Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Across Time and Place: Seeing is Believing

And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.’ When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.
Acts 4:29-31

When [King Ethelbert] among the rest, induced by the unspotted life of these holy men and their delightful promises, which, by many miracles, they proved to be most certain, believed and was baptized, greater numbers began daily to flock together to hear the word and, forsaking their heathen rites. to associate themselves, by believing, to the unity of the Church of Christ.
The Venerable Bede: The Arrival in Kent of the missionaries sent By Gregory the Great (597)

...if the new religion [Christianity], with invocations to the Great Spirit, would prevent [a Lakota/Dakota man's] blankets from being stolen, or the grasshoppers from destroying his corn, or disease from attacking his children... he would join the society [the Christian church]; but he would wait and see how it acted upon others, before he renounced the practices of his fathers.
Bishop William H. Hare, first Bishop of the Dakotas, reported by The New York Times, February 2, 1880.

In South Australia, what struck me were the stories told by our missionaries about the capacity of the Scriptures to cross boundaries and to make new Christians. Some unbelievers even put it about that Christians have put a curse on the Bible to fascinate the unwary! We know that this ‘curse’ is actually the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring Scripture and then illumining us as we read it.
Archbishop Peter Jensen, Anglican Diocese of Sydney

THE Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.
Articles of Religion V

1 comment:

Alice C. Linsley said...

This is a great read! My lips proclaim HIS praise. Such a "curse" as this undoes the curse.