I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to post yesterday, Wednesday 7th. The Blogger site was down for most of the evening, UK time. Now, just after midnight here, it is up again. My apologies also to the friends who I just pointed to this site and encouraged to comment, that although they could read it they could not comment. But now they probably can – unless the site goes down again.

A friend who is currently in China reported that his access to this blog is blocked. I must say that I somewhat flattered that the authorities there consider me a threat! Does anyone know, are all Blogger blogs blocked there, or is it because their automatic system has found certain keywords like “God” or “Bible”?

I set up this blog last summer with good intentions, but for various reasons never actually got started with speaking the truth. Now that summer has come round again (at last!), I have decided to get the blog started properly. But to start with I will be a little less presumptious than I might have seemed before, by offering some insights which I hope are helpful, but for which I make no claim that they are objective truth. Some of them may be based on comments I have recently made on other blogs.

I have just installed Trackback for this blog according to the instructions given at the Better Bibles Blog.

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.