Thiselton on the Pentecostals

Dr Anthony Thiselton has just complManila manuscript on the Holy Spirit and as part of his work on it he was part of the Pentecostal Theology Worldwide group on Facebook.  He wrote the following just a couple days ago.

I have valued 3-4 months of rearing this Pentecostal website, since I have almost finished writing a 500 page book on the Holy Spirit (Biblical, historical, and contemporary). I have included “mainline” scholars, Pentecostals, charismatic Renewal, and have been impressed with the mature capacity of many Pentecostals for thoughtful self-criticism (like Frank Macchia and Veli-Matti Karkkainen – sorry, no umlaut on email! – unlike many in the “Third Wave” of the Renewal Movement). But I have virtually finished writing this book, and can no longer handle the sheer volume of this website. Can you please unsubscribe it. (I hope that we can have mutual dialogue when the book is published (Eerdmans often takes up to a year)

Blessings,
(Professor) Anthony Thiselton, PhD., D.D., FBA.

Sunday at 5:03am via  · L 2

This was a nicecomplement!

video interview with Craig Keener on miracles

George P. Wood of Ministry Direct dot com will be interviewing Craig Keener on his newest 2 volume work, Miracles (Baker, 2011) as part of the “meet the author” interviews that he does on a regular basis.

Go here for the live view at 2 pm central time today, 1/17/2012.  After that, the interview with be archived and you will have to look it up at the site.

If you’d like to ask Dr. Keener questions during the live portion of the interview, email them to questions@ministrydirect.com, tweet the using #MinistryDirect, or use the Facebook message board on the live page.

Let me know what you think!  Blessings!

lack of blogging

continues because we continue to not have regular access to the internet (once we get back on our feet financially, then maybe regular blogging can continue).  I could post from my Kindle e-reader but that can be pretty cumbersome and time consuming….

I have been reading through Craig Keener’s commentary on Revelation in the NIVAC set.  I love it, it is really good and… convicting.   One part I thought was good was in relation to the vision of the risen Jesus in Revelation 1:13-20 where Keener notes in part:

the point of Jesus’ description here was not to tell us his complexion – but to declare his power.  He was the reigning Lord of the universe, the one with the power over life and death (1:18).  John was writing to persecuted Christians, reminding them that God was bigger than their trials (p.102).

I needed this word in the last few months and I still need it.  I need to remember Jesus is LORD now and he is over all NOW.  It can be a source of strength in times of trouble to remember Jesus is LORD and though we face many difficulties all will be made right and made NEW in his time.

Keener also has the line “The book of Revelation is a book of worship…”  I love that!  Every part of the book should encourage us to worship God with all our hearts and minds and lives!

ps,  The Ephesian church having lost its first love he argues doesn’t refer to not loving God anymore but failing to love one another anymore.  Their problem was not a lack of love for God, but a lack of love altogether… what do you think?

Hope everyone is doing well.

US AoG planted a church a day on 2011!

You can read about it here.  Here is an excerpt:

 

The Assemblies of God, one of the nation’s largest Pentecostal denominations, opened more than a church a day last year.

In all, 368 new churches opened in 2011, the denomination said. That total marks the second highest number of church starts since it began keeping reliable statistics in 1965.

That’s quite amazing to think about really…

Think you know your Bible?

Consider this bit from Eugene Peterson’s book The Pastor (pg 245):

And here is something that never ceases to astonish me.  The Revelation has 404 verses.  In those 404 verses, there are 518 references to earlier scripture.  But there is not a single quote; all the references are allusions.  Here was a pastor and writer who was absolutely immersed in scripture andsubmitted himself to it.  He did not merely repeat, regurgitate, proof-text.  As he wrote, the scriptures were re-created in him.  He assimilated scripture.  Lived scripture.  And then he wrote what he has lived…

It is imperative that Christians in general learn to read their Bibles, their whole bibles and then live it out.  Let me know what you think.

Merry Christmas! and a Happy New Year!

Just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  May you truly experience “the wonders of his love” during this HOLY Season of the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!  May the Incarnate One, indeed, be “God with us” in this most wonderful time of the year.

