I’m looking for Christian related documentaries that are pro-Christian and not the PBS/Discovery Channel stuff that denies God created stuff. Things like archeology, culture, Dead Sea Scrolls, anything about the Bible etc.
Monthly Archive for December, 2009
These are mainly for reading on a hand held type device but it could give you ideas for what’s out there in any case. You can access the plan through their web site, your mobile phone and using RSS.
Reading Plans
It case you’re wondering, as I’ve mentioned before I’ll be using the NLT 24/7 Chronological Bible for the OT next year and then for now plan to read using Professor Horner’s system in 2011.
Have you ever posted the same thing twice and didn’t realize it? In addition to the link above I also posted this on Horner’s reading plan back in August. My brain is pretty amazing.
Isaiah 1:10-20
Listen to the LORD, you leaders of “Sodom.”
Listen to the law of our God, people of “Gomorrah.”
11 “What makes you think I want all your sacrifices?”
says the LORD.
“I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fattened cattle.
I get no pleasure from the blood
of bulls and lambs and goats.
12 When you come to worship me,
who asked you to parade through my courts with all your ceremony?
13 Stop bringing me your meaningless gifts;
the incense of your offerings disgusts me!
As for your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath
and your special days for fasting—
they are all sinful and false.
I want no more of your pious meetings.
14 I hate your new moon celebrations and your annual festivals.
They are a burden to me. I cannot stand them!
15 When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not look.
Though you offer many prayers, I will not listen,
for your hands are covered with the blood of innocent victims.
16 Wash yourselves and be clean!
Get your sins out of my sight.
Give up your evil ways.
17 Learn to do good.
Seek justice.
Help the oppressed.
Defend the cause of orphans.
Fight for the rights of widows.
18 “Come now, let’s settle this,”
says the LORD.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
I will make them as white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson,
I will make them as white as wool.
19 If you will only obey me,
you will have plenty to eat.
20 But if you turn away and refuse to listen,
you will be devoured by the sword of your enemies.
I, the LORD, have spoken!”
For those who like snow I have a couple of pictures for you here. The second one is looking down State Street to the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. This one ended up on a post card. The flower is for those who long for summer. I happen to like winter and like it when it gets dark early so it’s all downhill from here.
Click on a picture to see a larger one. I just installed a plugin for that.
Photos © Jeff at Scripture Zealot
Also see:
Snowy scenes
I pray that everyone who reads this post will have a good time celebrating Christmas and be safe and know that you’re in God’s care whatever may happen. I hope we can all ponder Jesus during this busy time.
For those who are lonely or suffering I pray that God’s grace will be sufficient and that you will in some way grow closer to God.
John 17:3 HCSB
This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent–Jesus Christ.
I can’t say what the most incredible verse or passage is to me, but this really stuck out when I read it while reading a commentary. Not just to know God is there but to really know Him. Is this not absolutely amazing? I think about this all the time. Let’s never take it for granted.
This is what eternal life is which I would gather is a little different than salvation. Am I right in making that distinction? I’ve never thought about that before.
Instead of repenting of the false teaching called ’seed faith’, which is part of what’s popularly known as the prosperity gospel, the seed faith idea was exalted at Oral Roberts memorial service.
Oral Roberts Memorial a Stage for Seed Faith Message
See:
NewsNote: The Death of Oral Roberts by Albert Mohler
Measuring Oral Roberts’ Influence by John MacArthur
Some say not to speak ill of the dead. His teachings need to be spoken out against because they are alive and well.
I’m going to do my best to not write anything critical for two and a half weeks, just as an exercise because I’ve gotten a little too critical lately, starting in a couple of days. So this is my last shot for a while and maybe it will last longer. I still need to work on being less critical but won’t stop speaking out against things unbiblical or what I strongly believe in.
Grant Osborne is too.
Who Was Jesus’ Grandfather?
What the two genealogies of Christ, found in Matthew and Luke, are really trying to say.
by Grant Osborne
I like to read about seemingly boring things so that I can see the significance of why they might be in the Bible although for some reason I never really get bored reading genealogies.
Someday I’d like to read a commentary on the least interesting OT book to let someone help open my eyes to important things in the text that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
Let me know if you disagree with his assessment. I know there are various ways of looking at it. From what I’ve read so far I think we can rule out one was Mary’s and one was Joseph’s in Luke and Matthew which is what I always heard previous to reading commentaries and other related material.
This is the best post I’ve seen on blogging, I suppose partly because I agree with it. Some of these things, turning them positive, are aims of this blog right from the start–keeping with the blog’s theme, not thinking people care so much about ME, not posting too little or too often (although oftener is effective) etc. One thing I hadn’t thought about is #8 which is making the first paragraph strong.
Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Blog?
Immediately I think of blogs that do or don’t fit these guidelines. I like how all of my blogging friends don’t do #4 and 5. They always go out of their way to make people feel welcome.
As Christians, these things will better help serve our readers. Some don’t like rules and regulations and like to blog freer which is fine. It doesn’t do much good to make blogging a chore by chaining yourself to rules if you don’t like them. I do. Although I may have broken #9 with this post.
Are there other things you have found to be effective?
When God provides more money we often think, “This is a blessing.” Yes, but it would be just as scriptural to say, “This is a test.” Abundance isn’t God’s provision for me to live in luxury. God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven. “You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion” (2 Cor 9:11)
–Randy Alcorn via Facebook
A fellow home coffee roaster roasts coffee for an African woman who is a missionary in this country and owns a coffee shop. She said that when missionaries from the U.S. go to Africa they pray for safety and health. When African missionaries come here their main concern is to not get sucked into materialism. This is a big concern for them. Since we live in it we aren’t nearly as aware of just how insidious it really is.
1 Timothy 6:17-19 TNIV
Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
Proverbs 30:8-9 TNIV
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say,
‘Who is the LORD?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
Philippians 4:11-13 TNIV
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
I got an e-mail message from TBN. At first I wondered why they were writing to me. Then I realized they aren’t the TBN I thought they were. That second link is pretty scary. I notice they have A Tribute To Reggie White so they can’t be all that bad. Except that picture isn’t him.
That’s not Laura Bartlett.
To encourage a year of reading godly and edifying books, Working out Salvation with Fear and Trembling blog and his favorite publishing company, Crossway Books, have partnered together for the 2010 Book Give-a-Way! Each month he will give one brand new Crossway release to the readers of his blog.
Jason has tagged me with another evil meme. The other is one I still owe him related to grammar.
I’m not real into Christmas movies so this will be a boring post.
I like Dr. Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas and it’s partly because of the music. That baritone/bass voice who sings the main song is great.
I also like Elf which we’ve seen twice. My favorite line is soon after he (Buddy) reached New York after living with Santa’s elves all of his life:
[reacting to sign saying "World's Best Cup of Coffee"]
Buddy: You did it! Congratulations! World’s best cup of coffee! Great job, everybody! It’s great to be here.
I found a page on F.F. Bruce:
Frederick Fyvie Bruce
This includes a lot of PDF files. Especially interesting to me right now is the wisdom literature since we’re studying Ecclesiastes in our small group. Be sure to notice there are other pages for later sections of his life.
Some ways this download is being used:
- Family time listening experience (hot cocoa, fire place, Christmas cheer)
- Christmas E-cards (include a link to the download in your Christmas card this year)
- Posting the link in the comments sections of other blogs you read to spread the word
- Embed the audio file into your Facebook page or website so it plays automatically
- Spread the Gospel though Twitter
- Send the link through a text message or through your smart phone so you can download the file and play it all around town
Think you have a fun, interesting, or unique way that you’ve used the download? Want to share it with the world and in the process enter to win a Tyndale House January new release? Post your story in the comments section of the Tyndale Blog, and we’ll draw 5 winners on Christmas Eve.
Here’s what you could win:
- The Daniel Fast by Susan Gregory
- Raising a Modern-Day Princess by Pam Farrel & Doreen Hanna
- The Busy Couple’s Guide to Sharing the Work & the Joy by Kathy Peel
- The Courteous Cad by Catherine Palmer
- Blackout by Jason Elam & Steve Yohn
OR
Tyndale’s New : NLT Holy Bible Mosaic
I didn’t read a lot of regular books because I read commentaries of James through Revelation and Mark, Matthew and John. My favorite commentary was Revelation by Keener, which I did a mini review on but I loved reading them all. I also had surgery in January and was kind of out of it (or stupid as I called it) for a while.
My two favorites were A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers by D.A. Carson which I did quite a few posts on and by far my favorite was In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel Centered Life by Sinclair Ferguson. I definitely plan on reading both of these again someday.
In the future I will be reviewing The Prayer of the Lord by R.C. Sproul and How to Enjoy Your Bible by John Blanchard.
I decided after Black’s beginning grammar book I would move on to his intermediate-intermediate It’s Still Greek to Me and his beginning linguistics book. I have Con Campbell’s verbal aspect book which I won and will read whether I understand it or not. I have Wallace’s intermediate book within Bibleworks so I’ll see at that point if I want to get into that. Sometimes I want to spend all my time on the Greek and other times I want to just read other stuff. I only have so much mental energy and focus time.
