In late April, a new baby daughter called Ruth was born to one of our young couples – Ezekiel and Sydillia. She was named after Ruth, my wife, so naturally we were thrilled with her arrival. But news soon broke while we were on holiday that serious problems had developed. Baby Ruth had severe liver damage leading to kidney problems, serious infection, a suspected brain tumor, possible liver cancer, severe dehydration, coma-threatening low blood-sugar levels, and possibly blindness. Medics on the Intensive Care ward were trying to keep her alive until a liver transplant became available. Many babies don’t last that long and the chances for Ruth’s survival were slim.

Upon our return my wife and I were keen to minister God’s help. We raced to the hospital. Baby Ruth was like a limp rag doll – weak, non-responsive, helpless and seriously ill with her liver INR levels at an alarming 4.9 (the norm is 0.8 to 1.2). Her parents were distressed, but trusting God. I gently took their child from them and held her close, feeling the stress of this sore trial along with them. But the Lord had earlier said quietly to my spirit as I approached the Intensive Care ward, ‘It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these my little ones should perish.’ Faith comes by hearing!

The Holy Spirit’s gift of ‘miracle faith’ had entered my heart. You just ‘know in your knower’ that God will do something great, no need to work something up. The laying on of hands with prayer was the turning point. From that moment on Ruth’s INR levels fell incrementally every day for three weeks until they returned to normal, confounding consultants, nurses and doctors who were all genuinely amazed. They had not seen this before. Daily tests showed the complete recovery of her brain, eyes, blood sugar levels, liver, appetite and strength. God had healed her and the Doctors sent Ruth home and were delighted to declare this to be a ‘miracle’, without any prompting from us.

Then, the next Sunday evening our second sermon from Mark highlighted Christ’s kingdom work, especially in terms of his authority to preach, heal and deliver the demonically oppressed. With faith rising again, I called any sick people present to come forward for healing prayer. Two men in their twenties responded. Ben had continuous pain in both ankles due to chronic arthritis from early childhood. Pete had a sporting injury to his left knee with severe pain and ‘clicking’ that hadn’t let up for 4 weeks and made sleeping, walking and normal movement agonizing. So again, we laid hands on them both and ministered healing in Jesus’ name. Within minutes both men began to feel a tingling sensation in those damaged areas, then a new ease of movement, and finally freedom from pain and injury. Both were stunned and amazed. The next day, Pete was racing up five floors of stairs at his workplace after a great night of pain free sleep. Ben is also still enjoying his surprise reversal of the irreversible, in the easing of pain in his ankles and feet. God is so good!

Does Jesus really do healing miracles today? In the last 27 years since I started believing for this to happen, I’ve seen so many I can no longer doubt that he does. But then, Mark records Jesus’ final words to his people everywhere, promising them repeated and varied supernatural confirmations of his powerful presence and the truth of His Gospel as we preach and believe it: ‘And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons…they will place their hands on sick people and they will get well.” (Mk. 16:17-18).  So there you have it. If we go forth with Christ’s saving word, he promises to regularly back it up with his stunning wonders. Our preaching series in Mark is sure to be regularly interrupted with many divine surprises. Let’s be prepared to welcome them!

Some beliefs are totally destructive to Christian faith and culture for they are denials of it. Christ charges us to change the world for the better, not bed-down with its shallow-rooted ideas! This legislation is akin to enforcing the freedom of British National Party members to join the Labour Party and hold office, or a radical Socialist revolutionary’s right to work as an adviser to David Cameron and the Conservative Party since we’re all ‘equal’. Thankfully, this ain’t going to happen, for reasons fairly obvious to people of common sense! Sadly, this highly valuable commodity – common sense – once thought essential in decision making and public discourse in Britain, is increasingly hard to find.

