My apologies to Green Baggins for not getting to his latest installment on RINE more promptitudinously. Things have been busy — ministerial conference, presbytery, and a writing deadline all conspired to reinforce the dictum that obligations are like grapes. They come in bunches. Lane reviewed two chapters together (17 and 18), and he didn’t really …
Kings Who Devour and Kings Who Feed
The incident of feeding the multitudes is recorded in all four Gospels, and is clearly considered by the witnesses of Christ’s ministry to be very important. And as we consider the meaning God has written for us here it is crucial for us to note the context. “And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves …
Therefore We Have Spoken
“Our task is not to lecture about Jesus with philosophical detachment. We have become personally involved in Him. His revelation and redemption have changed our lives. Our eyes have been opened to see Him, and our ears unstopped to hear Him, as our Saviour and our Lord. We are witnesses; so we must bear witness” …
The Death of John Baptist
When Jesus comes to His own hometown, He is rejected by the people there. After this, He sends out His disciples to preach on His behalf, but before they return we hear a parenthetical explanation of the death of John the Baptist. “And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and …
Double Witness
“This brings us at last to the fifth aspect of Christian witness, which concerns the preacher . . . We may summarize the biblical view of Christian witness by saying that it is borne before the world by the Father to the Son through the Spirit and the Church . . . This double witness …
Making the Unclean Clean
When Jesus comes back across the sea, He performs two remarkable miracles, the first performed while He is on His way to the second. The woman with the issue of blood was healed while Christ was on His way to the house of Jairus. “And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the …
Testimony Rhymes With Me
“So much so-called ‘testimony’ today is really autobiography and even sometimes thinly disguised self-advertisement, that we need to regain a proper biblical perspective. All true testimony is testimony to Jesus Christ, as He stands on trial before the world” (John Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, p. 64).
Our Name is Legion
In the course of His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus cast down many demons. But this incident is one of the more remarkable, as well as one of the most memorable. “And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of …
The Witness
“The third word used in the New Testament for the Christian preacher is the word ‘witness’ . . . Christian preachers are privileged to testify to and for Jesus Christ, defending Him, commending Him, bringing before the court evidence which they must hear and consider before they return their verdict” (John Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, …
We Don’t Need No Stinking Proof
Green Baggins is on to the next chapter of RINE, the one on heretics and heresy. He begins by acknowledging that individualism is a bad deal, but distinguished individualism from the obvious fact that we all go to heaven or hell, as I have noted elsewhere, by ones. Lane wonders if we in the FV …