Exegetical Fallacies: The Bible it purpose and importance - D.A. Carson

Careful handling of the Bible will enable us to “hear” it a little better. It is all too easy to read the traditional interpretations we have received from others into the text of Scripture. Then we may unwittingly transfer the authority of Scripture to our traditional interpretations and invest them with a false, even an idolatrous, degree of certainty. Because traditions are reshaped as they are passed on, after a while we may drift far from God’s Word while still insisting all our theological opinions are “biblical” and therefore true. If when we are in such a state we study the Bible uncritically, more than likely it will simply reinforce our errors. If the Bible is to accomplish its work of continual reformation—reformation of our lives and our doctrine—we must do all we can to listen to it afresh and to utilize the best resources at our disposal.

D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Carlisle, U.K.; Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster; Baker Books, 1996), 17–18.

Misreading the Scripture - E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien

 

THE FOREIGN LAND OF SCRIPTURE

Christians always and everywhere have believed that the Bible is the Word of God. God spoke in the past, “through the prophets at many times and in various ways,” and most clearly by his Son (Heb 1:1). By the Holy Spirit, God continues to speak to his people through the Scriptures. It is important that Christ’s church retain this conviction, even as it poses certain challenges for interpretation. We can easily forget that Scripture is a foreign land and that reading the Bible is a crosscultural experience. To open the Word of God is to step into a strange world where things are very unlike our own. Most of us don’t speak the languages. We don’t know the geography or the customs or what behaviors are considered rude or polite. And yet we hardly notice. For many of us, the Bible is more familiar than any other book. We may have parts of it memorized. And because we believe that the Bible is God’s Word to us, no matter where on the planet or when in history we read it, we tend to read Scripture in our own when and where, in a way that makes sense on our terms. We believe the Bible has something to say to us today. We read the words, “you are … neither hot nor cold” to mean what they mean to us: that you are neither spiritually hot or spiritually cold. As we will see, it is a better method to speak of what the passage meant to the original hearers, and then to ask how that applies to us. Another way to say this is that all Bible reading is necessarily contextual. There is no purely objective biblical interpretation. This is not postmodern relativism. We believe truth is truth. But there’s no way around the fact that our cultural and historical contexts supply us with habits of mind that lead us to read the Bible differently than Christians in other cultural and historical contexts.

One of our goals in this book is to remind (or convince!) you of the crosscultural nature of biblical interpretation. We will do that by helping you become more aware of cultural differences that separate us from the foreign land of Scripture.3 You are probably familiar with the language of worldview. Many people talk about the differences between a Christian and a secular worldview. The matter is actually more complicated than that. Worldview, which includes cultural values and other things we assume are true, can be visualized as an iceberg. The majority of our worldview, like the majority of an iceberg, is below the water line. The part we notice—what we wear, eat, say and consciously believe—is really only the visible tip. The majority of these powerful, shaping influences lurks below the surface, out of plain sight. More significantly, the massive underwater section is the part that sinks ships!

Another way to say this is that the most powerful cultural values are those that go without being said. It is very hard to know what goes without being said in another culture. But often we are not even aware of what goes without being said in our own culture. This is why misunderstanding and misinterpretation happen. When a passage of Scripture appears to leave out a piece of the puzzle because something went without being said, we instinctively fill in the gap with a piece from our own culture—usually a piece that goes without being said. When we miss what went without being said for them and substitute what goes without being said for us, we are at risk of misreading Scripture.!

Sound complicated? An example will help. When Paul writes about the role of women in ministry in 1 Timothy, he argues that a woman is not allowed “to teach or to assume authority over a man” because “Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Tim 2:12–13). The argument may strike us as strange, since Paul’s point hinges on the implications of being first. But what difference does birth order make in an issue such as who is eligible to serve in ministry? To answer that question, we instinctively provide a bit of information that goes without being said in our context; we read into Paul’s argument what first means to us. For us, first is better. We express this cultural value in lots of ways: “No one remembers who finishes second,” or “Second place is the first loser” or “If you are not the lead dog, the view never changes.” We have a strong cultural value that first is preferred, more deserving and better qualified. What goes without being said for us—and thus what we read Paul to be saying—is, “Adam was first, and thus better, than Eve.” That is, by virtue of being “formed first,” men should be pastors because they are more deserving of the office or better qualified than women.

