Book Review: Could You Ever Love Me Again?

Weeks, Gary, and Bob Cretney.

Could You Ever Love Me Again? The Gary Weeks story of forgiveness.

156 pp +32 pp of colour photos.

Gospel Folio Press, Port Colborne, Ontario, 2010



Some of us boomers remember the 1973 hit song,

Could you ever love me again 
If I let you down, 
Disappointed you? 
Could you ever love me again? 
If I ceased to do little things for you, 
Could you ever love me again?
Somewhere, somehow, somewhen, 
If I let you down, girl, 
Could you ever love me again?

Well, this is the story of the man who sang it—Gary Weeks. The book opens with a review of the singing and comedy team Gary and Dave. Gary Weeks and Dave Beckett met in school in grade seven, they went through high school together, they canoed together in Algonquin Park, they attended the University of Western Ontario in London, they each established themselves as pilots and, in the early ‘70s, while still at university, they started performing in clubs and releasing a few recordings. The run-up to their expected music success takes only three pages of the book. In less than ten pages the bubble has broken and Gary is “broke and broken-hearted.”

Was there blame to be placed? Why did the big New York recording firm drop Gary and Dave back there in 1978? Gary tells us that he returned to Montreal and fell into “months of deep discouragement and serious financial problems.” He says, “How did this happen to me?...I was approaching the pinnacle of success…Now, I’m just a nobody.” Looking back after all these years, what does Gary now think of all these events? “The Lord had finally gotten my attention!”

The rest of the book goes back over his life to fill in details— he was raised by a single mother, he was an NHL-quality hockey player with Leaside Lions, he got a “phony” B.A. degree, he piloted for Air Canada.

But Weeks doesn’t leave us there. He tells how his life turned around and he came into full time service for the Lord, first as a youth leader in Toronto, then as a missionary in Eire (for some years in Newcastle West, County Limerick). He tells us of his own conversion to Christ at Pioneer Camp in Muskoka; he tells of his wife, Claudette’s conversion on the island of Fiji, and his mother’s, and even his grandmother’s.

Gary has spoken at Shoreacres Bible Chapel on numerous occasions. For example, I have personal notes from his visit on April 21, 2010: “The characteristics of all the Lord’s healings in the New Testament and thus the tests for all God’s miraculous healings are (1) Was it immediate? (2) Was it obvious? (3) Was it complete? (4) Was it permanent?”

We enjoyed Gary’s story— we felt some of the exhilaration of his successes, we felt the wrench of his failures. We want Gary to continue to live for Christ; we’ve caught the good infection and want to live for Him too.

Gary presented a riddle early in the book and it’s fitting to end with it here: “How can a person born once die twice, and how can a person born twice die once?” Read his book for the answer.

Reviewed by Glenn Wilson 

"Could you ever love me again" c.1973.

“Meditation in a Toolshed”

This is the exact title of an essay by C.S.Lewis, and I often think of it during the Breaking of Bread. He says, “I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.”

“Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”

So, how does this relate to a worship service at Shoreacres Bible Chapel? As we enter the chapel on a Sunday morning, we’re probably greeting one another, commenting on the weather, noticing the warmth or coolness of the auditorium, the comfort of the pews, even the bread and wine on the table at the front. In a sense, this is looking at the beam.

Then the service begins and we notice who gives out a hymn, reads a scripture or prays. Still looking at the beam. Someone may comment on a hymn or a hymn-writer or even the method of our remembrance. Still looking at the beam. Going deeper, someone may show us typology or prophetic fulfillment or the wonders we can expect to enter someday. Still looking.

But what we really want to see is the Son. Isaiah saw Him: “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord!” Isa.6:1 (also John 12:41). Peter, James and John saw Him on that mountain: “This is My Son, whom I love.” Mark 9:7. Stephen saw Him: He “looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” Acts 7:55. John saw Him again, on Patmos: “I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever.” Rev.1:18.

So there is a hope every time we come to a Breaking of Bread or any worship, expressed in a slight paraphrase of what those Greeks said to Philip long ago, “Lord, we would like to see Jesus!” John 12:21.

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Marazion from Saint Michael's Mount, south coast of England.



Book Review: and God said...Science confirms the authority of the Bible.

Abou-Rahme, Farid

and God said… Science confirms the authority of the Bible.

