Past imperfect
Oliver Barclay
Date posted: 1 Jun 1998
Book Review
TRANSFORMING THE WORLD?
The social impact of British Evangelicalism
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Mad for it in Manchester
Stephen Timmis
Date posted: 1 May 1998
Andy Hawthorne is 37 years old. He's married to Michelle, and has two children aged seven and four. They all live in Manchester and Andy supports Manchester United FC. He's a member of St. Mary's, a thriving Anglican evangelical church in Cheadle.
All of which is fairly routine. Commonplace. Even mundane. However, there can't be many middle-aged Christians who 'front' a dance band whose albums are distributed by a major recording company, featured on Radio 1, been subject to Joan Bakewell's attention on Everyman, and includes someone who was once the UK Breakdancing champion, and a DJ at Manchester's leading nightclub.
The campus - the world
Dick Dowsett
Date posted: 1 Mar 1998
After speaking at the Christian Union meeting, I strolled through the town to the student flat where I was to spend the night. Later that evening, with the CU president, I helped as a post graduate student from China become a Christian. Students and others in both English universities where he had studied had befriended him and shared the gospel. I just happened to be there, like a midwife, at the time when he was ready to be born again.
Before we broke up, I suggested the CU president lead us in prayer, which he did ... in fluent Chinese! Not a miracle, just a lot of hard work. Chinese is his degree subject: we had met before in China where part of his course was spent in a university in Beijing! I hope that he will soon be working in China, and living for Jesus there.
After God's funeral
Mr Ravi Zacharias
Date posted: 1 May 1998
During the recent Cambridge Mission, Ravi Zacharias spoke on 'What happened after God's funeral?' We print here a brief extract which touches on the problem of moral relativism, which follows atheism.
I think it was Paul Tillich who said that religion is the essence of any culture and culture is the dress of religion. I believe he was right in this statement. The West has yet to answer the question: 'What is the essential belief in its culture'. With pluralism growing dramatically, it is a question that Western culture needs to answer.
Gattaca
Julie Skelton
Date posted: 1 May 1998
None Review
Gattaca Columbia Pictures, 112 minutes. Cert. 15 'Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?' (Ecclesiastes 7.13) - the text is used on screen at the beginning of this timely science fiction film, in the mould of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The audience is invited to consider the evidence before them . . .
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Narnia's man
Colin Duriez
Date posted: 1 Apr 1998
Known to his friends as 'Jack' (he didn't like 'Clive Staples'), C.S. Lewis was born on the outskirts of Belfast on November 29 1898, and died in his Oxford home, The Kilns, almost 65 years later on November 22 1963.
He was equally a scholar and a storyteller, for years an Oxford don, and then Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge.
An exciting future
EN
Date posted: 1 Apr 1998
Stephen Gaukroger is giving the main Bible readings at Word Alive 1998.
Stephen is leader of the pastoral team at Gold Hill Baptist Church in Buckinghamshire. The author of over a dozen books, he is also the Chairman of the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association in Europe, a member of the Spring Harvest Executive and of the Word Alive Committee.
Brief lives: Alexander Mackay
Don Stephens
Date posted: 1 Feb 1998
Alexander Mackay was a pioneer missionary to Uganda. He was born in 1849 in Rhyme, a village not far from Aberdeen. His father was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, so it is no surprise to learn that the Bible and the Westminster Catechism were the two most important books in the house.
Until he was 14 he was home-schooled and during that time he came to love and trust Christ.
Brief lives: Fanny Crosby
Don Stephens
Date posted: 1 Jan 1998
I am told that Fanny Crosby is in the Guinness Book of Records for writing the largest number of hymns - nearly 9,000.
This remarkable lady was born in New England in 1820 and lived to one month short of her 95th birthday in 1915. When she was six weeks old, the doctor was called to attend to an eye infection. He arranged for hot poultices to be put on both eyes. These burnt the corneas, scar tissue formed, and as a result, she was blinded. Yet at no point in her life did she ever complain or hold a grudge. In fact, she saw it as the means God used to make her life's work possible.
The challenge facing Evangelicals (Bulldog for December)
Mr Joel Edwards
Date posted: 1 Dec 1997
We stand at one of the most exciting periods of human history. It is truly 'the best of times and the worst of times'. Modern technology is transforming our lives. We perform keyhole surgery with laser beams, we put cameras on Mars, we have more leisure time, more shops, more choice, more holidays, more TV channels, more power over our daily lives. In today's brave new world a virgin can bring forth a son.
But there is an awful truth. And it is this. We face a spiritual peril in which so many in society have everything to live with and nothing to live for. We are a society in danger of 'gaining the whole world' but at the expense of 'losing our own souls'.
Standing in the gap in Washington
Aaron Menikoff
Date posted: 1 Nov 1997
Hundreds were streaming into the Capitol. They call themselves 'Promise Keepers' and by Saturday October 4 1997, approximately half a million participated in the largest evangelical Christian gathering in American history.
For six sunny hours, men (and a fair number of women) from the Empire State of New York to the Golden State of California were planted on Washington DC's 'Mall' (a strip of grass between the United States Capitol and the Washington Monument).
Evangelism on wheels
Rachel Phillips
Date posted: 1 Nov 1997
‘Sorry, we’re full up. You’ll have to try again next break.’
Ian Fry, Christian schools’ worker in Kingston, often has to say this to pupils queuing up in the playground to get onto the Surrey Good News Bus.
Brief lives: Mary Slessor
Don Stephens
Date posted: 1 Nov 1997
This remarkable woman was born in Aberdeen in 1848, but, when she was ten, her parents moved to Dundee, looking for work as weavers.
Her father was an alcoholic and died young, but her mother was a Christian in the United Presbyterian Church. This church had started a pioneer mission work in Calabar, now part of Eastern Nigeria, and the stories from Calabar were studied in the Slessor house.
Lord, for the years...
Esme Shirt
Date posted: 1 Dec 1997
Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith lives in retirement with his wife Arlette. Ordained into the Anglican church after the war, he edited Crusade magazine, was Secretary of CPAS, and became Bishop of Thetford and President of Evangelical Alliance. But he is most well-known as a hymn writer. EN had the opportunity to interview him at his home in the countryside just outside Salisbury.
Q: Could you begin by telling us how you became a Christian ?
Brief lives: John Elias
Don Stephens
Date posted: 1 Dec 1997
First, let's see the 28-year-old John Elias fighting one of his greatest battles. It is the Battle of Rhuddlan.
It is the late summer of 1802. Unlike South Wales, North Wales is still largely a mission field, and Rhuddlan is playing host to a fair on a Sunday. There are men and women dancing, drinking and revelling. Musicians and singers are everywhere. People have come to Rhuddlan from miles around in the hope of being hired to work in the harvest fields.