eChurch Blog

It’s always nice to feature an article of news that is a little more upbeat and so here you go, one from the MailOnline:-

Joy to the world…the religious Christmas card is back in fashion

Sales of religious Christmas cards are soaring as shoppers rediscover the real meaning of the season.

Church officials and retailers believe that the trend has been fuelled by the global economic downturn, which they say has encouraged people to rethink their values.

And the pattern on the high street has been mirrored by an increase in the number of people attending church.

More parents are also choosing to name their children after biblical figures, with Thomas, Daniel, Joshua and James all appearing in this year’s top ten baby boys’ names.

Selfridges revealed that sales of traditional cards are up 30 per cent and religious-themed wrapping paper up 20 per cent on last year, prompting the department store to increase its order by 10 per cent.

It said customers appeared to be rejecting cards with designs or jokes that have little or no relevance to the Nativity story and are instead buying ones featuring scenes such as angels blowing trumpets over a stable or Jesus in his manger.

It has also launched a range of Christmas decorations based on religious themes after demand from shoppers.

Read More

The following comes from the Daily Express and is By Theodore Dalrymple (Hat-Tip Cranmer)

By far the most significant thing about the case against Benjamin and Sharon Vogelenzang was that it reached a court of law in the first place. This evangelical Christian couple who run a hotel were accused of making derogatory remarks about the religion of one of their guests, Ericka Tazi, a Muslim convert, and thereby spreading religious hatred and contempt.

Mrs Tazi was found to have exaggerated the couple’s verbal abuse grossly but the fact that the case was thrown out of court should not blind us to the insidious and creeping reign of terror that the Government has introduced in Britain by facilitating this kind of prosecution.

While the criminal justice system actively promotes real crime by its refusal to repress it vigorously, it attempts to make criminals of Mr and Mrs Vogelenzang because they expressed forthright Christian beliefs.

For myself I do not much care to be buttonholed by religious enthusiasts but in a free country that is a situation with which citizens must be expected to cope on their own without resort to the courts.

Apart from this, however, there is the strong suspicion that if the boot had been on the other foot, if the Vogelenzangs had complained about remarks made by Mrs Tazi about their religion, no case would have come to court.

The reason for the difference in approach is an officially-sponsored indifference or hostility to anything which might be considered part of the European and British cultural and religious heritage, combined with a tender regard for any non- European and non-British cultural heritage.

This is now so marked a trait that it could almost be called racist. No British minister would go to Brick Lane in East London and say it was horribly Bangladeshi but a British minister had no compunction at all in complaining of an institution that it was “horribly white”.

British intellectuals, as George Orwell once remarked, have long harboured a hatred of their own country and its culture. This attitude has deeply infiltrated the political class and has therefore come to affect legislation. All cultures are equal except ours, which is the worst.

The first thing to notice about this attitude is that it is insincere. Those who adopt it are not genuine admirers of other cultures, for genuinely to admire other cultures it is necessary seriously to study them. To know another culture is not just a matter of slipping down once in a while to a restaurant that serves its cuisine: it is very hard work indeed and the more different that culture is from one’s own the harder the work it is.

So when members of our political class express their adherence to multiculturalism they are not expressing their love of other cultures, they are expressing hatred of their own and it is this which explains the discrepancy in the way a Christian who derides Islam can now expect to be treated by comparison with a Muslim who derides Christianity. The hatred of that section of the political class for their own country’s culture, traditions and past is insincere in another sense also.

By expressing that hatred they imagine themselves to be exhibiting their own moral superiority for all the world and especially the intelligentsia, to see. Their hatred is actually moral exhibitionism. We all know the kind of odious patriot who believes everything in his own country is best merely because it is his own and who therefore despises every thing about all other countries, from their language to their cooking to their way of dress.

Our political class is a mirror image of this kind of person but preens itself on being morally superior to him.

There is a yet more cynical reason for the political class’s hatred of their own culture: it is politically advantageous to them. The mass immigration that has been permitted into Britain in the last few years, with the concomitant ideological glorification of the multi cultural society, has had as its purpose the production of a permanent change in the nature of the British population, which can be relied upon to vote for ever for the kind of politicians who brought it about.

It is one thing to encourage immigration because your commerce is so strong that there is a labour shortage but quite another when neither of those conditions obtains. Our commerce was never strong and there never was a labour shortage. We imported people while there was still mass unemployment (admittedly disguised as sickness) merely to create a vote bank for those who brought this about.

No one wants a blind or bigoted patriotism that manifests itself as xenophobia and ignorant rejection of all that is foreign. It is good to be open to others but self-hatred is neither attractive nor constructive. It is not only insincere but unjustified, as a walk through the National Portrait Gallery would prove to anyone with an open mind.

We are fortunate enough to be the inheritors of a tradition as great as (though not necessarily greater than) any that exists in the world. Why should we reject it? I write these words from India, where it is far easier to find genuine and knowledgeable admirers of British culture than it is among our own political class. This surely is the saddest possible commentary on our condition.

In truth, it has always morbidly fascinated and baffled me as to why our ‘elites’ seem to exhibit hatred for their own country and are obsessed with the desire to change it and destroy it. I read a great article from Professor Barry Rubin on this subject a couple of days ago and provide the link for you here:

Analyzing Why and How So Many Western Intellectuals Hate Their Own Societies and People?

