Musings of a Snickerdoodle

In Robots or Rebels, Robert Pruitt addresses the modern manifestation of legalism that has been around since the Church first appeared in the times of the Apostles, the ones stuck in true legalism he calls 'Robots'.   He also warns about rebels, who turn from legalism and flee to antinomianism.   As he says in the book, " "Rebels do not love Christ and do not desire to look holy before anyone.   Robots, on the other hand, desire to look holy while not realizing that true holiness only flows from the heart and life of one who sincerely loves the Lord Jesus. "        "Too many preachers and teachers today proclaim a gospel that saves from the penalty of sin, while not necessarily saving one from bondage to sin."   This leads to many who profess faith but who have no works, no holiness, to show that they are actually alive.   They do not have any evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in them, no evidence that they are among the ones Go...

Why do so many Christian organizations become secular within a generation or two?   How does one build a focused ministry that doesn't change its core purpose?   Peter Greer and Christ Horst provide some excellent answers in Mission Drift:   The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches .   They have examined and analyzed various ministries, some that have stayed focused on their Gospel focused mission, and some that drifted away from that focus have become secular in focus, not spiritual.  The authors make the interesting observation that "It is often Christians who seem most likely to be the biggest critics of bold Christian distinctiveness".   They quote the Christian Founder of Quaker Oats speaking of people "who are much interested in the loaves and fishes, but not at all in the faith."   They bring up organizations that were Christian at first, but now only help with material needs alone.   Greer and Horst also make th...

I like this Atlas very much, it is a nice overview of the geography of Biblical events. It was more interesting than I had expected.  You can get caught up following the discussion of places, and looking at the locations of Biblical places. Beginning with a basic overview of the geography of the middle east and then move into historical geography.   Moving along the timeline of the Bible, we examine Abraham's journeys, follow the possible path of Israel's Exodus from Egypt, and then journey to the promised land.   We see Israel's dispersions from Israel into other lands, and finally end up looking at Israel at the time of the New Testament.   The places visited by Christ are considered, and then we see the spread of the Gospel.    The book ends with an examination of the city of Jerusalem in detail. Some particular sections I found helpful were the maps of the distribution of land to the twelve tribes of Israel.   It makes the account in the ...

The Life of John Calvin by W.J. Grier is not your typical biography.   Grier had wanted to write a life of John Calvin, but was not able to do so.   It turns out that he had written some articles on Calvin in the Evangelical Presbyterian magazine of which he was editor.   These articles were edited into the book I am reviewing now.   Because these are 'articles', the timeline doesn't flow as smoothly as a normal biography, but this is a minor flaw.      It is very interesting to see how God used Calvin.   Calvin's life was not one people would generally envy.   It wasn't a life full of health, wealth and the favor of people, actually it was quite the opposite.    Calvin didn't want a public life, he wanted to focus privately studying God's word,   but God made him a pastor.   He didn't want to go back to Geneva after they 'kicked' him out and then desired him to come back, but God moved Him to go back, and things we...

When I read about the battles that take place in the Bible,   I have a vague picture in my mind of two generic groups of ancient soldiers fighting, nothing really specific about their attire, weapons or fighting methods. This is may be the case with most people. In Warfare in the Old Testament , Boyd Seevers sets out to give us a more detailed picture of what these clashes may have looked like. The organization, weapons and tactics of the nation of Israel are described first, "Typically, one finds good military records from nations only after they attained great strength.   Surprisingly, some of the best information from Israel comes from when it was struggling for birth and survival." Then in the subsequent chapters Seevers describes the enemies of Israel namely, Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, Babylon and then Persia.   He introduces each nation with a short fictionalized account of a soldier in each particular army, his thoughts, worries and considerations of the pa...

  "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...