Author’s Journal 2022

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Saturday, December 31, 2022

  • On the BRP for today:
    • BRP1 – When the apostle John launched his Gospel with the three words “In the beginning,” he was doing something bold – extremely bold! Those three words begin Genesis and therefore the whole Bible. The Hebrew name for the book of Genesis is “Bereshit” which literally means “In the beginning.” John was therefore signaling something very profound by beginning his Gospel this way – something so profound that a reader is left to wonder if he will ever fully understand it. Every time I read or remember those three words of John’s I get that feeling you get when something is so important that you can’t put your feeling about it into words. Every time. I don’t know how I will ever get tired of it.
    • BRP2 – If someone was on the fence about Jesus, I would encourage him to read the New Testament. If he considered this too time-consuming, I would then suggest he read a Gospel – either Mark (because it’s the shortest of the four and yet makes all the key historical points) or John (because it’s so meaty and confronts a reader with the staggering claims Jesus made about Himself). If the person also considered those alternatives too time-consuming, I would then suggest 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. If reading these 11 verses doesn’t make the person curious enough to read more of the New Testament, then he’s not really on the fence after all.
    • BRP3 – I love how Nehemiah 13:2 says “God turned the curse into a blessing.” My sins have brought curses on me, but God can turn them into blessings if and as I repent!
  • Today’s work on the book:

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Friday, December 30, 2022

  • On the BRP for today:
    • BRP1 – Luke 6:40 always gives me a charge. Jesus is promising that if I’ll just stay enrolled in His training program, I’ll eventually be like Him. Therefore, being engaged with a BRP that emphasizes His teaching daily is the best possible course for me!
    • BRP2 – 1 John 5:4-5 reminds me how important my faith in Christ is. Victory will come to me as I believe His promises – like the one mentioned just above. Believing Jesus means acting as if it’s impossible for Him to lie.
    • BRP3 – Nehemiah 12 presents me with a lot of unfamiliar names. Just as their names are unfamiliar to me, mine would be to them. Yet their names were not unfamiliar to God, nor is my name unfamiliar to Him. As they were re-building a wall to protect Jerusalem, so I am re-building protections for my family.
    • Don’t forget that you have An Audio Bible Reading Companion for these and all the other chapters of the Bible.
  • Today’s work on the book:

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Thursday, December 29, 2022

  • I began Reasons to Worship Christ and Not a Trinity. (I linked to it at the bottom of the chapter/essay in Part One (The Gospel): There Is No Trinity; There Is Christ.) It will eventually be a collection of over 300 readings on the subject, though I’ve only posted the first one so far. It will mainly consist of the over 300 readings I’ve already written on this subject beginning in 2010 when I was writing blogs. (I don’t know how long it will take me to convert them to this format; I had intended to make them into a book because it totals 60,000 words which is the size of an average non-fiction book, but I’ve decided to just add one reading a day to this page.) When an idea like the trinity has been pounded into our heads, and when so many people believe in it, I feel like I owe readers of the book some extra help in getting over it. People did not give up slavery easily, nor do I think they’re going to give up on this idea easily either. The main reason for helping people get over it is that it’s a distraction to understanding Jesus and becoming more like Him.
  • Added George Washington’s comments on religion from his “Farewell Address” in Life Nuggets.
  • Regarding today’s BRP2, the apostle John could write in 1 John 4:11 that God sent His Son “so that we might live through Him” because John himself heard the Son of God say things like “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48) and “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25) and “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6).

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Wednesday, December 28, 2022

  • I’ve made a revision to the Old Testament (OT) portion of the BRP for 2023 (which you can print out here, and find explained here). In 2022, we covered practically all of the history in the OT, but this left no room for the other two kinds of books in the OT: wisdom and prophecy. Therefore, I took out some of the history (starting with the history of 1 and 2 Chronicles (which covers the same period as the books of Samuel and Kings). The deletions made room to add half the Psalms (wisdom) and all of Isaiah (prophecy). This makes the OT readings in this plan more representative of the OT. It also It also means that our OT readings in this plan cover the OT books most often quoted in the New Testament. In order of how often they’re quoted in the NT, those OT books are:
    • Psalms (68 times)
    • Isaiah (55)
    • Deuteronomy (44)
    • Genesis (35)
    • Exodus (31)
  • Matt 6:1 in today’s BRP1 makes me think of all the “virtue signaling” going on in the world today. God saves us so much time because don’t need to signal our virtue to Him; He’s fully aware of how much virtue we actually have – or don’t have – at any moment.

