CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS
SERIES
OCTOBER 1998 (Revised and Enlarged, Feb. 1999,
extended
September, October and November 1999, January 2000)
1998, ISBN 0 9587235 8 3
"IN PRAISE OF CHRIST JESUS"
Ø
This coverage is dated at January 2000.
Ø Since that time, to
March 2005, the set has been extended from 22 to 102 volumes with over 25,000 pages and 10.5
million words. For detail on this more recent datum, please click here. For the sake of history, we’ll
leave this earlier version intact at this point.
INTRODUCTION 2000
AD
THESE TWENTY TWO
VOLUMES of some 5600 pages,
ARE DEDICATED
to
THAT INCOMPARABLE PERSON WHO IS GOD AS
MAN,
while now the Second Millenium
since He first came, is drawing near to its completion, as duly recognised by the date! So much is said of "the millenium", but of WHAT ?
Cast from about the date of His birth, it is a formal recognition of Him, who
has cast two millenia between us and the judgment, so
far; and by the signals and the contours of history, coming just as He said,
there is little time left.
from all who have ever lived as people
on this planet.
Here His claims are shown
authentic, indispensable, and agreeable to the necessities of logic as nothing
else is, as well as to the health of the spirit of man. When He is met in
truth, then the character of His compassion, love, grace and the grandeur of
His depth who came from eternity in heaven to contempt on earth, to perform His
mercy, is felt, learned, experienced and creates worship. This is just. He deserves it. None else does,
all others lacking the specifics which make it
apt and appropriate to worship.
·
"Praise" is not some specially
cool theological term. It means what it says. Think! IS there ANYONE who EVER
showed the entire purity of life, as well as compassion enough actually to bear
sin, selection enough to bear it for those who seek the vital means that Jesus
Christ offers; with power enough never to
fail, grace enough never to want to do so and knowledge enough to predict the
whole course of the development, or anti-development of the world, each in its
category. This He did in the context of the word of God, written, He the word
of God eternal, and alive.
·
The written word, He used as a
champion uses his instrument! He dashed to pieces the ornery obstructionism of
His opponents, adding freely to it as the Son of the Speaker, healed sickness,
broke death and came back to declare the triumph.
·
Life without Him is as dead as the eye of an infant to beauty.
Truth without Him is meaningless. Life in and through Him is all it was
intended to be, placed in truth, kept in grace, maintained in His heart, known
in His mind and sustained by His Spirit. All this and much more is here. THE
REASON WHY IS DEVELOPED, reason for faith, so that you see that not only is His
word true, and His living word the Truth; but why nothing else can so much as
stand, or if you like, get on its mark to start the race to be authenticated.
All other options are shown invalid.
This work
is written chiefly
1) to show the glory of
the Lord who made us, past all perfection and creating a standard for it; and
with this, to focus His glory on earth, where and when He came, His finished
work and His perpetual power to do precisely what He has said.
2) to help God's children to be fortified, alert in avoidance of tricks, traps and snares,
aided in Bible Studies, devotion,
faithfulness and the love of God.
3) to assist the doubting, the wandering, the mutely puzzled, the tired and the weary,
the fearful and the conditioned, to a better way, in One more glorious than all creation,
who made it, and makes yet one more creation, every time a sinner finds the salvation which
is in Him! Other creation is past; but
not this...
4) to refresh the pilgrims and warn the
lost, stir the slipping and reach the young and earnest minds which seek, while
their spirits soar without wings, or sink without bottom.
THE LIST OF THE TWENTY TWO
(Numbers are
Hyper-links)
1-3.The Shadow of a Mighty Rock -
a trilogy specialising in system, to show the certainty that God Almighty is, has spoken to mankind, and that this speech to the race is the Bible.
4.That Magnificent Rock
a large volume specialising in Creation, the meaning of life, models, the Gospel, Allegories, Logic, Christian and secular education, realism about the latter, and the rebuttal of assault on the Faith, overturning the assailant.
5. A Spiritual Potpourri
covering many things, it is highly specialised in Creation, Eldership, Gender matters. It defines life in broadest terms, explores the wonder of believing, provides poetry on the spirit of our Age, its thrust and the Lord's counter-thrust, the invisible church, the nature of freedom, the spiritual pilgrimage and sorts of follies which disguise the passports of non-Christians, who linger where they do not belong, in contrast with the authentic, Biblicallly defined mode of travel, as on the highway of holiness (Isaiah 35). Finally, it looks at the second coming of Christ, and the nature of the Biblical expectation.
6. Predestination and Freewill -
a University Thesis adapted for this page, it shows that not only is predestination a delightful doctrine, without which there would be a wandering way, but that the Biblical presentation in this area, alone, and necessarily, can stand in all wisdom, philosophy and religion. There is an enormous thrust of Christian Apologetics in this field.
