For those interested and read here, sermons are starting to go back up at our church website again at this address (click on link to get to the page).  It is from 2013, but there are over 700 sermons there and more are coming now.

In our world right now, evangelism is one of the hardest activities to do.  I’m pretty sure that almost no one envies it.  Very few are doing it and especially in a scriptural fashion.  Because of the difficulty, we need to have our motivation or purpose of and for evangelism down.  We need to know why and what we are doing in evangelism.  This has become much less easy as well because of a dust storm around the motivation and purpose of evangelism.  It’s hard to see through the cloud of sand what evangelism is about.  This precipitates sitting on our hands in indecision with lips pressed together, then looking for something else to do while maybe we’ll figure it out.

One of the statements you often here about evangelism is that it doesn’t work.  New methods for church growth occur because evangelism itself doesn’t work.  I’ve heard that many times.  In our area right here right now, I’ve watched something curious.  The two largest evangelical churches, which are not large compared to those in other parts of the country, don’t do evangelism.  Both of them are into modern church growth methods, which I know results in their churches expanding in numbers with more unsaved people.  Their churches are full of unsaved people.  I know this by talking to numbers of the members of their church.  The gospel isn’t clear to their people.

As a whole, the people in these two churches don’t evangelize.  They don’t even talk about the gospel.  They talk about how much they like their churches, because of all the stuff their churches have for them. Something is happening though.  Both of the churches are less than about 40 years old with one of them about that old or a little older.  The founding pastor is still the pastor in the older one.  He is a Dallas Theological Seminary graduate.  The church is an evangelical church that uses modern church growth methodology.   The emphasis isn’t on doctrine, but on making people feel welcome.

The second church has a younger pastor, a Trinity Evangelical Seminary grad in his forties, and he is using the same methodology as the first, except he pushes the envelope much further.  He started doing this about ten to fifteen years ago.  By my observation, the first one is shrinking in numbers, losing people, many of them, especially young ones, to the second evangelical church.  This is a concern to the membership of the first.  Their methods aren’t working, because they are competing with the other church, using the same means.  It’s all about getting bigger numbers.  The strategy is obviously even to pull from all the other churches in the area by attracting the most worldly people.  Neither has taken one person from our church.  Both of these churches would say that evangelism doesn’t work and neither of them are evangelizing our area.  People don’t hear the gospel from them and when they do, it’s watered down to make it palatable to a lost person.  I believe this is normal today.

Both of the churches I describe above would justify what they do by the notion that evangelism itself doesn’t work, so they don’t evangelize.  Some of their members, when we encounter them in person, congratulate our church for doing what we are doing in evangelism.  They think it’s “nice.”  They are happy that “we” are doing it.  Their churches are built, however, on their not doing it themselves.

In my inbox, I get emails from Steven Anderson’s online company, Framing the World.  He’s got his own videographer that is pushing his brand of false Christianity.  I didn’t subscribe, but he culled me or us in some way online.  He is trying to pull from many other churches into his movement.  Steven Anderson does not emulate everything that Jack Hyles did, but he does in evangelism.  I perceive him to be identical to Jack Hyles when it comes to “soulwinning,” including using that term predominately for evangelism.  Anderson and his people are doing that a lot.  They are doing a lot of this “soulwinning,” as he terms it.  He and his movement are growing in part from his method of soulwinning very much like the Jehovah’s Witnesses have grown.

I get something about every other day from Anderson’s company in my box and usually I just immediately delete.  Yesterday, I didn’t delete, because it was a promotion, what Framing the World called a “teaser,” to watch a little clip or sample of a seminar Anderson was doing on soulwinning in the Detroit area.  It seems that Anderson just rented a hotel meeting room, advertised that he was going to have this seminar, and then showed up to give it.  It was not sponsored by any church in the area.  However, in that assembly area, there were about 75-100 people or maybe a little more in their listening to his teaching on this subject.