I recently re-read a very old letter from a wise and highly respected thinker, who voiced uncommon wisdom on some very important issues that relate to this legislation and should concern everyone who’s worried about the erosion of the foundations within our culture. He urges us to embrace uncomfortable truths and make a stand for them, due to their importance to us all. Here’s an extract:

“I feel very strongly about this huge obligation to tell the truth to all kinds of people across the whole spectrum of human ethnicity and beliefs, even if I’m mocked as a fool for this. The fact is I’m not remotely embarrassed about the life-changing truths I feel compelled to pass on. I’ve already seen their power to transform countless human lives for the better. God can fix anything and anybody up. He plans to rectify everyone who believes this, and then everything else around them.

“This remedy is essential, because God is righteously indignant and opposed to the God-defiant and rebellious lifestyles of anyone who willfully suppresses his truth for self-serving private moral agendas, because it suits then to do so. It’s not as though God is in hiding as many assert, for he’s made his power and benevolence plain for all to see. First, in the way nature itself has been marvelously designed, then within our own consciences as we see his signature in even our body’s  human cells! It’s obvious that although unseen, God’s awesome power and capabilities have been on full display from the very beginning – creation itself.  You have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see this!

“The tragedy is that though we’re all aware of this, we work overtime to suppress it. We thus rob God of honour, failing to give credit where credit’s due. Why, we’re rarely ever even thankful! As a direct consequence, moral blindness shrouds our thinking and we become confused in our minds, refusing to face up to the plain facts. All the lights go out while, ironically, some claim they’re pursuing a path to greater insight and intellectual superiority. A few of these call themselves ‘The Brights’! I see this delusional thinking everywhere. People first deny the truth, then swap it for ‘tin-pot’ gods and crazy ideas of their own making that inevitably debase them.

“Eventually, God reacts strongly to this in a last resort.  He gives people up to their defiant choices, abandoning them to the consequences of rebellion. How else could they ever discover that they’ve bought into the Lie, and realize that ‘The Emperor has no clothes!’? It’s as though a kind of madness seizes hold of them. Shameful lusts are willingly permitted to master them. God-ordained natural relationships are replaced with unnatural ones that enslave people to insatiable cravings for illicit sexual practices. They abuse not only themselves, but others also. It’s not just the men who do this, for even women fall into these vices too, as everyone forgets what God actually gave us sex for.

“As God’s norms are overturned, the foundations for solid moral thinking disappear too, resulting in the ‘domino-effect’ of unleashing a ‘Pandora’s Box’ of countless evils. Whole societies marginalize God then go insane in the pursuit of freedom without limits. This virulent plague of ‘truth decay’ triggers the implosion of whole civilizations into anarchy and lawlessness in their insane flight from reason. They race to invent new ways to commit social suicide! The fall-out includes idol- worship, pandemics of deception, broken promises, slanderous dirt-dishing, paedophile child abuse, rape, brutal killings, massive frauds, anarchic violence, and vice-grip addictions, all symptoms of their hatred of God and love for de-humanizing evils. They interpret all of this as proof of their new-found ‘freedom’, then angrily silence all protests and pass laws to permit even worse things.”

If this is so, then God help us! The blindness of our legislators lies in their systematic dismantling of our culture’s once strong theological roots sourced in a Biblical life-and-worldview that once secured Britain’s freedoms and true greatness due to our fear of God and respect for his Law. Now, in the name of ‘tolerance’, ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ we are jeopardizing all three by framing laws that are discriminatory, intimidating, and restrictive to free debate on issues that lie at the core of what it means to be truly human – true beliefs and sound ethics. Both seem to change like the wind, but this is surely an ill wind.

NOTE: Most readers will have guessed my correspondent’s identity. It’s Paul the Apostle, the new name he acquired once his murderous fanaticism was removed and his boundary-free mission to the nations was well underway. The above echoes Romans 1. If anyone’s inclined to arrest, fine or imprison Paul for his ‘inflammatory talk’, you should know he’s already ‘done time’ for this. He’s presently beyond all attempts to silence or punish him.