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Tuesday, December 27, 2022

  • Regarding BRP1 for today, consider Matt 5:8. God had sent John the Baptist to cleanse His people from their sins through the process of baptism: acknowledging and confessing their sins and being forgiven as they were being washed in the water of baptism, signifying the spiritual purity being achieved. With the resulting purity of heart, they were able to “see God” (Matt 5:8) when they looked upon and listened to Jesus. The Pharisees and Sadducees who did not believe John the Baptist remained blind to who Jesus really was. Yes, in the beginning, the forgiven were only seeing Jesus as a godly man, but the ultimate result – revealed in the Second Coming of Christ – was that we could all realize that Jesus’ earliest disciples were looking on God Himself.

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Monday, December 26, 2022

  • I added to Spirit Nuggets. I also continued building out the last section of Proofs and Points: Jesus Christ, which is “Jesus Christ as God.” This section is tidier now and includes links to two sub-pages: Logical Pointers to the Deity of Christ and Scriptural Pointers to the Deity of Christ, which will take time to fully build out. In the meantime, just what I have there is lots to contemplate about how the Almighty God came to earth to live as one of us. The truth of it staggers the mind!
  • In today’s Bible Reading Plan (Luke 2), we see the old man Simeon looking at Jesus as an infant, describing Him as the pride of the Jews and an eyeopener for everyone else (verse 32). How was Simeon able to see so much in a human being so small? Faith in what God had said in the Old Testament through His prophets about the Messiah. There was much more to that infant than what people without spiritual insight could see.

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Sunday, December 25, 2022

  • Made slight changes to Proofs and Points: Jesus Christ, and created a new subpage for it titled Pointers to the Deity of Christ. I began with about a dozen of these pointers, but this is but a fraction of what I intend the page to hold. That Jesus is God is something that becomes clearer and clearer, especially with the benefit of hindsight that we have and His first disciples didn’t. How could anyone have processed such a thought in the moment?!
  • In the context of Christ’s deity, I was reflecting this morning on the first Christmas. This reflection left me struck by how much joy has come in the last 2,000 years from one woman’s pain in that birthing. How could such a harvest of joy for so many come from the birth pains of one unless God was in it? Literally!

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Saturday, December 24, 2022

  • Added to Gospel Nuggets, Faith Nuggets, Life Nuggets, and Prayer Nuggets.
  • In doing the research for the additions to the four collections mentioned just above, I came across President Harry Truman’s broadcast address to the nation on Christmas Eve 1952 – his last year in office, and the the year after I was born. Whether or not Truman believed what he was saying in these remarks, I cannot say. It’s a cinch, though, that he thought the country believed it or else he would have been keeping most of these thoughts to himself. Thus this short speech tells us how dramatically the country has changed in the last seventy years. For no president could speak this way today without setting off a firestorm…or worse. By the way, if you were to skim all eight of Truman’s Christmas Eve broadcasts from 1945 through 1952, you would see that he emphasized Christ in all of them – not just the last one. And neither is Truman himself an outlier. It’s always been commonplace for an American president to speak in this way around Christmas – until now.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2022 –

  • Added new chapter to Part Two (Faith) titled If Jesus Is Raised from the Dead, Then What? (4 min).
  • Up to this point, I’ve presented the book as a collection of essays, which generally means that the chapters can be read in any order. Over time, I’m going to transition to a point where the chapters are to be read in sequence as with a conventional book, with the supplemental essays in each part still being free-standing without any need to read in sequence. I’ve already accomplished this with Part Two (Faith), and will re-shape the other six parts of the book as time allows. I updated the Introduction accordingly. I don’t currently have a timetable for completing this transition. A related issue is that the last three parts of the book remain largely unwritten, but I do not intend any of them to be as long as the first four parts. Therefore, I do not expect this transition to take any longer than a few months.

Tuesday, December 20, 2022 – I’ve begun adding estimated reading time for the chapters and essays. So far, I’ve only completed this for Part Two (Faith), but plan to provide it in all parts of the book where it makes sense. (Some places – such as “…Nuggets” – it won’t be appropriate.)

