Fire and the Fading Year

"...I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza..." Amos 1:7

There is an old spiritual centered on the promise that the world will nevermore be destroyed by water. The assurance to Noah does not mean all judgment will be averted. Hence the song includes the words: "...the fire next time." War recurs in the Mid-East by reason of wounds of long bleeding. The conflict is protracted. The conflict was predicted. The conflict will not abate until the coming of the Son of Man. Our former UN Ambassador mentioned the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran between the election and the inauguration. The idea is that Iran's nuclear program must be stopped. If Israel attacks during the transition between two Administrations, immediate American pressure to desist is less likely. In an article in the London Times Britain's former Foreign Minister (David Owen) urged Israel to resist any inclination to attack. At this moment the fire is falling on Gaza not Iran. One day it will fall over the entire earth. I once heard Eric Alexander say that one who refuses the salvation offered in Christ Jesus has no shelter from the wrath of God. It is a truth seldom emphasized in our day. It was the special province of a prophet to warn. But pity the poor pastor who makes his congregation uncomfortable today. When we insist that sermons merely palliate and congratulate (a famous West Coast Pastor just demoted his own son for deviating from that path) we divest our pulpits of the prophetic. It is a trend much to be lamented. While Gazans flee the fire this time we note that there will be a fire next time.
If we have shelter well and good.
Let us press the urgency of shelter upon those who don't. Leisure is ill-suited to this task.
The number of allotted years is fixed and finite.
And the year we're in is fading.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours
Photo taken in Memphis Tennessee December 24th 2008

The Festival of the Born King

“Where is He who is born King of the Jews?” Matthew 2:2

Alec Motyer, the Anglican Old Testament scholar, called Isaiah 9:6 the prophecy of ‘God come to be born.’ The notion that God could be born was an idea without precedent. Just so, babies are not kings at the moment of their birth.

Edward VII (d. 1910) was not king when he was born; his mother Queen Victoria was on the throne. She was still on the throne when her grandson George V (d. 1936) was born. It was the same with Edward VIII and George VI. Babies wait their turn. They wait on their own maturity as well as the death of the previous monarch.

The exception of course was Bethlehem. Jesus did not ascend to the throne—He descended. He came from the higher heavenly place to the earthly. He came not to be an earthly king but the earthly king. The star proclaimed it. Magi believed it. Christians celebrate it.

So come, let us adore Him, born the King of Angels.

Hymn to the Christ Child

We greet Thee Lowly Babe
Near Bethlehem we heard your fame
Now draw we near to learn your Name
Sent to live with sinful men
Sent to be the Shepherds’ Friend

We sought Thee Lovely Babe
By Eastern Star we saw your sign
So rushed to make our treasure Thine
Brought gifts of myrrh and gifts of gold
Though great the distance, great the cold

We hail Thee Lordly Babe
From Heaven’s gate we hastened down
To share the joy the earth has found
To show the slaves, to tell the free
That angel hosts still worship Thee

Merry Christmas from Ronnie and Jane

Jonathan Edwards and What Isaiah Said About Christmas

For unto us a Child is born; unto us, a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called: Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6

Some (including Yale Professor Perry Miller) have insisted that Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was the greatest philosophical reasoner born in North America . He was the first President of Princeton. Tragically he was also one of the first to die of small-pox vaccination. Just as tragically he was the first Pastor to be fired from the church his grandfather founded. Genius doesn’t always find a smooth path .

