Sorry its long.
Start at the top and work down.
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From: *** ME ***
Sent: 25 July 2012 17:34
To: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Subject: New Wine
As discussed … it’s not a name for a Muslim conference!
But just to show you that it’s not a massive booze-up, here’s the website for the conference organisers... http://www.new-wine.org/home/about-us
The name comes from two references:
1. In the book of Matthew Jesus says: “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. 17 Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” This is usually interpreted to mean that when God is doing something new he does it in a new context. For example when Jesus instituted the New Covenant, it did not fit into Judaism but a new ‘container’ was needed – Christianity. This process repeats itself: when God sends revivals of faith they tend to disrupt the dusty anachronistic church organisations and new churches are born. This is how Protestantism started, how Methodism started, how Pentecostalism started, etc. So the ‘New Wine’ conference hopes to be the container for the next thing – the next revival – that God sends.
2. In the book of Mark Jesus says: “This is my blood of the[a] covenant,(A) which is poured out for many,” he said to them. 25 “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” . This is interpreted to mean that after his death, as part of his resurrection, there will be a new expression of the Kingdom of God in which Jesus will be present and participating. ‘The Kingdom of God’ used to be interpreted as a political Kingdom, hence most of the disasters in Europe for the last 2000 years. It is now seen more as a spiritual condition where individuals regard God effectively as their King, and includes all of the social consequences of people actually learning to live good lives. Christianity is now a grass roots religion –bottom up not top down. The Kingdom of God has two fulfilments. Jesus says ‘A time is coming and now is when …..’. The Kingdom of God is already here in people’s lives, but also has a final fulfilment near the end of time when Jesus returns and rules the planet. So the ‘New Wine’ conference is an expression of the Kingdom of God, with Jesus present and participating (in spirit at least).
Sorry if I am suffering from motormouth. I just enjoy talking about this kind of thing.
God bless
*** ME ***
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From: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Sent: 26 July 2012 09:49
To: *** ME ***
Subject: RE: New Wine
Nice one thanks for the clarification!!
I must admit I luv a good metaphor !
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From: *** ME ***
Sent: 14 August 2012 15:46
To: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Subject: RE: New Wine
Definitely not a Muslim conference! (see attached catering arrangements) (This was a photo of the Pork roast stall)
*** ME ***
Hydraulics Engineer
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From: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Sent: 21 August 2012 11:15
To: *** ME ***
Subject: RE: New Wine
Porky porky – interestingly I was watching an evangelist on youtube talking about why hes doesn’t eat pork
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From: *** ME ***
Sent: 21 August 2012 11:17
To: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Subject: RE: New Wine
So, what did he say?
*** ME ***
Hydraulics Engineer
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From: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Sent: 21 August 2012 11:19
To: ** ME ***
Subject: RE: New Wine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84q0f4vO6nU&feature=related (It's the Joel Osteen clip - 3 minutes approx - he says he doesn't eat pork for health reasons and because this is what God says in the Bible - but see for yourself in case I am misquoting him)
in the recommended list is “why I hate islam “ lol
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From: *** ME ***
Sent: 21 August 2012 14:50
To: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Subject: Porkies - the 20 minute sermon on why the evangelist is wrong. Seriously wrong.
Hi *** Muslim Colleague ***
Thanks for the link.
I sometimes catch this guy on Sky, but usually turn over fairly quickly because there is only so much American culture [vomit] that you can handle in one sitting.
It is of course the old, well rehearsed ‘health’ argument, supported by a theological case.
However, the pigs we eat now don’t scavenge but are given proper feeds, so that rather dismisses the whole case he makes.
I would have thought that a much more powerful case would be that pigs are highly intelligent – at least as intelligent as dogs and probably more so.
It is true that the Jewish scriptures that have been integrated into our Bible do contain the Kosher food laws, and it is an easy mistake to make – as your evangelist shows – to transpose those laws into the sect of Judaism called Christianity. Even Jesus said “Not the least stroke of the law [the law of Moses] will pass away”. Jesus also said “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it”. So am I saying Jesus was wrong?
No. I am saying that Jesus fulfilled the law, so the law is now fulfilled, period. You will agree that Jesus was sinless, and the Bible teaches us that he was the only person who is sinless. So he is the only person who has fulfilled the law. Now the Jewish scriptures identify that the reason we die is a consequence of sin, but because Jesus did not break the law, none of its punishments were applicable to him. This meant that when he died, it was not a result of his own sin, but that he was taking the legal punishments for our sins on himself. Much like when the chief of a government department resigns because some junior clerk in his department lost a memory stick – he didn’t do the deed but he takes the fall. As Christians we are in Jesus’ “department” – he takes the fall.
The Apostle Paul was a radical member of the most fundamentalist sect of Judaism at the time and used to go around killing Christians because he was so passionate about the Law. He was a highly intellectual man, an expert in the Jewish Scriptures and Law as well as being familiar with secular writings of the day. When he became a Christian he ended up writing books that became incorporated into the Christian Bible. Most of these books explain how the Christian is not subject to the Jewish law in which he was an expert.
Why?
The example of Jesus
• He healed people on the Sabbath when ‘work’ was not allowed, because it’s more important to do good than observe the pedantic detail of the law
• His hungry disciples harvested handfuls of grain on the Sabbath – “the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath”.