In Paul’s day, however, something quite different went without being said. The law of the primogeniture stated that the firstborn child received a larger inheritance, and with it greater responsibility, than all other children—not because he or she was preferred or more deserving or better qualified in any way, but merely because she or he was firstborn. Esau was the firstborn (until he sold his birthright), yet the Bible indicates clearly that Jacob was the more deserving brother (only a lousy son sells his birthright for a cup of soup). And the firstborn is not always the favorite: “Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons” even though he was the tenth of twelve brothers (Gen 37:3). In other words, Paul’s original readers may have understood him as saying that men should be pastors not because they are innately better qualified or more deserving but simply because they are the “firstborn.” In this case, we need to know what we take for granted—as well as what Paul’s audience took for granted—to keep us from reading “males are more deserving than females” into this passage.

In other situations, what goes without being said for us can lead us to miss important details in a Bible passage, even when the author is trying to make them obvious. Mark Allan Powell offers an excellent example of this phenomenon in “The Forgotten Famine,” an exploration of the theme of personal responsibility in what we call the parable of the prodigal son.4 Powell had twelve students in a seminary class read the story carefully from Luke’s Gospel, close their Bibles and then retell the story as faithfully as possible to a partner. None of the twelve American seminary students mentioned the famine in Luke 15:14, which precipitates the son’s eventual return. Powell found this omission interesting, so he organized a larger experiment in which he had one hundred people read the story and retell it, as accurately as possible, to a partner. Only six of the one hundred participants mentioned the famine. The group was ethnically, racially, socioeconomically and religiously diverse. The “famine-forgetters,” as Powell calls them, had only one thing in common: they were from the United States.

Later, Powell had the opportunity to try the experiment again, this time outside the United States. In St. Petersburg, Russia, he gathered fifty participants to read and retell the prodigal son story. This time an overwhelming forty-two of the fifty participants mentioned the famine. Why? Just seventy years before, 670,000 people had died of starvation after a Nazi German siege of the capital city began a three-year famine. Famine was very much a part of the history and imagination of the Russian participants in Powell’s exercise. Based solely on cultural location, people from America and Russia disagreed about what they considered the crucial details of the story.

Americans tend to treat the mention of the famine as an unnecessary plot device. Sure, we think: the famine makes matters worse for the young son. He’s already penniless, and now there’s no food to buy even if he did have money. But he has already committed his sin, so it goes without being said for us that the main issue in the story is his wastefulness, not the famine. This is evident from our traditional title for the story: the parable of the prodigal (“wasteful”) son. We apply the story, then, as a lesson about willful rebellion and repentance. The boy is guilty, morally, of disrespecting his father and squandering his inheritance. He must now ask for forgiveness.

Christians in other parts of the world understand the story differently.5 In cultures more familiar with famine, like Russia, readers consider the boy’s spending less important than the famine. The application of the story has less to do with willful rebellion and more to do with God’s faithfulness to deliver his people from hopeless situations. The boy’s problem is not that he is wasteful but that he is lost.

Our goal in this book is not, first and foremost, to argue which interpretation of a biblical story like this one is correct. Our goal is to raise this question: if our cultural context and assumptions can cause us to overlook a famine, what else do we fail to notice?

READING THE BIBLE, READING OURSELVES

The core conviction that drives this book is that some of the habits that we readers from the West (the United States, Canada and Western Europe) bring to the Bible can blind us to interpretations that the original audience and readers in other cultures see quite naturally. This observation is not original with us. Admitting that the presuppositions we carry to the Bible influence the way we read it is commonplace in both academic and popular conversations about biblical interpretation.6 Unfortunately, books on biblical interpretation often do not offer readers an opportunity to identify and address our cultural blinders. This can leave us with a nagging sense that we may be reading a passage incorrectly and an attending hopelessness that we don’t know why or how to correct the problem. We hope that Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes will offer a positive corrective by suggesting that there is a discernible pattern by which Western readers read—and even misread—Scripture. Becoming aware of our cultural assumptions and how they influence our reading of Scripture are important first steps beyond the paralysis of self-doubt and toward a faithful reading and application of the Bible.

