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Dear readers,

I am writing on behalf of the proGnosis authors to inform you that we have moved address. Our new address is, www.theprognosis.org. There we have a whole new site with the usual blog, but also with pages for downloading articles, sermons, music and for displaying videos which will be uploaded in time.

We will no longer be using this address so please use our new address in future. We hope this doesn’t inconvenience you too much and we hope we don’t lose you as a reader in future. And by the way, this is not because google are trying to shut us down, that was an April Fool’s joke. It’s simply that now we have more stuff and a better url!

Your’s gratefully and sincerely

Jonny Raine (Techie!)

I saw a programme about a month ago which had a guy on it who raced camels, like how people race horses. They go really fast. I would put a picture here to show you but we all know that’s not going to happen! So search on google images and you’ll get the gist. But that’s not the “fast” about camels I mean. I mean how they have humps full of fat on their backs that mean they can fast, as in go without food, for ages.

So how’s your fast been this year? Have you survived your 40 days Lent that finish on Saturday? Did you go all out and give up food completely or did you only give up, say, chocolate, or some other nicety? If you’re anything like me, which I suspect most of us are, then Lent will have passed with you barely missing a single meal.

Unless you’re part of the Anglican, Catholic or Orthodox church then fasting is not something we talk about much. We use those verses in Matthew 6:16-18

“When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

And based on this verse, we say that we shouldn’t let people know we are fasting or have fasted and we shouldn’t talk about it or do it even as a whole church. Or maybe that’s just my experience? These verses aren’t talking about how we shouldn’t let others know that we are fasting or that fasting should be an individualistic thing. After all, the verses before tell us to pray in a closed room. The point there is that our prayers shouldn’t be ’showy’ and the point here with fasting is that our fasting shouldn’t be ’showy’ either. So instead of looking deliberately rough when fasting we should look our best, because we don’t do it for glory in the site of men, but for God. 

It’s something it’s assumed we will do: “When you fast”. It’s something tied to prayer. But why do we do it? What is accomplished by fasting? How does it benefit me or God? These are questions on which the Bible is pretty much silent. I can’t find any answers to these questions from the Bible. Can you? The answer I was given growing up was that fasting gives us more time to pray, and therefore that we can fast by merely not watching TV or something. I think there’s a small amount of truth to that but I think limiting it to that is undercutting what fasting is.

So since the Bible remains quiet, that means we have to figure it out by experience. I’ve only fasted four times, ever, a total of, check me out, six days! One of those occasions wound up with me getting chased by 25 bullocks, but that’s another story! So here’s some thoughts (not at all exhaustive) from my experiences as to what the benefits of fasting are.

It expresses a devotion to God: Acts of devotion aren’t in fashion at the moment. But fasting is one of these things. It expresses to God our commitment to him, that we are willing to go without our most basic needs for God. It’s not that God needs us to actually do anything as such for him to see our commitment, but then God asks us to pray even though he knows what we will ask.

It highlights our weakness: When you’re feeling weak, miserable and starving, you realise how pathetic you are. The fact that you need to rely on food to keep you alive shows what you are before the self-existent God. In a small way, you face your own mortality.

Food and life is shown as secondary to God: Food is something we expect. It’s easier to have a meal than it is to take a bite out of God’s Word. When we fast, the tables are turned. We are more ready to go to God and his Word since we can’t have a meal anyway. God is physically shown as being more important to me than even my food. It’s an obvious means of self-denial.

Those thoughts are not exhaustive, as I said, so if you have more experiential wisdom about it then please share in the comments.

If you’ve been inspired to have a go and have never done it before then start where you can. Try fasting for just a day or two. Or even just miss a meal. If you’re feeling hardcore then why not actually try the 40 day fast. It is possible. I know Jesus was God so he was bound to last the 40 days, but many others have done it. Here’s a website with tips on how to fast even for 40 days, as well as more discussion on the matter than I can give. It’s not about how long you can last but about your heart as you fast.

WARNING: If you’ve got medical conditions or are not generally fit and healthy, be wise and check with your doctor first.

