Musings of a Snickerdoodle

"A fellow lecturer told his Bible class that it did not matter whether the biblical character Job was real or fictional.  For him, the point off Job's book is to teach us about suffering, and the historicity of Job is immaterial to that lesson.  I cannot disagree more strongly, and hopefully this illustration will help clarify why.  Suppose you are going through a difficult time in your life.  Perhaps it is from the death of a close relative or you struggle with debilitating illness. Just like the psalmist who felt abandoned by God in his deepest time of need, you feel lost and adrift in your suffering, with no sense of God's care.  In this state, you ask me to bring you wise counsel and comfort. I tell you a story about a man who built a spaceship to travel to Venus.  Due to a technological breakthrough, he was able to equip his vessel with heat-resistant panels, making it safe to venture close to the sun.  Unfortunately, along the way the panels ...

I have noticed, recently, that there is some sort of proposition going around (particularly in relation to man/woman husband/wife relationships) that the Trinity does not have any authoritative order, especially, that there is no subordination among the Persons of the Trinity.   When I received a notice that I could get a review copy of this book of collected essays by many people: Trinity Without Hierarchy: Reclaiming Nicene Orthodoxy in Evangelical Theology edited by Michael F. Bird and Scott Harrower , my dad wanted me to get it and look into the topic. I did not know that there was controversy over this particular topic, and I don't believe I've ever really considered it before.   I unconsciously have always assumed that God the Son does the will of God the Father, and that that is something that has always been the case, as that is what a basic reading of the Scriptures teaching on the Godhead seems to indicate.     After going through this...

I saw that there was a book on hermeneutics coming out by Abner Chou.  I thought his name sounded familiar, looked it up and remembered that I had listened to a message by him a while back, critiquing the Christocentric hermeneutic and thought that it was pretty good.  Therefore I wanted to see how Chou would tackle hermeneutics overall in a book. This book, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles is written from the perspective that the Bible has a "built-in hermeneutic".   We don't have to come up with our own. I loved that Chou points out that we don't need to go searching the hermeneutical methods of the nations in the days that the books of the Bible were written, rather we search the Bible to see how the text interprets itself.   But sadly, overall I did not like the book.   Let me explain why.   First, I didn't like how the author keeps saying that the prophets were th...

The Spurgeon Study Bible is a very neat idea.  As most people somewhat acquainted with Mr. Spurgeon know, he was not a verse-by-verse through a book of the Bible kind of preacher.  He usually would choose a verse (or portion of verses) for one Sunday and would preach on that and then preach on another (non-related, often from a whole different book)verse the next week. And also, some may also notice that his preaching was not always very exegetical. That being said, this  commentary is a great compilation!  It sort of gives a glimpse of how it would have been if Spurgeon went by a more verse by verse preaching style, and it focuses on snippets from his sermons that are more exegetical. The version that I have is the brown and tan cloth over board Bible.  It is very nicely bound and seems quite durable.  The spine has some fancy looking ridges on it and the front has Spurgeon's signature printed on the bottom left. There is a lot ...

A m illennialism and the Age to Come: A Premillennial Critique of the Two-Age Model by Matt Waymeyer is an excellent critique of Amillennialism and, in the process, an excellent defense of Premillennialism. I learned a lot about Amillennialism and grew even more confident (if that's even possible) in Premillennialism.  One of the key things that seems to mark the Amillennial view is that they apparently believe that many Old Testament passages that speak of a this-earth Millennium are symbolic, not literal in their content. They believe that the New Testament is the key to understanding Old Testament prophecies in their true symbolic meaning.  In other words, you shouldn't take these passages at face value.  The New Testament (excepting Revelation) is the section of the Bible that is the literal key to the symbolic Old Testament. Waymeyer goes through and defends a literal interpretation of these OT passages, showing that the literal interpretation is the mo...

The Christian Standard Bible is a new revision of the Holman Christian Standard Bible.  They have made some changes, and it seems to me that many of those changes are toward a more literal translation, which is a good thing.  Here are some samples: In Matthew 19:28 the HCSB renders it: "Jesus said to them, 'I assure you: in the Messianic Age, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne…"  This new revision has it as,  "Jesus said to them, 'Truly I tell you, In the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne…'" - CSB Not that I'm disputing that the renewal of all things references the Messianic age, it's just that "the renewal of all things"  is a more literal rendition of what Christ said, more toward a formal equivalence rather than a dynamic one - which I believe is a safer route. To some degree the same holds true with the following: Daniel 9:25: "Know and understand this:  F...

Looking for a book that will give you good guidelines for studying the Bible well? Inductive Bible Study by Richard Alan Fuhr Jr. and Andreas J. Kostenberger is a good resource on the topic. As the authors of this book explain, God chose to reveal His will to us through His written Word, rather than through personal revelation/new revelation.  He chose that it would be learned progressively with effort rather than instantly without any work on our part. We should revere God's choice method of conveying the knowledge of Him that He wants us to have and His will that is revealed through this collection of holy documents.  Fuhr and Kostenberger take you through a series of steps that will assist you in reverently discovering and handling what God's Word says with accuracy and reverence. The steps you are taken through range from: comparing English Bible translations, Asking the right questions of the text, using commentaries, word studies, practicing discernment and of cou...

This edition of the  Chronological Study Bible NKJV  is a nicely bound chronological Bible.  It has a simple, studious looking  'Leathersoft' cover, brown in color with a big dark blue stripe across its center.  This Bible is full of extra content, almost to the point of being  distractingly  cluttered.  It has charts and 'timepanels', background notes,  full color illustrations (some are very neat looking while others are not very decent), and maps throughout.  I have some problems with it though, besides some indecent works of art,  some of the notes and commentary seem rather eisegetical.   For instance, some of the notes dealing with wives being submissive to their husbands make it more of a concession to the culture of the time rather than God ordained. They say things like,   "Paul's command 'Wives, submit to your own husbands' (Eph. 5:22) is at least partly ...

I must admit, I liked the cover of this Bible (the 'Frost Bible') decorated with snow and sparkles and that was one of the reasons I requested this book in order to review it.   I am not an advocate of choosing a Bible because of its cover, and am generally uncomfortable with Bibles that are aimed towards a specific gender (mainly because of their study notes that may run into danger of eisegesis by trying to direct the thinking into a more egotistical interpretation of Scripture) , but this one, other than its being appealing to girls by its cover (as I am proof of) is otherwise a fairly basic Bible.      My motives in requesting this Bible were not wholly material in nature, I had never heard of the International Children's Translation before and was very curious about it.    It seems to be a rather literal translation overall.   They explain in the preface about some liberties they took in translation, such as clarifying ancient customs, c...

I wasn't sure about reading this book until I saw that Ken Ham had endorsed it and then I knew that it would be what I wanted:  a book that is biased towards the literal account that God's Word gives of creation.  The author of this book believes in a literal six-day Creation and in a literal global flood, and thus studies the dinosaurs with that viewpoint.  I was especially intrigued upon opening the first pages of the book to see 1 Timothy 6:20-21 and 2 Peter 3:5-6, two verses warning about those who turn away from what God's Word says. Dinosaurs Marvels of God's Design by Dr. Tim  Clarey is a very fascinating book on Dinosaurs. Filled with many photographs of dinosaur fossils, and many artist renditions of dinosaurs, it is interesting even to little kids as I found when my little brothers all gathered around me while I was reading this book this past week, asking about the dinosaurs and being intrigued with the pictures. Where the Bible is silent on Dinosau...