Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World

(171 pages + appendices) (Amazon Link)
Edited by C. J. Mahaney, with chapters written by Craig Cabaniss, Bob Kauflin, Dave Harvey, and Jeff Purswell

I enjoyed this little book. Mahaney and the other contributors use the illustration of the Jefferson Bible to make the point that Christians are often guilty of mentally if not literally clipping out parts of the Bible that deal with the sin of worldliness.  Worldliness is viewed as non-conformity to an outside set of a rules and restrictions, rather than a heart issue of putting the things we love above Jesus Christ.  Thus, as long we match up with our “checklist,” we ignore passages that deal with worldliness, mentally clipping them out of our Bible. Throughout the book, the authors present hard questions to practical issues of worldliness (media, music, stuff, clothes) that force one to re-evaluate his decisions in light of his love for Christ. Mahaney correctly makes the point that this self-centered heart attitude can not be defeated by self-effort, but only by the power of Christ, which was demonstrated on the cross.  The book includes a short study guide in the back which makes it helpful for a small group or discipleship study.

Ivanhoe

(Project Gutenberg Link)
Sir Walter Scott

This is a classic work of fiction loosely based on historical events following the King’s Crusade.  One of my favorite books. This was a re-read, but enjoyable nonetheless, as there are always things in a book of this length that you don’t pick up on the first time.  If you’ve only seen a movie or read an abridged version (i.e. the Wishbone version does not count ), I highly recommend you spend the time to read the full, unabridged version.  Another note about this book: I read this using the Stanza app for my iPod touch. Highly impressed with this free app.  As the parent company is now owned by Amazon, hopefully both this app and the Kindle app will only get better.

The Shack

(256 pages) (Amazon Link)
Wm. Paul Young

This book has been ably reviewed by others (Dan Olinger, Tim Challies, etc.) and I won’t be saying anything they haven’t. I was initially skeptical whether or not it would be worth my time to read this book, but I found the reading more profitable than I anticipated. Obviously the book is well-written. Obviously there are theological errors with the book.  Primary being the rather one-sided presentation of the “goodness” of God (love, forgiveness, patience, etc.) almost the exclusion of his “greatness” (holiness, justice, glory, etc.).  The author would argue that it was not his point to present a full picture of God and the character in the book (Mack) needed the emphasis on God’s goodness rather than his greatness. Perhaps. However, this is the inherent problem with creating a picture of God. Any picture we create will fall short because He is incomprehensible.  This might be excusable, except for that fact that by creating a false image of God, we violate the 2nd commandment. C.S. Lewis says something helpful in regard to this issue, but I’m too lazy to go look it up in The Screwtape Letters (Letter 4) in relation to prayer. Screwtape (head demon) tells his nephew (lesser demon) that when humans pray they pray to a composite object they call God composed of “ridiculous ingredients.”  Screwtape is ok with this type of prayer as long as human prayers are never directed “not to what I think Thou art but to what Thou knowest Thyself to be.” In other words, we need to be aware that any picture we create of God, even in our minds is most likely, if not certainly, inaccurate.  Overall, the book is helpful in making you think about your own preconceptions of God which quite probably are also false and thus also violations of the 2nd commandment.  This book may also be helpful on two other fronts. 1) Point of contact with many unbelievers who have read it and have questions (My mom had such an opportunity for a conversation the other week.) 2) Helpful to you in ministering to the “Mack’s” in your life by getting an idea of their false conception of God and how it needs to be biblically corrected

