Tim Chester and Mike Reeves on Lifted

Tim Chester and Michael Reeves have both made comments on Lifted today.

Tim Chester offers the following review:

I want to commend a new book spelling out the practical implications of the resurrection. Evangelicals rightly emphasis the centrality of the cross. But one unhappy by-product of this focus can be a neglect of the resurrection which becomes merely an affirmation of the finished work of the cross. Allberry shows us the saving significance of the resurrection and its practical impact on our lives. (He does this, thankfully, without the crass attempt to associate different traditions with different moments in the Christ-event as if our soteriological focus was a matter of preference). The main chapters cover (1) Assurance; (2) Transformation; (3) Hope; and (4) Mission. The book is short, punchy, engaging – a great book to give to others. It’s popular theology without compromising the theology.

Mike Reeves has offered this commendation:

Exactly what we need: joy-giving gospel truth, served up garden-fresh. Read and rejoice!

Here’s hoping neither of these were April Fools. (On which this was the best gag of the day by far.)

Interview on Premier Christian Radio

For anyone who’s interested, I’m going to be on the radio this afternoon – chatting about the resurrection with the good folks at Premier Christian Radio on their Premier Drive show. I’ll be on between 3:15 and 3:30pm.

http://www.premierradio.org.uk/shows/weekday/premierdrive

Raised with Christ

It is always a joy to meet someone who is a kindred spirit in an area of importance, and so it has been a pleasure getting to know Adrian Warnock over the past year or so. Adrian is on the leadership team of Jubilee Church (New Frontiers) in Enfield and is one of the UK’s leading evangelical bloggers. Each of us, it transpires, had independently come to feel burdened that the evangelical world had been somewhat neglecting the resurrection. And each of us, again independently, was in the process of putting pen to paper. We quickly became acquainted with each other’s work – emailing drafts back and forth. In the process it emerged that we were writing quite different, though complementary, books. If mine is the starter, his is the main!

Raised with Christ is what the publishers like to call a ‘mid-level’ book: neither introductory nor full-blown academic. If you are familiar with Adrian’s blog his writing style in RWC will be of no surprise to you – accessible and thought-provoking. Adrian writes not as the expert but fellow-traveller. This is not a book that requires a dictionary in one hand and flask of coffee in the other. Yet it doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the importance of the resurrection.

In the opening sections Adrian surveys some of the factors that might account for our neglect of the resurrection in recent years, takes us through the events surrounding it and provides something of a historical apologetic for belief in the resurrection today. All this is helpful and of interest, but the real value of the book is in the chapters that follow, and which unpack the book’s subtitle – Why the resurrection changes everything. These cover implications of the resurrection for Christian living, revival, prayer, Bible-reading, mission and the physical world.

But the stand-out chapter is ‘Raised for our Justification’. Warnock’s purpose is clear: to steer us from the danger of making the resurrection ‘a mere auxiliary to the cross. And nor is this concern novel. Throughout the chapter (and throughout the book) Adrian peppers his arguments with quotations from some of the great ones – Calvin, Spurgeon, Edwards, Lloyd-Jones. It is in this wider historical context, and in comparison to some of these thinkers, that we can see just how much we have let the resurrection slip in our thinking and preaching. As I’ve said elsewhere, if your view of what Jesus accomplished on the cross doesn’t require him to have been raised again then you are not preaching the apostolic message of the cross. And, it turns out, you’re out of kilter with the greater part of church history.

The absence of much literature on this issue means that many will pounce on this book – and so they should. (I’m on my second reading already.) It is an excellent book on a much-neglected subject.

We Christians need to learn again to be Easter people, and Adrian has done us all a great service in producing this book.

The West Wing / Lifted challenge!

Now here’s a test for eagle-eyed readers who happen to like The West Wing.

The West Wing, as we all know, is the single greatest television series yet made. My favourite episode comes in Season 2: “Somebody’s Going to Emergency; Somebody’s Going to Jail”. From the opening dawn shot, through Don Henley’s crooning, to Cartographers for Social Justice, heartache for Sam and Toby’s science of listener attention: it is all that makes TWW a pleasure to watch.

There is a homage to this episode in the first 50 pages of Lifted. Can you find it?

(Don’t give it away in the comments section!)

When good becomes dreadful

I’m very much enjoying C S Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy, not least for the insight which he peppers throughout.

One section early on in the book is a stand-out. Our narrator, till this point mildly skeptical as to their existence, finds himself suddenly in the presence of an angelic eldil.

My fear was now of another kind. I felt sure that the creature was what we call ‘good’, but I wasn’t sure whether I liked ‘goodness’ so much as I had supposed. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it is also dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can’t eat, and home the very place you can’t live, and your very comforter the very person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.