In his little clip, Anderson talks about why soulwinning is relevant in 2018.  He’s not as dynamic as Hyles, but he is attracting people in great numbers compared to most.  It’s easy to see.  In his presentation, first Anderson says that it’s relevant because of the numbers in his meeting, including that they had seen already over “60 saved” there.  I guarantee you that Anderson and his people did not see 60 saved in the meeting.  This is the Hyles methodology, the 1-2-3 pray with me.  Anderson uses that, copies what Hyles did.  You might know that Anderson does not believe in repentance.  He preaches that repentance comes after someone is saved, not in order for someone to be saved.  Salvation is praying the prayer with him.

When Anderson says “soulwinning works,” even though it is more difficult in some areas than others, he is saying that you see professions, prayers prayed everywhere and always.  His basis for that is experience and then he quotes Psalm 126:6 as a guarantee.

He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

Anderson is attempting to motivate people to do what he believes and does and he speaks with great conviction.  What he’s saying is false, but he understands that motivation is important in this.  His second point is that we can and will see great work today, much harvest today, that this is promised.  He quotes John 4 with the woman at the well as a present tense guarantee of a great harvest (John 4:35).

Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.

Anderson takes that passage out of context.  The disciples could see the Samaritan men coming down toward them, as a result of the witness of the woman at the well.  It was present tense, but it’s not a guarantee of those present results.  This is typical of fundamentalist sermons, however, that I would hear about motivation of evangelism.

Anderson says that in the old days, the “glory days,” soulwinning was a more effective means for building a church than it is today.  This exposes his false doctrine of salvation or his false gospel, same thing.  People who “get saved” with Anderson’s method don’t necessarily end up in church and in a major way, he doesn’t care.  He says, “Maybe it doesn’t work to build the church, but . . . it does work for, to get people saved.”  He continues, “If they keep going to the same church, so be it.  If they don’t end up going to church, so be it.”  If someone stays in his Catholic church after he’s been “saved,” or he doesn’t even go to church, then he really hasn’t been saved.  Anderson is motivating his followers or adherents to go out and preach a false gospel, and he calls it soulwinning, but it’s really motivating them to go out and make people twice the child of hell that they once were (Mt 23:15).  Anderson’s followers are not really evangelizing and part of it relates again to motivation and then what evangelism is.

What Anderson proposes to people and pushes them to do under the guise of actual soulwinning or some kind of work of God, which it isn’t and is actually a complete perversion, makes it easier for them to do this thing.  Motivation is at the forefront.  They can do this and see great things happen.  They can do it, because it’s just getting people to pray prayers, which is much easier than actual evangelism.  They can do it, because they’ll see results, which will make them happy, feel like they did something eternal.  People want that included in their lives.  Both are lies from Anderson, but they are lies in the realm of motivation of people, to get them to do what he suggests.

The dust storm of evangelism about which I write here is about the motivation to evangelize and the biblical understanding of evangelism.  Evangelism is occurring little because people don’t understand what evangelism is and what motivates it.  Churches have stopped doing it because they don’t know what it is or why they should do it.  If churches are not evangelizing, then they are missing one of the major points of their existence.

Jonah Goldberg wrote Suicide of the West, and I criticized his premise in this post.  Douglas Wilson read the book and did so with this post.

Since he burst on the scene, I’ve watched, less than most but a lot, of Jordan Peterson online.  I’ve ducked into his presentation of the Bible.  I’ve seen his answers to questions about Jesus, the resurrection, and the authority of scripture.  I wrote about his take on Christianity here in this post.  Then I just read last night this post by Liam Warner at National Review that says something close to what I was thinking on Peterson.

Mark Ward spoke at the last FBFI (now called Foundations Baptist Fellowship International) conference at Mike Harding’s church in Troy, Michigan, and he writes on his blog about what he said, including providing a link to the audio.  To cut to the chase, he called the FBFI to separation from KJVO men or churches.  That was number one on his list.