Wayback

(320 pages) (Amazon Link)
Sam Batterman

This was an excellent example of Christian historical science-fiction, for lack of a better term. Quick summary: A well-funded U.S. thinktank finds out about a Nazi secret-weapons program that attempted to create a method to travel back in time. The group succeeds where the Nazis failed. However, after failed attempts to reach 100,000 B.C., a team of specialists in various fields decides to make a trip to 2,300 B.C., just before the biblical Noah’s flood. What they find and document, if revealed to the public, would radically change widely accepted theories about world history.  However, a terrorist organization has also discovered the existence of this time machine and plan to use it for their own nefarious purposes. Batterman has done an excellent job of making a believable rendition of young-earth, world-wide flood, biblical history.  This is due in part to help from the scientists at Answers in Genesis.  I have a few small quibbles (mostly due to my own geeky views of time-travel and the ability to change history), but overall this is an excellent book. One of the characters in the book (an intially skeptical atheist) does raise an interesting question about time-travel from a biblical perspective, in relation to what time-travel and the ability to document important biblical events does to faith.  In other words, say for example it were truly possible for a individual to travel back to say, A.D. 30 and take photographs and video of the resurrection of Christ or even bring back a piece of the real burial shroud, thus establishing it as a historical fact beyond doubt by anyone, what would that do to faith?  Obviously there is more to salvation that faith in a historical event, but I look forward to seeing how this and other issues are dealt with in any future books. (Aside: Finally something put out by a Microsoft employee that’s enjoyable! jk )

Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape our Practice

(307 pages including appendix) (Amazon Link)
Bryan Chapell

Having greatly enjoyed and profited from Christ-Centered Preaching, also by Bryan Chapell, I’ve been looking forward to reading this book.  Chapell did not disappoint. His goal in this book is to help ministry leaders re-align their worship services around the themes of gospel.  He begins by a historical survey of orders of worship or liturgies from Medieval times, through the Reformation, up to the present day.  He demonstrates how all of these, as well as several biblical examples of worship are ordered in respect to the gospel.  He traces the themes of Adoration, Confession, Assurance, Thanksgiving, Petition and Intercession, Instruction, Communion/Fellowship, and Charge and Blessing through each of these examples of worship and shows how they relate. For example, Adoration – recognition of the greatness of God – leads to an accurate view of our own sinfulness which in results in Confession; because God is always ready to forgive those who have contritely confessed their sin we have Assurance of his grace and pardon which should cause us to respond with Thanksgiving, and so on… He discusses the importance and relation of each of these themes to the gospel.  He also includes various examples of different ways each of these themes could be communicated through a service (choir, congregational singing, prayer, preaching, offering, etc.).  In the back some resources are listed to help with locating suitable means to express these themes.  I think this book is a great complement to Gary Reimer’s book, The Glory Due His Name: What God says about worship.  While Reimers focuses on the elements of worship God requires (Preparation, Praise, Prayer, Presentation, and Preaching), Chapell shows how each of these elements can be used to communicate the gospel God desires. Another one of Chapell’s goal is to show how a biblical, gospel centered approach to worship avoids many of “worship wars” prevalent in churches today, often caused by a desire to hold to traditional practices or implement modern ones.  Although I would not agree with all of the applications Chapell draws, and I doubt he would expect me to, there is much in this book that is very helpful.

Anyone else read anything interesting or helpful recently you’d care to comment on?  You know where to do it.

No related posts.

Anyway this semester begins my 7th year at BJU.  I’ve so far received a B.A. and a M.A. in Bible, and am now pursuing a M.Div (Master of Divinity, also referred to as a master of infinity ).  All of the classes from my M.A. carry over to my M.Div. so I’m not technically just staring the M.Div., however it will take several more years to finish.  So this semester I will be taking the following classes:

• OT 701 – Hebrew Exegesis I  (commonly referred to as 3rd semester Hebrew), taught by Dr. Bell
• NT 616 – Exposition of Paul’s Shorter Epistles (1 & 2 Thessalonians; Prison Epsitles, Pastoral Epistles), taught by Dr. Minnick
• CH 601 – Church History, taught by Dr. Cook

In all, 9 credits, which toward the upper end of my limit as GA.  I’ll still be working as a GA in the “Media Center,” now known as Instructional Technology Services (ITS), which is now a department of the new Academic Success Center (ASC). My coworker thought it would be fun to answer the phone with “ASC, ITS, Andy” (which, of course, sounds like, “Ask, it’s Andy”).  I don’t think we’ll do that though.

