Review: What’s the Difference?: Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible

John Piper. What’s the Difference?: Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible.  Wheaton, IL: Crossway, June 29th 2001.  91 pp.

4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

The author John Piper is one of the editors along with Wayne Grudem of the massive Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  In fact this present book was originally written as a chapter for the larger work and while Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  While that work is more detailed in providing exegetical support and the reasons for why Piper and company takes the position they take yet Piper published What’s the Difference? as a stand-alone book is to present “a Biblical vision of manhood and womanhood as clearly and concisely as possible, and to leave the comprehensive technical discussion for other publications” (14).  Piper also wrote in chapter one that he wanted to have What’s the Difference? as a “portrayal of the vision that satisfies the head as well as the heart” (16).  In other words Piper’s second purpose is his desire to show how a biblical view of manhood and womanhood is “deeply satisfying gift of grace from a loving God” (16).

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Sam Shamoun: Refuting Iglesia Ni Cristo

Sam Shamoun has two videos and a couple of posts on his blog critiquing Inglesia Ni Cristo arguments that Jesus is not God from the James White debate with Iglesia Ni Cristo apologist Joe Ventilacion.

It’s worth praying that God would use these resources knowing that this group is the third largest religion in the Philippines.

Here’s the first video:

Here’s the second video:

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Bible Not Like a Trail Mix

This is from brother Wally’s blog a few weeks ago:

It is very true.  We cannot have a pick and choose approach towards the Bible.

We can easily fall into this error even when we confess publicly and know that this ought not to be.  This is why I think every local churches’ regular staple of Sunday preaching ought to be expository preaching which is contextual preaching that gives attention to the flow of the context.  The nature of expository preaching with its way of verse by verse teaching forces one to see what God’s counsel has to say helps us to minimize the danger of picking and choosing specific aspects of the Bible while ignoring the rest.

For those who are interested here’s Veritas Domain’s Hermeneutics Series: Course Level One, Two and Three.

 

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Memorial Day: Rocky Mountain News’ 2006 Pulitzer Prize “Final Salute”

This Memorial Day I took a bit of a personal memory lane.  A part of that was recalling other past Memorial Day.  And it got me thinking about one of the most powerful coverage on American service members’ death and their body coming back to their family that I have ever read titled “Final Salute,” a photo essay by Jim Sheeler of the Rocky Mountain News.  It was the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.  I don’t know when it happened but my old link to the PDF that Rocky Mountain News posted no longer works but I found a way you can still see the photos and read the story here.  If you haven’t seen and read this before, you got to do it.

 

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Sunday Morning Motivation for Preachers: Be Worthy of Your Wages!

It’s Sunday Morning.  Here’s a little motivation for preachers before you enter your pulpit from the Word of God.

 

1 Timothy 5:17-19 states

 The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. ¹⁸ For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,” and “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” ¹⁹ Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses.

Note in verse 17 that Paul’s intention in writing this is so that those who serve in the church as Elders/Pastors to “work hard at preaching and teaching.”  Verse 18 tips us that he’s going to give us the reasons for this with the use of the word “for” which shows the motivation.  I want to look at one of the motivation for this Sunday and Lord willing another next Sunday.

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2017 Memorial Day Weekend Lists of Recommended Readings

It’s Memorial Day Weekend.  If you are looking for some good books to read over the three day weekend here’s my recommendation from among all my readings of things military and military history between 2016-2017.  The only exception in the list is the first book which I read in 2013 but remains among the top book I think of when someone I think of a quality work.

I picked these books on the basis that they made me appreciate what those in the military have done.  Each book is linked to my original review.  Let me know which ones sound interesting to you or there are other books you would recommend!

We begin with the first one:

Review: Fearless: The Heroic Story of One Navy SEAL’s Sacrifice by Eric Blehm

Purchase: Amazon

This is a story of a SEAL Team Six operator who is also a Christian man.  He was killed in action before the Bin Laden raid.  The story of his faith, his battle with sin and his courage is very moving.  As shared by the author at the end of the book Adam Brown’s life moved the author to reconsider Christianity.

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Disingenuous Liberals: Double Standards With Islamic Terrorism

Two double standards I want to note.

I evangelize weekly on college campuses.  There’s been more than once where I had a conversation with a “Disingenuous Liberal” usually after a long conversation that makes the following assertion during different moments of the conversations:

It’s like they don’t notice the double standard.  Most of the time how the second premise (“Hitler is a Christian”) get brought up in the conversation is part of a moral objection against Christianity (“Christians have done a lot of evil in history!  Hitler was a Christian!”).  Of course that objection in of itself is not without its problems.  For instance I think those who make such a charge haven’t taken into consideration Hitler was a politician; we should study more carefully Hitler’s beliefs when he was a nobody and when he was in full power which often suggest’s Hitler’s more genuine beliefs when he was less susceptible to the need to appease people for their support.  A great book that explored Hitler’s worldview is the work Hitler’s Philosophers by Yvonne Sherratt.  Hitler is no Christian once one understand his worldview.  Ironically when some progressives hear Christians talk about radical Islam suddenly these terrorists aren’t true Muslims because Islam is peaceful and these “jihadists” are doing things that goes against the Quran.

