Message of the Month Vishal Mangalwadi

Message of the Month – Vishal Mangalwadi

Vishal Mangalwadi

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve had a kind of love affair with India for most of my adult life.

Nevertheless my admiration for Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi is anything but sentimental. I am genuinely impacted every time I hear him speak. It’s the same kind of impact I felt when I first read the works of Francis Schaeffer.

Somewhat guided by his notes (!), but also peppered with stunning digressions and off-the-cuff insights, his teaching energises me every single time.

Vishal's book about the role of the Bible in creating the West

He is currently working on a book about the central influence of the Bible in the development of the Western World, which, coming from an Eastern perspective, is intriguing.

This message is part of his material for that book. To be honest, I could have chosen any one of these messages but I thought the title alone might grab your interest.

The Message – Vishal Mangalwadi: ‘Why are some so rich while other are so poor?’

For more on Vishal Mangalwadi click here

Vishal’s stunning book ‘India – the Grand Experiment’

Other books for sale by Vishal

© 2011 Church History Blog / Lex Loizides

Wealth, Comfort and the Gospel – A Puritan Perspective

Wisdom from Old Times – Prosperity and Adversity from a Puritan Perspective

How focused should we be on material success and wealth? How focused should we be on eternity? Should the fluctuation of our material comforts have a significant influence on our experience of peace, or should we be able to set our hearts on the future grace to be revealed at Christ’s coming?

These are questions addressed in one of the most beautifully named Puritan books, ‘The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment’.

Jeremiah Burroughs

This short work was first published in 1648 by Jeremiah Burroughs. Burroughs was yet another mighty Puritan teacher/preacher educated at Emmanuel College at Cambridge University, England. After graduating, Burroughs served in churches in East Anglia, England and then in Rotterdam, Holland.

Some of his insights and comments are challenging. I don’t like some of them! But maybe it’s the ones I don’t like that should instruct me the most!

If you are facing difficult times at the moment then it may be that you will find strength and help in some of the wisdom from the 17th Century.

On God as the Source of true Peace
‘The good of my life and comforts and my happiness and my glory and my riches are more in God than in myself.’ (p.54)

‘If the children of God have their little taken from them, they can make up all their wants in God himself.’ (p.65)

‘Every comfort you have is a forerunner of those eternal mercies you shall have with God in Heaven.’ (p.59)

‘If you will only have contentment when God’s ways suit with your own ends, you can have it only now and then, but a self-denying man denies his own ends, and only looks at the ends of God and therein he is contented…The lesson of self-denial is the first lesson that Jesus Christ teaches men who are seeking contentment.’ (p.90-91)

On the Unchanging Nature of Human Desire
‘The world is infinitely deceived in thinking that contentment lies in having more than we already have.’ (p.45-46)

‘So if we come to understanding in the school of Christ we will not cry, ‘Why have I not got such wealth as others have?’, but, ‘The Lord sees that I am not able to manage it and I see it myself by knowing my own heart.’’ (p.102)

On how Affliction may Help and Prosperity may Hurt
‘You do not find one godly man who came out of an affliction worse than when he went into it; though for a while he was shaken, yet at last he was better for an affliction.
But a great many godly men, you find, have been worse for their prosperity.’ (p.50)

On Trusting God in Troubled Times
‘We must not have hearts hurrying up and down in trouble, discontent and vexing, but still and quiet hearts, if we [want to] receive mercy from the Lord. If a child throws and kicks up and down for a thing, you [will] not give it him when he cries so…

Even though, perhaps, you intend him to have what he cries for, you will not give it him till he is quiet, and comes, and stands still before you, and is contented without it, and then you will give it him. And truly so does the Lord deal with us.’ (p.124)

‘God is doing you good if you could see it, and if he is pleased to sanctify your affliction to break that hard heart of yours, and humble that proud spirit of yours, it would be the greatest mercy that you ever had in all your life.’ (p.181-2)

‘By contentment we come to give God the worship that is due to him.’ (p.119)

On the Bible as a Source of Comfort
‘There is no condition that a godly man or woman can be in, but there is some promise or other in the Scripture to help him in that condition.’ (p.69)

God has provided for us in His word and in Himself. In all the various trials we face we need to exercise faith in Him, either to be content in our need or to see the necessary breakthrough come.  As Burroughs says, there’s no circumstance in life that we face but that some passage of Scripture can speak to us and help us through.

Read the next post on ‘Worry, Trust and Wisdom from the Past to Help you Today’

All quotations are taken from ‘The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment’, Banner of Truth edition, which you can purchase here

© 2009 Lex Loizides

The Puritan Call to Holiness

Thomas Brooks (1608-1680)

The 1666 Great Fire of London

We continue the edifying journey into the thinking and theology of some of the great Puritan writers.

Thomas Brooks was educated at Cambridge, and pastored a London church. The church facility was the first church building to burn down in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

However, by that time Brooks had moved on. Like so many of his contemporary evangelicals he was removed for leadership by the Government in 1662 as a result of the Act of Uniformity. The Act was an attempt by Parliament to reverse Puritan influence and control leadership in the Church of England.

And so, with some 2000 other Puritan Pastors, the law of the land propelled him into ‘non-conformity’. Unlike Joseph Alleine, he was not imprisoned.

His first wife died in 1676 and he later remarried. An observer notes: ‘she spring-young, he winter-old’ (Alexander Grosart, Works of Brooks, Vol 1, p. 35, cited in ‘Meet The Puritans, by Dr. Joel Beeke and Randall J. Pederson).

He died in 1680 and was buried in a non-conformist cemetery.

On resisting sin

‘The pleasure and sweetness that follows victory over sin is a thousand times beyond that seeming sweetness that is in the gratifying of sin.’ (p.120)

On not grieving the Holy Spirit

‘You will not grieve you guests, your friends, but courteously and friendly entertain them; why then do you make so little conscience of grieving the Holy Spirit who alone can stamp the image of the Father upon you, and seal you up to life and glory?’  (p.153)

On continuing to be faithful to God

‘God is the same, and the commands of the gospel are the same, and therefore thy work is the same, whether it be night or day with thy soul, whether thou are under frowns or smiles, in the arms or at the feet of God.’ (p.81)

On wealth

‘As the bird hops from twig to twig, so do riches hop from man to man.’ (p.115)

On Faith
‘Faith brings an invisible God, and sets Him before the soul.’ (p.201)

All quotations and page references are taken from Heaven on Earth, Banner of Truth.

Read the next post, ‘The Tender Care of the Puritan Pastor’

You can purchase ‘Heaven on Earth’ here

© 2009 Lex Loizides