Monday, December 19, 2022 – My apologies to anyone reading in Part Two (Faith) right now. All my re-titling and rearranging are like road construction work – that is, to make improvements for the long run may cause frustration in the short run.

Sunday, December 18, 2022 –

  • Added item to Bible Nuggets.
  • Working for many days on Part Two (Faith) caused me to realize I should switch the order of Parts Three (Righteousness) and Four (Biblical Literacy). Specifically, I needed to cover the Bible right after covering faith; then it would be proper to go into how to live out the righteous life.

Saturday, December 17, 2022 –

  • Wrote additional chapter for Part Two (Faith): Fantasy for Children or History for Men?
  • Inserted “…Repentance and…” into the book’s subtitle. I didn’t enjoy lengthening the subtitle because it’s already long, but felt that our need to repent was important enough to be explicit about it. Seems like there are a lot of people today who feel like it’s people other than themselves who need to do all the repenting.

Friday, December 16, 2022 – Wrote additional chapter for Part Two (Faith): Lunatic, Liar, Lord…or Legend?

Monday, December 12, 2022 –

Thursday, December 8, 2022 – Added John Newton and John Adams quotes to Life Nuggets.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022 –

Tuesday, December 6, 2022 –

Sunday, December 4, 2022 –

  • Deleted the chapter “Faith in God Begins and Ends in Jesus” and added just the title to Faith Nuggets.
  • Wrote new chapter for Part Two (Faith): Faith in God Begins in Jesus.
  • Changed the chapter title of “Who Was Jesus…from a Strictly Human Point of View” to History Deniers.

Saturday, December 3, 2022 –

Friday, December 2, 2022 –

  • Added the subtitle of the book to the top of all pages in the book. Should help both readers and writer stay properly focused.
  • Added new chapter to Part Two (Faith): What Is Faith?
  • Removed the “Abbreviation and Notations” page of this book, and, I hope, all references to it. I also hope I was able to remove all abbreviations on it that were used throughout the book. I will continue to use unique abbreviations in the book but only in limited individual contexts where I explain them. I’m making this change because my previous approach of trying to use abbreviations throughout the book that were unique to me (such as “X” as referring to Christ) began to seem to me as unnecessarily burdensome to the reader. There’s enough new material in this book for a reader to absorb without expecting him to remember this author’s idiosyncratic abbreviations, no matter how useful they might otherwise be.
  • Added in About This Book (in Appendices) an explanation of the “A” in the first word of the book’s subtitle.

Thursday, December 1, 2022 – I continued to work on Part Two (Faith), reworking and supplementing the material in Faith in God Begins and Ends in Jesus to produce an additional chapter titled Toward a Faith in Jesus: My Personal Journey.

Wednesday, November 30, 2022 –

  • Streamlined the Table of Contents by moving all the front matter of the book except the Introduction to the back (Appendices). This should help the reader – especially the first-time reader – get into the meat of the book more quickly.
  • Because of the items added to the Appendices, I organized them logically rather than just listing them alphabetically as I had been doing. I also moved around some of the material from one item to the other, renamed, revised, and supplemented the Appendices as seemed appropriate. (The Appendices is listed at the bottom of the Table of Contents.)
  • Further fine-tuned the title of the book by replacing “…Repentance and Refuge” with “the Kingdom of God” so that the full title now reads Jesus Christ and the Bible: A 21st-Century Call to the Kingdom of God for Men and Their Families.

Tuesday, November 29, 2022 –

Sunday, November 27, 2022 – Made additions to Points and Proofs under “soul,” “spirit,” and “body.” Also, added paragraph to Introduction to Part Two (Faith).

Saturday, November 26, 2022 –

  • Wrote a new chapter – How Much Can History Tell Us about Jesus? – for Part Two of the book, which is about faith.
  • Revised the subtitle of the book, replacing “American Perspective” with “Call to Repentance” so that the full title now reads: Jesus Christ and the Bible: A 21-Century Call to Repentance for Men and Their Families. This doesn’t mean I’m changing the focus of the book; rather, it means that I’m making the title more closely match the focus of the book. As you may have noticed, I’ve revised the title a lot in the last few years and, even though I’m not happy with every single change I made, I do feel like the title fits the book better than ever right now.

Friday, November 25, 2022 – More revisions to the first three chapters of Part Two of the book (Faith).

Thursday, November 24, 2022 – Revised the first three chapters of Part Two of the book (Faith).

