Musings of a Snickerdoodle

The Life of John Calvin by W.J. Grier is not your typical biography.   Grier had wanted to write a life of John Calvin, but was not able to do so.   It turns out that he had written some articles on Calvin in the Evangelical Presbyterian magazine of which he was editor.   These articles were edited into the book I am reviewing now.   Because these are 'articles', the timeline doesn't flow as smoothly as a normal biography, but this is a minor flaw.      It is very interesting to see how God used Calvin.   Calvin's life was not one people would generally envy.   It wasn't a life full of health, wealth and the favor of people, actually it was quite the opposite.    Calvin didn't want a public life, he wanted to focus privately studying God's word,   but God made him a pastor.   He didn't want to go back to Geneva after they 'kicked' him out and then desired him to come back, but God moved Him to go back, and things we...

When I read about the battles that take place in the Bible,   I have a vague picture in my mind of two generic groups of ancient soldiers fighting, nothing really specific about their attire, weapons or fighting methods. This is may be the case with most people. In Warfare in the Old Testament , Boyd Seevers sets out to give us a more detailed picture of what these clashes may have looked like. The organization, weapons and tactics of the nation of Israel are described first, "Typically, one finds good military records from nations only after they attained great strength.   Surprisingly, some of the best information from Israel comes from when it was struggling for birth and survival." Then in the subsequent chapters Seevers describes the enemies of Israel namely, Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, Babylon and then Persia.   He introduces each nation with a short fictionalized account of a soldier in each particular army, his thoughts, worries and considerations of the pa...