible atrocities commited by humans against one another all we can do is sit watching and exclaim ‘Oh dear’. How true.

The program highlighted the way that news portrays conflicts and wars and cultures in the most scary way possible, leaving the viewer frightened and feeling powerless….oh dear!

The program showed that instead of news producers being able to portray ‘good guys’ vs ‘bad guys’ in the modern world all they can do is show the fruitless brutality of mankind against one another (and against the Earth itself – Webmasters own comment) as there isn’t really any ‘good guys’ left.

Basically what the news producers are portraying now in my opinion is the effects of the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden, when humankind (as represented by Adam) opted to believe the lie that God was trying to hold back ‘good’ things from them and believed Lucifer and in effect said to God we can rule ourselves without you, thank you very much!

Well I think that just simply watching the news every day shows the results of mankind trying to run their own affairs. I know that some will say that most wars and conflicts are religious based and there is something certainly to be said for that. However I still feel this is a smokescreen for the real cause of conflicts which is mans hatred and inherent wickedness that was a result of disobedience and denial of their maker, which resulted in man becoming his own God….which simply doesn’t work.

Went to a prayer meeting last night and felt really out of sync. I hate it when that happens and I assumed it was probably something to do with me and perhaps my spiritual heart condition at the moment. I know it sounds horrid but I was quite relieved when wifey said she felt the same.

Looking forward to Easter, got some friends coming from London (youth workers) and will go on a march of witness. I always see Easter as a time of celebration as the time when Jesus triumphed over the world and Lucifer, but I know many see this as a sombre time and focus in on the crucifiction, I must admit I don’t like focussing in on this aspect as I still find it disturbing (will never watch ‘The Passion’ again). I am a little irreligious as I find the sombre aspect of Christianity depressing and boring. I just feel that Christianity is joyful good news….that’s just my opinion.

Watched a telly program last night about hospitals and specifically A&E departments in relation to young folk. The A&E doctor interviewed said that when she began in her job in 1990, most of the nights the A&E was half empty and staff actually had time on their hands, not so today.

Some 50% of A&E admissions nowadays are alcohol related (fights and accidents) and mainly young folk. A&E staff are stretched to breaking point and due to this rise of admissions it is hard to care for seriously ill folk (who have not caused their own emergency!)

As it happens this is not a bash at our young folk or even the prolific alcohol consumption that causes our society so much trouble. The A&E doctor made an astute comment when asked how could this problem be solved, she said that it required a fundamental change in society itself. I agree.

There seems to be such a hopelessness in our younger generation today (this is a generalisation, obviously doesn’t apply to all) and the doctor especially pointed to what she called a ‘sub class’ which is poor and uneducated. She also mentioned destructive patterns of behaviour that had been passed down many generations and had become embedded.

From my perspective I see all of this as a result of the rejection of Jesus. Jesus is the only One who can actually change people from the inside and deal with our problems of behaviour and not just the symptoms which society seems to concentrate on.

I believe that hopelessness is the most destructive force in our society today and I certainly have suffered from this myself and the only help for me came when the Holy Spirit revealed Jesus Christ to me. Hoplessness regarding our eternal purpose and the life after this one, is one thing, but added to this the hopelessness for this life as well, equals personal and societal breakdown.

Just finished setting up the new forum for my main website. Have a look and as always this has been developed on my website not only to serve as my website forum but also to showcase what is available for your church or ministry website.

Link to forum

Hope you like it and please do contact me for an informal  discussion if your church or ministry is looking for web development!

Not sure why but am feeling a little low today, perhaps I shouldn’t watch so much BBC News24, another major earthquake in Italy and the associated devastation.

Every time I see these earthquakes I can’t help thinking about the Earth groaning as it were and the fact that Jesus mentioned earthquakes as being a sign of the beginning of the end of this age.

Thinking about the end of the age of course means to me the return of Jesus, but I have always been taught that He would not return until all people’s had heard the Gospel and as I said in earlier posts, according to World Horizons Christian missions, up to one third of the world has yet to hear the good news of Jesus and I think this fact has depressed me a little as there is so much still to do.

It is wonderful that churches are growing on other parts of the world like China and Vietnam, India and others and that they have a missions heart (Back to Jerusalem along the silk route comes to mind from the Chinese church), but equally it is so sad to see the decline in the western world and of course the associated moral decline that accompanies this. Britain has gone from the second largest ‘sender’ of missionaries globally but in recent times has slipped so far down the rankings.

There are countires out there with only a handful of believers let alone churches. Michael from World Horizons said that in remoter places of the earth where you have huge countires with relatively few people, there can be literally hundreds or thousands of miles seperating one believer from another!

I don’t know, it has bothered me that there is such a huge job still to do.

I always wanted to go to do mission in the middle east and even learnt Arabic for a couple of years but nothing ever came of it, perhaps wrong timing as my wifey would say or perhaps I am the wrong person eh!

Since listening to World Horizons I must say that Mongolia seems to be on my heart, which is strange because I know virtually nothing about the country and its people.

Anyway….God has the best plan and it is His kingdom and He knows what He is doing….that’s all I can say!

Oh no it’s 1.23am and I am blogging…not a good sign eh.

My wifey went to one of those churches together meetings to talk about a coordinated approach to reaching out to the youth of the community and 7 people turned out which is rather feeble when you think that there is (at this point I went on to the churches together website to count the churches but couldn’t get in to their website…perhaps I should take over!) quite a lot of churches in the area!

I do understand the lethargy in this country though, there just seems to be nothing but moral decline and an in built predjudice and rejection of the gospel which can be quite discouraging.

Makes me think though as (following on from my last post) there is still one third of the world who have never even heard of the gospel…not sure what my point is, but I am sure there is one.

I’d better go to bed I think I can hear wifey stirring.