Let Every Man be Slow to Tweet

Posted on March 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

“In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise,” Proverbs 10:19.

This verse, along with James 1:19, has been the one I’ve most often repeated to myself, and the one I’ve most often despised myself for not remembering.

In his commentary, John Gill writes:

“Where a great deal is said, without care and forethought, there will not only be many weak things uttered, but much falsehood, and at least many idle things, which cannot be excused from sin…”

And Matthew Henry writes:

“Those that love to hear themselves talk do not consider what work they are making for repentance.”

This not only applies to worldly talk, but can especially apply to “spiritual” talk (see Ecclesiastes 5:1-2). It is in this area that we should be the most cautious, humble, and “slow to speak.” When we think that we are being “led” to set a brother straight, or that God has “laid it on our hearts” to say something, we should have a care.

I don’t want to excuse our sin, but I have no doubt that temptation is more present and pressing than it was in Gill’s day. The lumber yard wasn’t open on Sunday mornings in the spring. There were no billboards of scantily clad women along the wagon road. And there was no WordPress, no Facebook, no Twitter, nor email tempting one to spew forth words for the whole world to read.

It’s true that “Speaking may be to great profit and advantage, when it is with care and judgment, and founded on close meditation and study,” (Gill). But, when there is no care or judgment, no close meditation or study, we should stay quiet, both in the real and the electronic world.

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Posted in Bible study, Proverbs

“Wildcat” Morrell, a “Tireless Foe of [Texas] Hardshellism”

Posted on March 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

This post is for my friends Dorothy and Lela—not because it applies to them, but because they like this kind of post; also my dad, with whom I’ve spent hours discussing this very thing, and who is the pastor of an East Texas hard-shell church.

I’ve been doing a little reading in Flowers and Fruits in the Wilderness by Z.N. “Wildcat” Morrell. Morrell was one of the first travelling Missionary Baptists in Texas, and quite a character: “One of his first Texas activities [after arriving from Tennessee] was to plan a bear hunt with the famed David Crockett.”

The preface tells us that “Morrell was a tireless foe of hardshellism, so prevalent in East Texas at the time.”

Another name for “hard-shell,” is Primitive Baptist. Many of the East Texas Primitive Baptists still proudly wear the name. I’ve told you before how that I grew up amongst these East Texas hard-shell churches. In his book, Morrell often mentions his contemporary Daniel Parker, who founded Pilgrim Primitive Baptist Church, which is one that I attended as a child.

Though Morrell was a “foe” of the hard-shells, he considered them brothers and seems to have spent a good deal of time with them. I may change my mind as I read more, but at this point it doesn’t seem like election or predestination is where he disagreed with them. It was their anti-missionary, hyper-Calvinist, antinomian tendencies that he didn’t like.

Morrell tells of one of his friends “making sarcastic hits at the missionaries and their folly in trying to do God’s work:”

“To this I could only reply, that we missionaries had one decided advantage. While the ‘iron jackets’ [apparently another name for hard-shell] boast of election and predestination, the missionaries are masters of the situation. ‘How is that?’ cries the anti-missionary. We reply, ‘You worship a God that saw the end from the beginning, but left out all the means leading to and accomplishing the end. We worship an all-wise God who ordained the means leading to the end, as well as the end itself; and he has ordained the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe, as a means in his own hands.’”

I like that. So am I a rank arminian?

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Posted in church history, history, Primitive Baptists, Texas

25th Anniversary Edition of Desiring God

Posted on February 24, 2011 | 1 Comment

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist

25th Anniversary Edition

By John Piper

WaterBrook Multnomah

I first read John Piper’s Desiring God several years ago. Not when it first came out, as some other reviewers of this 25th anniversary edition can say. At that time I was ten, and Tom Sawyer was more to my liking. But it has been long enough to look back and see how it has influenced my thinking, theology, and concept of worship.

Piper’s theme is simple: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” He tells us that we should seek our pleasure and joy in God. Not in His gifts, but in Him: “The pleasure Christian hedonism seeks is the pleasure that is in God Himself. He is the end of our search, not the means to some further end.”

We should find so much joy in Christ that sin and worldly pleasures lose their pull: “This is the great business of life—to put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hook.” Piper’s is a most Christian message, and one that is at odds with much of what passes as Christianity in the West.

