Musings of a Snickerdoodle

  "However it happened, the external God has now disappeared and has been replaced by the internal God.   Transcendence has been swallowed up by immanence.   God is to be found only within the self.   And once that happened, the boundary between right and wrong - at least as we had thought about these things - went down like a row of falling skittles.   Evil and redemption came to be seen as the two sides of the same coin, not the two alternatives in life."   Or as he also put it, "We want God's love without his holiness…"    Wells addresses this erroneous viewpoint by explaining who God really is, and what His love is really like.   I really liked his critique of our culture, how it has a 'therapeutic vision'.   As Wells indicates, sadly, the 'church' has been going this way as well, following the spirit of the age they adapt the gospel to be about the fulfillment of our needs, our self-promotion and about our happiness now.   T...

Exploring ChristianTheology is   a part of a series of books summarizing the main   theologies of the Christian Church, and summarizing their differences. The general editors of this book are Nathan D. Holsteen and Michael J. Sviegel. The volume gives an overview of the main views of The Church, Spiritual Growth and the end times.    I gave this book three stars because I did not like the first section(By, or edited by Nathan Holsteen) on the Church and spiritual growth.   My dislike began when the beginning of the book, in the short overview chapter entitled, 'The Christian Story in Four Acts', started out with a detailed description of the plot of Star Wars.   I simply did not see that coming.   Yes Star Wars was only used as an example of a so called 'hero cycle' but I don't think the illustration was warranted.   Actually, I found it extremely unfitting for, and distracting from, the subject matter about to be dealt with.   It did...

Did I like this book? Yes and no, but inclining more towards the latter.  The Apostle of the Last Days is an argument for Paul's life, letters and theology being eschatologically focused/united and that the troubles in the Churches Paul communicated with were because of faulty eschatologies.  Pate goes through the letters written by Paul and explains the Roman Eschatology/Roman Imperial Cult, non-Christian Jewish Eschatology and professing Christian faulty eschatology.  He then explains Paul's correction of them.  Did I like this book? Yes and no, but inclining more towards the latter. The Apostle of the Last Days is an argument for Paul's life, letters and theology being eschatologically focused/united and that the troubles in the Churches Paul communicated with were because of faulty eschatologies. Pate goes through the letters written by Paul and explains the Roman Eschatology/Roman Imperial Cult, non-Christian Jewish Eschatology and professing Christian faulty...

I wouldn't call this Bible uniquely applicable to a person's daily life as the Scripture is always applicable. That is not to say that I don't like this format, I do! I just needed to clarify that I don't quite agree with the title. This is a chronological Bible, interweaving chapters from various books of the Bible in their probable sequential order. This means that some chapters are split up and other parts of other chapters are placed in the gap to stay chronological.   There are many helpful charts to support the chronological aspect, some of my favorites being the several charts throughout the accounts of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, showing the "Kings To Date and Their Enemies"…I always get a bit confused about them. One of the other things I found very helpful were the little maps throughout, demonstrating where people went and where such and such a town was located. It gives you more comprehension of Biblical geography. There are also sev...

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...

Joseph: And the Gospel of Many Colors is not a full fledged commentary on the account of Joseph, nor was it meant to be.   It is more of an overview of the life of Joseph using a Christo-centric perspective.   I wanted to read this book partly because I thought that perhaps I was misunderstanding what people mean by "Christo-centric" as a hermeneutic.   Some of Baucham's explanations, such as the following, encouraged me in that regard:   " This does not mean that we find Jesus in every verse.   Another objection to the redemptive-historical approach to the Old Testament narrative is that it inevitably leads to allegorizing the text. Suddenly, every part of the story refers to an aspect of Christ.   The pit can't just be a pit; it has to be a type of grave.   The prison can't just be a prison; it has to be a type of hell.   And, of course, coming out of prison and going before Pharaoh must be a type of resurrection.   The possibilities ar...

http://www.nlpg.com/the-new-answers-book-4 The interpretation of the Bible's account of Creation through the lens of science seems to be a popular thing amongst professing Christians nowadays.  T his is a very discouraging state of things, that Christians trust human observations before the Bible's declarations.   That is one reason why this book is so refreshing as the authors hold to God's Word as the starting point and as the 'lens' with which to interpret their scientific observations.      The interpretation of the Bible's account of Creation through the lens of science seems to be a popular thing amongst professing Christians nowadays. The New Answers book 4 by Ken Ham(editor ) and many others, is full of chapters dealing with questions in regards to 'issues' that may come up in discussions about Creation, and is also great for simply perusing possible answers as to how certain things about Creation week might be explained.   It...