Heaven is for Real - Whew, What a Relief

To the few who read this blog, it will come as no surprise when I confess that I am a curmudgeon. But it  is a relief to know that I am not alone. Fellow curmudgeon Tim Challies comments on the latest offering that reveals the glories of heaven - and this from the experience of a 4 year old child. I, for one, am perplexed that Scripture gives such insufficient information that books like these are necessary. But then again, what do I know. I've never written a book.

Provocative Words

This sounds like heresy to an evangelical culture drunk on pragmatism

Evangelicals have always insisted that Christ is a person who can and should be known personally; he is not simply an item on a creed to which assent should be given. But from this point they have drawn conclusions that become increasingly injurious. They have proceeded to seek assurance of faith not in terms of the objective truthfulness of the biblical teaching but in terms of the efficacy of its subjective experience. Testimonies have become indispensible items in the evangelistic fare. Testifying to having experienced Christ personally is particularly seductive in the modern context, because it opens up to view an inner experience that responds to the hunger of the “other-directed” individual but often sacrifices its objective truth value in doing so. The question it poses to the outsider is not whether Christ is objectively real but simply whether the experience is appealing, whether it seems to have worked, whether having it will bring one inside the group and give one connections to others.

In any genuine knowledge of God, there is an experience of his grace and power, informed by the written Scriptures, mediated by the Holy Spirit, and based upon the work of Christ upon the Cross. What is not so clear from the New Testament is that this experience should itself become the source of our knowledge of God or that it should be used to commend that knowledge to others. To be sure there was plenty of witnessing that went on in the early Church, but it is anything but clear that this should be understood as the use of personal autobiography to persuade others that they should commit themselves to Christ. (David Wells, No Place for Truth, 172-173. Italics original)

Resources for the KJV

Here is a list of resources, historical and polemical, relating to the King James Version:

God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible  by Adam Nicholson

In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture by Alister McGrath (who doesn't like Alister McGrath?)



The King James Only Controversy. Can You Trust the Modern Translations by James White



The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism by D. A. Carson (D.A. Carson; nuff said)



King James Onlyism by James D. Price (Dr. Price was the editor of the OT translation committee for the NKJV. This extensive work is rich with text-critical issues.)