Gospel
Apostles' Creed
The Ten Commandments, and an aside on the first
"How will this end?"
Good things to read
Politics rears it's ugly head
Where did all this come from?
Blogs and other people's random chatter
Audio
Random links
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,
4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 1 Corinthians 15
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.
(The "Apostles' Creed", one of the oldest creeds in Christianity outside the New Testament itself. It's as succinct a statement of the faith as one could hope for, and free of the sectarian nit-picking that accumulated in later creeds. (Twentieth Century creeds, now, are more notable for what they avoid saying.))
1And God spake all these words, saying, 2I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness [of any thing] that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them, for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me, 6and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.
7Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain; for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; 10but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee.
13Thou shalt not kill.
14Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15Thou shalt not steal.
16Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
17Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.
Exodus 20
{20:1} And God spake all these words, saying, {20:2} I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. {20:3} Thou shalt have no other gods before me.{20:4} Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness [of any thing] that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. {20:5} Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them. for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me, {20:6} and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.
This is not some burdensome theocratic weight. This is a message of liberation. The run-of-the mill pagan religion of the time had a clutch of squabbling gods and goddesses -- sun gods, rain gods, sea gods, crop gods, fertility gods -- capricious, perverse or malevolent spirits in every tree and rock. God took them out of physical slavery, out of the "iron furnace" in Egypt. He also told them here "You do not need to submit yourselves to spiritual slavery. You do not need to be afraid of them. You are free."
They didn't get it, of course.
The Bible, where you need to start.
Bibles are readily available. The Gideons International give them away. If you really need to read one with your computer, try the King James Bible from Gutenberg Project, or The American Standard Bible here. Check Memoware for Palm and WinCE.
The Net Bible with Apocrypha, and copious translator's notes.
The English Standard Bible, a new translation in the revision lineage of the Authorized (aka King James) Version. "The words and phrases of the ESV grow out of the Tyndale-King James legacy, and most recently out of the RSV, with the 1971 RSV text providing the starting point for the ESV text. Archaic language was brought to current usage and significant corrections were made in the translation of key texts." I bought a copy as the Reformation Study Bible. What I've read of it reads fairly well. I will be reading through this translation as soon as my current pass through of the Bible is over.
Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation. Hermeneutics. You've got this bible -- how do you make sense of what you're reading? This is a seminary textbook, but not particularly difficult to digest.
Greek
I had three semesters of Koine Greek, half a lifetime ago. Along the line, I let those skills slide. One of these years I'd like to regain them.
NTGreek.org, resources for learning New Testament Greek.
Summary Lectures on the Basics of Biblical Greek. " These summary lectures were given at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary during the fall of 2000 and spring of 2001. This course will take you through the basics of biblical Greek, from the alphabet to noun and verbal grammar. The lectures correspond to the second edition of the textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, which is due out July 2003." Requires Quicklime (excuuuuse me, Quicktime).
Greek Tools for Bible Study lectures by Dr. Bill Mounce.
The Greek New Testament. The real thing, folks.
Christian Classics Etherial Library at Calvin College.
Meredith Kline and B. B. Warfield
Why Bother Catechising Our Children?
Let me tell you a true story about a Presbyterian pastor who asked a priest why so many lapsed Catholics come back to the church when they are older. The Catholic priest's answer was immediate. "We catechize our little children and it is part of them. Therefore, when they are seeking again the answers to life, their memorized catechism questions come back to them, and they return again to the source of that learning." I like to use a metaphor that we are wiring the house of the child's mind and are waiting for the Holy Spirit to flick the switch, translating the head knowledge to heart knowledge.. . .
"When I was a young girl we went to a Presbyterian church where there was an active catechism program. I managed to memorize the shorter catechism by age eight through the hard work of many teachers there. When I was eight, my mother and father divorced, and I lived with my mother. We began attending one type of church after another as my mother took a journey searching for an elusive truth of who God was. We went through a smorgasbord of beliefs from Mormonism to Jehovah”Ēs Witnesses, to liberal churches to Pentecostal denominations. What sustained me time and again were the answers that I learned as a child in the catechism. I knew there was a God that did not have a body but was a spirit, who existed in three persons same in substance equal in power and glory, that God had spoken the complete truth in His word, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and on and on, soundly refuting the error that was trying to be placed upon her at each turn. When I was a teenager, my mother relented and allowed me to go back into a Bible believing Presbyterian Church where I took up where I left off."