I’m open to calls to separation.  I’m interested in what the Bible says I’m supposed to separate from, therefore, I’m also interested in what men are teaching about what I’m supposed to separate from.  There is a lot that one could say men should separate from.  For instance, let’s say a church refuses to practice church discipline.  Do you separate from that church?  That wasn’t number one on Mark’s list.  It didn’t come up.  That’s just an example.

If I’ve got him right, and I’m trying to get him right, not misrepresent him, Mark is saying that KJVO men and churches deserve separation because of the following.  I want to get it all and I think I can in two points.  They are using an English translation with words that their audience will no longer understand, so these men and churches inhibit their people from understanding and, therefore, living all of the Word of God.  More so, and second, these men and churches influence or cause other people to use a translation that won’t allow people to understand and, therefore, live all the Word of God, because the King James Version is no longer intelligible.

Mark says his argument comes from 1 Corinthians 14 in that edification requires intelligibility.  I think there are two possibilities as to the origin of Mark’s argument.  One, he doesn’t like KJVO and he went to the Bible to see if he could get an argument against it.  From what I’ve read of him, I think I could prove that’s what he did.  I’m open to his showing me how this is wrong.  Two, he studied his Bible, came to 1 Corinthians 14 in that study, and it exposed KJVO as violating scripture.  It would be great if critical text men started with the Bible.  I’d love that.  I’d love if they wanted the Bible to be believed and practiced and their historic doctrine causes them to act.  I haven’t noticed that about critical text men.  They start with the non-biblical and then go looking for a way to use the Bible to argue it.  This is like a lot of sermons I heard through the years in fundamentalism, where men have a point and then go searching for a verse to back it up.

Mark’s separating doctrine is not a historic doctrine.  I’ve never heard it before.  I’m not discounting it because I’ve never heard it.  If it’s in the Bible, then it’s in the Bible.  We should deal with it.  However, there is other bibliological doctrine that has been on the table for centuries, written by giants in theology and passed down to us today, and those don’t seem of interest to critical text men.  They ignore them.  I haven’t noticed them caring about certain historic and biblical doctrines of bibliology.  They ignore some of those, and never once of course would bring them up to separation.

Why does KJVO merit a conversation in the FBFI about separation?  Again, I’m for separation.  It is a biblical doctrine, but if you are going to be credible and authoritative in a belief and practice of separation, then you need to be following the Bible in that belief and practice.  You can’t pick out a certain pet doctrine or practice that in particular that you don’t like and then separate from violators in a unique fashion.  You’ve got to be consistent with that principle and make sure that you do all the separating you are supposed to do.  This is where fundamentalism, or maybe it needs to be called foundationalism now, comes up way short.

Anyone should be confused about FBFI separation belief and practice.  I’ve thought it was supposed to be about fundamentals or foundations.  I’ve also thought it was supposed to be about gospel issues.  Could same sex marriage acceptance be included?  But is that a fundamental or a gospel issue?  What about music?  Is worldly music in church fashionable for separation?  What about nudity?  What about continuationism?  Do you see what I mean?  It’s impossible, I think, to understand their position. I do get how that the KJVO throws red meat to a lot of Bob Jones University styled fundamentalists.  I get that.  I’ve called it the third rail of fundamentalist politics.  But how is that scriptural?  If you do not start with scripture on separation, then you are going to get it wrong.  They get it monumentally wrong always.  I’m not exaggerating that.

Mark is saying that the FBFI is required by the Bible to separate over men who violate his particular application of 1 Corinthians 14.  They are disobeying Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 14 and they need to act on it, and this, according to Mark, is the number one problem in the FBFI.  Number one.  Men have stated their appreciation of Mark’s talk about this problem.  Churches that use only the KJV and their leaders deserve separation over their violation of 1 Corinthians 14.  Their translation is not sufficiently edifying.  If they don’t get at least another translation, separation from them should occur.  This isn’t even a Romans 14 issue.  This is not doubtful.  It’s new, but it’s not doubtful.  It’s not found as an application in historical theology, but it is a separation issue.