7.Biblical Blessings -
a coverage of some major blessings
which the saint of God should appropriate with pleasure, and use with profit
for the
8. Barbs,Arrows and Balms - a large work covering just what its title suggests.
9. The Kingdom of Heaven ... A Spread of topics, focussing the grace of God, the Kingdom and many related matters in Christian Life.
10. A Question of Gifts - a short but carefully disciplined Biblical presentation in the area of charismatics, gifts, guidance, eldership and vision.
11.The Other News -
a collection of actual news items which specialised in the OTHER approach to that of the world in many interesting and even arresting topics, which remain in substantial need of address. Where is the kingdom of heaven in the matters chosen, and what is the Biblical picture; for the world is ALWAYS in papers and on TV, on the Web putting its worst foot forward (for it has nothing but the worst), and it is time we saw its TOPICS of interest, with the sublime light of God shed on them, with a new perspective.
12.Questions and Answers -
a work with much in the format of dialogue, moving to interpret topics from baptism of fire, of water, music in church, eternal life and basic questions and queries which may attract the minds of those who think.
13. Repent or Perish -
has a title drawn directly from the lips of Christ Jesus, and its punch is derived from exposure of the simple Biblical confrontation and dilemma facing those who waver, wander and merely hope.
14.The Biblical Workman -
a careful analysis of Biblical passages which includes the Jews, Israel, Jerusalem, millenium and a whole garden to add to the famous Dutch "tulip" mnemonic for core Biblical teaching. It packs a punch to the listless, enshrining dead dogmatics without the light of the Bible to make them live, in merely dogmatised lives. The Bible is the resource which is beyond all creeds, and it is not so much the failure of simple basics which is in view, but the failure to have enough of them, padding out this or that aspect, instead of following the whole counsel of God in all things.
From the conscientious approach to the BIBLE FIRST, it is seen that moderation is often the path which is nearest, that extremes often go over the edge past the word of God, but that it is no mere matter of the middle-of-the-road, but of seeing the actual Biblical path from which so many, and so often, diverge, whether with Pharisaic, Sadducaic or Herodian noises: that is, adding, subtracting or just changing the focus, relative to the word of God.
Details on the trilogy, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, and the whole series as a Christian apologetic instrument, are available in separate sections of Library, by hyper-link. This serves as first acquaintance.
15.Scoop of the Universe. This conveniently collects together the many News Items which have been presented since the completion of THE OTHER NEWS.
Swooping down into the field of action, history obeys the command of the One who does not thereby diminish man's responsibility, but increases it; for man's inventions are his own, but God's interventions are the evidence of His mastery, who having invented freedom within the limits of creaturely status, is neither dazzled nor confused by its often witless exercise by the sinful race which, in these very terms of power and prescience, He invites once and for all, before the last Act, to Himself in Jesus Christ.
16. Joyful Jottings. This is a series, often but not always of smaller, perhaps more casual contributions to Christian Apologetics. It ranges from devotional exercises, with apologetic application and implication, to News, even Sport and Politics, at the level of Christian witness and concern. It keynote is joy in the midst of practical realities, knowing who has the Key, even He for whom the future is no unknown, but both predicted and sovereignly attended.
For more
detail on this latest book, see the Preface, found at the hyperlink
destination, for 16, in this section.
17. THE INDEX VOLUME
This provides around 160 pages of items, in four listings, referring
to scriptural verses used within the trilogy, , and major
ones used in the Rest
18 BENEVOLVENT BRIGHTNESS OR BROTHY BANE ?
The career of questing, the destinies that loom, that coasts of pilgrimage and the histories unfolding. News and needs, developments and deeds as the last vessels, final features and phases of our Age unfurl their sails.
19 STEPPING OUT FOR CHRIST
Out of pollution into the pure mountain air of truth, respondent in the light of the Lord. What is to be left behind, what is to be sought, what won, what is commanded ? Purgation, purification, empowerment and departure from the detritus of this world, its cultural clamminess and semi-automatic thought controls, to transformation in the service of the Lord of both this and the next.
20 WAKE UP WORLD! YOUR CREATOR IS COMING ...
Impending events are considered, the approaching consummation: with a composite stress extending back to creation, in a review of the correlation between the two, the dwindling of the results of the former, the arresting approach of the latter.
21 is at this point,
still in process, and is -
SPIRITUAL REFRESHINGS FOR
THE DIGITAL MILLENIUM
22 LEAD US NOT INTO EDUCATIONAL TEMPTATION ... (published January 2000, ISBN 0 9577461 8 0 ).
The topic here is education,
State indoctrination, Governmental creation of religion and the perilous
possibility, to be consummated in due time (II Thessalonians 2:4ff.), of
exposing to something like force, in a tide of coercive circumstances, a
humanistic, but by no means secular religion, where the facilities of God, are
blindly groped for, in the abundance of darkness. It focusses
the little less than amazing case of the State of