“Jesus is like Moses”

Who was the first preacher of the good news after it became fact,

that is, after the crucifixion and the resurrection? Of course, it was Jesus Himself. On the road to Emmaus, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” Luke 24:27. Later, Peter, in the temple, quoted Moses: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you.” Acts 3:22 (quoting Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15).

Later still, Stephen, in his speech to the Sanhedrin, recounted Israel’s history then said about Moses, “This is the same Moses whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself.” “This is that Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will send you a prophet like me from your own people.’ ” Acts 7:35,37.

This verse is the key—“a prophet like me!” There are dozens of prophecies and clear parallels with Moses, but Scripture goes much deeper than simply spelling out the details for readers to itemize and check off their lists. The story of Jesus is built right into the fabric of Scripture and the very life of Moses is a prophecy of Christ, not necessarily in the details but in the parallels and contrasts.

To get us started, here are a few parallels:

They both came under the sentence of death in infancy. You remember the children of Israel in Egypt. God blessed their families and the population grew until they became a threat to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. The king of Egypt told the Hebrew midwives, “if it is a boy, kill him.” Ex.1:16. He got even more specific: “Every boy that is born, you must throw into the Nile.” Ex.1:22. And what is the most famous story of Jesus, right after His birth? Probably Herod’s order to kill! “Kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old or under.” Mt.2:16.

They both interceded for their people. The Israelites in the wilderness had tempted God once too often so He decided to wipe them out: “I may destroy them…and I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.” Deut.9:14. Moses turned down God’s offer! “Please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” Ex.32:32. Now we turn to our Lord, in John 17, especially verse 24. “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am.” He prayed for all His people: He wouldn’t give up any of us and He eventually “became obedient unto death— even death on a cross!” Phil.2:8.

They both showed the glory of God. Moses went up Mount Sinai and talked with God face to face. Deut.34:10. When he came back, his face shone to such a degree that he had to wear a veil to hide the fading of God’s glory in himself. Ex.34:29,35. On the other hand, we get a glimpse of the Lord’s glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. Lk.9:29. “As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.” Then Paul tells us that “God…hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 2 Cor.4:6. Moses’ glory was reflected, but Jesus’ glory is His own and will never fade. In a sense God’s glory is reflected and “bounces off” Moses but it emanates from Jesus because that is His nature.

When we compare Christ’s life to Moses’, we find parallels that no impostor could ever match. The amazing thing is that they aren’t spelled out in advance— we see them only as we look back. In every instance we have to conclude, as the book of Hebrews does, “Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses.” Heb.3:3.

Next time we will look at a few contrasts. In the meantime, here are two more examples to think about:

• The people wanted to stone them both. Ex. 17:4; Jn.8:59.

• They were both cradled in very different and unusual places. Ex.2:3; Luke 2:12. 

Book Review: What’s So Great About Christianity

D’Souza, Dinesh.

What’s So Great About Christianity.

348 pp

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois, 2008

There are at least two important things to note about this book and its author. First, there is no question mark in the title— it is answers, not questions. Second, D’Souza has written seven or eight other books, some of which could almost be described as politically sensationalist, so our first approach is with some caution. Examples of his work: The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, The Roots of Obama's Rage, and articles like The Self Esteem Hoax, and Two Cheers for Colonialism.

D’Souza was raised in India, as a Catholic, but now describes himself as an evangelical Christian. In 1988 he served as an advisor on domestic policy in Ronald Reagan’s White House. Over the years D’Souza has appeared on CNN, Glenn Beck, ABC’s Nightline, and CBS’s Face the Nation, and has debated such noted atheists as Daniel Dennett, Peter Singer, and Christopher Hitchens.

When we turn to D’Souza’s own words, we are reassured by the apparent sincerity and forthrightness of his message. For instance, this book is dedicated: “For Bruce Schooley, stricken with cancer, who has found in Jesus Christ a cure for death.” And he shows to my satisfaction that, “As space and time are within the universe, the creator is outside space and time, which is to say, eternal.” In fact, “the entire universe with all its laws appears to be a conspiracy to produce, well, us.”

D’Souza has divided his book into eight parts, covering such subjects as “The Future of Christianity”, “Christianity and Science”, “Christianity and Philosophy”, “Christianity and Suffering”, and finally “Christianity and You.” Page three presents the Scriptural challenge to believers, of 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer…” D’Souza believes that, “Instead of engaging this secular world, most Christians have taken the easy way out. They have retreated into a Christian subculture…But a group of prominent atheists… has launched a powerful public attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular; they have no interest in being nice. A new set of anti-religious books— The God Delusion, The End of Faith, God Is Not Great, and so on— now shapes public debate.”

