Dangerous Calling / Golden Rule / the Failure of Marxism

Author

Douglas Jacoby
June 11, 2025

For the audiovisual version of the bulletin (YouTube, about 3 minutes, read by Chase Mackintosh), click here. 

Good morning from İzmir and the Global Smyrna Meeting. From the GSM website: “Ongoing archaeological excavations in Turkey help to uncover more every day, and help us to better understand Revelation. ‘Can I take a trip to the actual sites of the Seven Churches [of Revelation 2-3]?’ is a common question. Yes, you can. This one-week program is the most comprehensive meeting and visitation of the Seven Cities of Revelation ever organized. All tours are led by expert scholars.” The GSM takes place every other year. Consider joining in 2027! Below are some pictures from the past few days (Ephesus, Smyrna, Laodicea…).

Next week I’ll be in İznik (Nicea) for a conference on the 1700th Anniversary of the Council of Nicea. If you can’t make it this year (and are blessed with supreme longevity), consider participating in the next event, in June 2125.

In today’s bulletin:

  • Dangerous Calling (on ministry identity), by Paul David Tripp

  • A reflection on Marxism, by Os Guiness

  • Key New Testament passage: the Golden Rule

Global Smyrna Meeting

The GSM features classes by professors from Huntington University, Calvin Theological Seminary, Eastern Mennonite University, Messiah University, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Asbury Theological Seminary, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Mountain Theological Seminary, Hillsdale College, and the Asia Minor Research Center. It also includes visits to Ephesus (always the top location!), Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

Levent Oral, Tutku president, and NT scholars Mark Wilson and Ben Witherington

African participants Gilbert Kimeng (Nigeria), Thabani Mashava (Zimbabwe), and Emmanuel Emeh (Nigeria)

Worship in the 2005 Global Smyrna Meeting. Attendees hail from Europe, Asia, Africa and North America

Poppies, Laodicea

Library of Celsus, Ephesus

One of Laodicea’s theatres

Emmanuel Emeh (Lagos)

African participants

Ancient gymnasium, Sardis

With a little explanation, the ancient world comes to life

Tyler Herrington, IBTM free tour winner

Imposing pagan temple columns, Sardis

The Golden Rule

Christians have long recognized that the epitome of Jesus’ teaching as Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount. A key verse in this message is Matthew 7:12, also known as the Golden Rule. The verse is easy to quote, but not so easy to follow.

HEAR THE TALK (10 minutes—premium login required).

Even More Quotable Guinness

During May and June this bulletin has been featuring thought-provoking quotations from Os Guiness.

In 2022, after my first reading of Renaissance: the Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times, I posted comments and select quotes HERE.

After the second reading—and this is a book worth reading twice—there are even more quotations I’d like to share.

”[David Martin expresses] his criticism of Marxism with penetrating accuracy. ‘It is a paradox that the system which claimed that the beginning of all criticism was the criticism of religion should have ended up with a form of religion which was the end of criticism.’… Marxism and the Communist Party in particular could never admit that they were wrong, so they rationalized evil after evil in both the Soviet Union and China, and in other places such as Cambodia, until the spreading cancer of their unacknowledged crimes and lies appalled all but their most die-hard believers…

“The point is not that the Christian church has had cleaner hands than the Communist Party. Far from it. The church down the ages has committed appalling evils too—for example, the horror of the medieval pogroms against the Jews or of the sexual abuse scandals of the clergy today. But the crucial difference is that the Christian faith allows no evasions or equivocations. Sin is no less sin when Christians commit it, and before God there are no two ways about sin, lies, evil, oppression and hypocrisy. They are wrong, wrong always and wrong everywhere. God judges and condemns both sin and sins, so they always require confronting, and this has blunt consequences for those who believe such a truth…

“Marxism cannot admit its own failures and it has no authority higher than itself. It is therefore incapable of self-criticism and renewal” (79-81).

When You Let Ministry Become Your Identity
by Paul David Tripp

“Whether you realize it or not, you are in an unending conversation with yourself, and the things you say to you about you are formative of the way that you live.”

In ways that scare me now as I look back on them, I was a man headed for disaster.

I was in the middle of destroying my marriage and my ministry, and I didn’t have a clue. There was a huge disconnect between my private persona and my public ministry life. The irritable and impatient man at home was a very different guy from the gracious and patient pastor our congregation saw in those public ministry and worship settings where they encountered me most. I was increasingly comfortable with things that should have haunted and convicted me. I was okay with things as they were. I felt little need for change. KEEP READING

With Gilbert Kimeng

Until next week!

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed the bulletin. Next week I’ll write to you from Istanbul.

Thanks for your trust, moral support, donations, friendship, and prayers.
DAJ

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