Reformation and revival are not the same thing. We need both. We regularly hear about the need for revival but not often about the need for reformation. Revival without reformation is likely to be man-made rather than arising from the Spirit of God. Some people try to generate revival by flying kites. Flying kites is …
Category: Reformation
My YouTube channel
Today is the second anniversary of my brother Andrew's death. It is also the 49th anniversary of my reading the whole Bible for the first time on 22/8/1971. I have read the Bible daily ever since and now I spend several hours a day on my Bible commentary, making its teaching accessible to ordinary people, …
Riding the coronavirus downturn
The coronavirus pandemic is teaching national Government to move towards the standards of government in the biblical Millennium. There is much room for improvement, but the unprecedented Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme announced today by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer is a step in the right direction. It is a financial package "unprecedented in the …
Compounding one error with another
As if it was not bad enough to discover child abuse scandals in the Church of England, but its General Synod meeting in York has voted to formally recognise monks and nuns for the first time since the 16th-century European Reformation. These two errors are compounded by trying to justify one for the sake of …
Living in fear in the UK
Many people in the UK are living in fear – workers are afraid of losing their job, politicians are afraid saying the wrong thing, top footballers are in fear of racial abuse, and Jews are in fear of antisemitism. Even children are in fear, of being abused on social media and of climate change. Parents …
Why we need Christian voices in public life
A "Christian Voice" is a Christian articulating a Christian perspective on issues. It is not enough to have a Christian perspective, but one needs to articulate it. The Scottish National Party measures everything in terms of Scotland, the feminists in terms of gender, the homosexuals in terms of sexuality, the Greens in terms of the …
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Selective quotations
We have a very clear and recent example of selective quotation by the BBC in its commentary surrounding the use of parliamentary privilege to name Sir Philip Green as the anonymous person who secured a court injunction preventing The Daily Telegraph publishing allegations of sexual and racial harassment. While other commentators quite rightly concentrate on …
Selective Scottish history
There are some centuries of Scottish history that are overlooked in favour of other ones. This morning I was at a meeting of about 30 senior men who were asked to name the main events in Scottish history. The list of options went all the way from the battle of Bannockburn (1314) to the Highland …
What is the Establishment Principle?
The Establishment Principle is that biblical principle which states that God is sovereign over secular and ecclesiastical affairs, and that He has established a relationship between these two sovereign spheres in which the state and the Christian church are to acknowledge each other as divinely-appointed institutions, to mutually support and encourage each other, but not …
The ark of the covenant and the third temple
There is a movement afoot among orthodox Jews to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and to this end they have been looking for a red heifer without blemish to dedicate the temple. Although there have been discredited claims in recent decades, there are now rumours that a suitable red heifer has been found and that …
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