Introducing myself as a Speaker of Truth

My name is Peter Kirk, and I live in Chelmsford, Essex, UK. I have been a member of Meadgate Church, Great Baddow for 20 years. I started in life by studying Physics at the University of Cambridge, and worked for several years in the electronics and software industry here in Chelmsford. I left this work and studied theology to MA level at London Bible College, now London School of Theology. Then I joined Wycliffe Bible Translators, and after training in linguistics I served for seven years in the Caucasus region, coordinating a Bible translation project. In 2002 I left WBT, but I continue to work part time as an exegetical adviser to the same translation project, based at home in the UK with occasional visits to the Caucasus.

I chose to call this blog "Speaker of Truth" because I believe that this is my calling from God. A few weeks ago during a time of prayer at my church two people independently drew my attention to the following lines from the song "History Maker" by Martin Smith:

I'm gonna be a history maker in this land.
I'm gonna be a speaker of truth to all mankind.

(Sorry about the word "mankind", I would have chosen a more gender neutral word, but I didn't write the song.)

This confirmed my intention to give a large part of my time to "speaking" truth on the Internet. This is something which I was already doing on various e-mail lists, e.g. Bible Translation, Biblical Hebrew and New Chronology, some of which I had joined in connection with my work as a Bible translator. And I have already extended my speaking of the truth by contributing to the Better Bibles Blog. But in all of these I am limited by the specific subject matters of these lists and blogs. By starting this blog, I am setting myself free from such restrictions - now I can write what I want to! But the intention is that it will be the truth.

Well, first I need to give some attention to Pilate's question "What is truth?" (John 18:38). This is not the place to answer the metaphysical side of this question. But my intention on this blog is to write what I believe to be the truth. My main focus will be the truth about God and Jesus Christ, and how they relate to humanity and to the universe. But I will not shy away from telling the truth about other issues such as political ones. Nor will I be shy about being controversial.

Now I accept that some of what I call the truth may be debatable, and sometimes I may just be plain wrong (and I will correct any errors which anyone can convince me of). Maybe some people would be more comfortable if I presented it just as my own opinions, rather than as truth. After all, they might say, is there really such a thing as absolute truth? Well, let me say briefly that I reject this aspect of post-modern thought. I believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and my intention on this blog is to speak that truth. However, I welcome any comments in reply to my postings.

I hope that all of you my readers will be stimulated by what you read here.