I’ll also continue to serve in the ESL (English as a Second Language) ministry at Cornerstone Baptist Church, where I attend.

Ok, enough personal stuff for now.  The rest of that can be relegated to facebook.

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• Here we go again…
• Life as a GA
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First, xhtmlpro.com, where I previously hosted my blog was my the home of my web development/design company.  Our company did some realignment this summer, and now exists at http://waldenwebdev.com.  Xhtmlpro was too unwieldy of a name for those not familiar with web design and coding and such, and since we primarily market ourselves to churches and other Christian ministries, most of which aren’t familiar with terms like xhtml, we (my brother and I) decided we needed to charge our name and branding.  It also gave us an opportunity to redesign our site which needed a facelift.  (Btw, xhtmlpro.com is for sale, if anyone is interested. It would be a great domain for, say, those that convert Photoshop layouts to web templates.) So all that is to explain why I’m not still at andy.xhtmlpro.com.

But why not at say, andy.waldenwebdev.com? Well, the main reason is i thought it would be good to go ahead and get my own exclusive domain.  Not that i’m really concerned someone else will snatch up andyanglea.com (afaik, i am the only one in the world), but I can do other geeky things with it too, like setting up Google Apps for your domain, email server, backup/storage, roll your own URL cruncher, etc.

Now if you’re wordpress savvy and read my previous post, you might be wondering why i had to get my old posts from google cache, as wordpress has an export function in the control panel.  Well, I would have loved to do that, but due to some shenanigans by our web hosting company, that was not an option.  (Short version, they took down xhtmlpro.com before they said they would.)  As you might guess, this site is not hosted by that company.  Depending on how the service goes, I’ll reveal who that is sometime down the road. If you’re really curious, you can look at my whois record. So far so good, and I technically have more than I did with my previous host (storage, bandwidth, etc) for about half the cost.  Next up, the semesterly (or yearly) life update…

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I don’t what it is about this weekend, but as I was re-entering my old posts, i realized that a large portion of them come from the week/weekend of Aug. 20something.  So I guess this continues the tradition.  Hopefully, I’ll have more posts here in between Aug. 20somethings than I have in the past…

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• So what happened?

As i said, exams are done, and it appears I’ve managed to keep my 4.0 this semester, thanks to Dr. Bell’s crazy “Bell Curve” as we refer to it (cutoff for an A is 84, for a B, 72?, etc.)  I’m told a non-ten-point grading scale is common in grad school, but i’m still not used to it.  Oh yeah, since i didn’t post my customary “here’s what I’m taking this semester” post at the beginning of last semester my classes were Preacher Boys – History and Philosophy of Preaching with Dr. Minnick, Systematic Theology II with Dr. Olinger, and Old Testament Introduction with Dr. Bell (and no, Introduction does not indicate that it is an introductory level course.  It’s actually a technical term that refers to the background and history of the Old Testament, rather than its content. Themes, dates, critical views, authorship, integrity, that sort of thing.)  And as i said, God enabled me to get an A in all of them. Yay!

Work has been busy too.  Although i enjoy my job at the Media Center, at times it does get a bit hectic.  Yesterday, for example, I checked out equipment for faculty and students, did some web design, burned several CD’s, tunneled through a pile of email, answered various questions from faculty and students, continued development work on a new checkout system for materials, and tidied up some in preparation for the end of the semester.  I’m looking forward to the break this summer.

Speaking of this summer, I will again be counseling at the WILDS (i really don’t know we always capitalize it, it’s not an acronym, i guess we’re always excited and shout it) for my third summer.  This year as the camp has a patriotic theme, I will be on the Bull Moose party (white) as the head of the Varmint cabin. All the cabin names are take-offs of states (e.g. Steakus, Nascar-olina, Monsoona, Misery, etc.).  That begins with staff training week at the beginning of June.  Prior to that I will be working for Shank Door / Doors Express for three weeks, after visiting my girlfriend and her family in Canada after commencement.  Got all that? Commencement is Saturday (May 3), then Canada for a week, home in PA for 3 weeks, then the WILDS for 11 weeks, and then back here in BJ-land in the middle of August.  Hopefully I’ll post some more in there between now and then.