Christian hedonism won’t appeal to more traditional hedonists. It calls us to embrace suffering, to give away our money, to take up our crosses. And since Piper practices what he preaches, he isn’t easy to ignore. He is sincere, passionate, humble—one who represents Christ well. He is also a deep thinking theologian. His book isn’t easy to read, even if your normal diet consists more of Spurgeon and Edwards than Lucado or Stanley. But it’s worth the effort, as much today as it was 25 years ago. Some parts might trouble you. You may occasionally argue with the author—I do. You may have to re-read a page or a chapter. But this book has the potential to change your theology, even your life. It has changed lots of lives already, and there’s no reason to doubt that it will change more.

I received a review copy of this book from WaterBrook Multnomah in exchange for an honest review.

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Posted in Book Reviews, John Piper, WaterBrook Multnomah

A word from our friends

Posted on February 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Online life isn’t so important:

Mark Tubbs, my online friend and editor at Discerning Reader, writes:

“While I would love to be an online influencer, it runs a distant seventh or eighth to being a husband, a father, a seminarian, a friend, etc. When and if the time comes and I have adequate margin and health in my life, online life may gain a bigger piece of the pie. But ultimately, I won’t be answering to God for not posting every day, and that is liberating.”

You can read his post here. Thanks, Mark.

An invitation to the Eleventh Annual Confessional Conference:

And David Williams, my real life friend, asked me to mention the Eleventh Annual Confessional Conference sponsored by The Reformed Congregational Fellowship. This year’s theme is “Of Good Works & the Perseverance of the Saints.” The conference will be April 5-7 in Sharon, Massachusetts.

You can find the brochure here.

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Posted in conference

Becoming King by Troy Jackson

Posted on February 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

By Troy Jackson

University Press of Kentucky: 2008

Paperback: February 28, 2011

Troy Jackson, author of Becoming King, says that it was the people of Montgomery who shaped Martin Luther King Jr. rather than Martin Luther King Jr. who shaped the people of Montgomery.

Civil rights advocate Virginia Durr described Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950’s as a place of “death, decay, corruption, frustration, bitterness and sorrow.” And Jackson convinces us that she wasn’t exaggerating. Blacks were oppressed, intimidated, and abused, and they were ready for change. Durr wrote: “I think the Negroes are stirring and they won’t be held down much longer.”

Through Jackson’s thorough research and extensive quotes, we come to know and appreciate many of the African-Americans working for change in Montgomery before King arrived—those like E.D. Nixon, a Pullman Porter and “tireless fighter for justice,” and his secretary, “a local seamstress” named Rosa Parks. Along with Nixon, there were other courageous men like Vernon Johns, pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist church, who posted the title of an upcoming sermon on the church billboard (which was only a block from the State Capitol): “It’s Safe to Murder Negroes in Alabama.” But Jackson shows that it was the women who were most essential to the movement:

“Though many black men in the city were just as frustrated with the racial status quo, they had more to lose by being outspoken. Whites believed they had much more to fear from black men, and therefore they responded more quickly, and often violently, to any who got out of line. As whites fixed their attention on black men, several black women were stirring the waters of racial change in Montgomery.”

When the young Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Montgomery in 1954 to replace Johns as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he didn’t plan to lead a civil rights movement. But plans change.

Claudette Colvin, a student at Booker T. Washington High School, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in March of 1955. When an officer tried to physically move her, “she fought like a little tigress” and was arrested. Soon after, Rosa Parks was also arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat. Jackson writes: “After a little more than a year in Montgomery, Park’s arrest thrust King into the front lines of a local movement for civil rights.” The bus boycott began. “Because the people of Montgomery were willing to walk, King had the opportunity to lead.”

The newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which elected King as president, led the boycott for the next thirteen months. Jackson gives a detailed account, telling the good and the bad, and correcting the idea that it wouldn’t have happened without King. It was Nixon’s idea, and the working people carried it out. “King brought the refined dimension required,” but never took any credit for himself:

“If I am stopped, this movement will not stop. If I am stopped our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just. And God is with us.”

The locals responded to the boycott with threats, legal action, and violence. King’s house, along with Nixon’s and several others, was bombed. And the city government wouldn’t budge until the U.S. Supreme Court found bus segregation unconstitutional. Even then, Jackson says there were minimal gains for the local blacks:

“The U.S. Supreme Court decision supporting integrated buses in the city proved more of a victory for King and the burgeoning civil rights movement than it was for the Montgomery African-American community.”