Previous Posts:-

Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang are attending Liverpool Magistrates’ Court today for the second day of their criminal trial. The couple are alleged to have said that a guest, Ericka Tazi, was putting herself in “bondage” for wearing Islamic dress and insulting her by calling Mohammed a “warlord”. However, the couple strongly refute the claims.

Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang of Aintree in Liverpool are being prosecuted for a “religiously aggravated” public order offence. Police arrested the couple, who run the Bounty House Hotel in Liverpool, after a female Muslim hotel guest complained that she was offended

Christian hotel owners Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang hauled before court after defending their beliefs in discussion with Muslim guest

The case of Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang – the Christian hotelier couple charged with a crime for criticising Islam – was mentioned on the BBC’s flagship debate show last night.

I have nothing positive to say regarding this move by the UK government and so here are some Internet links on this one:-

BBC – UK food labels are set to distinguish between goods from Palestinians in the occupied territories and produce from Israeli settlements.

TheJC – The Israeli government has accused Britain of encouraging a boycott of goods from West Bank settlements. The two countries are locked in a diplomatic row after the British government released new guidelines for supermarkets on labelling of foods from settlements and products made by Palestinians.

Harry’s Place Today, I joined the “Buycott”

Just for a larf OK.

Both Biased BBC and Damian Thompson have covered the patronising comments from Matt Frei (BBC’s Washington correspondent). He is concerned that US evangelical Christians have a tendency not to believe in man made global warming. This comment from him sums it all up nicely for me:-

If the green movement truly wants to convert America it needs to convert more evangelical Christians. Let me explain.

Read Entire Article

In my mind this is akin to one religion proselytizing another. Even today I have seen headlines like the following:-

Will Church Bells Toll for the Climate?

The trouble is, that belief in man made climate change is a religion and Christians should beware, as you cannot serve two gods and the green religion is desperate for more converts.

Fascinating and disturbing research relating to “Christian” beliefs from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Here is a link to the research in PDF format

Here’s a quick breakdown from the Christian Post:-

According to the poll, 22 percent of Christians, for example, say they believe in reincarnation – that people will be reborn in this world again and again. Twenty-three percent, meanwhile, believe in astrology. And 15 percent have consulted a fortuneteller or a psychic.

Not surprising, however, is Pew’s observation that white evangelical Protestants consistently express lower levels of acceptance of both Eastern beliefs (reincarnation, yoga) and New Age beliefs (spiritual energy in physical things and astrology).

Roughly one-in-ten white evangelicals, for example, believes in reincarnation, compared with 24 percent among mainline Protestants, 25 percent among both white Catholics and those unaffiliated with any religion, and 29 percent among black Protestants.

Similarly, 13 percent of white evangelicals believe in astrology, compared with roughly one-quarter or more among other religious traditions.

“Among Protestants, high levels of religious commitment are associated with lower levels of acceptance of Eastern or New Age beliefs,” Pew noted in its report, released Wednesday.

“Among both evangelical and mainline Protestants, those who attend church weekly express much lower levels of belief in reincarnation, yoga, the existence of spiritual energy in physical things and astrology compared with those who attend religious services less often,” it added.

Among Catholics, however, Pew found that the frequency of church attendance was linked much less closely with such beliefs, although those who attend less often do express higher levels of belief in astrology compared with weekly attendees.

From Joel’s Trumpet

JihadWatch

Robert Spencer nails it when he comments: “That is, it is hypocrisy from a Western point of view. As far as the Saudis are concerned, Islam is the truth, its truth is self-evident, and therefore the Swiss are obligated to accommodate it in a way that the Saudis are not obligated to accommodate non-Muslim religious observance.”

“Saudi Arabia calls to boycott Swiss over minaret ban,”

A number of religious figures in Saudi Arabia called to boycott Switzerland and withdraw all Muslim deposits from bank accounts in the country in protest against the Swiss referendum that banned building new minarets.

The UAE-based newspaper al-Bayan reported that religious moderator Khaled al-Shamrani called for afar-reaching boycott on all good and products originating in Switzerland. He also called upon Muslims to avoid traveling to the country. Religious figure Ahmed al-Hassan called wealthy Muslims to withdraw their deposits from Swiss banks. (Roee Nahmias)

chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it

by Sandro Magister

In a terse statement two days ago, Russia and the Church of Rome announced “the establishment of diplomatic relations between them, at the level of apostolic nunciature on the part of the Holy See, and of embassy on the part of the Russian Federation.”

Six days earlier, on December 3, Pope Benedict XVI had received in audience Dmitri Medvedev, president of the Russian Federation, to whom he had given a Russian-language copy of the encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” and with whom he had discussed “cultural and social topics of common interest, like the value of the family and the contribution of believers to the life of Russia.”

But it is not only with the authorities of the Russian state that the Church of Rome now has relations defined by both sides as “friendly.”

With the Orthodox Church of Moscow as well, spring appears to have sprung.

One signal of this came at the same time as Medvedev’s visit to Italy.  A book was presented in Rome on December 2, published by the patriarchate of Moscow and containing the main speeches about Europe made over the past ten years by Joseph Ratzinger, as cardinal and pope.