I’ve noticed FBFI type and associated men harping about the idea of fundamentalism and separating over gospel issues.  Now what is happening, not just in the FBFI, but I see it now in the gospel coalition, is taking pet issues and turning them into gospel issues.  KJVO can be spun into a gospel issue if you stretch out the number of premises.  If you have an non-intelligble Bible, men won’t understand the gospel, and the KJV is unintelligble, so this is a gospel issue — so there.  At the gospel coalition, it is lack of racial reconciliation shows lack of repentance and repentance is part of the gospel, and so on.  You can work it if you want to.

I think that fundamentalists have bigger problems than what Mark says is number one.  They have many other issues over which they should separate.  They should separate over a false gospel in a consistent way and be clear on the gospel.  They should separate over false views of sanctification.  They should join me in separating over those.  No, the number one issue, as presented by Mark, is the lack of using a sufficiently edifying translation of the Bible.

Separation is according to scripture a church issue.  Churches separate, not big parachurch and extra-biblical coalitions like the FBFI.  Those have zero authority.  It’s like the model airplane operators of America talking about separation.  No, churches separate for many reasons according to scripture, including the protection of the truth and their church.  On this very narrow issue that Mark addresses, our church separates based upon one reason:  the biblical doctrine of preservation.  We separate over an established, historical, and biblical doctrine of preservation of scripture.  Separation started with what the Bible taught and then fleshed out the practice, not in reverse order.  You start with what the Bible teaches, studying the Bible, getting your doctrine and practice from the Bible, and then acting accordingly.  That’s the biblical order.  If you don’t do it that way, then you’re going to separate on whims and on political winds.

Jesus said we’re sanctified by the truth, so the truth is where sanctification starts.  Sanctification is separation.  You separate the biblical from the unbiblical in doctrine and practice.  It’s how sanctification occurs.

The reversal of the order — what does the Bible teach and then, second, what have Christians believed through history, before, and I mean, before you get to your position — is what causes constant new edicts on separation arising from the FBFI.  The FBFI has an announcement and now proposes what it shall do about Promise Keepers and hencewith seals in wax what it shall deem an acceptable practice.  To know how to practice separation, you subscribe to the latest list of propositions.

Separation should start with what the Bible says.  The dividing line is scripture.  History should be consulted.  You might doubt the doctrine if it’s new.  A biblical doctrine of preservation causes our church to separate from those who deny the biblical doctrine in at least two ways.  There are two different iterations of denial of the perfect preservation of scripture,  both in response to naturalism and rationalism.  They believe their lying eyes instead of believing what scripture says about itself.  In both cases, they can’t get past the existence of textual variants in the original language text.

The first iteration is a large swath of KJVO.  That’s right, I separate from KJVO.  Our church will not fellowship with Ruckmanites, English preservationists, men who believe that God either reinspired or preserved His Word in the English.  The English to them is the final authority for faith and practice and they correct the Greek original with the English.  There are many of these.  They don’t believe in the biblical doctrine of preservation.  They don’t believe God preserved His Words in the language in which He inspired them and they were written.  They deny that biblical doctrine and they react to that by taking a kind of cultic view of the English Bible.  Our church will separate from these people, when we know they are taking this position.  I would say this is over half of KJVO and maybe even a larger percentage.

These KJVO don’t believe God preserved His Words in the original languages, and so they take a preservation view that depends on twisting certain passages of scripture.  For instance, in many cases they take Psalm 12:6-7 and when they say God purified His Words seven times, they believe that this means that apparently the seventh English translation is God’s pure Words.  That is their “biblical” basis.  This is a new interpretation or application and a new doctrine.  One might call it tin-foil-hat hermeneutics. These KJVO advocates also do things like take 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and say that “is given by inspiration” is present tense, so it means that God is still inspiring scripture.  Ironically, the “is” is in the translation, not in the original languages.  They say inspiration didn’t stop in the past, but it is ongoing because of the present tense of “is.”  This is when people have a position and then go to scripture to find a basis for the position.