While “King became the face for the national struggle for civil rights,” the conditions in Montgomery worsened. Violence increased, and lots of those who took part in the boycott lost their jobs. Many had to move, including Rosa Parks.

In the introduction to Jackson’s book, Clayborne Carson writes:

“By acknowledging that the bus boycott had only a limited impact on the lives of Montgomery’s black working class, Becoming King is a necessary correction to romanticized versions of Civil Rights progress and Great Man historical myths.”

When King announced that he was leaving Montgomery in 1960, a Dexter member wrote: “The history books may write it Rev. King was born in Atlanta, and then came to Montgomery, but we feel that he was born in Montgomery in the struggle here, and now he is moving to Atlanta for bigger responsibilities.”

E.D. Nixon put it less politely: “If Mrs. Parks had gotten up and given that cracker her seat you’d never heard of Reverend King.”

We can’t say whether Nixon was right or not, but Jackson makes it clear that it was in Montgomery that King became the leader we remember. Jackson’s work is as engaging as it is important, and I highly recommend it.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the University Press of Kentucky in exchange for an honest review.

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Posted in biography, Book Reviews, history, Martin Luther King Jr.

February Book Giveaway Winner (and a side note)

Posted on February 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

The winner of the February book giveaway is Judy Dudley from Seize the Book Blog.  I had to draw a day early, as I won’t be available to post on the 11th.

Regular readers will notice a decrease in posts around here. I hope to continue updating once a week, but I don’t think that I’ll be able to do more than that.

Thanks for reading!

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Posted in Book Giveaway

The Legacy of the King James Bible by Leland Ryken

Posted on February 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Legacy of the King James Bible: Celebrating 400 Years of the Most Influential Translation

Leland Ryken

Crossway: 2011

This year is the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, which, according to Leland Ryken, is the most influential book of all time. Though he doesn’t “believe that the King James Bible is the best translation for a reader today,” his book makes it clear that he’s a strong advocate.

(Read a pdf sample of the book here.)

Ryken tells how in 1604, a group of “dejected Puritans” were granted permission by the recently crowned King James I to begin work on a new Bible. The task was not to create a whole new translation, but to revise the 1568 Bishop’s Bible, which was the version commonly kept chained in the churches of England for public reading.

A group of 47 scholars, divided into six committees, worked at Westminster Abbey, Oxford, and Cambridge. The group was diverse—from Puritans to high churchmen—but shared a commitment to accuracy and a dedication to the task, working long hours for little pay in “rooms so cold and damp, except close to the fires, that fingers and joints got stiff.” Ryken says that the popular “depiction of the translators ‘working in the sumptuous furnishings of the great universities and the royal court’ is preposterous.”

There is no evidence that the King James received the authorization of the church or king when it was published in 1611. It “was authorized, not by an edict imposed upon the people, but by popular acclamation.”

Regarding its accuracy, Ryken writes: “There can be little doubt that when the King James Bible was released in 1611, it was the most accurate English translation in existence.” The translators were careful to make sure that “every word in the original biblical text would be represented by an equivalent English word or phrase.” This was their main goal. How does Ryken say it compares today?

If we believe that the standard of accuracy is a translation’s giving us the words of the original text in equivalent English words, the KJV shows its superior accuracy over modern dynamic equivalent translations on virtually every page of the Bible (and probably multiple times on every page).

Though the KJV is known for being a literal translation, it is best known for its eloquence and beauty, traits that are mostly accidental. Much of the style resulted from the translator’s faithfulness to the Hebrew and Greek; what was poetic in the original became poetic in the English. Also, because most of the Bible reading was oral in those days, the translators wanted to ensure that the rhythm flowed “smoothly off the tongue and into the ear of the listener.”

Ryken’s book concentrates on the King James Version’s influence on the English world, from subsequent Bible translations to the various arts: “That the King James Bible has been the largest single influence on the English language is often asserted and can be plausibly inferred….It is from [the KJV] that the English-speaking world learned to read and to think.”

The work’s influence is especially evident in literature. “I do not remember ever having encountered a member of the literary establishment who preferred any English Bible other than the KJV.” Ryken gives sample after sample, his evidence as vast as the influence itself, until his book sounds like an anthology.  But it is interesting, and it is important, and Ryken is an English professor after all.

Though Ryken usually writes clearly, his style occasionally departs from the eloquent simplicity of his subject:

The fact that Yeats used a New Testament commonplace of a second coming in a metaphoric sense of the coming age of terror rather than Christ’s return at the end of history does not affect my claim that we need to know certain biblical texts before the title means anything.

