Category Archives: eschatology

BULLETIN

Posted on by Rob

This just in from the Hell in a Handbasket desk: It seems that I will be the featured speaker at next year’s Desiring God Conference – proving once and for all that Piper doesn’t give a toot what other people think. But it only makes sense, since in the last chunk of recent history I’ve been called emerging (Mark Driscoll spoke in 2008), a Federal Visionist (Doug Wilson spoke in 2009), and a Purpose Driven guy (Rick Warren speaks this year).

-30-

I KNEW It!

Posted on by Rob

Read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Or No Place for Truth by David Wells. Both will give you sufficient grounds to throw your 328 inch plasma screen television into the sea. But if you don’t have time (or, you can’t because of your television-induced inability to read more than 500 words at a time) read this.

[edit: apparently the link is not consistent and some of you have been sent to read a story about a rhinoceros or something like that. The upshot of the article is that television is killing you. So don't watch it.]

Newbigin on the Mission of the Church

Posted on by Rob

The mission of the Church is to be understood, can only be rightly understood, in terms of the trinitarian model. It is the Father who holds all things in his hand, whose providence upholds all things, whose tender mercies are over all his works, where he is acknowledged and where he is denied, and who has never left himself without witness to the heart and conscience and reason of any human being. In the incarnation of the Son he made known his nature and purpose fully and completely, for in Jesus “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19). But this presence was a veiled presence in order that there might be the possibility of repentance and freely given faith. In the Church the mission of Jesus is continued in the same veiled form. It is continued through the presence and active working of the Holy Spirit, who is the presence of the reign of God in foretaste. The mission of the Church to all nations, to all human communities in all their diversity and in all their particularity, is itself the mighty work of God, the sign of the inbreaking of the kingdom. The Church is not so much the agent of the mission as the locus of the mission. It is God who acts in the power of his Spirit, doing might works, creating signs of a new age, working secretly in the hearts of men and women to draw them to Christ. When they are so drawn, they become part of a community which claims no masterful control of history, but continues to bear witness to the real meaning and goal of history by a life which – in Paul’s words – by always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus becomes the place where the risen life of Jesus is made available for others (2 Cor. 4:10).

Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society, p. 118.

Is That an Obama in Your Pocket?

Posted on by Rob

So Al not-blogging-for-religious-reasons Sends emails me and says, “Somebody must blog this! Oh, and look at what others buy who buy his book!”

I’m going to have a talk with Al about blogging by proxy, but here it is. Have yourselves a click-see.

Pocket Obama