What Readers of Church History are interested in!

I’ve found it intriguing to note what posts are becoming more popular on The
Church History Blog, as well as the often completely daft (and often highly entertaining) search terms that lead people there.

Here are the top 6 posts during the last quarter:

John Wesley and his Wife (part 2)
John Calvin and Martin Luther – some differences
Mary Slessor the ‘Mother of all Peoples’
John Wesley and his Wife (part 1)
The God Delusion Debate
John Wesley Tries to Find a Wife

The interest in how Wesley bungled his personal relationships has bumped a still highly popular post down to No.7, yes, you guessed it:

‘Lord make me pure but not yet!’ – Augustine’s wayward prayer!

For those who may be concerned that other aspects of church history are not being accessed by serious readers of the blog, be reassured.

In terms of all time favourites the following are still right up there:

The 18th Century Awakening in Europe and America
The Conversion of the Wesley Brothers
The Birth of Modern Revival – Puritan Preaching in Scotland
The Puritans and Sin
Calvin and the Doctrine of Election

Here are some of the craziest search terms. I won’t attempt suggesting which posts they got to:

• why are charismatics dancing in church now?
• flaming evangelist
• worms standing together
• stories of fist fights and brawls in church
• I am yours in 17th century speak
• actual photo of john Wesley
• shut up wesley
• 3rd century nuns what did they give up?
• songs by Lex about Calvin
• John Lennon had big forehead
• nails in church doors
• Jonathan Edwards flocks to Jesus Christ

Well, I hope if you visit the Church History Blog you’ll find some inspirational stories that will spur you on to love and good works. Enjoy!

http://lexloiz.wordpress.com/

Lex Loizides

As you read this I am in South Africa for the second time in six months, and also the second time in my life. All my posts this week were written and scheduled before I went. I am definitely finding as a result of my first trip that Africa has a growing place in my heart. How could I not love the continent on which my wife was born and raised? While I was there last time I filmed the following interview with my friend Lex Loizides. In it we discuss his recently released DVD on creating and using your own personal tract. Lex is a great guy and a gifted evangelist. I encourage you to get hold of a copy, Newfrontiers resources will ship it anywhere in the world. Who knows the impact that this could have? Lex is also faithfully writing the Church History Blog, headlines from which appear in the bottom of my sidebar, and I strongly commend that to you. The video was filmed with my iPhone 4. You have to be careful to get the full quality video rather than the compressed version, the easiest way is to use the cable to download video to your computer.

Lex, who has been my friend for twenty years recently wrote the following article for the Lausanne website about Jubilee Church Capet Town. I can also let you know today that on 31st October this year I will be preaching in their evening service. Pray for me as it will be my first trip to Africa. I want a little bit of Africa to get inside me. I love Africa as it gave me both my wife and my pastor!

Since the birth of the new South Africa in 1994, the country has been affectionately referred to as the Rainbow Nation. This represents a celebration of the rich diversity of cultures, languages and races that make up the nation. Over the centuries Cape Town has become a real melting pot of cultures, and Jubilee Community Church reflects and celebrates this diversity as a local church community. . .

via Urban Mission and Reconciliation – Jubilee Community Church, Cape Town | The Lausanne Global Conversation.

My friend Lex Loizides keeps plugging away at his excellent church history blog. It is well worth dipping into for some inspiring snippets of what God has done in the past. New posts appear in my sidebar with the other “Warnie” winners.

Lex has identified and updated his five most popular posts, adding links that help them serve as gateways to the rest of the content of his blog. I thought I would share them here:

1. John Calvin and Martin Luther—Some Differences

2. The Birth of Modern Revival—Puritan Preaching in Scotland

3. The 18th Century Awakening in Europe and America

4. ‘Lord Make Me Pure But Not Yet!’ – Augustine’s Wayward Prayer

5. The Conversion of the Wesley Brothers

Today’s quest blogger is my friend Lex who blogs short, inspirational stories and illustrations from church history over at
http://lexloiz.wordpress.com/

Lex is an elder at Jubilee Community Church, Cape Town and travels throughout the world as an evangelist.
http://www.jubilee.org.za/

I recently completed an article for a Christian magazine. As part of the ‘get to know the author’ section, I had to answer several questions including ‘What is your favourite quote?’

