With the Easter season now past, and the ever-present issues of the identity of the historical Jesus in the news, I thought I would tackle an interesting question that I received recently:Revelation 22:16 says, \”I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.\” but then I read in Isaiah 14:12 where it says, \”How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth,you who once laid low the nations!\”

I was always told that the Isaiah passage was talking about the Devil and how he was cast out of heaven so how can Jesus AND the Devil both be the morning star?”); ?>Good question! There are a couple of parts I want to address. Firstly the comment “I was always told that the Isaiah passage was talking about the Devil” - it’s a common teaching in the church but we must not allow present day teaching to confuse our study of a passage of scripture; if we carry a preconceived notion of a passage back into our study, we’ll often not see what a given passage of scripture said to its original audience. The first question to ask when studying is “what did the original author intend to say to his/her intended audience?”

In context, the passage in Isaiah is a message of hope for the nation of Israel (a prophesy of their eventual return from captivity in Babylon) and a message of judgement against the king of Babylon. In its original context this passage is directed at a pagan king puffed up with pride.

The early church looked back at the passage, written about 800 years before their time, and interpreted it in light of what they already knew of the teachings of the New Testament. Notably, 2 Corinthians 11:14 (”And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.“) and Luke 10:18-19 (”And he said to them, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you.’“) It seemed obvious to equate the object of Isaiah 14 with the devil in this light of these New Testament passages. When you read Revelation chapter 12 speak of a dragon sweeping a third of the stars from the sky, and being cast down itself, the already established teaching equating Isaiah 14 with the fall of the devil is a nice aid in interpretting the language of the last book of the bible. This teaching stitches together passages separated from one another by 800 years of which some are written in poetic and figurative language. Its shaky at best.

There are two answers to the overall question “how can Jesus AND the Devil both be the morning star“. Firstly, we must recognize that both of the passages in question use poetic and figurative language to communicate their meaning. In this scenario I would conclude that the term morning star is more of a descriptive term, a role or a title than a proper noun. So rather than being a specific name of Jesus, the devil or a king of Babylon this is a generic term and there’s no point in making the association; just because I greet two of my friends “hey dude” doesnt mean that they are the same person, a singular individual who’s name is “Dude”.

The second answer to the question rests (again) on the use of language. We have a span of 800 years represented in the question asked. Languages change over time (for a nice description of this, see entries on Semantic change and Semantic drift in Wikipedia). For example, in the time of William Shakespeare (a mere 400 years ago), the term “gay” meant happy or colourful whereas today it’s either used as a derogatory adjective by some groups or more widely used as a synonym of “homosexual”. Even if “morning star” was a proper noun in Isaiah’s time, 800 years of semantic drift means it’s not possible to equate it to anything when you read the book of Revelation. Each instance needs to stand alone and be interpretted alone.

I hope that helps to clear up any confusion! Questions relating to this topic, or any other, would be more than welcome - drop me an email or leave me a comment!

In my search for some other material, I ran across a great quote from Søren Kierkegaard (a Lutheran minister and widely seen as the father of Existentialism)The present age is essentially a sensible, reflecting age, devoid of passion, flaring up in superficial, short-lived enthusiasm and prudentially relaxing in indolence … whereas a passionate age accelerates, raises up, and overthrows, elevates and debases, a reflective apathetic age does the opposite, it stifles and impedes, it levels. In antiquity the individual in the crowd had no significance whatsoever; the man of excellence stood for them all. The trend today is in the direction of mathematical equality, so that in all classes about so and so many uniformly make one individual…. For leveling to take place, a phantom must first be raised, the spirit of leveling, a monstrous abstraction, an all-encompassing something that is nothing, a mirage - and this phantom is the public … The present age is essentially a sensible age, devoid of passion and therefore it has nullified the principle of contradiction.”

His comment in there “The trend today is in the direction of mathematical equality, so that in all classes about so and so many uniformly make one individual” nails fairly precisely what I see happening in society today.

File these items under “I kid you not” - cover versions of songs that should never have been made. I’ve included links to the album they come from for two reasons: (1) as proof that they truly exist and (2) in most cases Amazon.com has a sample of the song so you can hear how amazingly bad these are. Dont blame me if your ears bleed after listening to a few of these travesties. What’s worse is that I believe every one of them is available for $0.99 on Apple’s iTunes music store.

