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The Beauty and Joy of Answered Prayer

By on February 14, 2013 in Discipleship, History

I’m so thankful for Jason Skaer (follow him on twitter), and what a joy to read this account of how the Lord answered prayer and provided:

PROPERTY PRAYER – There were many nights where the men’s ministry consisted of monthly gatherings on the corner of Branch Crossing and Alden Bridge to pray.  I remember hot nights with lots of mosquitoes, and a group of guys asking God to move so that we could leave that old YMCA and build a campus on these 5 acres filled with woods.  I think many felt like we were hoping against hope, all we could see were tall trees and low funds, and the people driving by in the middle of the night must have thought we were nuts.  But God proved once again He does hear and answer prayer.

MACY’S PARKING LOT  – It was your ordinary Sunday in 2008 that turned extraordinary with one phone call.  Suzanne and I were going to the mall when I got a call from Roger Yancey explaining that someone had anonymously donated $700,000 to TCAAB to help build our new campus (see above prayer).  For a church whose annual budget at the time was south of $200,000 this was BIG news.  I remember running from the Macy’s parking lot where I took the call, all the way in to the store where I found Suzanne and started crying.  God is good.

The whole thing – 10 Years of God Memories

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My Dad’s Coins

By on June 27, 2012 in Bible and Theology, History

I didn’t feel that I did enough for my Dad this past Father’s Day, and in the early hours of the Monday that followed that Sunday I had a dream about My Dad’s Coins that, it seems to me, was connected to that feeling. Having awakened from that dream, I was having a hard time getting back to sleep. I was thinking about the dream and about the advice that my good friend Denny Burk had given me about incorporating more personal illustrations in my sermons.

So I got out of bed and typed up my account of the dream, then went back to bed and got right to sleep.

Following Denny’s advice, I talked about this dream at the conclusion of my sermon this past Sunday. You can hear it here: Jeremiah 25:15–38, The Cup of Wrath.

Then I edited the written account, added some, and it’s now posted over at Christianity.com. Here’s an excerpt:

There I was in my dream, holding those coins in my hand. They had become priceless to me because of what they signified, and I was horrified that I had almost thrown them away on a cola that wouldn’t have been good for me anyway.

This is how our ignorant, wayward, and weak hearts find their way to sin. We forget the gifts our God and Father has given us. We become unmindful of what his mercy means to us. We neglect the mementos, the testimonies, the stories and songs of the Scriptures.

And all too often we are prepared to cash in our relationship with the living God for filth, filth that would ruin our lives and destroy everything precious and sacred to us. We are ignorant, wayward, and weak enough to throw away the world to come in exchange for a syrupy mixture of caffeine, sugar, and fizzy water, or worse, far worse: shameful things not to be named. God help us get hearts of wisdom.

You can read the whole thing.

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Greek Palindromes

By on May 24, 2012 in Great Quotes, History

Here’s a great post from Rod Decker:

A palindrome is a word or sentence that reads identically forward and backward, e.g., “Do geese see God?” The Greek palindrome inscription:

ΝΙΨΟΝΑΝΟΜΗΜΑΜΗΜΟΝΑΝΟΨΙΝ

is from the Hagia Sophia. (In Greek, Ἁγία Σοφία is short for Ναός τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας, “Church of the Holy Wisdom of God.” This was an Eastern Orthodox church building in Constantinople, constructed in the fourth century. For over a thousand years it was the Patriarchal Basilica of Constantinople. It is now a museum.)

Written in modern orthography the palindrome reads,

Νίψον ἀνόημα μὴ μόναν ὄψιν

and means, “Wash your sin, not only your face.” I first found this palindrome in Bruce Metzger’s Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 23.

The word palindrome is itself a Greek word, παλίνδρομος, a compound of πάλιν, “again” and δραμεῖν, “to run”/δρόμος, “a race, race course.” There were apparently many Greek palindromes current in the ancient world. Another example that I’ve run across is:

ἀμήσας ἄρδην ὀροφόρον ἥδρασα σῆμα.

“Having reaped I established a lofty-roofed monument.”

(This one I found in Lloyd W. Daly, “A Greek Palindrome in Eighth-Century England,” American Journal of Philology 102 [1982]: 95–97.)