The second iteration, that includes Mark Ward and those in the FBFI like him, is almost identical to the above KJVO.  They deny perfect preservation in the original languages.  Before I move on with this point, however, I want to take a moment to support the last statement.  They deny preservation in the original languages.  Many of them, like the KJVO of the first iteration, will reject that assertion.  They would say that they believe that all the words are somewhere in the preponderance of the manuscripts, so they really are “preserved.”  They just don’t know what they are.  This is a new position on preservation that doesn’t match the biblical and historical doctrine, and yet it is also one that they deny themselves.  For instance, I don’t know a single critical text person, who believes there is a manuscript available with the correct words of 1 Samuel 13:1 — any manuscript.  They don’t, upon a little closer scrutiny, believe their own preponderance of the manuscripts position.  The ongoing existence of textual criticism says they don’t know what the words are, they don’t whether they possess all of them.  They don’t take a biblical or historical position on the preservation of scripture.  They don’t start with the Bible to come to their position.

The two iterations of denial of perfect preservation take the same position on preservation, but deal with it in two different ways.  The KJVO say that the English is perfection and then go to scripture to conform passages to work for that.  The critical text go to scripture to conform passages to fit the existence of textual variants.  There was no established biblical position that began or buttressed either iteration of the denial of the preservation of scripture.

Our church separates over unbiblical doctrine and practice.  We separate from most KJVO and then critical text deniers of the preservation of scripture.  Both iterations doubt God.  Both change and twist passages of scripture to support their false doctrine.  Separating over the established doctrine is the only way to believe and practice separation in a consistent manner.  It’s also living by faith, which pleases God.

I can explain how that separating over the biblical doctrine of preservation results in the church preserving scripture, like God intends. God uses the church to keep His Words.  What is Mark Ward getting out of his separation?  I have hard time understanding it.  As I view it, his people won’t have to put up with something they don’t like.  They don’t like KJVO, don’t like the ramifications of association with it, especially among the cool evangelicals, and this will rid them of that.  They have their own sweet little club based on all their pet lists of separating issues.  Are they really delivering churches from the monumental issue of non edification due to non intelligibility?  No way.

Fundamentalist churches have a bigger problem, which stems from bad hermeneutics proceeding from revivalism, that results in faulty interpretations in much greater ways than the misunderstanding of some KJV words that are out of common usage.  Why can’t that get into Mark’s list of three?  Nope.  That doesn’t make the list.  I think it’s bad when KJVO types find a text to match their hobby horse.  However, if you are someone who relies on the original language to get your interpretation of a text, how is that not going to edify?  Can you separate from a man who actually gets the explanation right, or is that not good enough?  The separation Mark Ward calls for seems to be another convenient commandeering of separation, a weaponization of separation, for the accomplishment of a particular task.

My wife, two daughters, and I have returned from Europe.  We’re back.  I’m not going to write this whole series, as anticipated. It’s fine.  I couldn’t write it for several reasons.  There is no script or no auditions for a Europe trip one has never taken.  My normal vacation is in fact a vacation, not so much activity:  sleeping in, leisurely pace, a little sightseeing here or there.  This was a total outlier.

On Saturday, early evening, my wife and I came back to the hub of our public transportation, Shepherd’s Bush station, with our two youngest daughters, and left them at a very big British mall.  I’ve noticed that malls are still making it in Europe.  From my vantage point, malls are a thing of the past in the United States, but for reasons I can’t decipher, Europeans like them.  For instance, the next Friday, my wife and I walked from our flat in the Leif neighborhood of Edinburgh, Scotland to look at the Britannia, which was in harbor there, and found that an entire enormous three story mall was blocking it from view.  The mall was themed to an ocean liner in all of its design.  The Westfield mall at Shepherd’s Bush was of that nature as well.