Wednesday, November 23, 2022 – Wrote a new chapter – Faith in God Begins and Ends in Jesus – for Part Two of the book, which is about faith.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022 – Made additions to Points and Proofs.

Monday, November 21, 2022 – Made additions to Points and Proofs.

Sunday, November 20, 2022 – Re-wrote the chapter Jesus…from a Strictly Human Point of View (in Part Two).

Saturday, November 19, 2022 – Made additions to Points and Proofs. Added William Tyndale and Martin Luther quotes to Bible Nuggets.

Friday, November 18, 2022 – Made additions to Points and Proofs.

Thursday, November 17, 2022 – Added entries to Gospel Nuggets, Faith Nuggets, and Points and Proofs (I dropped the longer title of “Points and Proofs to Ponder” as well as the abbreviation “P3” for the sake of simplifying).

Wednesday, November 16, 2022 – Added material to P3.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022 – Added Criticisms of Jesus to P3, and added item to Life Nuggets.

Monday, November 14, 2022 – Added material about Jesus Christ to P3.

Sunday, November 13, 2022 – Added entries to Gospel Nuggets and Life Nuggets.

Saturday, November 12, 2022 – Added material about Jesus Christ to P3.

Friday, November 11, 2022 – Added multiple Faith Nuggets.

Thursday, November 10, 2022 – Added material to P3.

Friday, November 4, 2022 – Finished cleaning up the Table of Contents. Added an entry on “Chronological Snobbery” to Faith Nuggets.

Thursday, November 3, 2022 – Slightly revised the introduction to Part Two (about faith). Cleaned up the Table of Contents, reorganizing some of the underlying content – especially creating question/comment pages for each of the eight Related Books.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022 – Added Chuck Colson quote on conspiracies to Faith Nuggets.

Sunday, October 30, 2022 – Added back A One-Year Daily Devotional to Jesus Christ to Related Books.

Wednesday, October 26, 2022 – Made slight improvements to the chapter “Everyone Is Going to Heaven.”

Monday, October 3, 2022 – Added to “Life Nuggets.”

Wednesday, September 28, 2022 – Added “Sabbath” to “Points and Proofs to Ponder (P3).”

Tuesday, September 27, 2022 – Started “Prayer Nuggets.”

Monday, September 26, 2022 – Added “ESM” and “FJOT” to “Abbreviations and Notations.”

Monday, July 25, 2022 – Added nugget to “Bible Nuggets.”

Saturday, July 23, 2022 – Simplified the BRP. I had last revised it in December 2021. I’ve changed nothing in the NT readings just in the OT readings. You’ll notice two changes: 1) I eliminated the three columns that gave the option of reading all the OT in one year or three, and 2) I reduced the OT reading to just the history of the OT so as to keep the reading rate at one chapter per day. I felt this streamlining was necessary to bring the overall reading closer to its purpose which is to focus on Christ. Without going into detail, I felt the OT section was unnecessarily burdensome and distracting. Christ is all over the OT, but you really have to be familiar with the NT to recognize that.

Sunday, July 10, 2022 – Added material on the sinfulness of man and the sinlessness of Jesus at “P3” under the entry for “Jesus Christ.” Also, added a couple of “Gospel Nuggets.”

Wednesday, July 6, 2022 – Added “Related Essays” to the Appendix after “Related Books.” Moved six chapters from Part Two (Faith) there in order to make room for more streamlined chapters I want to write.

Tuesday, July 5, 2022 – Added nugget to “Ministry Nuggets.”

Monday, July 4, 2022 – Began the chapter “Ministry Nuggets.”

Sunday, June 12, 2022 – Added entry to “Faith Nuggets.”

Friday, May 13, 2022 – Added initial entry for “Names of Christ” in Points and Proofs.

Thursday, May 12, 2022 – Added initial entry for “Figures of Christ” in Points and Proofs.

Wednesday, May 11, 2022 – Added initial entry for “Types of Christ” and added to the entry for “Roles of Christ” in Points and Proofs.

Monday, May 9, 2022 – Added additional material for entries on “VISITATION,” and “ROLES OF JESUS CHRIST” in Points and Proofs.

Sunday, May 8, 2022 – Added initial entry for “LISTEN” in Points and Proofs.

Saturday, May 7, 2022 – Added initial entry for Roles of Jesus Christ in Points and Proofs.

