Sunday, 15 September 2013
Some thoughts for Today, Christian Ministry
2 Corinthians 4
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
The Light of the Gospel
4 Therefore, since we have this ministry because we were shown mercy,(A)
we do not give up.(B) 2 Instead, we have renounced shameful secret things, not
walking(C) in deceit or distorting God’s message,(D) but commending ourselves
to every person’s conscience in God’s sight by an open display of the truth.(E)
3 But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In
their case, the god of this age(F) has blinded the minds of the unbelievers so
they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,[a](G) who is
the image of God.(H) 5 For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as
Lord,(I) and ourselves as your slaves because of Jesus. 6 For God who said,
“Let light shine out of darkness,”(J) has shone in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge(K) of God’s glory(L) in the face of Jesus Christ.
Treasure
in Clay Jars
7
Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power(M) may
be from God and not from us. 8 We are pressured in every way but not crushed;
we are perplexed but not in despair; 9 we are persecuted but not abandoned; we
are struck down but not destroyed. 10 We always carry the death of Jesus(N) in
our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we
who live are always given over to death(O) because of Jesus, so that Jesus’
life may also be revealed in our mortal flesh. 12 So death works in us, but
life in you. 13 And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what
is written, I believed, therefore I spoke,(P)[b] we also believe, and therefore
speak. 14 We know that the One who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also
with Jesus(Q) and present us with you. 15 Indeed, everything is for your
benefit, so that grace, extended through more and more people, may cause
thanksgiving(R) to increase to God’s glory.
16
Therefore we do not give up.(S) Even though our outer person is being
destroyed, our inner person(T) is being renewed day by day. 17 For our
momentary light affliction[c](U) is producing for us an absolutely incomparable
eternal weight of glory.(V) 18 So we do not focus on what is seen,(W) but on what
is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Footnotes:
2
Corinthians 4:4 Or the gospel of the glorious Christ, or the glorious gospel of
Christ
2
Corinthians 4:13 Ps 116:10 LXX
2
Corinthians 4:17 See note at 2Co 1:4.
The
IVP New Testament Commentary Series
Setting
Forth the Truth Plainly (4:1-6)
There
is a constant temptation in the ministry to preach what people want to hear
rather than what they need to hear. Sermons that confront a congregation with
their spiritual shortcomings do not usually result in a pat on the back.
Instead, they quite often yield criticism and hostility. David Wells argues
that the pastoral task of brokering the truth of God to God's people has, for
this very reason, largely fallen by the wayside in evangelicalism today
(1993:1-14). To preach in a way that serves Christ and not people's egos takes
courage. But it is easy to become disheartened when people turn a deaf ear to
preaching that tells it like it is.
Paul
repeatedly had to deal with discouragement in his ministry. There were plenty
of preachers whose motives were less than pious and who would do whatever they
had to to gain a following (v. 2). There were also churches who were readily
seduced by flattering speech and winsome ways. It would have been all too easy
for someone who remained faithful in preaching Christ and not themselves (v. 5)
to grow weary of the downside of human nature (v. 1).
The Bible Panorama
2 Corinthians 4
V 1: ENCOURAGED God’s
mercy and commissioning for service encourage Paul not to lose heart.
V 2–6: ENLIGHTENED Unlike unbelievers, Christians renounce the
hidden and dark paths of shame because gospel light has shined in their hearts
to give them a personal knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. Accordingly,
they preach the Lordship of Jesus Christ to blind and lost sinners.
V 7–12: ENABLED Despite
crushing pressures from every side and persecution, Paul’s willingness to die
to self and to live for Christ means that God’s resurrection life is at work in
Paul to the glory of God. All Christians know the same truth when they trust
the risen Christ
. V 13–15: EMBOLDENED The Christian
knows that Jesus is risen from the dead and that he, too, will be raised one
day to be present with his risen Lord. This encourages his faith and emboldens
him to speak for Christ.
