Andre's Thoughts: Andre's thoughts

God is love

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:20:01 GMT

It pays to remember that God is love. He loved us in sending Jesus Christ to redeem us.

What a wonderful Saviour and Lord we have! Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord! Jesus, Name above all names, beautiful Saviour, glorious Lord. Emmanuel,

God is with us.

Jesus said

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:43:06 GMT

Jesus said that all those who labour and are heavy laden should come unto Him and He will give them rest.

A tribute to my wife

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 04:34:15 GMT

On Sunday, August 26, we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. The Bible says that 'a threefold cord is not easily broken'. Our lives, from our wedding day, have been dedicated to the Lord. Together we have been a threefold cord. Not everyone has been this blessed and we acknowledge God's hand upon us.

Our son and his wife and our two oldest grandchildren, from Christchurch, came to celebrate with us.

My wife, Jane, or Janie to all her friends, has been the most loyal, committed and faithful person imaginable.

She is a wonderful people person, a great musician and a very good writer. She can turn her hands to any restoration job; in fact she is multi-talented. She likes to do things justly and well and also expects to be treated justly.

She is the mother of three sons and one daughter and the grandmother of ten grandchildren. She is truly blessed and has always been a great blessing!

I admire and love her dearly!

Andre

re Revival

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:36:46 GMT

I am currently reading again the late Arthur Wallis's 1979 book entitled Rain from heaven about revival.

I would not consider that there is currently a revival in Timaru in the Biblical sense, as revival is a sudden sovereign outpouring from God. A revival is not something that is planned by people. It is a special visitation of God, not only amongst His people but also one which touches the surrounding community. It is akin to what happened in Acts 2 when the Spirit of God came down as a mighty rushing wind. The most appropriate way to describe it is to say with Habakkuk3:2-4 that 'God came'.

We can however set the sails to catch this heavenly wind. This refers to a thorough preparation of our hearts before God. As at Pentecost, true revival is always at God's initiative.

Unity or conformity?

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 02:41:03 GMT

When the early church creeds were formulated in black and white, the church of the day thought that this would deal with heresy once and for all. Such has never been the case. Most examples in the New Testament explain heresy as disunity. However, disunity soon again popped up quickly and the creeds would then be amended to deal with this new challenge.

The creeds actually created more disunity (heresy) than they sought to resolve.

The Roman emperors, starting with Constantine, wanted unity in the Roman Empire and used Christianity as the vehicle to achieve this goal. Once the church of the day was 'favoured' with the backing of the temporal power, so-called unity was enforced by the arm of the flesh. Unfortunately, it only enforced conformity or uniformity and incredible intolerance of alternate Bible-based views resulted. The church soon began to persecute its own people It is no surprise that after the fourth century, Christianised European society quickly descended into the Dark Ages. The creeds were mostly counterproductive, especially when they began to be enforced by temporal power.

There are many things we might not fully agree on. For example, even today eschatological (endtime doctrinal) differences are frequently not tolerated by those who think that their particular view is the one and only Biblically based interpretation.

Every church denomination that I am familiar with claims that its own tradition is solidly Bible-based. They are all probably right. About many issues, the Scriptures are not nearly so definite. It is the intolerance of differing views or ways of being the ekklesia that causes unnecessary friction in the body of Christ.

Unity

In 1Corinthians 15 we read of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ (the Messiah). Jesus went to the cross bodily and rose again bodily. That should be the sufficient basis of our unity and dispel misconceptions. Why then do we need complex creeds to try to say what the Scriptures have already said more than adequately?

Saved by faith through grace

When a lifesaver at the beach saves people from drowning, they do not need to know everything about this lifesaver or agree on everything about this person to be rescued. Even different understandings about this person, after the rescue has taken place, do not negate the fact that the rescued ones were indeed saved from drowning. In fact, the rescued certainly did nothing to deserve being rescued. All they needed to do was to put their trust in the rescuer at the time of the rescue.

Trusting Christ Jesus

Many believers, when they first come to Christ Jesus, know precious little about Him. Does this retrospectively negate their salvation ? I was not saved by right believing or orthodoxy , I was saved by fully trusting the One who saved me! Now this might sound somewhat simplistic. Jesus did not just come for the intellectuals. In fact He had a special ministry to the poor and disenfranchised of His days on earth. He is no different today!

No place for anathemas

Why should people be cursed because, while having put their trust in their Saviour and having experienced salvation from the debt and the power of sin, they have somewhat different understandings of Him. Why should the Athanasian Creed (for example) include threats and curses? In fact, such inclusions of threats and curses only legalistically seek to create unity. Such actually enforce uniformity, but end up destroying unity. That the church has been fear-bound for those many centuries is in itself amazing. I have met too many Christians who are too fearful to think outside the traditional square. They are afraid of the church's scrutiny or other people's censure or condemnation. I prefer to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has set me free! No threats will rob me of knowing Whom I have believed, even if some of my ideas might differ from the ancient credos.

It is time for a total rethink by the church of our day! The basis for our unity needs to be rethought and defined. In many respects, we should move toward more inclusiveness. I am not speaking of sinful lifestyles which are clearly disapproved in the Scriptures, I am thinking of differing understandings, all of which may be shown to be based firmly on the written Word of God.

The following is a passage directly quoted from Fausset's Bible Dictionary. See also the phrase which I have emphasised in bold print.

