Not a book review - just a blog post this time (on the importance of eschatology, no less!)

I'm not going to make a habit of posting things that are not reviews, but since I don't think I'll write other things often enough to make a separate blog, I thought I'd just put this here, and hopefully get some comments from folk.

This came about because of a comment in a discussion group, along the lines of "please don't argue; eschatology is not worth discussing, let's just use the time for useful things like praying, witnessing, or praising" when a discussion on the subject of end times grew a little frustrating for some.  And I recognised that view, of believing no one could know about the end time, so it wasn't worth discussing or reading about, because I used to hold it.  After having left the whole "Left Behind" and dispensational mindset I just wanted to avoid the whole topic. Over the years I've gradually taken up some beliefs which I trust are Biblical but I don't have my beliefs all worked out.  After I get through a great number of other things that I'm reading or planning to read, I do hope to look into eschatology at least a little bit.  I suppose I could start with seeing what my own confession says about it, eh?

Here was my reply to the friend who thought people should stop discussing eschatology:

 I believe that it does really matter. I'm not sure exactly what I believe (although I have a few things I do know, or know I don't believe) in the area of eschatology - but I know it matters. It matters because the Lord has put such things in His word - in order to know Him and His will for us and the world. If He has put it in His word, we ought to be studying it. Whatever it is, and however difficult it is. 
"All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

One of the ways that human beings learn is by discussing things with others.

Prophecy takes up a lot of the Bible - over a third of it is, so oughtn't we to think it important?

Eschatology is about God's plans for mankind and Himself. Our view of what will happen at the end does have ramifications for how we think, and how we live our lives now. People who believe Jesus is coming back any minute tend to emphasize certain things, and even live a certain way, and there can be some specific errors they fall into. People who believe other things will emphasize certain other things. Eschatology can influence our political views (i.e. Israel).

There are some really unbiblical teachings out there about the end times and we ought to know right from wrong - not only for ourselves but to steer away others from bad teaching, if we have the opportunity.

Eschatology is involved when we comfort someone after they have had a bereavement. “Therefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18) That passage comes after teaching about Christ's return. 

 I'll stop now. But it's important. Certainly we ought to discuss these things in kindness, and with reverence toward the Word of God, but the fact that some discuss things in wrong ways, doesn't mean that we should not engage in right ways.



So after writing that, I felt a bit convicted by my own words!  Surely I ought not avoid the subject anymore myself.    As I said, I have a lot of books I need to get through before adding others to the list, but I would be very glad to hear recommendations for good (preferably from a Reformed perspective)  books on "end times."   

And please comment - it's been a bit empty and echo-y in here lately!  Hopefully I'll get some more reviews up before the end of the month - things have been a bit busy since August and it's been hard to read much.   

Her Husband's Crown by Sara Leone

This is the third of the Banner of Truth paperbacks I would like to share about today. 

I enjoyed this booklet by Sara Leone, which contains Biblical advice for pastors wives. I bought it as on the back it said it would be helpful to all wives no matter their husband's profession, and also to know how to pray for the pastor's wife of one's church.

She did indeed include all wives in her writing and I enjoyed both her practical and personal examples as well as the Biblical counsel she gave. There were plenty of Bible passages to back up what she said, and I appreciated the lines and stanzas from poems and hymns that she included.

Caring for the home, and showing respect for your husband are two of the major themes I came away with. 

Two Banner of Truth booklets dealing with the end of our earthly lives

I thought today, as I am still working through a number of books, that I would share about a few booklets I read earlier this year, from Banner of Truth.   Two of them are about the end of our earthly lives and one is for wives.   I just have some very brief comments that I already shared on Goodreads but I thought it was worth posting them here, and I have added a bit here.   In this post I'll share about the two booklets by Donald Howard. 

 

 

  The first is:

Burial or Cremation: Does It Matter?

ISBN  0851518036 (ISBN13: 9780851518039)

Published January 24th 2012 by Banner of Truth

Paperback, 32 pages

 

  I'm not sure that he entirely convinced me but he does make a very good case and if I didn't already lean to burial I think I would now. As a Christian the reminders of the Biblical teachings on resurrection were very encouraging.

Mr Howard shares some of the history of burial and of views found in the Bible regarding death and burial, and then moves on to the origins of cremation. He discusses burnings of bodies in the Bible (not our modern cremation), and then the modern history of cremation.  There are sections on the dignity of the body and on the need to grieve.

I agreed with his views in a further section that Christians ought to give thought to their death and the funeral arrangements that should follow.  The last section was on Christian burial and he included a short account of how his wife's grandfather's burial allowed them to share Christian truths with their children.   I think Mr Howard is probably correct in asserting that the emotions we feel and the truths we are able to contemplate at a burial are not as easily experienced at a cremation service. 

