I read a book review during the week about what it means that we share 98 per cent of our DNA with apes. Are we just bigger badder animals? Are we fundamentally different? And what does it do for our ethics? These are questions that confront us all the time. Should the courts in Western Australia have ruled that a paralyzed man has the right to starve himself to death? Should the Australian parliament pass laws totally re-defining marriage to allow homosexual marriage in our country?

Over the next few weeks I want to post some sections from an old Briefing article by Peter Jensen on what it means to be human. This week's section is a little long, but I felt it would do too much damage not to post it in full. The coming weeks will be shorter. I hope that it will stimulate us to keep thinking biblically about what it means to be human.

More »

5 Comments »

Last week my children made an exciting discovery: high up in the branches of the gum tree in the back yard of the house next door, a magpie was building a nest. For three days, we were transfixed, taking it in turns to look through the binoculars and watch him flying up with tiny sticks, one at a time, carefully adding them to the nest.

On the fourth day, it was windy, and we craned our necks, anxiously watching the upper branches of the gum tree. Would the nest survive? Had this little magpie chosen the wisest place to build a home for his family? We talked about how sad it would be for the poor bird if all his hard work was lost in a sudden gust of wind.

More »

3 Comments »

Ever since I first came into contact with the rich fool of Luke 12, I've been intrigued by the stupidities of his personality. He is a man so rich that he can even afford to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. This is a strange piece of non-thriftiness that a friend from a farming background assured me is still not unknown in rural Australia—something which I witnessed, in modified English form, for myself just the other day. (Well okay, watching Grand Designs on the telly may not count as ‘witnessing’, but let's just say that there are enough rich fools about for any of us to recognize the type.)

More »

1 Comment »

History. We might be standing in it, but which direction are we looking?

The Terminator told us he would be back, but the latest version disappointed fans because the Governor of California was reduced to a Computer Animated bit-part. For the Australian, T4 was rescued somewhat by the presence of our own Sam Worthington—but only just!

Even though it struggles a bit with the inherent fatalism of a future that seems to march inevitably towards the present, no matter what is done in the present, a major theme of this series of movies now stretching across a quarter of a century is that the future is not fixed; fate is what you make.

More »

Add Comment »

This is the final instalment in my series of posts introducing the range of new Matthias Media resources that have just arrived in. And today's takes a bit of explaining. Here goes...

One of the issues we've grappled with for many years at Matthias Media relates to our monthly magazine, The Briefing. Each year, writers and editors pour countless hours of thought and hard work into putting together helpful magazine-length articles on a wide range of important topics. The people who happen to be subscribing to The Briefing at that time get the benefit of reading that article. But once it is published, that's pretty much it; it's unlikely to see the light of day again or be read by anyone else.

Frankly, magazine publishing often feels a bit ‘vapour-ish’ in an Ecclesiastes kind of a way: here one month, gone the next. Which is a shame, because the articles we publish are extremely useful material.

More »

2 Comments »

Here's the fifth of ten propositions about church life and ministry (taken from the forthcoming Matthias Media title, The Trellis and the Vine). The others have been:

1. Our goal is to make disciples not church members.
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward.
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful speaking of God's word.
4. All ministry has the goal of nurturing disciples, not just one-to-one discipling or mentoring.
5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker ...

More »

3 Comments »

The next in my series of posts introducing some of our recent releases at Matthias Media is about a tract called It's Time to Come Home.

Let me start by pinching some comments Tony made recently in The Briefing:

With a little reflection, perhaps the continued popularity of tracts is not so surprising. They might not mount mind-blowing theological arguments, or be masterpieces of literature. They might not be trendy or on the cutting edge of digital culture. But they are short. They are cheap. They are easy to buy and give away. And most of all, if you want to start a conversation with someone—or continue a conversation that's been going on for some time—they are hard to beat.

More »

1 Comment »

What's the most dangerous excuse for avoiding a conference?

I reckon it's the one that says, “I'm not going to that conference because I've heard what they're going to say before”.

Maybe you don't go because because the particular conference speakers are not going to say anything new! But I go because the conference speakers are not saying anything new!

More »

10 Comments »

The Everlasting God by Broughton Knox is another ‘new’ book that has just become available through Matthias Media. But it's not really new; it's a new edition of a book that was first published more than 25 years ago.

I suppose it's no guarantee these days of a book's merit that it is still in print more than a quarter of a century after it was first published. But in this particular case, it certainly is.

Back in 2006, we included The Everlasting God in Volume 1 of our Collected Works of D Broughton Knox. But as stock of that volume starts to dwindle, we felt it was time to bring out a new and cheaper edition of The Everlasting God on its own again—an edition for a new generation of Christians who want to better understand the character and attributes of the everlasting God.

Here are four reasons to buy this book:

1. You've never owned or read it before. You should read it; it'll do you a power of good.
2. You've lost or given away your copy. Which probably means you haven't read it for some time. Get another copy and read it again. It's one of those books that repays a second, third or even annual reading.
3. Your old copy doesn't have the extensive Bible referencing that we added to the text of Dr Knox's writing back in 2006. Get yourself a copy of this new edition and read it again, looking up each of the Scriptures that undergird so much of what Broughton wrote.
4. You know someone who needs to grow in their understanding of who God is. (Anyone come to mind?)

You can download the contents page and first chapter for free from the The Everlasting God page in the Matthias Media online store.

Add Comment »

The next of the new resources I want to share with you is By God's Word (Volume 2).

I suspect the majority of Sola Panel readers would be familiar with the name and Bible teaching ministry of Phillip Jensen. For those of you who don't know, Phillip is the person who started Matthias Media some 21 years ago. (You can learn more about Phillip at his website).

To be quite frank, I don't think I could name anybody who knows, understands, and loves God's word more than Phillip. Nor can I think of anybody as gifted at teaching it and applying it to life.

More »

Add Comment »