Well, this post is more than long enough now, so I’ll put anything else i wanted to say in another post.

Related posts:

• Life as a GA
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• What’s new

My “faculty” position is a bit unique. Although I’m classified as a “teaching graduate assistant (ga),” I don’t teach any classes. However I do work for the school of education in the Media Center. The Media Center is a multimedia and resource lab on the second floor of the Alumni building. The MC is also in charge of distributing the multimedia equipment (laptops, projectors, monitors, etc) that the teachers use in the classroom. So my job is some kind of a cross between an IT technician, computer lab assistant, and tutor. The way I like to refer to it is “I get to help students and work with computers!” both of which i love.

Anyway, without further ado, here are this semester’s classes.

• Hom 634 – Expository Sermon Preparation – Dr. Reimers
• OT 633 – Biblical Hermeneutics – Dr. Hankins
• CMn 651 – Christian Discipleship (Grad preacher boys) – Dr. Berg (we’ll be going through Changed into His Image)
• Th 601 – Systematic Theology – Dr. Bell (lots and lots of reading)

That makes a total of 9 credits to which I add 27.5 hours of work in the Media Center. At least it’s 9 month GAship, so I have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the summer off

I will also hopefully have some opportunity to work with the teens at Faith Baptist Church, and I’ll probably continue ministering at Shepherd’s Care assisted living center, some too. All in all, it looks like a busy semester… well, that’s normal.

Related posts:

• School is in session
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• ALG 202: Intermediate Greek II, we will be studying verb tense uses as well as translating portions of Mark and Thessalonians
• RPA 303: Pulpit Speech II, we will preach three times in class, using both deductive and inductive structures
• PR 302: Ministerial Class (ie. Preacher Boys), the topics this semester will be Stewardship and Prayer
• NT 450: Old and New Testament Prophecy
• CpS 225: Advanced programing with several simple languages (HTML, Javascript, and VBA)
• GT 215: Project Management, not entirely sure what all will be involved with this class, but my unofficial adviser recommended it
• CmN 430: Christian Masterworks, we will be studying 2 works by Bunyan, 3 by C.S. Lewis and portions of several by Tozer

Well, that's it for now.

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I know he knows this verse, because of where I met him. Yes, I’ve met an alleged double murderer. We met at a Bible quiz between about 5 churches in our area. The Bible quiz was over the book of I Peter. In order to effectively compete in this competition, you basically had to have the entire book memorized, and be able to quote word-perfect any verse in it. He and I were on two of the top 5 teams that year, so I that’s how I know he had that verse memorized.

So how does a bible quizzer become a murderer? It’s really not as difficult as you might think. To quote our former school president, “Anyone is capable of committing any sin, given the proper provocation.” “Who me,” you ask? “I’ll never murder anyone!” I didn’t say you would, I just said we were capable of it. I pray that no one that’s reading this will do such a thing, but it’s not impossible.

Although David professed to be saved, he was devoured by Satan. So what’s the lesson for us? How can we keep from being devoured – chewed up and spit out – like David was? Ironically enough, or maybe not so, it comes from I Peter 5:8-9, some of the very verses David memorized for that quiz. If you know Jesus Christ, these verses give four things you should do in order to avoid being devoured.

1. “Be sober-minded” – Be serious minded. Have the right attitude toward sin. Sin is not a joke. Sin is not something to play around with. Sin is serious business, and God hates it. That should be our attitude too.
2. “Be watchful” – Be alert. Don’t let down your guard just because you’re in an insulated Christian environment. Satan knows where your weak points are, and he knows how to attack them in order to get you to fall. Don’t let him!
3. “Resist him” – Don’t let him have an avenue into your life. Don’t just keep away from sin, keep away from temptation. Don’t even give Satan a chance to destroy your life. Use the “Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” That’s the only weapon we have – learn how to use it!
4. “Firm in your faith” – Know God’s Word. This goes along with the previous point. Be steadfast, or firm, or sure in your faith – know what God’s Word says. This is the only way we are going to have consistent victory over Satan.