The entire volume is in two languages, Italian and Russian. The title is taken from an expression that Benedict XVI used in Prague: “Europa, patria spirituale [Europe, spiritual homeland].” And its extensive introduction is signed by the president of the patriarchate’s department for external Church relations, Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk (in the photo), an authority of the highest order: suffice it to say that the previous occupant of this post, Kirill, is today the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Moscow “and all Rus.”

An extract from the introduction to the book is reproduced further below. And it is of great interest for grasping the perspective from which the patriarchate of Moscow looks at its own role in Europe.

It is a Europe forged by Christianity, but now attacked by a “militant secularism” against which two forces above all are leading the counteroffensive: the Church of Rome in the West, and the Orthodox Church in the East.

Those who expect an Orthodox Church removed from time, made up only of remote traditions and archaic liturgies, will come away shaken from reading the introduction to this book.

The guideline here is being set by a document of great vigor, unprecedented in the entire history of Orthodoxy. Its title is: “The foundations of the social doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church,” and was published by the council of Russian bishops in 2000.

The image that emerges from it is that of a Russian Orthodox Church that refuses to let itself be locked up in a ghetto, but on the contrary hurls itself against the secularist onslaught with all the peaceful weapons at its disposal, not excluding civil disobedience against laws “that oblige the commission of a sin in the eyes of God.”

It is a text that is also striking for its frank, politically incorrect language, unusual for the pen of a high Church authority.

But before reading it, it is interesting to take note of a few of the book’s unique features.

Its publication is not the result of official ecumenical contacts. Neither the pontifical council for Christian unity headed by Cardinal Walter Kasper nor any other Vatican office is at the origin of it.

The actual organizers and publishers are on the one side the department for external Church relations of the patriarchate of Moscow, and on the other side an international association based in Rome: “Sofia: Idea Russa, Idea d’Europa.”

This association is run by Pierluca Azzaro, a professor of the history of political thought at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, who also edited the book. And he acts through the “Foro di dialogo delle società civili di Italia e di Russia,” with Italian co-president Luisa Todini, CEO of a big construction company and former European parliament in the party of Silvio Berlusconi, and Russian co-president Vladimir A. Dmitriev, chairman of Vnesheconombank.

The Forum was created at the end of 2004, through the joint initiative of Berlusconi and Russian president Vladimir Putin. And it was this Forum that organized the public presentation in Rome last December 2 of the book by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, at the offices of the ministry for economic development, with the participation of two other ministers, for culture and for education, and a sizable crowd of businessmen, diplomats, experts in geopolitics.

The speaker representing the Russian cultural world was the rector of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Anatoly V. Torkunov, and for the world of Italian culture, the rector of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Lorenzo Ornaghi.

For the patriarchate of Moscow, there was the secretary of the department for external Church relations, Sergij Zvonarev, while for the pontifical council for Christian unity there was Monsignor Milan Zust, a specialist on relations with Orthodoxy.

The title of the meeting was: “The  the role of the Churches in the cultural integration of Europe.”

More gloomy headlines regarding Christians in Iraq, it’s no wonder Christians are fleeing Iraq currently:-

Asia News (www.asianews.it/)

Iraq: Two Christians Assasinated.

On December 9, 2009 police found the bodies of two Christian brothers in Mosul, 350 km north of Baghdad. The two were killed with a gunshot to the head. From the capital, meanwhile, fresh claims of responsibility for the bloody attacks on 8 December, which killed 127 people, have arrived from the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda. A senior police official, however, also points the finger at Damascus and Riyadh, which he says “financed” the perpetrators.

Security sources in Mosul confirmed the murder of two brothers originally from Batnaya, a Christian village 20 km north of the city. Yesterday morning the two had arrived in the industrial area of Mosul, to repair their truck. The police found the bodies last night: Both were killed with a gunshot to the head. The dynamics of the attack speak of an execution style killing. Suspicions fall on Sunni extremists who previously attacked the Christian community.

Read More

And

Catholic News Agency (www.catholicnewsagency.com)

Office of Chaldean patriarch hit by brutal attacks in Iraq

Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad revealed yesterday that the offices of the Chaldean Patriarchate in the Iraqi capital were damaged by the terrorist attacks on Tuesday that left 127 dead and 500 wounded.

According to the SIR news agency, the bishop noted that “fortunately only the buildings were damaged. The sisters and the Patriarch were not present at the time of the explosion. They had left to celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

“Doors, windows, window panes were all blown out, and the walls were also damaged,” he added.

Bishop Warduni said Baghdad residents are convinced that those behind the attacks are linked to political groups. “What is left now is the great desperation, pain and suffering of death that haunts our people,” the prelate concluded.

“We know that all things work together far good to them that love God, to
them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

I. WE have here the description of a true Christian, and a declaration of
that Christian’s blessedness. We have him first very succinctly, but very
fully described in these words — “Them that love God, them who are the
called according to his purpose.” These two expressions are the great
distinguishing marks whereby we are able to separate the precious from the
vile, by discovering to us who are the children of God.

