Biblical history at a glance
January 5, 2010
Justin Taylor has posted two entries worth clicking: one is a chart outline of biblical history and the other is a brief summary of the main divisions of biblical history. Both are taken from Dr. Graeme Goldsworthy’s excellent book According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible. (Joe and I taught a class on that book in 2008-09.) Printing these two entries and sticking them inside the Bible you are reading would be a good idea.
Grace like manna
January 5, 2010
Eight or so years ago I went with an elder to visit an elderly widow on a blistering cold day (much like today). She had recently moved closer to one of her grown children and had been coming to our church with her family. On this get-to-know-you-better kind of visit, I knew what to expect. This elder and I had good teamwork in these situations. He is affable, warm, quick-witted. He sets a good, engaging kind of tone to these visits, and I bring the heavy artillery. I usually asked the question or made the comment that moved things from friendly chit-chat to more serious and spiritual directions. But on this day, I was surprised. The widow gave a clear and credible testimony of her faith in Christ. She said that frequently she thought about death. While she was not afraid to die, she said she was often afraid of dying. “I wonder sometimes if I have the strength and courage to face the process,” she said. 
Before I could formulate a response, the elder (usually the silent partner at this point in the conversation) spoke up and answered better than I could. “O you don’t have to worry about that. When you need that grace, the Lord will give it to you. You feel like you don’t have it right now, but you don’t need it right now. It’s like manna. It’ll be there.”
Reading Edward T. Welch’s Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest reminded me of that cold afternoon. In one chapter Welch teases out our specific fears of death: fears of eternity, fears of the way you might die, fears of hardship for loved ones, fear of the unknown, and fear of judgment. He addresses the second fear, fear of the way you might die, like my friend and fellow elder did that day. Let me share Welch’s version with you. Read the rest of this entry »
Which or that?
November 4, 2009
Do you ever have trouble knowing when to use “which” or “that” in your writing? Tips that help you write more clearly are available from the Grammar Girl. Good grammar advice, which is not easy to find, is available in podcast or transcript form.
Two sharp barbs re: prayer
October 19, 2009
The next sermon in the Jesus Unplugged series is on Luke 11:1-13, in which Jesus’ disciples want him to teach them how to pray. Below are two sharp barbs about prayer–the first from Paul E. Miller’s recent release, A Praying Life,
“The quest for a contemplative life can actually be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet. Because we are less hectic on the inside, we have a greater capacity to love…and thus to be busy, which in turn drives us even more into a life of prayer. By spending time with our Father in prayer, we integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us. Our lives become more coherent. They feel calmer, more ordered, even in the midst of confusion and pressure.”
The second is a humorous-but-deadly-serious observation from Jonathan Acuff’s site Stuff Christians Like. Acuff addresses a frequent prayer meeting and intercessory prayer technique: Praying that God will fix a situation as long as you are not part of the solution. (I dare you to click it and read.) More and more often I find myself coming back to that as I pray and as I lead others in praying, “Father, use us–our words and actions–as part of your gracious answer to these prayers….”
Cream of blog: 29 September 2009
September 29, 2009
- Explore the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, a vast library of print and audio media files from Colson and many others.
- From Gene Edward Veith’s blog, a glimpse at where the debate about gay marriage is heading for some–the abolition of marriage itself.
- Also from Veith, thoughts concerning the Christian origins of health care as we know it in the West. (Atheists are fond of claiming that Christianity is a toxic presence in the history of civilization.)
- Actions steps for anxiety from Tullian Tchividjian.
- A review of Paul Miller’s A Praying Life from Coram Deo, Omaha, Nebraska.
Matthew Henry’s A Method for Prayer available online
August 12, 2009
In 1994 Christian Focus Publications released a newly edited version of Matthew Henry’s A Method for Prayer (original edition appeared in 1712). Former professor and constant friend Ligon Duncan served as editor. A Method for Prayer has assisted and encouraged in me over the last fifteen years in both private and public prayer. It has helped me pray with greater Scriptural proportion and brought my prayers into greater conformity to the priorities and the very language of God’s Word.
Now Henry’s A Method for Prayer is available online, together a number of resources. Take and read…and above all, PRAY!
Depression: a stubborn darkness
August 6, 2009
Dr Ed Welch, of CCEF (Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation), shares the story of his father’s depression and some thoughts on how to think biblically about depression. Dr. Welch’s new book Depression: A Stubborn Darkness–Light for the Path is available at Westminster Bookstore. You can also read the first few pages of chapter one.
Flannery O’Connor: mercy in extremis
March 26, 2009
Ralph C. Wood of Baylor University has written a splendid short piece in honor of Flannery O’Connor’s birthday (b.1925). Best paragraph this:
The key to comprehending Flannery O’Connor’s life and work is to remember that, in her lexicon, divine grace is never synonymous with human graciousness. On the contrary, it is often abrupt and rude and disrespectful of ordinary proprieties, for the skin of human resistance is exceedingly thick. When asked why her characters meet such violent self-awakenings, O’Connor replied that it’s because their heads are so hard. Grace must wound before it can heal, she declared, and her fiction is filled with both woundings and healings. O’Connor wittily consoled readers that, while a lot of folks get killed in her fiction, nobody gets hurt. In her unsentimental reckoning, there are states of thriving but damnable life far worse than a grisly but saving death.
