S - Past Witness Files
- Robert Schuller - Charles Simeon - Isaac Stavely - William Still - Emanuel Swedenborg
Robert H Schuller
Sept 27, 2021: Mail & Guardian: Happy Jele has given ‘The Ghost’ much to smile about
“That was music to my ears. And looking around his office, I saw a lot of framed rugby jerseys. I knew they were from players grateful to have been helped and that gave me hope. I did everything he instructed me to do during the rehab programme after the surgery. I also read some positive books such as Robert H Schuller’s Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do and Joel Osteen’s It’s Your Time, which helped make me strong mentally.”
“That was music to my ears. And looking around his office, I saw a lot of framed rugby jerseys. I knew they were from players grateful to have been helped and that gave me hope. I did everything he instructed me to do during the rehab programme after the surgery. I also read some positive books such as Robert H Schuller’s Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do and Joel Osteen’s It’s Your Time, which helped make me strong mentally.”
"I was called to start a mission, not a church....you don't try to preach....what is sin and what isn't sin. A mission is a place where you ask nonbelievers to come and find faith and hope and feel love."
--Robert Schuller
--Robert Schuller
charles simeon
“I love the simplicity of the Scriptures, and I wish to receive and inculcate every truth precisely in the way, and to the extent, that it is set forth in the sacred Volume. Were this the habit of all divines, there would soon be an end to most of the controversies that have agitated and divided the Church of Christ. My endeavor is to bring out of Scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head—never to speak more or less than I believe to be the mind of the Spirit in the passage I am expounding. I would run after nothing, and shun nothing. . . . The truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme, but in both extremes. . . . I formerly read Aristotle, and liked him much. I have since read Paul, and caught somewhat of his strange notions, oscillating (not vacillating) from pole to pole. Sometimes I am a high Calvinist, at other times a low Arminian, so that if extremes will please you, I am your man. Only remember, it is not one extreme that we are to go to but both extremes.”
— Charles Simeon, quoted in H. C. G. Moule, Charles Simeon (London, 1956), pages 77-78.
— Charles Simeon, quoted in H. C. G. Moule, Charles Simeon (London, 1956), pages 77-78.
isaac stavely
Sept 2, 2022: Michael AG Haykin: Desiring God: A Meal for the Journey
“May these precious seasons make me fruitful.” These words, found in the diary of a certain Isaac Staveley, who worked as a clerk for coal merchants in London during the 1770s, were written after he had celebrated the Lord’s Supper with his church, Eagle Street Baptist Church, in 1771.
In the rest of this diary, Staveley makes it evident that the celebration of the death of the Christ at the Table was a highlight of his Christian life. In the evening of March 3, he recorded that he and fellow members “came around the table of our dear dying Lord to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body, show his death afresh, to claim and recognise our interest therein, to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body as happy members of the same family of faith and love.” How many today view the Table this way?
“May these precious seasons make me fruitful.” These words, found in the diary of a certain Isaac Staveley, who worked as a clerk for coal merchants in London during the 1770s, were written after he had celebrated the Lord’s Supper with his church, Eagle Street Baptist Church, in 1771.
In the rest of this diary, Staveley makes it evident that the celebration of the death of the Christ at the Table was a highlight of his Christian life. In the evening of March 3, he recorded that he and fellow members “came around the table of our dear dying Lord to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body, show his death afresh, to claim and recognise our interest therein, to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body as happy members of the same family of faith and love.” How many today view the Table this way?