The first contains an outward manifestation of the second — “Them that
love God.” Now, there are many things in which the worldly and the godly
do agree, but on this point there IS a vital difference. No ungodly man
loves God — at least not in the Bible sense of the term. An unconverted
man may love a God, as, for instance, the God of nature, and the God of
the imagination; but the God of revelation no man can love, unless grace
has been poured into his heart, to turn him from that natural enmity of the
heart towards God, in which all of us are born. And there may be many
differences between godly men, as there undoubtedly are; they may belong
to different sects, they may hold very opposite opinions, but all godly men
agree in this, that they love God. Whosoever loveth God, without doubt, is
a Christian; and whosoever loveth him not, however high may be his
pretensions, however boastful his professions, hath not seen God, neither
known him for “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God,
and God in him.” True believers love God as their Father; they have “the
spirit of adoption, whereby they cry Abba, Father.” They love him as their
King, they are willing to obey him, to walk in his commands is their
delight; no path is so soft to their feet as the path of God’s precepts, the
way of obedience thereunto. They love God also as their Portion, for in
him they live and move and have their being; God is their all, without him
they have nothing, but possessing him, however little they may have of
outward good, they feel that they are rich to all the intents of bliss. They
love God as their future Inheritance, they believe that when days and years
are past they shall enter into the bosom of God; and their highest joy and
delight is the full conviction and belief, that one day they shall dwell for
ever near his throne, be hidden in the brightness of his glory, and enjoy his
everlasting favor. Dost thou love God, not with lip-language, but with
heart-service? Dost thou love to pay him homage? Dost thou love to hold
communion with him? Dost thou frequent his mercy-seat? Dost thou abide
in his commandments, and desire to be conformed unto his Image? If so,
then the sweet things which we shall have to say this morning are thine.
But if thou art no lover of God, but a stranger to him, I beseech thee do
not pilfer to-day and steal a comfort that was not intended for thee. “All
things work together for good,” but not to all men; they only work
together for the good of “them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose.”

Note the second phrase, which contains also a description of the Christian
— “the called according to his purpose.” However much the Arminian may
try to fritter away the meaning of this 8th chapter of the Romans we are
obliged as long as we use terms and words to say, that the 8th chapter of
the Romans and the 9th, are the very pillars of that Gospel which men now
call Calvinism. No man after having read these chapters attentively, and
having understood them, can deny that the doctrines of sovereign,
distinguishing grace, are the sum and substance of the teaching of the
Bible. I do not believe that the Bible is to be understood except by
receiving these doctrines as true. The apostle says that those who love God
are “the called according to his purpose” by which he means to say two
things — -first, that all who love God love him because he called them to
love him. He called them, mark you. All men are called by the ministry, by
the Word, by daily providence, to love God, there is a common call always
given to men to come to Christ, the great bell of the gospel rings a
universal welcome to every living soul that breathes; but alas! though that
bell hath the very sound of heaven, and though all men do in a measure
hear it, for “their line is gone out into all the earth and their Word unto the
end of the world” yet there was never an instance of any man having been
brought to God simply by that sound. All these things are insufficient for
the salvation of any man; there must be superadded the special call, the call
which man cannot resist, the call of efficacious grace, working in us to will
and to do of God’s good pleasure. Now, all them that love God love him
because they have had a special, irresistible, supernatural call. Ask them
whether they would have loved God if left to themselves, and to a man,
whatever their doctrines, they will confess —

“Grace taught my soul to pray,
Grace made my eyes o’erflow,
‘Tis grace that kept me to this day
And will not let me go.”

I never heard a Christian yet who said that he came to God of himself, left
to his own free-will. Free-will may look very pretty in theory, but I never
yet met any one who found it work well in practice. We all confess that if
we are brought to the marriage-banquet —

“‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That gently forced us in
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.”

Many men cavil at election; the very word with some is a great bug ear;
they no sooner hear it than they turn upon their heel indignantly. But this
know, O man, whatever thou sayest of this doctrine, it is a stone upon
which, if any man fall, he shall suffer loss, but if it fall upon him it shall
grind him to powder. Not all the sophisms of the learned, nor all the
legerdemain of the cunning, will ever be able to sweep the doctrine of
election out of Holy Scripture. Let any man hear and judge. Hearken ye to
this passage in the 9th of Romans! “For the children being not yet born,
neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to
election might stand not of works, but of him that calleth; It was said unto
her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved,
but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness
with God? God forbid! For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I
will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth,
but of God that showeth mercy.” “Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth
he yet find fault? for who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art
thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that
formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over
the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another
unto dishonor! What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his
power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted
to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on
the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory. Even us,
whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.” These
are God’s words; if any man doth cavil at them, let him cavil; he rejecteth
the testimony of God against himself. If I promulgated the doctrine on my
own authority, I could not blame you if you should turn against me, and
reject it; but when, on the authority of Holy Scripture, I propound it, God
forbid that any man should quarrel therewith.

