Bridge of Reason

  Isaiah 53 in the Great Isaiah Scroll It is in Acts 8:26-38 we find the story of Philip and the Ethiopian official from the court of Candace. The Spirit directs Philip to ‘go down from Jerusalem to Gaza’ and talk to the man. Here was the last watering hole before the desert on the route from Jerusalem to Egypt, from where he would go on to the ancient Nubian kingdom south of Aswan on the Nile. The man was probably a God-fearer – ‘he had come to Jerusalem to worship.’ He was ‘seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.’ This was unusual for an outsider, a Gentile. He had, nevertheless, been to Jerusalem and would have heard of the crucifixion, of the events at Pentecost, and might have witnessed the beginning of the Christian Diaspora. What would he have seen and heard that would draw him to Isaiah 53? Philip is instructed to join the man’s chariot, which he did and found himself invited to come up and sit with him. What if it had been Charles Russell in that...

  A New Year usually brings a fresh wave of optimism. There appears to be an opportunity for a fresh start, a chance to get your house in order, the possibility of doing something different. Each year people resolve such things as losing weight, giving up smoking, not drinking as much, going to the gym, or learning a new language. None of these are bad in and of themselves, but very few people will continue these activities much beyond February. Why is it that people resolve to try and change themselves? Change Did you hear of the small boy who swallowed a pound coin? When his mother called the doctor to ask of her son’s condition, the doctor said: ‘I’m afraid there has been no change’. There is something deep within us human beings that causes us to be dissatisfied with our lives. We know things are not right and so we seek to change. Realising the truth of this, the American author, Henry David Thoreau said that: ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’, meaning that mos...

  What does ‘a different gospel’ look like? Paul, in his letter to the churches in Galatia, is ‘astonished’ that they had turned so readily to a different gospel (Gal.1:6-9) In a letter to Corinth he writes: If someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.’ (2 Cor.11:4) This different gospel uses the same language, references the same familiar ideas as the genuine. We know that our first task in a discussion is to define terms, find out what someone understands by the language they use. A different Jesus still goes by that name. The Mormon Jesus, however, is not Immanuel, God with us (Mt.1:23) but literally our elder brother from a premortal existence, the brother of Lucifer. The Watchtower Jesus is not our Creator (Col.1:15-19) but another creature, a premortal angel, and ‘the greatest man whoe...