Liz asks for prayer for two topics in particular:
- this week we have a translation workshop on James, involving four
languages (Guergiko, Sokoro, Dajo and Migaama). Having lots of fun trying
to think through what it means and how to express it these languages,
especially in temperatures of 40+ degC! We’ll do the second half of the week
before Easter. Pray especially for the Dajo translators, who are Muslim.
- from 4-9 April we have our next (and final for this year) story workshop,
in which we’ll develop 3 new stories in 10 languages (Elijah. and the prophets
of Baal, the 3 men in the furnace and a general summary of the period between
the exile and the coming of Jesus. Several of the participants are Muslim,
and most of the groups that will be told these stories are Muslim too.

Will has arrived safely and is settling in in Rwanda. He says if you want to write him a letter he would love it. His address is

RDIS, B.P 142, GITARAMA, RWANDA

He also said let him know your address if you want a letter from him

Hannah writes – “I am here! Nicaragua is a beautiful country…very colourful and green! It is soo hot! We have received such a warm welcome from the church. Accommodation is very basic- we have a bedroom for 6 girls which is fun! The team are getting on well too. The church is very different…but great! loong services and I have never clapped so much in my life! We are hard at work on the building site already- it is hard in the sun and very tiring but such a privilege to be serving the church and the people of the church in this practical way. This week holds lots of youth work, more building and cell groups, which involve walking door to door evangelising apparently…should be fun! All is well for me personally, am loving the beauty of this place, making new friends and drawing closer to God.

Thank you for all of your prayers.

I would really appreciate prayer for:

-energy for the team

-not missing home too much!

-protection

-language (I am desperate to improve my Spanish to get more involved)”

WARNING!!!!!

New Wine CSW is rapidly filing for the summer.

The conference is likely to be fully booked for delegates in the next couple of weeks. If you are planning to join the Trinity Church family at New Wine please book in ASAP to avoid disappointment. Once the delegate places are full Team places will fill soon after. Please book in on-line ASAP. BE WARNED.

Here is the latest New Wine promo video – a reminder to book your place for this summer’s celebration (on New Wine’s web site).

You can follow Mark Bailey on Twitter here.

Gareth Dickinson is also on Twitter.

Ancient Practices – Confession: Gareth Dickinson, 20th March 2011 AM

Ancient Practices – Confession: Helen Brunt, 20th March 2011 PM

Question:

God (in the Old Testament) ordered many genocides (eg. Numbers 31). I would have thought that it was almost universally accepted (particularly amongst Christians) that genocide is incompatible with human rights. God (Jesus) is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). So is God/Jesus against human rights (even post-Old Testament)? I accept that not all modern-day “human rights” are necessarily compatible with Christianity, but genocide (particularly with women and children deliberately targeted) seems totally opposed to what a God of love should stand for.

Response:

This is a hard question indeed and I must say I found myself recoiling from what I read in Numbers 31 which is generally acknowledged to be one of the most difficult passages in the Old Testament. Clearly genocides are a total denial of human rights as we understand them but perhaps there is a distinction to be drawn between a genocide perpetrated by a vindictive and brutal dictator and one which is the sovereign judgement of the one we believe to be the all righteous God of the Universe. Sometimes of course we may feel that human genocide is necessary / justifiable in order to prevent an even greater one occurring. Such I guess was the case with the carpet bombing of Eastern Germany at the end of World War II and Hiroshima in Japan.

It is noteworthy that in Deuteronomy 9:4-5 the Lord informs the people of Israel that He is not driving the Canaanites out of the land because of Israel’s righteousness or integrity but ‘on account of the wickedness of these nations’. We do, of course, also need to remember that the land was taken away from God’s people on account of their wickedness and they were punished and sent into exile in Babylon.

The background to Numbers 31 is similar to that of the Canaanites and we learn from Numbers 25 that it was the Midianites who led Israel into idolatry and immorality. In Numbers 25:16 the Lord told Moses to treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them ‘because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor and Cozbi…’. I am not an Old Testament expert but I do know that even Conservative biblical scholars question the numbers in verses 32-45 (ie the 675,000 sheep and the 32,000 women who had never slept with a man etc). Some take them to be symbolic approximations and others think there may be scribal errors in the copying of the manuscripts. Whatever the actual numbers were, there seems to have been a small degree of mercy here.

There are those (among them many American fundamentalists) who have tried to assert that Christian revelation is progressive and that although God hasn’t changed He progressively revealed more of His character over time so that we see a more vengeful God in the early years of Israel’s history who deals an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This moves on so that in the time of the later prophets we catch the first glimmer of God as Father (about five OT references to God as Father I think). Then in the New Testament we have much more teaching on God as the loving heavenly Father who goes out in compassionate love to rescue the prodigals (perhaps we should underline repenting prodigals). I have found a certain amount of comfort in this idea but it doesn’t solve all the issues.

Perhaps some of these Old Testament passages challenge us that we don’t take sin as seriously as we should. Jesus certainly condemned the religious leaders of his day. He spoke sternly of everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:46) and warned us of the dangers of hell on at least 12 occasions. He was also pretty straight with the inhabitants of Capernaum: ‘And you Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you’. (Matthew 11:23-24).Perhaps most significant of all, we have to reflect on Jesus’ prophecies of judgment (see Luke 21:20-24) that the Jerusalem temple would be brought down to the ground with not one stone left standing on another and Jerusalem surrounded by armies. This was fulfilled to the letter in AD 70 when the Roman legions under General Titus surrounded Jerusalem for 18 months and starved and crucified the inhabitants. The Jewish historian, Josephus who witnessed the destruction, recounts the whole episode in graphic detail. He tells us that one million four hundred thousand Jews died and that ninety thousand were taken away as prisoners to Rome and elsewhere. This is of course a very large scale genocide! So I think what I am suggesting is that perhaps there is more about judgment and punishment for sin and wickedness in the New Testament than we might like to think. Jesus, of course, is indeed our friend and redeemer but He is also the Holy Lord God Almighty and the coming judge of all the earth.

(Nigel Scotland)

Ancient Practices – Sabbath: Mike Fuller, 13th March 2011 PM

Ancient Practices – Sabbath: Tim Grew, 13th March 2011 AM