But you know what, if you don’t know Jesus Christ as your Savior, if there has never been a point in time when you acknowledged your sin before Him, and trusted Him to be your Savior, then you don’t have to worry about being devoured by Satan.

“I don’t?!” you ask.

Nope, because Satan already has you right where he wants, you – on the way to hell. Why does Satan want you to go to hell? Because he knows that’s where he’s going to be for all eternity, and he wants to bring as many as he can with him. Satan hates your guts. He doesn’t want you to be in heaven forever, enjoying the presence of God. He wants you miserable, like he is. And there’s nothing we have to do in order to be condemned to hell, other than to be born on this earth. That’s our natural destination from birth.

But even if hell weren’t our natural destination we’d all be condemned there anyway because we have all sinned. Romans 3:10 says, “None is righteous, no, not one.” and Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned.”

So is there anyway we can change our destination? I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to go to hell, a place the Bible describes as a place of eternal fire and darkness and torment (Luke 16). Thankfully, God has provided a way for us to go to heaven. That way is through His Son, Jesus Christ. Nothing good that we do can get us to heaven, for the Bible says that our good deeds are no better than filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). Only through Jesus Christ can we get to heaven. He Himself says in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

But what has Jesus done that allows me to go to heaven? He paid the penalty for your sin through one of the most gruesome forms of death known to mankind, Roman crucifixion. He was nailed to a cross, and there died in order save us. The Bible says in Romans 6:23, “The wages [or payment] of sin is death.” Someone had to die for our sin, so Christ sacrificed Himself for us, that we might escape that penalty.

But the good news, as you may know, it that Christ didn’t stay dead. After being a tomb for 3 days, he arose from the dead, and was seen by over 500 witnesses. The most extreme situations in a court of law require only 7 witnesses in order for something to be certified, yet there were over 70 times that many witnesses of Christ’s resurrection. His resurrection – His coming back to life – defeated death, and because of that He can give us eternal life. And that life is with Him forever in heaven.

That’s how you can know for sure that you are on your way to heaven and not hell. If there has never been a specific time in your life when you have trusted Christ to save you from your sin, and have entered into a personal relationship with Him, you can pray right now and place your trust in Him. If you would like more information on how you can know for sure that you are on your way to heaven, leave a comment, and be sure to fill in your email address (only I will see it, so don’t worry about spam bots harvesting it).

Don’t let Satan devour you.

Related posts:

• So what’s “manthano” anyway?
• Stop the BB’s!
• Bible Conference ‘06: Dr. Bob – “Guess Who’s not showing up for church?”

• NT 460 ~ Gospels and Acts
• ALG 201 ~ Intermediate New Testament Greek
• Pr 301 ~ Junior Preacher Boys class: Ministry and Law / Church Education
• En 202 ~ Early British Literature
• RPA 302 ~ Pulpit Speech
• CpS 109 ~ Introduction to Programming: VB.NET
• OT 320 ~ Historical Books: Joshua – Esther

All in all… 18 credits. Add to that 15 hours of work on stage crew per week, it makes for a pretty busy schedule.

For those that don't know, I'm a Junior Bible major, (and as of this semester) with a minor in Information Technology (IT). (The major/minor combo explains the Bible and CpS classes, the fact that Bob Jones University is a liberal arts school explains the literature.)

Well, got to get back to that homework… Mmmm, Beowulf…

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So why koine Greek? Koine Greek is the language I am learning right now at school. I’m leaming it so I can study the Bible (at least the NT) in it’s original language. I have had a year of it so far, and I will continue learning it this year.

Another cool word is mathetes. This word is the noun form of manthano. It literally means “learner.” In the Bible it is usually translated “disciple.” It is used of the original 12 as well as others who followed Christ. That is what I desire to be, one who follows Christ, a mathetes. I am still learning.

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• Bible Conference ‘06: Dr. Bauder – “Let us adore Him”
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