An English vicar, Rev. Edward Tomlinson, of the Church of England, got grief for himself when he suggested that his role at funerals that featured pop music and bad prose from grieving participants was superfluous:
“I have stood at the Crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the blaring tunes of Tina Turner summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with “I did it my way” blaring out across the speakers,” he wrote in his blog on the website for St. Barnabas Church in county of Kent.
His remarks angered bereavement counsellors and humanist groups and prompted much debate over what is appropriate and what is not when it comes to mourning.
“The best our secularist friends (and those they dupe) can hope for is a poem from Nan combined with a saccharine message from a pop star before being popped in the oven with no hope of resurrection”, Tomlinson said. [Read more...]
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Justin speaks in various ways of the evildoers’ “punishment in eternal fire” and of “eternal punishment”. He says that “the sword of God is fire, of which they who choose to do wickedly become the fuel.” These are not just “big words and bugbears”, says Justin, as if Christians wished only to scare people into living a virtuous life, rather this punishment reflects the reality of God’s justice. While the language of “eternal punishment” and “eternal fire”, as it is found in Scripture, is adequately explained by Conditionalist writers, either as referring to the result of the judgment, or to its sharing in the quality of the “age to come”, there are, however, some more explicit statements of Justin’s which seem to conflict, and therefore need to be reconciled, if possible, with what we have seen above of Justin’s beliefs. 
Though earlier chapters of Acts do not speak of Paul talking about the General Resurrection, (though he made much of Christ’s resurrection), his speech to the philosophers on Mars’ Hill, includes the declaration that judgement is ordained through “that man”, of which the proof is that “he hath raised him from the dead.” Obviously, that judgement could not come about unless men were raised from the dead, so the general resurrection is inferred here (Acts 17:31).
The Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 was spoken by Jesus and directed at the Pharisees and teachers of the law. Jesus told it to them, along with the parable of the lost coin and the lost sheep, in response to the Pharisees mutterings about Jesus mixing with sinners. Of course we know that these parables were like carefully aimed arrows intended to pierce the hardened hearts of the Pharisees to bring them to an understanding of the heart of God and His desire to seek the lost sinner. If any of those Pharisees and teachers had been really listening I think they would have also understood that Jesus was talking about themselves. The Pharisees were the sheep left in the field while the shepherd searched for the lost sheep, the sinner; they were the 9 coins kept in the purse; they were the brother who stayed at home and complained about the grace of the father towards the lost son. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son, that’s me. I’m sure many of you will relate to this as I do. This is the testimony of a son who was once lost and now by the grace of God has been found.