Sometimes I wonder if we realise the extent to which our own country has become a mission-field. In reality it is something that we ought never to have forgotten. Has Britain ever been a 'Christian country' in the sense that a majority of its people could lay claim to that identity? Disturbing facts The…
Read more
It is not nice to be accused. When I was a boy I was accused of stealing from a shop. To be sure, I was a brat, and not above such behaviour, but on that particular occasion I was not guilty. When I was in the army I was accused of stealing ammunition. I…
Read more
It is very cold outside, as I slowly drive to my office in the Northeast of the United States. So cold, that the windscreen washer fluid has long since frozen, with no regard for the anti-freeze that was added to it. On the radio, the presenter announces that today’s ‘high’ temperature will be around…
Read more
Apollo Quiboloy is one of the most popular Filipino preachers today. His campaigns draw thousands of people in search of the miracles that he never fails to promise. His crusade slogan says in big letters, ‘Jesus, the Name above every name!’ And in that name the preacher intones to his congregation, ‘All your debts…
Read more
Horatio Spafford was a successful and prominent businessman in Chicago in the middle of the last century. He had enjoyed great success. He was wealthy, well known and influential. But overnight he lost almost everything. The great Chicago fire left him in near financial ruin, and he decided to relocate to Europe with his…
Read more
What is evangelicalism? What distinguishes those who call themselves evangelicals from other professing Christians? As we come to the end of this century and millennium, these questions of identity are among the most vital facing the evangelical movement, for it is increasingly unclear what is meant by the terms 'evangelical' and 'evangelicalism'. Scottish theologian…
Read more
'Don't pray to anyone but me for thirty days,' commanded Darius, the king of Persia. The royal edict plunged Daniel, the king's respected administrator, into a crisis. Should the eighty-year-old Daniel continue his lifelong habit of praying three times a day, or give prayer a miss for the next month? Really no choice The…
Read more
Have you ever been attacked by the beast from the black lagoon? No? Well, that black beast from the depths surfaced the other day and knocked me senseless with one of its slimy tentacles. It sent me reeling. By the way, it's called depravity. Not 'depravity' in the sense of degrading behaviour, but in…
Read more
Area: 115,800 square miles. Geography: 7,100 islands (700 inhabited), stretching 1,120 miles; with Luzon, Mindanao and nine others each having over 1,000 square miles. Typhoons are frequent. There are about twenty active volcanoes. Mt Pinatubo erupted violently in 1991. A rich diversity of wildlife exists, with rainforests and 9,000 varieties of flowering plants. Half…
Read more
Bing-bing Bing-bing was a girl of nine years. Neither she nor her younger brother, G-Boy, had ever been to school. They would visit the doors of the small rooms in the shanty community where she lived, offering to throw away the occupants’ rubbish for them. There are no dustbins, and the rubbish needs to…
Read more
Nothing is isolated. If we look at isolated events and try to judge the goodness of God's providence by them, we will always fail to see it. Providence uses all things together, like gears and wheels in a great piece of machinery. Be sure you mark that word 'work'. Paul does not say all…
Read more
Last month we looked at the nature of worship and praise: what worship is. Now we come to the central issue, namely the purpose of praise and worship. If we are to worship God in a way that pleases him, we must know why we do it. It is my belief that the overarching…
Read more
The Philippines were named after Philip II of Spain (husband of ‘Bloody Mary’ and the king of the Spanish Armada). This group of islands was discovered for Spain during the ill-fated journey of Ferdinand Magellan, who set out to find a westerly route to the spice islands, which were then controlled by Portugal. Magellan…
Read more
People today don't like 'tags'. 'Calvinism' is seen to be one such tag that can be jettisoned for, it is said, we are not to follow men but only God. There is of course plausibility in such an argument. We do not follow men. Yet, in writing to the Thessalonian Christians, Paul says 'you…
Read more