I have affirmed, and I am sure most Christians will bear witness, that what
I said was the truth, that if any man loveth God he loves him because God
gave him grace to love him. Now, suppose I should put the following
question to any converted man in this hall. Side by side with you there sits
an ungodly person; you two have been brought up together, you have
lived in the same house, you have enjoyed the same means of grace, you
are converted, he is not; will you please to tell me what has made the
difference? Without a solitary exception the answer would be this — “If I
am a Christian and he is not, unto God be the honor.” Do you suppose for
a moment that there is any injustice in God in having given you grace
which he did not give to another? I suppose you say, “Injustice, no; God
has a right to do as he wills with his own; I could not claim grace, nor
could my companions, God chose to give it to me, the other has rejected
grace wilfully to his own fault, and I should have done the same, but that
he gave ‘more grace,’ whereby my will was constrained.” Now, sir, if it is
not wrong for God to do the thing, how can it be wrong for God to
purpose to do the thing? and what is election, but God’s purpose to do
what he does do? It is a fact which any man must be a fool who would dare
to deny that God does give to one man more grace shall to another; we
cannot account for the salvation of one and the non-salvation of another
but by believing, that God has worked more effectually in one man’s heart
than another’s — unless you choose to give the honor to man, and say it
consists in one man’s being better than another, and if so I will have no
argument with you, because you do not know the gospel at all, or you
would know that salvation is not of works but of grace. If, then, you give
the honor to God, you are bound to confess that God has done more for
the man that is saved than for the man that is not saved. How, then, can
election be unjust, if its effect is not unjust? However, just or unjust as man
may choose to think it, God has done it, and the fact stands in man’s face,
let him reject it as he pleases. God’s people are known by their outward
mark: they love God, and the secret cause of their loving God is this —
God chose them from before the foundation of the world that they should
love him, and he sent forth the call of his grace, so that they were called
according to his purpose, and were led by grace to love and to fear him. If
that is not the meaning of the text I do not understand the English
language. “We know that all things work together for good to them that
love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Now, my hearers, before I proceed to enter into the text, let the question
go round. Do I love God? Have I any reason to believe that I have been
called according to his purpose? Have I been born again from above? Has
the Spirit operated in my heart in a manner to which flesh and blood never
can attain? Have I passed from death unto life by the quickening agency of
the Holy Ghost? If I have, then God purposed that I should do so, and the
whole of this great promise is mine.

II. We shall take the words one by one, and try to explain them.

1. Let us begin with the word “work.” “We know that all things work.”
Look around, above, beneath, and all things work. They work, in
opposition to idleness. The idle man that folds his arms or lies upon the
bed of sloth is an exception to God’s rule; for except himself all things
work. There is not a star though it seemeth to sleep in the deep blue
firmament, which doth not travel its myriads of miles and work; there is not
an ocean, or a river, which is not ever working, either clapping its thousand
hands with storms, or bearing on its bosom the freight of nations. There is
not a silent nook within the deepest forest glade where work is not going
on. Nothing is idle. The world is a great machine, but it is never standing
still: silently all through the watches of the night, and through the hours of
day, the earth revolveth on its axis, and works out its predestinated course.
Silently the forest groweth, anon it is felled; but all the while between its
growing and felling it is at work. Everywhere the earth works; mountains
work: nature in its inmost bowels is at work; even the center of the great
heart of the world is ever beating; sometimes we discover its working in
the volcano and the earthquake, but eyen, when most still all things are
ever working.

They are ever working too, in opposition to the word play. Not only are
they ceaselessly active, but they are active for a purpose. We are apt to
think that the motion of the world and the different evolutions of the stars
are but like the turning round of a child’s windmill; they produce nothing.
That old preacher Solomon once said as much as that. He said — “The sun
also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he
arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north;
it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his
circuits.” But Solomon did not add, that things are not what they seem.
The world is not at play; it hath an object in its wildest movement.
Avalanche, hurricane, earthquake, are but order in an unusual form;
destruction and death are but progress in veiled attire. Everything that is
and is done, worketh out some great end and purpose. The great machine
of this world is not only in motion, but there is something weaving in it,
which as yet mortal eye hath not fully seen, which our text hinteth at when
it says, It is working out good for God’s people.

And once again, all things work in opposition to Sabbath. We morally
speak of work, especially on this day, as being the opposite of sacred rest
and worship. Now, at the present moment all things work. Since the day
when Adam fell all things have had to toil and labor. Before Adam’s fall
the world kept high and perpetual holiday; but now the world has come to
its work-days, now it hath to toil. When Adam was in the garden the world
had its Sabbath: and it shall never have another Sabbath till the Millennium
shall dawn, and then when all things have ceased to work, and the
kingdoms shall be given up to God, even the Father, then shall the world
have her Sabbath, and shall rest; but at present all things do work.
Dear brethren, let us not wonder if we have to work too. If we have to toil,
let us remember, this is the world’s week of toil. The 6,000 years of
continual labor, and toil, and travail, have happened not to us alone, but to
the whole of God’s great universe; the whole world is groaning, and
travailing. Let us not be backward in doing our work. If all things are
working, let us work too — “work while it is called to-day, for the night
cometh when no man can work.” And let the idle and slothful remember
that they are a great anomaly; they are blots in the great work-writing of
God; they mean nothing; in all the book of letters with which God has
written out the great word “work,” they are nothing at all. But let the man
that worketh, though it be with the sweat of his brow and with aching
hands, remember that he, if he is seeking to bless the Lord’s people, is in
sympathy with all things — not only in sympathy with their work, but in
sympathy with their aim.

