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 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: 6 minutesQuestion 60090. Faith and reason are assumed by almost everybody to be opposites, and the assumption has done real damage to Christian witness. On one side stands the believer who parks his brain at the church door. On the other stands the clear eyed rationalist who has outgrown all that. It is a caricature, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60070. Whether there is religious freedom in Islamic lands is a question that invites two bad answers. One says no, never, anywhere, which is inaccurate. The other says the situation is much like anywhere else, which is worse than inaccurate because it makes light of real suffering. I want to give you the picture…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60106. Moral evil is the wickedness that people do to one another, and it is the sharpest form of the oldest objection to the Christian faith. If God is good, He would want to prevent it. If He is almighty, He could. Evil exists. Something in the argument has to give. I want to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60089. Objective truth has become the one claim you are not allowed to make in polite company. That may be true for you but not for me sounds tolerant and generous, and it is now the standard response to any statement about God, morality or the resurrection of Jesus. It has moved out of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60105. Natural disasters are the version of the problem of evil that is hardest to answer, and I want to say at the outset that I know it. Human wickedness can be laid at the door of human freedom. An earthquake cannot. Nobody chose the fault line under Port-au-Prince or the wave that came…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60088. Science and Scripture are widely assumed to be locked in permanent conflict, and the assumption does a great deal of quiet damage. It shows up in newspapers, in lecture theatres, and in the private worries of Christians who feel caught between the faith they hold and the world the sciences appear to describe….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60067. Filipino Israelism is the claim that the Filipino people are the descendants of ancient Israel, that the Philippines is the land promised in Scripture, and that the prophecies of restoration point to the islands rather than to the Middle East. It is less familiar in Britain than its Victorian cousin, but it is…