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Showing posts from February, 2019

Devotedly: The Personal Letters and Love Story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot

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I have liked pretty much any Elisabeth Elliot (Gren) book I have read (I've read about three or four I think, but not the ones on marriage or relationships).  When I saw that this book was published, I was quite excited.  This is a book about Jim and Elisabeth's 'love story', told through many of their letters to each other and their journals.  Their daughter, Valerie, put it together and added commentary. I was very disappointed by their relationship.   I had always had the impression that they were a model example in Christian pre-marital relationships.   After reading this book, I think that they are a horrible example to young men and women. I was quite shocked.   They started out liking each other, but not being sure whether the Lord would have them marry. All fine and good.   But then when you get to them still not being sure whether or not the Lord would have them marry,(actually for a while,   Jim was quite sure that the Lord wanted him to be sin

American Christianity's Adultery with Secular Culture

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American Christianity's Adultery With Secular Culture by Michael D. Lemay addresses the American Church's desire to be relevant to the society around her. I saw the title and some of the contents of this book online, and was pretty intrigued, looking forward to reading it. But, after going through it, I have mixed feelings.  Let me try to explain. First, let me explain some of what this book is about:  In this book, Lemay goes through and points out many of the philosophical poisons the church voluntarily drinking and diluting the gospel with.  Thinking they're improving it, the modern church is actually making it deadly. The author lists several popular teachers and preachers of our day and points out specific heresies of their teachings. The author attacks the notion that we need to make God and the gospel more palatable to the unbeliever, and laments that so many Christians are content to not spiritually grow.  He also attacks the heresy that repentance

Not Afraid of AntiChrist - By Michael Brown and Craig S. Keener

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My previously pretrib family has recently changed our position on the timing of the rapture (because of studies my dad [a pastor] has done on Matthew 24).  We had been quite staunchly pretribulationalists before, but had always had some doubts and questions about certain implications and assumptions of the position. In our study through the book of Mathew at our church, we were forced to change our position, as it was not biblical. I was curious at what Brown and Craig had to say about the topic in their book "Not Afraid of Antichrist".  Both authors believed in a pretribulation rapture, and then changed their mind after a closer look at the Scriptures.  They do a pretty good job of showing the unbiblicalness of the position, and demonstrate from various passages of Scripture that 'pretribbers' are connecting dots that should not be connected.   They explain that there is no significant difference between the various mentions of the coming of the Lord