In the pages that follow, we talk about nine differences between Western and non-Western cultures that we should be aware of when we interpret the Bible. We use the image of an iceberg as our controlling metaphor. In part one, we discuss cultural issues that are glaring and obvious, plainly visible above the surface and therefore least likely to cause serious misunderstanding. In part two, we discuss cultural issues that are less obvious. They reside below the surface but are visible once you know to look for them. Because they are less visible, they are more shocking and more likely to cause misunderstanding. Finally, in part three, we address cultural issues that are not obvious at all. They lurk deep below the surface, often subtly hidden behind or beneath other values and assumptions. These are the most difficult to detect and, therefore, the most dangerous for interpretation.

E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 11–16.

The Drama of Scripture - Bartholomew & Goheen

The Drama of Scripture

Preface to First Edition

 "God did not turn his back on a world bent on destruction; he turned his face toward it in love. He set out on the long road of redemption to restore the lost as his people and the world as his kingdom. The Bible narrates the story of God's journey on that long road of redemption. It is a unified and progressively unfolding drama of God's action in for the salvation of the whole world. The Bible is not a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises guiding principles, and commands; instead, it is fundamentally coherent Every part of the Bible-each event, book, character, command, prophecy, and poem-must be understood in the context of the one storyline. Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little -theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented way, we ignore its divine author's intention to shape our lives through its story. All human communities live out of some story that provides a context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thoughts and actions, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the unity of Scripture is no minor matter: a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshipers! If our lives are to be shaped by the story of Scripture, we need to understand two things well: the biblical story is a compelling unity on which we may depend, and each of us has a place within that story. This book is the telling of that story. We invite readers to make it their story, to find their place in it, and to indwell it as the true story of our world.

Another collection of Quotes

 

1. “I have but one can of life to burn and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light” John Keith Falconer

2. It is high time to make known the glad tidings in these dark regions of sin and spiritual bondage. Samuel Marsden

3. We have all eternity to tell of victories won for Christ, but we have only a few hours before sunset to win them. Anonymous GOC

4. Its amazing what can be accomplished if you don’t worry about who gets the credit. Clarence W. Jones

5. If we are going to wait until every possible hindrance has been removed before we do a work for the Lord, we will never attempt to do anything. TJ Back

6. “Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.” J Hudson Taylor

7. Here am I, Send Me! Isaiah

8. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Jim Elliot

9. I have but one passion – it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world: and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ. Count Zinsindorf

10. I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth. James O. Fraser

11. This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. Jesus 2 –32 – forever

12. We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first. Oswald J smith

13. His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice. John Stott

14. Tell the students t five up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ. Francis Xavier

15. Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell. CT Studd

16. Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?… “ It is more a guestion with me whether we who have the Gospel and fail to five it to those who have not, can be saved. CH Spurgean

17. The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed. CH Spurgean

18. I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light" -- John Keith Falconer

19. "God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply" -- Hudson Taylor [ video ]

20. "God isn't looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him" -- Hudson Taylor

21. "The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed" -- Hudson Taylor

22. "If I had 1,000 lives, I'd give them all for China" -- Hudson Taylor

23. "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God" -- William Carey, who is called the father of modern missions [ more info ]

24. "The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become." -- Henry Martyn, missionary to India and Persia

25. "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose" -- Jim Elliot, missionary martyr who lost his life in the late 1950's trying to reach the Auca Indians of Ecuador [ info on video ] [ brief biography ]\

26. "We are debtors to every man to give him the gospel in the same measure in which we have received it" -- P.F. Bresee, founder of the Church of the Nazarene

27. "In the vast plain to the north I have sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been" -- Robert Moffat, who inspired David Livingstone

28. "Can't you do just a little bit more?" -- J.G. Morrison pleading with Nazarenes in the 1930's Great Depression to support their missionaries

29. "Lost people matter to God, and so they must matter to us." -- Keith Wright

30. "The Bible is not the basis of missions; missions is the basis of the Bible" -- Ralph Winter, U.S. Center for World Mission

31. "Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell; I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell." -- C.T. Studd

32. "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him." -- C.T. Studd

33. "No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once." -- Oswald J. Smith [ more on Oswald Smith ]

34. "This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of souls on the earth!" -- Keith Green

35. "There is nothing in the world or the Church -- except the church's disobedience -- to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility." -- Robert Speer, leader in Student Volunteer Movement

36. "If you found a cure for cancer, wouldn't it be inconceivable to hide it from the rest of mankind? How much more inconceivable to keep silent the cure from the eternal wages of death." -- Dave Davidson

37. "If God calls you to be a missionary, don't stoop to be a king" -- Jordan Groom (variations of this also credited to G. K. Chesterson, Thomas Carlyle and Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

38. "World missions was on God's mind from the beginning." -- Dave Davidson

39. "Let my heart be broken with the things that break God's heart" -- Bob Pierce, World Vision founder

40. "No reserves. No retreats. No regrets" -- William Borden

41. "The reason some folks don't believe in missions is that the brand of religion they have isn't worth propagating." -- unknown

42. When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, "You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages." To that, Calvert replied, "We died before we came here."

