Inerrancy accepted, discarded, established and eroded

Last week on this side of the pond, specifically at John MacArthur's Shepherds' Conference in California, the hot topic has been the inerrancy of Scripture. Inerrancy means that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is 'without error in all that it affirms'. For the first 16 centuries of church history inerrancy was accepted. People believed that the Bible was written by men, but men who "spoke from God" and were "moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). With the Age of Reason in the 17^th and 18^th centuries came Enlightenment thinking which had the effect of raising the thoughts of man above the mind of God.

A South African preacher persuaded his congregation to drink petrol after claiming he had turned it into pineapple juice. Pastor Lesego Daniel performed the supposed 'miracle' in Garankuwa, near Pretoria, having poured the liquid into a bucket and dropped a match inside, causing it to set alight.

When a guesthouse belonging to one of Nigeria's leading Christian pastors collapsed last month, killing 115 mostly South African pilgrims, attention focused on the multimillion-dollar "megachurches" that form a huge, untaxed sector of Africa's top economy.

At least 45 people were killed in bombings in and around Baghdad Saturday as Iraqi soldiers continued to defend the capital against Islamic State, or ISIS, militants. In Syria, the Sunni terror group has encircled Kurdish fighters struggling to defend the besieged border town of Kobani.

A Chinese pastor has said he is "grateful" for the opportunity to go to jail as he awaits his prison sentence. Huang Yizi, 40, of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, could face up to seven years in jail. He is accused of "gathering to assault a state organ," and was detained on August 2 for "gathering crowds to disturb social order"