"We are not to regard the cross as defeat and the resurrection as victory. Rather, the cross was the victory won, and the resurrection the victory endorsed, proclaimed and demonstrated" -- From The Cross of Christ by John R. W. Stott

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
December 7, 2007

Dear Brothers and Sisters
www.virtueonline.org
11/21/2007

It was another week of turmoil in the Episcopal Church, with two dioceses, Ft. Worth and San Joaquin making exit sounds about leaving the liberal denomination. They are about to ring down the final curtain on a theologically and morally bankrupt church. All that will be left to fight over is the legal right to properties.

It is recognized that liberal Protestant Churches have been in decline for decades and this has prompted all manner of schemes to reverse the trend. It is also recognized that most of these schemes have failed. No amount of talk about the Church being in mission has helped. We may blame the environment and say that the culture has turned against us or that the language of the Church is foreign to the man in the street but this does not touch the underlying problem.

Jesus the Great? To relegate Christianity to one chapter in a book of the world's religions is to Christian people intolerable. Jesus Christ to us is not one of many spiritual leaders in the history of the world.He is not one of Hinduism's 330 million gods. He is not one of the forty prophets recognized in the Qur'an. He is not even, to quote Carnegie Simpson, 'Jesus, the Great', as you might say Napoleon the Great or Alexander the Great ... To us, he is the only. He is simply Jesus.