 

The second is:

 

 Christians Grieve Too

Paperback, 30 pages

Published October 1st 1991 by Banner of Truth 

ISBN 0851513158 (ISBN13: 9780851513157)

 

I found this book helpful and I believe that it helped prepare me more for future events. Many of the things Mr Howard wrote rang true to my own experience of losing a newborn many years ago.

I think all Christians who felt able to read this booklet, ought to, and that teaching on grieving and comforting the grieving ought to be more widespread in the church.

 

Mr Howard begins his book by talking about the types of grief that one may experience and how that grief may be manifested in different ways.  He goes on to discuss how grief is a process and it can be complicated by emotions such as fear, guilt, and anger.  There are a couple of chapters on how people (both ministers and laymen) may be helpful to the bereaved.  He concludes by reminding his readers of the hope the believer has in Christ, while acknowledging that there are some things which will always puzzle us. 

I was reading this at a time when others wouldn't, I think.  In January and February of this year my husband was waiting on the complete diagnosis of the cancer preliminarily diagnosed in December, and the possiblities were that he had a fairly "good" cancer (if you have to have cancer at all) or a really bad one.    As it turned out, in God's mercy, he has the "good" kind, one that often causes no problems at all, but we weren't sure of it at the time.   I'm the type of person that likes to look at all the possibilities and things that might have to be done, in order to meet them head on.  And, death is no stranger to us as a couple, having buried an infant daughter in 1997.    I really did find this booklet helpful.   My husband and children will live for a long time, I hope, but there are others in our extended family, and in our community who will probably pass on before we do.  It is good to be reminded of Scriptural truths and also to read of ways to be helpful to others who are suffering in grief. 

 

 

 

 

Pocket Puritan edition Baptist Confession of Faith 1689

Today I received from Amazon my copy of the Banner of Truth "Pocket Puritan" 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.  It's quite small, only 5 1/2 " high (or almost 14 cm if you insist on new money) so it's easily carried in jacket pocket, handbag, or perhaps Bible case.   Despite its small size I find the type very easy to read. 

The foreward was written by Walter Chantry and is a history of this confession in the UK and the US.  Spellings and punctuation have been changed but otherwise it has been taken from the 1677 edition (which was called the second Baptist confession, and was published anonymously due to the persecution at that time).  The edition of the LBCF which I have had for a few years was changed in at least one section by Spurgeon (so I am led to believe) so I am glad to have this one now.

I am continually filled with thanksgiving to God that we can so freely buy copies of this confession today when at one time it had to be published secretly because of the religious oppression that so many believers experienced in Britain in the 17th century.  Though published recently, it is a real connection to history that can be held in your hand and carried around!   As a Christian (and as a mom who has lots of questions asked her - I see now from a quick glance in the book what I could have added to my answer when I was asked why people needed to be baptised)  it is nice to have such access to good doctrine and the Biblical reasonings for that doctrine. 

This volume, and the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Heidelberg Catechism are all available through Amazon or through Banner of Truth.

Praying the Bible

Praying the Bible by Don Whitney was published by Crossway this year.  It's been available in print in the US for a bit but is only available in the UK on Kindle until 21 August when the print version will come out here.  I first heard of this book probably in  Crossway's posts on Facebook.  The descriptions intrigued me and the more I looked into it, the more I wanted to read the book and learn what Don Whitney was teaching, so even though I much prefer print for such a book, I bought the Kindle version earlier in the summer so I could get started on it.  I was not disappointed.  The book is informal and conversational but the topic is still handled with seriousness and the Scriptures are held in reverence.   

It turns out that it's not so much a new technique that is taught, but rather an old method of praying, taught in a fresh way, and it is reaching a lot of people who have never heard of or understood the idea of praying the Scriptures.

The first chapter describes the problem that many of us have, which is our prayer life suffers because we get bored or just discouraged praying the "same things about the same things."  We think there is something wrong with ourselves, that we are not good Christians, because we find prayer so difficult, and frankly, boring so often.  

Dr. Whitney explains that praying about the same things is normal, because our lives are usually rather routine, with disruptions occurring only once or twice a year.  So, our concerns, and therefore our prayers,  usually are the same, year in, year out.  He points out six typical things we pray for:
1.  Family
2.  Future (either needing direction, or upcoming situations)
3.  Finances
4.  Work/studies
5.  Christian concerns such as church, missions, individuals
6.  Current crisis in our life

He also explains that the Holy Spirit's "preserving work"  in believers, helps them to persevere in their spiritual lives, which is why Christians continue to want to pray even when they feel so discouraged about it. 

