I’ve really appreciated these people and just in the last weekend listened to some of their speaking. I’ve selected some quotations which are not even necessarily the main points or the most important but hopefully will whet your appetite for more! They are all, to my mind, well worth listening too.
Lessie Newbigin speaking on Nihilism (h/t Glen)
The critical faculty can only operate on the basis of beliefs which are held uncritically. When someone criticises a position, a proposition, one has always to ask, ‘what are the assumptions which are not criticised when that critical move is made?’…
…if one takes the denial of the resurrection, again you have to ask, what is it that is not being doubted when you say, ‘I cannot believe in the resurrection’. What is not being doubted is a certain view of the world as a closed system of cause and effect which is a total explanation of the world. Now that whole conception of the world has been and can be very radically called into question. When a theologian says ‘I can’t believe in the resurrection’ you have to ask, ‘what are the things that he does believe in which make it impossible for him to believe in the resurrection and what are the grounds for those beliefs?’
Ravi Zacharias was asked, “The Apostle Paul said he became all things to all men. What do you think he meant by this?”.
He answered, well that’s a good question. There are four parts to communication: persuasion, justification, translation, identification. Identification – when you identify and correctly understand what the person is saying otherwise they think you haven’t even answered their question. Translation – when you communicate using their language so that they can understand what you’re saying. You don’t use big words that confuse them. Persuasion – because if what you say isn’t persuasive people won’t even bother to listen to you. Justification – when you demonstrate that what you’ve ultimately said is right rather than wrong.
Paul was a communicator. The Jews often thought in terms of light and the great light that shone down from heaven to illuminate the path and show us the way. The Romans often thought in terms of glory and the glory of the Roman empire and the eternal city of Rome. The Greeks in particular loved the idea of knowledge and their Greek philosophers and those philosophers that came before them. So you have these different groups thinking in terms of light, knowledge and glory. In 2 Corinthians 4:6 Paul said that God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
Simon Ponsonby speaking on the Gift-Giving God
(Speaking about 1 Corinthians 12:1-2) When you were pagans you were led astray but mute idols but now we follow God, we follow the speaking God. He speaks pre-eminently through the Son, He speaks pre-eminently through Scripture, He speaks through creation, He speaks through culture, He speaks through our consciencse but he also speaks to us through charismatic gifts…
…Rachel Hickson, had been preaching on Mother’s Day in America. Sometime later she received a letter which went like this: Dear Rachel, you don’t know who I am but a year ago you preached in my church and it was Mother’s Day and this is my situation. I can’t have children, I’m infertile and now we’re in our 40s, IVF hasn’t worked. We’ve been praying that God would work a miracle. We needed a miracle giving us two children in one, because I was too old to go through one pregnancy and then another preganancy. The other thing is my husband is black and I’m white so we used to pray to God that he would give us zebras. You don’t know this but I was out of the meetin in the toilet and my friend came out and said Rachel is going to pray for women who can’t have children. I went forward without any faith but you walked up to me and said, “Today God is giving you two zebras”. Here is a photograph at the bottom of the letter of my two children born nine months later, my twins.
