At last—we return to missions and worship to conclude the book. It’s obvious by now that Piper is strongly influenced by Great Awakening pastor Jonathan Edwards, and he says as much here. Then he goes on to explain that missions is necessitated because “creation is telling the glory of God, but the peoples are not treasuring it…. The ultimate issue addressed by missions is that God’s glory is dishonored among the peoples of the world.” Then he connects worship with missions and all that with compassion for the lost: “Unbelief not only dishonors God but destroys the soul….And so missions is driven by a passion not only to restore the glory of God to its rightful place in the worshiping soul but but also to rescue sinners from everlasting pain.” The final chapter, probably the one that most enthralled me, deals with the nature of worship itself—what is this that we’re trying to propagate throughout the world? I’ll let him tell it himself, in abbreviated form: Worship in the New Testa...

The second of the three sections in John Piper’s book “Let The Nations Be Glad!” dealt with the necessity and nature of missions work, and to be honest this was where I got really bogged down in reading. The necessity of missions, according to Piper, lies in the fact that people simply can’t be saved apart from belief in God as revealed through Christ in the Scriptures. And in the fact that the thing they’re getting saved from is eternal, conscious torment—no more, no less, no annihilation nor other escape available. Piper won’t have any of this salvation-through-general-revelation, wishy-washy watering down of the truths that by their existence implore us to get busy about evangelism and missions. (OK, so he didn’t actually say “wishy washy watering down of the truths,” but he may as well have done so!) That chapter was mostly proving the truth, via demonstration in Scripture, of the preceding statements—theological and doctrinal paths I’ve walked before and wasn’t too keenly inter...

“Missions exists because worship doesn’t.” –John Piper This week is missions conference at my newly adopted church. The featured missionary in yesterday’s morning service started by saying that the reason for missions couldn’t be as superficial as “Jesus said so in the Great Commission.” (And at a Christian and Missionary Alliance church as missions/Commission-focused as mine have been, that’s a weighty declaration.) Sure, he said, it was a command Jesus gave, but that couldn’t be the only basis for such a large-scale project. This missionary to Kosovo had wondered about the real reason for missions, the reason behind the mandate, even as early as his first months in college. But—what was the answer? It begins with this: Jesus calls us to be missionaries, each in his own way, for one purpose: To bring more people into the knowledge of God, to make them his worshippers. The purpose of all of life, reiterated the missionary, was to worship God, to give him glory in everything we do...

Apparently this was the week that the world decided to intrude itself into the U.S. news consciousness. Egypt’s government is slip-sliding away; Tunisia’s was/ doing the same; Jordan’s may be showing signs of… something; Yemeni people are standing in solidarity with the Egyptians; and the U.S. isn’t exactly sure what to do with it all. But in other news—there was a bit of good news. South Sudan voted to secede from the North, and its independence is being recognized. (Picture by Mark Allen White , relative of a friend.) There are still some things that need to be smoothed out—one region on the border is claimed by both the North and the South, for one thing—but so far, so good. As long as the unrest in the other countries doesn’t spread to the Sudan and mangle things up. Praise the Lord for this bit of good news, though. He knows South Sudan needs it…

I read a blog post over at World Magazine's blog related to the recent Russian adoption fiasco , where a family sent an adopted child back to Russia. This story was about another family who had managed to keep their adopted children, also Russian, instead of giving up. These children were all under 5 years old when they were brought into their new family. Now-- Ruggiero’s younger daughter is 17 and still screams. Ruggiero wrote poignantly that she doesn’t really have any real relationship with her older daughter who’s 19. Their 20-year-old son left home and lives on his own; he doesn’t communicate with the family. “There isn’t any doubt that we love them,” Ruggiero wrote, “but I think it’s hard for them to understand what love means.” I continued through the story, and started reading the comments. Some people mentioned something called reactive attachment disorder , which is apparently a big problem with children adopted from orphanages in Eastern Europe. I never knew this...

I just finished watching "An Inconvenient Truth" for a class assignment. Aside from its dated material now (it was released 4 years ago, which is significant when discussing as much scientific data/conclusions as were in the film), it was... eh. I did not really care for the egotistical-feeling introductory sequence where Gore walked on stage amid clapping and cheers (and between footage of his time as a politician), or for the other sequence showing his defeat in the 2000 presidential race. Neither had anything to do with the matter at hand, since he said at the outset that climate change was not a political matter (though he said later that it was, and I'm pretty sure he meant the two statements in different ways, but still). As for the science... well, I just attended a seminar (part of the class for which I watched the movie) in which almost all of it was covered in more depth and with more up-to-date data (which Al Gore can't help, I suppose). I'm not con...

