“The ruler [pastor] should be a near neighbor to every one in sympathy, and exalted above all in contemplation, so that through the bowels of loving-kindness he may transfer the infirmities of others to himself, and by loftiness of speculation transcend even himself in his aspiration after the invisible; lest either in seeking high things he despise the weak things of his neighbors, or in suiting himself to the weak things of his neighbors he relinquish his aspiration after high things.”
[Food for thought from Steve Turner:]
Here is the creed for the modern thinker. We believe in Marx, Freud and Darwin. We believe everything is okay, as long as you don’t hurt anyone to the best of your definition of hurt and to your best definition of knowledge. We believe in sex before, during and after marriage. We believe in the therapy of sin. We believe that adultery is fun. We believe that sodomy is okay. We believe that taboos are taboo. We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary. The evidence must be investigated and you can prove anything with evidence. We believe there is something in horoscopes, UFO’s, and bent spoons. Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammad and ourselves. He was a good moral teacher, although we think basically his good morals were really bad. We believe that all religions are the basically the same, at least the ones we read were. They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation. We believe that after death comes nothing because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing. If death is not the end, and if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsively heaven for all except perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan. We believe in Masters and Johnson. What is selected is average, what’s average is normal, and what’s normal is good. We believe in total disarmament. We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed. Americans should beat their guns into tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow. We believe that man is essentially good-it’s only his behavior that lets him down. This is the fault of society; society’s the fault of condition; and conditions are the fault of society. We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly; the universe will readjust and history will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth, except the truth that there is no absolute truth. We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought.
If Chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is His rainbow in the sky. And when you hear: “State of Emergency,†“Sniper Kills Ten,†“Troops on Rampage,†“Youths go Looting,†“Bomb Blasts School,†it is but the sound man worshipping his maker.
I’ve seen others post on their blogs about seizing that often small amount of time between lying down for bed and actually falling asleep. Talk about redeeming the time! I’ve often lain in bed at night willing to God that I could read with my eyes closed, after Emily’s told me to go to sleep and my eyes are still struggling like Atlas to uphold their lids. I eventually give in–there comes a point where you have to. Unfortunately at that point your mind is still going and you feel that if you had the energy (or, in my case, God had granted the miracle that you could read with your eyes closed [however that might work out]), you could still be doing something productive.
Well, this post isn’t meant to be primarily about sleep, productivity, eyes that read while closed, or redeeming the time, but about a website I discovered this weekend that made me so happy I could have planted a tree. It’s called GreekLatinAudio.com, an “internet New Testament recording project. This web site offers free MP3 audio-files of high-quality recorded readings of the New Testament in fluid koine Greek and vulgate Latin.”
Friday night, as I lay me down to sleep, I downloaded John’s gospel in Greek and Latin and slapped them onto my MP3 player (quickly adding in the omitted ID3 tags). Loving both, I didn’t know which to listen to first. Greek it was. A rather gruff sounding man rolls through it. It sure beats me trying to read out loud to myself for this man flawlessly, naturally, and mellifluously brings the text alive. Sometimes I can’t quite pick up all the phonemes (the little pieces of sound that carry the meaning) and the text seems to run together just as it would be trying to listen to a radio broadcast in a language with which you’re unfamiliar. (His pronunciation is a little different than mine. I don’t believe he uses what’s known as the Erasmian pronunciation; I’m not quite sure though. His omicron is different.)
Nonetheless, the recordings done in a quality, listen-to-able manner, bring with them a new appreciation for both Koine Greek and the original autographs. Is this what it would have been like being with the church at Ephesus after receiving a letter from Paul, hearing it read aloud to the congregation? I like to imagine it so and that my hearing it read aloud links to me them and the original autograph somehow.
Also, I never noticed how poetic John chapter one sounds. It’s beautiful! Both the content and the form! Each short phrase is like the stroke of a brush painting a vibrant picture of Jesus ho logos. What a gift to the church!
