Daylight Saving ends Easter morning

In 2010, NSW Daylight Saving ends on Easter morning, April 4th.

Reserve Bank Governor uses ‘God given capabilities’

“Glenn Stevens used a charity breakfast in Sydney this morning to say he was using his god-given talents to do the job of managing the economy.…

Mr Stevens also responded to a direct question about his belief in God. ‘I would say that, despite claims to the contrary, there is a God. This is worth checking out and the critical issue people have to deal with is, was Jesus Christ who he claimed to be? If he wasn’t then you can forget about it, and if he wasn’t then I am living in a fool’s world…'”

– report from ABC News. (Photo: Reserve Bank.)

Easter and history

Simon Smart from the Centre for Public Christianity, writes, “[We] would like to draw your attention to a resource that we thought might be of assistance to you as you prepare for the lead-up to Easter and Easter services. …

How do we respond to claims that Jesus didn’t even exist? What about answering questions about the reliability of the New Testament documents? Why is the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus such a crucial aspect of the Christian story? How might one respond to the New Atheist claims that the crucifixion represents cosmic child abuse?

For all that and more, just click here to gain access to our Easter page. We hope you will be able to use the material in whatever way is most helpful to you.”

‘Easter Show bans Jesus’

“It’s a curious thing that an event bearing the name “Easter” has disallowed anything to do with the very thing Easter is all about – the death and resurrection of Jesus,”  – CEO of Bible Society NSW, Daniel Willis. Report from Eternity newspaper.

‘Calvinism is back’

“New Calvinism draws legions to the sermons of preachers like John Piper of the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis.

Here at CHBC, the pews and even rooms in the basement are filled each Sunday, mostly with young professionals. Since senior pastor Mark Dever brought Calvinist preaching here 16 years ago, the church has grown sevenfold. Today it is bursting at the stained-glass windows…”

– The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the ‘New Calvinism’ – via Capitol Hill Baptist Church. (h/t Justin Taylor. Photo: Mary Knox Merrill / Christian Science Monitor.)

Holy Week Geography and Harmony in Google Earth

Justin Taylor writes:

“Today is the first day of “Holy Week,” where Christians recount Jesus’ final pre-glorified week on Earth.

Here is something you might find fruitful while contemplating the events leading up to our Saviour’s death and resurrection: an attempt in Google Earth to show the locations of the major events (to the best of our knowledge) along with descriptions and biblical passages describing those events.”

See it here.

‘Canonically Permissible Graciousness’

“…on May 15 the Presiding Bishop intends to do the very thing that the Joint Standing Committee — on which she serves — urged the Episcopal Church not to do. …

… even a rudimentary grasp of Jesus’ admonition to “let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’” (Matt. 5:37) highlights a conflict between the Episcopal Church’s rhetoric of reconciliation and autonomous actions.”

– from an editorial in The Living Church.

(Photo taken at the November 2008 Joint Standing Committee meeting: ACNS Rosenthal.)

The Messiah by Mr Handel & Mr Newton

Dr Alec Motyer, Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith and others speak about Handel’s “The Messiah” at The John Newton Project.

In preparation for Easter, learn about John Newton’s little-known connection with Handel’s Messiah.

South Carolina defiant

At the 219th Convention of the Diocese of South Carolina yesterday, Bishop Mark Lawrence didn’t mince his words:

“It would be insufferable to see this great Diocese of South Carolina come under the sway of the same false gospel that has decked so much of The Episcopal Church with decorative destruction and dreadful decline.

Like those in the Church at Corinth with whom St. Paul was confronted, many within the leadership of The Episcopal Church have grown willful. They will have their way though it is contrary to the received teaching of God’s Holy Word, the trustworthy traditions of the Christian Faith, and the expressed will of the Anglican Communion—that rich multicultural body of almost 80 million Christians around the world, from many tribes, languages, peoples, and nations.…”

– and that was just the warm-up. Worth reading in full.

