The Better Covenant: launched Feb 2012

My first book, The Better Covenant, is now available in print and kindle formats. Be sure to check out the latest 'Biblebase Second Thoughts' blog.

Biblebase Second Thoughts Blog: The Better Covenant.

Biblebase Bible Reading Plans

The New Year approacheth..

Are you thinking about Bible Reading schedules? Gary Sims has created two apps based on the Biblebase 3 year reading cycle.

1. Biblebase Daily Bread
is a free app and comes with a basic introduction to the reasons for this particular schedule which was created for the overseas students of the Church Life School which operated in Reading, UK in the 1980s. You can download it from the iPhone app store on your iPhone/iTouch or iPad.

The iTunes Shop spot is
iPhone Biblebase Daily Bread app
The app has links to a variety of translations.

2. The second version has the KJV built in and will cost you 69p!! You can see this in the iTunes app store at
KJV Biblebase Daily Bread

They are also available for the Android or if you prefer a paper based alternative you can find an almost infinite selection in The Biblebase Bible Reading Schedules. Infinite? yes, almost infinite!

Give them a look and see it they appeal...

Hostgator Maintenance

My apologies to any who have tried to download recent additions or take part in the discussion forums. My Server provider is changing some parameters and re-populating some of our stores of good things.

It ought to catch up over the next few days. My apologies for any inconveniences.

Ron

Biblebase Vimeo

We had notification from Google Video that they are clearing out their video in favour of YouTube. We have already lost some but are trying to recreate them on our new Biblebase-Vimeo.

This is a neat presentation and as other videos come to hand we will try to get them here as soon as we can. If you watch any of them and would like to make a comment, that would be much appreciated.

If you would like to discuss any of the videos please come and join us at the BibleBase_Discussion_Forum. You will be very welcome.

it's in the post

Entries to this blog tend to be a bit infrequent but I thought this was worth sharing. I have sent the first few chapters and synopses of my book off to a prospective publisher... now we wait.

I started it quite some time ago but last year's health issues added a large gap in my efforts.

It is called 'The Better Covenant' and subtitled... "unpacking the treasures of the New Covenant". It has gone to a company which specialised in Christian Book and now there is likely to be a long wait before they get around to reading it.

I reread it over the past few days and was blessed by it! Cast you bread upon the waters... I really do feel passionately about this topic and feel a strong burden to encourage others to consider this life into which God has brought us.

Here is the blurge from the back cover...

The final hours of Christ’s pre-Calvary life focused on the themes of a new Passover, a new Kingdom and a New Covenant. This New Covenant stands in stark distinction to the Covenant enjoyed by the saints of the Old Testament. It is said to be ‘new’ and ‘better’ and ‘more glorious’ but for many its uniqueness has become uncertain. It is often described in contrast to the older Covenant; the writer to the Hebrews does this, as does Paul, as did Christ. Perhaps its determining feature can be expressed in the contrast implied in the statement; …but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. John 14:17 NKJV


The conscious reception of the indwelling Spirit is the point of entrance into this New Covenant. This receiving of the Spirit effects the work of regeneration and fulfils the promises of the New Covenant made by Jeremiah and Ezekiel in which they see a new and different covenant in which old things would pass away and all things become new. This powerful regeneration/baptism in Spirit takes a man out of Adam and puts him into Christ thereby creating a ‘new man’ with new powers and instincts.


This book explores the salvation history of the Bible, examining the background to the promise of the New Covenant as introduced in the Old Testament and the fulfilment of that promise in the New Testament. It traces Paul’s exciting discovery that the New Covenant contained a ‘secret’ which opened God’s kingdom to all races and conditions of humankind. It examines the implications of this better covenant for a true understanding and practise of daily living in the New Covenant.

I'll keep you in touch with events as they happen.

Speakers' Corner Workshops

Do you have something to say?

How will you say it?

Will they hear you went you say it?

I have begun a series of workshops to help folks who have a desire to bring the word of God into our meetings. Surely that should include everyone? The purpose is not to create 'preachers'; preachers are born not made. It is not even intended to help you to create a 'sermon' but if you have something to say and believe that God has given it to you then these workshops are designed to help you to deliver the message.

This is our own version of what they used to call Homiletics in Bible Colleges.

We will run the series of workshops through the winter months and expect to finish at the end of March 2011. I have created a simple website designed to serve as a noticeboard for all those involved but the website is not exclusive and you would be very welcome to come and join us. It will include a podcast of each session and full notes as a downloadable pdf.

Why not come and visit the website and see if you think i might be a help to you too?

Check out the website at Biblebase Speaker's Corner

Ron's Bulletins

I have created a new and temporary blog called Ron Bailey Bulletins. This is to give caring and praying friends a regular update on my treatment of prostate cancer. If you would like to be kept up to date please visit this blog.

Introducing the Blue Letter Bible

There is a valuable and free online resource that I regularly used, especially when away from my own computer. It is called the Blue Letter Bible. I was recently asked my opinions about the Blue Letter Bible and decided to create a simple introduction to the resource.

