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Archive for September, 2011

September E-Book Specials

We’re working this month with e-book distributors on a coordinated promotion of a few great Crossway titles from the past. To see this month’s special pricing, search for one of the titles below at any of the following stores: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Christian Book Distributors, eChristian, Monergism, and Google.

Featured Titles:

Stand Cover

Stand Edited by Justin Taylor

These calls to godly endurance from John Piper, John MacArthur, Jerry Bridges, Randy Alcorn, and Helen Roseveare uphold its value and beauty while bearing personal witness to its power. Stand will solidify rugged, Christ-exalting perseverance in everyone who is weary in this vacillating generation and who dreams of a culture-shift toward lifelong faithfulness.
Disciplines of a Godly Woman Cover

Disciplines of a Godly Woman by Barbara Hughes

Barbara Hughes carefully guides her readers through the Scriptures, asks them questions for self-evaluation, and provides helpful suggestions for direct application of these fundamental spiritual disciplines.

Teach Us to Pray Cover

Teach Us to Pray: 365 Prayers from the Bible Edited by Timothy J. Beals

Teach Us to Pray uses examples of scriptural prayer to reveal God’s intentions for prayer, the patterns and occasions for prayer, and the power of this spiritual discipline. This study will help you develop the habit of prayer and challenge you to make scriptural prayer a priority in your life.
Living in God's Two Kingdoms Cover

Living in God’s Two Kingdoms by David VanDrunen

VanDrunen uses the two-kingdoms theory to demonstrate how God’s response to the civil and spiritual kingdoms—preservation and redemption, respectively—inform an active yet critical Christian engagement with culture.
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September 8, 2011 | Posted in: Books,Digital | Author: Ted Cockle @ 1:11 pm | 0 Comments »

Posted in Books, Digital | No Comments »

9/11 Shows the Value of Human Life

Earlier this week we posted two excerpts from When Worlds Collide by R. C. Sproul (Was 9/11 a Senseless Tragedy? and 9/11 was a Blow to Moral Relativism). Sproul continues to explain how 9/11 proves the value of human life:

We witnessed on 9/11 the absolute wickedness of an assault on human life. We also saw, with the implosion of those buildings, the practical end of macroevolution as a defining theory for the human species. Who really believes anymore that mankind is merely a grown-up germ? Who believes anymore that we are nothing but cosmic accidents emerging fortuitously from the slime and destined for annihilation? If we truly believe that, when we see pictures of thousands of people destroyed by an act of violence, it should merely make us yawn. The mass destruction of grown-up germs who have no eternal significance is no more important than going into our yard and using a cherry bomb to blow up an anthill.

But every human being in America knows that he or she is not an ant. Every person on this planet knows that he or she is not a germ. We all know that human life is sacred and that human life is meaningful, which it could not be if there were no purpose for human existence, as macro- evolutionists believe.

If God does not exist, there is no purpose to human existence. We would be, as Jean-Paul Sartre said, nothing more than a “useless passion.” But if we understand the existence of God and relate our own existence to His existence, we know that every human life is of great value. We know that human life matters. We know that it matters ultimately that human beings were murdered in the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon and on the four planes that went down on that day.

Learn more about When Worlds Collide by R. C. Sproul.

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| Posted in: Apologetics,Ethics,Suffering | Author: Angie Cheatham @ 6:00 am | (2) Comments »

Posted in Apologetics, Ethics, Suffering | 2 Comments »

9/11 as a Mortal Blow to Relativism

Earlier this week we posted an excerpt from When Worlds Collide by R. C. Sproul (Was 9/11 a Senseless Tragedy?) We continue today with Sproul briefly explaining one consequence of 9/11 that he is in fact thankful for:

One of the things that I am grateful for as a consequence of the tragedy that befell the United States on 9/11 is something we began to hear on television. Suddenly it was politically acceptable for the media to speak of real, objective evil. Indeed, when I watched the buildings implode, I knew we had marked a turning point of moral relativism in American history. The events of 9/11 were a mortal blow to relativism, because the response of Americans and the response of people the world over, after looking at this heinous attack on human life, was the very “unrelativistic” declaration that “This is evil.”

Recently I saw that same affirmation made by a national news service, where a headline bulletin on the screen proclaimed, “The end of moral relativism.” One cannot have such a shocking encounter with pure evil and walk away, saying, “Well, it’s a relative thing.”

Learn more about When Worlds Collide: Where is God When Terror Strikes? or download a free sample chapter.

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September 7, 2011 | Posted in: Ethics,Suffering | Author: Angie Cheatham @ 1:00 pm | 0 Comments »

Posted in Ethics, Suffering | No Comments »

Was 9/11 a Senseless Tragedy?

by R. C. Sproul (When Worlds Collide)

I have noticed, as the media described the events of September 11, 2001, that they used words such as “catastrophe” or “calamity” to describe that day. One word I hear perhaps more often than any other is “tragedy.”

I am especially concerned when the events of that dark day are described as a “senseless” tragedy. If we look closely at the phrase, it becomes obvious that “senseless tragedy” is an oxymoron. It is a self-contradictory statement, a phrase that makes no sense. For something to be defined as “tragic” there first must be some standard of good for it to be deemed tragic over against. But if things happen in a way that is “senseless,” there cannot be anything that is either a tragedy or a blessing. Each event would simply be meaningless.

The word “tragedy” presupposes some kind of order or purpose in the world. If the world has purpose and order, then all that occurs in it is meaningful in some respect. The idea of a “senseless tragedy” represents a worldview that is completely incompatible with Christian thought. It assumes that something happens without purpose or without meaning. If God is God and if He is a God of providence, if He is truly sovereign, then nothing ever happens that is ultimately senseless. Things may appear to be without purpose or meaning. Their ultimate purpose might elude us for the present. Yet if we fail to see purpose in what happens, we must remember that our view of things is limited by our earthly perspective.

An important slogan in theology is finitum non capax infiniti. This means that “the finite cannot grasp the infinite.” The limit of our comprehension is the earthly perspective. We do not have the ability to see things sub specie aeternitatis—“from the eternal perspective.”

The eternal perspective belongs to God. He is the infinite One, whose understanding is likewise infinite. If God is truly sovereign—if He rules over all things—then nothing that ever happens is senseless. Events can be senseless only if: 1) God is not sovereign over them; or 2) He Himself is senseless. What would be truly senseless is a view of God that regards Him either as not sovereign or as senseless.

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| Posted in: Suffering | Author: admin @ 8:54 am | (3) Comments »

Posted in Suffering | 3 Comments »

Why Kevin DeYoung’s Church Switched to the ESV

This July we published a booklet by Kevin DeYoung entitled Why Our Church Switched to the ESV. In it, DeYoung writes to his congregation outlining the reasons why they were changing their primary translation in the pulpit and in the pews. DeYoung has provided a brief overview of the ESV’s benefits for church use that you may find helpful.

We’re now giving away the e-book edition of this book for free. Simply add the e-book to your cart and check out to receive the full discount. Or, if you prefer, you can directly download the pdf, Kindle (mobi), or e-pub files.

Pastors considering using the ESV in their churches can also request a free church kit that contains several samples of the ESV and information on available discounts.

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September 6, 2011 | Posted in: Books,Church and Ministry,ESV,Giveaways | Author: Andrew Tebbe @ 4:00 pm | (7) Comments »

Posted in Books, Church and Ministry, ESV, Giveaways | 7 Comments »