• He declared all foods (implicitly including pork) clean “It is not what goes into a man that pollutes him but what comes out of him”
• At the last supper before his death he instituted a new covenant. i.e. the old covenant – the law of Moses, having been fulfilled in him, was now superseded.
The vision of the Apostle Peter
• He saw a vision in which a sheet was let down from heaven, full of all the animals the Jewish law forbade him to eat. In the vision, God told him to kill and eat the animals. He refused, because the animals were unclean’. This happened three times, and the voice [of God] told him not to call ‘unclean’ what God had made clean. He came out of the trance and found gentile knocking on his door asking him to come to their house to tell them about Jesus. In the Law he was forbidden to go into the house of ‘unclean’ gentiles, but because of the vision he went and they were the first gentile Christians. This story is primarily about the expansion of the church beyond Jews to include gentiles, but it also tells us that we are under a new regime, not under the Law of Moses.
The theology of Salvation
• Under the old covenant – the Jewish Law of Moses - you had to obey the Law or die. But the law included a system of sacrifice, whereby you could offer the best animal in your flock to die as your substitute. And there were national ceremonies where specific animals were sacrificed on behalf of national sins – the leaders would place their hands on the animals head to lay their sins on it, then kill it.
• Jesus fulfils all of this, both a perfect life lived under the law and a perfect sacrifice on our behalf. (Note that this sacrifice does not work if Jesus is just a man, because you can’t transfer sins onto other people that way. But if Jesus is the one sinned against, namely God, then he can legitimately take onto himself the consequences of our actions against him) Thus the law is complete, wrapped up and put away in storage.
• As above, Jesus instituted a new covenant in which all who call on his name asking to be included in his sacrifice (included in his Department, so to speak) are consequently forgiven for all their wrongs, and start a new life in relationship with God. This is no longer a salvation based on obedience to a law, but based on a relationship of trust, of faith, in God. It is by his grace [defined as “unmerited favour”] not by our efforts.
• My point is this – it is by trust (which we call faith), not by obedience to laws.
Disputes and a learning process in the early church
• The Bible record contains a history which shows how the Jewish Christians initially tried to impose Jewish law on Gentile converts, but gradually come round to the idea that this is missing the point.
• After a major council to debate this they wrote to the Gentiles, the only restrictions being on eating blood and food sacrificed to pagan idols
• Later they were just told to abstain from food sacrificed to idols.
• Later, they were told that since the gods represented by idols are ‘nothing’, the sacrifice could be ignored and they could eat the food so long as it didn’t upset anyone they were eating with.
Thus Paul – the expert in the law - says in his letter to some Galatian gentiles who were under pressure to adopt Jewish law when they became Christians:
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free ……. do not let yourselves be burdened …. by a yoke of slavery. (in this case the ‘yoke of slavery’ is the Jewish law.)
Mark my words! …. if you let yourselves be circumcised, (an example of obeying the law)
Christ will be of no value to you at all.
Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. (I emphasise the next bit -) You who are trying to be justified by the law(F) have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.
So we have a choice:
A) Choose to obey the law, but fail and be condemned to hell
B) Ask to be included ‘in Christ’, and be saved by his grace.
Every human falls into one of these two categories.
So at the end of the Bible, the last chapter of the book of Revelation, it describes God’s final judgement of mankind. People come before him and books are opened – one is the record of their deeds. Anybody judged by their deeds is thrown into hell. But the other book is the list of those whose names are in ‘the Lamb’s book of life’ – those who are ‘in Christ’ as above. And if their name is in the book, they go to heaven.
Now the point in all this ranting is that if your evangelist wants to start refusing pork because it is part of the Law, then he puts himself in category A. He is then obligated to obey the WHOLE LAW – including things like not going to church the day after having sex, wearing a vest with tassels, not cutting his sideburns, the full monty. And if he fails on one point, he has become a lawbreaker, destined to death. He could try the sacrifices, but I’m not sure that deal is on offer any more. He has excluded himself from category B, erased himself from the Lamb’s book of life, and destined himself for hell.
If he wants to avoid pork for genuine health reasons, fine, its not compulsory to eat pork.
But if he says ‘the Law says so’ then he’s going down.
Sorry about the rant – it’s a knee jerk reaction. (Or is that just ‘Jerk’ reaction?)
God bless
*** ME ***
Amateur Theologian
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From: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Sent: 21 August 2012 15:08
To: *** ME ***
Subject: RE: Porkies - the 20 minute sermon on why the evangelist is wrong. Seriously wrong.
Thanks for the response – very interesting indeed I like categories A and B very clear, a pretty good attempt by an “Amateur theologian”
I think you may just like Pork – no? [smiley]
I like the idea of pork being compulsory – infact during the Spanish inquisition it was!!
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From: *** ME ***
Sent: 21 August 2012 15:15
To: *** Muslim Colleague ***
Subject: RE: Porkies - the 20 minute sermon on why the evangelist is wrong. Seriously wrong.
(Trying to be brief) – Thanks for your comments. I do like pork but you could make the same arguments regarding blood sausage such as black pudding, which is disgusting, and prawns, which have too many legs. I remember the Spanish inquisition thing on Radio 4.
Now – I really must do some work on the ######## project
Cheers!
*** ME ***
Hydraulics Engineer
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