2. Now, the next word, “All things work together.” That is in opposition to
their apparent confliction. Looking upon the world with the mere eye of
sense and reason, we say, “Yes, all things work, but they work contrary to
one another. There are opposite currents; the wind bloweth to the north
and to the south. The world’s barque, it is true, is always tossed with
waves, but these waves toss her first to the right and then to the left; they
do not steadily bear her onward to her desired haven. It is true the world is
always active, but it is with the activity of the battle-field, wherein hosts
encounter hosts and the weaker are overcome.” Be not deceived; it is not
so; things are not what they seem; “all things work together.” There is no
opposition in God’s providence; the raven wing of war is co-worker with
the dove of peace. The tempest strives not with the peaceful calm — they
are linked together and work together, although they seem to be in
opposition. Look at our history. How many an event has seemed to be
conflicting in its day, that has worked out good for us? The strifes of
barons and kings for mastery might have been thought to be likely to tread
out the last spark of British liberty; but they did rather kindle the pile. The
various rebellions of nations, the heavings of society, the strife of anarchy,
the tumults of war — all, all these things, overruled by God, have but made
the chariot of the church progress more mightily; they have not failed of
their yredestinated purpose — “good for the people of God.” I know my
brethren, it is very hard for you to believe this. “What!” say you? “I have
been sick for many a day, and wife and children, dependent on my daily
labor, are crying for food: will this work together for my good?” So saith
the word, my brother, and so shalt thou find it ere long. “I have been in
trade,” says another, “and this commercial pressure has brought me
exceedingly low, and distressed me: is it for my good?” My brother, thou
art a Christian. I know thou dost not seriously ask the question, for thou
knowest the answer of it. He who said, “all things work together,” will
soon prove to you that there is a harmony in the most discordant parts of
your life. You shall find, when your biography is written, that the black
page did but harmonize with the bright one — that the dark and cloudy day
was but a glorious foil to set forth the brighter noon-tide of your joy. “All
things work together.” There is never a clash in the world: men think so,
but it never is so. The charioteers of the Roman circus might with much
cleverness and art, with glowing wheels, avoid each other; but God, with
skill infinitely consummate, guides the fiery coursers of man’s passion,
yokes the storm, bits the tempest, and keeping each clear of the other from
seeming evil still enduceth good, and better still; and better still in infinite
progression.

We must understand the word “together,” also in another sense. “All things
work together for good:” that is to say, none of them work separately. I
remember an old divine using a very pithy and homely metaphor, which I
shall borrow to-day. Said he, “All things work together for good; but
perhaps, any one of those ‘all things’ might destroy us if taken alone. The
physician,” says he, “prescribes medicine; you go to the chemist, and he
makes it up; there is something taken from this drawer, something from
that phial, something from that shelf: any one of those ingredients, it is very
possible, would be a deadly poison, and kill you outright, if you should
take it separately, but he puts one into the mortar, and then another, and
then another, and when he has worked them all up with his pestle, and has
made a compound, he gives them all to you as a whole, and together they
work for your good, but any one of the ingredients might either have
operated fatally, or in a manner detrimental to your health.” Learn, then,
that it is wrong to ask, concerning any particular act of providence; is this
for my good? Remember, it is not the one thing alone that is for your good;
it is the one thing put with another thing, and that with a third, and that
with a fourth, and all these mixed together, that work for your good. Your
being sick very probably might not be for your good only God has
something to follow your sickness, some blessed deliverance to follow
your poverty, and he knows that when he has mixed the different
experiences of your life together, they shall produce good for your soul
and eternal good for your spirit. We know right well that there are many
things that happen to us in our lives that would be the ruin of us if we were
always to continue in the same condition. Too much joy would intoxicate
us, too much misery would drive us to despair: but the joy and the misery,
the battle and the victory, the storm and the calm, all these compounded
make that sacred elixir whereby God maketh all his people perfect through
suffering, and leadeth them to ultimate happiness. “All things work
together for good.”

3. Now we must take the next words. “All things work together for good.”
Upon these two words the meaning of my text will hinge. There are
different senses to the word “good.” There is the worldling’s sense: “Who
will show us any good?” — by which he means transient good, the good of
the moment. “Who wilt put honey into my mouth? Who will feed my belly
with hid treasures? Who will garnish my back with purple and make my
table groan with plenty?” That is “good,” — the vat bursting with wine,
the barn full of corn! Now God has never promised that “all things shall
work together” for such good as that to his people. Very likely all things
will work together in a clean contrary way to that. Expect not, O Christian,
that all things will work together to make thee rich; it is just possible they
may all work to make thee poor. It may be that all the different
providences that shall happen to thee will come wave upon wave, washing
thy fortune upon the rocks, till it shall be wrecked, and then waves shall
break o’er thee, till in that poor boat, the humble remnant of thy fortune
thou shalt be out on the wide sea, with none to help thee but God the
Omnipotent. Expect not, then, that all things shall work together as for thy
good.

