SIGHT SPECIAL ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

OPEN BOOK: WHO IS THE RESURRECTION? (1)

Luke gives us the story of Martha and Mary. On one occasion, Martha was busy making sure that all the tasks of polite hospitality were being attended to for the visit and the comfort of the Rabbi (Luke 10: 38-41). You will know, perhaps, the common way of distinguishing two kinds of female activity - one active; the other passive - by reference to this story of the two different sisters.

     That's from Luke's account. But the interesting thing is that though Luke does tell us that they were sisters, he does not tell us about their brother Lazarus, and his raising (John 11: 19). Why? Maybe he didn't know about it. The apostle seems at various points to have "an insider's story" that links people and events that are not always evident in the accounts of the other Gospel writers. But Luke does seem to give us an account in his Gospel about a party where Jesus was anointed, or at least a party that bears a remarkable resemblance to the one John tells us about. Compare John 12: 1-8 with Luke 7: 37-50. Matthew 26: 6-13 and Mark 14: 3-9 are clearly descriptions of the same event which the apostle refers to in 12: 1-8.

     In his series on the Gospel of John, BRUCE C. WEARNE takes a look at what John says about Mary and Martha - and their relationship to Jesus... | more... |

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FREE TO LOVE!, PART II

The first Christians realised that they didn't have to spend their lives trying to get acceptance from God. They didn't have to do that anymore. They were free, free to serve and love without wondering if what they were doing was good enough. They realised that in Jesus there was something much better and it wasn't about trying to be better, it was about following a way that was better.

     The great story of Odysseus in Greek mythology shows this beautifully. Odysseus and his friends need to get somewhere in their boat, but they need to go past this island which no one has ever got past before. The reason that everyone has floundered on this island is because of the beautiful seductive voices of the sirens on this island. When they would sing no man could resist and they would turn their ship toward the island and be wrecked on the rocks.

     NILS VON KALM concludes his article looking at what love really means... | more... |

PART I

As I read these passages over and over, there is a consistent theme coming through, a theme of acceptance, and repentance, in that order. And not just that - what also shines through is that it is all because of Jesus. It all centres around Him. Who He is and what He has done is completely new - that is, love us first, without requiring us to do anything to earn that love. 

     In the first part of a two part article, NILS VON KALM examines what the love of God means for us... | more... |

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The issue of euthanasia is again raising its head in an Australian state, with Tasmanian Greens' leader Nick McKim introducing a 'Dying with Dignity' bill into parliament in late May.

     This is despite a previous Tasmanian parliamentary inquiry's unanimous decision to reject euthanasia in 1998, as well as last August's resounding defeat of Victoria's euthanasia bill by 25 votes to 13 in the Victorian Upper House.

     According to media reports, both Labor and Liberal MPs are to be allowed a conscience vote on the Tasmanian bill. However, thankfully, this vote is likely to meet with a delay while the bill receives closer scrutiny. Tasmania's Deputy Premier Lara Giddings has moved to have the legislation examined by a cross-party committee of both Houses of Parliament before being debated later in the year.

     But why are the Greens and others continually trying to resurrect the issue of euthanasia? And why should Christians be so concerned?

     GLYNIS QUINLAN, of the Australian Christian Lobby, outlines why Christians need to fight the latest push to legalise euthanasia... | more... |

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Stepping out of the plane, the island was hot and just breathing heated the lungs like inhaling a hairdryer on low. The air pulsated and shimmered the view over the tarmac of the Nadi International Airport.

    I'd never been to this part of the world. I was trying to check my excitement so I could soak it up.

    The building was not new. Inside, the walls looked musty suffering from humid days. Their murals of beaches, jungles and smiling hoola girls with jasmine necklaces lead us through customs.

    In the foyer we came upon the real thing, a small choir of native Fijians, wearing colourful sulus, strumming guitars and ukuleles with broad smiles and beaming eyes. The ladies heralding the welcome “Bula” once for impact, twice to reinforce, again and again. Ahh, feel the love.
    Musician GURYEL ALI writes about his recent visit to Fiji... | more... |

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ENDING POVERTY, ONE PERSON AT A TIME

A few years ago, at a Make Poverty History rally, Nelson Mandela said: "Sometimes, it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation."