"The Reformed Reader is committed to the historic Baptist faith where one may discover their rich Baptist theological and doctrinal heritage. " with a link through to what looks like a good discussion forum
Richard Baxter and the origin of "Mere Christianity"
The Old Testament Speaks. The historical books of the Old Testament focus mostly on the Jews, in their land. What was the greater context to biblical history? The land of Caanan was a crossroads bettween Egypt in the southwest and Assyria (later Babylon, still later the Persian Empire) to the northeast. Wars of conquest washed back and forth across the area continually. The Jewish kingdoms spent most of their existence under the thumb of one empire or another. Fat lot of good having a king did for them.
Charles Hodge's Systematic
Theology
The Development of the Canon of the New Testament
Early Christian WritingsApocrypha and
Pseudepigraphica. All the "other" books of the bible, that
this Protestant has never gotten around to reading, but should.
The Westminster Assembly Project
The Westminster Assembly (1643-1652) was both the largest parliamentary committee of the English civil war and the last of the great post-Reformation synods. The Assembly is perhaps best known as the creed-making body behind the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, documents which have guided Presbyterian and Reformed churches for centuries.
The Westminster Assembly Project exists to make the writings of the Westminster Assembly and its members available to scholars and to the general public.
Prophets
True and False, by J. Gresham Machen.
H. L. Mencken's obituary
for J. Gresham Machen
Bible
Researcher dot com (lots of stuff)
"What is your only comfort, in life and in death?"
We humans seem to be built to expect catastrophic change.
Conservative Protestantism has in the last century and a half or so bought into a complicated model of the end times. There are alternatives that are just as respectful of the biblical text.
Rapture Ready. Jack van Impe, the Left Behind novels, the Scofield Reference Bible. Dispensational premillenialism, the standard evangelical model, accepted, but with much arguement about details ("pre-, mid- or post-trib?") by much of conservative Protestantism in the U.S. . Dispensationalist premillenial eschatology is a complex model, involving multiple ressurections, multiple judgements, three distinct second comings, a cast of hundreds of millions and a tight time schedule, once the ball gets rolling. The "You Are Here" star on the timeline is somewhere in the "Church Age", which is pause of uncertain length in Daniel's "70 weeks of years" countdown to the coming of the Messiah (Daniel 9:24-25).
Additionally dispensationalism regards Israel and the church as distinct.
This chart is from Loraine Beottner's The Millenium. Covers Postmillenialism (which the author holds), Amillenianism, Historical and Dispensational Premillenialism. Half the book is about Dispensationalism, for which the author has severe criticism. Unfortunatly, his references to the Scofield Reference Bible are often to page numbers, not Bible passages.
Clarance
Larkin's charts. (If you think Mr. Boettner's chart is
complex, check these out.)
More charts showing how the end times play out: Tim LaHaye's chart for $6. A big and detailed chart (dialup warning -- sizeable graphic, church age and end times). Yet another chart (from biblebelievers.com. Covers creation to eternal state. Note that salvation by faith appears to be for the church age only. The Tribulation is listed as "faith and works", and the Millenium is listed as "works, no faith". Hmmmm, that's interesting.)
Hal
Lindsay, one of the major popularizers of the standard
model in this generation. His perrenial bestselling book on
eschatology, The
Late, Great Planet Earth, first published in 1970.
Kim Riddelbarger, A Case For Amillenialism: Understanding the End Times. "Amillenialism" is a bit of a misnomer. Amillenialist do not hold that there is no millenium, just no millenium as a distinct future period of time. The thousand years of Revalation 20, in this conception, is a symbolic number that represents the entire church age. The saints reigning for a thousand years are the dead in Christ. The first ressurection is either conversion or physical death.
Postmillenialism is another alternative to the standard evangelical
Protestant eschatological scheme. Postmillenialism holds that
over time (possibly thousands of years), with God's help the church
will spread over the whole earth, the world will become Christianized
("from the least to the greatest, they will all know me.").