. My favorite Edwards' quote comes in his sermon on Revelation 5:5-6. While enlarging upon the possibility that a lion could be regarded as a lamb he remarked upon the “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies “ which we find in Christ Jesus. A lamb may have peculiar qualities (meekness, humility, innocence) . But those qualities are necessarily remote from the qualities of the lion (majesty, courage, tenacity). Not simply different but practically opposite. How can we imagine the combination of such opposites? That’s just it; we can’t IMAGINE . But God has manifested just such a thing.
We see the same unlikely combinations in the Christmas prophecy of Isaiah 9.One who is born is yet eternal. A child is able to hold the government upon his shoulder. A Son is also somehow called Father. Impossible? Of course--- but the thing happened. It happened in the broader context of that other impossibility: God became Man.
There are roughly 30 million gods in the Hindu pantheon.
In Hindu iconography there is an attempt to amalgamate the incompatible. One figure not an elephant has the trunk of an elephant.The image is grotesque. But when we come to know Jesus we behold previously unassimilated attributes in harmony. CS Lewis asked how anyone could entertain “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” and “I am meek and humble…” claims from the same person without protest. We would protest unless we witness some unanticipated consistency in the claimant which renders those opposites congruent.
In Jesus the confluence is not grotesque but rather seamless, convincing, satisfying and real.
Beholding the Infant Deity in Bethlehem we note another set of blended opposites. Something new is paired with something original. Did Matthew and Luke connive at the unscrupulously dishonest and the spiritually magnificent in the same fabrication? That would be yet another impossible combination.
The Incarnation is too sublime, too beyond the range of human imagining, to be invented.
By man He is uncontrived. As God He is uncreated.
We celebrate the historical event at Christmas. The Word of the Father is now in flesh appearing.
O come let us adore Him.
For He is the admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.

Bach - Magnificat - 01 - Magnificat

Christmas Music as an Apologetic.

National Public Radio consistently projects what we may fairly call a secular point of view. There’s nothing which feels quite so secular as listening to NPR on a Sunday morning. All Things Considered, the long running evening news magazine is a liberal broadcast which few conservatives can resist. Years ago near Christmas I was listening to ATC when a woman commentator shared the challenge of being Jewish in America at Christmas. I wish I could remember her name. What she said was cordial and insightful. As she wrapped it up she conceded wistfully that Christmas had quite simply inspired the greatest music in the history of the world. That admission contained a sigh and a signal.
Even Richard Dawkins (who succeeded Bertrand Russell and Madalyn Murray O’Hair as the world’s most famous atheist) has admitted to being a "cultural Christian." The foundation for so startling a confession.? He found the singing of English Christmas carols to be irresistible. There is a truth and power in music whose source is not yet fully comprehended. Music is the registry of an unarticulated native reality. The power of music offered in praise suggests that though God’s truth can be denied the beauty which radiates from that truth cannot go unadmired. Music which praises God’s majesty reflects God's majesty. The music of Christmas, like the message of Christmas resonates with something deeper than the mere recognition of excellence.
As thinkers like H R Rookmaaker, Calvin Seerveld and Jeremy Begbie have taken pains to point out there is an undeniable conncection between aesthetics and apologetics. By apologetics we mean the effort to substantiate the truth claims of Christianity by the marshalling of evidence. That effort necessarily involves the refutation of error.
Where are the hymns of the cults?
If they exist I’m sure they are not worth singing. That the world is fallen means that much which is unspeakable proceeds apparently unabated. But God has drawn a line in some places. Let’s face it ,the world has produced powerful and appealing music which may be sensual, romantic, patriotic, or whimsical. But God’s sovereign providence has not allowed a corresponding volume of appealing music to be produced in the service of false worship.
Nowhere does the superiority of Christian music show itself more dramatically than in the music of Christmas. The season does not adorn the theology. The theology adorns the season. The traditions are invested with beauty and wonder by the augmentation of historical reality.
Christmas happened in Bethlehem .
Angels announced it.
Shepherds found it.
Magi searched for it.
Herod feared it.
The facts sound prosaic enough but when we respond to the facts reverently the music and poetry begin to flow. The thing becomes first luminous, then overwhelming.
We offer a bit of the Bach 'Magnificat' as Exhibit A.
After which I rest my case.
When we hear this news can anyone keep from singing?
Richard Dawkins could not.

Nor can I.