Greg Haslam

Back in September 2009, I was invited to participate in this programme by preaching a sermon on Genesis 1 at Westminster Chapel, then being interviewed for 90 minutes by Howard Jacobson. Both would be filmed as material to be included in this hot debate about creation. Howard wanted to find out how ‘fundamentalist’ creationists explain and defend the theology of Genesis. Most ‘fundamentalists’ usually appear not much ‘fun’, slightly ‘dumb’, and occasionally ‘mental’ to me, but I was willing to take the risk and participate.

I found Howard Jacobson to be charming, witty and incisive in his questions. A Mancunian Jew who drifted away from the faith of his fathers and lived a secular lifestyle, he now hovers indecisively somewhere between wistful longings and strong scepticism on the God-question. This was reflected in the whole tenor of the programme.

Howard’s personal uncertainties, speculations, poetic imagination and eagerness to glean abstract insights and mythical morsels from his guests was plain. His witnesses were as diverse as A.C. Grayling and Mary Midgley, comic Dara Ó Briain, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Israeli thinkers and archaeologists, and theistic evolutionists like John Polkinghorne. Even The God Delusion polemicist Richard Dawkins appeared, but Howard’s contempt for Dawkins was evident from the grainy old footage he showed of his nemesis in a full tirade against God and religion! The overall presentation was fair but unsatisfying. As one blogger remarked, ‘Howard Jacobson spent the next three quarters of an hour showing his dislike of people of conviction and his desire for an almost fantasy world where things could be both true and untrue, and where you could reject the creation story and believe it at the same time.’ Sad but true.

Biblical creationists like myself were given a voice, but not really permitted to present their case. My 90 minute interview and careful overview of the ‘In the beginning…’ historical narrative of Genesis 1, was honed down to 3 or 4 sound-bites. That’s television I suppose, but it’s not serious argument. Most of the evidence for the defense ended up on the cutting-room floor. Sometimes, not even God is allowed to get a word in edgeways.

Jacobson seemed more comfortable and at home in the poetry and mythology of speculative ideas, and more eager to accept inaccurate archaeological conclusions or the speculations of liberal theologians in their cavalier de-bunking of scripture, than he was prepared to pursue substantial theological accuracy, careful historical study, and scientific facts.

Science and religion don’t meet in his thinking. But can such a strange idea be right if ‘All truth is God’s truth’, as philosopher Arthur Holmes affirms? Biblical faith is meant to be founded on historical facts, or else it’s a probably a lie (see I Corinthians 15:12-20). Jacobson’s confusion on this matter is a great pity, since no subject is more important a priori to our thinking than God and the Bible’s teaching on his creation and control of all things. Alone among all alternative worldviews, this perspective offers us satisfying and reliable answers to all of life’s most important questions: Who are we? What are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? How will it all end? How long have we got?

But then, from ancient Greek thinkers to post-modern sceptics, mankind has always pursued the secret agenda of making a bid for autonomy from God by denying his existence in a self-imposed wilful blindness that refuses to see the truth of his ‘eternal power and divinity’ which is ‘clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse’ (Romans 1:18-25).

Harvard biologist, Richard Lewontin, candidly admitted the paucity of scientific evidence for Darwinist macro evolution, whilst simultaneously revealing his real moral and spiritual reasons for still embracing, in blind faith, its unproven speculations, ‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs…because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.’

Philip Johnson, retired Professor of Law at Berkeley, in his book Reason in the Balance comments on the Apostle Paul’s words in Romans 1:20-23, ‘What these words mean plainly is that those who turn away from God towards naturalistic philosophy give up their minds in the process and end up endorsing sophisticated nonsense and nature worship.’

Let’s give credit for creation where credit is due.

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Please click here if you would like to hear the sermon, ‘Now a Word from Our Creator’, preached for this programme.