134 pp

John Ritchie Limited, Kilmarnock, Scotland, 1997

As the subtitle indicates, Abou-Rahme has set out to show how science confirms scripture. The four parts of his book are (I) Science and the Bible, (II) Creation or Evolution, (III) Evidence for the Flood and Noah’s Ark, and (IV) Written That You Might Believe. Coming from John Ritchie, as it does, we know this work will be fundamental and evangelical. In fact, I find that Abou-Rahme disbelieves in the “big bang”, believes in creation by the hand of God in six literal days “a few thousand years ago,” believes there was a vapour canopy above the earth before the Great Flood, believes the mountains were formed after the Flood, and believes that men and dinosaurs walked the earth together.

Abou-Rahme has totally confounded “evolution as science” with “evolution as philosophy.” The latter is firmly atheistic and obviously a Christian can have no part of it. But the author seems to have tied salvation to right-understanding of science and to a belief in creation (in six days, etc.). In fact, at several points in his work, he escalates almost to a rant against “false” science, “so-called” science, “betrayal”, and so on. To put it simply, his thinking is “top down.” This means that he has all his doctrines lined up and now he’s trying to fit the facts into them. This is exactly what the Roman Catholic priests did to Galileo— they had the Bible verses that said the earth is firmly established and cannot be moved. “Unfortunately”, Galileo had facts on his side and knew that the earth goes around the sun.

A “bottom-up” approach, on the other hand, would deal with “facts” that the author never considers. For instance, what about the “red shift” and the calculations of star–distances into the millions of light years? And the red shift also indicates the universe is expanding. If we reverse this process, the only conclusion is that at one time “everything” was together, and this would have been the point of the “big bang” (caused by our Creator).

The Bible does not spell out how God made the plants or the animals. Nor does it spell out how He gave life to the first plants and animals, nor how He formed the first humans. In fact, there must have been death before Adam or what would he have eaten (i.e., vegetables and fruit)? What came in with Adam was, sadly, spiritual death.

There are other facts that the author blatantly denies or ignores with little or no evidence but lots of “faith”— the succession of strata and fossils, radiometric dating, application of the laws of thermodynamics, and DNA analysis of Neanderthals.

Abou-Rahme thinks that evolution has God “sit back and wait”, but then I wonder why God should have to hurry. And he never deals with “the appearance of age.” This factor alone can make God out to be a liar. Why not accept the “appearance” of age, as “true” age? Does he think the Americas drifted away from Europe and Africa overnight, or during the Flood?

Let’s leave the creation of the universe for the moment, and move on to the flood. Has he never heard that in the glaciers of both the Arctic and the Antarctic, there are successive layers of snow deposited to the extent of 180,000 years? And in fresh-water lakes in Japan and elsewhere there are undisturbed sediments or varves going back as much as 35,000 years; tree-rings can take us back 12,000 years. These are facts— our job as Christians is to interpret them, not deny them. Because God inspired the Bible and made the worlds, His Word and His Works have to agree— never mind what the scientific term might be— creation, evolution, or whatever.

All this brings to mind Augustine’s remarks, “Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars…it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics.” Abou-Rahme pooh-poohs and even mocks the work of such faithful Christian scientists as Denis Alexander, Francis Collins, Darrel Falk, Deborah & Loren Haarsma, Keith Miller, John Polkinghorne, and Howard Van Till, who are better educated, and deeper thinkers than he. To quote from Denis Alexander, “Personal saving faith in the God who has brought all things into being and continues to sustain them by his powerful Word, is entirely compatible with the Darwinian theory of evolution which, as a matter of fact, provides the paradigm within which all current biological research is carried out. There is nothing intrinsically materialistic, anti-religious or religious about evolution…Christian campaigns against evolution represent a giant “red herring”, distracting believers from far more important pursuits.”

My summary of this book is brief: I’m inclined to suggest that the best service John Ritchie can offer the Christian community is to recall every copy and pulp the lot.

Reviewed by Glenn Wilson

“Gone Fishing” Matthew 17:24-27

Peter was moping in Capernaum because the temple tax collectors wanted their money and he didn’t have it.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jesus. “Take a little break and go fishing.”

So Peter took His advice, went down to the lake, and threw in his line. Imagine the great guffaw from Peter when the first fish he caught had a coin to pay both his and Jesus’ tax!

I can just see Peter coming back up the lane to his house a few hours later—“Lord, guess what I found!”

I’m sure Jesus smiled at Peter.

Pleasing the Lord

You may remember the story, Chariots of Fire, made into a movie in 1981. The young Eric Liddell is racing with his friends in Scotland. After he easily wins, he says, "I believe that God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. When I run, I feel His pleasure."

