The church in thy house

The “house should be a church, and every head of a family a spiritual shepherd” (John Chrysostom). It would be the dearest and most joyful situation to have the house and a family as a church (Rom. 16:5, 1 Cor. 16:5, Col. 4:15, Phil. 1:2). Only in such a home daily family worship is possible, where reading and teaching of His word becomes an integral part of life, where His Sabbaths are observed, where the members are instructed in the knowledge of God and their duty to Him. In such a home Christ is not only studied and becomes an example of love and conduct; everyone is filled with His spirit that empowers the whole family to live life as worship for the glory of the Father.

"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart" (Zec. 12:10-14).

"And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the LORD will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles" (Zec. 14:16-19).

Exercise of Christian liberty in loving

"We must not on pretext of love of neighbour offend against God. ... For the things necessary to be done must not be omitted for fear of any offense. For as our freedom must be subordinated to love, so in turn ought love itself to abide under purity of faith. Surely, it is fitting here also to take love into consideration, even as far as to the altar [cf. Mt 5:23-24]; that is, that for our neighbour’s sake we may not offend God. We must not approve the intemperance of those who do nothing without raising a tumult and who prefer to tear into everything rather than open a matter gently. But those people also are not to be listened to who, after making themselves leaders in a thousand sorts of wickedness, pretend that they must act so as not to cause offense to their neighbors [cf. 1 Cor 8:9]; as if they were not in the meantime building up their neighbours’ consciences into evil, especially when they ever stick fast in the same mud without hope of getting out."

(quoted from The Institutes of Christian Religion, 3.19.1-13)

Ocean Wave Energy: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Excerpts from Section 2.2 Looking Forward, by Prof. Stephen Salter

The initial task is to ensure that early wave power devices survive and produce the output predicted by their designers, even if the first wave electricity is as expensive as the first from coal or wind.

Survival depends on the full understanding of the statistics of the loads induced by waves and the strength of our parts. ... If possible we must try to clip the load skirt to the economic limit and narrow the standard deviation of the strength histogram.

Large systems can fail because of very small components. ... we must test large numbers of quite basic components such as bearings, seals, ... in parallel in the chemistry and biology of the sea to know which ones will actually work. ... We should have a test raft on which parts and subassemblies can be subjected to accelerated life tests.

We must try to maximise the ratio of the swept volume of any displacer to its own volume and the idle volume of the supporting structure. ... Concave shapes, like the corner at the foot of a breakwater or the focus of a shaped explosive charge, can amplify peak stresses in breaking waves so everything must be convex. Sharp edges, which we see in a great many designs of wave energy devices, waste lots of energy by shedding vortices ....

... we must overcome the instinctive preference for movements in the vertical direction. ... The horizontal forces and velocities can be just as useful.

We must find ways to choose and control, instant by instant, the amplitude, phase and upper limit of the force going to the power-conversion mechanism.

We must find ways to install and remove devices more quickly and much more cheaply ....

Every new technology makes many painful mistakes. ... The mistakes only become less painful if people learn from them. They will learn only if full details of every mistake are circulated throughout the industry.

in reference to:

"Current Status and Future Prespectives"
- Ocean Wave Energy (view on Google Sidewiki)

Moving windmills

William Kamkwamba, a young man from Malawi, was forced to drop out of school when he was 14 because his family could not afford the $80-a-year tuition. Armed with a library book about energy, he built a windmill to provide electricity for his family.

"My problem was that I didn't have much money to buy parts to construct the windmill. Over time, I found materials that had been discarded by other farmers or by the nearby tobacco plantations, and I bought a few parts with money I scraped together," he explained.

"Since then, he has built a solar-powered water pump that supplies the first drinking water in his village, and two other windmills" (Wikipedia).

in reference to: William’s Story | Moving Windmills Project (view on Google Sidewiki)

The Unfolding of providence leading to the Westminster Assembly

1517 31st October. Martin Luther nails his famous 95 Theses.

1526 William Tyndale's English New Testament (completed 1 year earlier) reaches England.

1536 Henry VIII and the English Parliament separate the Church of England from Rome because the Pope would not sanction his proposal to divorce Queen Katherine.

1538 Henry VIII changes his position again, and authorizes 6 articles which essentially brought many of the Roman Catholic doctrine and practices back into the Church of England. Many who are persuaded of the truth of the Protestant faith (eg. John Hooper, Miles Coverdale) leave for the continent, and come under the influence of the Continental Reformers like Zwingli and Calvin.

1547 Edward VI becomes king. The Protestant Reformation in England advances dramatically. Key players are Thomas Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury), Nicholas Ridley (scholar) and Hugh Latimer (preacher).

John Knox becomes preacher at St. Andrews Castle (Scotland), but when it fell to the French, he was captured and made a French gallery slave for 19 months. Upon his release in 1549, he came to England and pastored a congregation for the next 5 years.

1553 Mary Tudor, Roman Catholic, becomes queen in England. 300 English Protestants were martyred (including Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer), and 800 fled to the Continent, where they imbibed the doctrinal tenets of the Continental Reformers.

1554-59 John Knox flees. While in exile in Geneva, he studied under John Calvin: “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles.”

1558 Queen Elizabeth I ascents to the throne and establishes the Elizabethan Compromise, which is insufficiently reformed to satisfy those who would soon be known as Puritans. Many of these Puritans were strict Calvinist who were religious refugees returning from Switzerland.

