Sunday, January 25, 2015

For The Lord's Day



“While I regarded God as a tyrant, I thought my sin a trifle; but when I knew him to be my Father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against him. When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast that I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so, and sought my good.” ~   Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Book Review

George Whitefield: America's Spiritual Founding FatherGeorge Whitefield: America's Spiritual Founding Father by Thomas S. Kidd

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Two disclaimers as I begin this brief review.

First, I am a 'fan' of Thomas Kidd. I'm not certain as to how I discovered him, whether on the Gospel Coalition web site, Patheos' web site or in WORLD magazine. At any rate, I have read his other works on Patrick Henry, The Great Awakening and the Religious History of the American Revolution, and in so doing I found an historian who writes in an uncomplicated, straight forward style. that style is maintained through out this work.

Second, I am a Christian and I embrace much of Whitefield's theological perspective.

I often find the notes on the dust jacket of a book overstate the case. Not so here, so that all four comments were spot on. Words like "Unusual empathy and unusual comprehension," and "lucid, well-researched, and insightful" hit the nail on the head.

Professor Kidd presents Whitefield warts and all - sometimes combative, lacking in social graces with others and his wife, suffering a blind spot in relation to slavery,and yet media savvy before it became popular (Ben Franklin was his friend and printer).

Whitefield made 13 crossing of the Atlantic - a remarkable feat in and of itself. His part in The Great Awakening and his itinerating up and down the colonies probably had him in contact with more people that anyone else at the time. So he is justly called "America's Spiritual Founding Father." (p. 250) Whitefield also appears sympathetic to the rising patriot movement, but his main focus was the Gospel.

Professor Kidd's two aim in producing this work were to show "...Whitefield was a key figure in the first generation of Anglo-American evangelical Christianity," and to present a scholarly biography that "places him in the dynamic, fractious milieu of the early evangelical movement." He has succeeded in both!





View all my reviews

Sunday, January 11, 2015

For The Lord's Day



What can separate my soul
From the God who made me whole,
Wrote my name in heaven’s scroll?
Nothing, Hallelujah!
Trouble, hardship, danger, sword
Brought by those who hate my Lord?
Slander here? Or no reward?
Nothing, Hallelujah!
-- James Montgomery Boice

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Unbroken


This is a 30 minute video about Louis Zamperini - Unbroken


http://billygraham.org/video/louis-zamperini-captured-by-grace/


For the Lord's Day - first one of 2015



“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.”   -- William Temple