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The Scribes Didn’t Just Copy the Text

By on March 23, 2012 in Books, History, Manuscripts

They also left some comments in margins, like these listed by Tommy Wasserman:

“New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.

“I am very cold.”

“That’s a hard page and a weary work to read it.”

“Let the reader’s voice honor the writer’s pen.”

“This page has not been written very slowly.”

“The parchment is hairy.”

“The ink is thin.”

“Thank God, it will soon be dark.”

“Oh, my hand.”

“Now I’ve written the whole thing; for Christ’s sake give me a drink.”

“Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims you sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.”

“St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.”

“While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight.”

“As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.”

“This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more’.”

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The Authorial Agony of Charles Dickens

By on December 1, 2011 in Art, Books, Great Quotes, History, Literature

My friend Scott Corbin sent me this poignant excert from Clair Tomalin’s Charles Dickens: A Life, 113-114:

“These were all distractions from the central business of the year, which was the story that had started as a few episodes and was being made into a novel, week by week, The Old Curiosity Shop. Against all the odds, it became the second-highest seller of all his books, surpassed only by the The Pickwick Papers, another improvised tale. What sort of a story was it? A very odd one, a picaresque tale of a child who tries and fails to escape from her fate, with a supposed protector, her grandfather, addicted to gambling, and a grotesquely wicked pursuer, the dwarf Quilp, both putting her at risk and driving her towards her death. Nell herself has no character beyond sweetness, goodness and innocence, which endeared her to male readers; and Lord Jeffrey, the great Scottish judge, critic and sometime editor of the Edinburgh Review, even likened her to Cordelia, although the only resemblance is in their untimely deaths. At the age of thirteen, Nell effectively has to look after her grandfather, who has been corrupted by his fascination with money, rather as Dickens’s maternal grandfather had been corrupted by money, and his father also, overspending, borrowing and failing to settle his debts; so this aspect of the story was quite close to home. And while there is very much more in the book than Nell, it is her death that made its fame. It was Forster who suggested that Dickens should kill her off: he seized the idea, and the slowly approaching death of Little Nell held readers in a state of excited anxiety on both sides of the Atlantic for many weeks. Letters came to Dickens imploring him to save her, and grave and normally equable men sobbed uncontrollably when they read that she was dead.

Dickens himself suffered as he wrote of Nell’s decline, and shared his sufferings with his friends through November and December 1840. He told Forster, ‘You can’t imagine how exhausted I am today with yesterday’s labours… All night I have been pursued by the child; and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable. I don’t know what to do with myself… I think the close of the story will be great.’ Then, a few days later, ‘The difficulty has been tremendous — the anguish unspeakable.’ To his illustrator, Cattermole, he wrote, ‘I am breaking my heart over this story, and cannot bear to finish it.’ In January, Macready was told, ‘I am slowly murdering that poor child, and grow wretched over it. It wrings my heart. Yet it must be.’ A few days later it was Maclise who heard, ‘If you knew what I have been suffering in the death of that child!’

Another letter to Forster shows how Dickens used his suffering, deliberately summoning up painful feelings, in the cause of telling a better story: ‘I shan’t recover it for a long time. Nobody will miss her like I shall. It is such a very painful thing to me, that I really cannot express my sorrow… I have refused several invitations for this week and next, determining to go nowhere til I had done. I am afraid of disturbing the state I have been trying to get into, and having to fetch it all back again.’ “

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From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology by Andrew E. Steinmann

By on November 23, 2011 in Bible and Theology, Books, History

As I’ve noted before, Andrew Steinmann has been remarkably prolific in recent years:

2008 – a 600 page commentary on Daniel

2009 – a 700 page commentary on Proverbs

2010 – a 600 page commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah

And now this year, 2011, he has brought out a 400 page book on biblical chronology. There is a lot of great stuff here, but what I want to highlight is what Steinmann says about the date of the exodus. I won’t repeat his whole argument, but in my view his discussion is a great summary of the reasons the late date of the exodus (1200′s BC) should be retired altogether.

Steinmann observes that the late date for the exodus:

“was popularized by William F. Albright in the 1930s. The primary motive for Albright’s theory was to harmonize the Exodus with archeological evidence from Palestine. In the decades since Albright’s death in 1971 most Palestinian archeologists and most critical scholars have abandoned this theory in favor of denying the historicity of the Exodus and conquest. Virtually all of the remaining adherents of a thirteenth century Exodus are evangelical scholars” (54).