Now I am eccumenical. Not that I am an eccumenicist but that I am eccumenical.(as a description not a label. See a previous post on which there was much confusion!) I don’t think that I’m the only one who will be saved nor only those who agree with me on every letter of the law, so to speak. I would love to see the church unified as Jesus prayed for in John 17:21. But the fact is, it’s not. So the solution surely is that we unite over the lowest common denominator. So we’ll start an eccumenical church where anyone who calls themselves Christian, who claims to follow Christ, can join and we’ll accommodate them all, right?

But if you put too little concentrate in your blackcurrant and apple squash you end up with disgusting stuff, the sort that normally gets given to kids in Sunday School. I noticed this yesterday in the service. The thing is, I couldn’t really disagree with anything. Ok, so the candle lighting was a bit la-de-da and though I may think that a lot of the practice was not the best practice, it didn’t mean it was wrong per se. Then in the reflection/sermon, she went through the stories that were read out, she even spoke about the Hebrew word ruah, which means wind or spirit or breath or something (and no jokes about my Hebrew exam: yes I did fail!) Her two application points didn’t say anything exactly wrong. They were: 1. We need to be loosed from whatever it is that binds us. 2. We need to loose others who are binded by whatever binds us. There was nothing wrong as such, but she could’ve gone on to explain that it is sin that binds us and it’s only in Christ’s atoning work and in being united to him that we can be freed. But if she had gone on to say that, well she would’ve been saying more than that eccumenical spirit allows and she would’ve offended someone for talking about sin binding us or something.

So why am I eccumenical at all? Well I think the converse is also true. If you put too much concentrate in your blackcurrant and apple squash you end up disgusting stuff that’s just too sharp and strong for anyone to drink. I’ve been along to churches where only one type of person is allowed, where everyone agrees with every letter of every individual doctrine and you end up with clones and a flat, dull, two-dimensional expression of church! In unity we have a greater knowledge of the riches of Christ (Col. 2:2). We all understand Christ in slightly different ways so when we unite and share our differences we have greater understanding of Christ and a richer gospel.

So how concentrated should our churches be? Well, my blackcurrant and apple squash should be done 4 parts water to one part concentrate, but I dunno what that means for the church! How much should we seperate and how much can we unite over? It’s an interesting question and one that the Bible doesn’t really give us any guidelines on. Pretty much my favourite author pretty much always goes on about how we should unite over the creeds such as the apostles’ or other creeds, Nicea maybe? I also asked a well known Bible College Principle (no prizes for guessing who), and he said it was a case of looking back over history and see what the majority have always agreed upon as the core. Both are similar answers but majorities can be wrong and old creeds addressed the needs of the time. I haven’t really got any strong answers, though I think a lot of it has to do with humility, conscience, seeing what is clearly taught in scripture and an understanding of the difference between heresey, error and difference of opinion. Any other answers, on a postcard or in the comments below!

It’s all very well saying we unite over Christ and the gospel according to the scriptures, but what does that mean? Whose Christ? Whose gospel? Whose interpretation of the scriptures?

I’m going to do an occasional series where I simply put up scanned images of evangelistic tracts. I’m not going to comment on them in the actually post itself! Here’s the first, called Last Rites which has an obvious target audience and is from Chick Publications.

The programme centres around a fundamentalist Bible-Belt street preacher called Samuel, a black charismatic healer called Terry and a girl called Ana who preaches to congregations numbering in the thousands in the shanty towns of Brazil. Samuel is going out on missions with his dad and during the show he ventures to the Capitol where, armed with sandwich boards and tracts, they preach to the American sinners telling them they’re going to hell. Terry is caught up in the publicity campaigns and the hype of his healing meetings as his father come manager/promoter plans for his future in the big bucks of mega church life within the next few years. Ana is filmed going to prisons and to drug culture and drug driven shanty towns in Rio de Janeirio, obviously heavily influenced by her father.

As someone who preached his first ’sermon’ when he was their age (it was on two occasions to my family when we were on holiday and couldn’t get to church!), I couldn’t help but feel some empathy for them, for their young passion for God and his work. Their zeal was something that was very evident and at least seemingly genuine. It’s something we could all do with more of!

