Jesus is the Word of God
I'll be self-publishing the King's English as a daily devotional in four quarterly instalments.
Hopefully it will be available very soon on Amazon, STL, and through me. Just in time for Christmas. Just in time for all those New Years Bible-reading resolutions!
Tell your friends!
And thanks so much to James Watts for a great cover design!
Here's one for IDEA magazine:
What is the most famous verse in the Bible?
Think of your instinctive response.
Was it John 3:16 by any chance?If so, we may have understood the Bible and our faith too narrowly. Consider these contenders for the mantle of 'Most famous Scripture': "By the skin of my teeth." "No rest for the wicked." "Salt of the earth." "How the mighty are fallen." "The Spirit is willing, the flesh is weak." "In the twinkling of an eye." "Turn the other cheek."
The list runs into the hundreds. Sometimes the sayings are a misquote of the Bible: "Money is the root of all evil." Sometimes they are paraphrases such as "pride goeth before a fall" or "going the extra mile". Often we use a summary of Bible stories: "Giant killing", "The writing is on the wall", "The good Samaritan." In most cases the Scriptures "put words in our mouth" even though "we know not what we do!"
This year I have been blogging my way through 365 biblical phrases. If the general public ranked this list according to familiarity, I wonder where "God so loved the world" would come? I doubt it would make the top 100.
That's the first thing I've learnt this year: The Scriptures are also secular....
-- Read the whole thing (only short!)
.
And here's a post on why atheists love the King James Bible...
....The triumph of a Bible in the vernacular was at the heart of the English renaissance. What it did was to put the word at the heart of worship instead of images... Images without words keep people enslaved to the interpretations of the establishment. Power is kept when images are at the centre. But words written in the language of the people devolves power. This was the revolutionary thing. But it was revolutionary because the words conveyed ideas – and those ideas were liberating....
...A love for the King James Bible should not stop at its lyrical beauty. If it does it betrays the real revolutionary power which the English Bible unleashed in the 16th and 17th centuries. The English renaissance was birthed out of the content of the Bible – the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if we want another renaissance, that’s the place we’ll find it!
-- Read the whole thing.
An after-dinner talk on the KJV. I speak about the impact of the KJV on language, on culture and then speak of the true King of the King James Bible. Everyone left with my book at the end. (If you want me to do something similar at your church, let me know).
Here's the Powerpoint.
And here's the audio.
From the latest King's English post:
God does not send His Son in order that He might love the world. It is not that God can love the world once the Son has redeemed it a bit. No, in all its darkness and unbelief God loves the world andtherefore He gives His Son. We are not saved so that God might love us. We are saved because God loves us.
Therefore when we see Jesus given to us, it is not the sign that we are, in principle, now loveable. It is the proof that we are in fact loved. The Gift doesn’t purchase the love, the Gift proves the love.
Do you feel that God loves you? Look again at the Gift of the Son and you will see the Father – the Father of Jesus and your Father. See this Gift given to you and remember that He is yours not because you are good – you aren’t; not because you were receptive – you weren’t; but because of God’s own prior and indomitable love. See His nature expressed in Jesus. See Him spread His arms, though it cost Him His life, and know that this is the love of God for you.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son
For similar thoughts, see He rescued me because He delighted in me.
Blessed are the poor in spirit...
Blessed are they that mourn...
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness...
Blessed are the pure in heart...
Blessed are the peacemakers...
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake...
Hiding your light under a bushel
Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth
Our Father which art in heaven
Lead us not into temptation...
Where your treasure is there will your heart be also
Ye cannot serve God and mammon
Seek ye first the kingdom of God
Judge not that ye be not judged
By their fruits ye shall know them
Blessed are the poor in spirit...
Blessed are they that mourn...
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness...
Blessed are the pure in heart...
Blessed are the peacemakers...
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake...
Hiding your light under a bushel
Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth
Our Father which art in heaven
Lead us not into temptation...
Where your treasure is there will your heart be also
Ye cannot serve God and mammon
Seek ye first the kingdom of God
Judge not that ye be not judged
By their fruits ye shall know them
In the last week the BBC, CNN, the Daily Mail, The Telegraph and many other news sites and blogs have reported a hoax as fact. The hoax was this: Internet Explorer users are less intelligent than those using other web browsers.
It is a lie that has spread like wildfire despite the thinnest of fabricated "evidence" produced by a website cobbled together in the last month. Why did this lie find such instant and universal acceptance (amongst the web-savvy anyway)? Because we love to judge.
We are inveterate self-justifiers who need to feel righteous. But before we paint that beautiful word in sordid colours, let's think about why we need to feel righteous....