See also the text of key resolutions approved – including this one –

RESOLVED, That this 219th Convention acknowledges that for more than three centuries this Diocese has represented the Anglican expression of the faith once for all delivered to the saints; and, be it further

RESOLVED, that we declare to all that we understand ourselves to be a gospel diocese, called to proclaim an evangelical faith, embodied in a catholic order, and empowered and transformed through the Holy Spirit; and be it further

RESOLVED, that we promise under God not to swerve in our belief that above all Jesus came into the world to save the lost, that those who do not know Christ need to be brought into a personal and saving relationship with him, and that those who do know Christ need to be taught by the Holy Scriptures faithfully to follow him all the days of their lives to the Glory of God the Father.

(Photo of Bishop Mark Lawrence: Diocese of South Carolina.)

Where do we go from here? — Fulcrum

The leadership team of Fulcrum, the Church of England’s ‘open evangelical’ group seems to have accepted the reality of the situation in the Anglican Communion in a post on their website –

“The bishops and Standing Committees of The Episcopal Church (USA) have consented to the election of Mary Glasspool as bishop suffragan in the diocese of Los Angeles. That consent sadly confirms that TEC is determined to ignore all the repeated appeals of the wider Communion and, in the closing words of The Windsor Report, ‘walk apart’…

It is important that this is not simply a matter of disagreement about biblical interpretation and sexual ethics although these are central and important. It is now very clearly also a fundamental matter of truth-telling and trust.”

– Read the full article.

And John Richardson comments: ‘Fulcrum: their challenge to Canterbury and the challenge they must face’.

“Understandably, the statement is at pains to recognise Rowan Williams’s past efforts. Yet it is remarkably frank in the call it now makes upon him…”

(Photo courtesy ACNS/Rosenthal.)

‘The Heart’ in the Old Testament

Barry Newman has posted a PDF file of his latest series – this one on ‘The Heart’ in the New Testament.

It’s a follow-up to his earlier series on ‘The Soul’.

There’s a link on this page.

Installation of Archbishop Okoh

“The service lasted just under four hours and was worth every minute! Had it been on a weekend, there would have been ‘an explosion of numbers’ a bishop sitting next to me said…”

– Canon Chris Sugden writes from Abuja for Anglican Mainstream. He also provides a summary of the new Nigerian Primate’s sermon.

(Photo: Anglican Mainstream. Bishop Peter Tasker was present from Sydney.)

The Trials of Theology

At Reformation21, Derek Thomas thinks Carl Trueman’s essay in The Trials of Theology, edited by Andrew Cameron and Brian Rosner, is alone worth the price of the book.

(There’s some other excellent stuff in there too.)

John Piper writes this about the book:

When I began my theological studies in 1968 I devoured Helmut Thielicke’s A Little Exercise for Young Theologians.

If I were starting today I would devour The Trials of Theology.
Here is counsel from the proven dead and the wise living.

“Do we need theology”?
We may as well ask, “Do we need to know God?” Ten thousand times yes.

“Is studying theology perilous?”
Yes. But less perilous than ignorance.

“Will it be costly?”
Let the Bible answer: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Ps. 119:71).

Without the “trials of theology” we remain on the surface of the statutes of God. May the Spirit of truth make this book a means of true thinking about God, deep affections for God, and beautiful obedience to God, through Jesus Christ who is God.

Moore Books has copies.

New Nigerian Primate from today

“The new Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), His Eminence, Most Reverend Nicholas Dikeriehi Orogodo Okoh will be installed today in Abuja. He becomes the fourth Primate of the Anglican Church in Nigeria.

He takes over from the Most Rev Peter Akinola who vacates his office today…”

– from This Day (Nigeria).

God, Sex, and ‘Christianity Lite’

Albert Mohler:

“A project of theological revisionism is easy to start, but hard to stop. Like a spreading acid, theological liberalism moves from one doctrine to the next, developing patterns of argument that arise over and over again.”

– from his latest blog posting.

And then it’s worth re-reading Mark Thompson’s ‘The Anglican Debacle: Roots and Patterns’:

“It is increasingly clear that the gospel of salvation by the cross and resurrection of Jesus, with its call to faith and repentance has been replaced in some quarters by a liberal gospel of universal reconciliation, what some call ‘the gospel of inclusion’…”

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