But there were obviously some disturbing things about it. Some which may be down to the angle of the programme itself, others which are at least worrying regardless of what angle you put on it! The first is their obvious lack of experience, maturity and knowledge. Granted, Timothy was told not to let anyone look down on him for his youth (1 Tim. 4:12), but Timothy wasn’t nine! He was also in the same verse to set an example for the believers. During the programme you saw two of the kids being disciplined by their parents for being naughty. Besides which, the kids can’t have the knowledge and experience to preach pastorally let alone Samuel dealing with issues on the streets such as evolution and abortion, despite his futile attempts.

Another issue was that the kids were driven by their parents and their parents seemed driven by performance. It was particularly evident with Terry as his dad arranges his photo signings, his preaching tours and his next three years as he heads towards his multi-million mega church. The newspaper reviews all seem to pick up on how the kids are driven by their parents in much the same was as child actors are, in fact Ana puts herself in the same league of child actors and singers when trying to justify herself as ‘normal’. It’s particularly disturbing seeing Samuel starting to cry as his dad engages in arguments about homosexuality and he is sat in the background crying saying that he just wants his mum. Our motivation for doing gospel work should be God and his glory as well as a desire for the gospel message to go out. Is this really the motivation that drives these kids?

The final negative thing I’m going to point out is that it presents the church, Christianity and therefore Jesus Christ in such a bad light. It presents the gospel as something we manipulate our kids into. And need I say anything about using gimmicks for the presentation of the gospel. They were presented as weirdos in the film (though only because it was presented that they’ve been pushed into it by their parents) and when you’ve got a little kid obsessively shouting at people in a monotonous Texan accent that they’re going to hell, well I don’t think that does any help for the gospel. I know we’re going to look foolish to the world and that “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27) but that’s in our message and we shouldn’t be seeking to look foolish for the sake of appearing foolish.

I think kiddie-Christians are great. I know a good few of them from my church and their faith is amazing. I love seeing them serve the work of the gospel in their own unique ways too. How could I not when children’s faith glorifies God, especially when I was a kiddie-Christian myself—converted under five, delivering leaflets to doors at the same time, doing small group evangelism at eight (one of whom is a Christian to this day, though he doesn’t actually remember my bible study group!), helping out at Sunday School at age twelve. Admittedly, a lot of this was done out of a legalistic desire to please God through my works, but as I continued, I was discipled to serve in a right way. I hope I haven’t been unfair in my reflections, and the last thing I want to do is discourage anyone in their obvious gifting at whatever age they’re at. We need to encourage the faith and servanthood of kiddie-Christians, but we also need to be careful to disciple them properly first/alongside service and not push them too much, too fast, too young and all for the glory of God.

So here’s a diary of all that I’ve got up to this week. Again, if you need clarification as to what anything is then do ask in the comments, and if you don’t know what Crowded House is nor what I’m doing here for three weeks then have a look at my first post by clicking here and my second post by clicking here.

First off, if you don’t know what Crowded House is or why I’m here for three weeks then scroll down to my post last week and you’ll understand!

Second, I’m going to explain the ’structure’ as it stands at the present (though keep in mind that the nature of Crowded House is such that it changes quite frequently). There are two main networks at the moment, the 215 network and the Sharrow network. The 215 network, of which Steve Timmis is a leader, is the one I’m predominantly involved in and is the largest. They have four churches: Sharrow Vale, HuB, Broom Springs and Loughborough. Sharrow Vale meets in a typical (though of course modernised) church building and has two teams seeking to reach out to particular people. So you have the Manor team and the South View team. The hope at the moment is that eventually these teams may become church plants in and of themselves. The other three (HuB, Broom Springs and Loughborough) all meet in homes and Loughborough is expected to plant in the coming months and perhaps will become its own network. The Sharrow network, of which Tim Chester is a leader, is a lot simpler. They have two churches: Abbey and Sharrow. Both meet in homes. I don’t know what their plans and intentions are for the near future, as I haven’t spent as much time with them!

Third, here’s what I’ve been up to this week. If anything doesn’t make sense then do ask in the comments bit and I’ll clarify. 

Fourth and finally I want to reflect on how the evangelism is done here. If like me you don’t think that street preaching is the best form of communicating the gospel and that door knocking is not the best way to get into a relationship in order to share the gospel, then you’ve got to ask the question how can I do evangelism? One answer is to hold ‘events’ as a church and tag on a token gospel talk at the end. Another answer is to rely on individuals in the church to go out, build relationships and share the gospel themselves and then when their non-Christian friends become Christians they can be brought into the church. I would have said that the best means of evangelism was the last one, that is until I read Total Church and saw how it worked out here at Crowded House.

