by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Bishop Mike Lowry –
A legend arises out of the mist of early Christian lore of a crucial turning point in the life of the infant church which merits reflection on this occasion. Like most legends it carries a core kernel of truth. So compelling is the story that it was made into an award-winning movie entitled Quo Vadis in 1951.
In The Rise of Christianity, scholar Rodney Stark records the following:
“In the ‘Acts of Peter’ [a mid-second century Christian writing] we read that an upper-class Roman wife and convert sent word that Peter should flee Rome as he was to be seized and executed. For a time, Peter resisted their pleas to flee: ‘Shall we act like deserters, brethren?’ he says. But they argue with him, ‘No, it is so that you can go on serving the Lord.’ Reluctantly Peter agreed. Putting on a disguise, he begins to flee the great center of the Roman Empire. As Peter exits the city gates, to his shock he sees the Lord entering this citadel of imperial might. ‘Lord,’ Peter asks, ‘where are you going (quo vadis)?’ And the Lord said to him, ‘I am going to be crucified.’ And Peter said to him, ‘Lord, are you being crucified again?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Peter, I am being crucified again.’ The ‘Acts of Peter’ records the following: ‘Peter came to himself; and he saw the Lord ascending into Heaven; then he returned to Rome, rejoicing and giving praise to the Lord, because he said, “I am being crucified.’”
Back among the followers, Peter told them what had taken place and of his new resolve to be crucified. They again tried to dissuade him, but he explained that they were now to serve as the “foundation” so that they might “plant others through him.” In the crucifixion account that follows, Peter (crucified upside down at his own request) speaks at length from the cross to a crowd of onlooking Christians about the power of faith in Christ.
We who gather this day stand again at the city gate. We too converse with good, well-meaning colleagues who believe deeply in a different path to faithfulness. We too, just as Peter so long ago, this day encounter Christ before us. The question put by Peter lingers in the air over our gathering: “Quo Vadis” – “where are you [we] going?”
It is here, leaning on the gate pillars of conviction and commitment, that we must pause to seek again the guidance and insight of those first Christ followers. It is here we are bid to stop, worship, pray, reflect, and anchor ourselves again in the heart, mind, and fellowship of the One crucified for our sake, and for the sake of this bruised and battered world.
Focus with me on the Apostle Paul’s writing to Christians at the heart of the Empire. He anchors himself, those first followers, and we 21st century followers in the gospel. “That’s why I’m ready to preach the gospel…. I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation” (Romans 1:15-16).
Scholars tell us that the claim to be unashamed of the gospel carries a distinctive weight and witness in Roman culture. That culture was built along lines of status, standing, and shame. Shame represented the disgusting opposite of honor.
Paul takes the very concept of shame and stands it on its head. It is a challenge flung boldly into the face of society’s false presumptions and personal predilections. No wonder the gospel will be called a “scandal” and “foolishness” by Paul in 1 Corinthians.
Our situation today is not as dissimilar from the writing of Paul’s letter to the Romans as we are inclined to think. Make no mistake. The days of casual Christianity are over. The same issue of deep faithfulness is upon us. Once again, we are in a time when to be Christian is to be seen as quaint, backwards, and scientifically ignorant. For some, it is even a sign of being mean spirited and bigoted. And here we must pause for a moment to confess that we have brought some of this on by ourselves through a narrow-minded refusal to love those who disagree and more often than we would like, a coarse indifference to the hurting, hungry, and homeless, both physically and spiritually. Yet surely the response to our appropriate confession is not abject surrender to the whims of our hedonistically saturated civilization. Dean Inge’s famous quote rightly reminds us that “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself [or herself] a widower [or widow] in the next.”
Is it not time to admit that instead of being the transformer of culture we have been transformed by our culture? To borrow an insight from James Davidson Hunter’s To Change the World, we have steadily sacrificed a Wesleyan commitment to sanctification for purposes of cultural acceptance and the result has been to steadily be marginalized by the culture itself. Is it not passed time to declare that the day of cultural accommodation is over?