43. "Someone asked Will the heathen who have never heard the Gospel be saved? It is more a question with me whether we -- who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not -- can be saved." -- Charles Spurgeon

44. "God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him." -- Hudson Taylor, missionary to China [ video ]

45. "The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time" -- Carl F. H. Henry

46. "Our God of Grace often gives us a second chance, but there is no second chance to harvest a ripe crop." -- Kurt von Schleicher [ Apple pickers' parable ]

47. "Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God's delight in being God." --John Piper

48. "You can give without loving. But you cannot love without giving." -- Amy Carmichael, missionary to India

49. "Only as the church fulfills her missionary obligation does she justify her existence." -- Unknown

50. "As long as there are millions destitute of the Word of God and knowledge of Jesus Christ, it will be impossible for me to devote time and energy to those who have both." -- J. L. Ewen

51. "The mission of the church is missions" -- Unknown

52. "Sympathy is no substitute for action." -- David Livingstone, missionary to Africa

53. "The command has been to 'go,' but we have stayed -- in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth ... but 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland." -- Robert Savage, Latin American Mission

54. "People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives ... and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted." -- Nate Saint, missionary martyr [ devotional thoughts ]

55. "We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God." -- John Stott

56. "Believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story." -- K.P. Yohannan, founder of Gospel for Asia Bible Society

57. "We talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first." -- Oswald J. Smith

58. "Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ." -- Francis Xavier, missionary to India, the Philippines, and Japan

59. "The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity." -- Mike Stachura

60. "'Not called!' did you say? Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face -- whose mercy you have professed to obey -- and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world. -- William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army

61. "It is not in our choice to spread the gospel or not. It is our death if we do not." -- Peter Taylor Forsyth

62. If God's love is for anybody anywhere, it's for everybody everywhere. -- Edward Lawlor, Nazarene General Superintendent

63. "Never pity missionaries; envy them. They are where the real action is -- where life and death, sin and grace, Heaven and Hell converge." -- Robert C. Shannon

64. "People who don't believe in missions have not read the New Testament. Right from the beginning Jesus said the field is the world. The early church took Him at His word and went East, West, North and South." -- J. Howard Edington

65. "It is possible for the most obscure person in a church, with a heart right toward God, to exercise as much power for the evangelization of the world, as it is for those who stand in the most prominent positions." -- John R. Mott

66. "In no other way can the believer become as fully involved with God's work, especially the work of world evangelism, as in intercessory prayer." -- Dick Eastman, president of Every Home for Christ (formerly World Literature Crusade)

67. "What's your dream and to what corner of the missions world will it take you?" -- Eleanor Roat, missions mobilizer

68. "We can reach our world, if we will. The greatest lack today is not people or funds. The greatest need is prayer." -- Wesley Duewel, head of OMS International

69. "Love is the root of missions; sacrifice is the fruit of missions" -- Roderick Davis

70. "Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love" -- Roland Allen

71. "I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages - villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world."
    - Robert Moffat

72. "The command has been to "go," but we have stayed - in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth…But 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland."
    - Robert Savage

73. "While vast continents are shrouded in darkness…the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by God to keep you out of the foreign mission field."
    - Ion Keith-Falconer

74. "I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done for China…I don't know who it was…It must have been a man…a well-educated man. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing…and God looked down…and saw Gladys Aylward…And God said - "Well, she's willing."
    - Gladys Aylward

75. "Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees."
    - J. Hudson Taylor

76. "The man…looking at him with a smile that only half concealed his contempt, inquired, "Now Mr. Morrison do you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the Chinese Empire?" "No sir," said Morrison, "but I expect that God will."
    - Robert Morrison

77. "Here am I. Send me."
    - Isaiah

78. "And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives…and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted."
    - Nate Saint

79. "Jehovah Witnesses don't believe in hell and neither do most Christians"
    - Leonard Ravenhill

80. "Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary."
    - C.T. Studd

81. "Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine."
    - said to a young William Carey