The site has completed 25/27 books of the New Testament in both Greek and Latin with 2 Corinthians and John in progress (chapters 1-6 completed). Also, Genesis 1-25 and Jonah are available in Hebrew. Here’s a link into the download directory for the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. This site may be old news for you–shame on you for not telling me if that’s the case! I’m hoping that these recording will aid memorization of the Greek text.
Now, you can read, like me, with your eyes closed.
Theology I (Dr. Keathley)
New Testament I (Dr. Black)
Yes, Amharic! Sing to Jesus for by his blood he has ransomed you, too!
Church History I (Dr. Hogg)
Baptist History (Dr. Harper)
Miscellany
Being an owner of Overcoming Sin and Temptation (gratias tibi ago, JBA) I knew what to expect with this title. I am extremely grateful for volumes such as this new edition of John Owen’s Communion with the Triune God published by Crossway. There are several reasons to rejoice at this printing.
First, while John Owen’s works are notoriously onerous and culto, editors Kapic and Taylor have gone to great lengths—while neither abridging nor paraphrasing—to assist the reader in combating reader’s fatigue commonly brought on by antiquated language, page-length paragraphs, and specialized vocabulary. All Latin phrases and quotes are translated. Hebrew and Greek are both transliterated and translated. Scripture references are provided. Extensive outlines and headings assist in tracking the argumentation. All the above are new to this edition and make this spiritual gold mine more accessible than ever, equipping the reader with the tools necessary to join Owen in the task of meditating on (with increasing depth) the triune nature of our great God and King.
Secondly, it bespeaks the utility of the work by the very fact that over three hundred and fifty years later it is still being reproduced. The work’s longevity is due in great part to Owen’s own saturation in Scripture, doing the work of a true systematic theologian tying Scripture together to weave a tapestry of the God who has revealed himself in the Bible. It is here within this work that we are invited to meet with Owen as he treats of the thrice holy God in three parts, answering our objections with grace and passion. Kevin J Vanhoozer in the foreword calls the work “indispensable reading for all those who want to go deeper into the meaning of relationality than one typically goes in the pop-theology boats that float only on the psychological surface of the matter†(12).
The (aspiring) theologian and layman alike will greatly benefit from spending these pages with Owen.
I don’t normally like to post snatch or hat tip (“HT”) because I should make my blog my own, not just aggregate everyone else’s. However, my man John Piper has written words that encourage the soul and point to the magnitude of God’s gospel shining in the face of Jesus Christ in When Does God Become 100% For Us?. Reading the full article is well worth five minutes out of your busy life.
Here’s a foretaste:
“When did God become for us so fully that there was not any wrath or curse or condemnation on us, but only mercy?
The answer, I still say, is at the point when, by grace, we saw Christ as a supremely valuable Savior and received him as our substitute sacrifice and substitute righteousness. In other words, it happened at the point of justification. The implication of this is that all our works, all our perseverance, all our continuing faith and obedience does not cause God to be 100% for us, but is the result of his being 100% for us.”
That we would say with Paul (Romans 11:33-36),
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?â€
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?â€For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
I’m sure you have heard preachers ask the question, Why, after you’re saved, doesn’t God just take you out of the world? There are probably more answers to this than there are categories of High School Musical memorabilia; but I think there’s a (lame) analogy in baked barbecue chicken (which, as you can guess, I made last night; thus the following afflatus):
Bake chicken skin side down at 425 for 45 minutes.
Remove from oven and spoon barbecue sauce over and return to oven for 40 minutes at 375.
So goes the recipe. The chicken after 45 minutes at 425 looked crispy and ready to eat. I venture to say it was cooked; but did we just eat the plain chicken after 45 minutes at 425? No! The chicken was basted with barbecue sauce and returned to the oven to bake for another 40ish minutes. Why? Why return it to the oven, if it’s already ready to eat already? Because it tastes better to the cook after baking longer.
“Tell us what this means teacher,” you say.
I’ve been baked once (“saved”). I got the barbecue sauce (“Holy Spirit”) and I’m baking a second time (“sanctification”) to taste better to the Cook.
More than this and the analogy breaks down quicker than teenyboppers watching High School Musical II.
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