Looking at Christ

Ecclesiastes 1 is a great Easter passage.  4 Generations come and generations go,     but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets,     and hurries back to where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south     and turns to the north; round and round it goes,     ever returning on its course. 7 All streams flow into the sea,     yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from,     there they return again. 8 All things are wearisome,     more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing,     nor the ear its fill of hearing. 9 What has been will be again,     what has been done will be done again;     there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there anything of which one can say,     “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago;     it was here before our time. 11 No one remembers the former generations,   ...

Jesus replied, "Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? (Mark 12:24) I've been coming across a lot of Both-Ands recently. Here's another great pairing.  The danger of knowing the power of God but not the Scriptures . There are branches of the Church which have a strong and living trust in the strong and living God. They truly believe that our God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, for whom nothing is impossible, who can raise the dead and heal eve ry disease and still any storm and part any sea. They know this God not simply from systematic theology but in personal relational knowing - in their experience. They pray with fervency and they see answers and they praise God. Make no mistake, that is a very good, God-honouring posture. The problem is when it is not combined with a knowing of the Scriptures then it is untethered and potentially very dangerous. It is the Scriptures which tell us the passions of God (...