We gather at the city gate, the intersection of Christ and Culture. Let this be our grace filled witness: “So don’t be ashamed of the testimony about the Lord or of me, his prisoner,” writes Paul. “Instead, share the suffering for the good news, depending on God’s power” (2 Timothy 1:8).
Bishop Mike Lowry is the Resident Bishop of the Central Texas Annual Conference/Fort Worth Episcopal Area.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Madeline Henners –
God has deepened and strengthened within me the conviction that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. It’s the truth that transcends all nations, all generations, all denominations. The truth of Christ is something to earnestly contend for and eagerly seek with all your heart.
The Lord called me to contend for the faith. That’s what Methodism’s founder John Wesley did in his day. He contended for truth and for the lost souls with that truth. We’ve been given the Holy Spirit so that we can contend for the truth even in the midst of the struggle we’re in and strife we’re facing. This is the time we pray together. This is the time when we call our church into holiness and accountability. We can restore greater order to the church, but if we don’t have the revival power of the Holy Spirit, we’ll still be stuck.
We have a rich spiritual heritage in Methodism. There are four characteristics of John Wesley’s ministry that we definitely need for the future of Methodism.
One is the charismatic nature of revival that even shocked Wesley. He didn’t expect it to rock his own view of God, but it did. When he experienced the Holy Spirit and people started shaking in conviction, it helped him see God’s work in a whole new way.
Two, Wesley was a fervent defender of the faith. In his dialogues with his Calvinist colleagues about the intricacies of our theology, Wesley’s engagement was marked by grace.
Three, there was a discipline of accountability to holiness and faithfulness. We cannot have a church without accountability. In addition to calling for our leaders to be accountable, we need to ask ourselves if we are personally accountable
Four, Wesley went to the people outside the church walls to share his faith. He went begrudgingly at first, but he went. He was astounded. Although doors to some congregations were closed to him, the call on his life was so strong he preached in the fields and saw the power of the Holy Spirit fall. And lives by the thousands were changed. Wesley travelled hundreds of thousands of miles across England on a horseback. Nothing could stop his mission of contending for Christ.
Jesus is always relevant. He is the only way for truth and freedom.
The only way we’re going to navigate the future of Methodism is when we ask, “Lord, what is my next step?” And not just my next step for me and my church but for us as a global denomination. For my brothers and sisters in Africa and in the Philippines. We’re a global connection. How do we navigate this together through discernment of the Holy Spirit?
Despite the pangs of anxiety, we need to remember that Jesus is still on his throne. He is not despairing. Instead, he is inspiring, empowering, and equipping us.
The Rev. Madeline Henners is an elder in the Rio Texas Annual Conference currently pursuing her doctorate at United Theological Seminary.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By David F. Watson –
The idea that there are parts of the biblical canon that we need to disregard is nothing new. It’s a theme we’ve seen again and again through Christian history. And every time it’s been a mistake.
I get it, though. I understand the impulse to act like those parts of the Bible we don’t like or we don’t know what to do with just don’t count. There are some parts of the Bible, after all, that are really cutting against the grain of the world we live in today. Conventional wisdom tells us that these ideas are out of date. They just don’t work. We know a better way. You know what passages I’m talking about, right?
Passages like: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44) or “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all” (Romans 12:17) or “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
I mean, how culturally out of step do you have to be? Isn’t that absurd? How can we believe that today? It was probably okay for people in the ancient world, but… well… back then they didn’t have … (insert here the political party you don’t like). Those people deserve whatever nastiness they get.
You see, those passages are hard for me – passages about loving our enemies and meekness. Those aren’t my defaults. It sure would be easier if Scripture really wasn’t authoritative, or we were free to get rid of the parts we wanted. But we aren’t. The very reason we need a canon – a rule or measuring rod – is that we are prone to go astray, and we need the revelation of God to guide us.
I don’t know what the future holds for the United Methodist Church. Things are pretty messed up. And in the midst of all of this controversy, in the midst of all of this deep disagreement, the Bible forces me to remember that the people I disagree with, people I may get really mad at, are so important to God that Christ died for them. And in those times when I’ve tried to hurt the people who hurt me, when I’ve returned evil for evil, when I haven’t shown meekness, but succumbed to pride or anger – Scripture calls me to confess my sin and repent.