82. "Oh, that I had a thousand lives, and a thousand bodies! All of them should be devoted to no other employment but to preach Christ to these degraded, despised, yet beloved mortals."
    - Robert Moffat

83. "We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God."
    - John Stott

84. "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
    - Jim Elliot

85. "A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story."
    - K.P. Yohannan

86. "I have but one passion - it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ."
    - Count Zinzindorf

87. "God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies."
    - J. Hudson Taylor

88. "He must increase, but I must decrease."
    - John the Baptist

89. "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him."
    - C.T. Studd

90. "The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner."
    - William Cameron Townsend

91. "Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes."
    - Robert E. Speer

92. "The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is a "field full of wheat and tares."
    - Amy Carmichael

93. "I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth."
    - James O. Fraser

94. "It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ's global cause has a Church as to say Christ's Church has a global cause."
    - David Bryant

95. "If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray."
    - Frederick Franson

96. "What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?"
    - Malla Moe

97. "I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver."
    - Robert Murray M'Cheyne

98. "It's amazing what can be accomplished if you don't worry about who gets the credit."
    - Clarence W. Jones

99. "Two distinguishing marks of the early church were: 1) Poverty 2) Power."
    - T.J. Bach

100. "Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give."
     - David Livingstone

101. "From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross."
     - Sadhu Sundar Singh

102. "I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been."
     - Lottie Moon

103. "All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient."
     - William Carey

104. "How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves."
     - C.T. Studd

105. "I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to."
     - Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

106. "The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something."
     - Clarence W. Jones

107. "Expect great things from God. Attempt great thing for God."
     - William Carey

108. "God's part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith."
     - Andrew A. Bonar

109. "All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!"
     - Jonathan Goforth

110. "The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same - that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West."
     - E. Stanley Jones

111. "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come."
     - Jesus

112. "All roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ."
     - Keith Green

113. "Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them"
     - A.W. Tozer

114. "I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares."
     - Alexander Duff

115. "Today Christians spend more money on dog food then missions"
     - Leonard Ravenhill

116. "It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home."
     - J. Hudson Taylor

117. "We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first."
     - Oswald J. Smith

118. "God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know."
     - David Bryant

119. "And thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named so that I would not build on another man's foundation."
     - Paul

120. "Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts?"
     - K.P. Yohannan

121. "If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ will continue on unchanged."
     - C. Gordon Olson

122. "I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!"
     - George Miley

123. "Oh dear, I couldn't say that my church is alive and I wouldn't want to call it dead. I guess it's just walking in its sleep!"
     - Church member

124. "When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen."
     - said of John Geddie

125. "At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer's love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself."
     - John G. Paton

126. "Save others, snatching them out of the fire."
     - Jude

127. "The evangelization of the world in this generation."
     - Student Volunteer Movement Motto

128. "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring"
     - Jesus

129. "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't."
     - John Piper

130. "His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice."
     - John Stott

131. "Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them."
     - David Bryant

132. "Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ."
     - Francis Xavier

133. "Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ."
     - Luther Wishard

134. "We who have Christ's eternal life need to throw away our own lives."
     - George Verwer

135. "Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell."
     - C.T. Studd

136. "When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone"
     - J. Hudson Taylor

137. "God has huge plans for the world today! He is not content to merely establish a handful of struggling churches among each tongue, tribe and nation. Even now He is preparing and empowering His Church to carry the seeds of revival to the uttermost ends of the earth."
     - David Smithers

138. "The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity."
     - Mike Stachura

139. "Answering a student's question, 'Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?' thus, 'It is more a question with me whether we who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.'"
     - C.H. Spurgeon

William Barclay Quotes

William Barclay

• A man may well be condemned, not for doing something, but for doing nothing.
• But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus, and where nothing will separate us from Him any more.
• Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory. 
• For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him. 
• God himself took this human flesh upon him.
• If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach. 
• In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can.
• Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross. 
• Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are. 
• The awful importance of this life is that it determines eternity. 
• The tragedy of life and of the world is not that men do not know God; the tragedy is that, knowing Him, they still insist on going their own way. 
• There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.
• We will often find compensation if we think more of what life has given us and less about what life has taken away. 
• When we believe that God is Father, we also believe that such a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear. We may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life any longer.
• When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in their company that we are really and truly alive. 