“The Crowded House is a group of church planting networks in Sheffield and Loughborough.” Well that’s what their website helpfully explains. What they’re known for is their emphasis on community as well as being gospel centred. They talk more about planting churches not just growing churches and do so using a ‘house church’ model. Everyone is involved in ministry and church is not an event that happens one day a week, it is their lives lived with gospel intentions. If you want to understand more of where they’re coming from, check out their values and doctrine or if you want a more in depth understanding then read Total Church written by two of its leaders, Steve Timmis and Tim Chester.

Whilst in Bible college we are expected to go for three weeks on a placement with a church or Christian organisation or something. In my interview with my lecturer to decide where I’d be going this year, I said, “I want to go somewhere different.” Then paused, then said, “I want to go somewhere small, traditional and denominational.” Because I’ve never been in that situation. My lecturer said that he had thought I’d meant something like Crowded House when I said that I wanted to do something different. Not knowing what Crowded House was, I asked and he explained and it sounded a lot more appealing than something smal, traditional and denominational! So now I’m here and I’ve just done my first week. First, here’s what I’ve done then below I’ll give a reflection. I have two more weeks left so you can expect two more posts.

So here are some reflections. The first thing to say is that it’s not all that different to how any other church I’ve been in. I suppose it wouldn’t be though since fundementally we all believe the same things. And I’ve only been to the church meeting that meets in a typical church building not any of the house churches meetings. So we sung, we read the Bible, we prayed and had a sermon. They then had a meal together, but that’s not all that uncommon in the churches I’ve been to. Then during the week they do do a lot of seeing each other, hanging out and spending time together, which people will do in other churches though not necessarily as often as the Crowded House people do. I even did a hospital visit! But whatever background or tradition we’re in (unless you’re dodgy) fundementally we all believe the same things so it’s not going to look all that different really is it.

So now some reflections on what did strike me. There really is a real buzz about the gospel amongst the people. It’s obvious that it is what they are passionate about. It’s obviously in part down to good and consistent biblical teaching, but I wonder if this buzz is heightened by their emphasis on communities, their emphasis on keeping it smaller and planting rather than growing a mega church and because of their willingness to change as situations change all for the good of the gospel.

One other thing that struck me is that these people really are all involved with one another not just on a social level but also on a spiritual level. It’s what I’ve decided to call the allelous element (since allelous is the word for ‘one another’) because it sounds cool. This allelous thing is Biblical. We’re told many times to be loving one another, teaching one another, encouraging and admonishing one another, in short being devoted to one another. And as I’ve been amongst the people here, they have very naturally opened up the Bible together, prayed together and got onto spiritual conversations together, and I don’t think it is just because they have the Bible College student around who they’ve got to impress, that’s just what they do. Again, I’d say it’s because of the community emphasis and the size.

Well, I want to have something to say next week, so I’ll leave it there.

We’re not talking languages in the international spoken sense here, (personally, I wish everyone spoke one language - English - blast those Babel guys!) what we’re talking about here is the languages used in the Bible, Greek and Hebrew. So why is it important that we know them? And I’ll offer a few tips on how can we know them. So if you don’t know your theos from your huios, then either you have bad Christology or you should read on!

I’m going to give one simple reason why it’s important that we know Greek and Hebrew, and that is that we can go deeper into God’s Word. Knowing the languages helps a person see the reasons for differences between translations, they help a person see patterns and structures to different passages and authors, they help a person engage with more technical commentaries, they enable a person to see emphases that an English translation may not highlight and they slow down a person’s reading so that you spend more time thinking about it. So the one reason, that you go deeper into a text, actually has a lot of sub-reasons. If you want somewhat more detail on reasons for knowing the Biblical languages, look here, here and here for some good ones!

Now I know that not everyone is a languages person. I know that because I certainly am not a languages person. I do like to play with language (so long as it’s English) but I’m not the sort of person who understands grammar (apart from intuitively) or who picks up foreign languages easily. So I’m not going to say that everyone should kill themselves trying to be fluent in both Greek and Hebrew. But for a minister, it is an incredibly useful tool to have, even if it’s a fairly basic grasp. And because not every minister is a languages person, if you are a languages person and not a minister, then why not pick up these languages so you can be a tool for your minister. That way whenever they come to a complicated text, they can come to you for an explanation.

