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Tom said:

I would like to recommend a book to you by JI Packer called 'Knowing God'.

Tom

Thanks Tom. I am no John the Baptist or Appollos. I certainly am not unaware of the doctrinal overkill of the word of faith movement. However, over balances are like sicknesses in the body, before one goes for the knife, one needs to do a proper prognosis. Why was there a word of faith overbalance ? What can we learn ? RC tradition is dominantly 'word of love' - It is not wrong for us to obey Jesus' command to love one another. One might call SDA 'word of hope' and Brethren 'word of fundamentalism' ... as I said, I am no Church History expert, but I do know that in my own life when there are over balances, or sickness, I need to find the root or the cause and discover that carefully so that I do not catch those germs again. To merely take a mercenary stance on everything that is contrary to what we perceive to be the correct behaviour, is to miss the opportunity to grow as a body. It is true that understanding the intrinsic value of faith, and hope, and love and the greatest of these is... heresy hunting. I think we are in danger of becoming like the one's we judge. Currently we have a New Reformation on the go, with it's ideas of conversation, dialogue and emergence (a sickness ?) and on the flip side ecumenism, reductionism, dumbing down the doctrines to have some form of common ground, people saying let's just concentrate on Jesus and forget about all this traditional stuff or baggage which has kept us ineffectual in the global village aka. Warren's World Peace Plan. These are overbalances/sickness...BUT what are they saying...are they saying that we have become tasteless, have we lost our savour, have we lost the vision of the mission to reach out and be healing to the world... maybe not in such a subversive a way as certain rock stars who are looking to heal those who are starving and dying of aids, or certain fringe rejected groups which are being reached by a over the top idea ... where doctrine is almost being thrown out in favour of Spirituality. I am not saying go to be with heresy, but becareful that we are not found encasing our brothers and sisters in yet another IRON MAIDEN. (Inquisitional Torchure Machine) I.T.M.

Moderation,