Quote of the week

Heaven is not the destination of the saved. Rather, we will participate in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We will become part of the new creation. Jesus’ salvation is not just about me and my sins, but will envelop the whole of the cosmos. A new heaven and earth will be created, and our call is to live as his people there in relationships of love with the Trinity and with one another forever. No clouds and harps and halos; instead, real life and love, with no more crying and no more dying. I don’t know how he’s going to do it. But if Easter is any indication of what’s in store, then he’s off to a very impressive start.


From William Black in the land of milk and honey via Christians should know better

Joke of the week

Reaching out for the Alka Seltzer

Last week, at a dinner hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, someone from the Russian Orthodox Church gave the Church of England a serious rebuke. Now whoever chose to invite him must no doubt be nashing their teeth for their decision to invite someone who would cause quite a few guests (possibly including the Archbish) to reach out for the Alka Seltzer. Here is the full text of remarks and for a taster, here is a small portion of Hilarion's meaty talk

We are also extremely concerned and disappointed by other processes that are manifesting themselves in churches of the Anglican Communion. Some Protestant and Anglican churches have repudiated basic Christian moral values by giving a public blessing to same-sex unions and ordaining homosexuals as priests and bishops. Many Protestant and Anglican communities refuse to preach Christian moral values in secular society and prefer to adjust to worldly standards.

Our Church must sever its relations with those churches and communities that trample on the principles of Christian ethics and traditional morals. Here we uphold a firm stand based on Holy Scripture.

In 2003, the Russian Orthodox Church had to suspend contact with the Episcopal Church in the USA due to the fact that this Church consecrated a self-acclaimed homosexual ... as bishop. The Department for External Church Relations made a special statement deploring this fact as anti-Christian and blasphemous. Moreover, the Holy Synod of our Church decided to suspend the work of the Joint Coordinating Committee for Cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Episcopal Church in the USA, which had worked very successfully for many years. The situation was aggravated when a woman bishop was installed as head of the Episcopal Church in the USA in 2006 and a lesbian was placed on the bishop’s chair of Los Angeles in 2010.

Similar reasons were behind the rupture of our relations with the Church of Sweden in 2005 when this Church made a decision to bless same-sex “marriages”.  And recently the lesbian Eva Brunne has become the “bishop” of Stockholm.

What can these churches say to their faithful and to secular society? What kind of light do they shine upon the world (cf. Mt. 5:14)? What is their ‘salt’? I am afraid the words of Christ can be applied to them: If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men (Mt. 5:13).

To flee lust, look up

Is what John Piper says in this brilliant quote.

The sky is a great power against lust - pure, lovely, wholesome, beautiful, powerful.

Large-hearted things cannot abide the soul of a sexual fantasy at the same time.

To listen to this quote and more, go here

Thought for the day: Ain't it ugly?

Lask week on these shores, I referenced an excellent post which spoke of the objectivity of beauty (Music and the Objectivity of Beauty). One of the insights I gleaned from reading that post, was how beauty is intrinsic to who God's being. Consider for example the follow verses:


Exodus 28:2
And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty.


Exodus 28:40
"For Aaron’s sons you shall make coats and sashes and caps. You shall make them for glory and beauty



Psalm 27:4
One thing have I asked of the LORD,that will I seek after:that I may dwell in the house of the LORDall the days of my life,to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple

Psalm 48:2
beautiful in elevation,is the joy of all the earth,Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.

Psalm 50:2
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.

Psalm 96:6
Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary

From these verses, we can clearly see that God likes beauty. He likes beautiful clothes, He likes beautiful surroundings and He Himself is in fact beautiful (Psalm 27:4). I'm sure that there is more that could be said but at the very least we'd want to say that beauty pertains to the very nature of God. Now this is all very nice and interesting, and I was minding my own business having put this "beauty" stuff to one side when I came across this quote from Darwin

Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds . . . gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare. . . .

Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music. . . .

I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. . . .

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. . . .

The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

After reading this quote, I've been asking myself - what beautiful things has Atheism produced? Where is their music or art or poetry or architecture? Where are their charities and old people's homes? Where are their holidays and festivals? Could it be that besides hating the One who is the source of all life, atheism is also barren and ugly?

Hypocrisy sucks

Every so often a commentary, online article etc I'm reading will capture with great force a point from Scripture I'm trying to teach. These last few days, I've been working on Romans 2 in preparation for a sermon I'm preaching this Sunday. One of the things that's really struck me as I've prepared this sermon, is how much hypocrisy really really sucks. It quietly eats away at our conscience and more seriously, it is utterly distasteful to God. This alone should lead us to immediate repentance and godly fear but not always. Thus something I read today reminded me that one way God's hatred for hypocrisy is displayed, is by allowing our hypocritical life to be understood as such by those around us

No amount of rigorous apologetic for the faith—as important as that is—will supplant or squelch the consistent noise coming from the moral megaphone of our lives. 

How is your life? Are you simply talking the talk or are you also walking the walk? Ezekiel 18:27

Joke of the week