1559 The English Puritans who had returned from Geneva had become parish ministers. But the Archbishop Matthew Parker had not been in exile, and he carried out a policy of conformity to the Anglican church. Under his advice, the Queen issued the Act of Uniformity which authorizes the Anglican Prayer Book for public worship and lays down penalties for those who refuse to use it or who speak against it.

Thus the English returnees could not implement their Presbyterian ideals. Instead they formed “classes” (from Latin classis or division) for mutual study and the encouragement of preaching. These advocated the Presbyterian system. Two men’s views were particularly influential: Walter Travers (1548-1625) and Thomas Cartwright, professor at Cambridge University (1535-1603); both friends of Theodore Beza. Their views would later influence the Westminster Divines.

In Scotland, Knox arrived in May. Shortly, he and others wrote the Reformed Scottish Confession and established the first truly Presbyterian Church based on the teachings he had received at Geneva. Presbyterian from Greek presbuteros (elder). The church was to be governed by a plurality of elders.

1561 Belgic (or Netherlands) Confession composed largely by Guido de Bres, one of several itinerant preachers during those days of persecution.

1563 Heidelberg Catechism written by Zacharias Ursinus, professor at Heidelberg University and Caspar Olevianus, court preacher of Heidelberg; and published on the behest of Elector Frederick III.

1583 John Whitgift becomes Archbishop of Canterbury and enforces conformity to the ceremonies of the Anglican Church, leading to oppression of Puritan nonconformists. The Presbyterian classes were driven underground, but their influence persisted, and many of the Puritans favoured the Presbyterian form of church Government.

1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England. Puritans initially had hopes that their situation would improve since James I was a Scottish Calvinist much influenced by John Knox. They presented the king with the Millenary Petition.

In 1604 they met with the new king at the Hampton Court Conference to present their requests. The bishops and the Puritans debated. The king presided as chairman. One of the Puritans accidentally used the term ‘synod’. The king immediately felt threatened: “If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agrees as well with a monarchy as God with the devil! No bishop, no king.”

The king threatened to “harry them out of the land, or else do worse.” James had heartily embraced the Anglican system. Although the king approved of a new translation of the English Bible (KJV), after the conference 300 Puritan clergymen were deprived of their livings. Large numbers emigrated. Many went to Holland where they would later sail the Mayflower to America.

1618 The Book of Sports is first published, encouraging sports on Sunday afternoons in direct contradiction of Puritan Sabbatarianism. This is cited by the seventeenth-century British church historian Thomas Fuller as one of the leading causes of the English civil war.

1618-19 Synod of Dordrecht (Netherlands) met concerning the five points of the Remonstrance. Canons of Dort from which the 5 points of Calvinism are derived resulted.

1620 Puritan Separatists (led by John Robinson) left Holland and found the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts in America. These were either congregational or Presbyterian.

1625 Charles I, unsympathetic to the Puritans, becomes king.

1628 William Laud becomes Bishop of London (and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633) and undertakes stringent measures to stamp nonconformity out of the Anglican Church. Laudian oppression is a leading contributor to Puritan migrations to America such as the large group led by John Winthrop in 1630.

The notorious William Laud, was however to become a very important figure in Presbyterian history. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain” (Ps 76:10). William Laud was an Arminian and he was trying to use Arminianism as an instrument to bring the church of England back to Roman fold. On one occasion members of Parliament spoke openly against Arminianism, and that angered King Charles I. And he decided to rule without Parliament, and so for 11 years he did not convene the Parliament.

But in 1637, William Laud decided to extend his influence, and decreed that the Anglican Prayer Book should be read also in Scottish churches. There was great opposition, and soon the people rose in revolt. They would not be ruled by bishops. The people flocked to sign the National Covenant upholding Presbyterianism.

Civil war broke out. The king soon found out that it was not so easy to force the Scottish into submission. He soon ran out of money and also found it difficult to raise troops. Soon he was compelled to recall the Parliament.

1640 The parliament met twice, and in the second, known as the Long Parliament, the Parliament decided to curtail the power of the king. The rift between parliament and king widened.

1642 A second civil war broke out, this time between Parliament’s New Model Army led by Oliver Cromwell and the king’s army.

Immediately, John Pym, parliamentary leader and a Puritan decided to appeal to Scotland to help. Scotland agreed. But as part of the agreement, the English parliament would be required to undertake positive steps for the reformation of religion in doctrine, worship, discipline and government of the church, according to the Word of God. The English parliament agreeing to these terms decided to convene and assembly of English and Scottish ministers to bring about the necessary changes.

1643-49 This assembly met at the Westminster Abbey and is thus called the Westminster Assembly. From 1 July, 1643 to 22 Feb, 1649, in 1,163 sessions, 121 English divines and 6 Scottish commissions met. The result was the Westminster Confession, a Larger Catechism, a Shorter Catechism, a Directory of Worship and a Psalter for singing by the churches among other documents.

By 1646, Oliver Cromwell's army defeated the king’s army and made Scottish help unnecessary. In the same year, the Episcopalian form of church government was abolished in the Church of England, and three years later in 1649, King Charles I was executed. Cromwell became the Lord Protector of England. But because his army comprised many Independents, Cromwell refused to enforce the spread of Presbyterianism.

(taken from PCC Bulletin, 1 November 2009)