I must admit that I’m not certain I have a favourite quote as such, although several zingers from Winston Churchill immediately come to mind.

In the end I settled for something that impacted me when I first read it, and which I have quoted so often I probably know it by heart, but which is surely too long to be added in the magazine’s ‘get to know the author’ column. So I thought you, Warnie’s faithful readers, might like it. It is actually two statements by George Whitefield describing the same incident.

Why do I love these words so much? Because they describe the heroism of the Evangelist, the compassion of a merciful Saviour, the power of the Holy Spirit to turn the hearts of those outside the Christian faith to Him, and the appeal of the gospel to ordinary people when it is presented simply and honestly.

Whitefield describes his fourth visit to the coal-miners of Kingswood in Bristol in 1739. His first visit, and his first attempt at preaching in a field, was attended by around 200. Over the next few days the crowds grew steadily until eight days after his first visit Whitefield could write:

‘At four I hastened to Kingswood. At a moderate computation there were about ten thousand people.

‘The trees and hedges were full. All was hush when I began; the sun shone bright, and God enabled me to preach for an hour with great power, and so loudly that all, I was told, could hear me.’

‘Having no righteousness of their own to renounce, they were glad to hear of a Jesus who was a friend of publicans and sinners, and came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

‘The first discovery of their being affected was to see the white gutters made by their tears which plentifully fell down their black cheeks, as they came out of their coal pits. Hundreds and hundreds of them were soon brought under deep convictions, which, as the event proved, happily ended in a sound and thorough conversion.’

(From George Whitefield’s Journals, Banner of Truth edition, p.223 and ‘Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, MA’, John Gillies, 1772 edition, p.28)

As we seek to bring the message of God’s grace to our generation my hope is that, whilst being eager to learn all we can from the various methods that are accompanying church growth at the moment, we would never forget our dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit through the simple, humble, Christ-centred preaching of the gospel to reach those who don’t yet know Jesus Christ.

Lex Loizides

–

This is the video of a sermon preached by Lex Loizides (who I also interviewed) at Jubilee Church, London last Sunday. You can also download the audio. This message is a great introduction to the Christian faith and we saw a good response to the gospel as a result.

I have known Lex for approximately twenty years. His passion for Jesus is, if anything, more infectious now than when I first met him. Spending this twenty minutes or so with him left me wanting to tell more people about Jesus. I suspect that if you pour yourself a coffee, pull up a chair, and join us, you will feel the same.

We spent some time together speaking about how he came to be an evangelist who travels to many countries sharing the good news alongside local churches. He said that his involvement with Jubilee Church Cape Town for many years (he is one of the elders there) has been vital for his ministry. Lex has a blog which focuses on church history. He is passionate about bringing reformed theology, a respect for the great events of church history, and a love for the unchanging gospel of the Bible together with evangelistic zeal, faith, and an expectation of the miraculous presence of Jesus. It’s a great recipe, in my opinion!

Lex Loizides — Interview With A Church-Based Evangelist from Adrian Warnock on Vimeo.

Dare To Believe God For Miracles – Tope Koleoso from Adrian Warnock on Vimeo.

This video clip was filmed as a message for members of Jubilee Church to stir us to pray and expect great things from God this coming Sunday. Tope was kind enough to allow me to post it here on my blog. His passion and faith is infectious and I encourage you to watch this short video.

Lex will be with us to preach as well as praying for the sick and as Tope explains in the film we are praying for God to act in dramatic ways both here and in about 30 other special guest services across England happening this weekend.

Why should we have to make the choice between being biblically accurate and experiencing God’s healing power? Tope explains how he has seen healing before and is hungry that it become a regular feature of our experience.

On Saturday 16th May, my good friend, Lex Loizides, will be leading a day conference aimed at equipping Christians for the work of reaching out with the gospel. There are still spaces available at this event, which will take place at Kings Church Catford.