I expect there will be about a dozen of these mini-tutorials. You will find them on my 'biblebase' YouTube account. Do take a look and if you have any comments please add them to the YouTube comments section, that will draw more attention to the actual videos.

Here is a line to the first one... Introducing the Blue Letter Bible 01

If you choose 'subscription' on the YouTube you will be notified of new additions to the series.

Caution: Repainted Website.

I have long wanted to give the website a bit of a lick of paint. The old version was looking very dated and some folk found it very difficult to negotiate. Hopefully this one will be easy to navigate and a little easier on the eye too.

One friend commented that he had no idea the site had so much content. I hope this refurbishment will encourage you to look around and discover some of the gems hidden in the corners of The Biblebase.

Why not let me know what you think about it and how we can further improve it?

a blog about a blog...

I thought you might like to know that I have started a new blog... This blog that you are reading was designed to keep people informed about the happenings on the Biblebase websites but the new blog is more general in its scope. I have been encouraged by some to begin a kind of morning by morning devotional blog but I have been reluctant to take that route; it seemed a bit presumptious to think that I would have something relevant to add each day. Nevertheless, I do often have thoughts that I feel I would like to share with others. They are not ordered in any way but simply where I have 'gleaned today'. I have called it the Biblebase Second Thoughts blog and you can visit it by simply clicking that phrase. I suppose I could have called it 'Ron's Rambles' which was the unofficial title of a radio programme that I used to have.

If you visit Biblebase Second Thoughts and like what you see please make sure to 'subscribe' to that blog. That doesn't mean you have to pay anything but simply that whenever I do write a blog you will get an automatic message inviting you to come and read it. That way you don't have to come looking for the blog the blog will come looking for you. You can subscribe by clicking the 'follow this blog' option at the upper right hand part of the page.

The Biblebase Second Thoughts blog will also have a place where you can comment AND if you want to think more about that topic a link to the New Covenant Discussion Forum where you can 'think through' in the company of others, hopefully of like mind. See you soon?

Meanwhile back at the Base...

This catch-up is long overdue and as there has been quite a bit of activity on the website I thought it was time to put you in the picture again.

In the fellowship in Reading I conducted a series of Bible studies in 1st Corinthians on the theme of expressing the life of Christ in the local church. Corinth had wonderful beginnings with apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers. The believers had received spiritual gifts and were equipped to be 'God's People' in that city but things had gone badly wrong.  These studies trace the nature and purpose of a local church and the obstacles that stand in the way of its achieving of God's purpose. Matt Steed videoed the series and it is now available online in various forms.  You can also use the 'dynamic notes' which will give links to other sites and information.  We called the series...

Church Life Revisited 

Bob Oakley, one of the brothers in the church here, and myself have long been burdened about the number and quality of Bible versions which now circulate.  We did a series of studies to examine the nature of the Scriptures and their translation.  We concluded by looking at a selection of different versions in comparison. I would recommend this as a really useful starting point for consideration of this vital issue.  Currently you will find downloadable mp3s for the series at...

Which Bible?

...the videos and notes will be online very shortly.

We have also added numbers of M-other Tongue mp3s in Polish, Russian, Spanish, German and Romanian.  Please pass these URLs on to anyone you know who might benefit from them.  You will find a mini-menu at...

M-other Tongues.

and lastly, for this blog, I have begun a series of compilations on different themes. These are based on Dot Twivey's boxed sets of messages.  So far I have done two compilations... tell me what you think.

1. Choose Fire
   
2. Prayer

Do take a look at the Discussion Forums and mp3 downloads.

His/yours

Ron

Normal Service Resumed

Hi Everyone
Gary has managed to pacify the 'kernal' and all is sweetness and light again. Thanks Gary!!

So if you have wondered what all this is about, why not join us on the Biblebase Forums?

Meanwhile, back on earth...

HI There,

I'm afraid my blog is a very occasional event. I tend to use it as a noticeboard rather than a regular update of Biblebase. This posting is a case in point. If you have tried to access the forum recently you will have got a message something like...

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CLONE, expecting T_STRING in /home/biblebas/public_html/ncw/kernel/object.php on line 528

I am not quite sure what the 'kernal' is 'objecting' to but I gather he doesn't expect 'cloning' and his preferences are more for Bach's Air on a T_String. I am not sure why he has chosen my Biblebase Forum to share his disappointments but until we find out what is really bugging him the Forums will not be functioning.

I will get back to you as soon as we have located the 'kernal' and resolved his problems. Thanks for listening.

His/yours
Ron Bailey

Tranquility Base here; the Eagle has landed...

...but not without a few ruffled feathers!!

We are now settled with our new host and this really gives us oodles of space to work in. The new style website is up and running and most (hopefully all...) the kinks have been ironed out. The next exercise is to think through how we can make the site 'higher profile'. I am not into competitive things but I wouldn't have spent the labours (or other people's labours) on the site if I didn't think we had something that ought to be made available. My 'guru' tells me that one of the most efficient ways of making the site more conspicuous is if folk 'link' to it. So if you have a site of your own or some influence over a site please consider putting in a link to www.biblebase.com

I have oodles (please note this technical term for future reference) of tapes which need to be digitised and lots of ideas for new projects. A close friend tells me I am good a 'starting' projects! In particular I want to get some of the materials from the Church Life School online; this is really unique content and I think could be particularly useful for folks in other cultures as one of the themes of the CLS was to distinguish between culture and Christianity.