In general in society, I don’t think it is a good practice for single women to roam around freely without protection.  One component to our trip here in Europe has been to purchase European cell phone sim cards from a local London company that are good through Europe at least to text and phone between our four phones, and include 5gb of data.  This was very helpful for using the phone for the gps, which made life exponentially better.  I’ll talk more about this, but you don’t have to know the language so much if you can make it around without finding an English speaker, when none is available.  We could stay in constant contact with them, and they live in a very diverse metropolitan area, where the oldest of the two has ridden public transportation all three years of university.  She knows how to handle herself. Actually both of them do.

My wife and I went downtown into London again on the underground, and rode first to the British library.  The British museum was closed.  While we rode, we wrote postcards to people back home, and were so caught up, that we missed our stop.  We exited one too late and walked to the other track, but that packed-out train wouldn’t move.  The engineer announced that the train couldn’t go to the next stop, because of a security issue.  A security issue had occurred at the station where we would have disembarked, and then we couldn’t go back there.  An hour later, we saw it in the news, and it was a knife wielding man, who was subdued by the police before he could do damage.  Because we couldn’t get back there, we decided to use a taxi, which is unique in London, because the taxi drivers are so well trained and driving usually in distinctive styled cars.

Our taxi driver lived in Kent.  Kent, my name, comes from that region of England, ancestors of my paternal grandmother.  He was very talkative with a lot of opinions, one of which is that he liked our president.  He liked Trump.  It was a short drive to the library.  With so much of England being old and traditional in appearance, the British library is modern and ugly.  It’s sad that it shelters in such a modernistic or even postmodern structure the very old books it does.

There is an exhibition in a large, guarded, secure side room of some of the most important books in history and especially English history.  They are displayed under glass, but you look at in no necessary order, all original, first edition:  Gutenberg Bible, Wycliffe Bible, Tyndale NT, King James Version, apparently Sinaiticus, and the Magna Carta. There are many other hand written originals there in English literature of well-known English authors.  The library also had displays of original scores:  the original of Handel’s Messiah, Bach, Mozart, etc.  There was as we viewed the exhibition, a special large display of original Karl Marx, which included his library card at the British library.

After our short visit to the library, my wife and I went to mail our postcards and then find someplace to eat an English breakfast (for Supper) and we traced a place on our phone called The Breakfast Club with good ratings as a kind of small chain that offers the English breakfast.  However, we didn’t really know London well enough to understand how bad Piccadilly Circus was.  The Breakfast Club was at that station, so when we arose from the underground and saw it, we knew it was akin to Broadway or Times Square in New York City.  It’s very lascivious territory with wickedness all around.  It’s as bad or worse in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.  We found the breakfast place and ordered the first of two of these breakfasts that we ate while in the UK.

My assessment of the traditional English breakfast is that it isn’t the same as the American in quality or content.  You get eggs, but they really don’t do them the same. At this place, our waiter, a grungy yet talkative character, asked if we wanted our eggs fried on both sides.  We said, yes, and this was a bad move.  The yokes were not intact and the egg took on the nature of a bit of a crispy, rubbery hockey puck.  They fry the bread in oil.  It’s not like something toasted.  The meat is a banger.  I ate bangers at least three times on the trip, this the first, and it is a very plump sausage, which at face value looks very good, but the taste is something of the nature of our bologna, extremely bland.  No banger has the spicy sausage taste of American sausage.  Our sausage, my friend, is much better than the banger.  The American sausage link, Jimmy Dean style, stands alone.

Then we come to the odd items of the English breakfast:  baked beans, warm tomatoe, and black pudding.  Baked beans are baked beans.  They even eat Heinz brand, our brand, but they were both times baked beans.  I imagined the tomatoe as salsa, which is nice with eggs, especially in an omelet in the U. S., but this is a slice of tomato or what we call stewed tomatoes, also warm, if you want those instead.  I like beans and tomatoes, but they both seem incongruous with breakfast to an American. The oddity here is black pudding, which is also called blood pudding.

