Musings of a Snickerdoodle

I knew a little about the famous Israeli rescue of hostages held in Entebbe but didn't know a lot.  'Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, The Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History' by Saul David was an interesting way to learn about it.  David takes you through each day, in 'real time', as it were, bringing you back and forth from the hostages and terrorists to Israeli diplomats and military men, international political leaders and others,   continually switching locations to give you a perspective of what was going on in these significant places and among the various significant people throughout each of these 8 days of tension.   It was quite interesting,   and very informative.   I did not know that hijackings were such a common thing in the late 60s into the early 70s.   And that they were mainly to make demands of Israel! Nor did I know that there were Japanese terrorists fighting for the Pal...

(This is my full review - most of the other sites I posted an edited version as the full review could not be posted due to size limits)  Evidence For the Rapture: A Biblical Case For Pretribulationism - General Editor John Hart is a compilation of several essays by several men in defense of the pretrib rapture. I wanted to read this book primarily because it is a topic that our church is examining at the moment (we're in Matthew 24). We've been wrestling with the concept of the rapture and are actually leaning strongly in a Post-tribulational direction. My dad, a pastor has held a pretrib rapture stance for all of his life, until recently, and he wants to make sure that there is no compelling exegetical argument that he has not heard defending a pretrib rapture (and he's heard many arguments for it). I saw that this book was available for me to choose in the reviewing program I'm a part of and so I snatched it up. Each chapter of the book deals with various arg...

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...

Understanding the Congregation's Authority by Jonathan Leeman is a short and yet quite thorough explanation and defense of what Leeman calls, "Elder-Led Congregationalism".  He does not advocate congregationalism nor Elder-Rule, rather he presents the concepts of 'congregational authority' as 'responsibilities' and the role of the pastors/Elders he presents as the God-given 'trainers/councilors' of the congregation.  Each member of the congregation is responsible to prod one another to love and good works, building and discipling their brothers and sisters in Christ (which may involve correction) and coming to be discipled as well, to attend church regularly not making a habit of forsaking the assembling of their church family, and the congregation is also responsible to submit themselves to the elders of the church(the Elders do not make them submit), which Elders are to train up the congregation to fulfill their responsibilities by preachi...

The Ten Commandments: Ethics for the twenty-first century by Mark Rooker is a good and quite concise look at the meaning of each of the ten commandments, comparing them to the laws of other nations, looking at the repetition(or the significance of their non-repetition) in the New Testament, their application in the lives of Christians and their significance, or comparison to our modern culture. Have you ever wondered about the statement some people make, that other nations had laws similar to the ten commandments before the ten commandments were given out to Moses and Israel? I really liked Rooker's point about how the how the Ten commandments express God's eternal will, and how "This is known by the conviction of the human conscience but more explicitly by the ancient pagan law codes discovered in the Near East. Many of these law codes contain statutes similar to the Ten commandments which indicate their recognition of basic intrinsic moral values. Indeed, the law sin...

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...

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...

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...