Dr. David F. Watson is academic dean and professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Bishop Kasap Owan –
The meaning of the cross is to bring us closer to God. The meaning of the cross is to reconcile us with God. Origen, an early church father, says the gift of God is Jesus himself. Because Jesus Christ is the gift of God given to us, he was on the cross crucified because of us. Through faith we are crucified with Christ. Faith is the confidence we have in God, and that confidence is centered on Jesus. When we depend on God, we need to be obedient to the gospel.
I come from Africa. In my area we received the gospel in 1912 through Bishop John Springer (1863-1963) who was sent to start mission in the Congo. Bishop Springer preached the gospel to the people. He asked them to believe in God – not in their ancestors or so-called sacred trees.
The gospel has completely transformed the culture of these people. There were so many traditional religions, but the gospel, the good news of God of our Lord Jesus Christ, has completely transformed our culture.
I have five annual conferences. One day I met a lady who asked me, “Bishop, what does the Bible say, what does the Book of Discipline say about marriage?” In Africa Christians talk about the Bible and the Discipline. This means Africa is always going along the word of God and Discipline. Africa holds on to faith in Christ our savior – Christ as the one who freed us from our culture.
Christ is the one who brings us close to our God. Christ is the one who gives us peace and the one who is giving peace between different tribes. That’s really the meaning of the cross.
Africa is saved in Christ. Africa keeps faith in the gospel. Remember when Jesus was born, Herod decided to kill all male children. Do you know where Jesus went as a refugee? It was in Egypt. It was in Africa. Jesus was protected in Africa. When the church is in this turmoil, Africa will remain the place to protect the gospel.
Africa will keep faith. Africa will respect the cross of the one who died for us. Africa will continue to obey the one who is just. Africa will continue to say yes to Christ.
This is what one man told me: “Bishop, we have celebrated a hundred years of evangelization in Congo. If you bring us another teaching on marriage, our churches will be empty. But if we remain obedient to the word of God, the church will continue to grow in keeping faith with Christ.”
I told him, “You have a bishop who is a true disciple of Christ who will keep the gospel as it was given to us through the apostles and we’ll continue to obey because Christ died for us.”
Bishop Kasap Owan is the Resident Bishop of the South Congo Area of The United Methodist Church.
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019, Magazine Articles
By Christine Caine –
Hope is unshakeable confidence in God. It doesn’t deny the reality of our pain, but it does give us a life beyond our pain. It gives us permission to believe in a new beginning. It is the happy and confident expectation of good that lifts our spirits and dares us to believe for a different future. It is always looking to God with expectation: “But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you” (Psalm 39:7).
But when we lose hope, when all we feel is the pain of loss and disappointment, it can be so hard to believe that God wants to help us, or that he cares, because we have more questions than answers. More doubt than faith. And yet, that is the perfect time to become a prisoner of hope.
A prisoner of hope sounds like an odd thing to be, doesn’t it? Aren’t prisoners locked up in high-security institutions and stripped of all their freedoms? Why would we want to be characterized as a prisoner of anything, even hope?
Because being a prisoner of hope in God is different. God’s prisoners of hope aren’t forced into an institution for punishment but invited into a fortress for safety. Imagine a castle that stands firm even when the very foundations of life are shaken. A place created just for us, where we can chain ourselves to the promise that God is working all things for our good, even when all things are falling apart. From the high tower of this fortress, we prisoners of hope gain a whole new perspective. We can look beyond our unexpected circumstances to the future, trusting that God has good things in store for us.
When I first learned to think and live this way, it was revolutionary to me. I was raised in a religious tradition that never encouraged me to expect good things from God. In fact, it was considered presumptuous to even imagine that God had time for my requests, given that he had an entire world to run. I’m so glad I discovered in his word that God is good, God does good, and God wants to do good for me — all the time. But to keep my heart and mind thinking and believing this way on a daily basis doesn’t come naturally; instead, it’s always a choice, one I have to make again and again.