HERESY

1 Cor 11:18-19. "Schisms" meant "divisions" through differences of opinion of recent standing. "Heresies" meant schisms inveterate. "Sect" (Greek "heresy" Acts 5:17; 15:5. Paul means by "there must be heresies among you," that sin must bear its natural fruit, as Christ foretold (Luke 17:1), and schisms (compare 1 Cor 12:25) must eventuate in mattered secessions or confirmed schisms. "Heresy" did not yet bear its present meaning, doctrinal error. However see its use Acts 24:14.
(from Fausset's Bible Dictionary, Electronic Database Copyright (c)1998, 2003 by Biblesoft)

Settled in Timaru!

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:54:28 GMT

Hello to all our old friends! We have finally settled in Timaru, New Zealand. Our suburn is Timaru Central. Timaru is on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand and it has a substantial port complex. It is located between Christchurch in the North (164 kms) and Dunedin in the South (200kms). We have enjoyed some delicious salmon steaks in the last week.

What a busy time we have had. In all, what I would have easily taken in my stride ten or twenty years ago, has been fairly stressful. Nearly all boxes have been unpacked and we are beginning to settle in. We can walk into the centre of Timaru within ten minutes; very convenient.

The weather has been amazing! It was 17 degrees Celcius yesterday and today. Have communicated with some of our friends in Rushworth, Australia, and am trying to catch up on mail, administration and a dozen other things. In particular, we have been in contact with that marvellous place, the Rushworth Community House.

The Timaru people are very friendly. This is so in the banks, Post Office, shops, and other places. Apparently Timaru is knows for its friendliness. People are coming here all the way from the UK and many other places, to settle in this city of some 27,000 plus.

Janie has started to paint and restore this place. Hope to get a new kitchen and carpets installed in due time. Janie has been busy getting competitive quotes from a number of places. She is good at nearly everything, not just playing the piano.

Good to be back on line!

Thank you, Bernie!

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:39:31 GMT

My wife and I will be moving to New Zealand within the next few weeks. 'Andre's Thoughts' in Windows Live Spaces will be inactive until I settle at our new address in Timaru.

In the meantime I would like to thank all the good people in Rushworth and district. We have made many good friends.

Particular thanks to Bernie Halpin of the Rushworth Community House who has instructed me patiently over the last couple of years in relation to running my website The Honour of His Name! He is a master at his trade and

my weekly computer sessions at the Community House have been an absolute highlight of the week.

I hope to keep in touch with him via the wonderful web.

Thank you, Bernie!

The origin of science

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 22:13:15 GMT

The following has been copied and pasted from the columbia.edu website. I considered it interesting enough to place it in my space.

This is certainly food for thought!

The origin of science
...as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang,
not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East,
not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of
the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he
would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping
objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not
first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation. (Walker Percy, Lost
in the Cosmos)

To the popular mind, science is completely inimical to religion: science
embraces facts and evidence while religion professes blind faith. Like
many simplistic popular notions, this view is mistaken. Modern science
is not only compatible with Christianity, it in fact finds its origins
in Christianity. This is not to say that the Bible is a science textbook
that contains raw scientific truths, as some evangelical Christians
would have us believe. The Christian faith contains deeper truths--
truths with philosophical consequences that make conceivable the mind's
exploration of nature: man's place in God's creation, who God is and how
he freely created a cosmos.
In large part, the modern mind thinks little of these notions in much
the same way that the last thing on a fish's mind is the water it
breathes. It is difficult for those raised in a scientific world to
appreciate the plight of the ancient mind trapped within an eternal and
arbitrary world. It is difficult for those raised in a post-Christian
world to appreciate the radical novelty and liberation Christian ideas
presented to the ancient mind.
(The Origin of Science
<http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/science_origin.html>)
14 <posts?page=14#14> posted on *08/07/2006 11:19:23 AM PDT* by A. Pole
</%7Eapole/> (Saint Augustine: "The truth speaks from the bottom of the heart without the noise of words")
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The sound of a different drummer

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:53:36 GMT

I was quite taken by a 1960 book by Robert E Goodrich Jr entitled Reach for the sky.

This book has been on my bookshelf for years, but I only recently read it for the first time.

His Chapter 2 is entitled ‘The sound of a different drummer’. He quotes a famous line from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer

Goodrich wrote that we live under constant pressure to conform to the crowd, to go along with the group, to fashion our ideas and our ideals to fit the standards of the majority.

This is certainly very true in today’s society but unfortunately also in today’s church. People are encouraged to be Bereans and search the Scriptures, provided they end up with the conclusions that are approved by those in leadership.

Romans 12 is so clear about not being conformed to the world but being transformed by the renewing of our minds. To stand apart from the world is not nearly as easy in practice as many people think.

To stand apart from some of the practices and beliefs of the church, requires that we also walk to the beat of a different drummer.

This website speaks out against the injustices suffered by believers in Christ Jesus and the constant blasphemy of His name and the frequent vilification of our faith by the Australian free-to-air television networks.

Believers do not like to rock the boat but like to be liked. Such selfishness shows that we do not walk to the sound of a different drummer.

There would have been no redemption for us sinners if Jesus had adopted such an attitude in His ministry and death on the cross.

Jesus did what was right! No wonder He could say that He was ‘the way, the truth and the life’.

We need to do what is right, not with a self-righteous attitude, but with a knowledge that we do all to the glory of God.

Believers need to be in the world and be salt and light. That does not mean that they have to approve of everything that happens. That does not mean that they ought not to speak up when injustice or some other wrong is obvious.

What victories have we recently won that give glory and honour to our Lord?