Speak now, or forever hold your peace
“Marriage is the exclusive union between a man and a woman.”
“It wasn’t so long ago that making a statement like this wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow. In fact, if you’d said this, most people would have responded with a ‘Yes, and?’. It would be liking stating that the sky is blue, or the Australian cricket team had been disappointing.
Today in Australia, this is perhaps the most controversial statements you can make…”
– At Communicate Jesus, Steve Kryger pleads with Christian leaders to actually lead Christians in responding to the challenge of same-sex marriage.
William Taylor on the wrath of God
William Taylor at St Helen’s Bishopsgate in London preached from Romans 1:16-23 at a lunchtime gathering to explain why everyone needs the gospel.
28 minute audio.
Pride
“According to Solomon, of the seven things God hates, pride tops the list (Proverbs 6:16 – 19).
CS Lewis called pride, “that complete anti-God state of mind – it leads to every other vice!”. Martin Luther claimed that his greatest enemy was not the Pope or Cardinal, but the enemy within, his own pride…”
– Presbyterian Moderator-General David Cook writes.
Planned Parenthood, Abortion, and the Conscience of a Nation
“Yesterday’s release of a video showing the senior medical director of Planned Parenthood casually discussing the sale of organs from aborted babies is a moral challenge thrown right in the face of all Americans…”
– Albert Mohler writes about the video which has exposed the depths of human depravity.
Russell Moore also writes about it, and Carl Trueman congratulates Planned Parenthood “for having so perfectly summarized the spirit of our age.”
True Repentance — Peter Jensen on Judges chapter 10
From Moore College:
“Former Archbishop (and College Principal) Peter Jensen preached on Judges 10 at St Andrew’s Cathedral on 12 July.
We are convinced this is a message that should be heard by as many people as possible and are pleased to be able to make it available through our podcast.”
Listen to Archbishop Peter Jensen’s sermon here (14MB mp3 file).
Same-sex intimate unions
Moore Theological College Principal, Dr Mark Thompson, has written a very helpful piece to aid Christians in their thinking and discourse in the current debate around same-sex marriage. Read more
Evangelical Ministry Assembly 2015 talks
The Proclamation Trust has made available audio of the talks from the 2015 EMA, held 22-24 June at the Barbican in London.
The theme: “Identity Crisis: Preaching to a Confused World”.
Speakers included –
- Christopher Ash (Director of the Cornhill Training Course)
- Tim Keller (Redeemer Presbyterian, New York)
- Andrew Reid (Holy Trinity Doncaster)
- Vaughan Roberts (St Ebbe’s, Oxford)
- Bruce Ware (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)
- John Wyatt (University College London).
The audio files are all on this page.
‘Will the same-sex marriage push destroy the right of churches to dissent?’
“This raises the question about the real ideology of the same-sex marriage campaign. Is it merely to allow gays to marry? Or is its ultimate purpose to impose ‘marriage equality’ across the entire society, civil and religious. Ideologies do not normally stop at the halfway mark…”
– Andrew Bolt at The Herald-Sun quotes from an important article by Paul Kelly in The Australian (which requires a subscription to read in full).
How should we then live — in Babylon?
“Back in the late 1970’s when I was an undergrad at Stanford, our Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship chapter sponsored lectures by Dr. Francis Schaeffer to the whole university. In the wake of the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage, and its ramifications for the constraint of our religious freedoms, I am reminded of the question Dr. Schaeffer posed in those lectures (and in his book) How should we then live?
I’m a pastor by first calling (an attorney by second), and I’ve been prayerfully reflecting on the answer to Dr. Schaeffer’s most relevant question. So let me respectfully offer some thoughts as we look over the cultural, spiritual and legal landscape we know face…”
– Phil Ashey at the American Anglican Council, has some advice for US churches.
David Cook on Preaching Acts
Weekend encouragement: Here are some very useful videos recorded at a 2 Timothy 4 Trust workshop in Scotland in 2012.
‘Redefining Sex and Marriage: how to think, live and speak as Christians’
The next event at the Centre for Christian Living at Moore College is on Wednesday August 26.
The topic is: “Redefining Sex and Marriage: how to think, live and speak as Christians when the world heads in a different direction”.
Sandy Grant and Tony Payne will be speaking. Details here.
A collection of resources for Christians to engage in the same-sex marriage debate
At Communicate Jesus, Steve Kryger has assembled a list of useful links to help Christians think and talk about same-sex marriage.
The success of the Left
“There are now fewer in our denomination who remember the way the church was pre 1977.
I began to teach Sunday School at Waverley Presbyterian in 1968. The curriculum consisted of situational ethics. There was no gospel being taught, indeed, in the wider church, those who refused to use the imposed Sunday School material were hounded out of the church. Liberalism in the majority is always thoroughly intolerant!
These were the days when our training institutions imposed a deadening liberalism by training clergy with no gospel to preach, no propitiatory sacrifice, no substitutionary atonement, no bodily resurrection, and no new life…”
– In one of his recent opinion pieces, Presbyterian Moderator-General David Cook reminds us of the ever-present danger of theological liberalism.
(Image: St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.)
Bring lasting hope
Through their Lasting Hope Appeal, CMS Australia is seeking the help of its supporters to bring lasting hope to Buddhist Asia.
To sustain their work, they are praying to reach their $1.5 million goal by the June 30th deadline!
Trouble ahead for U.S. Churches?
“The problem is that with this decision, the not-Supreme-and-not-a-court has set the stage for a monumental conflict between two constitutional rights: the right to exercise one’s religion under the First Amendment, and the right to marry (which soon will have to be extended to polygamy and polyandry, since there are no limiting principles to the new “right” just discovered).
And the worst part is that the only umpires for this impending conflict will be: you guessed it — unelected lawyers in black robes.
What may come as news to some is that the United States has been there before — and the results were not pretty…”
– Christian lawyer A S Haley comments.
Related: American Tragedy: Now Gird Up Your Loins.
“… this will turn out to be the greatest American tragedy for the civil liberties of persons of faith, for the cause of sexual purity… and for the lives of persons struggling with same-sex attraction…”
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…