Musings of a Snickerdoodle

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...

World War II England, and in particular, WWII London, was an intimidating place to be; itt seems that around 40,000 civilians in total were killed in England during the war.   During this time, when many bombs were being dropped by Nazi Germany on the civilian population, the director and the assistant director of the BBC's Religious Broadcasting department, James Welch and Eric Fenn, were searching for someone to draw people to the religious programs they were broadcasting on the BBC's radio station which were apparently being passed by in deference to stations/programs that were entertaining.   C. S. Lewis was the man they ended up recruiting.   C. S. Lewis and Mere Christianity by Paul McCusker is the story of how C. S. Lewis' book, Mere Christianity came to be.   It took a little bit for me to get used to the way the book was put together.   The story is told, not by mere sequence of events, but also by 'flashbacks' to C. S. Lewis' history, and consta...

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...

It is odd, at least to me, to find a commentary that is both exegetical and Premillennial.    Normally exegetical/linguistic commentaries are really good with their linguistics, and much of their basic exegesis, but are Amillennial, Covenantal and overly typological.   And to my knowledge, most premillennial commentaries are not exegetical/linguistic commentaries but more of the devotional/light type, and like the Covenantal commentaries, are too typological in their views of certain texts.     This commentary on the Psalms, by Allen Ross, is a very refreshing find in that it is both exegetical and Premillennial, and if anything, tries a little too hard not to be typological, focusing on examining the text for what it says.   Each examination of a Psalm starts out with the Psalm itself, and underneath the Psalm, one of my favorite features, LOTS of footnotes containing textual variants from other manuscripts, such as the Greek version, Symmachus, t...

The NIV Read Easy Bible is just what it claims to be, easy to read.   The font is nice and large, and the Bible generally lays down nice and flat, but the pages tend to turn on their own toward the beginning and end of the book, this could be because I haven't worn it in enough yet.   I really like the look and feel of the cover, it's simple and has a…strange but soft feel to it.   The only extra thing this Bible has is a 'table of weights and measures' at the end.   Other than that, it's a typical NIV(2011), there are no study notes and no commentary except for the textual notes at the bottom, which is, in my opinion, the best thing about the NIV.   These notes give many variants from the Masoretic Text from the Syriac, several Greek translations(Symmachus, Theodotion…etc.), the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as other sources.   I only wish the translators would have replaced the verses that don't match up with the Apostle's quotations of the Old Testam...