Last week Lex Loizides shared this fantastic quote from Martin Luther in his church history series:

“I was seized with the conviction that I must understand [Paul’s] letter to the Romans. I did not have a heart of stone, but to that moment one phrase in chapter one stood in my way.

I hated the idea, ‘in it the righteousness of God is revealed’ . . . according to which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner.

I lived without reproach as a monk, but my conscience was disturbed to its very depths and all I knew about myself was that I was a sinner.

I could not believe that anything I thought or did or prayed satisfied God. I did not love, nay, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.

Certainly, and with intense grumbling (perhaps even blasphemy), I was angry with God and said, ‘As if it were indeed not enough that miserable sinners who are eternally lost through original sin and are crushed again by every calamity through the Ten Commandments, God Himself adds pain to pain in the gospel by threatening us with His righteousness and wrath!’

At last, meditating day and night . . . by the mercy of God, I gave heed to the context of the words, ‘In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’

Then I began to understand that the righteousness of God is . . . a gift of God, namely by faith . . .

Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through gates that had been flung open.

An entirely new side of the Scriptures opened itself to me . . . and I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the loathing with which before I had hated the term ‘the righteousness of God’.

Thus, that verse in Paul was for me truly the gate of paradise.

This astonishing description by Iraneus of normal church life in the early centuries was cited on Lex Loizides’ blog.

‘So it is that in His name those who truly are His disciples, having received grace from Him, put it to effectual use for the benefit of their fellow-men, in proportion to the gift each one has received from Him.

Some drive out demons really and truly, so that often those cleansed from evil spirits believe and become members of the church; some have foreknowledge of the future, visions, and prophetic utterances;

others, by the laying on of hands, heal the sick and restore them to health; and before now, as I said, dead men have actually been raised and have remained with us for many years.

In fact, it is impossible to enumerate the gifts which throughout the world the church has received from God and in the name of Jesus Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate, and every day puts to effectual use for the benefit of the heathen, deceiving no one and making profit out of no-one: freely she received from God, and freely she ministers…

Similarly, we hear of many members of the church who have prophetic gifts and by the Spirit speak with all kinds of tongues, and bring men’s secret thoughts to light for their own good, and expound the mysteries of God,’ (Quoted in Eusebius, History of the Church, Penguin Classics [UK Edition], pp. 209-210).

UPDATE
Frank Turk has posted on this, claiming that this quote is not originally in Iraneus. However, one of his commenters says she has checked on it and said that it is, indeed, there in Iraneus, although another commentator has disputed the context these quotes were found in Iraneus by Eusebius.

Finally unleashed from the confines of Facebook, a new blog by Lex Loizides has been born. It’s so good that I’m granting it an instant Warnie, an honor last achieved so quickly by the Pyromaniac himself! From now on you can follow Lex as he shares bite-sized chunks of church history by the links which will appear in the Warnie box in my sidebar. Here is an excerpt to whet your appetite:

Polycarp, with his face set, looked at all the crowd in the stadium and waved his hand toward them, sighed, looked up to heaven, and cried, “Away with the godless!” The Governor pressed him, “Swear, and I will set you free; execrate [curse or, revile] Christ.”

“For eighty-six years,” replied Polycarp, “I have been His servant, and He has never done me wrong. How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?”

“I have wild beasts,” said the proconsul, “and if you make light of the wild beasts, I’ll have you destroyed by fire.”

Polycarp answered, “The fire you threaten burns for a time and is soon extinguished; there is a fire you know nothing about – the fire of the judgment to come and of eternal punishment, the fire reserved for the ungodly. But why do you hesitate? Do what you want.” Polycarp, the Aged Martyr by Lex Loizides

Lex is a good friend of mine and is well-known in Newfrontiers circles as a biblically sound and enthusiastic evangelist who has recently started posting very helpful notes on Facebook. I have his permission to reproduce the following Review of Positioning Yourself to Receive Healing by Doug Jones in its entirety here.