John ‘Rabbi’ Duncan
February 26, 2009
Today marks the anniversary of the death John “Rabbi” Duncan (1796-February 26, 1870), Scottish Presbyterian missionary to the Jews in Budapest and much-loved professor in New College, Edinburgh. He was known for his pithy sayings, as well as his knowledge of Hebrew and his Christian love for the Jews. His deep love for the Jewish people and his eminence as a Hebrew scholar earned the nickname ‘Rabbi’ among his students.
It’s hard to read any Reformed writer of the late 19th or 20th century without finding Duncan quoted. The Banner of Truth published a nice short paperback compendium of Duncan’s aphorisms about a decade or so ago called Just a Talker: Saying of John (“Rabbi”) Duncan. Among his sayings:
“I’m first a Christian, next a catholic, then a Calvinist, fourth an evangelical, and fifth a Presbyterian. I cannot reverse this order.”
“Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.”
Thanks to the excellent blog, Scriptorium Daily, here are more samples of Duncan’s skill:
On Thomas Carlyle: Sham is a word often in the mouth of one who is a keen detector of other people’s shams, and a very earnest maker of his own.”
On Wesley’s Hymns: “I have a great liking for many of Wesley’s Hymns; but when I read some of them, I ask, ‘What’s become of your Free-will now, friend?’”
On Genius: “Genius lies very much in that region where the profound is simple, and the simple profound. The great thoughts of such men as Chalmers are very simple when expressed; but only a man of genius could think them.”
On Mysteries: “All the great mysteries are simple as well as unfathomably deep; and they are common to all men. Every Christian feels them less or more.”
Hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism: “Hyper-Calvinism is all house and no door; Arminianism is all door and no house.”
Aesthetic Religion: “There is no entering into the kingdom of heaven by a mere sense of beauty.”
Terminology: “There is a curious connexion between the success of a teacher and his possession of a fine terminology –a good store of words to express shades of meaning. Much wisdom has been stored up in men, and never diffused for want of the gift of speech.”
Reason in God: “Transcendentally, it is true that God has reason, but He does not reason; He does not draw syllogisms.”
Love: “Individual love, per se, is a centrifugal force; universal, cosmopolitan love, per se, is centripetal: combine them, and the revolutions of love are orderly.”
How and What: “All questions as to the ‘How’ are best answered by a more extended knowledge of the ‘What.’”
Old and New Covenants: “We must not unsaint the Old Testament saints, but we must not make Pentecostal Christians of them.”
Trinity: “The Trinity is my highest Theologoumenon. I reach it, and find in it the supreme harmony of revealed things. But it is equally irrational and irreverent to speculate on the nexus between the distinct Persons. That is not revealed, and is not revealable.”
More on the Trinity: “I exceedingly dislike that expression of some divines, that Christ purchased for us the blessings of the Spirit. I cannot but believe that the three things –the Father’s love, the sacrifice of the Son, and the influence of the Spirit– are each and all the unpurchasable blessings of grace. And I am driven to this, to hold my ground against the Socinians.”
Fighting Theologians: “Now, every unrenewed Arminian is a Pelagian, and every unrenewed Calvinist is a fatalist.”
Old Brazey: “Hezekiah broke in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, because the children of Israel had made an idol of it; and he called it ‘Nehushtan’ –literally ‘Old Brazey.’ … There was no harm in keeping the brazen serpent; bu when they began to turn it to idolatry, it was proper to break it in pieces. ‘What! will you break in pieces a relic connected with our history –a historic memorial?’ ‘Yes, I’ll break it in pieces,’ and he called it ‘Old Brazey.’””
On the communion of saints: “Does no news go between earth and heaven? and if news goes, must there not be knowledge of events? God has put there a veil; Popery tries to bring us within it, and Protestants will not look at it for Papistical abuse.”
Pilgrim’s Progress anniversary
February 18, 2009
On this day in 1678 John Bunyan published the first edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Next to the Bible, Bunyan’s 
Pilgrim’s Progress is the best-selling Christian book of all time. It has never been out of print. In a decade when the fantasy genre has gained popularity in a “hip-to-be-square” kind of way in Christian circles, Bunyan’s work certainly deserves an honored place (if not a higher place) alongside the work of Tolkein and Lewis. J.I. Packer wrote in a conclusion to an analysis of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,
When I ask my classes of young and youngish evangelicals, as I often do, who has read Pilgrim’s Progress, not a quarter of the hands go up. Yet our rapport with fantasy writing, plus our lack of grip on the searching, humbling, edifying truths about spiritual life that the Puritans understood so well, surely mean that the time is right for us to dust off Pilgrim’s Progress and start reading it again. Certainly it would be great gain for modern Christians if Bunyan’s masterpiece came back into its own in our day.
I did not read until compelled to do so in a Restoration Literature class in college. I was then devouring most any Reformed work I could get my hands on. During the 1990’s I read it nearly every year and have read through it again every two or three years during this decade. The book never loses its charms or its convicting power. Someone told me that Charles Spurgeon said that when he was tired and depressed to the point of utter exhaustion, Pilgrim’s Progress was the only book he could stand to have read to him. As the years go by, I am beginning to agree.
I’ll let English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge raise the final note of praise for Bunyan’s work. Coleridge appreciated both its theological and literary powers:
It is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision… This wonderful book is one of the few books which may be read repeatedly, at different times, and each time with a new and different pleasure. I read it once as a theologian, and let me assure you that there is great theological acument in the work; once with devotional feeling; and once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.