Blood pudding is an item of food that would seem to be included only as a tradition for a culture.  I can’t surmise it to be something worthy of invention as food.  Who would think of blood pudding?  It looks the color of dark blood with clots in it, which are, I guess pieces of organ meat.  Pudding then isn’t pudding, which in this case one can be thankful.  Pudding is never pudding, so if you order it, expect some kind of crispy bread with a softer interior.  This is the size of an English muffin, except almost black and tastes like no other food I’ve ever tasted.  I ate both of my blood puddings, both the same color, size, and shape.  I could eat them.  No gag reflex ensued, but it was curious as to its place in this ensemble.  There’s got to be a story here that I do not know or it’s something like mom making you eat your castor oil, and your chest sticks up a little over having done it again, having eaten this food item.  Did it again!  But why?

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

I am writing this post over a week after the events, while riding the train from Bologna to Venice, and then from Venice to Rome a few days later,  finish it in a flat in Rome.

I read that it rains in the UK on average 156 days of the year, so I was really expecting rain while we were on this part of the trip.  The people here talk about it.  Rain is normal in the UK, but it missed us, only at night did it pour and during the day a few light sprinkles here and there.

My family and I left our flat, rode bus 207 to Shepherd’s Bush station from Acton, and took the underground to Greenwich.  You switch to a newly constructed overground train to get down to Greenwich and before people here said it was only accessible by water.  We would pick up a cruise on a large barge-like boat for tourists on the River Thames from Greenwich to Westminster, which is where Parliament and the Abbey are, among many other prominent, historic London sites.

We arrived a little early, and at that location in Greenwich is a tour of the Cutty Sark, a historic fast clipper ship from the mid 19th century.  Right next to it is the Old Royal Naval College, which includes a museum, and an example of hundreds of possible sites to visit.  When I was a teenager, digital watches came on the market, and I wore one along with many other nerds, but also, using a short wave radio, set it to the second to Greenwich time.  The world doesn’t use Greenwich time any more, because atomic time is more accurate, but Greenwich time, what I called world standard time, originated at the Royal Observatory.  A time ball has dropped there, normally each day at 13:00.  We saw that observatory as we took off from Greenwich.  This is where the phrase originated, dropping the ball.

The Thames River is unusual in that it is controlled by the ocean tides.  The depth of the river rises and lowers dramatically, up to twenty feet.  This has been important to the history of England and the importance of London.  The current changes twice a day, depending on the tide.  Essentially, the Thames carried out the garbage and sewage and then brought in the cleaner fresher ocean water once a day.  During ocean storms, flooding became a problem, just like it has in Venice and other such locations.  As we moved along the Thames, we saw “the lion’s heads” at the top of the embankment, the wall alongside the river.  They are cast in bronze and each holdiung a mooring ring for an emergency to tie up a small vessel.  An old poem reads, “When the lions drink, London will sink.  When it’s up to their manes, we’ll go down the drains.”  There are times at spring and fall tides that the tide does rise to touch their bronze heads.

As we floated west, we saw the Golden Hind, a replica of the Sir Francis Drake ship on which he sailed around the world.  Quite close is the reconstructed Globe Theatre also on the southern side of the river.  We passed under varous bridges of varied age and importance, the Tower Bridge, taking on the nature of the London Tower, the famous London Bridge, the Waterloo Bridge, the Millennium Bridge, and the Westminster Bridge.  The London Bridge, even though it is now a plain modern urban concrete structure, was the first of which was built by Roman founders of London.  The longest standing London Bridge construction started in 1176, finished in 1209, and lasting until 1831.  It had numerous buildings on it, and was famous for its use for displaying the severed heads of traitors, starting with William Wallace’s in 1305.  An earlier version of the London Bridge was destroyed in 1014 by Olaf to block enemies from London, inspiring the lyrics, “London Bridge is falling down.”  The greatest view along the Thames in my opinion is moving to Westminster to end our cruise and seeing the Gothic spires of the Parliament building, the Abbey, and Big Ben from the river, the latter which was under repairs while we were there.