Steinmann demonstrates how the late-date theory is unconvincing on 1 Kings 6:1 and Exodus 1:11, and, though the main impetus for the theory is archeological, even the archeological evidence for it is disputed.

The early date for the exodus, meanwhile, based on 1 Kings 6:1, fits naturally with Judges 11:26 and is confirmed by traditions from Jewish sources that shed light on the calculation of Jubilee years and Sabbatical cycles. Steinmann’s discussion of these matters is a great introduction to the Sabbatical cycles and the Jubilee years, and along the way it becomes apparent that the most natural explanation for this evidence is that the priests faithfully counted the Sabbatical and Jubilee cycles on the basis of Leviticus 25–27, texts that must have been in existence from “the late fifteenth century BC” (52–53).

There is, of course, a lot of other valuable chronological information in this volume, and I expect to return to it often.

Steinmann’s approach at point after point confirms the veracity, historicity, and accuracy of what is recorded in the biblical text. He comes to the texts sympathetically and patiently sifts the evidence, seeking explanations that account for all the evidence. This is evangelical scholarship at its best.

My only regret about this book is its price! I don’t understand why this volume costs twice as much as comparable books do, and I hope the price does not prove prohibitive. From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology is a faithful, up to date discussion of what we can know about when these events in the Bible took place.

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Jonathan Edwards as a Missionary

By on November 14, 2011 in Current Events, Discipleship, Education, Evangelism and Apologetics, History

Insightful article by Jonathan Gibson in the latest issue of Themelios, looking at how Edwards viewed his mission to the American Indians, how he adapted his preaching to the new context, and how he pursued “social justice”!

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Hans Frei’s Central Idea

By on October 24, 2011 in Biblical Theology, Great Quotes, History

Thanks to Patrick Schreiner for pointing to this essay, in which William C. Placher describes Hans Frei’s central idea:

Frei certainly never thought of himself as a “great theologian, ” but he did have a central passion, a central idea. That idea emerged through long study, in the 1950s and ’60s, of l8th- and 19th-century ways of interpreting the Bible. He grew convinced that nearly the whole of modern Christian theology, from the radical to the fundamentalist, had taken a wrong turn.

For many centuries before the modern age, most Christian theologians had read the Bible primarily as a kind of realistic narrative. It told the overarching story of the world, from creation to last judgment. Moreover, the particular coherence of this story made “figural” interpretation possible: some events in the biblical stories, as well as some nonbiblical events, prefigured or reflected the central biblical events. Indeed, Christians made sense of their own lives by locating their stories within the context of that larger story.

But somewhere around the 18th century, people started reading the Bible differently. Their own daily experience seemed to define for them what was “real, ” and so they consciously tried to understand the meaning of the Bible by locating it in their world.

They did that in — to overgeneralize — two ways. They saw the meaning of the biblical narratives either in the eternal truths about God and human nature that the stories conveyed or in their reference to historical events. The Bible thus fit into the world of our experience either as a set of general lessons applicable to that world or as an extension of that world developed by means of critical history.

Those two ways of interpreting the Bible remain prominent. Those who set out the moral lessons of Jesus’ teaching or focus on the insights provided by his parables believe that the real point of the Gospels lies in their general lessons for our lives. On the other hand, fueled by Wolfhart Pannenberg’s early arguments for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection and continuing scholarly efforts to establish which of the Gospel sayings were really spoken by the historical Jesus, some Christians still tend to treat the Bible as a historical source whose value lies primarily in its historical accuracy.

The whole is worth reading. I think this is basically right, and this is why I sometimes say that the aim of biblical theology is to get at the presuppositions of the biblical authors, to get into their world, and to stay there. We want to live in the world as the biblical authors conceived it.

As Placher puts it, summarizing Frei:

Frei’s theology is finally church theology: it first of all addresses the Christian community and invites that community to let the biblical narratives shape its vision of the world. To what extent parts of that community will respond to such invitations may be the most important unanswered question regarding Frei’s work.

See further Frei’s Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.

