Christmas Miscellanies

Wow, we’re talking about Christmas already. Time sure flies!

More and more businesses are removing “Christmas” from Christmas. Happy Holidays from Costco and others…. Personally, however, I’m not too disturbed when our secular nation rejects a Christian holiday. For the first 300 years of Christianity all secular nations rejected all Christian holidays, and they persecuted us to boot.

R.C. Sproul’s radio broadcast Renewing Your Mind is offering daily specials. Yesterday I gave a gift to receive a copy of Sproul’s new kid’s book, The Prince’s Poison Cup. They gave an audio cd of it along with the book. Today, for any gift, you can get a new Christmas music CD (The Word Became Flesh), with narration of the Christmas story. Check it out.

I read an interesting post over at Parchment and Pen challenging many of the traditional trappings to the Christmas story. You think Christ was born in a lonely stable built into a cave away from the town? With no happy relatives there assisting? They say think again. Makes me want to research this topic out even further….

Finally, I’m going to strongly suggest that you stay tuned to BibleGeekGoneWild.com. Shaun Tabatt has an announcement to make this weekend. Something about tons of free book offers in the 12 days before Christmas. It may be in your best interest to follow his blog over the next couple of weeeks 😉 . UPDATE: here’s the link to Shaun’s announcement.

123 Book Meme

I’ve been memed. Shaun Tabatt (of Bible Geek Gone Wild) tagged me. Apparently the meme has been around a while, as Nick Norelli (of Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth) has been tagged twice now this year.

The rules are simple. 1) Pick up the nearest book and find page 123. 2) Count the first five (full) sentences. 3) Then quote the next three sentences. So here goes!

Thus, the “once saved, always saved” notion is incomplete, as if the justification of the sinner were the whole salvation of God, to the exclusion of the “things that accompany salvation,” such as repentance unto life, faith, and holiness. Advocates of this view deny that an important aspect of assurance is the ability to say, “Yes, I do belong to Christ because I find in myself changes which He alone can work and changes which only His unbought love prompted Him to work.” Ultimately, this view teaches that faith can exist in a vacuum and that the believer does not need the law as a rule of life””the essence of antinomianism.

Side-note: I thought it interesting that this quote is a critique of a simplistic “once saved, always saved” view of eternal security. One of my better blog posts is my own critique of that idea.

The book is Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism, by Joel R. Beeke (Reformation Trust).

One more rule, you’re supposed to tag 5 other people with the meme. So I nominate, Scott, John, Will, Rhett, and Seth.

I'm Famous

I guess I’m famous. Anyone being interviewed is right?

Shaun Tabbat, who also attends Bethlehem Baptist, recently interviewed me. I’ve just recently met Shaun and discovered we have many similar interests. I think you’ll enjoy this little interview. If I can get away with it, I might borrow his concept and start interviewing some of my favorite bloggers (er, Biblio-Bloggers, that is).

Now it’s off to the Minnesota State Fair for the day….

Bigfoot Found

I’m not making this up! Check out this story from Fox News:

Bigfoot Trackers Say They’ve Got a Body

I’ve always been fascinated by the hunt for bigfoot. And I don’t buy the claim that modern science has everything figured out. We’ll have to wait for the news conference Friday, and the results from the testing to come in, but this could be the most interesting news story of the year. Or, then again, maybe not.

Check out the links at the bottom of that story. They link to the pictures of the body, and there’s a Fox News video as well.