Pressing on.

We’re heading towards 2023. In the late 90s, I purchased the “biblebase.com” domain name. Why .com? Well, in those days it was the obvious choice and many current domain names ending in .net, .org, etc., weren’t available. I had been thinking about how modern communication tools might be used for bible-teaching in the form of an online Bible School. Those were the early days and tech tools for the task were in short supply… Back in 1998, our welcome page looked very different.

We did accomplish most of those aims… at a low level. The residential week-ends were a particular joy to me. We experimented with various formats and began to build an archive of study tools in the form of preached messages, articles, notes and audio-visual presentations. Some of these still lurk in the dark corners of biblebase.com We were asked to absorb a ‘tape library’, twice, of what we judged to be significant ministry and the archive continued to grow.  Our tech was a series of free programs and a free wiki navigation system. It was all stitched together by a close friend who provided all my tech expertise. But the system began to creak as free programs lost their maintenance element and bits of the archive got stranded in almost impossible-to-reach places. (there now hundreds of mp3 messages converted from tapes and cassettes)

We later moved to WordPress and we gained a webmaster, Robert Wurtz, who is now a co-host of the website. We also created a Vision and Mission Statement. I’m not too committed to all the aspects of Project Management but I think the start of a project

can benefit from some clarity. A Vision/Statement can also help to remind us of what we are trying to accomplish. ‘Scope Creep’ is a sometimes deadly disease that afflicts lively minds!

So, as we approach our 25th year it seemed a good time to review the beginnings and see how many of our original intentions had survived. Let’s take a look… you will find our Vision Statement and our Mission Statement in the ‘About us’ section of biblebase.com

Vision Statement:

The vision/goal of biblebase is…

• To communicate the truth of Christ’s New Covenant and
• To encourage groups and individuals to thoughtfully consider the implications of this covenant for a life and witness of dependence upon the Spirit.

We are Bible-believing, conservative evangelicals here on biblebase.com although other ‘conservative evangelicals’ can become a little nervous when they examine our servings. We are orthodox in most of our theology and certainly in the ‘theo’ section of our ‘ology’, but the concept of the New Covenant impacts much of our understanding of God’s current work in the lives of his people.

So why this special emphasis on The New Covenant? This is the ‘raison d’etre’ of biblebase.com Other good ‘conservative evangelicals’ provide a much wider menu and we are not in competition with these. In fact, we frequently provide URLs for other websites. There may be many websites with the same ‘raison d’etre’ as our own but if so we, have not yet found them.

For us at biblebase.com The New Covenant prophesied by the Old Covenant prophets, achieved by Christ in his death and resurrection,

and made wonderfully available to all His people by the gift of His Spirit is an authentic ‘paradigm shift’. It is not an addition to the Old Covenant, but rather a replacement Covenant. He takes away the first in order to establish the second. The New Covenant is the theme of the New Testament (ie Covenant) scriptures.

I came late to this understanding. In my first 15 years of faith, I don’t recall hearing a single message on the topic of the New Covenant, even though those years included a three-year residential Bible School and three years as the pastor of a low-key Pentecostal church. It came as a shock when I began to realise that the first thing that we hear of the New Covenant in the Bible is… that it is not the Old Covenant. (Jer 31:31ff) Subsequently, it so gripped my understanding that I wrote a book “The Better Covenant“, still available on Amazon, to gather together how fundamental the truth of the New Covenant is to an understanding of the New Testament… and to the necessary preparatory role of the Old Testament.

I wanted to work with others in examining the implications of the New Covenant and our ‘mast-head’ on biblebase.com includes the sub-heading “an explorer’s guide to the New Covenant“. The exploration continues and many have joined us in this voyage of discovery. The New Covenant is my ‘controlling model’ for my interpretation of the New Testament scriptures. In all my reading and study of the Old Testament scriptures, I find myself asking ‘what impact does the New Covenant have on this truth or record?’ The gospels introduce the Man who would live the New Covenant day by day and give his life to make it available for others; this is my blood of the New Covenant. The Acts and the Epistles assume the availability of a new and living way and present a life dynamic and style that still takes my breath away.

Mission Statement:

The mission/strategy of biblebase is…

• 

  To spread a table where all and any may ‘feed with a view to feeding others’

• To provide study aids and guides and a central source of reference for all who are committed to the journey
• To create a networking fellowship for mutual encouragement and support

The ‘mutual encouragement of individuals and groups’ is still a work in progress, and always will be.  We have a Facebook group called ‘friends of biblebase’ where topics can be discussed in a spirit of gentle enquiry and mutual respect. It is not a debating chamber but rather a small gathering for‘coffee’ around a table. Our members and contributors are an indispensable part of our facilitation of this aim.

So, approaching 25 years, are we still heading in the direction we set out on? I trust we are and we extend to all our readers here a warm welcome and reminder to ‘come in and make yourselves at home’. We look forward to your company.