After a prolonged period of peace (the millenium) Christ will return
bodily. At this point the ressurection and the Day of Judgement
will happen.
Iain Murray, Puritan
Hope. What did the Puritans think about prophecy and
eschatology, and what difference did it make then? Why does it
matter now? The Puritans were, with
few exceptions, not chiliasts. They, and their likeminded
successors, expected to see revivals. They expected to see the
world won for Christ and the Jews converted. They prayed and
worked to make this happen.
The Last Days According to Jesus, by R. C. Sproul. Preterism is the notion that New Testament prophecy in the Apocalypse and elsewhere about the return of Jesus was mostly ("partial" preterism) or completely ("full" or "consistant" preterism) fulfilled in 70 A.D. The destruction of Jerusalem and the end the Jewish Temple is viewed the return of Jesus in judgement against the Jews. The "end of the age" is the end of the Jewish age, not the end of the world. Preterism handles the New Testament expectation that the day of the Lord would be soon, by saying that it was, indeed, soon, and in our time long past. This book is an overview of preterism.
Partial preterism segues easily into postmillenialism.Full
preterism,
however, leaves me unconvinced. Not all of New Testament prophesy has
been
fulfilled. We do not now see creation released from it's bondage to
decay (Romans 8:19-23). That implies a major rewrite of
physics. We do not yet see the hardening of the Jews against the
gospel removed (Romans 8:25). We know (from Eusebius' history) that
Jerusalem Christians took prophetic warning (from their own prophets
at least and probably also from Jesus' words) to leave Jerusalem
before it was beseiged. It would be odd if this were the return of
the Messiah in judgement that noone at this time announced it, and
that history did not remember it.
They make some good points. The specifics of the
Olivet discourse, for instance, fit well with with the destruction of
Jerusalem ("Do
you not see all of these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone
here shall be left upon another, which will not be thrown
down.").
Eschatology.com ("Dedicated to the Glorious Doctrines of Fulfilled Eschatology and Soverign Grace". I'm guessing preterist.)
End Times Fiction by Gery DeMar. A critique of the eschatology of the Left Behind books, from a preterist perspective. A quick read.
I don't like linking Christianity with any politics in this age.
The Bible has been used to justify almost anything. People read into the Bible what is already in their own heads. Divine Right of Kings, where Henry VIII gets to be his own Pope. The American Revolution. Lately all sorts of boringly predictable leftist redistribution programs. The good Christian G. W. Bush is President and all will now be good (if his handlers allow).
Here's one you probably haven't seen: Anarchy: A Judeo-Christian Legacy. See also Joe Sobran, The Reluctant Anarchist and Jacques Ellul (A chapter from Anarchy and Christianity. Good comments mixed in with Euroleft claptrap. Not a book I think I could get away with putting in our church's library. . . )
A similar looking work by Vernard Eller, Christian Anarchy: Jesus' Primacy Over the Powers
What do I think?
Sit down. Ready? There are no good solutions. There are no good solutions, not in this life, not in a fallen world. The unredeemed, unregenerate, untransformed individual is, among other things, predatory, and will gladly use and use up others to achieve his own ends. They'll dominate others, just for the sick thrill of it. This applies to individuals by themselves, individuals in groups, and individuals acting as or on behalf of coercive states.
Socialism kills. The state kills. From the work of R. J. Rummell, there is no question of that.
(Mostly cleaning up my bookmarks.)
Christian Reformed Church in North America
Evangelical Free Church of America
Chalcedon FoundationChristian Truth. "Christian Resources is a non-profit teaching, apologetics and publishing ministry dealing with issues related to Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Gospel, Church history and the Christian life. The ministry is dedicated to the teaching and proclamation of the Gospel, a biblical and historical defense of the teachings of the Reformation and the discipling of believers in their Christian walk."
Trinity Foundation, televangelist investigation.
Christianbook.com. The usual drek, a lot of good stuff.