We departed from our boat and walked to a hop-on, hop-off bus, which is a good way to see everything, and visiting whatever you want on the route, several of which are available.  The bus comes with audio that comments on interesting, historical, and important sites along the way just as you pass them.  While walking to the bus, we saw 10 Downing Street, the home of the British Prime Minister, which is surrounded by iron gates and many armed security so that you could not get near the place anymore.

The busses in London, as you have likely seen, are double decker and bright red.  You can’t pay cash.  Like many other metropolitan areas, you are required to have purchased some type of card, the oyster, which is refillable, or a paper card that gives you something like 75 minutes of riding.  The upper decks of these hop-on and off busses is half covered and half open-air, the latter much better for pictures.  Our bus made its way down the Strand, which is the most famous and important roads in the history of London.

Growing up, the pub was synonymous with a bar.  I don’t think I even knew that it was short for “public house,” which is essentially a social meeting place, but is still associated with drinking.  I noticed taverns, and I asked a Brit what was the difference, and she said there was none.  She said that the pubs have turned now into restaurants in order to survive.  Certain parts of the United States are heavy alcohol areas.  The town of just over 20,000 where I attended college had over 50 bars in it.  Englad seems worse to me.  There are pubs all over the place, it seems like at least one, and sometimes more, on one side of a city block.  Very often people are crowded on the sidewalk after work with tall glasses of alcohol in their hands.

The pub is also connected to famous people in the history of England, where and who they sat at pub with.  Some of the oldest of these were pointed out as we drove along — writers, politicians, soldiers, and statesmen.

Our first hop-off point was St. Paul’s Cathedral, which we planned on visiting for just an hour.  St. Paul’s is very old and for centuries and centuries, really up until recently, was the tallest building in London, rising above everything else.  So much revolved around religion for so many centuries that it was a very important building.  On the outside west of the cathedral in a little garden area more difficult to see is a statue of John Wesley, even as nearby here he was said to have been converted, whether that is true or not.  Note is made of Wesley in the cathedral because the Wesleys were Anglicans, even as Susannah, John’s mother never left the Church of England.  John and Charles were non-conformists who did leave it in founding Methodism.

Buried in the crypt, essentially the basement of St. Paul’s is Christopher Wren, who was the architect or planner of much of London.  He has a famous statement about the whole cathedral itself being his memorial since he designed the present iteration of it, the former burning down in a London fire.  Also buried down there with a gigantic tomb is the Duke of Wellington, which is the title for Arthur Wellesley, who was famous for the Battle of Waterloo, and defeating Napoleon early in the 19th century and later serving twice as Prime Minister.

The original entrance to London, a stone archway is right next to St. Paul’s.

Interesting to my two daughters are other areas besides the historical.  We went on some excursions of the foodie variety, at one point hopping off to catch other bus transportation to dum-dum donuts, a famous super donut chain in London.  After eating the donuts, we split up, with my wife and daughters taking the bus to the Charles Dickens museum, his former home, and my staying on the hop-on and off bus to later meet with them at Trafalgar Square.

I can’t tell you everything I saw the rest of the way.  I found that the Waterloo station, next to the Waterloo Bridge, named after the British victory at Waterloo, was to be the original public transportation hub with Paris, France, but the French rejecting it unless the name was changed.  Instead the plans were changed to come from something close to King’s Cross station in Northern London.  The Lambeth Palace is a gigantic, monstrous edifice on the south of the Thames, where the archbishop of Canterbury lives, when he is in London.  Buckingham Palace is even more grand, ostentatious in its immensity, along with its majestic nearby parks.  I hopped off for my last time to go there, and then walk the length of the park to the Churchill underground museum, which is the original location where he commanded Englad during World War 2.  He made important speeches from this location.  With it is a fine museum to Churchill, chronicling his life and career in minute detail.

More to Come

I have had a difficult time keeping up with writing on this trip. I expect to blog it all. However, you can keep up through photos on brandenburgeurope on Instagram.