The best known prophetic vision of revival in these islands is that of Jean Darnall, who was shown the fires of hungry believers seeking New Testament christian life, followed by lightning striking the fires and a great explosive wave of evangelistic fervour sweeping the land. What is not well known is that when she toured Scotland in 1987, she said wherever she went that the first sign of the great awakening would be a men’s prayer movement. This is in accordance with the scriptures, since they exhort first of all that prayers be made for all men that all may be saved, and then direct the men specifically to fulfill this most essential and holy ministry with uplifted and clean hands in every place without wrath or doubting.

Let us therefore heed the prophetic word and follow Jesus Christ in His mighty intercessory ministry and not fail the test by losing faith in God’s promise to Britain to restore its greatness and bring forth a new generation of holy missionaries who will not fear to evangelise the nations that are now held down in the darkness of false religion and idolatry.

I am reminded again of Winston Churchill’s moment of greatness when he rallied and fortified this nation to fight against the onslaught of an evil tyranny. Just three days after assuming leadership of a divided and irresolute country, and in the face of the breach of the defences of France and the Low Countries, he announced a policy of total war unto victory, and reversed the tide with faith and great courage. Taking up his task ‘with buoyancy and hope,’ he led the people of England into battle: “Come then, let us go forward together in our united strength.”

This not a time to give up, nor to draw back, but rather to march forward in unity and determination and fervour. The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ is shining still - let us work while there is still light.

My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him.

(Hebrews 10 v 38)

Let us not be of those who shrink back to destruction, but be those who persevere in faith and hope and victory over the powers of darkness which assail us.

The fires of war are building in strength in the Middle East, and especially over the rocket war, for the Moslem nations have found a way to challenge Israeli military superiority without committing themselves to all-out battle. Syria is especially vulnerable to being used as a proxy by bigger powers who are currently close to breaking American military and economic hegemony through pressure in those areas combined with the subversion of that nation’s Christian foundations both in the church and in the social sphere. Oh that we would wake up and see the danger before it is too late.

In the natural what is happening is that Ken Gott, who is God’s apostolic leader for the North-East of England, arrived back yesterday from the revival meetings in Lakeland, Florida, where the Spirit of the Lord is being poured out in a wonderful way and there is a visitation of the Lord in signs and wonders and miracles and raising of the dead. Fervent prayer is needed for Todd Bentley who is a mighty man of God if rather immature in his sometimes embarrassing vanity with respect to his ministry and possibly vulnerable to deception by dark angels masquerading as angels of light. With depressing predictability the self-appointed watchdogs of the internet have launched into the attack like dogs on a wounded prey and will slow the move by hemming him in with accusations and vilification that only the holiest saint would be able to endure without flinching in the battle.

Meanwhile the leader of the Argentinian revival in the 1990s, Claudio Freidzon, assumes his mantle as fire carrier, arriving in Newcastle upon Tyne today to minister in the church which Ken Gott leads, and we may be sure that the Lord will use him in power to release the apostolic anointing that is needed to break through the religious spirit that dominates and controls the pentecostal and other Spirit-filled churches in the area. Oh that the Lord would raise up men of grace and power and much Christian love, men like John Wesley who preached on the Newcastle quayside and Smith Wigglesworth and others who breathed the Spirit of freedom and holiness in the birth of the English pentecostal movement in Sunderland. Pray for us that we will lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus laid hold of us.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacle of the most High.
God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved;
God shall help her, just at the break of dawn.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved;
He uttered His voice, the earth melted.

Israel too is in a pitiful condition, unable to defend its citizens against daily rocket attacks, with a vacillating and irresolute leadership. Iran has threatened her with extinction and she is unlikely to go quietly to her grave. If there is one lesson that the Jews have learnt from history, it is that those who make these threats usually mean what they say.

Rise up and pray, my friends. Draw close to Him in communion. I feel reminded of Churchill’s exhortations to a weak and fearful nation. Let us not be downhearted. Arise and conquer, in the Name of Christ. Amen.

Reason has its place in the process of conversion and I thank God for apologists old and new who have defended the gospel with precious arguments and evidence. But ultimately it is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring conviction and faith. God help us to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit on this dry and thirsty and barren land. Amen.

Oh how glorious and wonderful the love of God, that He should look down upon us wretched sinners and rescue us from our destruction in hell, and forgive us our sins and reconcile us to Himself through the blood of the cross. Oh what a wonderful salvation and what a shame that the Pope did not proclaim it last Tuesday to the assembled teachers of the University of Regensburg, for they too must repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ if they are to be saved on the day of judgement.

The gift of God is righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. He calls us into His kingdom, we do not call Him into ours. Justin and the apologists tried to accommodate the holy gospel of Jesus Christ to Greek philosophical terms and ideas and thus polluted it and set in train an amalgamation of pagan and biblical thought which corrupted the truth of the word of God. Hurray for the Pope standing up to Islam and its reign of violence through the Middle East and North Africa and across the Euphrates into Persia and beyond. But let us not forget that it was the paganisation of the church in these regions in the form of unholy and false doctrines that brought calamity upon it  through the armies of Islam.

 In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God.

and he translates ‘logos’ as ‘word and reason’. He even says that this identity of God and the logos is ‘the final word’ on the biblical concept of God.

He goes on to say that, being made in the image of God, there is an analogy between our reason and God’s reason, so that God is not wholly incomprehensible to us.

He has a positive view of the encounter between the biblical faith and Greek philosophical and scientific enquiry, that resulted (though he does not say this) in the great dogmas of the catholic church. He speaks of the ‘intrinsic necessity’ of a ‘rapprochement’ between biblical faith and Greek enquiry and sees Paul’s Macedonian call as a ‘distillation’ (or sign or starting point) of this.

 Is he right? Is the emphasis on the reasonableness of our faith a good one? And was the marriage of the faith of the gospel with Greek philosophy holy and pure? I believe these two questions need to be examined separately and hope to do this tomorrow. Meanwhile I invite your comments.

[Recently I read] the edition by professor Theodore Khoury (Muenster) of part of the dialogue carried on — perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara — by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Koran, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the “three Laws”: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran.

In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point — itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself — which, in the context of the issue of “faith and reason,” I found interesting and which can serve as the starting point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (”diálesis” — controversy) edited by professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that sura 2:256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion.” It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under [threat]. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Koran, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels,” he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably (”syn logo”) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats…. To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death….”

I think it is a fact that Islam spread primarily through military conquest, whereas the Christian gospel spread primarily through unarmed preachers and missionaries. It is also a fact that today a man in the Christian world is in general free to convert to another faith whereas in general it is extremely dangerous for a man to convert from Islam to Christianity in a Moslem country. This is surely an evil thing to force someone to adopt an alien religion against their will. So why should the Pope apologise? Instead he should press the point and force the media to explain what he is saying rather than giving everyone the impression that he has committed some sin against God that he needs to say sorry for!

How can we who are so weak achieve anything for the Lord? Can we plant a church, or raise a dead man, or humble the proud, or heal the sick, or feed the poor, or convert the sinner? The answer is no. Only God can do these things. So first we must pray and only act at His command. This is our grave mistake in the Western church which is so weak and blind and half-naked and poor and miserable. Oh for a dose of suffering to wake us up and move us out of our comfort zones and get us into action preaching the gospel again. There is no hope for the sinner without Christ and hell awaits the impenitent. Gird your loins, brothers and sisters, and fight the good fight of the faith. We are on the Victor’s side. Labour in the vineyard for soon the Master will return.

 In Him,

 Andrew Chapman