Bible Study Tools (dot net)
King James Version only -- some people think the Authorized Version of 1611 is the actual inspired Word of God, superceding supposedly corrupted older manuscripts in the original languages . Google on KJV only. Some of these people are out and out nutty.The Text of the New Testament, It's Transmission, Corruption and Restoration by Bruce Metzger. The counter arguement.
(King James isn't that hard for a literate modern to read, but see also the King James dictionary.)
Contender.org, the website for the Institute for Christian Apogetics.
Grace To You, the radio ministry of John McArthur. Bible Bulletin Board has many of his sermons on line (text, not audio).
Layman.org, the website of the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
Discernment time: the worship of Sophia.
A news release from the 2002 General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church USA. "'I am stunned by a Presbyterian church so wrapped up now
in the lordship of Jesus Christ that we forget how many ways,
traditions and cultures God comes to us,' she told her audience of
more than 600. 'But Sophia shows up, crying out to a church that is
rule-led rather than Spirit -fed. It is Sophia's voice we hear crying,
I am the wisdom of God who created you. You cannot confine me. I am
the breath of the power of God.' "
Discernment.org Inner City Christian Discernment Ministry -- "Our mission is to expose and refute the current trends in heresy, especially among the charismatic ranks of the Church. We will not only cite the errors rampant in these teachings, but also offer sound Biblical exposition as to why these teachings are not part of orthodox Christianity." Interesting site -- there's a lot of weird stuff going on in the less reputable corners of Christianity. He claims that some currently popular manifestations represent an revival of kundalini yoga.
Institute for Religion and Democracy
David Wilkerson, The Reproach of the
Solemn Assembly.
The
Vatican. Yes, that Vatican.
Watchman
Fellowship, "A ministry of Christian discernment, focusing
on cults and new religious movements."
Brooks Alexander, Witchcraft
Goes Mainstream.
Mr. Alexander (founder of the Spiritual
Counterfeits Project) examines Wicca. He writes on
what it is and isn't, and where it came from. This book has no
lurid
tales. There is no genuine human tradition connecting modern
Wicca, European witchcraft of the Middle Ages, the ancient occult
practices
condemned in the New and Old Testaments of the
Bible, and the Wiccans' imaginary prehistoric Goddess cult. Wicca
as a practiced religion is no older than the 1940s
or so, and the Wiccans know it.
Blogs that I watch, or have watched in the past, in alphabetical order. Some are good, some are not. Some I agree with, some I do not.
Adrian Warnock. English baptist enthusiast.
Alpha and Omega. James White's musings. A Reformed Baptist with a Kilt.
"And His Ministers Flames of Fire"
Between Two Worlds. Old location: Between Two Worlds
Beyond the Rim. Infrequently updated.
Biblical Christianity Blog Dan Phillips, Calvinist, baptist, dispensationalist. Somehow he manages the dissonance. Something on this page makes my browser dog slow until it's fully loaded.
Challies Dot Com. Canadian guy who reads a lot.
Calvinist Gadfly Alan Kurschner and friends.
Calvinist Libertarians. Hey! Infrequently updated.
Christianity Today weblog. Less of a blog, than a daily news aggregation.
Clueless Christian infrequently updated.
Constructive Curmudgeon Doug Groothuis, TV hater.
Eschatology Stuff Sam Storms
ESV blog. News and issues related to the English Standard Version.
Mike Corley's The Expositor
Founders Ministries Blog. Tom Ascol. Southron Baptist calvinists.
Heidelblog. Old site: The Heidelblog. R. Scott Clark.
Hip and Thigh. Fred Butler, among other things a scourge of KJV onlyist nuttiness.
Internet Monk and the Boar's Head Tavern
J. Mark Bertrand, somebody (else) who appreciates a well made book. What is it with these pricy pages-glued-to-the-spine bibles? They can't stand up to extended use.
Kim Riddelbarger, Reformed Theology and Amillenial Eschatology.
Chris Roseborough's A Little Leaven. Drek from the Den of Thieves Retail Show. Chris' other site Extreme Theology
Ministry Watchman. Wannabe muckraker. From here I can't tell if he's shooting blanks or not.
The Narrow Mind Aftermath Download and discuss Gene Cook's Narrow Mind webcasts.
Old Truth. " My name is Jim Bublitz and I'm a 'refugee' from the Seeker Sensitive / Purpose Driven movement."
