Patrick Sookhdeo

Heavy clouds hang over many Muslim-majority countries around the world. The devastating war in Syria has seen over 60,000 lives lost at the time of writing, and by the time you are reading this there may well be 4 million people displaced internally and over a million externally. The Syrian economy has been devastated, and the beleaguered Christian community in Syria faces the certain prospect of oppression if not destruction. The process of eliminating the Church in Iraq continues. A dreadful tyranny hangs over the Christian community of Egypt. Pakistan’s Christians exist in a failed state. In Africa, particularly Nigeria, the frequent murder of Christians, especially when they are gathered for worship, seems unstoppable. Add to this the natural disasters and widespread economic decline of our day, and we have a situation very much as the Lord Jesus predicted to His disciples: wars, rumours of wars, nations in conflict, famines and earthquakes (Matthew 24:6-7). (more…)

Luke 2:21 tells us that Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day. In Jewish thought, the number eight signifies a new beginning, because it was on the eighth day that God returned to work after creation. The week began again.

It goes without saying that the birth of Jesus ushered in a new age. God would do a new thing in the world. A new creation would begin. A new day would dawn. In the darkness, light would come. In the despair, there would be hope. In a world devoid of meaning, reality would enter. Hatred would give way to a new kind of covenant love. (more…)

December 26 is celebrated in Britain and many other countries under the rather mysterious name of “Boxing Day”. There are various theories about the origin of the name, mainly linked to the tradition of giving gifts to servants on this day. But Boxing Day has now developed into a sport and spending spree with little connection to the events of the previous day. Instead of being a day of reflection on the enormity of the incarnation and its implications for spiritual life, growth and development, it has become one of pleasure and indulgence. (more…)

The question David asked concerning the righteous is as pertinent for our day as it was for his. When the foundations of our societies are crumbling and collapsing, what should the righteous do? In the United Kingdom, as in many other Western countries, the moral fabric of society is collapsing. The government is threatening to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions as well as unions of one man and one woman. The daily exposure of corruption among the leaders of our society, whether in the media, politics or the world of high finance, is, as one politician has put it “of Biblical proportions”. But this moral collapse has occurred because of a spiritual collapse, as vast swathes of our populations abandon the Christian faith either for the secular humanist “god”, for some occultic entity or for another religion. (more…)

The early Christians in Rome were renowned because they cared for all their own poor and needy and also for other people’s. While their care for outsiders brought them persecution, their care for their fellow Christians was admired. Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth in the late 2nd century, wrote to thank the Church in Rome for the aid they had sent to his church. “From the beginning it is your custom to bestow your alms in all places, and to furnish subsistence to many churches. You send relief to the needy, especially to those who work in the mines; in which you follow the example of your fathers.” (more…)