Save all you can - DL Moody

"I look upon this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a lifeboat and said to me, 'Moody, save all you can.'" 

D.L. Moody

He is no fool - Jim Elliot

 "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Jim Elliot

The mission Of God - Chris Wright

 This uneasiness stems from the persistent paradigm that mission is fundamentally something we do; and especially if we use the word 'mission' as more or less synonymous with evangelism.

The appropriateness of speaking of 'a missional basis of the Bible' becomes apparent only when we shift our paradigm of mission from our own human agency to the ultimate purposes of God himself,    for clearly the Bible is, in some sense, ' about God'. What, then, does it mean to talk of the mission of God?

it is not so much, as someone has said, that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission is not just something we do (though it certainly includes that).

Truth with a Mission: towards a missiological hermeneutic of the Bible, Chris Wright Nov2001 ALL Nations.

Mission Is not. . . . - John Piper

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn't.

John Piper, let the nations be glad, baker 1993

Image vs Morality - David Wells

 

Image and appearance assume the functions that character and morality once had 

-David F. Wells

There are Four Types of Retirees

There are Four Types of Retirees Which one will you be?

Ageless Explorers - Make up 27% of the older adult population 

Described as youthful, working, and happy, this group loves freedom, seeks personal growth and are often active volunteers. Of the four groups, [they spent their working years] preparing for their retirement, maxed out their 401(k)'s, had financial planners and have the highest net worth. When asked, "When will you feel elderly inside?" they responded, "Never".    

Comfortably Contents - Make up 19% of the older adult population

Living their Golden Years, they are relaxed and content not to work. Their primary desire in this stage of life is simply to relax and be free of worry, stress and obligation. . . . Of the four groups, they maxed out their 401(k)'s and had financial planners. When asked "when will you feel elderly inside?" they respond "Soon".

Live for Todays - Make up 22% of the older adult population

Describing themselves as fun loving and adventurous, this group loves the idea of continuing to grow as individuals. But the problem is that they . . . are not financially prepared. As a result, they are anxious about their predicament and worried about not having enough money in their modest net worth.

Sick and Tireds - Make up 32% of the older adult population

Making up the largest category, these people have been beaten down by life and are typically having a miserable time in retirement. Unhappy, unfulfilled and generally in most anything, they have given up and are prepared to suffer their way through. To no surprise, this group spent the least amount of time preparing for retirement.

Lincoln Financial Advisors

life is meaningless - Bertrand Russel

Man is….but the outcome of accidental concoctions of atoms, .. no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave, and … all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all of the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. The whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

Bertrand Russel

Globalization - Justin Long

I've received the following "cute story" from numerous people on the Internet.

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN) for 6 a.m. While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG). He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA), designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE) and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA) he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the radio (MADE IN INDIA) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB. At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL) poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in.....AMERICA.....

___

While I understand the gripe of the original author (whomever it may be), this implication of the story is that somehow things are better in other places than they are right here. This is obviously not the case. So, I've put together the following 1-paragraph "response" to this story. While both the original story and mine are lacking and inadequate in several respects to address the issue of globalization, I hope they make you stop and count your blessings.

___

Joe Smith apparently has a place to sleep, which makes him better off than 1.3 billion people who have no adequate shelter. He's apparently healthy, which makes him better off than 2.2 billion people. He has an alarm clock, which he can read (better off than 70% of the world), and he has electricity (better off than 40% of the world). While his coffeepot was perking (with safe, clean water, which makes him better off than 2.2 billion people), he shaved with his electric razor (see electricity above). He put on clothes (which makes him better off than 1.4 billion people who do not have adequate clothing). He cooked his breakfast. With breakfast, he's better off than 1.2 billion hungry people who don't have enough food for an active working life -- and that doesn't mention the fact that he could cook it on a stove, not over firewood (and 1.5 billion people can't even do this, having no supply of wood). He sat down with his calculator (a technology to which more than 3 billion people have no access) to see how much he could spend today (and if he is poor, he joins 46% of the world in this category, but he is better off than 18% of the world who have no money at all and live in absolute poverty).

After setting his watch (better than 1.6 billion people) to the radio (better off than 43.5% of the world), he got in his car (better than 5 billion people) and continued his search for a good paying American job (if he has time to search for a job, he's better off than 1 billion just-coping people, is in company with 1 billion unemployed workers, not to mention the 900 under-employed labor who have no access to a job that pays good, or the 35 million slaves).