Through the due use of Ordinary Means .... A podcast about worship.
Philip Johnson (now replaced by Team Pyro)
Real Clear Theology Blog from New Testament Research Ministries.
Reformation Theology, the blog part of Monergism.com.
Ron Gleason. Thoughtful essays.
Running Well. Another guy that reads a lot.
Seventh Sola. Joel Griffith.
Slice of Laodicea Ingrid Schlueter and associates rant, mostly about the silliness and sometimes outright apostacy that is rampant in contemporary evangelicalism. Talk about a "target rich environment." Ingrid's personal blog Hope in Laodicea
Titus One Nine ("classical anglican")
Natural Theology in the Christian tradition is the knowledge of God that can be achieved through examination of the created world (as opposed to the knowledge of God given through revelation.) Per St. Paul, this knowledge is limited:
19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Romans 1: 19-21
The Design Revolution, by William Dembski. Dr. Dembski covers Intelligent Design by responding in 44 chapters to various criticisms. Intelligent Design is not "creation science" (which is an attempt to recocile a literal interpretation of Genesis with the observed physical world), but is asking a somewhat different question. For any given object, can it be determined whether a mind had a hand in it's shaping? The author says yes, and provides a criterion ("specified complexity") for determining that.
Uncommon Descent, William Dembski's blog.
International Society for Complexity, Information and Design
Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe. Introduces the concept of irreducable complexity. "You can't get here from there." The author covers several common cellular events and structures at the molecular level and argues that there is no credible way to build these up step by step by Darwinian natural selection from simple precursors, because any intermediates are (usually fatally) nonfunctional.
"Attempts to explain the evolution of highly specified, irreducibly complex systems -- either mousetraps or cilia or blood clotting -- by a gradualistic route have so far been incoherent, as we have seen in previous chapters. No scientific journal will publish patently incoherent papers, so no studies asking detailed questions of molecular evolution are to be found. Calvin and Hobbes stories can sometimes be spun by ignoring critical details, as Russell Doolittle did when imagining the evolution of blood clotting, but even such superficial attempts are rare. In fact, evolutionary explanations even of systems that do not appear to be irreducibly complex, such as specific metabolic pathways, are missing from the literature. The reason for this appears to be similar to the reason for the failure to explain the origin of live: a choking complexity strangles all such attempts."
Lee Strobel's Case for Creation. Similar to his previous "Case for" books. Lighter weight than the Dembski book, and much of the material was not new to me, but provides some useful references.
Reasons to Believe -- very interesting site. An evangelical Christian approach to creation that actually does justice to science. Hint -- Hugh Ross is not a "young earth" creationist. One of his associates also has an interesting take on UFOs, and why astronomers by and large don't see them.
Alpha and Omega. James White, Firing Line (biweekly apologetics webcast in Real Audio) and debates (mp3).
White Horse Inn. Michael Horton and associates. Half hour weekly radio show. MP3 download from Oneplace.
Sermon Audio. Vast number of recorded sermons. Audio quality ranges from OK to unlistenable.
Apologetics.com Weekly deep morning call in show out of Los Angeles. MP3 download.
John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis.
9 Marks Ministries audio files
The Stob Lectures at Calvin College
Westminster Seminary audio archive
Associates for Biblical Research audio resources
Radio interviews and lectures at Reasons to Believe
Crosstalk. Daily topical discussion, often with callers. Real Audio and that Winders thing.
Covenant Seminary audio classes
Bible.org (have not checked it out yet).
Tools I use:
Vsound, convert an audio stream (for instance, RealAudio), to a wav file. "vsound -f outputfilename.wav realplay -q realaudiofile.ram" produces a wav file from a Real Audio stream.
Lame. Convert wav to mp3. "lame outputfilename.wav" produces an mp3 file from a wav file.
The whole command line looks like this: "vsound -f outputfilename.wav realplay -q realaudiofile.ram ; lame outputfilename.wav ; rm outputfilename.wav ; rm realaudiofile.ram"
And dump it to a nice cheap MP3 Player. 256MB holds a lot of voice recording. It's treated as USB storage.