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It has been said that "of the intellectuals who transmitted and adapted the Renaissance spirit to northern Europe, Erasmus (1466-1536) was the greatest. Taken together, his writings reflect a rare combination of practical Christian piety, biblical and patristic scholarship, and broad Humanistic learning" (Robert Ellis, Great Lives from History: The Renaissance & Early Modern Era, edited by Christina J. Moose, Salem Press, 2005, 314). Years before the Protestant Reformation, Erasmus clearly stated "his dismay at the excesses of an increasingly worldly and corrupt" Roman Catholic Church "and urged church leaders to return to Christian essentials" (Ellis, 317, my emphasis). In this light some church historians argue Erasmus "sparked" the Protestant Reformation through his writings. There is much truth to this line of thinking. However, while Erasmus was critical of the Church (Roman Catholicism) on many points, he could not bring himself to join the Protestant Reformation.
Rather, Erasmus sought to reform Catholicism from within, rather than encouraging yet another distinct branch of the church in addition to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, which had officially separated in 1054. In addition to preferring reform from within, Erasmus preferred the Roman Catholic doctrine of free will, which many reformers rejected, including both Martin Luther and John Calvin, Calvin's entire system of doctrine being oriented around the doctrine of predestination, and Luther having much to say about the "bondage of the will." The Reformers generally held that God's election of believers was a reality prior to and separate from any particular person coming to faith in Christ. Indeed, Luther's famous De Servo Arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will, 1525), was written in reply to Erasmus' De Libero Arbitrio Diatribe Sive Collatio (On Free Will), which had appeared just the year before in 1524. Erasmus' On Free Will was his first public criticism of Luther's ideas and where he saw them leading. For many years prior to this, Erasmus had Bulletin of Evangelical Ministries, January 2012, page 3. been wary of Luther's teaching concerning free will and predestination.
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Armageddon is mentioned in only one passage in the New Testament: Revelation 16:16. The NIV translates this verse as, "Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called 'Armageddon.'" The New English Translation (NET) renders the same verse this way: "Now the spirits gathered the kings and their armies to the place that is called Armageddon in Hebrew." In the translation notes which accompany the NET, the editors explain their use of "spirits" instead of "they" is based on the referent (the demonic spirits) found in verse 14, and is used simply for clarity. The use of "armies," which the NIV does not mention, the NET editors explain they also use for the purpose of clarity, but they also observe that the "armies" of the referent (the kings back in verse 14) is implied and not actually represented in Revelation 16:16.
Armageddon is interpreted quite differently by different people and groups. Even conservative, evangelical Christians do not agree on the nature of Armageddon, some saying it is a spiritual battle, others arguing it will be a literal battle, and yet others who say there will actually be no battle, just the gathering or preparation for an end-time battle. In addition to the variety of Christian interpretations of Armageddon, of which there exist an amazing variety, Jews, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, those of the Bahá'i faith, and adherents of many other groups each have their interpretations and beliefs, usually ranging from a literal battle or a near-battle (gathering) to the culmination of a symbolic or spiritual battle.
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Pictured at left is Oxford University Press' Quartercentenary Edition of the King James Bible. In 2010 and 2011 many publishers decided it would be worthwhile to offer - to mark the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible - a special anniversary edition of this unique English version. During this year's celebration, many people have been surprised to learn, among other things, that the famous King James Version of the Bible, first published in 1611, (1) included the Apocrypha, which most Protestants today, despite their love of the KJV, do not include in their Bibles, as do Catholics; (2) was never really "authorized" by King James, despite its being popularly referred to in England, and later America, as the "Authorized Version;" (3) was published primarily for Anglicans, who technically speaking are not true Protestants, and, at the time, had no great love for the Protestant Reformation, much less the Roman Catholic Church, from which Anglicanism originated and separated (in 1534) during the reign of King Henry VIII in England (who reigned from 1509-1547). However, I should add here that the Church of England, or Anglicanism, considers its heritage to date back to St. Augustine of Canterbury's mission to England in 597, a heritage which includes a lengthy and large chunk of the work of Catholic missionaries and British Catholic church history.
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After finally completing a vocational doctorate (D.Min.) in preaching and worship at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1982, although not in the pastorate at the time, I returned to EMOS (Evangelical Ministries of Sylvania, Inc.) and spent quite some time developing a basic worship service which began with preparation, moved to praise, then prayer, followed by presentation and proclamation. Depending on the church, the "presentation" portion of the service included the offering, but it could also include the sacraments or ordinances of baptism and/or the Lord's Supper, as in a real sense, in the context of worship, those who come to be baptized are "presenting" themselves to the church and Lord. Similarly, in observing the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion, believers are presenting themselves afresh to the Lord, having allowed the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and minds for any unconfessed sin that might prevent us from fully identifying with the risen Christ, the memory of whose death on the cross we remember as being the cost He willingly and graciously paid for our sins and alienation from Him.
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Anyone who has ever viewed the dark gray chunk of granite known as the Rosetta Stone, or a replica of it, usually remembers this artifact, which is the mostvisited object housed in the British Museum in London, England. The Rosetta Stone served as the key to the decipherment and the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was the French scholar Jean-François Champollion who solved the mystery of hieroglyphs in the 1820s. The stone was discovered years earlier, in 1799, near the Egyptian port of el-Rashid by troops attached to Napoleon who were working nearby at Fort St. Julien, also known as Rosetta. The stone dates back to 196 B.C. and the Ptolemaic Period in Egypt. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing had been a mystery for many centuries, even to native Egyptians, as the script had not been used in Egypt since the 4th century A.D.
Although we can generally refer to this stone as being dark gray granite, the black rock is more specifically termed granodiorite. The Rosetta Stone was originally part of a larger stone, a stele or pillar that scholars believe stood about two meters high. The section that remains, as the reader can see, is roughly rectangular, measuring just over a meter high, seventy-two centimeters wide, and almost thirty centimeters thick. Or, in more familiar measurements for many of us, the stone is about forty-five inches high (at its tallest point), twenty-seven inches wide, and eleven inches thick.
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