Pete's Blog

Baliva the Urban missionary preached at Mill Hill East Church on 27th October 2013.  Sometime previously he made a music video here featuring as extras some of the congregation from our Hip Hop service, Urban Praze.

This is where Jesus heals the paralytic man in John 5:1-9.  It is a complex site. It appears to have been a mikveh, or ritual bath. As the spot of one of Jesus’ miracles, the Bethesda Pool was built over in subsequent periods with chapels and churches that are still visible today.

As the evidence for a global Mediaeval Warm Period is now overwhelming surely it's time to admit that global warming and cooling are natural and cyclical - and to ditch the arrogant notion that humans have caused global warming.  Also note that this also means that there is no big apocalypse coming, at least not one caused by carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere.  Rather, the globe is warming just as it has done in the past and will do again.  For everything there is a season...

"Do not conform to the ways of the European Union but be transformed..." as a good book might have said. This was not heeded by a certain PM who was seen as bravely standing up for his beliefs in equality by some (by putting up a certain bill recently in the House of Commons) but was actually cravenly obeying his European masters . I'm speaking this morning on how not to fit in with the ways of the world in this cowardly fashion.

The Gospel of Mark Chapter 13 begins with Jesus' disciples pointing out the great stones of the temple. Jesus predicts that the temple will be destroyed and then ask when it will happen, when the temple's stones will all be thrown down.  The rest of the chapter is all about this.  To the disciples the permanent destruction of the temple means that the end of the age, the end of the world as they know it.  Jesus uses language similar to that used by Old Testament prophets to describe destruction of cities - he describes it as the stars falling from heaven. “But in those days, following that distress, “‘the sun will be darkened,     and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky,     and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ (Mark 13:24-25) Compare this with a prophecy of Isaiah about the destruction of Babylon The stars of heaven and their constellations     will not show their light. The risin...