Musings of a Snickerdoodle

This edition of the  Chronological Study Bible NKJV  is a nicely bound chronological Bible.  It has a simple, studious looking  'Leathersoft' cover, brown in color with a big dark blue stripe across its center.  This Bible is full of extra content, almost to the point of being  distractingly  cluttered.  It has charts and 'timepanels', background notes,  full color illustrations (some are very neat looking while others are not very decent), and maps throughout.  I have some problems with it though, besides some indecent works of art,  some of the notes and commentary seem rather eisegetical.   For instance, some of the notes dealing with wives being submissive to their husbands make it more of a concession to the culture of the time rather than God ordained. They say things like,   "Paul's command 'Wives, submit to your own husbands' (Eph. 5:22) is at least partly ...

The NLT GuysSlimline Holy Bible is nicely bound, very slim and lightweight. The cover has some of the 'leather-touch' material that feels very nice (not that boys will care that much), and the bright blue lines intermixed with the black should make it very easy to spot if misplaced and also catches the attention which would hopefully be a reminder for young guys to read it each day.   The letter font on the inside is small but not too small, I found it quite easy to read.  At the back of the book, Bible includes a dictionary/concordance, a list of suggested memory verses on various topics, a Bible reading plan and of course the usual maps of the Holy land and Europe. The translation itself is very readable, the translation notes say that they were trying for a mix of formal equivalence and dynamic, I think this translation leans a bit more to the latter, a 'thought for thought' type of translation which then necessarily has some heavily imposed biased interpreta...

I am disappointed with many of the 'study' Bibles of our day but the Apply the Word Study Bible is quite refreshing in its commitment to prompting one think to about the text one is studying.  he Bible has many "application notes" and also includes maps,  charts and little character profile boxes throughout.    It really is more of an application type of study Bible, not a linguistic study Bible but the application used seems to be mostly exegetically based.  I think that the application notes are quite good, none of them really seem forced onto any text they're commenting on, even the ones found throughout the books of the law, and prophets, are quite good and don't seem as though someone was grasping at straws (as some study Bibles seem to do) to find an application of those seemingly tedious parts of Scripture and so they come up with some  eisegetical way to get some personal-meaning out of them. For example, toward middle of Ezekiel one...

Disappearing Church by Mark Sayers posits an interesting thought:  We live in a culture riddled with "liberal Christian residue", our seemingly secular culture is basically Christian liberalism without the label of 'Christian' and without being considered 'religious' .  By trying to be relevant by trying to appeal to the ever-changing culture around them liberal Christianity became so relevant that it's basic tenets became a part of the culture and thus the church 'institution' was irrelevant as the culture had already been won.  Sayers illustrates it in this way, " " Like a team of suicide bombers who obliterate themselves yet irrevocably change the cultural atmosphere, liberal Christianity has essentially destroyed itself as an ecclesiological, institutional force,  yet won the culture over to its vision of a Christianity reshaped for contemporary tastes." The author explains that the modern 'church' has imbibed an...

I have read a good chunk of the unabridged Christian in Complete Armour by William Gurnall, it is very good but HUGE, you kind of need to plough through it. This book, Daily Readings from The Christian in Complete Armour, was an excellent idea!  Breaking it up into small chunks for daily reading makes it a much easier read, and gives you a good taste of Gurnall's great skill of teaching and illustrating various spiritual warfare concepts. The best summary that I can come up with is that this book is like having a spiritual commanding officer giving you a rousing speech each day to be ready to fight the battles to come.  Gurnall talks about the armor our General has provided for us and each individual piece's purpose,  he instructs us to keep in  mind that we should 'wrestle' with the enemy in the way our General has instructed us to do so, not merely in the way that we think we can defeat him,  he also examines the strategy of our spiritual enemy, and giv...

I have seen a couple of timelines before, one showing Jewish history/significant persons and the other world history/significant persons, but I don't recall ever seeing a church history timeline.   This is a basic church history timeline with markers telling of key events, Bible development, key persons and church councils.   Included are some markers of certain heretical groups coming into being (like Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses…etc.).  I didn't love the timeline overall, mainly because the arrangement is a bit confusing to me, it is arranged by chunks of centuries (AD 1500, 1600…1900..etc.) and the events are underneath each 'age' but the problem for me is that since the lists of events and people are descending at an angle some of them end up 'in' the section for the next era   when they really aren't' in that era(though they do have a year next to each).   Also, I would have preferred a format like Adam's World history chart one of ...

Usually, at least for me, when I think of God 'calling' someone to some type of work it is always in the context of some type of 'official' evangelistic type of work, such as one being a missionary overseas, starting a 'prison' ministry, working at a rescue mission, teaching a class at Church on Sundays…etc.    Normally it is always outside of 'everyday life', outside of one's secular profession and outside of one's life at home, it is something recognizably 'spiritual'.  The author of this book has a different perspective(one that I basically agree with).  The premise of this book, Consider Your Calling by Gordon T. Smith,  is  that the work that God  calls Christians to do is not just missionary work, or heading church ministries, but it is also the seemingly 'secular' callings.  I LOVE the premise of the book, I just have some problems with how Mr. Smith tries to teach it.  First,  h...