Category: Christianity

Virginia Cobb: an approach to witness

 In advance of the Teheran Conference of June 1969, fellow missionaries in Lebanon asked Missionary Virginia Cobb to prepare their position paper on missionary methods for work among Muslims. (See The Commission, November 1969, for a conference report and related stories.) Detained in Beirut, Lebanon, by illness, Miss Cobb did not reach Teheran in time …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/11/25/virginia-cobb-an-approach-to-witness/

Lost ironies

 Glad to hear your trip is going well.  My Muslim friend here is a former imam himself, so maybe you can continue your dialogue when you get home.  Wish my dad lived closer so you two could visit.  I spoke with him this evening and he is quite concerned about the idea of using the …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/11/13/lost-ironies/

Who would Jesus water-board?

 This is one of those rare occasions where I agree with some of what Dershowitz had to say.  Water-boarding IS torture.  The real question is not whether or not a particular technique is torture, but whether or not torture harvests useful intelligence or is just indulging the sadistic impulses of some of our freakier interrogators.  The …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/11/10/who-would-jesus-water-board/

Once more, with feeling

 Here we go again.  Is there no limit to the willful ignorance that manifests itself on these pages?  If the writers who routinely berate Charley Reese for his studied sympathies ever stop scouring the Internet for imaginary jihads, we’ll all be better off.  Do us a big favor and stick to researching dubious medical remedies; …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/11/07/once-more-with-feeling/

Memo from a church consultant

 From http://www.mirabilis.ca/archives/cat_religion.html February 08, 2003 When the Baptist visited the Orthodox church When Baptist minister Dwight Moody visited an Orthodox church, he found himself in a cloud of incense, trying to figure out what the worshippers were chanting, why they rarely sat down and when the 9 a.m. service was going to end so that …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/10/29/memo-from-a-church-consultant/

Tradition

 You had to know this was coming…  A few thoughts on yesterday’s message:  How much of the clapping phenomenon is really a demonstration of spontaneous, spirit-led worship?  Or were your first instincts the right ones — that clapping is a reflection of widespread bad manners and more evidence of worship-as-entertainment and further infiltration of fringe-sect antics based …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/10/29/tradition/

The millennium

 To my pastor: I find the most unusual things on the Internet.  Take a look at this:  http://books.google.com/books?id=2OIRAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA453&lpg=PA453 The doctrine of the millennium does not properly belong in eschatology, but is rather a part of Christology, coming under the head of “Government by Christ.”  Putting it into its proper place, we shall find that not a …

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2007/10/26/the-millennium/