I’m still trying to spend less time on the internet which is a struggle. There’s a lot of good stuff that I’ve learn from but a lot of things to learn which are useless and a lot of useless arguing and people who don’t fear God that really add unnecessary stress. Sometimes I admire the old coots who don’t even get on the internet.
The Gospel of Luke (The New International Commentary on the New Testament) by Joel Green
Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) – by Darrell Bock
I now have and will have read next year one commentary on each book of the New Testament. I wish I could afford to have three in addition to one for each OT book but there’s always the library if I’m going to study something in-depth. I do plan on getting a couple more commentaries on Colossians someday.
The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary by J. A. Motyer
How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil by D.A. Carson
The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition – I may have been a little hasty in buying this but hopefully I will be able to make use of it by later next year. I appreciated Nick’s review.
These are posts from this blog that I think are worth reading again. It was nice to look back over the year.
January
February
April
June
- Jesus Cleansing The Temple In Mark’s Gospel
- Scripture of the Day – most comments on this blog
July
August (The August Experiment)
- How To Be A Cool Biblioblogger
- Marketing Slogans for the TNIV Translation
- Couldn’t the elders and angels in Revelation do something useful?
- The End
October
December
A great article by Carl Trueman:
Fools Rush In Where Monkeys Fear To Tread
Learn to Read New Testament Greek, Third Edition by David Alan Black
This book and the companion workbook are review copies sent to me by the publisher, B&H Publishing Group of LifeWay Christian Resources, via NetGalley. I appreciate the opportunity to review these materials.
This review is written by someone learning Greek on their own. I hope this is helpful for someone in the same situation or for someone who is brushing up on Greek learned in the past.
I have looked extensively at a couple of the other popular beginning Greek grammars although I won’t be doing any direct comparisons.
Regarding the aesthetics, the hardcover is very sturdy in addition to being very appealing to look at. The black cover is a nice tie-in to the author’s last name. The paper is high quality, crisp and white which takes to a highlighter very well. The conjugations are in gray shaded boxes which helps them stand out and makes them easy to locate when wanting to go back and review them. The only thing I don’t like is that the font chosen for the Greek is a little less formal than what most of us are used to seeing which takes a little while to get used to.
In a word this book is efficient. There are no chapter overviews, introductions, summaries, what you’ll learn in the next chapter, etc. which is usually annoying anyway. The author gets right down to business in each chapter. Each of the 26 chapters are short enough that you don’t need those things.
This doesn’t mean the book’s information is skimpy. You will learn a lot of the important terms so that when you read a more technical Bible commentary or read what others write about Greek, you will have learned or at least have a reference for the terms at the beginning level which are explained well.
The exercises for the first 17 chapters of the book are made-up sentences in Greek that the student translates. All of the words in the sentences are from vocabulary that has been learned previously in the book.
Starting in chapter 18, Bible verses are used for the exercises. When there is a word in a verse that hasn’t been learned, the English gloss (a short basic definition) is listed in parenthesis next to the Greek word. This is much nicer than at least one other book where the extra vocabulary is listed on another page, sometimes requiring a page turn so that one is constantly flipping back and forth. There is an answer key for the exercises in the Appendix at the end of the book.
For more extensive exercises there is a companion workbook, sold separately. There is no answer key in the workbook, but if you write to the publisher, they will send you one in PDF format. The workbook (which was a pleasant surprise since I didn’t expect it to be sent to me) has all sorts of exercises coming at the Greek from many angles.
Verbs are introduced in chapter 2 and all of the indicative verbs are covered by chapter 17. There are various methods for introducing verbs in the books I’ve seen. I like having them introduced early so that they can be reviewed frequently as time goes on. There are very helpful charts of the indicative verb forms in the middle of the book. I wish I would have known this earlier so that I could have referred to it as I went along but it wasn’t mentioned earlier in the book. There is also a very helpful large fold-out complete Greek Verb Chart glued to the inside of the back cover.
There are a couple of very important items that were put in footnotes which I think should be in the main part of the text. (There are very few, thankfully, and they are at the end of each section where they are easy to see.) In particular is footnote iii. on page 31 which mentions that kai can mean “both”, “also” or “even”. So be sure to pay close attention to the footnotes.
I believe this book is a very efficient way to learn beginning level Greek. I would think it would be especially useful for someone reviewing Greek that they’ve already learned. I like to use more than one book to be able to read things explained in different ways, but this book is my first choice for the primary book to study and I highly recommend it.
Buy it from Amazon.com
- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: B&H Academic; Third edition (March 1, 2009)
- ISBN-10: 0805444939
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