Algerian persecution Two Algerian Christians have received suspended jail terms and fines for involvement in converting Muslims to Christianity. The ruling follows a series of trials extending back to November 2007. The verdict has disappointed Algeria's growing Christian community, but does not come as a surprise. Recently, a number of Algerian churches have been closed on the…
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Mission — evangelism or church planting? God is the author of all missionary work. As David Livingstone said, ‘God had an only Son and he made him a missionary’. The incredible thing is that God chooses to use us in the great missionary task. Who do we mean when we say he…
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Schoolboys punished for not praying to Allah Two boys have been disciplined after refusing to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during a school religious education lesson. The boys, from a year seven class of 11 and 12-year-olds, were given detention after refusing to take part in a practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped,…
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This God is our god At a time when false images of God abound - in other cultures as well as in our own - it is both encouraging and challenging to be reminded of the character of the one true God, the God of the Bible. Is he a God who fosters hatred and violence,…
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No time for Christ Anglican evangelicals failed to secure a debate on a Private Member's Motion about the 'uniqueness of Christ' in a multicultural society. The motion had enough signatures to merit a debate but was ruled out by church leaders at the recent General Synod in York, who said that there was not enough…
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Tabor Baptist Church On a glorious weekend in early June, Tabor Baptist Church, Llantrisant, celebrated Richard Wigham's 25th anniversary as pastor. More than a hundred family members and friends met to give thanks to God. During the service, one of the deacons asked why Tabor had survived, while four or five other nonconformist chapels…
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Mission — independence or co-operation? It seems to me that the model for missionary work clearly set out in Scripture is one of ‘church based mission’. Acts 13:1-3 is the key text and establishes the following principles: (1) mission is the concern of a well-ordered church; (2) God uses godly leadership to…
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Olympics intimidation Despite the imminent Beijing Olympics, Chinese Christians continue to be harassed by government officials. In recent weeks, several Chinese house church leaders have been arrested and house church meetings broken up by government officials. On 18 June Zhang Mingxuan, president of the Chinese House Church Alliance, was detained together with his interpreter…
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Jerusalem The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) does not trip easily off the tongue. Yet the 1000 representatives who travelled to Jerusalem at the end of June have called for the Anglican Church to return to biblical orthodoxy - which ought to raise a cheer from Evangelicals everywhere. The conference issued a statement of principle The…
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Bala 2008 The Evangelical Movement of Wales Ministers' Conference was held from 16-18 June in its normal, idyllic setting of Bryn-Y-Groes, Bala, in North Wales. Sessions of devotional ministry and prayer were led by conference chairman Colin Leyshon (Stanmore). Colin had been called upon at short notice, and we were blessed with his…
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Sex-education for four-year-olds Children as young as four should be given compulsory sex education, say two sexual health charities. The Family Planning Association (FPA) and Brook claim this would cut abortion rates and sexually transmitted infections (STI) among teenagers and would help children not to rush into sex when they were older. However, the…
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Compulsory gay values Public bodies like schools, the police, and local councils should be forced by law to promote 'gay rights', says Britain's leading homosexual lobby group, Stonewall. The comments come in anticipation of the Government's proposals for a vast, over-arching Equality Bill which would bring together numerous statutes designed to outlaw discrimination. The law…
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Canadian furore A Christian pastor in Canada has been fined about £3,500 and told he must stop expressing his views on homosexuality in public. The ruling orders Stephen Boissoin to 'cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals'. The…
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Scottish Reformed Conference This year's highly successful Scottish Reformed Conference saw about 300 adults and children gather together at Hamilton for what proved to be a deeply inspiring and challenging day. The speakers were Dr Joel Beeke from the USA and Dr Ian D. Campbell from Lewis. The addresses, which were searching and encouraging, are…
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Called or chosen ? Jesus said, 'Many are called, but few are chosen', but what did he mean? (Matthew 22:14). A church member asked me this question recently. Several further questions arise from the original one. Who are the 'many' and who are the 'few'? What is the difference between the 'called' and…