But wait. God took only some of the human components and genetic make-up from the ovaries of Mary his mother, a virgin Jewish maiden of royal lineage. From them he then cloned the embryo of Jesus, bypassing the normal intervention of male sperm and its chromosome complement, presumably through a creative miracle which subsidised the lack in Mary’s ovum. Matthew says ‘She was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit’ (1:18), and notes that Joseph’s suspicions were quelled by the explanation, ‘What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit’ (1:20). Many struggle with the apparent naivety of believing this.

Mary did too. In answer to Mary’s query of the angel as to how she could be pregnant when she was still a virgin and had never ‘played around’, she was told ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God’ (Luke 1:35).  The actual physical processes involved in this are not explained medically, but the activity of the Holy Spirit is clearly credited as the source of the resulting miracle child. The most obvious reason for this is that the child should be holy, and that Adamic sin and corruption should not be inherited by Jesus. Male paternity was bypassed to ensure this.

If rational scepticism raises hard questions beyond those already voiced by Mary and Joseph themselves, the response of the angel is as terse in its rebuke as it is in its brevity: ‘For nothing is impossible with God’ (Luke 1:37). No further explanation seemed necessary. The process from that point onwards was normal in every way and concluded in Mary’s labour and painful delivery, as happens with other newborns. Both Matthew and Luke attribute a human family tree to Jesus, affirming that Jesus inherited genetic traits from his forbears as we all do, ancestors that included the prostitute Rahab and gentile Ruth (Matthew 1:5). Theologically, the virgin birth of Christ is crucially important. Why?

1. We are told it occurred, and the integrity of scripture is at stake here. This truly is ‘Good news, good news for all mankind’. And God himself announces it!

2. The whole of human life had to be redeemed, not just part of it. Early church theologian, Irenaeus (b. 130AD), wrote ‘He came to save all through himself; all that is, who through him are born unto God, infants, children, boys, young men and old. Therefore he passed through every stage of life: he was made an infant for infants, sanctifying infancy; a child among children, sanctifying those of this age, an example to them of filial affection, righteousness and obedience; a young man amongst young men, an example to them, and sanctifying them to the Lord. So also amongst the older men; that he might be a perfect master for all, not solely in revelation of the truth, but also in respect of each stage of life. And then he came even unto death that he might be “the firstborn from the dead, holding the pre-eminence among all” (Colossians 1:18), the Prince of Life, before and preceding all’   (Adv. Haer. II. xxii. 4).

3. Transmission of sin is related to the father. Not because a man is more sinful than a woman, implying we would all be sinless if we didn’t have a male parent. Nor because sex is the source of sin. But because God held Adam primarily responsible for sin’s invasion, though Eve sinned first chronologically (Genesis 3:6; I Timothy 2:14). It is ‘in Adam all die’ (I Corinthians 15:22). Adam was more responsible, not more sinful than the woman (I Timothy 3:14).

4. It has great value in symbolizing the incarnation. God became man. If Christ had been born in the normal way, then his beginnings would have been unexceptional and non-miraculous to human observation. But ‘the Word became flesh’ here! The virgin birth serves to authenticate his claims to a unique divine status, whilst identifying him totally with us in our plight, due to sin’s universal fallout.

5. It illustrates many truths concerning  salvation. For example, we see that (a) Salvation is clearly supernatural. With Christ God began a completely new prototype humanity (John 1:12-13). All subsequent ‘born again’ or regenerate people in Christ since then are also supernatural products, because we are termed a ‘new creation’ in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Humans are helpless when it comes to salvation. We cannot initiate the first step in the process, nor even introduce the Saviour into society. Salvation belongs exclusively to God. He saved us from the de-humanising of mankind, corruption and death. (b) Salvation is a gift of grace. Mary herself was undeserving, and needed a Saviour too (Luke 1:38; 46-55). She had nothing to offer, not even a husband. So God moved in grace. (c) Christ is unique. He was a highly unusual child and man, as evidenced by his conception. His existence preceded his birth, and he was the only child in history who chose his own mother. (d) God has total sovereignty over nature. He is its creator, and is regularly interventionist within it. Christ is not a product of ‘natural evolution’ but a completely new beginning involving the fiat creative handiwork of the Father, who works the totally improbable to prove that ‘nothing is impossible with God’ (Luke 1:38).

