The Doctor’s Casebook:
Easy Grace? - you must be kidding!
Thanks to Paul Anderson-Walsh we have had some wonderful teaching about the grace of God and Christ working within us. It is a joy to know that we have eternal security and that sin has no power over us, but has it made a positive impact on our day-to-day life experience? The problem with grace theology, along with other practical theologies, is that a system of belief does not necessarily guarantee satisfactory outcomes, at least not this side of eternity.
I remember my years as a Word of Faith Christian, I firmly believed ‘by his stripes I am healed’, therefore I was already healed. Now nothing wrong with that at face value, except that if I was already healed I was not allowed to speak or act sick any more! Because of the doctrine of ‘confess it and possess it’ and ‘we can have whatever we say’ , I became too ashamed to ever admit I was ill. The same reasoning applied to finances – my tithe made me right with God, so now he would provide all my needs and open up the windows of heaven, I will never lack – but I did lack, and in that lack I felt that I had somehow fallen short!
The Doctor’s Casebook: Dr Peter Rowe
Martin Luther: Personal Dilemma to Diet of Worms !
Hello and I pray the Lord’s blessing upon you today.
I am reading a book on the Reformation and it has given me some unexpected insights into the internal struggles of that great reformer, Martin Luther. One of the wonderful things about reading is that we can touch base with our own feelings in the experiences of others.
Before we look at Luther’s inner turmoil, let’s first take a whirlwind tour of what brought him to his crisis… a crisis that eventually had him stand before a Church Council at Worms (in Germany) – known as the Diet of Worms (hence our clever title) – and refuse to recant of his heretical view that salvation was by personal faith in Jesus Christ alone. As always, please forgive oversimplification for the sake of brevity.
The Doctor's Casebook series by dr. peter rowe PhD.,D.R. Phil,. M.Th.,B.Min
Just a short article for you this time, but it is nice and controversial. Here is something I am impatient to share with you and I sincerely hope you will feel strongly enough to write in with your views.
There has been certain paranoia in the ‘western’ churches including those in the UK about the threat of Islam to our religion, culture and safety. I have heard the expression ‘they are taking over’ so often it is becoming cliché.
Whereas, we all abhor the World Trade Centre incident and the Madrid and London train bombings and the dreadful carnage in Bali, we cannot blame an entire race or religion for this, any more than we can blame all Germans for the Holocaust. It would do us well to remember the atrocious acts in history committed by Christians, all in the name of God. The scars left by the Crusades – a cruel smear upon the history of Christian public relations – could be named as one of the root causes of today’s Christian/Muslim conflict. Of course, we could rightly argue that the conflict goes back to Isaac and Ishmael; but the church of Jesus Christ should know better!
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SShutes
