Friday, December 10, 2004

John Eldredge's image of Christmas

Over the past few days, I've been reading some rather critical writings about John Eldredge. It's intruiging to me, I'm certainly not fully believing or fully discounting the writings. I guess I'm just a little apathetic towards some of the points. Are these really core issues that pertain to the Gospel? Believe me, I'm not theologian, I'm probably just too simple.
"For example, he writes about how God speaks to him, even audibly." I will admit, I know nothing about this guy. I'm pretty much reading it without any context. But that statement bugs me - God doesn't speak any more? Hmm, really.
Anyway, I'm still a fan of Eldredge. So I'll close this post with a quote from Wild at Heart:
Rev 12
1A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.
7And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9The great dragon was hurled down–that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

"As Philip Yancey says, I have never seen this version of the story on a Christmas card. Yet it is the truer story, the rest of the picture of what was going on that fateful night. Yancey calls the birth of Christ the Great Invasion, 'a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s seat of evil.' Spiritually speaking, this is no silent night. It is D-Day."

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