Robert Clarke once observed ‘Christ was God, not because he was virgin born. He was virgin born because he was God.’ Here then, is the real ‘reason for the season’, and why we should all recover from our spiritual amnesia and make merry throughout it!

The results have, for the most part, been devastating. You can’t go anywhere without meeting its tragic victims. London is filled with them. The mugged, sexually abused, depressed and suicidal, trafficked children, street sleepers, junkies, corrupt city traders, bent politicians, ‘wasted’ clubbers, abandoned single mums, fatherless kids and knifed teenagers and so on, are everywhere.

TIME-TESTED REMEDY

The only answer to this is the Gospel. The Gospel radically transforms, reorientates and remakes human lives. It affects a kind of metamorphosis – change from the inside out. No education or social conditioning can do this. Over time, the result is ‘redemptive lift’, recreating individual lives. The suicidal find hope, unshackled addicts go free, the sexually defiled feel clean again, the violent find peace. Whole communities and cultures change for the better. This is what we need so much in Britain, but only Christ’s Gospel can do it.

At a time when the Church should be preaching this message everywhere, with Holy Spirit backing, we are often watering it down and warping it beyond recognition. Recently, a book on church leadership offered advice about teaching people simply what they need to hear. It suggests a curriculum for teenagers that includes topics like ‘When I see as God sees, I will do as God says’, ‘Purity paves the way to intimacy’, ‘In the light of my past experiences and future dreams what is the wise thing to do?’, ‘I must consider the interests of others ahead of my own’.

This comes close to moralistic fire-fighting to me. Where’s the Gospel? I wondered why these topics didn’t feature such vital mind-benders as Creation, Fall, God’s Master Plan, Adam and Christ, The Cross, Trinity and Relationships, Christ’s Glorious Achievements, and much more. Our role is not to offer moralism, but to shape the minds of the next generation, showing them God’s big story of Creation, Decreation, and Recreation in Christ. Only then can our relationships, moral decisions, planning, and sex be done to the glory of God.

Must we conclude that we’re most ‘relevant’ to our culture when we offer them homely wisdom, non-confrontational counsel, How To steps to self-improvement, and feel-good pic ’n’ mix spirituality? Yet Paul resolved not to preach anything among the Corinthians (a sordid broken culture if ever there was one!) ‘…except Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (I Cor. 2:2). That was what changed them! Tragically, the cross is now considered too jagged, dated, offensive, and bloodied to matter much now. You could catch a splinter touching it, worse still, cause people to faint at its horrors and gore. We’ve become squeamish. We shun subjects like sin, death, judgment, heaven and hell, for more ‘relevant’ topics like ‘Lookin’ Good, Feelin’ Fine!’

OLD PATHS

Jeremiah gives sound advice here: ‘This is what the LORD says: Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls’ (Jer. 6:16). Time spent attempting to understand the cross is one way of rediscovering those ‘ancient paths’ that we need to travel again. This is where the route to spiritual, moral and physical health really lies. We never mature beyond this point, rather, we mature more and more into it, as we restate the irreducible elements of authentic Christianity, and it is these we most need in troubled and unstable times.

The great need of our cities today is to be exposed to and confronted by the Christ of Calvary and his radical intent to restore and renew all things, founded upon his eternal victory at the Cross. The Gospel is an announcement of ‘Good News’, not ‘Good Advice’. It tells us more about what has been done for us, than what we can do. It calls us to believe and receive, not ‘try harder’ and ‘be good’. We can now be fixed-up and repaired completely in body, soul, mind and spirit, but only because Christ was made sick to death in our place, on the cross.

Somebody, somewhere, has to announce this great news or God help us!