Musings of a Snickerdoodle

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...

In this book, MacArthur attacks the 'Strange fire'/worship practice of   pneumacentrism/Holy Spirit centrism(Major focus upon the Holy Spirit)particularly in the Charismatic movement, and does a good job too.   He starts by reminding us to 'test the spirits' and then moves on to how the modern charismatic movement got started and how they misinterpret Scripture.   We look at the Scriptures to see what the work of the Holy Spirit actually looks like and what 'Spirit-filled' really means.   Speaking in tongues is addressed, of course, and we are given the history of how and why the Charismatics switched from viewing the word 'tongue' as being a human language to its being an unintelligible spirit babble.   They apparently tried out their 'tongues' on people in other countries, and it proved that their supposed 'languages' were not languages at all but merely gibberish.   They wanted to keep this babble and so reinterpreted the Script...

Recently there seems to have been a trend towards a Christocentric hermeneutic, and  an overall focus on Christ altogether in Christian circles.  It has been frustrating to see, as the focus of the Bible is not on Christ, but on the Father.  Christ Himself points to the Father!   When I saw the title of this book, it intrigued me…that's exactly what I and my dad(a pastor) have been talking about: people forgetting about God the Father.  As Mr. Smail writes, "God the Father "has been regularly and ritually confessed, but his being and work as Father has been out of the centre of concern.  It is of course true that in recent years there has been a great deal of concentration on God.  It has, however, been a mainly apologetic concern, about the basis, possibility and meaning of speaking about God at all, rather than a properly dogmatic discussion with in the Christian family on the basis of shared faith about the nature and character of the God who...