Timothy's Thoughts

A cts is largely a sequence of events. Because we don’t want to read long passages before teaching a lesson on it, we often break it up into manageable chunks. We might for example, talk about how Paul cast a spirit out of a damel. We might talk about Lydia. We might talk about the Philippian jailer. All of these stories stand on their own in our head, but we lose sight of the sequence. All of those stories I mentioned are connected with a cause and effect relationship and it all started with a vision. Paul saw a vision in the night of a man of Macedonia saying, “Come over into Macedonia and help us.” Why there’s a sermon on missions right there. But what we find is that because of the vision, Paul and his companions travel to Philippi, which was the chief city of Macedonia. On the Sabbath, they meet Lydia and some other women in a prayer group. After baptizing Lydia and her household, they stayed in her house. But while they were doing that, they encountered a damsel possessed by a ...

I f you have a Kindle,you want to protect it. There are plenty of covers available, some of which cost as much as $60 each. I wanted one that looked like a book. Here is how I made mine for approximately $15 and a couple of hours of my time.

I t’s no surprise that Todd Burpo’s book, Heaven Is For Real is a bestseller. People love hearing about that place Shakespeare called “the undiscovered country.” We want to know that there is something after death. Parents who have lost children want to know that their children are all right. People are looking for hope behind that great curtain of death. I believe many people will read Heaven Is For Real looking for that hope and they will find what they are looking for. At the very least, they will walk away having had an enjoyable read. But to be honest, I was a skeptic when I began reading Heaven Is For Real and I don’t think the book has done anything to relieve my skepticism. The book is told from the point of view of a father who hears about his son’s near death experience. Having read the Bible, I believe it is quite possible that God could take a child to heaven for a while. We have plenty of examples. But I see too much of myself in this child. Todd Burpo’s basic argumen...

A bsalom, David’s son became upset with his father and tried to take the kingdom from him. One of the things he did to gain favor with the people was to sit where the people going in to see King David could see him and he would say, “Oh, that I were made judge in the land, that every man who hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!” It is kind of an interesting statement because it is the same kind of statement we hear from people who are complaining about the government today. “Those politicians don’t know what they’re doing. If I were up in Washington, this is what I would do.” But Absalom ultimately failed. In explanation of that, Woodrow Kroll of Back to the Bible says, “No one is ever successful in any kind of ministry if their goal is to make themselves successful. Our goal always ought to be to make the next person up in line successful. Because when they’re successful we’re successful.” [David: Deposed Ruler] Many people see writing as a mi...

Y esterday, we learned that the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Westboro Baptist Church and their protests at the funerals of service men and women. Westboro Baptist Church, which is Baptist in name only, has been in the news often during the past few years for their protests and use of hate speech. At one of their protests, you are likely to see signs that read, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags,” and “You’re Going to Hell.” These are not our kind of Baptists. These are the kind of people who give Baptists a bad name. These are the kind of people who are participating in things that do not show the love of God to a lost and dying world. I see no way to condone anything about the actions of these people. And yet, this ruling is good news. As much as we would like to see the Westboro Baptist Church protests stop, this ruling is a victory for free speech. Let’s turn this around. Not that long ago, a street preacher in another country was out preaching the gospel. A gay...

S teve Laube talked about this book trailer on his blog the other day. Okay, I’m impressed with the production quality, but it doesn’t really give me any reason to buy the book. It doesn’t really tell me anything about what I can expect to find in the book if I read it. What is the benefit to me? At first, I thought it was a pro-life book, since it showed the image of a baby on the preview, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The title of the book seems to imply that it is a list of prices. I can’t think of why I would want that, though I doubt that is what it is. My conclusion is that this trailer is a huge waste of money. What do you think of trailers for books? Do you think they are beneficial or are they all a waste of money? What do you think of publishers requiring their authors to pay for trailers for their books?

T he award for the most anticipated book for the month of March as to go to Rob Bell’s Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived from HarperCollins. Even before the book officially releases, people are already speculating on what it says. In both the product description and the video featuring Rob Bell talking about the book, it appears that the book is going to declare that God won’t actually send people to hell for eternity because “Love Wins.” One possibility is that this is just a marketing ploy. In the promotional stuff I’ve seen, Rob Bell asks a bunch of questions without giving the answers. Though he implies that the view that hell is hot and full of billions of people may be wrong, he doesn’t actually say that in the promotional material. He only asks how people know that. He also suggests that his view of things is more optimistic than the view most of us hold. But here again, he doesn’t actually tell us what his view is, only that “Love Wins.” ...