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Halton on the Human Element of History

By on October 14, 2011 in Great Quotes, History

Reflecting on a post entitled “The Spiritual Ground of History,” Charles Halton describes a poignant moment in his own research:

. . . as I was going through the cuneiform tablet collection that belongs to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. I was bogged down in trying to read from broken tablets and keep track of the accounts mentioned in the various texts when, as I held a 4,000 year old tablet in my hand, I saw a fingerprint. It was a powerful sign that reminded me that as I read the tablet I was not merely reading a “sheep text” but a record of the work of a real human being. Someone who probably enjoyed his work some days and other days found it difficult and frustrating. Someone with parents who loved him or was he abused? Maybe he had a wife and child at home and worried about feeding and clothing them and about buying a new house, and so on. This tablet was no longer just about sheep, it was about the humans who engaged in these tasks.

A few lines later he has this description of history from a novel:

in Julian Barnes’ new novel, A Sense of an Ending, in which this definition of history is attributed to one of the characters:

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

The whole thing.

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J. K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Address: Failure and Imagination

By on October 11, 2011 in Current Events, Great Quotes, History

In 2008 Rowling gave a stirring address at the Harvard commencement on the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination. Some highlights:

by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

—–

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

—–

Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

—–

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

—–

Read the whole thing here.

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R. C. Sproul and T. Lively Fluharty, The Barber Who Wanted to Pray

By on October 5, 2011 in Art, Bible and Theology, Discipleship, History

If you’re needing a little encouragement to do family devotions, or if you’re looking to spur someone in that direction, you’ll want to get your hands on The Barber Who Wanted to Pray by R. C. Sproul and T. Lively Fluharty. This book is a great encouragement to be reading the Bible, singing the Bible, and especially praying the Bible with our families. And it’s beautiful.

The message of the book is simple: pray the ideas in the Lord’s prayer, the ten commandments, and the Apostle’s Creed. This point is made through a poignant account of an encounter between Martin Luther and his barber, into whose hands Luther put his life. It’s only gradually revealed that Luther is the outlaw with the price on his head who sits down in the barber’s chair.

I read this book aloud to my older two sons, who have learned a little about Luther and are a little familiar with the reformation. When the moment of revelation came, they gasped aloud, exclaiming, “Martin Luther!” That reaction, for me, was the best part of us reading this book.

What will keep me coming back to this book, and what has me even now marveling at it, turning its pages slowly, are the works of art it contains. Don’t get me wrong: I believe in the importance of praying Scripture, and I love stories about Martin Luther. But the paintings by T. Lively Fluharty deserve more contemplation and consideration than can be given as a parent reads this book aloud to children who want to hear how things turn out.

R. C. Sproul has told a great story here, and T. Lively Fluharty brings it alive with lasting beauty.

If you’re looking for a good gift as we near the Christmas season, this would be a good book to put in the hands of anyone who has children, anyone who wants to pray, or anyone who might be drawn by great art to the God who works for those who wait for him.

If you like this one, don’t miss Fool Moon Rising by Kristi and T. Lively Fluharty (what a name that guy has!).

I don’t know if Fluharty has captured the historical circumstances, or if he just has a thing for cats, but judging from his paintings, Luther’s town was over-run by them. [There's a mouse in the last painting, and that little guy is glad that these are Muggle paintings. If they were housed in Hogwarts, the cats from previous pages would be on the chase.]

Crossway is committed to truth, goodness, and beauty. You can see it in projects like this one. Praise God for Sproul and Fluharty, and praise God he has given us his own word to pray back to him.

—–

Related: Biblical Theology for Kids!

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George W. Bush Sounds Like Lincoln on Prayer

By on September 27, 2011 in Current Events, History

The conclusion of this must read article:

I visited President Bush in the Oval Office one more time. I was thinking about doing a book about how Americans pray, and I had remembered that way back in Midland, he had advised me to read the Bible cover-to-cover, something I had done since then. He agreed to talk with me about his prayer life, and, for a final time, I journeyed to the Oval Office.

“I’ve thought about this conversation a lot since you asked … ,” President Bush said. “I’m learning and have been learning ever since 1986, really.”

That afternoon, only a few months before he would leave office, we sat beneath the famous Rembrandt Peale portrait of George Washington, and President Bush told me that he prayed daily in the White House. He prayed for spiritual insight—to “be more discerning of the Word of God.” He prayed that God keep his wife and daughters protected. He prayed that our soldiers and their families be given comfort and strength. He did not pray for good weather on his daughter’s wedding day, or that his father’s hip surgery go well, or that the stock market rise.