V 16–18: ENERGISED Despite the
temptation to be discouraged within, and the physical weakness of their bodies,
God’s servants know God’s daily renewal and are motivated by the prospect of
glory to come. They do not lose heart. Their current trials are light in comparison
with the weight of that glory that will be theirs.
The Bible Panorama. Copyright © 2005 Day One
Publications.
Different Kingdom: Different Kinds of Journey.
Different Kingdom: Different Kinds of Journey.: All this talk of journey - but what exactly is the journey I, and maybe we (I don't want to assume for you, dear reader) are on. In fact...
TAKE THE LEAP
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him (Luke 5:10–11).
Have you ever taken a leap of faith?
By “taking a leap of faith” I mean doing something so daring, so “crazy,” that some really questioned the wisdom in making such a drastic move. Have you ever been so sure of the Lord’s direction that you knew if you took this leap, he would catch you wherever you landed?
GOD’S POWER CHANGES THINGS
There wasn’t anything inherently wrong or sinful with the path most of the first disciples were on before they met Jesus. Many of them were fishermen, working a trade and doing business to earn a living. Jesus himself worked as a carpenter before beginning his public ministry (Mark 6:3). But God had an important task for these men, and when Jesus called his disciples, he was calling them to take a leap of faith.
We should all be stirred by the example of Jesus’ first disciples. They may have had settled lives before meeting Jesus, but when he called them, the disciples took the leap of faith to trust and follow Jesus. What they found is that God is worth following, no matter what he calls you to do.
When Jesus called his disciples, he was calling them to take a leap of faith
The reality is that for most people, God is calling you to follow Jesus in your vocation. I often find myself advising men in my congregation to get a job, get a house, find a wife, love her, lead her, get equipped, and serve the local church (1 Thess. 4:11). Do not think for a moment that ‘normal’ life is any less holy than that of vocational ministry, or that it requires any less faith. Whether preaching a sermon, disciplining children, or working hard at our job, we all are called to take the leap of faith to trust and follow Jesus in the work he has for us.
THE CALL TO LEAVE IT ALL
God calls some to leave everything they know behind and take a leap of faith into the unknown. There is no way the disciples could have known what was ahead, but after experiencing his power firsthand (Luke 5:1–11), following Jesus just made sense, no matter what he called them to.
God is worth following, no matter what he calls you to do
I felt the Lord leading me to take a leap of faith when I was studying ministry in Bible college. I thought I would simply finish my studies and find a nice ministry job working in a small church. But instead, God spoke to me and told me to sell everything I owned and follow him to a country I had never been, a church I had never set foot in, and people I had never met. Jesus had saved me, was changing my life, and was crushing my sin—I knew his power was real. Because I knew the Lord was calling me to this, I knew I could trust him and take the leap of faith. By God’s grace, I now get to lead a local church and can say from experience that following Jesus is worth far more than comfort, security, and reputation.
TAKE THE LEAP
No matter what your situation is, I’d invite you to ask the Lord if he’s calling you to take a leap of faith. Whether it’s in your job, your community, your local church, or across the world, is God calling you to give up some comfort and do something that shows the supreme value of Jesus above all else?
Is the Lord calling you to take a leap?
Global warming is just HALF what we said: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong , The Myth of Global Warming
Global warming is just HALF what we said: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong
- Leaked report reveals the world is warming at half the rate claimed by IPCC in 2007
- Scientists accept their computers 'may have exaggerated'
- Met Office to examine the report and 'respond in due course'
By DAVID ROSE
|
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its story after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years
A leaked copy of the world’s most authoritative climate study reveals scientific forecasts of imminent doom were drastically wrong.
The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the ultimate watchdog whose massive, six-yearly ‘assessments’ are accepted by environmentalists, politicians and experts as the gospel of climate science.
They are cited worldwide to justify swingeing fossil fuel taxes and subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy.