About a month ago I came across a Bible verse that caught my attention so powerfully that I printed it in letters half-an-inch high across the first pages of my journal— FIND OUT WHAT PLEASES THE LORD! Eph. 5:10.

Then I started to dig—what does please the Lord? For starters, I ran a Bible search on those three words and got seven hits, four OT and three NT. Apparently, “it pleased the Lord to bless Israel.” Num.24:1. “It pleased the Lord to make you [Israel] prosper and increase in number.” Deut.28:63. Then it pleases the Lord to “praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving” (more than sacrificing an ox or a bull). Psa.69:31. “It pleased the Lord…to make his law great and glorious.” Isa.42:21.

The New Testament tells us that we all should be “concerned about the Lord’s affairs”—how we can please the Lord. 1 Cor.7:32. And then, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” Col.3:20.

Let’s enlarge on the whole subject of “pleasing the Lord,” by brainstorming a list of things that help:—

       • direct communication with the Lord (prayer and Bible reading—we speak to Him and He speaks to us.)

      • raising our children to know Him.

      • associating with and helping all God’s people.

      • assembling with God’s people to worship Him.

      • spreading the knowledge and the love of the Lord everywhere we can.

      • striving for personal holiness. Arthur Dixon recently commented, “Do you want to be holy? Read 1 Corinthians 13!”

This list is almost overwhelming, and it’s far from complete. Here are three more scriptures: Psalm 104:34 says, “May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord,” and 2 Tim.2:4 says “No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding officer.” Finally, 2 Cor.5:9 says, “We make it our goal to please him.”

Perhaps no one outside of scripture said it better than C.S. Lewis: “That some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

Summer sunrise, from my balcony

Some thoughts about creation

God created light!—not that He just lit a candle or a star and produced light, but that He created light. ‘God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.’ Gen.1:3. And what powers light, that it can travel for four years from the nearest star? What other thing do we know of that can travel undiminished for that length of time, with no other apparent input of energy? No wonder we are told that “God is light.” 1 John 1:5. What better metaphor could there be in the physical world for a pure, unchanging, fadeless and eternal Being? But this is still only a figure of speech because God is greater than light—He can go where light can never go. Psalm 139:12 tells us, “darkness is as light to you,” and Hebrews 4:13 says, “nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.” Ultimately, Paul tells us, He “lives in unapproachable light.” 1 Tim.6:16.




Mount Saint Michael at high tide and low. South coast of England.

 

Book Review: Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible

Strong, James, ed. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 1999.

For Father’s Day, my children gave me an iPod Touch. One of the first things I put onto it was a Bible from the Olive Tree Company because it included a search function allowing me to find any word in the Bible. I now use it all the time for my daily reading and my thought was that now I don’t need a concordance any more. How wrong I was, as you will see.

James Strong (1822-1894) was Professor of Exegetical Theology at Drew Theological Seminary in New Jersey, when this work was first published in 1890. Although based on the King James Version of the Bible, it is really only a compilation of facts—it’s almost like a huge computer print-out. As a concordance, it allows you to find any word in the Bible. Where it goes beyond a concordance is this— it allows you to see which Hebrew or Greek word was used to give whatever English word you are searching, and shows what other words were used to translate that same Hebrew or Greek word.

For instance, look up the word “pleased,” as in, “it pleased the Lord to bruise him.” Isa.53:10. The Concordance for this reference indicates that the word for “pleased” is Strong’s Number 2654. When we look up that number, we find that the word has been translated in the KJV by a multitude of other words, including (have, take) delight, desire, favour, like, move, be (well) pleased, have pleasure, will, or would. If we look up any of these words, we will find at least one instance where #2654 was the original. It thus becomes impossible for the non-Hebrew speaker to refine the exact meaning. Perhaps the best modern word to use would be, “It was the Lord’s will to crush him.”

When you think that this book is over 1500 triple-columned, fine-print pages from the days before computers, it’s obvious that Strong was primarily the supervisor and editor— he was backed up in the work by over a hundred colleagues. It must have even become a matter of some pride because when the title says “exhaustive”, it means “exhaustive”— even the words “a” and “an” are indexed!

The publisher now tells us that the entire book has been newly typeset, with “a key word comparison chart for six Bible translations. The words of Jesus are shown in red.” Maybe it’s time I bought a new copy!

Reviewed by Glenn Wilson 