The Christian understands the word “good” in another sense. By “good,”
he understands spiritual good. “Ah!” saith he, “I do not call gold good, but
I call faith good! I do not think it always for my good to increase in
treasure, but I know it is good to grow in grace. I do not know that it is for
my good that I should be respectable and walk in good society; but I know
that it is for my good that I should walk humbly with my God. I do not
know that it is for my good that my children should be about me, like olive
branches round my table, but I know that it is for my good that I should
flourish in the courts of my God, and that I should be the means of winning
souls from going down into the pit. I am not certain that it is altogether for
my good to have kind and generous friends, with whom I may hold
fellowship; but I know that it is for my good that I should hold fellowship
with Christ, that I should have communion with him, even though it should
be in his sufferings. I know it is good for me that my faith, my love, my
every grace should grow and increase, and that I should be conformed to
the image of Jesus Christ my blessed Lord and Master.” Well, Christian,
thou hast got upon the meaning of the text, then. “All things work
together,” for that kind of good to God’s people. “Well!” says one, “I
don’t think anything of that, then.” No, perhaps thou dost not; it is not
very likely swine should ever lift their heads from their troughs to think
aught of stars. I do not much wonder that thou shouldst despise spiritual
good, for thou art yet “in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity;” a
stranger to spiritual things, and let thy despising of spiritual things teach
thee that thou art not spiritual, and therefore thou canst not understand the
spiritual, because it must be spiritually discerned. To the Christian,
however, the highest good he can receive on earth is to grow in grace.
“There!” he says, “I had rather be a bankrupt in business than I would be a
bankrupt in grace; let my fortune be decreased — better that, than that I
should backslide; there! let thy waves and thy billows roll over me —
better an ocean of trouble than a drop of sin, I would rather have thy rod a
thousand times upon my shoulders, O my God, than I would once put out
my hand to touch that which is forbidden, or allow my foot to run in the
way of gainsayers.” The highest good a Christian has here is good spiritual.
And we may add, the text also means good eternal, lasting good. All things
work together for a Christian’s lasting good. They all work to bring him to
Paradise — all work to bring him to the Saviour’s feet. “So he bringeth
them to their desired haven,” said the Psalmist — by storm and tempest,
flood and hurricane. All the troubles of a Christian do but wash him nearer
heaven; the rough winds do but hurry his passage across the straits of this
life to the port of eternal peace. All things work together for the Christian’s
eternal and spiritual good.

And yet I must say here, that sometimes all things work together for the
Christian’s temporal good. You know the story of old Jacob. “Joseph is
not, Simeon is not, and now ye will take Benjamin away; all these things
are against me,” said the old Patriarch. But if he could have read God’s
secrets, he might have found that Simeon was not lost, for he was retained
as a hostage — that Joseph was not lost but gone before to smooth the
passage of his grey hairs into the grave, and that even Benjamin was to be
taken away by Joseph in love to his brother. So that what seemed to be
against him, even in temporal matters, was for him. You may have heard
also the story of that eminent martyr who was wont always to say, “All
things work together for good.” When he was seized by the officers of
Queen Mary, to be taken to the stake to be burned, he was treated so
roughly on the road that he broke his leg; and they jeeringly said, “All
things work together for good, do they? How will your broken leg work
for your good?” “I don’t know,” said he, “how it will, but for my good I
know it will work, and you shall see it so.” Strange to say, it proved true
that it was for his good; for being delayed a day or so on the road through
his lameness, he just arrived in London in time enough to hear that
Elizabeth was proclaimed queen, and so he escaped the stake by his broken
leg. He turned round upon the men who carried him, as they thought, to
his death, and said to them, “Now will you believe that all things work
together for God?” So that though I said the drift of the text was spiritual
good, yet sometimes in the main current there may be carried some rich
and rare temporal benefits for God’s children as well as the richer spiritual
blessings.

4. I am treating the text as you see, verbally. And now I must return to the
word “work” — to notice the tense of it. “All things work together for
good.” It does not say that they shall work, or that they have worked; both
of these are implied, but it says that they do work now. All things at this
present moment are working together for the believer’s good. I find it
extremely easy to believe that all things have worked together for my
good. I can look back at the past, and wonder at all the way whereby the
Lord hath led me. If ever there lived a man who has reason to be grateful
to Almighty God, I think I am that man. I can see black storms that have
lowered o’er my head, and torrents of opposition that have run across my
path, but I can thank God for every incident that ever occurred to me from
my cradle up to now, and do not desire a better pilot for the rest of my
days, than he who has steered me from obscurity and scorn, to this place to
preach his word and feed this great congregation. And I doubt not that
each of you, in looking back upon your past experience as Christians,
could say very much the same. Through many troubles you have passed,
but you can say, they have all been for your good. And somehow or other
you have an equal faith for the future. You believe that all things will in the
end work for your good. The pinch of faith always lies in the present tense.
I can always believe the past, and always believe the future, but the
present, the present, the present, that is what staggers faith. Now, please to
notice that my text is in the present tense. “All things work,” at this very
instant and second of time. However troubled, downcast, depressed, and
despairing, the Christian may be, all things are working now for his good;
and though like Jonah he is brought to the bottom of the mountains, and he
thinks the earth with her bars is about him for ever, and the weeds of
despair are wrapped about his head, even in the uttermost depths all things
are now working for his good. Here, I say again, is the pinch of faith. As
an old countryman once said to me, from whom I gained many a pithy
saying — “Ah! sir, I could always do wonders when there were no
wonders to do. I feel, sir, that I could believe God; but then at the time I
feel so there is not much to believe.” And he just paraphrased it in his own
dialect like this — “My arm is always strong, and my sickle always sharp,
when there is no harvest, and I think I could mow many an acre when there
is no grass; but when the harvest is on I am weak, and when the grass
groweth then my scythe is blunt.” Have not you found it so too? You think
you can do wondrous things; you say,

“Should earth against my soul engage,
And hellish darts be hurled,
Now I can smile at Satan’s rage,
And face a frowning world.”