At the end of yet another day, he put on his sandals (see note above about clothes), poured himself a glass of wine (see notes about safe water and having any money at all to spend), and turned on his TV (better off than 2.6 billion people).

While he wonders why he can't find a good paying job in America, I hope he remembers that just under half the world is in the same position. I also hope he's grateful that he doesn't have to sell one or more of his children into sex slavery because he can't afford to feed them, he doesn't have to restort to prostitution himself (of which 2 million men do), he's not living under an oppressive regime (like 400 million people) or a racist regime (80 million). He can't be imprisoned for his political beliefs (unlike 1.2 million people), and he has freedom of religion (better off than 2.2 billion people) and full political freedom and civil rights (better off than 4.2 billion people). He doesn't live in a country that regularly and publicly employs torture (better off than 2.2 billion people), and he himself is not being tortured (better off than 120,000 prisoners). He has some education (which makes him better off than 850 million people with none). He's been immunized against disease (which makes him better off than 4 billion people).

He's not a woman - and this is no slight to women. It's just that his genetics put him out of a bracket that number 49.6% of the world, forms 37% of the paid labor force, heads 33% of all households, makes up 95% of all nurses, performs 62% of all work hours, yet receive 10% of the world's income, own just 1% of its property, and make up 70% of all poor, 66% of all illiterates, 80% of all refugees and 75% of all ill or sick.

I hope he counts his blessings and thanks God for them, and does something to bless someone else's life.

The Effects of Globalization: Counting Our Blessings Strategic Networks ARTICLE 10434

Joe Smith wonders why he can't find a good job in America, but forgets all of his blessings.

by Justin Long

Enough - Unknown

 

There is something perverse about "more than enough" Dot Jackson decided. 

When we have more, we never have "enough". 

It is always somewhere out there just out of reach. 

The more we acquire, the more elusive enough becomes.

Phil 4.11 I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.

Quote from UNKNOWN

Majority - William Carey

One with God is a majority.

William Carey

Do not be surprised - Blaise Pascal

Do not be surprised at the sight of simple people who believe without argument. God makes them love him and date themselves. He inclines their hearts to believe with a vigorous and unquestioning faith unless God touches our hearts; and we shall believe as soon as he does so.

Blaise Pascal 1623-62
the Lion Handbook of The History Of Christianity

A Modernist interpretation of Psalm 1

 Psalm 1

Blessed are the man and the woman, 

who have grown beyond themselves

and have seen through their separations.

They delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open,

day and night

They are like trees planted near flowing rivers,

Which bear fruit when they are ready.

Their leaves will not fall or wither

Everything they do will succeed

Hass, Robert

Into the garden: a wedding anthology: Poetry and prose on love and marriage

edited by Robert Hass and Stephen Mitchell 1994

How happy is the man who does not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path of sinners, or join a group of mockers! Instead, his delight is in the LORD's instruction, and he meditates on it day and night. He is like a tree planted beside streams of water that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. The wicked are not like this; instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not survive the judgment, and sinners will not be in the community of the righteous. For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.

(Psa 1:1-6 HCSB)

seeking unity

One of the interesting things I find is, when you sit down and talk to people," Mapps says, "there's more room for consensus."  

Mingus Mapps

https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2020/10/07/mingus-mapps-is-running-an-old-fashioned-campaign-in-his-challenge-to-commissioner-chloe-eudaly/

About Nigel Jaquiss

News reporter Nigel Jaquiss joined Willamette Week in 1998. He covers politics.

No Solicitors ~ We are Happy Just the way we are

 Really

FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury

read."

 "Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go." Faber turned the pages. "Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the `guilty,' but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the, firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now, it's too late." Faber closed the Bible. "Well--suppose you tell me why you

came here?"

"Nobody listens any more. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I

read." 

Faber examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face. "How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands?" "I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help." 

"You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the `parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph record0s, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right, that's what counts. Three things are missing. 

"Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This

book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet

of paper, the more `literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. 

Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

"So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But when he was held, rootless, in mid-air, by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn't something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane. Well, there we have the first thing I said we needed. Quality, texture of

information." 

"And the second?"

"Leisure."

"Oh, but we've plenty of off-hours." 

"Off-hours, yes. But time to think? If you're not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can't think of anything else but the danger, then you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the four wall televisor. Why? The televisor is 'real. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, '

What nonsense!'"