Now that my office is (mostly) done, I think I need another project. Johan Huibers of the Netherlands is building his own 1/5 size replica of Noah’s Ark. He intends to stock it with farmyard animals and sail it on the interior waters of the Netherlands.

Thanks to Todd at Bible Places blog

Where is your Strong's concordance? If you are reading this you have a computer, and you probably have at least one Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. So where is it? Do you still use it or have you switched to an electronic concordance?

Well, I have returned to life as normal (almost). I spent my spring break writing my church history talks (the retreat is this upcoming weekend, April 1-4, so I would appreciate your prayers if you remember) and spending lots of time with my wife. We found a game that we have been playing incessantly, Settlers of Catan. It is a great game and I highly recommend it to you. I though about writing a theology of Catan (for example, just because something is probable does not mean it will happen, especially when you most want it to happen, as in, just because 8 is supposed to be rolled often does not mean it will be when you need it), but I decided against it for now. So instead, I have another topic. I have been leading a Bible Study recently in 1 Corinthians 14. We have just arrived at 1 Corinthians, which contains a whole slew of fascinating problems and issues. The issue I want to discuss today is whether tongues are appropriate for private devotions.

Sam and I just had a big smack-down over my spot-on fisherman post. Surprisingly, we both made cogent arguments. Early on Sam appeared to be hung up on a point about exegesis, but in the end he came to a rather startling conclusion.

Below is the transcript of the exchange, edited slightly to make us sound even more cogent. What do you think of Sam’s conclusion?

With this entry, I will conclude my treatment of The Privileged Planet.  I hope you have had as much fun with it as I have had. 

Gonzalez and Richards Synopsis, Conclusion

And What About Panspermia?

Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet: How our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004). 

Assumptions and implications are not the same thing.

I don’t mean, “Are you a good fisherman or a bad fisherman?” Are you a commercial fisherman or a recreational fisherman? For the first time yesterday it dawned on me that our understanding of evangelism may hinge on that question. Before that realization struck, fishing with a pole was as good as fishing with a net. I have not done much of either. Now I see that they are poles apart. Peter, James, and John were net fishermen—commercial fishermen, and that makes for a very different relationship with the fish.

This morning in Sunday School we covered 2 Peter 3:8 on our journey through 2^nd Peter. Peter wrote in certain terms, “Do not overlook this one fact…”(ESV) in relation to God’s faithfulness to his promise (interesting that “promise” is singular!). It is important not to demand that God act according to my timeline or my interpretation of his timeline. His plan is beyond my scope of understanding, and I must fall back to trusting him.

So how do I keep this one fact before me?

Lo, it has been nearly two months since I wrote anything about the Ancient Christian Commentary. I began this project eager to interact with these ancient Christians about 1^st and 2^nd Samuel. Since I wrote on Augustine, however, I have not spent much time with them nor have I found much to interact with. In order not to let this project die completely, this installment will address this disappointment.

Following Hannah’s Song we have numerous rich pericopes: the decline and fall of Eli and his sons; the call of Samuel; the capture of the Ark and its sojourn in Philistia. In almost none of them, however, did I find good exegesis. These stories appear as illustrations for sermons. Gregory the Great seemed close in his analysis of the afflictions of the Philistines (1 Samuel 5-6), but, in the end, he used it as an illustration of dying to sin.

The government of Pakistan has added itself to the ranks of those natians censoring the internet. Scott over at Magic Statistics commented on this turn of events. Western Resistance started the discussion, but here I will take advantage of this opportunity to reveal the most amusing thing that has happened to me while surfing the net.

I was taking a course on Islam from Dr. Vreeland in which he required us to read through the Koran. I decided to use the database compiling feature in Bibleworks so that I could quickly search for phrases that I half-remembered. I only needed an electronic version of the Koran that I could reformat for the BW compiler and that is how my adventure began.