We have had a long and difficult year but we, who have seemingly lived in great darkness, have seen a great light in the coming of the Lord to us during this Advent season.  As I noted Debbie got a good job that, while we are not out of the woods yet by any means, will be able to move in the right direction!  Also, things had been bad enough that we honestly did not think we would be able to get out children any Christmas presents.  Nothing.  It was really that bad.  Still is.

I am glad to say the Lord has watched out for our children too!  They have been given many presents we were not able to afford to buy.   Through others, God stepped in on their behalf!!  We are indeed experiencing “the wonders of his love” and joy as “the Lord has come” to us this Christmas….

May he come to you also in this most wonderful time of the year!

Blessings!

on recent happenings

christmas miracles still happen!  debbie just got a really good job as an admin assistant to the person who overseas all the ethnic fellowships in the AoG here in the states, here in Phoenix!  it may seem that the dawn is appearing and my long and “dark night of the soul” may finally be coming to an end!  hopefully things will only be looking up from here on out and maybe I’ll be able to start blogging more regularly.  much has happened and perhaps some it will come out on the blog.  I am still working out what I will be going for me work wise or what.  I may apply for a couple of the CPE programs here in Phoenix and just go on subbing until then.  who knows.  I have also been thinking about a slight shift in my ministry focus and may perhaps pursue a counseling degree or an msw and go that route.  not sure yet.  thanks for all the prayer support and putting up with my complaining and such.  More to come!

thought for the day: the advent wait

From David Timms’ book Sacred Waiting: Waiting on God in a World that Waits for Nothing (Bethany House, 2009):

Advent provides an opportunity for us to pause, reflect, and wait on God – the One who comes to us in the flesh – in fresh ways.  For most of us, the Christmas season usually denotes the busiest and most chaotic time of the year.  With just a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, there’s no time for quiet reflection or downtime.  From Black Friday (the crazy bargain-hunting that begins the day after Thanksgiving) until Christmas Eve, we plan, search, buy, cook, wrap, and hurry.  The goal for many of us is simply survival, not attending humbly to the Lord….

The biblical story of Advent – that period immediately before the arrival of Christ – calls us to wait on God in deeper ways, even while time flies by.  Thus, it becomes not only a story to tell, but a life to embrace….

Thus, Advent denotes a season of increased attention to Christ – acknowledgement of our sin and waywardness, an appeal for absolution and deliverance, and anticipation that the Deliverer is about to arrive.  This is sacred waiting.  (99-100).

We have been in a long waiting period since leaving the Grand Canyon.  And we continue to wait.  I was starting to run the risk of losing my focus on the Lord due to the many troubles we have endured and David Timms book has been pulling me back to the right focus – it is about God, not me.  I am to be attending to and waiting on him, not he on me.   I am to maintain a posture of waiting on the Lord and a readiness to serve him not the other way around.

I know waiting is hard, especially since we do much of it already, waiting in doctors waiting rooms, waiting in line, waiting in resturaunts, waiting here, waiting there, we seem to always be waiting.  But the difference with sacred waiting is that with sacred waiting, we are waiting on God with a readiness to serve him as opposed to waiting on others to get our own needs met.   The benefit of sacred waiting is that in the process, our needs do get met, but through our service to God and not his service to us.  This is a subtle but important difference.  I have so many needs I want met, but I have been realizing that as we stick to waiting on the Lord and not just going off on our own way, our needs do get met but in the process we stay connected to the Lord and grow closer to him and learn more.

So, I suppose I’d like to encourage us to find ways in this busy season of Christmas and Advent to wait on and attend humbly to the Lord – to find time to wait for our deliverer to come!

Blessings,

 

Phoebe the Expositor of Romans?

Scot McKnight posts about Mike Bird’s argument that Phoebe delivered Paul’s Letter to the Romans to that congregation and was that letter’s first expositor!  I love it!  Here is the repost below – give it a read!

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From Mike Bird, who does for Phoebe a bit of what I do for Junia in Junia is not Alone. Dr. Michael Bird (PhD, University of Queensland) is Lecturer in Theology at Crossway College in Queensland, Australia.  His research interests include the Gospel of Mark, Pauline theology, New Testament theology, and evangelical ecclesiology.

“I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me” (Rom 16:1-2 TNIV).

I love messing with my students. Yes, I know it catches them off guard, but exposing their assumptions and ignorance is both enjoyable and actually educational too. When I get to my Romans class, I ask the students four questions:

So who actually wrote Romans?

