Musings of a Snickerdoodle

Having read the unabridged Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas I was interested to see that there was an abridged version and was curious to see how the abridged version would compare to the original.   It was a nice attempt, but it definitely isn't even half as good.   For one thing, it seemed choppy at parts, for instance, at one point, the Nazi party is a small minority party in the government and then all of a sudden Hitler is in power. As far as I can recollect, It didn't really talk about the growth of the Nazis like the other one did.   I understand that in order for it to be 'abridged' lots of things would have to be 'cut', but I thought that it should have had a little bit more of the background of what was going on politically in Germany just for clarities sake.   And another example of its 'choppiness' was where Bonhoeffer declares that he won't go to the 'Fano' conference if a particular 'Reich-church' leader went too, and then w...

I've started a shadow blog that sounds more like a 'theological' blog than a 'cooking blog'.  I'll still keep this one up as my 'main' blog, but I do want to recommend a Christian novel that just came out, Polycarp: A destroyer of our gods - by Rick Lambert: You can read my review on my other blog,  HERE  

The Evangelism Study Bible is intended to help with Evangelism.   It has a lot of footnotes, commenting on the relevance of many verses to evangelism.   It also contains various charts explaining/expounding on certain topics, like the fruit of the spirit, the whole armor of God…etc.   There are many 'commentary' boxes, discussing various evangelism related topics, that are inserted throughout the Bible as well.   One in particular I appreciated dealt with the question, "Do You Have to Know the Date You Were Saved?", and it deals with the source of our assurance of our salvation being Christ, " …when Scripture speaks of salvation, it goes back to a fact, not a date.   If you are trusting in Christ alone, you are saved, regardless of when the divine transaction took place…..The one who saved us gives us security, not the 'when' of our salvation." I also appreciate that many of the footnotes remind us that, though we are privileged to serve God by gi...

The first time I remember hearing about the HCSB translation was in John Macarthur's book: ' SLAVE: The hidden truth about your identity in Christ', in which this translation is used because it translates 'doulos' literally as 'slave' rather than the less accurate translation of 'servant' or 'bondservant'.   That made me curious to take a better look at the translation.   This translation uses "Optimal Equivalence" as the translation method which they consider to be a careful cross between formal equivalence an dynamic/functional equivalence.   Also, the translators do not give in to gender neutrality, as they mention in their 'introduction':   "…the translators have not changed 'him' to 'you' or to 'them,'   neither have they avoided other masculine words such as 'father' or 'son' by translating them in generic terms…"   There were some specific things that I looke...

I did not know much about Samuel Rutherford before reading this 'bite-sized'   biography by Richard Hannula.   I associated his name with the song "The Sands of Time are Sinking" and thought that he was the author.   The content of the song made me desire to know more about Mr. Rutherford. It turns out that the song was written by Anne Ross Cousin, but it was inspired by Mr. Rutherford's writings and sayings, so my curiosity stayed.   Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish pastor who lived in the 1600s who underwent persecution along with other Christians under the reigns of Charles the I and II.    He was married twice(his first wife died) and had nine children altogether, only one survived him.   One of the things I admired about God's working in him was his deep love for his congregation, even when banished from them he was concerned with their welfare, and kept up a correspondence with them to keep encouraging them in their lives as Christians.   ...

When I first looked at Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary I was quite impressed.   It is very nicely bound, and quite "fancy".   It has several maps, modern pictures of the places being described, pictures of various archaeological finds and many other illustrations.   Much of the information it gives seems quite good. For instance, in their definition of Agape love, they explain that the term "unconditional love" is not the right definition, Agape love is:   "primarily a love of the will rather than the emotions.   The New Testament never speaks of God loving unbelieving human beings with emotional love…He loves with His will…".  I loved a lot of their entries on particular people in the Bible, in a nice condensed summary of who they were and the events in their lives, I also really like the descriptions of various Biblical places, where they were located, what happened there...etc. But, sadly, the negatives outweigh the positives so that I ...

The People, the land, and the future of Israel is a collection of essays on those topics by various people including   Michael Rydelnik, John Feinberg and Walter Kaiser Jr.   The Essays are Divided into several groupings, in sections like Practical Theology, Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament..etc.   All of these men are defending the Biblical view that God is not done with the Jews as a people, that they have a future in   the land of Israel, a future in which as believers in Jesus as the Messiah, and as the Atonement for their sins, they will live in peace in the land under their Messiah's rule(The Millennial Kingdom). At first I liked the idea of having multiple people contributing in one book, but when I read it, or rather as I was reading it,   I changed my mind.   It just wasn't a smooth flow, once you got used to one person's style of writing you ended up with another one.   And then some of the essays were interesting, some weren't so intere...

The NIV Once a Day Bible is a great concept, not only is it chronologically arranged, but it is also divided into 365 daily readings.   Last year our church went through the Bible in a year using a chronological reading plan.   Though it was really neat to be reading it chronologically, it was a bit tiring flipping back and forth to the different texts for each individual day.   Then I started reviewing Bibles that were already chronologically arranged, and that helped a lot.   Some, or all of them, had one year Bible reading plans listed in the back of the Bible; this Bible is neat in that it is already arranged that way so you don't have to flip to the back of the book, you just read until the next 'Day' heading.   It would be nice if they would come out with a hardcover edition as the softcover feels a bit flimsy.  At the end of each day's readings, there are little reflective paragraphs at the end, talking about what you've just read.   Some...

