Daily Archive for October 23rd, 2006

Controversial new Bible cuts out difficult gospel passages

Published
by
Graeme
on October 23, 2006
in old uksalvationist posts
. 2 Comments

Western Bible(from www.ekklesia.co.uk) A new Bible translation is causing controversy after it cut out difficult parts surrounding economic justice, possessions and money.

The new bible version, released by the Western Bible Foundation in the Netherlands, has created a storm by trying to make the Christian gospel more palatable.

According to Chairman Mr. De Rijke the foundation has reacted to a growing wish of many churches to be market-oriented and more attractive. “Jesus was very inspiring for our inner health, but we don’t need to take his naïve remarks about money seriously. He didn’t study economics, obviously.” Continue reading ‘Controversial new Bible cuts out difficult gospel passages’

Is God really Omnipresent?

Published
by
Graeme
on October 23, 2006
in old uksalvationist posts
. 2 Comments

Is God really Omnipresent, or is He somehow limited in His omnipresence by the sight of Christians?

It seems to me that we’ve fallen into a trap of limiting the presence of God in some way! We know either in our heart or in our mind that God is everywhere at the same time in some way in which we can’t fathom, but our actions say that we don’t really believe it!

Over the years I must have heard countless testimonies about how people have seen God’s presence in the beauty of creation. I know I have given a few myself! Then we have the whole thing of being in a wonderful worship service and when talking about it say that we had great worship and “then God turned up!” as if in some way He wasn’t already there. We also talk about ‘taking Jesus’ to other communities, again as if in some way He is only where Christians are.

Now I know that the majority of this is more due to our use of language than anything else, but I do think there is an underlying problem. It really is as if we only see God where we expect to see Him! Consequently we fail to see Him amongst the very people that Jesus showed us we should work with. I sometimes wonder whether we actually have started to equate wealth and success with God as well, because we often celebrate those things as a sign of God’s blessing!

Yesterday was the farewell meeting of our current Regional Commanders and the first Bible Reading he used was Habakkuk 2:14Open Link in New Window, which to my mind sums up what I’m trying to get at.

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

The knowledge of the glory of God! The key word there is knowledge as the glory of God already exists throughout the whole of His creation. Nowhere is there a place where God cannot be found if only we seek Him out!

So let’s stop limiting God through our careless use of language. Instead of talking about taking God to places, let’s talk about helping people see God where they are. Instead of only seeing God in the people we expect to see Him in, let’s search for Him in the most unlikely people and through them learn more about the glory of God ourselves.