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Josh Harris had this video produced to advertise and explain his latest book, Dug Down Deep. But aside from that fact, this video is absolutely brilliant for explaining why theology matters. If you’ve not seen it yet then check it out, it’s awesome.
You wouldn’t have thought that this was really an issue these days would you, well at least it never crossed my mind until recently. After all we don’t have Temples like they had in New Testament times which were part of the Roman culture where food was offered to the Roman gods and shared by those who attended. But it turns out that we regularly face meat that has been offered to idols.
Last Sunday I was preaching in Harpenden (which I’ll be repeating this week in Cardigan) and they asked me to kick-start their series on the letters to the churches in Revelation 1-3, so I had all of Revelation 1. What’s interesting is that before the book gets on to the nitty-gritty of the criticisms and commendations of the churches, they’re first given a fantastic image of Christ on which to hang that nitty-gritty.
Here are some other observations:
By Craig A. Evans
In recent times it seems that every Christian ‘festival’ brings some documentary or some newspaper article reporting upon a new gospel discovered or a new understanding of who Jesus really is that flies in the face of the orthodox and conservative understanding that the church has presented throughout the centuries. These new ideas of Jesus that often, amazingly, stem from scholars are what Craig Evans addresses in this book.
In a thoroughly engaging style that is easily accessible though also clearly scholarly and well founded Evans addresses eight areas of concern with certain schools of current Jesus scholarship and gives a chapter to each (with two chapters on questionable texts such as the Gnostic gospels). In these chapters he addresses things like bad use of history and archaeology as well as unhelpful use of Josephus (and Philo) and incorrect chronology. He addresses everyone from pop culture’s novelist, Dan Brown, to the academics of the Jesus Seminar.
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Perhaps I was a bit rash in deciding that I was giving up blogging, but over the last month I’ve had a change of heart and feel that I would like to continue blogging here. Let’s call the past month and a bit a sabbatical! I will probably be changing the style of blog that this is…but we’ll see how that goes. So if I haven’t already lost you as a reader or a feed subscriber then carry on and we’ll see where we go from here!
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Well, I just don’t have enough time nor motivation to blog these days, for various reasons. Just as we’ve decided on The proGnosis to call it time, so I’ve decided it’s time to end blogging. Thank you for reading and for contributing, I’ve enjoyed it! If you want to keep in touch with what I’m doing then send me an email (jonnyraine at gmail dot com) and I’ll send you a prayer letter around 3 or 4 times a year.
This blog site will close down by the end of the year.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: God, Hymn, Jesus, Poem, Praise, Saints
SAINT VENANTIUS HONORIUS CLEMENTIANUS FORTUNATUS
A poet and hymn writer, this saint with a long name lived around 530-610 AD.
Well, the straight answer is Robbie Williams, as I’ve raised in my previous post. Since that post i’ve been doing a lot more thinking about his song.