In chapter 2 he begins talking about the solution.  He points out that if God wants His children to pray, He will not have made it too terribly difficult to do.  It would have to be something that people with all sorts of backgrounds and abilities can do.  Dr Whitney introduces in this chapter the idea of praying through passages of the Bible, especially from the Psalms.

At this point he had convinced me that this was what I needed to do.  But I needed to know how to do it.   Happily, in the rest of the book he explains to the reader the method he is recommending.  He gives an example of how he might pray through Psalm 23.  He explains that praying is different from exegeting, where you are trying to understand the meaning of it.  Although understanding it is good, in prayer it is alright if, when you are praying through a passage, things come to mind not directly related to the verse you are reading, and you pray about them.

There is a chapter on how to choose a Psalm of the day, and how to pray over other parts of the Bible. The epistles (letters from the apostles) are easy to pray from, but the Gospels and other narrative parts of the Bible will be approached differently. 

I really recommend doing the exercise he suggests in one chapter, before going on to the others.  

In chapter 8 where the reader is to evaluate his experience, I found my own experience of the exercise varied from the norm, but that is probably because there was a very specific concern I had that morning, and none of the suggested passages seemed to be much help.   However because of the videos (more on those later) I had already begun to pray through Scripture and on those previous occasions I found my experiences matched up more with those he described that other people had had. 

Praying the Bible - using the words that God has already given us - helps us to pray more according to His will and gives us more variety in our thoughts and words even when we pray about the same things we normally do. 

I'm so thankful to have learned about this book and to have been able to get it.   In June when I was back home a dear friend asked what she could be praying for me about, and I responded by requesting she pray for the improvement of my prayer life.  I feel this book was at least part of the answer to those prayers. 

If you can't get the book (but I hope you can) and even if you do get the book, I can recommend the series of short videos Dr. Whitney has made, to explain this technique and take the viewer through various examples.  You do need to sign up to get the emails which will have the links to the videos.  I normally hate having to sign up for things, but in this case I think it was well worth it. 
Link for videos

If you read the book, and or watch the videos, and actually begin to pray the Bible, I would love to hear about your experiences.

More about Dr. Whitney here. 

Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a Watchman
by Harper Lee
William Heinemann (UK publisher)
14 July 2015

I wasn't going to read this book, at least not yet, as I hate getting on bandwagons. But there it was, at Sainsbury, copies nicely displayed in rank and file, at a low price, and with a free DVD of To Kill a Mockingbird as part of the deal!  I couldn't resist.  I succumbed.

(I will save the DVD until the younglings and I have read TKAM together.)

 I had enjoyed TKAM, had appreciated the story, the themes, and the writing, but it had never been something I loved and wanted to read over and over again. That might be because I had had to read it in school and as Mark Twain commented about humor, things die when they are dissected.  I had heard many negative things about Go Set a Watchman.   It repeated sections of description, the characters were racist, it was unpolished or not complete as a novel, etc.   Certainly nothing to commend it. 

And I certainly didn't enjoy it very much when I began reading it.  I never did grow to like Scout at any point of the book but in the beginning I really didn't know if I were going to finish the book because she grated on my nerves so badly.  A peevish young thing with an attitude of superiority - almost stereotypically "small town girl goes to New York City and comes home thinking she's better than everyone else."   Just plain irritating with no depth to redeem her character.

I enjoyed Ms Lee's descriptions of people and places, and her conversations, especially those involving Uncle Jack.  Her writing is definitely Southern and even her minor characters and events are decidedly Southern as well.

During the Depression, Mr. Finckney Sewell, a Maycomb resident long noted for his independence of mind, disentombed his own grandfather and extracted all his gold teeth to pay off a mortgage.  When the sheriff apprehended him for grave-robbery and gold-hoarding, Mr. Fink demurred on the theory that if his own grandfather wasn't his, whose was he?  The sheriff said old Mr. M. F. Sewell was in the public domain, but Mr. Fink said testily he supposed it was his cemetery lot, his granddaddy, and his teeth, and declined forthwith to be arrested. (p 191)

I love that!  It is definitely in the South that one could might find a local character so cussedly independent-minded as to do such a thing, and then "decline forthwith to be arrested!"

You'll find plenty of synopses and reviews on the web so I won't try to give a run-down on the story.  I'll limit this to a few of my decidedly personal observations.   I think one of the most prominent thoughts that I have after reading this book is that how one reacts to it will not only depend on one's personality and beliefs, but very much on one's age and one's origins.   I'm not from the Deep South but I am from the South (Tulsa and Oklahoma on the whole being an odd mix of South, Mid-West, and South-West cultures).  The story is set before my time yet I did grow up when "de-segregation" was very much a part of public policy, particularly noticeable in schools.   Busing students from one section of town to another (as I recall it was mostly black students to mostly-white schools) was part of life at the time.

