Many of you have probably had cold callers wasting your time. Rather than putting the phone down on them, you might want to waste their time, or better still, to maximise their time to good effect. My most recent call (the second one today) went like this. First, he asked about 'my recent minor car …
Sermon on Acts 13:26
The Free Offer of the Gospel ‘Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you fears God, to you is the word of this salvation sent’ Act 13:26. The Gospel is 'good news'. The good news is that God's salvation is sent to you. Some people know about the Gospel, some …
The spiritual dimension
We are familiar with three dimensional space. But our three dimensional world is travelling through time, so we call time the fourth dimension. This can be written down mathematically, and mathematicians can invent on paper any number of dimensions. The question is whether these extra mathematically-postulated dimensions have any practical meaning. It is on such …
Rugby World Cup 2015
So the Rugby World Cup 2015 has begun, with an England victory 35-11 over Fiji in the opening match. There was controversy over a disallowed try. Matawalu the Fiji scrum half made a spectacular break and made a solo run to be given a try in the corner by the referee. However the television replay …
Mistakes in exegesis and eisegesis
There are many mistakes about exegesis. One of the commonest is to substitute eisegesis for exegesis. One's own opinion of the meaning of a text is not exegesis. Most scholars agree about the importance of determining the intention of the original penman as a basis for exegesis, but beyond this they do not agree. Some …
Metaphors and exegesis
Biblical exegesis is a wonderful God-given skill. It enables the exegete to draw out of Scripture the meaning intended by the Holy Spirit, as opposed to imposing on Scripture a meaning that the reader has already determined (eisegesis is reading into Scripture one's own prejudices). There are many principles for exegesis, but one of them …
Copyrighting our language
Language barriers and language battles are very real features of modern society. Now Google is taking over our alphabet. The world famous search engine company is rebranding itself as Alphabet. Can Alphabet be seriously trademarked? Will others be allowed to use the same name? Walt Disney once tried to get Dr Donald Duck, a Scottish …
How to search this website
There is a search box at the top of the right hand column of every page of the website. Type into this box what you are looking for, then click on the magnifying glass icon to search, or simply press Enter on your keyboard. A series of results will appear. If there are too many …
Pollsters’ post-mortem
Opinion pollsters are organising a post-mortem on why the opinion polls were so completely wrong in the recent General Election. There will be much huffing and puffing, money and time wasted in trying to reach a conclusion. For my part, a good part of the answer will be found in the tick box mentality of …
A summary of the opening chapters of Ezekiel
To understand Scripture, one needs to understand texts and passages in context. So a summary of Scripture chapters can be very useful to help us understand the context. I have been doing so for years for my Bible commentary, an on-going work that will probably be published posthumously. However, this does not prevent extracts coming …
Continue reading A summary of the opening chapters of Ezekiel
Donald's Thoughts 