Musings of a Snickerdoodle

No Greater Valor:   The Siege of Bastogne And the Miracle That Sealed Allied Victory by Jerome Corsi deals with the surprise attack by Nazi forces against the Americans in Belgium that hinged upon the capturing/holding the town of Bastogne.   It is a very detailed account, almost too detailed for my taste, for instance, there are intricate accounts of the weapons used, what kinds they were, how many…etc.   Which just didn't capture my interest, but it makes absolute sense to have that type of info in a book about war.   And many probably prefer such attention to detail.   There are many maps in the book as well, illustrating what was happening, and many photographs from that time too.   The thing I really didn’t like about this book was that, though trying to have a Christian aspect to it, it didn't really succeed in anything but showing that many of the allied forces were theists.   One of the main persons focused upon is a Catholic Priest rath...

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...

Having read the unabridged Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas I was interested to see that there was an abridged version and was curious to see how the abridged version would compare to the original.   It was a nice attempt, but it definitely isn't even half as good.   For one thing, it seemed choppy at parts, for instance, at one point, the Nazi party is a small minority party in the government and then all of a sudden Hitler is in power. As far as I can recollect, It didn't really talk about the growth of the Nazis like the other one did.   I understand that in order for it to be 'abridged' lots of things would have to be 'cut', but I thought that it should have had a little bit more of the background of what was going on politically in Germany just for clarities sake.   And another example of its 'choppiness' was where Bonhoeffer declares that he won't go to the 'Fano' conference if a particular 'Reich-church' leader went too, and then w...

I've started a shadow blog that sounds more like a 'theological' blog than a 'cooking blog'.  I'll still keep this one up as my 'main' blog, but I do want to recommend a Christian novel that just came out, Polycarp: A destroyer of our gods - by Rick Lambert: You can read my review on my other blog,  HERE  

The Evangelism Study Bible is intended to help with Evangelism.   It has a lot of footnotes, commenting on the relevance of many verses to evangelism.   It also contains various charts explaining/expounding on certain topics, like the fruit of the spirit, the whole armor of God…etc.   There are many 'commentary' boxes, discussing various evangelism related topics, that are inserted throughout the Bible as well.   One in particular I appreciated dealt with the question, "Do You Have to Know the Date You Were Saved?", and it deals with the source of our assurance of our salvation being Christ, " …when Scripture speaks of salvation, it goes back to a fact, not a date.   If you are trusting in Christ alone, you are saved, regardless of when the divine transaction took place…..The one who saved us gives us security, not the 'when' of our salvation." I also appreciate that many of the footnotes remind us that, though we are privileged to serve God by gi...

The first time I remember hearing about the HCSB translation was in John Macarthur's book: ' SLAVE: The hidden truth about your identity in Christ', in which this translation is used because it translates 'doulos' literally as 'slave' rather than the less accurate translation of 'servant' or 'bondservant'.   That made me curious to take a better look at the translation.   This translation uses "Optimal Equivalence" as the translation method which they consider to be a careful cross between formal equivalence an dynamic/functional equivalence.   Also, the translators do not give in to gender neutrality, as they mention in their 'introduction':   "…the translators have not changed 'him' to 'you' or to 'them,'   neither have they avoided other masculine words such as 'father' or 'son' by translating them in generic terms…"   There were some specific things that I looke...

I did not know much about Samuel Rutherford before reading this 'bite-sized'   biography by Richard Hannula.   I associated his name with the song "The Sands of Time are Sinking" and thought that he was the author.   The content of the song made me desire to know more about Mr. Rutherford. It turns out that the song was written by Anne Ross Cousin, but it was inspired by Mr. Rutherford's writings and sayings, so my curiosity stayed.   Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish pastor who lived in the 1600s who underwent persecution along with other Christians under the reigns of Charles the I and II.    He was married twice(his first wife died) and had nine children altogether, only one survived him.   One of the things I admired about God's working in him was his deep love for his congregation, even when banished from them he was concerned with their welfare, and kept up a correspondence with them to keep encouraging them in their lives as Christians.   ...