I think people younger than myself, even from the South, will be bemused and horrified by some of the attitudes and beliefs of some of the characters.  It can't be helped, somewhat, as we all have to look at the world through our own eyes and if we haven't learned another's point of view and have been taught only certain parts of history we tend to read things from the past through our own moral lens which has been formed more recently.   So, many of the characters' statements and views will seem reprehensible to many readers, even those raised in the South.  To those younger people raised elsewhere the characters might seem even more backward, ignorant, and perhaps even evil. 

But we have to place the characters in their time in history.  Atticus Finch, if he was in his 70s in 1955, would have been born in the 1880's, only 15 or 20 years or so after the end of the War Between the States, during the Reconstruction Era (which, although it officially ended in 1877 some historians believe that in reality that era ended in the 1890s).   How ignorant it would be to think that his and his family's and other peers' views would mirror-image those formed by people born and raised in the late 20th Century!  Of course his views will seem strange to modern readers, and also to his own daughter who was raised in an entirely different world by the time she came along - even though she was raised in the South which hangs onto tradition like the oaks hang onto moss.

I don't think that Harper Lee was necessarily trying to promote the views of certain characters through this book, like I have read some reviewers say.  I think rather that she was reflecting on what she was seeing and hearing during a time of great change for the South.  I would not like to make any assumptions about what her views really are.  It is certainly possible to create a protagonist with attitudes that are at odds with your own (Dorothy Sayers and her character Lord Peter Wimsey come to mind here).

Besides the theme of race there are the themes of growing up and of learning to look at people and places in a different way, of realising that people are a mix of good and bad.   There seem to me to be two major periods of growing up: one is when one leaves childhood and enters adolescence, and the other is when one leaves adolescence or young adulthood and enters real adulthood.  The latter is when those last remnants of childish thinking and acting are finally done away with.  Some people never really get through that second stage.   Scout goes through at least part of the second growing up in a very painful and dramatic way in the second half of the book. 

There is a theme very worth talking about, I think, and I would love to have some conversations on this, and that is "how do we combat evil or wrong-thinking?"  Again we have a generation gap, I believe, with younger people believing one thing and older people having another view.   Jean Louise has quite a lot of learning to do in this regard.

Harper Lee brings a lot of her own life into this book.  She was the daughter of a lawyer and moved away to New York City.  I don't know what she felt when she came back; again, I do not want to speculate.   I do think that disdain for your hometown after being away is not an automatic thing; something that must appear in someone that lives away for a while.  It's more apt to be present in someone in their 20s and who is searching for something deep they're not finding in their life in their hometown.  Although different lifestyles/locales may suit different people better or worse (I'm definitely a country or small town mouse, as opposed to a city mouse), much of what people are searching for is not going to be found elsewhere if they aren't finding it where they already are.

This book isn't going to win any prizes, I think.  I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would, although not as much as I wish I could have.  In the end I am glad I read it.  Almost more important than the book itself, in some ways, to me, is reading other people's reactions to the book.   I'd really like to hear more from older people who lived through some of the things talked about and get their views on this book. 

Some thoughts on chapter 1 of Bavinck's The Doctrine of God

I'm doing a Systematic Theology course from Reformed Theological Seminary on ITunesU.   It's free although I have bought the recommended books for the course.

One of the nice things about doing it this way is that I can do more if I have more time, and less if life is busy and I need to cut back on reading and listening to lectures.  I don't get credit for the course but, after all, it is free and as I'm not working on getting another degree and just want the information, I don't mind at all.

One of the books is The Doctrine of God by Herman Bavinck.  I just this morning finished chapter 1. I think most of it went in through my eyes and then went out my ears or something.  To say I found it hard going would be an understatement.  It's been a long time since I attempted such serious reading and I'm very out of practice. There was a long section on various 19th century philosophies about knowing God and another section on agnostic thought (from the late 1800s - early 1900s) and I found those very hard to get through. It does look like the other chapters will be a bit easier for me.

I know the purpose of this blog is for me to review books after I've read the whole thing, but I think I would like, from time to time, to write a very brief summary of the chapter.  So here goes my summation of chapter one - what I got out of it (which will make any seminary professor shudder, I'm sure):
God is incomprehensible yet knowable (Bavinck's words).   A lot of philosophers have said a lot of things about God but it's mostly all rubbish.  We can know about God from what He has said about Himself in His word and in nature. 

Oh, and Israel didn't "evolve" it's idea of God. 

I think section 1 of chapter 1 was the most useful to me and I will probably read it again some day.