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• MMC - a God ordained moment
• Holocaust denial
• GAFCON corporately seeking God's will
• Letters
to the ed
MMC - a God ordained moment
[ Keith Trollip ]
I
did what I could not to go to the Mighty Men Conference. There were so
many reasons to give it a miss. Praise God there weren't reasons
enough! What an incredible weekend - what a privilege it was to be a
part of that gathering of 60 000+ men. It was an occasion to be
experienced, almost impossible to describe in a few lines. Cars,
bakkies, buses, bikers from all over the country kept pouring in.
Traffic like that hadn't been witnessed in the area before, and still
they came. The world's biggest tent overflowed. The sound of 60 000 men
singing praises to an almighty God had to be heard to be believed. How
could this have happened other than that an awesome God ordained the
event in the first place?
An
amazing thing was that with so many people present there was no pushing
in queues, no evidence of anyone becoming irritated - just goodwill all
around. I heard that there were a couple of drug lords there who were
amazed that for the entire duration of the conference they experienced
only positive input.
I'm not one who generally likes large
gatherings and this, my first MMC, was a record gathering of note! I
was in good company as, like myself, there must have been over 40 000
who were on their first MMC.
Although 30 000 men were
expected, double that number arrived. The organization was amazing and
Angus and his Shalom team must be congratulated.
What an
incredible Holy Spirit experience. I'm sure everyone who attended MMC
08 was touched in some way and would have come away with a different
point of view.
Picture: Saturday morning at the MMC - about 07h20 prior to the 09h00 session -
and enthusiastic delegates are already waiting in the tent.
Holocaust denial
[ Submitted by Mike Oettle ]
The UK has removed
The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the
Muslim population which claims it never occurred. Iran, among others,
claims the Holocaust did not happen.
The Supreme Commander of
the Allied Forces during WWll, General Dwight Eisenhower, said when he
found the victims of the death camps - words to this effect: "Get it
all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because
somewhere down the track of history some b*stard will get up and say
that this never happened".
 He then ordered all possible
photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding
villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the
dead. This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the
world and how easily each country is giving in to it.
This
photo was taken in Germany by James Emison Chanslor, an army Master
Sergeant who served in World War II from 1942 until 1945.
iindaba
publishes this in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians,
10 million Christians and 1,900 Roman Catholic priests who were
murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the
German and Russian peoples looking the other way! Now, more than ever,
with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to b e 'a myth,' it is
imperative to make sure the world never forgets.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
GAFCON corporately seeking God's will
[ Gavin Mitchell - Gen Sec Anglican Maintream SA ]
I
was a delegate at GAFCON on behalf of Anglican Mainstream Southern
Africa. The entire gathering was of such a quantumly different nature
to everything I had experienced in the church up to now.
While
we had gathered from 27 nations representing between 35 and 40 Million
Anglicans (I also learned that in many of the anglican provinces in
Africa, membership is counted only of worshippers and not the way we
count members here twice a year!), there was an amazing attempt to
corporately seek God's will.
As far I could detect there did not
seem to be any foregone conclusions when we began. What was evident was
the great sadness for our church and the brokenness that we have
experienced in the last decade. While the question of homosexuality was
the presenting problem for the communion, it was not the focus of our
discussions or indeed the statement. The simplicity of the language of
the statement is refreshing, the lack of Anglicanese or even
church-speak.
While the challenge to the leadership of the
church is real, it seems sadly unavoidable since there is no sign of
the 'instruments of unity' taking any decisive action in the face of
the stresses that the actions of the liberal north west has placed on
the communion.
In all I can only praise the Lord for the
experience and pray that as canon Sugden says,
(www.anglican-mainstream.net), perhaps GAFCON can save the communion
from its self - destruct mode.
The GAFCON Jerusalem Declaration,
and the Abp of Canterbury’s reply, are available from the Bishop's
office. See Bishop's letter on page 3.
Letters to the ed
Use of quote by Prof James Barr challenged
While
I do not want to stir up further debate on creationist issues, I would
like to come to the defence of Prof James Barr. The quote that appeared
in iindaba in July has been mischievously used by creationists, as one
can see from their many websites devoted to the issue.
The
extract referred to the use of the word 'day' to denote longer periods
of time, thus enabling people to read current cosmological and
evolutionary understanding back into Genesis.
All Prof Barr was
saying was that reputable biblical scholars (of whom he was one - he
died in 2006) accepted that the writers(s) of Genesis would have
understood their words literally. Barr's own position, and presumably
also that of the scholars to whom he referred, was that we are not to
broaden the meaning of words to fit what we want to say. He intended
that we regard the creation accounts as a whole, and interpret them as
complete stories, starting first of all from the point of view of the
writers.
However, it does not follow that Prof Barr meant that
we were to interpret the creation accounts literally, in the sense of
interpreting them as a scientific textbook. Barr himself certainly did
not do so.
As an illustration of this, we may note that the
writer of Ecclesiastes also clearly understood his words literally,
that the earth was stationary and that the sun moved! Hopefully, we
have learned from the furore over Galileo and Copernicus not to re-open
that debate, which we would need to do if we went along with people's
misuse of Barr's quote!
Howard Lancaster
All Saints' Church, Kabega.
I
read with interest Sue Bennett's account (iindaba, July 2008) of the
letter from the great Old Testament scholar James Barr to David Watson.
In this letter, Barr seems to be arguing that the writers of Genesis
believed their narrative to be literally true. But his other
writings show clearly that he did not believe that himself.
Evangelical
Anglican John Stott takes a different view. He had this to say:
"Some Christians today defend the concept of a literal six-day
creation, but the text does not demand it, and scientific discovery
appears to contradict it. The biblical text presents itself not
as a scientific treatise, but as a highly stylised literary statement."
(J Stott, Understanding the Bible, Revised ed., pg 42)
Barr
was probably correct that the original writers believed in the
literality of the narrative. They would have had no reason to think
otherwise. Clearly they also believed that the Earth was at the centre
of the universe, otherwise what would it have done until the Sun was
created on day four (Gen 1:16-17.)? But the lasting value of the
Creation story lies not so much in the historical narrative, as in the
deep spiritual truths which underly it.
When I walked into
Faith, I could not walk away from Science. If the Universe is
indeed less than 10 000 years old, if modern animals did not evolve
from pre- existing species, and if the entire fossil record was laid
down during the Genesis flood, then the scientific community has
demonstrated breathtaking incompetence by not noticing this. And
if they got this wrong, what else did they get wrong? Is it not
also possible that HIV does not cause Aids, and that we don't need
anti-retrovirals at all? Perhaps it really can be prevented by eating
beetroot and taking regular showers! I think not!
Good Science and good faith empower people. Why settle for substitutes?
Geoff Booth
Zwartkops River Valley Parish
This correspondence is now closed!
Thank you
St
Katharine's, Uitenhage, extend sincere thanks and appreciation to all
the clergy who have helped and supported us during this time of
interregnum. We have been richly blessed by many from Port Elizabeth,
Humansdorp and Uitenhage.
Patty Matthews
Travelling Along the Anglican Way
A
new printing with an extra chapter in it has been done of this very
popular book by The Revd Fr Roy Snyman tssf. Now also available in
Afrikaans. Cost: R50 plus postage and packing (R5) Contact: Tel/fax 041
373 1283 e-mail: fr.roy@telkomsa.net
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