• Pat Boone - Stairway to Heaven
  (from “In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy“)
• William Shatner - Mr. Tambourine Man
  (from “Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner“)
• Leonard Nimoy - If I had a hammer
  (from “Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner“)
• Charlie Daniels Band - Layla
  (from “The Ultimate Charlie Daniels Band“)
• Ranga Pae - Purple Haze
  (from “Full Circle“)
• William Hung - We are the champions
  (from “Inspiration“)
• The Atomic Harvesters - You Give Love a Bad Name
  (from “Welcome To Lounge Country“)
• The Brady Bunch - American Pie
  (from “Meet the Brady Bunch“)
• Hayseed Dixie - Back In Black
  (from “A Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC“)
• Gene Simmons - When You Wish Upon A Star
  (from “Gene Simmons“)
• Vienna Boys Choir - All You Need Is Love
  (from “Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop“)
• Tritons - (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
  (from “Satisfaction By Tritons“)

Please leave me comments if there are other truly terrible covers out there…

Thinking about Reading Rock Festival put me in mind of some other stuff that happened in Reading. I remember visiting my family and running into a group of people who’d parked a double-decker bus next to a park in the middle of town. This park had a reputation as a place where druggies hung out (if you decided to sit under a tree in the summer, it was always best to make sure you didnt sit down on a discarded drug needle!)Evangelism on wheels
Use of a bus as a means of Christian outreach
© Evangelicals Now - November 1997

These buses have been to so many different venues, such as a New Age travellers’ site where the local church involved did get permission to park, a car boot sale, outside Anfield Park Stadium during Euro ‘96 or for a children’s holiday Bible club, with thousands of people coming on board and hearing the gospel, for example over 3,000 primary school children have visited the Liverpool bus in just one year. Through all this Christians have been able to take the message of the Christian gospel to people where they are, rather than expecting people to walk through the doors of their church buildings.The article mentions that Carey Baptist Church in Reading managed a bus. This was the bunch of people that I managed to get involved with - I returned several times to help with their efforts to share the good news of Jesus with people in the park and around the centre of town. I was invited to be part of their outreach to the Rock Festival in 1991 - the year that “Sisters of Mercy” was headlining.

A half-dozen church people arrived on the festival grounds, outnumbered at least 7,500 to 1 by rock fans. With numbers like that, fans felt “safe” and were incredibly open in sharing their beliefs with us! I know many church-goers would be intimidated but I have to admit that I felt truly alive there. We’d taken the walls off the church and gone where the people were rather than waiting for them to come to us. We were being obedient to what Jesus commanded in Matthew 28:18-20:Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”We had gone and it was good. Yes, we saw every tattoo and piercing known to man while we were there. Yes, people were drinking heavily. Yes, (to so many things that run counter to the culture of the church) but YES we were following the example of Jesus too.As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

I am so glad that today I am part of a church with an outward focus, a church with a vision to plant other churches and reach out to those who dont yet know Jesus (and to do it on their terms, on their ‘turf’, not forcing folks into the church). The object lesson learned on the Rock Festival grounds in 1991 are still with me today … they will be with me for life. I cant avoid the call: Go into “the world” and make disciples. Who wants to come along with me for the ride? I can promise it’ll probably be pretty wild!

Reading Rock Festival - August 25-27^th 2006

I just saw news online that Pearl Jam has been confirmed as one of the headline bands at the annual Reading Rock Festival. See the official festival page for more details.

Back in the autumn of 1988 my parents moved to Reading. I would travel from the University of Surrey (in Guildford) up to visit them - a journey of about an hour. They’ve since moved out of Reading but our habit of visiting the town remained firmly in place - we’d feel bored with the same old shops in Guildford and take an afternoon trip up the Reading. (not to mention the multi-screen cinema in Bracknell that would take us roughly half-way to Reading anyhow).

One time when we were visiting we thought, “Wow, Reading town centre looks way more busy than usual, whats going on?” and then we realized - it was the August bank holiday which falls at the end of August. The town had been invaded by about 40,000 rock festival goers and our quiet walk around town turned into a combination game of “dodge the drunk” and “spot who doesnt have the bodyart”. We swore and declared (every year) “next year, we’ll avoid rock festival weekend” and the very next year we were back in Reading for the August bank holiday. We took extreme steps in May of 1998 to avoid going to Reading for the weekend - we moved to the USA!

So, good luck all visitors to Reading this year. It’s estimated that about 100,000 rock fans will converge on the town as the huge Glastonbury festival isnt going to occur this year. Im sure the end of August would be a great time to find somewhere else to be!

Guilt-Free Chocolate Fudge Banana Cake

Ingredients

• 1 box Betty Crocker “Triple Chocolate Fudge” mix
• 5 Eggs
• 4 Bananas
• 2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1/3 Cup Vegetable Oil

Method

• Pre-heat oven to 350°F
• Grease a pair of 8 inch square cake pans
• Separate eggs - add the whites to mixing bowl and throw away the cholesterol laden yolks
• Peel and puree the bananas (if you dont have a blender, mash them into a pulp with a fork) and add to mixing bowl
• Add oil and baking powder and Betty Crocker cake mix to the mixing bowl
• Whisk on slow speed on until blended, then a few minutes on high speed thereafter
• Split the mixture between the two cake pans
• Bake for about 35-40 minutes (a toothpick put in the cake will come out clean when the cake is done)
• Allow cakes to cool in their pans for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool fully.