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When Will The Kingdom Come?
Every day that Passover week, Jesus taught in the Temple. He arrived early in the morning and stayed till late at night. People flocked to hear him from the time he entered the city till the time he left. But at night, when everyone else went back to their homes to eat and sleep, Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives alone to pray.
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Jesus entered the Temple and stood in the Court of the Gentiles. What He saw grieved and horrified Him. So He set to and began to throw the traders out. Out went the men who changed people’s money into Temple currency at outrageous exchange rates – just so they could pay their annual taxes. Out went those who sold doves, the minimum sacrifice required from poor people, at high prices. Out went all those who bought and sold. He would not even allow anyone to carry things to sell through the Temple precincts.
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Six days before the final Passover feast, Jesus arrived in Bethany. A supper was prepared for Him at the house of Simon the leper and everyone came. Martha was serving as usual and Lazarus was sitting with Jesus at the table. People turned up not only to see Jesus but Lazarus as well. He was quite a figure now he had been raised from the dead and he used this to preach about Jesus. (The Pharisees were quite annoyed about it and were plotting together to execute him as well as Jesus if they could.)
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As we enter the Easter period, we are going to be posting a series of blogs retelling the Easter story. There will be one post per day starting from tomorrow, and concluding on Easter Monday. The idea is to match the events covered in the story each day closely with the events that happened in the week leading up to Jesus trial, death, and resurrection. We don’t know the exact order of events, but have done our best to make the story as chronologically accurate as possible.
The material for ‘Easter Retold’ has been serialized from a book of Bible stories for adults by Hilary Higgins. If you’re interesting in finding more about this, please get in touch.
We hope that you will enjoy this version of the Easter story, and that it will make you think a little!
Image: Flickr.
As you can see, our Sunday School caters for a wide range of ages (from toddler to teenager). We do our best to provide a structured lesson plan of stories with moral value, all delivered by leaders who are DBS checked. We would welcome all children, so if you're interested, please get in touch.
I think we should view prophecy a bit like supporting England in a major football tournament. Each time we believe that this time could actually be it. This time I think we actually have a decent squad and a good manager and our build up has been really exciting and positive. When the first whistle starts we genuinely believe that in four weeks’ time we will be lifting the trophy. Devastatingly quickly it becomes obvious that we were wrong, our star players flounder, the youthful hopefuls get overwhelmed by the occasion and it’s clear we still haven’t practised our penalties and we go out. Once again, this time wasn’t it. Do I feel tricked by all the positivity beforehand? No, not at all. I loved all the build-up and even though in the back of my mind there were major doubts, I allowed myself to be caught up in the seeming impossibility of a victory. But one day I know that my belief in the English football team will be rewarded, one day we will win a tournament and I will not regret those previous disappointments at all. In fact, they will make the final victory in a World Cup final all the sweeter.
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We have been thinking a lot about the Kingdom of God in the past few weeks, taking a few different perspectives. Firstly, there's the historical Kingdom in Israel, where God ruled through judges, prophets and kings, and which foreshadowed a future Kingdom of God that will fill the whole earth. Meanwhile, we can be living and sharing his Kingdom now, albeit in a rather limited way, through the kingship of Jesus and his influence in our lives. However, it is clear that God wants us to be looking forward to Jesus’ return and the establishment of the Kingdom in its fullest sense. This is the great good news which Jesus brought us!
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Science discovers and defines what has been observed. On the basis of such research, theories are devised to explain the facts, and ‘laws’ developed to identify commonly occurring activity. These ‘laws’ are accepted as true and factual until proved false, at which time new ‘laws’ are devised. Science works from observable facts to generate knowledge and understanding.
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Luke18:18-23 recounts Jesus’ dialogue with the Rich Young Ruler. The Rich Young Ruler was doing nothing wrong. However, his walk with God was passive: “Have I killed anybody? Nope. Have I had an affair? Nope. But have I worked out what’s coming between me and God and dealt with it so that I can have an active walk with God?”
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I was watching a Channel 4 documentary the other evening: The Girl who Forgave the Nazis. It told the story of Eva Kor, a holocaust survivor who publicly forgave the Nazis for what they did to her. There was an interesting scene in the programme, in which she discusses her action with other survivors who are not sympathetic. Many have the view that the Nazis should never be forgiven for what they did. One man said they cannot be forgiven because they haven’t asked for forgiveness. And this got me thinking: does forgiveness only take place when someone is sorry?
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Welcome to our new site! We hope you like it. We would like this to be a thought-provoking and active online space to match the atmosphere of our church. But why the lighthouse? It’s fair to say Newbury is about as far from the coast as you could possibly get in this island of ours! But we see ourselves as a lighthouse for a number of reasons.
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Our thoughts on Sunday were on faith and forgiveness. One of the interesting topics that came up was whether God ‘forgives and forgets’. It’s easy to assume that the answer is yes because this is such a common adage, and therefore, we should do the same. But on closer inspection, whilst it is clear we are asked to forgive, I don’t think we are asked to forget.
Read moreI think it’s fair to say there’s quite a bit of mutual misinformation about what other churches believe. When I read online about what Christadelphians believe, I often find that my own beliefs are quite some distance from what Christadelphians apparently believe (e.g. “salvation by works”). I suspect strongly that other Christians have exactly the same issue. Part of this problem is that there will be a large range of views within each denomination on a particular issue. Take any issue, and you will probably find Christians in a different denomination who feel the same about the issue as you, whereas Christians within your denomination differ completely.
Read moreDuring our service today, we considered how Israel are God's chosen people. Most Christians would agree that the nation of Israel were once very much God's chosen people - with associated rights and benefits. But since Jesus came on the scene, the extent to which Israel remain God's chosen people is much-debated.
On the one side of the debate are those who claim Israel remain God's chosen people, and retain certain privileges. This is based on passages like Isa43:10, Rom11:26 and relatively recent evidence of the vastly improbable re-establishment of the state of Israel after WW2, and the survival of the country since then against all odds [I should add I have not actually seen this video so can't vouch for its quality!]. On the other side of the debate are those who claim that the privileged status of Israel before Jesus arrived has been transferred wholly to Christians, aka 'spiritual Israel' (e.g. Rom2:28-29).
Noah's Ark is one of the few Bible stories that remains firmly in the public consciousness. This evening's Bible Class revisited the story from a number of different angles: chronologically, practically, dimensionally, and scientifically!
Read moreWe had a thought-provoking talk today about 'Faith Online'. The way that the world learns has changed, and now often involves bite-sized chunks of readily accessible information. There are some excellent online resources out there that illustrate how Bible learning can be done in novel and engaging ways using online formats. The Bible Projectis a great example - and was new to me so thought I'd share.
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Our church at Newbury hosted a 'Community Christmas' lunch on Christmas day. The idea behind this thoughtful charity is that no older person should be alone on Christmas day (unless they want to be). We were delighted to host 35 visitors and volunteers for a traditional turkey-with-all-the-trimmings (plus vegetarian option) lunch! I think it's fair to say that a good time was had by all - and nobody left hungry. And it was quite an experience to host the TV cameras of Good Morning Britain who covered the event - it's not often that our little church gets a slot on national TV!
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