Monday, April 11, 2022 – Added entry for “PHARISEES” Points and Proofs. Also did more streamlining of the front matter of the book (see note from yesterday). Also polished the chapters in Part Two: “Jesus of Nazareth…from a Strictly Human Point of View” and “The Best Historical Sources for Jesus of Nazareth.”

Sunday, April 10, 2022 – Added entries for “THE HOLY SPIRIT” and “WAY” to Points and Proofs. Also did some streamlining of the front matter of the book – mainly reducing the number of items and rearranging the ones remaining to remove the cluttered look. The content within each item needs to be streamlined as well, but that’s for another day.

Sunday, April 3, 2022 – Added entry for “VISITATION” to Points and Proofs.

Friday, March 25, 2022 – Did design work on the Table of Contents, revising and adding to the four Parts.

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 – Added Andrew Jackson quote about the Bible to Bible Nuggets.

Saturday, March 19, 2022 – I am in the process of re-writing Part Two of the book (which is about faith). I’ll be writing about a half dozen new chapters to replace the existing half-dozen chapters. You can look at the Table of Contents and see that I’ve already finished the first two as of this morning. When I’m finished with all the new ones, I’ll delete the old ones (“What Do People Say about Jesus? through “What Evidence Exists for the Resurrection of Jesus?”). Therefore, if you want to retain a copy of the old chapters, now is the time to download or print them. I expect that the soonest the deletion will take place will be a week from today.

I will also at that time delete two books – Apostolic Apologetics and The New Testament from a Distance – from the list of Related Books. This is because I expect the new chapters I’m writing on faith to greatly simplify those concepts and present them in a much more succinct and far less technical way. Nevertheless, if for some reason you want to preserve that book, this is your notice to download it before I delete it.

I am not recommending that you retain copies of the material I’m deleting. I definitely think the replacement material will be superior. But I make this announcement out of respect for readers who may for their own reasons want to retain access to that form of the message.

Saturday, March 19, 2022 –

Wednesday, March 16, 2022 – Added a new chapter in Part Two. Its title is Jesus of Nazareth According to History.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022 – Added entries for “FAITH,” “BELIEVE,” and “HOPE” to Biblical Points and Proofs.

Monday, March 14, 2022 – Began work on another tool for biblical literacy: Biblical Points and Proofs. I think of it as something between a Bible concordance and a Bible dictionary. It will take me a while to fill it out to the degree I’d like, but today is a start.

Wednesday, March 9, 2022 – Added new chapter – From the Second Coming until Now…and Beyond – to Part One (“Whatever Became of Jesus Christ?”).

Wednesday, March 2, 2022 – Added “American” to the book’s sub-title (making the full title Jesus Christ and the Bible: A 21st-Century American Perspective for Men and Their Families.

Thursday, February 24, 2022 – More tinkering with the book’s title (now Jesus Christ and the Bible: A 21st-Century Perspective for Men and Their Families, having added the last five words from a previous version of the title). I want to get this right, because all the content in the book should trace to it; and, conversely, it should provide a context for every chapter in the book – if, that is, it’s to be a good title.

Sunday, February 20, 2022 – Posted a new chapter: Repent!

Thursday, February 17, 2022 – Changed the name of the Latest Comments page to Recent Interaction with Readers.

Wednesday, February 16, 2022 – Added a Latest Comments page.

Tuesday, February 1, 2022 – More tinkering with title and other front matter.

Wednesday, January 26, 2022 – Continued revising the front matter. Added a Dedication page.

Sunday, January 23, 2022 – Revised the order and structure of both the front and back matter of the book (that is, the links you see at the beginning and the end of the Table of Contents).

Friday, January 14, 2022 – More tinkering with the book’s title, cover page, and introduction.

Thursday, January 13, 2022 –

  • Changed the book’s title from “The King’s Man” to “The Kingdom of God Is Here and Now.” Left the subtitle unchanged. None of the title changes I have made over the last few years indicate a change in the content or direction of the book. I just keep searching for the best way to frame the book. Let’s see if this title and subtitle combination stick.
  • Changed the book’s introduction to conform to the new title.

Monday, January 3, 2022 – Revised the Bible Nuggets chapter.

Saturday, January 1, 2022 – Added this Update page to the top of the Table of Contents.

Question or Comment