Related to this is another double standard with “Disingenuous Liberals:”

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Review: Bloody Crimes by James Swanson

In light of Memoral Day weekend, I thought this would be timely to post this review for this Friday Night’s Non-Fiction Review.

James L. Swanson. Bloody Crimes.  New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, September 28th 2010.  464 pp.

4 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

This book is a study of the President of the Union and the President of the Confederacy during the last days before Lincoln was killed and the days afterwards.  The side by side account of both these Presidents was a fascinating angle of the book and one which I appreciated.  There were many moments that I thought the juxtaposition was quite fascinating.

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Dallas Seminary’s Faculty Responds to Same-Sex Sexuality

Four Faculty Members of Dallas Theological Seminary got together to do two Podcasts to have a Biblical response on the topic of Same-Sex Sexuality.  Specifically they are responding to the arguments that some have tried to explain away the verses in the Bible that described Same-Sex Sexuality as a sin.

The four professors are Dr. Darrell Bock, Dr. Robert Chisholm, Dr. Joe Fantin, and Dr. Jay Smith who are from the Old and New Testament department of the Seminary.  I appreciate that these are scholars of the Bible giving their input on the text.  They examined the biblical passages often brought up on homosexuality.  The first video is on on material in the Old Testament while the second video is on the material in the New Testament.

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#ppsellsbabyparts: It is time for Planned Parenthood to be Prosecuted

Given how evil abortion is as an act of murder against the most helpless its time we don’t just talk about defunding Planned Parenthood but the legal banning of them from murdering.

This is one of the latest undercover video of their evil.  May God wake up the conscious of our nation against this injustice.

I’m moved to pray to see this evil end in the United States.

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Bible Contradiction? Where does God dwell?

For today’s post we will tackle another question from the Skeptic Annotated Bible: Where does God dwell?

This one should be filed under the category of “Too Silly.”

Here are the two answers which the skeptic believes shows a Bible contradiction:

God dwells in Zion.

“Sing praises to the Lord, who dwells in Zion; Declare among the peoples His deeds.” (Psalm 9:11)

“His tabernacle is in Salem; His dwelling place also is in Zion.” (Psalm 76:2)

“Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, Dwelling in Zion, My holy mountain. So Jerusalem will be holy, And strangers will pass through it no more….And I will avenge their blood which I have not avenged, For the Lord dwells in Zion.” (Psalm 9:11)

God dwells in the heavens.

“To You I lift up my eyes, O You who are enthroned in the heavens!” (Psalm 123:1)

“Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God. For God is in heaven and you are on the earth; therefore let your words be few.” (Ecclesiastes 5:2)
(All Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible)

Here’s a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:

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Argument Against the Trinity? Origin of the Trinity

One of the comments in my previous post “Argument against the Trinity? Jose Ventilacion on the death of Christ” had a comment from “Javier” that tried to argue against the Trinity:

History and Archeology show that the Trinity comes from the false religion. You can find images and sculptures of trinitarian gods from Babylon and Egypt in museums and ancient churches. The Trinity had its origin and development by men in the councils of Nicaea (325 CE) and Constantinople (381 CE), not in the Bible.

Here’s my reply:

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A Schizophrenic Attack Against Presuppositional Apologetics

It seems to me that most of the objection I’ve heard against Presuppositional Apologetics is a misunderstanding of this method of apologetics.  Either it is that or there’s a deliberate misrepresentation.  But I believe once one finally understand Presuppositional Apologetics…well the picture captures it well.

In this post I want to deal with a blog post by someone that have posted against Presuppositional Apologetics.  I want to be even more narrow in my focus to point out how sometimes objections against Presuppositional Apologetics seems to be quite appropriately described as schizophrenic. To avoid distraction I’m not even going to deal with the misrepresentations of Presuppositionalism but I am going to look only at what the guy assumes and show how it is internally incoherent within his own words–let alone whether his critique truly refutes what Presuppositionalists really believe.

 

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Have You Checked Out Our “999+ Audio Lectures” Page?

We live in a time of incredible resources on the Christian faith, life and intellect.  Our fellow blogger “Andy” has been working for weeks on a new page called “999+ Audio Lectures” which he completed not too long ago.  You might notice that it’s a tab on our blog.  Have you checked it out?

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Presuppositional Apologetic’s Links: Third Week of May 2017

These are links concerning Presuppositional apologetics gathered from May 15th-21st, 2017.

1.) God is the Ground for Truth

2.) He is There and He is Not Silent- Francis Schaeffer (1972)

3.) Western Law’s Theological Basis

4.) An Atheist Suppressing the Truth

5.) Disturbing Reasoning

6.) Bible Contradiction? Did Sarah have faith that she would conceive?

 

Missed the last round up?  Check out the re-blogged post from a friend OR that of Another REBLOG HERE

 

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