“Do you pray, ‘Dear God, let Congress get it right?’ ” I asked.

“No.”

“ ‘Dear God, let Pelosi get it right?’ ”

“No, no, no, no, no, God is not the minority leader”—and then he laughed and corrected himself. “Majority leader. … Nor do I pray for a Republican victory. … I really don’t.”

He prayed before his presidential debates, kept a little cross in his pocket that he would squeeze: “ ‘Dear God, I pray that I speak clearly and bring calm.’ ” He prayed before his State of the Union addresses, alone in the little holding room: “ ‘Dear God, I pray that you shine through me today.’ ”

“And the prayers of the people,” he said, referring to those who pray for him, “this is where I get into a little shaky ground because I can’t prove it.” But Bush said he had actually felt the prayers of people asking God to comfort him. “And so the pop psychologists say, ‘Well, he’s grasping for affection.’ … I tell people all the time this—that the prayers of the people matter. And I do have a sense of calm.” Perhaps, he said, his prayers and the prayers of others are the reason. “I’ve been asked this some: ‘Do you think God wanted you to go to war?’ I didn’t ask in prayer. … I don’t think that’s fair to God to do that.”

“Have you prayed, ‘Dear God, if I was wrong about this, forgive me’?”

“No, no, no. First of all, I don’t believe I’m wrong about it. I don’t believe it’s wrong to confront evil. And I don’t believe it’s wrong to give people the opportunity to live in a free society. … I don’t want to bring God down into a presidential debate over ‘yes’ or ‘no’ into Iraq.”

“Do you have compassion for your enemy?”

“I have yet to forgive Osama bin Laden, and, frankly, haven’t prayed [for him] because I think he needs to be brought to justice in order to prevent him from killing other people.”

“Isn’t it possible to pray for Osama bin Laden and also want to bring him to justice?”

“I’m not sophisticated enough in prayer, evidently, to be able to pray for Osama bin Laden and at the same time go hunt him.”

Early the next morning, my hotel phone rang me out of bed.

“The president would like to talk with you,” a pleasant voice said.

In a moment, President Bush was on the line. He said he didn’t want to leave me with a wrong impression: he did pray regularly for forgiveness. He just wanted to be sure I knew that.

I thanked him for the call.

“Well,” he said with a laugh, “now you can tell your friends that the president of the United States gave you a wake-up call.”

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Fascinating Article on President George W. Bush

By on September 27, 2011 in Current Events, History

I haven’t even finished this article yet, but I find it riveting, informative, and inspiring.

Enjoy.

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Perseus Classics Free for Logos

By on September 26, 2011 in Bible and Theology, History, Literature, Manuscripts

The Perseus Collections will be released from Logos on September 30, 2011. If you pre-order them, you get them free.

You read that right – free if you pre-order.

Tony Reinke writes:

The collection is a library in itself of over 1,100 ancient Greek and Latin titles and includes many corresponding English translations and helpful commentaries. Authors include Aristotle, Cicero, Homer, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Demosthenes, and many others.

The release of this massive collection is significant step for New Testament studies since many of the Greek titles are referenced in technical Greek reference works and lexicons like TDNT, BDAG, and EDNT. The folks at Logos have announced on their website that over time they plan to add lemma tags to all the Greek books and add hyperlinks to the lexical reference to correspond to the original books in the Perseus Classics Collection. So when you see a reference in TDNT to, say, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the reference will be hyperlinked and a click will land you in Aristotle’s work to read the context for yourself.

Skilled Greek exegetes will benefit from the collection because of the tags and hyperlinks, but what about those who want to engage the classic Greek works on a less technical level? Most of the books are available as English translations. With these English translations the collection is quite accessible to all readers and offers many key books that can help sharpen your communication skills.

I downloaded Perseus classics and the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri. I’m still amazed this stuff was free!

Thanks to Logos for serving us in these ways. You can pick the ones you want to pre-order here.

Clarification: I’ve just heard from Logos that they’ve decided this material will always be free, so even if you don’t pre-order it, the price won’t change.

Lots of info here.

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