Ryken answers questions, corrects myths, and gives the Authorized Version the attention and praise that it deserves. I’ve had the unhappy opportunity to read many of the writings of King James only advocates. Ryken, though far from that camp, does more to persuade me to return to the Bible of my ancestors than all of those writings combined.

Solomon said, “Of making many books there is no end.” I’m afraid that goes for Bible versions, too. But, endless though they may be, there will never be another that surpasses the beauty or influence of the King James Version. Ryken’s book convinces us of that; it is a fitting celebration of a most important anniversary.

I received a copy of this book from Crossway in exchange for an honest review.

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Posted in Bible Versions, Book Reviews, Crossway

The Strength of the King James Language Demonstrated in the Elements of Style

Posted on February 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve written about both the literary superiority of the King James Version and my favorite book on writing, The Elements of Style, this week. Below is a passage from The Elements of Style that demonstrates the strength of the KJV language:

“16: Use definite, specific, concrete language….

To show what happens when strong writing is deprived of its vigor, George Orwell once took a passage from the Bible and drained it of its blood. On the left, below, is Orwell’s translation; on the right, the verse from Ecclesiastes (King James Version).

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must inevitably be taken into account.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Though much easier to read and more concrete, the translation in The Message is nearly as bad as Orwell’s:

“I took another walk around the neighborhood and realized that on this earth as it is—

The race is not always to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor satisfaction to the wise,
Nor riches to the smart,
Nor grace to the learned.
Sooner or later bad luck hits us all.”

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Posted in Bible Versions

The King James Version: 400 Years of Literary Excellence

Posted on February 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

Crossway sent me Leland Ryken’s new book, The Legacy of the King James Bible, which I’m reading with interest. If you’ve read this blog long, you know that I’m a fan of the KJV. Though I have several translations, I could do without any of them other than my two favorites: the KJV and the English Standard Version (ESV). That’s not to say that the others aren’t good. I just don’t prefer them.

(Read the reasons why I prefer the KJV here.)

Though Ryken says, “I do not believe that the King James is the best translation for a reader today,” he goes to great lengths to show its merits. He might not think it’s the best, but he’s certainly an advocate.

One of the most obvious strengths of the KJV that Ryken discusses is its literary excellence. Its being a “literary masterpiece” was an accident: “The translators did not think of themselves as producing a literary Bible. Their primary aim was to produce an accurate translation of the original Bible.” Accident or not, it is the greatest work in English literature. In the preface of the 1881 English Revised Version, the revisers say:

We have had to study this great Version carefully and minutely, line by line; and the longer we have been engaged upon it the more we have learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression, its general accuracy, and…the music of its cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm.

The NIV is probably the most popular translation today. Though it is not a literary translation, it’s a lot closer than most new dynamic equivalents. Still, it falls far short of the beauty of the KJV. Consider:

“Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer. From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy,” Psalm 61:1-3, KJV.

“Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe,” NIV.

“God, listen to me shout, bend an ear to my prayer. When I’m far from anywhere, down to my last gasp, I call out, “Guide me up High Rock Mountain!” The Message.

The NIV still sounds poetic, though not nearly as much as the KJV. As for the Message, yikes!

For the last several years, I’ve done most of my Bible reading from the ESV. This year, though, in honor of its 400th anniversary, I’m revisiting the KJV. Why don’t you give it a try? If you like reading the works of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Lloyd-Jones, or Billy Graham, then you might like reading their Bible.

If that’s too much to ask, and especially if you usually read a “dynamic equivalent,” at least try a version that was translated in the tradition of the King James, such as the ESV or the NKJV.

Comments are open for this post.

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Posted in Bible Versions, Crossway

February Book Giveaway

Posted on February 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here’s some hard-shell Calvinist reading for you: William Rushton’s Defense of Particular Redemption.

Synopsis from alibris:

“Reprint of William Rushton’s famous critique of Andrew Fuller’s eighteenth century theological innovations commonly called Fullerism. Rushton thoroughly demolishes Fuller’s vague and indefinite teaching on God’s purpose in salvation, Christ’s atonement, and the Holy Spirit’s call in the gospel.”

I’ll also throw in a copy of Don Kistler’s Why Read the Puritans Today?

Deadline: February 11.

Enter here:




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Posted in Book Giveaway