Another growth area is likely to be M-other Tongues. This is a section given over to providing materials in other languages which have been created in the course of visits to other places. If you have friends who are German, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Russian, or Greek speaking please point them in this direction. In the UK at present we have oodles of Polish migrant workers and I would love to see some of these materials in theirs hands.

It would also be a help to know which parts of the site you visit most frequently. Can you let us know which parts you think are helpful? More later... as always His/yours Ron.

Rare Vintage Recording discovered

In the mid 1960s I was able to meet and listen to W F P Burton, aka Willie Burton. He was already a legend in his own lifetime. Born in 1886 he went as an independent missionary to the Congo (now Zaire) in 1915 in the company of Jimmy Salter (who later married the daughter of Smith Wigglesworth). When he relinquished his responsibilities in the work 50 years later it had grown to hundreds of churches. His missionary work saw notable miracles and thousands of first time responses to the gospel.

The churches he founded were simple and indigenous. He refused to allow any titles other than 'elders' and 'deacons'. If you want an insight into apostolic missionary work get a copy of "God Working with Them"; the story of the first 18 years of pioneer mission in the Congo.

He was a man with a delightful sense of fun with children but with a steel backbone. My first experience was to hear him preaching in our Anglican church pulpit against the errors of infant sprinkling! He was a man of exceptional natural talents; an engineer, scientist, artist, linguist, musician, bible scholar. He was also a man of powerful spiritual gift. He conscioulsy dedicated it all to God and when he passed into glory, in 1971, he was travelling with all his wordly possessions in two suitcases; one for clothes and the other for his books.

I will see if I can 'dust down' this old recording and make it a little easier on the ear, but this is a must-hear opportunity to hear him telling his own story in 1968 in Staffordshire, UK. If you want to catch the flavour of those old time Pentecostals be sure to listen to Willie Burton's Testimony

We have a problem, Houston...

This famous laid-back communication of the Apollo 13 mission has been much in use over the last few days.

We have switched host-providers... twice... in that time and even now there a few kinks to be ironed out. Our current provider is based in 'Houston' hence our echo of the phrase.

Gary has been looking over their shoulder at every twist and turn of this saga but we are 'getting there'! The discussions forums are now up and running again. The Audio and pdf files should be there soon and the menues to follow. The front page isn't looking quite as swish as it should but the great news is that we have oodles of space and download capacity.

Please do remember us as you pray. We have stacks of materials that we want to make available and now we have the space to do it... now all we need is the time.

Did you know that we have all the time to do all that God wants us to do? We rest on thee and in thy name we go...

meanwhile back at the ranch...

We hit some insurmountable problems with our first host and have retreated a little the worse for wear. We are now in process of trying to get our stuff onto yet another host server. This seems to be going better but we have almost 15GB of files to transfer and this seems to be a slow process.

In the meantime please bear with us. The usual BibleBase URL will take you to our start up page with the new host so there is not much to look at there. I will do another blog when it is all up and running.

In the meantime you can be thinking about some of those topics... back soon, we trust.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible...

Some will remember the early days of television with their many breaks in transmission and a static printed card which carried the title of this blog.

Normal service...
If you have been trying to take part in the discussions forum you will have found that it would not accept your posts. This is not a clever theological filtering system for rejecting rogue contributions but the consequence of having filled our quota on our server. The various parts of Biblebase have hit the ceiling for what we are allowed and so most things are quietly stalled at present. You should still be able to download audio and pdf files at the present time.

...as soon as possible?
I am in process of switching to another provider which will give us ample disk storage for the foreseeable future. Hopefully this will take place in the next day or two and I will do another blog then.

In the meantime my apologies for your frustrations... although frustration is always a call to prayer, so even this need not be wasted. ;-)

...and now with musical accompaniment

For the duration of the New Life Conference I am going to 'mirror' the morning meditations on Biblebase. If you would like to start your day with a bible meditation on 'the New Creation mirrored in the Old' you can visit Morning Meditations

This facility will only be available during the duration of the conference and will be taken off-line on 10th August.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Well, February 2005 at any rate and in a place called Reading in the UK... I launched a concept on the unsuspecting world... New Covenant Workshops.

The idea was to combine a day seminar with the power of a discussion group on the web. It was a modest beginning and it has taken some time to get a video of the event online, but its here at last. The two teaching seminars are now online and I will add the Q&A session and the evening meeting as soon as I can.

You will find a link at
Sin: its cause and cure.

You can then join any discussions on the discussion forums. The presentation and presenter are not likely to win any oscars but there is a beginning here of a vital topic and one that is fundamental, in my understanding, to the nature and glory of the New Covenant.