william still
May 8, 1911 - July 30, 1997
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God has caused you to become pastor to some souls here who are as valuable to Him as any in the world–your quiet persistence will be a sign that you believe God has a purpose of grace for this people, and that htis purpose of grace will be promoted, not by gimmicks, or stunts, or newe ideas, but by the Word of God released in preaching by prayer. --William Still; The Work of the Pastor To be true pastors, your whole life must be spent knowing the truth of this Word, not only verbally, propositionally, theologically, ut religiously, that is, devotionally, morally, in worshipping Him whom it reveals, and in personal obedience to Him whose commands it contains, in all the promised grace and threat of those commands. To be pastors you must be ‘fed men’, not only in knowledge, but in wisdom, grace, humility, courage, fear of God, and fearlessness of men --William Still; The Work of the Pastor It is to feed the sheep on [biblical] truth that men are called to churches and congregations, whatever they may think they are called to do. If you think that you are called to keep a largely worldly organisation, miscalled a church, going, with infinitesimal doses of innocuous sub-Christian drugs or stimulants, then the only help I can give you is to advise you to give up the hope of the ministry and go and be a street scavenger; a far healthier and more godly job, keeping the streets tidy, than cluttering the church with a lot of worldly claptrap in the delusion that you are doing a job for God. The pastor is called to feed the sheep, even if the sheep do not want to be fed. He is certainly not to become an entertainer of goats. Let goats entertain goats, and let them do it out in goatland. You will certainly not turn goats into sheep by pandering to their goatishness. Do we really believe that the Word of God, by His Spirit, changes, as well as maddens men? If we do, to be evangelists and pastors, feeders of sheep, we must be men of the Word of God. --William Still; The Work of the Pastor |
A leading evangelical minister in 1970 he was a founder member of the Crieff Brotherhood, a group of ministers who campaigned for the retention of traditional values and beliefs within the Kirk and who became known as the ''Stillites.'' Mr Still was born into a Salvation Army family and was self-educated from the age of 13 when illness forced him to leave school. As a teenager he followed his father into the family business but lasted only a few months claiming he couldn't stand the smell of fish. After a period as a piano teacher and then as an organist at a Methodist Church he planned to become an officer in the Salvation Army but once again ill health struck and he was forced to leave the Salvation Army training College in London. When they refused to admit him a second time he decided instead, at the age of 29, to train for the ministry at Christ's College in Aberdeen which he was able to attend while remaining at home. During a spell as an assistant at Springburn Hill Church in Glasgow he was badly injured when he fell between the platform and a train at a station in the city. It was while convalescing he underwent what he described as a ''second conversion'' and was ''all aflame with the Gospel in a new way.'' He said he was a ''fire and brimstone preacher in his early days'' and it caused him a lot of upset but he did gain a reputation for filling the pews and in 1945 he was invited to become the minister at Gilcomston South Church. When he arrived it was run down and the Presbytery had twice tried to close it down, but within months the church was so packed he was inviting people to sit a little closer together and share a hymn book. It has grown to be a major force for evangelism in the Kirk. Mr Still was no stranger to controversy and the declining standard of dress of young people attending church wearing ''drab rags and bags'' was one of the subjects on which he voiced his opinion. He also attacked TV soap opera EastEnders for portraying religion inaccurately. In spite of poor health he insisted on preaching twice every Sunday until his retirement in May. In his retirement speech he described falling church attendance and subsequent church closures as ''scandalous''. The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland the Rt Rev Sandy McDonald said: ''The death of William Still marks the end of a very distinguished and dedicated ministry in the Church of Scotland. ''A great bible teacher and a much loved father in the faith to countless ministers over the last 53 years, I believe he will be remembered as a good and faithful servant of Christ and the Church.'' Mr Still remained unmarried and is survived by his sisters Barbara and Rene and youngest brother David. On his eighty-sixth birthday, William Still demitted the pastoral charge of the congregation he had served with unstinting devotion for 52 years. |
Emanuel Swedenborg |
Swedish Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic. He became best known for his book on the afterlife, Heaven and Hell (1758)
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"When it is known that there is both an internal and an external man, and that truths and goods flow in from, or through, the internal man to the external, from the Lord, although it does not so appear, then those truths and goods, or the knowledges of the true and the good in the regenerating man, are stored up in his memory, and are classed among its knowledges (scientifica); for whatsoever is insinuated into the memory of the external man, whether it be natural, or spiritual, or celestial, abides there as memory-knowledge (scientificum), and is brought forth thence by the Lord. These knowledges are the "waters gathered together into one place," and are called "seas," but the external man himself is called the "dry (land)," and presently "earth," as in what follows."
-E. Swedenborg 1668-1772
-E. Swedenborg 1668-1772