Yet the leaked report makes the extraordinary concession that the world has been warming at only just over half the rate claimed by the IPCC in its last assessment, published in 2007.
Back then, it said that the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade – a figure it claimed was in line with the forecasts made by computer climate models.
But the new report says the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade – a rate far below even the lowest computer prediction.
The 31-page ‘summary for policymakers’ is based on a more technical 2,000-page analysis which will be issued at the same time. It also surprisingly reveals: IPCC scientists accept their forecast computers may have exaggerated the effect of increased carbon emissions on world temperatures – and not taken enough notice of natural variability.
lThey recognise the global warming ‘pause’ first reported by The Mail on Sunday last year is real – and concede that their computer models did not predict it. But they cannot explain why world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase since 1997.
lThey admit large parts of the world were as warm as they are now for decades at a time between 950 and 1250 AD – centuries before the Industrial Revolution, and when the population and CO2 levels were both much lower.
lThe IPCC admits that while computer models forecast a decline in Antarctic sea ice, it has actually grown to a new record high. Again, the IPCC cannot say why.
lA forecast in the 2007 report that hurricanes would become more intense has simply been dropped, without mention.
This year has been one of the quietest hurricane seasons in history and the US is currently enjoying its longest-ever period – almost eight years – without a single hurricane of Category 3 or above making landfall.
One of the report’s own authors, Professor Myles Allen, the director of Oxford University’s Climate Research Network, last night said this should be the last IPCC assessment – accusing its cumbersome production process of ‘misrepresenting how science works’.
Despite the many scientific uncertainties disclosed by the leaked report, it nonetheless draws familiar, apocalyptic conclusions – insisting that the IPCC is more confident than ever that global warming is mainly humans’ fault.
It says the world will continue to warm catastrophically unless there is drastic action to curb greenhouse gases – with big rises in sea level, floods, droughts and the disappearance of the Arctic icecap.
Last night Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said the leaked summary showed that ‘the science is clearly not settled, and is in a state of flux’.
She said it therefore made no sense that the IPCC was claiming that its confidence in its forecasts and conclusions has increased.
For example, in the new report, the IPCC says it is ‘extremely likely’ – 95 per cent certain – that human influence caused more than half the temperature rises from 1951 to 2010, up from ‘very confident’ – 90 per cent certain – in 2007.
Prof Curry said: ‘This is incomprehensible to me’ – adding that the IPCC projections are ‘overconfident’, especially given the report’s admitted areas of doubt.
Head of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said the leaked summary showed that 'the science is clearly not settled, and is in a state of flux'
Starting a week tomorrow, about 40 of the 250 authors who contributed to the report – and supposedly produced a definitive scientific consensus – will hold a four-day meeting in Stockholm, together with representatives of most of the 195 governments that fund the IPCC, established in 1998 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The governments have tabled 1,800 questions and are demanding major revisions, starting with the failure to account for the pause.
Prof Curry said she hoped that the ‘inconsistencies will be pointed out’ at the meeting, adding: ‘The consensus-seeking process used by the IPCC creates and amplifies biases in the science. It should be abandoned in favour of a more traditional review that presents arguments for and against – which would better support scientific progress, and be more useful for policy makers.’ Others agree that the unwieldy and expensive IPCC assessment process has now run its course.
Prof Allen said: ‘The idea of producing a document of near-biblical infallibility is a misrepresentation of how science works, and we need to look very carefully about what the IPCC does in future.’
Climate change sceptics are more outspoken. Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, described the leaked report as a ‘staggering concoction of confusion, speculation and sheer ignorance’.
As for the pause, he said ‘it would appear that the IPCC is running out of answers . . . to explain why there is a widening gap between predictions and reality’.
The Mail on Sunday has also seen an earlier draft of the report, dated October last year. There are many striking differences between it and the current, ‘final’ version.