     I recently interviewed Dr Tony Campolo for a new TV series. Campolo is a respected sociologist and author and professor of sociology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. A former advisor to President Bill Clinton, he is widely recognised as a leading advocate and campaigner on social justice issues.

     I put it to him that making poverty history sounds good, but that for many people it remains little more than a noble dream, given the size of the problem.

     His response was characteristically succinct: with the enormous reserves of wealth still held within the developed world and the forces of globalisation and digitisation in media, we are the first generation in history which could realistically put an end to poverty.

MAL FLETCHER says that if we are serious about ending poverty around the world, it starts with us and how we live our lives every day... | more... |

WHY ARE CHRISTIANS SO ANGRY?

I have been a Christian now for nearly 50 years and I still can’t get over the fact that so many fellow believers in the West appear to be so angry.

     We read the words of Jesus in John 13:35 (New King James Version), who said, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

     But where is the love in these times? Almost daily, I receive hateful emails that are forwarded to me attacking other Christians, the president, and a plethora of other things. Most are urban legends that have not been checked, but they still get sent.

     A cottage industry has sprung up on the Internet of individuals and groups that spend most of their time in an attack mode. I call it the “wild, wild west of the blogosphere.”

     DAN WOODING wonders why so many Christians in the West seem so angry... | more... |

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From the moment you walk up to a Chick-fil-A restaurant, you're under the impression that this is not going to be your typical fast-food eating experience.
First, there are the employees racing each other to hold the door open for you, broad smiles on their faces. The entire restaurant, including the bathrooms, is consistently and impeccably clean. Instead of the indifference and boredom you are often confronted with at the cash register, the cashiers make eye contact with you and smile pleasantly as they take your order. Your order is always filled quickly and efficiently, and when the transaction is complete, you'll get another big smile and the words, "My pleasure."

     The differences that make Chick-fil-A what it is, though, go far below the surface. Rather, the heart of the company - and arguably why it is so unique - can be found in its corporate purpose, inscribed at the Atlanta, Georgia-based headquarters: "To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us, and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A".

    JOY NICHOLAS writes about the unusual approach of US-based fast food chain, Chick-fil-A... | more... |

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Hate! Hate?

     What an unusual choice of words.

     Theology, the Bible, can hardly lay claim to ownership of hate.

     But the word certainly has its place in any Christian approach to life, to others, to God.

     So there must be more to hate or hating other that arriving at the point where you are fuming and that bubbling emotion has been festering for some time.

     There is more to hate than recognising that if you are seeing someone as "the disease upon the puss upon the dirt upon the scum upon the backside of a maggot eating its way through the rotting flesh of a road kill" then you are not in a healthy place.

     And if all that gushing ill will is vented upon someone... well...

     Maybe Christians need some new material on the topic - ‘The five languages of hate’... and such.

     Yes, I am being frivolous but, hey, if I am going to talk about hate then the least I could do is write a light-hearted introduction.

     Hate needs to be better understood. Thinking of hate as just the opposite of love will only take us so far in dealing with it.

      LLOYD HARKNESS takes a deeper look at what hate is all about... | more... |

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I don't know about you, but I look forward to receiving the payment from the Rudd government's stimulus package. We went away for a holiday before Christmas, and need to change the gate in our driveway. We need some cash for these bills. But I am deeply aware that about 100 million people across the world have been affected by the current global food crisis. Multitudes of people have no access to safe drinking water. Countless number of women in the developing world do not have adequate maternal and child health services. So I have no complaint about my financial situation. Indeed, I would like the government to direct more money to the poor.

     I don't want to be poor. I grew up in a tiny apartment in a working class district in Hong Kong. I walked past homeless people in our streets everyday. From time to time I saw street prostitutes near our place. I saw the plight of the poor, and I feared that I would become poor.

    SIU FUNG WU says that while he doesn't want to be poor, it was in hardship and desperate times that he found God at work in his life... | more... |

FOR MORE OF LIFESTORY...  | more... |  

The vexed issue of who Jesus is, who He claimed to be, and who the New Testament writers claimed He was, is one that will never go away as long as humanity exists. The piece by Dr Vincent Taylor, from the January 1962 Expository Times - reproduced at John Mark Ministries website, is one more argument contributing to this fascinating debate.
      Taylor's argument is slightly different from the usual ones that make such assertions as 'Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God' or 'Jesus was not divine'. I note that Taylor is not denying the Divinity of Christ, and that he stresses that “it should be recognised at the outset that the question is not whether Jesus is divine, but whether He is actually described as THEOS and whether we...are justified in speaking of Him as 'God'.”

