THIS WEEK AT LWF!
Painting Day!
Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. the team from Home Depot will be arriving to begin the wall and trim painting project. I'll be there early, and anyone available tonight after Bible Study is invited to help strip the front room to prepare it for painting. Any added volunteers tomorrow would be appreciated.
Bruce Vannetta Visit
The Last Day (& Other Such Tomorrows)
LIVING WORDS:
The past few months have been filled, for me, in part with preparing this eschatology class, and although the End of Days seems to be a topic of constant surround in the Church these days, immersing in so much study around the subject has driven home to me more than ever the power of our attitude regarding tomorrow, be it in the hereafter or in the here-and-now. I liken it to a rudder of our ship, and I suppose I only have a short thought for you this week.
Do people see hope when they look at you?
It's no shock to hear me refer to Peter's exhortation to always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is in us (the great Apologetics verse), but for once, I don't mean it in the sense of apologetics, but in the simplest sense possible: why do we have hope? Jesus is the answer, we know, but it then leads me to ask: what is the form of that hope? Obviously, the most important form of hope is hope in eternity, in the glorious resurrection of the dead in Christ, but I ask the question beyond even that scope. Do they see hope for a literal tomorrow also? Every day is just as much in His hands now as it ever was. I suppose this is an invitation to examine our own attitudes, the way we meet tomorrow, whatever it brings. Is Jesus our hope in the hereafter only? Or our hope in our earthly tomorrows, too. As we'll cover in class soon, it is always the temptation to believe we live in the ultimate hour, that things are worse than ever, that Christendom is "burning down," as I often year. Yet, Jesus promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His church. When I read that in Matthew 16:18, it emerges that Jesus speaks in the matter of a general addressing His men. There is no failure possible for the Church, for Christ goes before us. Cue the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," folks!
RECOMMENDED READING
(other than your Bible, obviously)
God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
by
John Lennox
You probably know what a fan of John Lennox I am, a wonderful Christian apologist (my favorite, actually, a jolly Irishman, just to make it better, and one who helped me in my homecoming to my faith some years ago. He currently occupies a position in mathematics at Cambridge University. Lennox was the first westerner allowed behind the Iron Curtain prior to the fall of the Soviet Union and played a role in its demise through the preaching of the Word. He has appeared on Eric Mataxas' Socrates & the City (link below) and I highly recommend a watch-through. In God's Undertaker, Lennox tackles the misconceived divide between science and faith. It's philosophical but still very accessible. If you like his work, I likewise recommend his study of the book of Daniel, Against the Flow (Elizabeth and I did a personal study of the book through our Scripture reading of Daniel), or frankly anything else this man writes or speaks about.
“It is rather ironical that in the sixteenth century some people resisted advances in science because they seemed to threaten belief in God; whereas in the twentieth century scientific ideas of a beginning have been resisted because they threatened to increase the plausibility of belief in God.”
― John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
ON THE HORIZON AT LWF:
5/2 | Extended Prayer
On May 2nd, our normal Tuesday morning prayer service is extended from its normal 9:00 a.m. start time to beginning at 5:00 a.m. for a special, longer gathering.
5/6 | Unplanned Film Showing
Until next time! God go with you, brothers and sisters in Christ.
~Daniel