“Paul,” they immediately reply in chorus.

“No,” I retort, “Who physically sat down and penned the letter to Paul’s dictation?”

Blank faces, deep thoughts, then some bright spark will blurt out, “Oh, oh, that guy, what’s his name, um, Tertius.”

“Correct-a-mundo” comes the teacher’s approving reply who points students to Romans 16:22 which says, “I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord” (Rom 16:22 TNIV).

Moving on…

So who delivered the letter to the Romans then? Who was Paul’s envoy?

Confused faces, odd looks: how can they be expected to know that?

“Turn with me to Romans 16 then” and together we read the text.

Then we have a cool discussion about the meaning of “deacon,” “benefactor,” and the role of letter carriers in antiquity. It gives a good starting point to talk about Christian ministry and patron-client relationships in the context of the Greco-Roman world.

“So then, if Phoebe is a deacon, Paul’s benefactor, and he trusted her to take this very important letter to the Romans, then Phoebe must have been a woman of great abilities and good character in Paul’s mind. Do you agree?”

Heads nod in agreement.

And if the Romans had any questions about the letter like ‘what is the righteousness of God?’ or ‘who is this wretched man about half-way through?’ who do you think would be the first person that they would ask?

Eyes wide opened, some mouths gaping, others looking a bit irritated.

Then I provocatively add: “Could it be that the first person to publicly read and teach about or from Romans was a woman? If so, what does that tell you about women and teaching roles in the early church?”

The end result is an “Aha” moment for some students, confusion and frustration for others.

Then comes the big question…

Think about it people. This is Romans—Paul’s letter to unify the Roman churches and to prevent a potentially fractious cluster of ethnically mixed house churches from ending up like Galatia where there were painful divisions over Law and Halakhah—the oral interpretation on how exactlyto obey the Law. This is Paul’s effort to return to Jerusalem with all of the Gentile churches behind him. This is Paul’s one chance to raise support from the Roman churches for a mission to Spain. This is Paul’s gambit to answer rumors about his ministry that he’s either anti-Law or anti-Israel. This is Romans, his greatest letter-essay, the most influential letter in the history of Western thought, and the singularly greatest piece of Christian theology. Now if Paul was so opposed to women teaching men anytime and anywhere, why on earth would he send a woman like Phoebe to deliver this vitally important letter and to be his personal representative in Rome? Why not Timothy, Titus, or any other dude? Why Phoebe?

Some students nod in agreement, others flick through to 1 Timothy 2:12, others sit back and just think.

I’m careful to make the point that this is not the be all and end all of debates about women in ministry. There are other texts, contexts, and interpretations that we have to deal with. This text won’t answer questions for us about who to ordain either, they have to be answered elsewhere. But I point out that taken at face value, Paul evidently had no problem with women having some kind of speaking and teaching role in the churches. I think Paul’s commendation of Phoebe and her role as letter-carrier to the Romans shows that much. What is more, we should also commend women like Phoebe today!

the sacrament of pain?

P.T. Forsyth, an early twentieth-century English preacher and writer, once described pain as a sacrament, something through which God imparts grace to us. He stated:

We pray for the removal of pain, pray passionately, and then with exhaustion, sick from hope deferred and prayer’s failure. But there is a higher prayer than that. It is a greater thing to pray for pain’s conversion than for it’s removal. It is more of a grace to pray that God would make a sacrament of it. The sacrament of pain! God has blessed pain even in causing us to pray for relief from it…. Whatever drives us to Him, and even nearer Him, has a blessing in it.

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All the above is from David Timms, Sacred Waiting: Waiting in a World that Waits for Nothing. Bethany House Publishers, 2009. 135. The Forsyth quote is from his book, The Soul of Prayer and quoted in Timms’ Sacred Waiting.

Wow!! (for me at least) This gives us much food for thought especially in a society that eschews pain or suffering of any kind, even going so far sometimes to blame the sufferer for their own problem.  Afterall, God helps those who help themselves, right?

Instead of eschewing our pain, God calls us to embrace the pains of life as a means of grace in that the pains of life drive us to the the only true place we can receive help and grace in our time of need, throne of God. It is only in this place that pain can transform us and draw us closer to the Lord.

Blessings.