Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60094. A global flood is what Genesis 6 to 9 appears to describe, and a great many Christians now hold instead that the deluge was a large regional inundation in Mesopotamia. This is not a question about ancient geography alone. What is at stake is how we read the text, how Jesus and Peter…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60074. The New Apostolic Reformation is the most influential movement in global charismatic Christianity that most churchgoers have never heard named. Its songs are sung in congregations that would be alarmed by its doctrine, and its assumptions have travelled far further than its label. I write as a continuationist who believes the gifts of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60093. Cain’s wife has been produced as a knockout blow against Genesis since at least the seventeenth century, and she is still being produced today, usually with an air of having settled the matter. Cain kills Abel, is driven out, goes to the land of Nod, and there he knows his wife. Where, the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60110. Prayers for healing are among the most heartfelt any of us ever pray, and one of the hardest things in pastoral ministry is standing beside someone whose prayer has not been answered. I have done it many times, and I have never got used to it. So this article on prayers for healing…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60073. The Turning revival began in Reading in 2016 and for a while it was the most talked about thing in British evangelicalism. Reports of hundreds and then thousands of people praying to receive Jesus on the streets travelled quickly, and churches across the country wanted to know how to get it. I want…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60092. Slavery in Scripture is raised more often as an accusation than as a question, and I understand why. The charge is that the Bible not only tolerates slavery but endorses it, and that the transatlantic trade was therefore consistent with Christian teaching. If that were true it would be a very serious matter…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60109. Antisemitism is rising again in Britain, and I do not write that as a rhetorical flourish. Synagogue attacks, harassment of Jewish students on campuses, conspiracy theories that would have been recognised in 1930s Germany, and a great deal of it circulating among people who would be appalled to be called racist. So it…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60072. The Latter Rain movement began in a small Canadian town in 1948 and has shaped far more of modern charismatic Christianity than most of its heirs realise. Its ideas are still with us, usually without the label attached. I write as a continuationist. I believe the gifts of the Spirit remain, and I…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60108. Reincarnation is now believed by a surprising number of people in this country, including a fair few who would describe themselves as Christians. Surveys have repeatedly put the figure at around a quarter of the British population, which means it is not a fringe idea any more but a background assumption. So the…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60091. The Canaanite conquest is the passage in the Old Testament I am asked about more than any other, and it deserves better than the two standard responses. One is to explain it away until nothing troubling remains. The other is to shrug and say God can do what He likes. Neither is honest,…