That Song I Like

There’s no accounting for taste.
I tilt toward the traditional in the worship wars. But must we war? And must we take sides?
Once in Memphis I waxed rhapsodic about Graham Kendrick’s “Knowing You Jesus”, at that time my favorite contemporary Christian song. A friend whose tastes are a bit more traditional than my own challenged me on the line in that song which says: “You’re the best...” . What could I say? She was right. The sentiment is true but trite and excessively casual. I suppose it’s there because it rhymes with the line before. But the song moves me nonetheless.
I know little about any genre of music but I am especially ignorant of Contemporary Christian Music. In November ,2007, I joined some YWAMERs (Youth With A Mission) for a week of study in Budapest . During their worship segment they sang a song I had never heard. I liked it so much I asked them if they would come to our church that Sunday and teach it to us. They were bound for places like Romania , Armenia and Egypt but they made time on the Sunday to drop in. It wasn’t a new song. Lots of people had heard it but somehow it had passed me by. Neither was it a song which had generated a lot of excitement. Nor can I say that the words are anything special. I found myself wanting to rewrite in parts. But the combination of the words and the music got to me all the same and made me want to worship. The words are an invocation –what some would call a bidding prayer. The YWAM team showed up and did as I asked, but I don’t think anyone was impressed like I was.
The next day I flew to the Mid-East.The plane landed at 4 in the morning. I was met by my driver, a National with a big moustache and a small gun. Then there was an American colleague who lives in country part of the year. We had a three hour drive ahead of us. The two of them discussed the advisability of leaving while it was dark. They thought it best to visit the restaurant and wait out the dawn. Finding the restaurant closed they shrugged, and we set out. No one asked me. I won’t say I was scared ,but if I had been offered an escort by The Light Brigade I would not have turned them down.
Our driver pushed in a cassette (remember those) and guess what?
I think it was the third song.
It was as if the Lord was saying “Did you forget that I’m sovereign over this space as well?”
I know I haven’t told you the name of song.
But if you click on below you can listen.
And , if you don’t like, it well…
There’s no accounting for taste.

Meet With Me Ten Shekel Shirt Worship Video

Milton on His 400th

In the third year of our marriage Jane and I walked into an Antique Shop in Goldsboro North Carolina . We walked out with a portrait of Milton and his three daughters. That picture has hung in every place we’ve ever stayed. We didn’t know the artist was Hungarian (Michael Munkacsy-a reproduction of course), still less did we know we would one day live in Hungary where Jane would lecture on Art.
While I was a student I learned that Milton is the second greatest poet in English behind-who else-Will Shakespeare. For the record Geoffrey Chaucer ran a strong third. I do not know who makes these determinations or how authoritative they are but that one sounds reasonable. Paradise Lost is always dreaded (by all but the most literary) and often encountered by students of every generation. A classic has been defined as a masterpiece we want not to read but to have read. Paradise Lost is nothing if not a classic.
It is not only a poem but a theodicy. That is it is an effort (as the poet plainly admits) to justify the ways of God to man. These apologetic aims were subverted by the reality that Milton did not always deploy biblical arguments. Though his Christianity was highly publicized he was in fact heretical on the doctrine of Christ’s Person. The more serious drawback though (and it’s a shocker) is the charge that Milton made Satan the hero of Paradise Lost. If that were true (my knowledge of the poem is too superficial to weigh in on this one) it would obviously spoil the thing for the likes of simple Christians like myself.
I encountered the “Satan as hero” thesis quite by accident just today while reading an interview with the Roman Catholic apologist Dinesh D’Souza, a powerful ally in our conflict with the New Atheists. You may consult Dinesh’s analysis for yourself at

http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo7/7segelstein.php

My own favorite Milton quotes range beyond Paradise Lost:
In his essay against censorship called ‘Areopagitica’ Milton contends that truth or virtue is only praiseworthy if it has been tested. And tests only come by battles with antagonistic points of view. Nothing, he maintained, should be banned from the field by decree but rather vanquished in the field by debate.
His arguments, though always appealing and sometimes noble, are not always biblical or wise. But his phraseology is irresistible. About these untested convictions he wrote:
“I cannot praise a fugitive or a cloistered virtue.”
He meant he couldn’t admire a virtue which runs away or a truth which hides. Stirring stuff that.
In ‘Lycidas’ he wrote the words:
“ To scorn delights and live laborious days”
This is an ideal I’ve always admired but seldom applied. Milton well articulates an approach to work I would aspire to. He writes a similar thing when he characterizes his personal view of his own calling and the legacy he hopes to leave.
“By labor and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die." (Reason of Church Government)
I’d say he succeeded.
Happy Birthday John Milton. We have few poets today and we are the poorer for it.
And we have none like you.