Wednesday

The Story of a Sign



The winner of the NFB Online Competition Cannes 2008, director Alonso Alvarez Barreda presents this short film Historia de un Letrero (The Story of a Sign) produced in Mexico/U.S.A.

Sunday

The Apostolic Bible Polyglot

The best Bible I have ever seen! Free downloads of OT and NT, here.

Tuesday

Wordling

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Here is one for this site. Make your own here.



Sunday

A Churchless Faith


"From the perspective of someone rethinking their religious faith, the most helpful aspect of the book was the level-voiced and non-judgemental survey work (drawn from Alan Jamieson's doctoral thesis) showing why people stop attending churches. Jamieson develops a model showing why people leave and the summary, surprising to some, is that it's a matter of growth of faith rather than death of faith that makes the majority of leavers go it alone. The key message to the individual? "You're not the first to face this, and you're not on your own".
Read more...

Friday

The Tithing Dilemma

Thankfully, Jewish theologians know better than their Christian counterparts. They are well aware that only Levites have the right to receive tithe of the people. After all, the Jewish leaders have the Old Testament as their Scripture and that’s what it commands. And since there is no Temple in existence (and consequently no ordained Levites or Priests serving in a Temple), then a major factor in fulfilling the laws of tithing does not exist in our modern world. Read the rest here.

Monday

God and Alcohol

Few issues have generated more heated debate among Christians than that of the morality of alcohol consumption. The dispute has generated responses ranging from local educational temperance movements to federal amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Certainly there is evidence of widespread abuse of alcoholic beverages today; this few would deny. Furthermore, the Bible clearly condemns all forms of alcohol abuse, by binding precept and by notorious example. Yet the ethical issue before us is: Does the Bible allow for a righteous consumption of beverage alcohol? The fundamental question is ethical, not cultural or demo-graphical; it requires an answer from a Biblical, not an emotional base. Read the rest here.

Thursday

Loving the Lost

There are two extremes on the cultural engagement spectrum. At one end there are Christians who are no longer being shaped by the Bible but by their surrounding culture. At the other end are Christians who denounce everything in culture as wrong.
My observation is that reformed evangelical Christians are more likely to fall into the latter. We run in the opposite direction from culture. We create Christian schools, home schools, Christian contemporary music, Christian sports comps, Christian monastic communities (sometimes in the guise of a theological college), Christian political parties and the like. Read the rest here.

Tuesday

A Field Guide To Evangelicals



An inside look at the often quirky world of evangelicals from an insiders perspective. Funny stuff.

Monday

TruthGuard.com

Just learned of this website - TruthGuard.com. I was amazed at what I found there. For example, Should A Pastor Rule Over You? and The Circus of Diversity. Some decent mp3s are available on the site as well.

Saturday

Eternal Torment in Hell

Jesus' Teaching on Hell Here is an excellent article on an extremely hot topic, here.

"Most of what we believe about hell comes from Catholicism and ignorance of the Old Testament, not from the Bible. This study will cause you to re-examine current teaching on hell and urge you to further study on what happens to the wicked after death."
Samuel G. Dawson

The Parousia - Free PDF Download

The Parousia There are several versions of this classic work available for free online, but none in pdf until now.

"Russell's book has forced me to take the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem far more seriously than before, to open my eyes to the radical significance of this event in redemptive history. It vindicates the apostolic hope and prediction of our Lord's close-at-hand coming in judgment...I can never read the New Testament again the same way I read it before reading The Parousia." R.C. Sproul

Christian Zionism: Road Map to Armageddon?



Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer's sizzling expose on Christian Zionism. Dope stuff. Peace.

Debate: Preterism v. Dispensationalism

Killer! An internet debate. As you know, theological debate, undoubtedly, is one of the best ways to assess the strengths and weaknesses of doctrinal positions. Listen to the debate between Don K. Preston and Louis Ruggiero here.

Recent Developments in Eschatology

"Eschatology is so often abused today that it has become a source of positive embarrassment to the integrity of the Christian faith and biblical Christianity. Two insightful books documenting this dismal state-of-affairs are: Dwight Wilson’s Armageddon Now and Francis Gumerlock’s The Day and the Hour. A steady flow of recalculated cries for the end perennially ring out from the hollow shelves of Christian trinket stores. Even the smooth entering of a new millennium has not stalled the flow of the dispensational Chicken Littles. It would seem that all one needs in order to be a “prophecy expert” today is either a steady supply of Dapper Dan and access to television air time, or a computer graphics program and a money-hungry publisher. No new developments here!" Read Kenneth Gentry's full article here.

Friday

Spiritualized Judaism



A very intriguing video on the spiritual nature of the New Covenant by Michael Grace. Well worth the 36 minutes!

Money, Greed and the Church

Do these things go hand in hand? Find out here.

The Year of Living Biblically



The Year of Living Biblically answers the question: What if a modern-day American followed every single rule in the Bible as literally as possible. Not just the famous rules – the Ten Commandments and Love Thy Neighbor (though certainly those). But the hundreds of oft-ignored ones: don’t wear clothes of mixed fibers. Grow your beard. Stone adulterers. A.J. Jacobs’ experiment is surprising, informative, timely and funny. It is both irreverent and reverent. It seeks to discover what’s good in the Bible and what is maybe not so relevant to 21st century life. And it will make you see the Good Book with new eyes. Let me know...

Pagan Christianity

Frank Viola and George Barna have just completed their new book entitled, Pagan Christianity, and already it is sending shockwaves throughout the Christian community. I have not read it yet but plan to. You can find interviews and articles here and read a sample chapter here.

...and check RadicalCongruency's blog on a related topic.