Just delivered my totally perfect (many people are saying the best ever, I don’t know, that’s what they tell me… 😂) reading of Isaiah 40:1–11 at Nine Lessons and Carols Service ... in Babylon. Isaiah 40:1–11 (King James Version) 1 Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 2 Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD’S hand double for all her sins…

Temple, People, Heart – A Prophetic Litany for a Church in Decline The command given in 4 Kingdoms 12 is disarmingly simple: “Repair the breaches of the house, wherever any breach shall be found.” (4 Kingdoms 12:5, LXX) No grand new scheme. No ambitious expansion. No intricate strategy. Simply this: take the silver that comes from the heart of the people, and use it to mend the house of the Lord wherever it is broken.

How Preservation Becomes Judgement Scripture rarely repeats itself without meaning. Moses saved in infancy. Jesus saved in infancy. Joas saved in infancy. Three deliverances; three threatened children preserved from murderous rulers by the hidden providence of God. Two of these stories are well-known. Moses is concealed among the reeds and drawn from the water (Exodus 2:1–10). The child of slaves is taken into Pharaoh’s house and given back, by a strange twist of providence, to be nursed by his own mother.

The Church That Died of Affluence: A Reflection on 4 Kingdoms 12 (LXX) ... and some photos of Maryfield Church, Torpoint, Cornwall. There are many ways for a Church to perish. She may fall beneath the sword, as Jerusalem fell. She may fade under persecution, as the martyrs of the early centuries bore witness. She may be scattered by famine or plague or the slow attrition of exile.

This morning I opened my Bible at random, and Malachi 3 was the page before me. I immediately recognised that this passage was used by Jennens in Handel’s Messiah My gaze focused, however, upon these, abridged, verses: “I will be a swift witness against those who withhold the wages of the worker, who oppress the widow and the orphan, and turn aside the stranger, and fear not Me… Return to Me, and I will return to you, says the Lord Almighty.” (Malachi 3:5–7)