The 2012 draft makes no mention of the pause and, far from admitting that the Middle Ages were unusually warm, it states that today’s temperatures are the highest for at least 1,300 years, as it did in 2007. Prof Allen said the change ‘reflects greater uncertainty about what was happening around the last millennium but one’.
A further change in the new version is the first-ever scaling down of a crucial yardstick, the ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ – the extent to which the world is meant to warm each time CO2 levels double.
As things stand, the atmosphere is expected to have twice as much CO2 as in pre-industrial times by about 2050. In 2007, the IPCC said the ‘likeliest’ figure was 3C, with up to 4.5C still ‘likely’.
Now it does not give a ‘likeliest’ value and admits it is ‘likely’ it may be as little as 1.5C – so giving the world many more decades to work out how to reduce carbon emissions before temperatures rise to dangerous levels.
As a result of the warming pause, several recent peer-reviewed scientific studies have suggested that the true figure for the sensitivity is much lower than anyone – the IPCC included – previously thought: probably less than 2C.
Last night IPCC communications chief Jonathan Lynn refused to comment, saying the leaked report was ‘still a work in progress’.
The Met Office said it would examine the paper and respond in due course.
MET OFFICE'S COMPUTER 'FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED' SAYS NEW ANALYSIS
The British Met Office has issued ‘erroneous statements and misrepresentations’ about the pause in global warming – and its climate computer model is fundamentally flawed, says a new analysis by a leading independent researcher.
Nic Lewis, a climate scientist and accredited ‘expert reviewer’ for the IPCC, also points out that Met Office’s flagship climate model suggests the world will warm by twice as much in response to CO2 as some other leading institutes, such as Nasa’s climate centre in America.
The Met Office model’s current value for the ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ (ECS) – how much hotter the world will get each time CO2 doubles – is 4.6C. This is above the IPCC’s own ‘likely’ range and the 95 per cent certainty’ level established by recent peer-reviewed research.
Lewis’s paper is scathing about the ‘future warming’ document issued by the Met Office in July, which purported to explain why the current 16-year global warming ‘pause’ is unimportant, and does not mean the ECS is lower than previously thought.
Lewis says the document made misleading claims about other scientists’ work – for example, misrepresenting important details of a study by a team that included Lewis and 14 other IPCC experts. The team’s paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience in May, said the best estimate of the ECS was 2C or less – well under half the Met Office estimate.
He also gives evidence that another key Met Office model is inherently skewed. The result is that it will always produce high values for CO2-induced warming, no matter how its control knobs are tweaked, because its computation of the cooling effect of smoke and dust pollution – what scientists call ‘aerosol forcing’ – is simply incompatible with the real world.
This has serious implications, because the Met Office’s HadCM3 model is used to determine the Government’s climate projections, which influence policy.
Mr Lewis concludes that the Met Office modelling is ‘fundamentally unsatisfactory, because it effectively rules out from the start the possibility that both aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity are modest’. Yet this, he writes, ‘is the combination that recent observations support’.
‘Children of MoS reporter should murder him’: vile abuse on Guardian site
The Mail on Sunday’s report last week that Arctic ice has had a massive rebound this year from its 2012 record low was followed up around the world – and recorded 174,200 Facebook ‘shares’, by some distance a record for an article on the MailOnline website.
But the article and its author also became the object of extraordinarily vitriolic attacks from climate commentators who refuse to accept any evidence that may unsettle their view of the science.
A Guardian website article claimed our report was ‘delusional’ because it ignored what it called an ‘Arctic death spiral’ caused by global warming.
Beneath this, some readers who made comments had their posts removed by the site moderator, because they ‘didn’t abide by our community standards’.
But among those that still remain on the site is one which likens the work of David Rose – who is Jewish – to Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic rant Mein Kampf.
Another suggests it would be reasonable if he were to be murdered by his own children. A comment under the name DavidFTA read: ‘In a few years, self-defence is going to be made a valid defence for parricide [killing one’s own father], so Rose’s children will have this article to present in their defence at the trial.’