Here’s another way to think about this choice. When the unexpected strikes, we find ourselves perched on a thin precipice with an abyss on either side. That’s when we have a decision to make. We can choose to fall into the abyss of despair on one side, or into the abyss of hope on the other. Both look like scary choices, but when we choose to fall into hope we soon find ourselves wrapped in the arms of a loving God — a God who always catches us and always promises to carry us from the precipice of despair into the wide-open space of new life. That’s where we find the new opportunities and experiences that get us beyond our disappointments and disillusionments. It is a place of freedom where we let go of what we once wanted in exchange for what we never expected — a new adventure. But we can’t get there by ourselves. Only God can catch and carry us into the new life we never imagined and take us to places we never considered going.
Becoming a prisoner of hope doesn’t mean we no longer struggle with disillusionment or despair. When the unexpected strikes and gives us new reasons to lose hope, it’s still tempting to dig a tunnel out of our fortress, to escape hope and lose ourselves in doubt, fear, and unbelief. I cannot tell you how many times I almost lost hope that we would see people rescued at A21 – our organization that works to fight human trafficking – or that traffickers would be caught and prosecuted and sentenced. There were times I wondered if I would have the ability to parent my girls with wisdom. Or if I would get free from the pain of my past. The list is endless.
In each and every endeavor, I had to chain myself once more to the God of all hope. As we launched our ministry initiatives, people who said they would stay, left. People who were supportive at one stage dropped out in the next. Doors slammed shut. Governments changed policies. But I have learned to walk by faith and not by sight. To close my eyes, proclaim myself a prisoner of hope, and step into a spiritual fortress — to dare to get my hopes up and keep my hopes up. I’ve seen God step in and carry me to better places, present me with better opportunities, and lead me into amazing breakthroughs.
When we are tempted to escape but choose instead to run into our stronghold Jesus, he promises to overflow our lives with hope: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). He promises to help us become the prisoners of hope he’s called us to be so we can move beyond despair and into a new destiny.
Christine Caine is an Australian born, Greek blooded, lover of Jesus, activist, author, and international speaker. She and her husband, Nick, founded the global anti-human trafficking organization, The A21 Campaign. They also founded Propel Women, an organization designed to activate women to fulfill their God-given passion, purpose, and potential. Taken from Unexpected by Christine Caine © 2018 by Christine Caine. Used by permission of Zondervan (zondervan.com).
![Should we Abandon the Old Testament?]()
by Steve | Jan 7, 2019 | Jan-Feb 2019
Alexandre Cabanel – Death of Moses.
By David F. Watson –
As Christianity continues its numeric decline in the West, we in the church rightly look for ways to reverse this trend. In this new book, Irresistible: Reclaiming the New That Jesus Unleashed for the World (Zondervan, 2018), Andy Stanley offers a diagnosis for our decline, along with several solutions. For Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Community Church in the Atlanta area, a faith that was once irresistible is now all-too-resistible. In the early centuries after Jesus, the Christian faith spread like wildfire. Today, however, we suffer the effects of generation after generation having misrepresented the true faith Jesus came to reveal. The result is that more and more people are walking away from the church.
Our great error in the twenty-first century church, according to Stanley, is primarily theological: we have blended the old and new covenants. This is nothing new, he says, but it was not always so. The earliest Christians knew that God had done away with the old covenant once and for all and had replaced it with a new covenant through Jesus Christ. The old covenant, established at Sinai, had one way of doing things. The new covenant has another. To blend the two covenants is to undermine the power of the new, the very power that once made it irresistible in the early generations following Jesus.
Stanley spends most of the book establishing a few major claims: the old covenant is legalistic, judgmental, and unnecessarily harsh. In the new covenant God has made the old obsolete. We now have a covenant rooted in the grace of God, one that compels us in all our actions to ask what love requires. The Old Testament (OT) contains the old covenant. The New Testament (NT) tells us about the new covenant. When we claim that we are saved according to the new covenant, but still act as if we are under the old (living according to OT teachings), we are blending the covenants, and thus rejecting God’s work in Jesus Christ.