One is reminded of the prophet Isaiah’s encounter with God in the Temple in Jerusalem. Before the presence of his holy God Isaiah could not bask in wonder but cry out in fear. Not ‘Wow!’ but ‘Woe!’.

Warnie reviews Lifted

Fellow resurrection author, omni-blogger and great buddy Adrian Warnock has reviewed Lifted.

As he mentions in the course of his review, Adrian and I got to know each other well through the process of writing on the same theme. I hope to have a review of his excellent book Raised with Christ posted in the next day or two – I’m nearly done reading it through for the second time!

Another review was also recently posted by Dan Green, pastor of Banstead Community Church, over at blogofdan.

10ofthose.com to launch new Carson book with exclusive offer

From the good folk at 10ofthose:-

10ofThose are pleased to announce that they will launch Don Carson’s newest book ‘From the Resurrection to His Return: Living in the last days’ (published by Christian Focus) on March 18th – with an exclusive offer of 35% off for 48 hours only!

This offer will be available on www.10ofThose.com for 48 hours, from 00:01 on the 18th until 23:59 on the 19th March.

This short, accessible book is designed for the whole church. In it, Carson gives wise council to the church, imploring them to avoid false teaching and instead to seek good mentors, based on Paul’s teaching in 2 Timothy 3.

It is outstanding; a must for every believer, no matter what age or level of understanding. The powerful ‘watch me’ illustration (found on page 28) alone makes this book worth buying.

The book will be available for purchase here: http://www.10ofthose.com/shop/index.php?act=view&pid=870

Pre-orders are available now.

The cross without the resurrection: punishment that never becomes atonement

Michael Jensen’s column over at SydneyAnglicans is always worth a read. This week he strikes a real chord on the resurrection:

A theology of the cross with no resurrection is a gospel of condemnation without forgiveness, of punishment that never becomes atonement, of a human Jesus but not a divine saviour, of a world condemned and abandoned but never redeemed and transformed.

And it didn’t stop there: the resurrection of Jesus in the body supplies the ground from which the NT writers can claim that God has not abandoned, but rather reclaimed the created order from the effects of sin and death, and from the monstrous regimes that assert their power in the world in the present time.

All the ho-humming and tut-tutting by liberal theologians about the resurrection as an internal, personal experience of faith makes the gospel into nothing more than a warm inner glow. But that is not the New Testament gospel. The gospel of the apostles is the declaration of the present rule of the Son of God with power and in the flesh.

Take the Resurrection Test

Here are a couple of quick tests to see if the resurrection has the right place in your thinking:

1. If you’ve ever used the gospel outline ’2 Ways to Live’, what do you say when you get to box 5? Do you have a message, or do you just pass over this box as being no more than ‘the next bit of the story’?

The resurrection is not just a matter of chronology (‘and then he rose again’). It is a matter of theology (‘and then he rose again and this is what it means‘).

2. Does your understanding of what Jesus accomplished on the cross require him to have been raised?

Does your version of the cross require a resurrection? If Jesus could have accomplished all you believe he did without rising again, you are not preaching the apostolic message of the cross. The cross of the apostles was an empty cross, and no resurrection means no salvation:

• ‘He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification.’ Rom. 4:25

• ‘If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.’ 1 Cor. 15:17

On maximizing an All-You-Can-Eat buffet

So the other matter that has been absorbing me during the week in Dundee has been how you make the most of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Probably the biggest-attended event of the mission week was an evening at Jimmy Chung’s – a full Chinese buffet with a talk from me based on 1 Timothy 1:15. (If you’re wondering how to make a connection from such a context to that verse – well, you really have to WANT to see it!) As well as many stimulating conversations and questions that arose out of the talk, I was left pondering this: how do you get your money’s-worth out of these sorts of places? I offer the following suggestions:

1. Don’t eat too much, and don’t eat too little in the run-up. You obviously don’t want to go into the pray already weighed down from a large meal, but you also need to avoid the temptation of eat hardly anything as well. Going in having skipped lunch means your shrunk stomach will fill that much quicker.

2. Do some reconnaissance. Before wading in and loading up willy-nilly, take an exploratory tour of all that’s on offer and start to plan a little. Worth having checked what all the mains (and desserts) are before starting to assault the crispy duck.

3. Less is more. Avoid the temptation to slap as much of everything as you can on the plate. There is lots of time so pace yourself. It’s a marathon not a sprint. I find it best to limit myself to three foodstuffs per plate. Too many flavors on one plate leads to the culinary equivalent of white noise. Three at a time (plus rice) is plenty.

4. Ditch dessert. Chinese food has never been about dessert. Skip it. Max on the mains. Have a biscuit when you get home if you need something sweet. Have as much of the proper stuff as you can.

Any other wisdom?