     In my mind there is not a lot of doubt that the New Testament calls Jesus God. This is seen not just in the Gospels, but in the letters of Paul, as well as in some of the other New Testament letters.

     NILS VON KALM explores the question of whether Jesus is God... | more...|

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One of my heroes of faith is George Muller (1805-1898). One day he looked down the streets of Bristol in England and saw hundreds of homeless children. He was so moved with compassion for them, he knew that something had to be done. Although he only had a few pence in his pocket he decided to start an orphanage. Over 60 years, George Muller took care of over 10,024 orphans.

     George Muller started many orphanages without ever making requests for financial support, nor did he ever get into debt. (I must confess that is a challenge to us at Philo and to all our associates!). He simply trusted God to do the work and keep it going. On more than one occasion God provided in a miraculous way. Once they had no food to feed the orphans and yet George gathered all the orphans around the table and began to thank the Lord for the food. At the end of the prayer, he said, “Amen”, and that’s when they heard a knock at the door. A truck with milk and food had broken down on the road and all the milk and food was going to go off, so the driver gave it to the orphans. Do we have that kind of faith, where we can take all our problems and trust to the Lord and ask Him to take care of them? When asked how much time he spent in prayer, George Muller’s reply was, “Hours every day. But I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk and when I lie down and when I arise. And the answers are always coming.”

    J JOHN takes a look at the extraordinary life of George Muller... | more... |

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I’ve always found it a moving experience to look at something that was created hundreds of years ago and a recent visit to the State Library of Victoria to take a look at The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand exhibition was no exception.

     DAVID ADAMS is impressed by wonders of a bygone age... | more... |

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Why a Christmas album?
“It’s Christmas - that’s the easy answer. I’ve done a Christmas album before. I did one a few years ago with a German orchestra actually...It was your regular kind of Christmas album - it had some carols and it had Santa Claus is Coming to Town and all that stuff on it and it was instrumental only. I thought it was time to do a bit more of a focused Christmas album; one a little bit more on what Christmas is really about. So this is just carols and also I’m got Emma Pask singing on there with me because I wanted people to hear the lyrics. So, yeah, just a bit more focused...a real Christmas album, is how I think of it.”

     Musical virtuoso James Morrison has just released his latest album, Christmas. The 44-year-old speaks to DAVID ADAMS about Christmas, the power of music and what he’d be doing if he wasn’t a musician... | more... |

REVIEW: JAMES MORRISON'S GROOVIN' CHRISTMAS
This is Mr Morrison at his smooth 'n grooviest. Difference? It’s been seasoned. For those who have had the privilege of seeing JM live, you will know that there is rarely a bad night and when there is, there’s a joke to go with it. Here, you won’t get any wrong notes, but you will hear the cheekiness and fun that JM and the band bring with them when they jam.
JUSTIN MICHAEL looks forward to a Christmas with James - and his trumpet... | more... |

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I hear from God when...I am alert to the possibility that God can and does speak at any time through scripture, experience, circumstance, worship, creation, or the person (people) I happen to be with at the time.

Like all atheists, Richard Dawkins does not understand the concept of God and why God exists. He has been told this before, as he writes in his book, The God Delusion:  "This is as good a moment as any to forestall an inevitable retort to the book, one that would otherwise - as sure as night follows day - turn up in a review: ‘The God that Dawkins doesn’t believe in is a God that I don’t believe in either. I don‘t believe in an old man in the sky with a long white beard.'...I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented."

      In this essay, I will try to succeed where others have failed so that we can say of Dawkins, “And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith...”

      Dawkins is an atheist because he places too much confidence in the methods and ideas of science. Working scientists are just people living their lives in a practical and reasonable manner. If something unusual occurs in the lab, scientists assumes there is a reason and try to replicate what happened. This is the same kind of common sense and reason mothers use when they assume there has been no change in the number of children they have when they are out shopping.

     DAVID ROEMER answers the arguments in Richard Dawkin's book, The God Delusion... | more... |

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