A while ago, I pointed to some information on Calvin as a missionary supporter and sender. Michael Haykin, a Reformed Baptist and church historian, has an article at Reformation21 on the same issue. Again, it is really helpful and refreshing to see that Calvin was not apathetic towards missions as the caricatures that have been painted of him have held.
Archive for September, 2006
Photography
Here is a picture I took this weekend at the Sun Lake Forest Preserve. This preserve recently opened and so my daughters and I took a walk through it. It is lovely. We saw what we believe were two whooping cranes strutting across an open field. I brought the camera and got this picture as we were heading out. Gillian got a really good one of a grasshopper. I’m still fiddling with it and should have it posted this weekend.
I’ve been posting some of my pictures at MacDesktops.net. You can take a look at my collection there if you’re interested. If you do, the one titled “Eden” is a picture Bernie shot one foggy morning. The reality was more stunning than the photo but it is still a great picture.
EM Bounds
I got a free MP3 copy of E. M. Bounds Power Through Prayer from SermonCloud. It is a high quality audio book, not like one I saw from a website once that had a computer reading the classics. That was irritating!! No, this is read by an eloquent human being.
Beyond the sound quality, this is a book I wish had been required reading in our initial homiletics class. Were I to teach that class, I would take most of the first day or so of class just reading selections. To assign it for reading might subject the book to the kind of hurried reading seminary students must do just to keep up. I’m only up to chapter 6 and so far Bounds had spoken at length about the preacher and the pastor and their need for prayer. It has been richly convicting. This would be one of those books that I would end up underlining every sentence. To me, this book should be part of every pastor’s regular reading schedule along with J. Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership. I know they will both become part of my regular reading schedule when I finish seminary.
You can read Bounds on line here at CCEL for free. It is available in many other formats as well. Sanders is not available for free. Both are worth the price you would pay to buy them bound and printed.
Luther, the pope, Islam, Jihad
So the pope quoted a 14th century emperor’s statement about the violence of Islam without approbation or condemnation and Islam demands that Pope’s apology with a display of violence. Okay. There are many comments about this in the blogs I’ve read but the best has got to be from Herr Luther.
Luther at the Movies is an excellent blog even if I don’t always agree with Lutheran theology. The author’s insight and wit are wonderful. He does a pretty good Luther impersonation as well. Worth a read!
Rosie the Genius
Yesterday at work I walked past a TV in the cafe and saw the show “The View” was on. It occurred to me to blog a thought on it but I let the thought pass. I was going to say that such a show is a bad idea. It is supposed to be friends having interesting discussions. But how often do you have interesting discussions with your friends? If you’re like me, we hit a good one once a week or so. Not every day. So “The View” means that these people have to work really hard at having an interesting discussion every stinking day.
The result is not brilliant and witty dialogue, it is something that passes for that because the network wants us to think it is brilliant and witty. It is fake. It is a pretense of friendship and intimacy but it isn’t.
So what prompted me to blog on this show after all? Well, you’ve read the title so you know what’s coming. Rosie O’Donnell has once again inserted her foot into her overly large mouth in a public arena. I’ve commented on her previous foibles here. This time she said “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state.”
Faith & Doubt & 9/11
Last night I watched the Frontline program Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero. It examined the impact 9/11 had on the faith in God of some people when the World Trade Center was destroyed. There are a lot of things I’d like to talk about in relation to that program (there was more doubt than faith even though their on line poll was exactly the opposite) there is one thing that is bothering me. One of the voiceovers said something like “religion drove those airplanes into those towers and for that reason religion should be abandoned.” The voice was angry and passionate.
This is a common cry from atheists. But what of the Holocaust? Millions of Jews and others were exterminated by Hitler in order to “improve” the race. Hitler had taken the theory of evolution to its grisly and horrific extreme end and decided that the right thing to do was to purify the gene pool. He strove for Nietzsche’s Superman ideal. So if the cry to ban religion should be applied fairly, evolution must likewise be banned. What options does that leave us with?
In the end, the Frontline program was all about religion and not about faith. It was about man’s attempt to grasp at God and not about God’s self-revelation. No one asked what God has said about humanity’s evil. No one asked if God is going to do something about the evil in the long run. No one asked if America had even been faithful to what God has said. Only that religion is a bad thing because it leads people to extremes such as flying commercial airliners full of people into buildings filled with people. No one asked what God said about that.
Site Update Round Ups
A few websites have recently undergone updates. One is immediately visible, the other is not and one is now functioning as promised.
Ligioner Ministries’ website update is dramatic and beautiful. The site is now the Ligioner Ministries Media Center. Now you can listen to RC Sproul teach, as you could before, but now video is available as well. Many years ago, when I was first getting turned on to Reformed theology, I used to hang out at this website’s message boards. They are no longer available but they were challenging and edifying. Now the Ligionier site looks crisp and professional with pleanty of good content. Great stuff and well done.
John Piper’s ministry, Desiring God, did a recent update of their website but you wouldn’t notice it from the home page that much. I didn’t notice the change. But they have added more content and tried to make navigation easier. Adding more of John Piper’s work and making it available on the web is a good thing in my book.
Free Derek Webb is now up and running. You can go there and get a free download of Derek’s album Mockingbird. I bought it when it first came out but now you can get the whole thing for free. Sweet deal. A New Law really hit me.
Star Wars Funny Part II
The video I linked to where Darth Vader messes with his underlings got taken down from YouTube for “terms of use violations.” Too bad, that one cracked me up. I’d check it out when I needed a good laugh.Not nearly as funny but a good one none the less is this parody of failed Star Wars screen tests.UPDATE: I found another copy of the video I originally mentioned and update the link on that entry. Enjoy.