And now a little capful of wind blows on you and the tears run down your
cheeks, and you say, “Lord, let me die; I am no better than my fathers.”
You, that were going to thrash mountains, find that molehills cast you
down.

It behoveth each of us, then, to comfort and establish our hearts upon this
word “work.” “All things work.” Merchant; though you have been sore
pressed this week, and it is highly probable that next week will be worse
still for you, believe that all things even then are working for your good. It
will cost you many a pang to keep that confidence; but oh! for thy Master’s
honor, and for thine own comfort, retain that consolation. Should thine
house of business threaten to tumble about thine ears so long as thou hast
acted honourably, still bear thy cross. It shall work, it is working for thy
good. This week, mother, thou mayest see thy first-born carried to the
tomb. That bereavement is working for thy good. O man, within a few
days, he that hath eaten bread with thee may lift up his heel against thee. It
shall work for thy good. O thou that art high in spirits to-day, thou with
the flashing eye and joyous countenance, ere the sun doth set some evil
shall befal thee, and thou shalt be sad. Believe then that all things work
together for thy good; if thou lovest God, and art called according to his
purpose.

5. And now we close by noticing the confidence with which the apostle
speaks. “A fiction!” says one; “a pleasant fiction, sir!” “Sentimentalism!”
says another; “a mere poetic sentimentalism.” “Ah!” cries a third; “a
downright lie.” “No,” says another, “there is some truth in it, certainly;
men do get bettered by their afflictions, but it is a truth that is not valuable
to me, for I do not realize the good that these things bring.” Gentlemen,
the apostle Paul was well aware of your objections; and therefore mark
how confidently he asserts the doctrine. He does not say, “I am
persuaded;” he does not say, “I believe;” but with unblushing confidence he
appears before you and says, “We“ (I have many witnesses) we know that
all things work together.” What Paul are you at? So strange and startling a
doctrine as this asserted with such dogmatic impudence? What can you be
at? Hear his reply! “‘We know;’ In the mouth of two or three witnesses it
shall all be established; but I have tens of thousands of witnesses.” “We
know,” and the apostle lifts his hand to where the white-robed hosts are
praising God for ever. — “These,” says he, “passed through great
tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb: ask them!” And with united breath they reply, “We know that all
things work together for good to them that love God.” Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, David, Daniel, all the mighty ones that have gone before, tell out the
tale of their history, write their autobiography, and they say, “We!“ It is
proven to a demonstration in our own lives; it is a fact which runs like a
golden clue through all the labyrinth of our history — “All things work
together for good to them that love God.” “We,” says the apostle again —
and he puts his hand upon his poor distressed brethren — he looks at his
companions in the prisonhouse at Rome; he looks at that humble band of
teachers in Rome, in Philippi, in all the different parts of Asia, and he says,
“We!” “We know it. It is not with us a matter of doubt; we have tried it, we
have proved it. Not only does faith believe it, but our own history
convinces us of the truth of it.” I might appeal to scores and hundreds here,
and I might say, brethren, you with grey heads, rise up and speak. Is this
true or not? I see the reverend man rise, leaning on his staff, and with the
tears “uttering his old cheeks, he says, “Young man it is true, I have
proved it; even down to grey hairs I have proved it; he made, and he will
carry; he will not desert his own!” Veteran! you have had many troubles,
have you not? He replies, “Youth! troubles? I have had many troubles that
thou reckest not of, I have buried all my kindred, and I am like the last oak
of the forest, all my friends have been felled by death long ago. Yet I have
been upheld till now, who could hold me up but my God!” Ask him
whether God has been once untrue to him and he will say, “No; not one
good thing hath failed of all that the Lord God hath promised; all hath
come to pass!” Brethren, we can confidently say, then, hearing such a
testimony as that, “We know that all things work.” Besides, there are you
of middle age, and even those of us who are young: the winter has not
spared our branches, nor the lightnings ceased to scathe our trunk; yet here
we stand; preserved by conquering grace. Hallelujah to the grace that
makes all things work together for good!

O my hearer, art thou a believer in Christ? If not, I beseech thee, stop and
consider! Pause and think of thy state; and if thou knowest thine own
sinfulness this day, believe on Christ, who came to save sinners, and that
done, all things shall work for thee, the tumbling avalanche, the rumbling
earthquake the tottering pillars of heaven, all, when they fall or shake, shall
not hurt thee, they shall still work out thy good. “Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and be baptized, and thou shalt be saved,” for so runneth the
gospel. The Lord bless you! Amen.