This book is immensely wide-ranging— its specific subject-matter is truly “Christianity.” There are statistics on the global Church (in not too many years, China may be the country with the largest Christian population); statistics on missionary effort (Britain has more than 250 churches run by foreigners, typically preachers from developing nations); statistics on the scientific illiteracy of young people; dozens of quotations of the subversive intentions of the prominent atheists mentioned earlier; and on and on.

Part II switches to history and shows how Christianity is “the spiritual basis of limited government.” Christianity is also the basis of “our culture’s powerful emphasis on compassion, on helping the needy, and on alleviating distress.” In contrast, he quotes the Chinese proverb, “the tears of strangers are only water.”

D’Souza looks at “the theological roots of science”, then at what he calls “the invention of invention”, then at “a universe with a beginning” and “man’s special place in creation.” He progresses to “the limits of reason”, “why miracles are possible”, and “the reasonableness of faith.” Many parts of this book are truly a mental feast. Quotations, statistics, arguments pile up so quickly that we often have to re-read and muse.

The climax of the entire work is Chapter 25: “Jesus Among Other Gods: The Uniqueness of Christianity.” For an unbeliever or a seeker, this is where D’Souza finally shows his hand. This is where he reaches the heart of the matter: “The propensity to sin is in man’s nature…The wages of sin is death… It is impossible to atone for one’s past sins…God decided to pay the price himself for human sin…Hell is where God is eternally absent… when every earthly hope of redemption has failed…it is at this point that God’s hand reaches out to us, steady and sure. All we have to do is take it.”

On the very last page, D’Souza presents this thesis, “Ultimately we are called not only to happiness and goodness but also to holiness…Yet holiness is not something we do for God. It is something we do with God. We couldn’t do it without Him.” We want that holiness too; and, even more intensely, we concur with D’Souza’s very last line: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus. We are ready.”

Reviewed by Glenn Wilson 

God Created Time!



Fountain at Castle of Chillon, Switzerland



Stephen Hawking (“widely regarded as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein”) in his book A Brief History of Time mentions that philosophers like Immanuel Kant made the “unspoken assumption that time continues back forever.” When St. Augustine was asked, “What did God do before He created the universe?” he replied that “time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe.”

Not to belabour the subject of scientific views of “time”, the September issue of Scientific American had for its cover the words “the end.” And the period at the end was important! Most articles dealt with some aspect of time from its assumed beginning at the “Big Bang”. Then a lead article in this highly scientific and sophisticated (not to say atheistic) magazine posed the question, “Could time end?”

What is this pre-eminent factor that God has created in our lives? It’s almost like a sixth sense, isn’t it? If we lost all sense of touch, hearing, sight, smell and taste, we would still be aware of the passage of time. The world, and we Christian believers too, would often like to slow down or stop the passage of time. C.S.Lewis expresses some of our longings about time:

“This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,

        Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

“This time they will not lead you round and back

        To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

“This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

        We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.”

But enough of man’s thoughts. Let’s get down to Scripture. In my daily reading, I’ve just come through John 17, with our Lord’s references to the glory He had with the Father “before the world began” and to the love the Father had for Him “before the creation of the world.” (vv.5,24) Expanding on this, the Apostle Paul refers to the glory God has destined for us since “before time began” 1 Cor.2:7; to the grace “given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time”; and to the hope of eternal life which God promised “before the beginning of time.” 2 Tim.1:9 and Titus 1:2. So we must conclude, with Augustine, that God is outside of time.

Our existence relative to the life of God is probably something we will never get our heads around. C.S.Lewis again has an analogy that helps. He supposes an author writing a story. The time-line of the story is completely independent of the author’s time-line. A character in the story may be preparing a cup of tea when the author’s phone rings. He answers the phone, then goes out to lunch. Two hours later he may sit down at his computer and finish preparing the cup of tea in his story. In fact, he can interject himself anywhere in his story. Perhaps God is like that— He is outside our story, can see all details of our story, past, present, and future, and can put Himself anywhere in our story while knowing all of its future as well.

Deep stuff! Creation is complex. Time is complex. But, “by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” Heb. 11:3 It seems that “time” is part of that creation.

And could time end? For spiritual beings with OUR Lord as Saviour? Never.





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.

 



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.