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Singles outnumber married Married people now probably make up less than half the population, a new report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) claims. Recent years have seen a steady decline in the proportion of married over-16s, with numbers falling by between 100,000 and 150,000 each year since 1995. The proportion was 50.3%…
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The presumption of primacy In a document released on 10 July 2007 (as reported on p.3 of ET's September 2007 issue) the Roman Pontiff declared that Christian churches outside the Church of Rome 'are not Churches in a proper sense'. Of course, Joseph Ratzinger had made this claim before as a cardinal, but it was…
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Meet Mark Was the author of the second Gospel present when Jesus was arrested? Mark's Gospel is the only one to tell us that on that fateful night 'a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body, and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away…
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The fruit of faithfulness Faithfulness is unfashionable. It is not highly esteemed in our day, whether, generally, in marriage and everyday life, or in Christian commitment and obedience to God's word. The account in 2 Kings 4:42-44, where Elisha fed 100 people from a backpack, may therefore be instructive. The man who was faithful We read, 'There…
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Pakistan reprieve Pakistan has revised its policy on capital punishment and announced it is to commute the sentences of thousands of prisoners on death row to life imprisonment. The proposal, still to be endorsed by President Musharraf, is expected to benefit some 7000 condemned prisoners. Amnesty International claims the move will reprieve one-third of…
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Fresh fire or false flames? Are you ready for the third wave - again? You might recall that in the 1980s, C. Peter Wagner termed John Wimber's Vineyard ministry the 'third wave' of the Charismatic Movement. Is it happening all over again? Wagner claimed at the time that the first wave of…
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Civil partnerships The number of UK civil partnership registrations dropped by 50% in 2007. Following an initial 'boom' in registrations in 2005, there were only 8,728 registrations last year compared to 16,106 in 2006. This means that fewer than 0.1% of unmarried adults took out a homosexual civil partnership in 2007. If this trend…
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Gang culture A senior police officer has blamed family breakdown and a corresponding growth in gang culture for the increase in violence and drug-related crime amongst young people. Barbara Wilding, Chief Constable of South Wales, said that in some areas tribal loyalty had replaced family loyalty. In a speech for the Centre for…
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Anglicans look to Rome The Church of England's endorsement of women bishops is causing serious damage to its relations with the Roman Catholic Church. It is thought that hundreds of clergy may choose to defect to Rome rather than continue as Anglicans, notwithstanding the accommodations made at the recent Synod of the Church of England…
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Surviving hostility 'Consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls' (Hebrews 12:3). The first readers of this epistle were in serious danger of becoming 'weary and discouraged in their souls'. Spiritually speaking, they were tired, sick at heart and ready to give up. Why?…
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Professor John Murray When the Headmaster of Dornoch Academy, Mr John Garvie, was asked recently to nominate the most distinguished pupil of Dornoch Academy he had no hesitation in naming the late Rev. Professor John Murray. The present academy in Dornoch, Sutherland, was opened in 1911 and John Murray enrolled in the school…
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Church Society The Church Society met this May in sunny Hertfordshire for its annual conference. The conference aim was to reflect on the danger of evangelical apostasy. Iain Murray of the Banner of Truth Trust opened with a talk on the characteristics and causes of apostasy. Apostasy exists in the church because of unbelief,…
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Heinz advert pulled A TV commercial for Heinz mayonnaise which features two men kissing has been pulled by the company after it caused nearly 200 complaints. The advert shows a family scene, but 'mum' is played by a man with a New York accent. During the ad he kisses another man who plays the…
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Thankfulness at LTS Deep thankfulness to God characterised the two services held at London Theological Seminary on Saturday 14 June. The first service marked the completion by students of a two-year pastoral course; and the second, the retirement of Principal Philip Eveson and his wife Jennifer after a fruitful 31-year ministry in the seminary. The…
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Hybrid licence clash Another licence to create human-pig embryos, for the study of heart disease, has been issued to the University of Warwick by the fertility watchdog. This is the third animal-human hybrid embryo licence to be issued by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and the first since the Commons voted in…
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Sharia in UK Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice and England's most senior judge, has re-opened the possibility of Islamic sharia law some day being recognised as part of the legal system in England and Wales. Speaking at the East London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel, Lord Phillips said that sharia suffered from 'widespread misunderstanding'. He…