Erwin Lutzer gives a high level overview of the return of Christ and the events that will be associated with this return.   Writing from a premillennial standpoint he examines the events that have yet to take place and helps us think, "how should I live in light of this?"   The chapters are all written in light of our Lord's coming, as is evidenced by their titles, "The King Returns for us", "The King Judges us", "The King Marries His Bride", and so on.   He states that, "Some of the events associated with His glorious return will be shocking, ,especially for those who think of Jesus only in terms of the gospel accounts, when He went about healing the sick, raising the dead, and blessing the poor.    In the event before us, we see not only the love of Jesus but the meticulous justice of Jesus."   And so you also have chapters like, "The King Destroys Nations" and "The King Returns to Conquer".   I like ...

Martyn-Lloyd Jones' enthusiasm about this 11th chapter of Romans is evident in every chapter of this book.    My dad likes to point out that the most interesting messages are given by people who are actually interested in what they are speaking about.   Lloyd-Jones is definitely interested and excited about sharing what he has learned in God's word, and so this commentary(a collection of his sermons on this chapter)is very interesting.   In Romans 11 Paul is continuing his explanation of what is going on with the ethnic people God chose, namely the people of Israel, and whether or not God is done with them as an ethnicity.   The majority of Jews were rejecting the Gospel, while most of the people who were responding to the 'call' were   Gentiles.    Despite his apparently Amillennial views, Lloyd-Jones emphatically rejects the view that the term 'Israel' is speaking of the 'Church' anywhere in this passage.   He explains that it is spe...

How defensible are Old Testament prophecies of Christ?   If someone came up to you and declares that, in the Hebrew manuscripts of the OT, Psalm 22:16 does not read, "they pierced my hands and my feet," rather, when it is accurately translated it reads, "like a lion are my hands and feet." What would your answer be?   And what if they say that Isaiah 53 was not speaking of a Messiah, but rather of Israel as a suffering servant?   Nowadays, too many Christians believe that many, if not all, of the prophecies of the Messiah are only indirect prophecies, not direct prophecies.   And many Christians might say that these prophecies are allegorically fulfilled, or that it is perfectly alright for the Holy Spirit , in His inspiration of the Apostles, to change His own prophecies.   Others say that many prophecies have a 'double fulfillment', that these prophecies were fulfilled historically, in the prophets' life-time, and that they were fulfilled spiritual...

World War II England, and in particular, WWII London, was an intimidating place to be; itt seems that around 40,000 civilians in total were killed in England during the war.   During this time, when many bombs were being dropped by Nazi Germany on the civilian population, the director and the assistant director of the BBC's Religious Broadcasting department, James Welch and Eric Fenn, were searching for someone to draw people to the religious programs they were broadcasting on the BBC's radio station which were apparently being passed by in deference to stations/programs that were entertaining.   C. S. Lewis was the man they ended up recruiting.   C. S. Lewis and Mere Christianity by Paul McCusker is the story of how C. S. Lewis' book, Mere Christianity came to be.   It took a little bit for me to get used to the way the book was put together.   The story is told, not by mere sequence of events, but also by 'flashbacks' to C. S. Lewis' history, and consta...

The Israeli Solution:   A one state-plan for peace in the middle east is an excellent and very compelling argument for the abandonment of the "two-state solution".   Just today, I heard that, though Israel had accepted a cease-fire, Hamas   rejected it. So Israel still has to defend itself against their enemies who do not desire peace with them, but desire their annihilation instead.   This has been the case for many years, beginning even before Israel even existed as a state.      In this book, Caroline Glick takes us on a trip through history to examine the Arabs' constant rejection a Palestinian state. As she puts it so well, "Israel's desire for peace with the Arabs has been amply proven" .   They have put themselves at risk multiple times, releasing their proven enemies from prison, giving up land that could be used as a base of attack against them, even approving the entry of known terrorists into the land they relinquished.   I...

It is odd, at least to me, to find a commentary that is both exegetical and Premillennial.    Normally exegetical/linguistic commentaries are really good with their linguistics, and much of their basic exegesis, but are Amillennial, Covenantal and overly typological.   And to my knowledge, most premillennial commentaries are not exegetical/linguistic commentaries but more of the devotional/light type, and like the Covenantal commentaries, are too typological in their views of certain texts.     This commentary on the Psalms, by Allen Ross, is a very refreshing find in that it is both exegetical and Premillennial, and if anything, tries a little too hard not to be typological, focusing on examining the text for what it says.   Each examination of a Psalm starts out with the Psalm itself, and underneath the Psalm, one of my favorite features, LOTS of footnotes containing textual variants from other manuscripts, such as the Greek version, Symmachus, t...

The NIV Read Easy Bible is just what it claims to be, easy to read.   The font is nice and large, and the Bible generally lays down nice and flat, but the pages tend to turn on their own toward the beginning and end of the book, this could be because I haven't worn it in enough yet.   I really like the look and feel of the cover, it's simple and has a…strange but soft feel to it.   The only extra thing this Bible has is a 'table of weights and measures' at the end.   Other than that, it's a typical NIV(2011), there are no study notes and no commentary except for the textual notes at the bottom, which is, in my opinion, the best thing about the NIV.   These notes give many variants from the Masoretic Text from the Syriac, several Greek translations(Symmachus, Theodotion…etc.), the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as other sources.   I only wish the translators would have replaced the verses that don't match up with the Apostle's quotations of the Old Testam...