Our good English translations are very good (into this category I would include the ESV, NASB, NIV and the many others) so we can have a good and clear understanding of the original text. With the use of commentaries and reliance upon scholars and their language tools this is brought deeper and richer, but with the use of our own original languages it is brought even deeper and richer still.

So if I’ve convinced you to at least have a stab or a dabble at the originals, i guess there are three main ways you can start learning. First is take a Bible college course/module either by distance learning or by actually attending. I guess this is the most interactive and personal option but is also the most expensive at upwards of £367 per module at WEST. Another option is to buy a book. This would take some motivation and means you can’t ask further questions when you find topics to be quite difficult. I bought a book to help with my Hebrew recently that cost me £15.82 at the Book Depository. And the final option which is by far the cheapest option, since it is free, is by learning through the Information Superhighway that is the World Wide Web, A.K.A. t’internet.

First if you’re looking to learn Greek (which I’m sure is the easier one of the two), then there’s the online animated lessons by Ted Hildebrandt at Gordon College. I can’t work out whether his voice is computer generated or not, but in 28 lessons you can learn all you need to get the basics of the language down. You get to watch this funny little computer animated bloke dancing around the page pointing at bits and pieces and at the end of each lesson there’s a vocab. section. I’ve only watched one lesson in full which lasted around an hour, so you should be able to go through all the lessons in little over a day, (though I’d recommend spacing the lessons out so that you’ve got time to learn paradigms and vocab.) Click on the image to see a screen shot.

Then, for Hebrew, there’s a brilliant series of animated lessons by Charles Grebe at Animated Hebrew. Charles takes you through 40 lessons, working through Introducing Biblical Hebrew by Allen P. Ross (though it’s not essential to have the book). Each lesson lasts anything from 15mins to 1hr 35mins (though on average they’re about an hour) with a grand total of 35hrs 7mins. Again I’d recommend you space your learning out, (I tried doing four lessons a day and my brain refused to take anything in for a few days!) Charles draws most things out to engage your mind in ways that are a real help for people like me who learn visually. He’s got this neat little program as well that’s such a great tool for his lectures (you really need to see them just to see how cool this program is!) He also has a fantastic vocab. flash card program that fits his lessons (and Ross’ book). Click the image for a screen shot.

So have a go, even if you can spare just an hour a week, it may well pay richly in years to come, or you might get nothing more than a basic understanding of the principles of the original languages, but hey, at least you can say you’ve tried!

For those who haven’t been reading proGnosis for that long or who haven’t read every post we write, a while ago I posted on how some old Church leader from the 2nd Century, Irenaeus, proposed that Jesus probably died in his late forties (and had to to save people who are in the latter stage of life). But the main focus of the blog was how we assume that Jesus started ministry at age 30 and died when he was 33, but how we don’t actually know that. If you want to read the post, click here.

But after a Greek lesson translating John 2:13-22 of all things, it seems there has been some good research into the question of how old Jesus was. If you want to read the full article, by Andreas Köstenberger, click here. But I’ll summarise very briefly now. Jesus was born about 5BC (and there is no year 0, apparently!). John the Baptist started his ministry in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, as Luke 3:1-3 which was 29AD. Jesus started his ministry soon after John the Baptist and Luke tells us further that he was about 30 when he started his ministry. According to the evidence we’ve seen he would be more accurately, about 33 years old when he actually started ministry (not when he died).

Now for how long he was in ministry. John records three Passovers (and one happens each year) and then the synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) record one more. Four passovers equals three and a half years, and for a Passover to happen on a Friday, Jesus could only have died in the year 30AD or 33AD. So 29AD plus about three and a half years equals 33AD, which makes Jesus about 36 or 37 when he died. Comprendez vous?

The great thing to remember here is that all the evidence in different gospels ties in to other historical records, such as Josephus’. If it was made up, surely they’d get dates confused and the stuff in Luke wouldn’t match the records in John nor the historical records nor the recent research stuff about stars and all that. The stuff in the gospels actually happened!