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The Gospel on the Amazon ‘We need to pick you up for breakfast at 6.30am and then on to the boat at 7.30’. This is how we learned that the next morning would be a very different Sunday for us. Along with Geoff King, chairman of Grace Baptist Mission, I was making my…
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Persevering in India Bangalore is the capital city of the state of Karnataka in southern India. It is the IT (information technology) ‘capital’ of India and has experienced immense growth over the last five years. My family and I were sent there in May 2005 by Maranatha Bible Presbyterian Church, Singapore, supported…
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Sunderland Free Church Saturday 10 May was a significant day in the life of Sunderland Free Church (SFC) when Gary McKee was ordained to the gospel ministry. Gary is the church's first full-time pastor since the mid 1990s. In the intervening years SFC has experienced considerable decline and currently around ten people meet regularly for…
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Brighton outreach For two weeks this June, a team of young people from Montpelier Place Baptist Church, Brighton, engaged in intensive literature outreach in Brighton. The team was led by Pastor Stephen Nowak and assisted for one of the weeks by Dwayna Litz, of Lighting the Way Worldwide (LTW). Miss Litz had the previous…
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It's my party When an eight-year-old boy in Sweden failed to invite two of his classmates to a birthday party, his school accused him of breaching their human rights, seized the invitations and reported him to the Swedish Parliament. The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school…
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Greenfield Camp What comes to your mind when you think of the May bank holiday weekend? Traffic jams? A trip to the coast? Well, for the last 25 years this weekend has seen hundreds of primary school children under the sound of the gospel at Greenfield Camp near Harrogate. Many attending are not regular…
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Abortions reach record high The number of abortions taking place in England and Wales has reached a record high, new figures show. Numbers increased by more than 4000, according to official statistics just published. There were 205,598 abortions in 2007 compared to 201,173 in 2006. For girls aged 14 or below, the number of abortions…
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Lovewise - A Christian initiative in sex education A British Family Division judge recently hit the headlines for pointing out that our society is facing catastrophic breakdown because of the collapse of the family. As a hospital paediatrician, I often come face to face with what he described as the 'ceaseless river of human…
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Biblical strategy for gospel MISSIONS Why should we be concerned with the subject of missions or with the mandate for the work of mission as recorded in the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20? And how exactly should we go about carrying out the tasks outlined by this commission? Let us consider these matters.…
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Greek evangelism in London There are 300,000 people of Greek and Greek Cypriot origin in the UK, and most of these live in north London. This ethnic group is often overlooked as a mission field by churches and missionary societies. Once a year on the last weekend of June, the Cyprus Wine Festival and Business…
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The Gospel in the West End of London The Lord greatly blessed The Open-Air Mission’s (OAM) week of outreach this June in the tourist areas of London’s West End. A team of twenty-two made the gospel known to a large number of people. Many listened to the preaching and some then stayed…
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Congregational chapel wins carnival trophy In the year in which they celebrated their 220th anniversary, Hayes (Middlesex) Town Chapel ran a stall in the local carnival on Saturday 12 July, as they have been doing for at least 40 years. This year, however, for the first time, they entered three vehicles in the carnival procession.…
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Women of the Word at Thornton Heath Great blessings were received during the sixth Ladies' Day at Thornton Heath Evangelical Church, Surrey, on 21 June. Nearly 100 ladies of all ages, from 13 churches in and around London, gathered to hear two wonderful messages from Joy Browning. Joy has worked for the Society for Distributing…
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Rediscovering the Jewish Jesus 'More than money, more than politics', said Time magazine earlier this year; 'ideas are the secret power that this planet runs on'. Among the ideas that Time felt its readers needed to know about were Common Wealth, Reverse Radicalism and … the Jewishness of Jesus! Jesus was a Jew but until recently…
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Exaggerated figures could cost lives Converts from Islam to Christianity are increasingly concerned about a number of reports in recent months which have cited astounding statistics on conversion. It is true - and a matter for thankfulness to God - that more Muslims are now coming to Christ than at any other time in…
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