Let me be entirely honest: I disagree with virtually every major premise of this book, save the claim that Christians live within a new covenant that God has established through Jesus Christ. Its problems are both historical and theological. For example, one historical problem emerges in Stanley’s discussion of the way in which early Christians regarded the Jewish Scriptures. He seems to believe that the earliest Christians somehow devalued or even outright rejected them. At one point he writes, “[I]magine how first-century, Jesus-following Jews felt when it was suggested that they bid farewell to texts that shaped their culture and consciences” (151). At another point he remarks, “[T]he credibility of our faith has never hung by the thread of the credibility of a collection of ancient texts. Even inspired ancient texts. Especially Old Testament texts. Once upon a time, a group of textless Jesus followers, sandwiched between empire and temple, defied both” (306, italics original).
Frankly, I don’t know what to do with statements like this one. It is quite simply historically inaccurate. Though they did come to understand their Scriptures in a new way, Jesus’ first followers did not “bid farewell” to their sacred texts, nor did Jesus ever suggest that they do so. Jesus and his first followers were firmly planted in the soil of the Jewish Scriptures. Paul relies heavily upon these texts, as do the Apostolic Fathers, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria. The second-century apologist Justin Martyr writes that the early Christians with whom he would gather would read from the gospels or the OT prophets for as long as time would allow. Much of the earliest Christian art consists of depiction of OT figures such as Moses, Noah, Jonah, and the three young Hebrew men in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace.
The third-century Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria (185-254) thought the OT so important that he undertook a massive project to establish the most accurate possible rendering of these texts. Over two decades he developed a document called the Hexapla in which he compared the Hebrew Bible (in Hebrew and transliterated into Greek) and four versions of Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible, including the most well known and widely used version, the Septuagint. This work consisted of around 6,000 pages, and its cost must have been phenomenal. Why in the world would Origen have invested so much time, labor, and money in a project to reconstruct the earliest OT text if the early Christians devalued them in the way that Stanley describes?
Another historical problem emerges in Stanley’s discussion of Athanasius’ Festal Letter 39 (A.D. 367), the first witness we have to our twenty-seven book NT canon. Stanley writes, “The documents that made Athanasius’ list and eventually our list, were considered valuable, credible, and reliable the moment they were written” (303). Again, this is simply incorrect. Some of the works on Athanasius’s list were widely accepted early on. In the second century there began to emerge collections of the four gospels and Paul’s letters. 1 Peter and 1 John were also widely accepted before the beginning of the third century. Other works, such as Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation, were slower to find acceptance. They were held in suspicion by some parts of the church. Revelation had a particularly difficult time in the Eastern churches. The process by which we came to understand the authority and inspiration of the twenty-seven books of the NT we recognize today was slow and messy.
Stanley also asserts, “In the fourth century, church leaders bound the Jewish Scriptures together with the Gospels and epistles for the first time and gave the collection a name: ta biblia. The Bible. Once the Hebrew Scriptures were bound together with Christian Scriptures, the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures were granted the same authority as the Gospels and epistles” (155). In fact, the process of canonization was quite the opposite of this. From its inception the church understood the Jewish Scriptures as authoritative. Over time, specifically Christian writings, such as the Gospels and epistles, came to stand alongside the Jewish Scriptures as authoritative for the life of faith. The Jewish Scriptures were authoritative well before specifically Christian writings came to be regarded as Scripture. The Old and New Testaments were bound together in the fourth century because it took until the second half of the fourth century for our present NT canon to find widespread acceptance.
These historical problems, however, are outmatched by the book’s theological problems. For example, at one point Stanley writes, “Christianity begins with Jesus, not Genesis,” (284). Matthew and Luke apparently disagree. Both evangelists include genealogies in their Gospels that trace the story of Jesus back through the stories of Israel, all the way back to – you guessed it – Genesis. Jesus did not simply appear out of thin air. He stands within the salvation history of Israel as the one who extends that salvation to all the world.