This past Sunday I got to go with my family to meet a gaggle of just-returning missionaries from all over the world, at an amazing opportunity at my church district's campground. A pretty simple setup--a giant world map, on canvas maybe (it was something pretty sturdy), laid out all over the grass next to the tabernacle at camp, and with band instruments set up next to it. The amazing part was being able to hear so many stories/prayer requests from so many parts of the world at one time. The missionaries were stationed on the map (that's why it was so big), in the vicinity of where they minister on the real globe. Anyone who wanted could come up and talk to the missionaries--several folks from my church made the trip. And these missionaries were from all over, though we got to talk to just people from Africa and South America (there wasn't time to visit with everyone). We heard some encouraging stories about breakthroughs in West Africa, changes in South America, and s...

"Micronations" are itty bitty nations, apparently, that are hardly big enough to stick a ranch on. Think the Vatican. (That's still a sovereign nation, right?) So apparently some British guy went and took over a man-made sea island forty years ago and declared it his own little nation... and so far, the UK hasn't beat him on it! Imagine living on a platform, on stilts, seven nautical miles from anywhere.... The wonders of Yahoo! News, old KBers, and Facebook. In other words, the only reason I found out about " The Principality of Sealand " was because John saw it on Yahoo News and linked to the government website from his Facebook page.

I wish our local newspaper had a much bigger world-news section. Then maybe I'd be learning a little more about the whole hullabaloo in Iran lately. As it seems a lot of Iranians are unhappy (to say the least!) with the elections, the Iranian government has been cracking down on information transmission... the Internet, and foreign journalists, too . (Thanks to my cousin for the link.) Eyewitnesses are reporting that fully-credentialed foreign journalists are similarly being detained all over Tehran today. The deputy head of the Ministry of Guidance just told me on the phone that other journalists have also been beaten, and that the official permissions no longer work. Also, foreign journalist visas are not being extended, so all of those people who were allowed in to cover the elections are now being forced out in the messy aftermath. Nobody is going to believe that the election wasn't rigged. Not when the government is responding like this.... Mild rant: I just want to yell...

Seriously. One of my better-liked magazine writers, living in China, posted a couple things on his blog about it: I have been more affected by the preceding 2.5 years in China than I thought. For instance: ...I would have taken it for granted if certain live dispatches from the US or Europe suddenly disappeared from the screen.... But from within the US on this trip, I realize that it's actually quite incredible that Chinese broadcast authorities-- representing the world's most populous nation, the one whose relations with the U.S. will make a huge difference to the entire world's future, the country that presented itself to all other countries as a full, major, mature power with its Olympic games -- would pull the plug on live coverage of Barack Obama's inaugural address just because Obama began talking about the virtues of dissent. More here and in his second post about it . There's also the question of whether Chinese authorities rip open your mail packages...

A conservative news outlet put me onto this meteorologist who called global warming a "scam." Curious, isn't it? Because, as OneNewsNow describes, he's got some credentials.

On April 18, five Muslims entered a Christian publishing company and killed three believers in the southeastern province of Malatya. Two of the victims were Turkish converts from Islam and the third man was a German citizen who had lived in Turkey for 10 years. News reports said four of the attackers admitted that the killings were motivated by both “nationalist and religious feelings.” More at Voice of the Martyrs. It was grisly.

Now this is another reason I'm not German. What is Germany thinking?? The German homeschool association wrote up the complete story of how young Melissa was taken into state custody - for being homeschooled. In summer 2004, Melissa was told that she would have to repeat the 7th grade at the Christian Ernst Gymnasium (a high school where one can obtain the Abitur, the highest German high school diploma) due to her bad grades in math and latin. The situation in the class played no small part in creating this state of affairs - the high noise levels and cancelled classes prevented her from receiving the educational assistance she needed during school hours. AND she had good grades in everything else!! But that didn't matter to the judge... neither did fairness: On the afternoon of the 1st of February, the judge of the Family Court, representatives of the Youth Welfare Office, along with fifteen police officers, marched up to the Busekros home, to haul Melissa off to the Child Psy...