Tim Challies reviews ‘The Meaning of Marriage’

Tim Challies reviews The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller:

“the distinguishing feature of this book is its deep dependence on the gospel. This distinguishing feature is also the book’s greatest strength.

Marriage simply cannot be properly understood or practiced without being rooted in the gospel. ‘If God had the gospel of Jesus’s salvation in mind when he established marriage, then marriage only ‘works’ to the degree that it approximates the pattern of God’s self-giving love in Christ.’…”

– read it all here. Places to buy it.

Tim Challies reviews ‘Real Marriage’

After earlier making observations (1, 2) about Mark & Grace Driscoll’s new book Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship & Life Together, Tim Challies has now published a review. From his conclusions –

“Having read the book through two times, I’ve found myself wondering how to best measure or evaluate it, but perhaps these criteria are useful: Would I want to read it with my wife or would I encourage her to read it on her own? Would I recommend it to the people in my church? In both cases the answer is no.”

– Read his full review here.

‘Knowing God’ — free AudioBook for January

This month’s free audiobook from Christian Audio is J I Packer’s Knowing God.

The m4b version is about 300MB. It’s a new recording, read by Simon Vance. Know someone who doesn’t read books? Send them the link.

Bible Reading Plans for 2012

Justin Taylor at The Gospel Coalition has links to a selection of Bible reading plans here.

Update: Ligonier Ministries has more.

Whether you read on the web, on your phone, listen via podcast or read in your printed Bible (recommended!) there’s something here for you.

 

Prayers for defence chaplains at Christmas

This is a good time to be reminded to pray for defence chaplains. Many minister to servicemen and women who are far from home. Defence Anglicans has two stories to give ideas for prayer –

An army chaplain’s Christmas preparations and Advent in Afghanistan.

Nathan Tasker’s ‘A Star. A Stable. A Saviour.’

Nathan Tasker’s Christmas EP ‘A Star, A Stable, A Saviour’ is available as a free download for the next seven days, from Grouptune. (h/t Gary Ware.)

Exploding Fenella Souter’s Myths of Christmas

“Last Saturday, the ‘Good Weekend’ magazine published by the Sydney Morning Herald (and the Melbourne Age?), ran an article by Fenella Souter entitled “Truth, Lies and Santa Claus: Exploding the Myths of Christmas” (not available online).

It was highly sceptical towards the narratives surrounding the conception and birth of Jesus recorded in the Bible…”

– Sandy Grant at St. Michael’s Wollongong looks at some mistakes and undocumented claims in last weekend’s ‘Good Weekend’ – at The Briefing.

Dick Lucas at the Autumn Joint Ministers conference 2011

Last week we linked to video of Carl Trueman at the Proclamation Trust’s 2011 Autumn Joint Ministers Conference in Leicestershire.

Dick Lucas also spoke at the conference, giving three talks on 2 Peter, and now video and audio files of his addresses are online.

From Reformation to Revival

Lee Gatiss has been speaking in Cambridge at the ‘Saturday School of Theology’ on the theme ‘From Reformation to Revival’.

The audio of the first two sessions is now available, with the third to come. Below are the descriptions of each session:  Read more

David Jones on Church Planting

Here’s a challenging talk on evangelism and church planting – from David Jones, church planter, pastor, and Moderator-General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia. He spoke recently in Adelaide.

The audio quality is not great, but the video file is very much worth watching. (Image: Pilgrim Hill.)

Questions for Mark Dever

Mark Dever of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC was recently asked a series of short questions by christianity.com.

Questions include: What should I look for in a local church?
What books would you recommend on the topic of Church history?
Is heaven going to be a renewal of this earth?

Find them here.

 

Richard Bewes and Alec Motyer in conversation

Recently Richard Bewes and Alec Motyer were in Inverness, where they were interviewed by David Meredith, Minister of the Free Church of Scotland.

The video interview runs for 47 minutes, and covers their friendship, Keswick, preaching, Christ in all the Scriptures, and much more. (h/t Reformation21.) See also interviews with John Blanchard, Sinclair Ferguson and Helen Roseveare.

Themelios — November 2011

Issue 3 of Volume 36 of Themelios is now available as a free download from The Gospel Coalition website.

Contributions include an editorial on Spiritual Disciplines by Don Carson, and An Evaluation of the 2011 Edition of the NIV, by Rodney Decker. There’s also a host of book reviews. Worth taking the time to read.

Marriage Petition to the 2011 ALP National Conference

Resolutions calling on the Australian Government to retain the current definition of marriage have been passed by –

Members of churches are being urged add their voices through a petition being circulated by the Australian Christian Lobby. It affirms the current definition of marriage as “the union of a man and a women to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life”.

The hope is to have 100,000 people sign the petition before the ALP’s National Conference in December. Read more

Is God a Delusion?

Three weeks ago, at the invitation of the Oxford University Christian Union, William Lane Craig addressed the challenges of Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. See his lecture at BeThinking.org, run by the UCCF.

(Dawkins had been invited to debate Craig, but declined to take part.)

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