Stanley argues, however, that God has done something entirely new in Jesus Christ, and what came before (i.e., the OT) is merely the “backstory.” Sure, you might find the “backstory” interesting, even helpful in some ways. It is not, however, the basis of our faith, nor is it binding upon us as Christians. At one point he writes, “The Christian faith doesn’t need to be propped up by the Jewish Scriptures,” and, “In a post-Christian context, our faith actually does better without old covenant support” (278).
In keeping with his deflationary view of the authority of the OT, Stanley makes some rather radical suggestions regarding how we should speak about and order the writings contained in the Bible. “What if, instead of Old and New Testaments,” he writes, “our texts were labeled the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible. That’s clearer and more accurate” (280). It’s only more accurate, however, if you’re willing to concede that the Old Testament is not properly a part of the Christian Bible. Since, however, the church has never affirmed this at any point in its history, and in fact has specifically repudiated it, we would be wise to reject this suggestion.
Christians sometimes refer to the OT as the “Hebrew Bible.” In so doing, they are attempting to demonstrate their rejection of supersessionist theologies (i.e., theologies according to which Christianity has utterly replaced Judaism) and show respect to Jewish people. Stanley’s rationale is that, because both “testament” and “covenant” are translations of the same Greek word, diathēkē, when we use the term “Old Testament” we suggest that there is nothing more in this body of writings than the old covenant. He insists, however, that the OT “includes more than the old covenant. A lot more” (280). Given that there is “a lot more” in the OT than the Sinai covenant, why should we unhitch from the entire OT? The answer to this question never becomes apparent.
He also picks up the idea that referring to these works collectively as the Hebrew Bible will be less offensive to Jewish people. “[I]f you start referring to the Old Testament as something other than old, it isn’t going to hurt God’s feelings. It wasn’t his idea. And referring to it as something other than old may reduce the number of Jewish feelings we hurt along the way” (283). Never mind that he spends the better part of the book describing the Jewish Scriptures as obsolete, irrelevant, and barbaric. At one point he refers to the “legalism, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and exclusivity that characterized ancient Judaism” (146). Were a Jewish person to read Stanley’s book, the use of term “Old Testament” would not likely rank among its more offensive elements.
“For the sake of clarity,” Stanley continues,” perhaps the Christian Bible should precede the Hebrew Bible in our published texts” (284). He goes on to suggest, “Perhaps our Bibles should begin with Luke” (284). The lack of even a hint of deference to Christian tradition – the judgment of the saints and martyrs who have passed on the Church’s faith to us – is utterly stupefying.
Stanley rightly describes Christians as people of the new covenant, noting that we are not bound by or saved by the law. That’s Christianity 101. Yet as he himself points out, the OT involves much more than the old covenant. The Old and New Testaments together provide us with a single great narrative of salvation. Each is incomplete without the other. In Romans 11:17-18, Paul writes, “If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you” (NIV). The OT is more than the “backstory.” It is the unfolding of God’s great plan of salvation in human history, a plan that will emerge out of Israel in Jesus Christ.
While we are not bound by the law, moreover, the OT does reveal to us certain principles about the moral fabric of God’s creation. Stanley acknowledges this (p. 166), but it doesn’t seem to do any heavy lifting in his argument. I agree with him that we do not refrain from, say, theft because the law commands that we do so. Rather, we refrain from theft because, in God’s ordering of creation, it is wrong to take what belongs to another person. The OT commandments against theft simply give voice to this. In dialogue with the NT, Christians can extrapolate other ethical principles from the OT as well.
I don’t dispute that Andy Stanley is a man of God who has made many important contributions to the life of the church. In this book, however, he has missed the mark. I cannot recommend it for any type of use in the church. The inspiration and authority of Scripture have come under attack quite commonly in recent years by people who wish to see a resurgence of Christian practice. I, too, wish deeply to see our churches fulfilling the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20. The way to do this, however, is not by neglecting what God has revealed to us as canon – a rule or measuring rod for Christian faith and practice. On the contrary, a deeper engagement with Scripture, rather than a more limited one, will stoke the fires of revival.
David F. Watson is the academic dean and professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He is the author of Scripture and the Life of God (Seedbed).