Critics of the article entirely ignored its equally accurate statement that there is mounting evidence the Arctic sea ice retreat has in the past been cyclical: there were huge melts in the 1920s, followed by later advances.
David Rose¿s article in the Mail on Sunday last week attracted world wide interest
Some scientists believe that this may happen again, and may already be under way – delaying the date when the ice cap might vanish by decades or even centuries.
Another assault was mounted by Bob Ward, spokesman for the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the London School of Economics.
Mr Ward tweeted that the article was ‘error-strewn’.
The eminent US expert Professor Judith Curry, who unlike Mr Ward is a climate scientist with a long list of peer-reviewed publications to her name, disagreed.
On her blog Climate Etc she defended The Mail on Sunday, saying the article contained ‘good material’, and issued a tweet which challenged Mr Ward to say what these ‘errors’ were.
He has yet to reply.
'A REFLECTION OF EVIDENCE FROM NEW STUDIES'... THE IPCC CHANGES ITS STORY
Power house: The IPCC'S Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland
What they say: ‘The rate of warming since 1951 [has been] 0.12C per decade.’
What this means: In their last hugely influential report in 2007, the IPCC claimed the world was warming at 0.2C per decade. Here they admit there has been a massive cut in the speed of global warming – although it’s buried in a section on the recent warming ‘pause’. The true figure, it now turns out, is not only just over half what they thought – it’s below their lowest previous estimate.
What they say: ‘Surface temperature reconstructions show multi-decadal intervals during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (950-1250) that were in some regions as warm as in the late 20th Century.’
What this means: As recently as October 2012, in an earlier draft of this report, the IPCC was adamant that the world is warmer than at any time for at least 1,300 years. Their new inclusion of the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ – long before the Industrial Revolution and its associated fossil fuel burning – is a concession that its earlier statement is highly questionable.
What they say: ‘Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 – 15 years.’
What this means: The ‘models’ are computer forecasts, which the IPCC admits failed to ‘see... a reduction in the warming trend’. In fact, there has been no statistically significant warming at all for almost 17 years – as first reported by this newspaper last October, when the Met Office tried to deny this ‘pause’ existed.In its 2012 draft, the IPCC didn’t mention it either. Now it not only accepts it is real, it admits that its climate models totally failed to predict it.
What they say: ‘There is medium confidence that this difference between models and observations is to a substantial degree caused by unpredictable climate variability, with possible contributions from inadequacies in the solar, volcanic, and aerosol forcings used by the models and, in some models, from too strong a response to increasing greenhouse-gas forcing.’
What this means: The IPCC knows the pause is real, but has no idea what is causing it. It could be natural climate variability, the sun, volcanoes – and crucially, that the computers have been allowed to give too much weight to the effect carbon dioxide emissions (greenhouse gases) have on temperature change.
What they say: ‘Climate models now include more cloud and aerosol processes, but there remains low confidence in the representation and quantification of these processes in models.’
What this means: Its models don’t accurately forecast the impact of fundamental aspects of the atmosphere – clouds, smoke and dust.
What they say: ‘Most models simulate a small decreasing trend in Antarctic sea ice extent, in contrast to the small increasing trend in observations... There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the small observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent.’
What this means: The models said Antarctic ice would decrease. It’s actually increased, and the IPCC doesn’t know why.
What they say: ‘ECS is likely in the range 1.5C to 4.5C... The lower limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2C in the [2007 report], reflecting the evidence from new studies.’
What this means: ECS – ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ – is an estimate of how much the world will warm every time carbon dioxide levels double. A high value means we’re heading for disaster. Many recent studies say that previous IPCC claims, derived from the computer models, have been way too high. It looks as if they’re starting to take notice, and so are scaling down their estimate for the first time.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Global-warming-just-HALF-said-Worlds-climate-scientists-admit-computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html#ixzz2ewPQLC3a
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Saturday, 14 September 2013
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