Spurgeon Anecdotes
Posted Monday, August 28, 2006 by Charlie Trimm
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In the course of my research for the sermon about Spurgeon, I came across many funny stories from his life. They were so humorous I could not keep them to myself, so here are some of my favorites.
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Bookins.Com
A trading-post for books
Posted Thursday, August 24, 2006 by Brian Beers
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Due to tasks such as bringing this website into a more carefree state August has been somewhat of a dry month for reading material here at Theoblogian. To compensate for this, I would like to introduce you all to Bookins.com. This site is for trading books. You offer some of your books for trade, and when someone decides they want it, you slap a shipping label on it, and send it off to the lucky new owner. For each book you put up for trade, you get a certain number of points based on the value of the book. You can trade these points in for that book you have always wanted that someone over in Tennessee put up for trade. Those points plus $3.99 gets the new book.
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Sermon on Spurgeon
Posted Wednesday, August 23, 2006 by Charlie Trimm
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This post is a sermon I preached last Sunday. It is a little unusual because it is not based on a text, but is a biographical sermon about Charles Spurgeon. I think that there are many things we can learn from him and his faith, and it is these points that I highlight in the sermon. And Spurgeon is a fun one to talk about because he was really funny, so there are lots of good stories! I hope you are encouraged by Spurgeon's example.
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Theoblogian.org Reopens
Posted Sunday, August 20, 2006 by Brian Beers
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Welcome to the new and improved Theoblogian.org.
Many of you may have noticed that the site was unavailable some of the weekend. This was due to a change in our name servers. Since you are here reading this, you may be confident that the change was successful!
On the surface Theoblogian.org looks much as it always has. The biggest change is in how you make comments. You must log in before you can make comments, and in order to log in, you must first become a theoblogian.
In my eagerness to eliminate spam in the comments (web-graffiti) on Theoblogian, the site is up minus some features. The archives will be added back in soon, and various others odd and ends will be corrected too.
This means that over the next several weeks, you may find the site temporarily unavailable as new things get moved out. Updates will take about 15 minutes, so if you find the site unavailable, please try back a little later.
Lack of Activity
Posted Monday, August 14, 2006 by Brian Beers
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Lack of Activity
You may have been noticing a lack of activity here at Theoblogian this month.
My excuse is that I have been working on the design of the site after reading a post on WordPress plugins (http://www.theblogstarter.com/7-must-have-plugins-for-your-wordpress-blog/ ). I have also been reprogramming the website since we had been getting about 8 spam comments a day for the past three weeks. So I decided to upgrade my knowledge of ASP.Net to version 2.0 and eliminate the possibility of the spam at the same time. Consequently I haven’t had a lot of time for writing interesting stuff.
If any of you are burning with curiosity you may go and see the upgraded site, but the visible differences are very minor. The biggest difference is that you will need to log in to make comments. I am interested in any suggestions or comments that you may have. Please leave any comments here, but if they start with “Nice Site,” “Cool site,” or anything Italian, I may think it is just more spam.
Interprecation
The Difference Between Interpretation and Application
Posted Monday, July 31, 2006 by Brian Beers
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Bible
How does application differ from interpretation? Or does it differ? I was certain that they did differ. I even came up with a term merging interpretation and application into “interprecation.†This clever term not only represent the blurring of the distinction between the two activities, it also reminds me of “imprecation,†something appropriately directed at one who doesn’t distinguish between application and interpretation. I enjoyed my own cleverness until I read the very helpful “Making Sense of the Old Testament, Three Crucial Questions†by Tremper Longman III. In it he states, “It may be possible to distinguish between meaning and application on a strictly theoretical level, but it is never possible to do so in practice.â€
Well clever isn’t very satisfying if I’m just plain wrong so I decided to take a closer look at the differences that I thought I perceived.
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The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jonah
One Sam's radical approach to the "Sign of Jonah"
Posted Monday, July 31, 2006 by Sam Yeiter
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Almost certainly it will happen to me again this week. I will get that look…the one that asks, “Is he serious? He can’t possibly believe that, can he? Where did we find this guy? Who was his Hermeneutics instructor?†Yes, that look is filled with questions. But I have endured it before, and I will endure it again…and nothing Josh and Adam can say will shake me. For I believe Jonah rose from the dead.
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The Deity of Christ in the Early Church
Part 3 of the Early Church History Sermon Series
Posted Sunday, July 30, 2006 by Charlie Trimm
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This is the third installment of my sermon series on the early church. It went quite well, and I included a fun surprise in the middle of the sermon that helped people to wake up. I have noted it in the text below.
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An Israelite indeed speaks his mind
Context in John 1:43-47
Posted Monday, July 24, 2006 by Brian Beers
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Context. Context. Context.
What good is context anyway?
According to Merriam-Webster, it is: “1 : the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaningâ€
What is does for most of us is to limit meaning.
Almost any isolated statement may have a fabulous range of meaning. For example a politician taken out of context can sound even wackier. But when we have context even a politician may sound reasonable. With context meaning is constrained, and we have confidence that we understand what a person really meant to say.
In Scripture we usually have context. Occasionally, though, the context is missed and statements are misinterpreted. Jesus’ statement about Nathaniel is one example of this. I had always considered Jesus’ statement concerning Nathaniel’s character to be an example of Jesus’ deity showing. Jesus genuinely knew Nathaniel’s character because he was God. But reading the statement in context, I think that it is a bit more ordinary, more human, and a more humorous conversation.
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My Lump Is Done Taken Away
Posted Thursday, July 20, 2006 by Brian Beers
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Thank you all for your prayers. My partial thyroidectomy (surgery) went well. The Dr. removed half my thyroid, but I didn’t get to bring it home in a jar to show my boys. My folks came over from Idaho for the surgery, and they got to spend lots of quality time with four adorable, well-behaved children. Before dinner tonight the Dr. called and told me that the pathology report had come back already, and my lump was benign. This means that I only need to go in to get my stitches out and then live happily ever after.
Everything else is going well as well. Recovery is progressing at a break-neck pace (that is not the same as a cut-throat rate), and in only four weeks I will be able to pick up my children again. That is going to be the toughest part of convalescence. My three-year-old loves to be “walked to sleep†a ritual in which I walk around our yard with his head resting on my shoulder. This is ritual we both enjoy, and often it results in him falling asleep.