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I’m always trying to find these. So to save me hunting, I’ll put them somewhere.

(William Perkins, chapter 7 of The Art of Prophesying, entitled “Use and Application”)

What do I notice when I read what Perkins is actually saying (as opposed to what people imagine him to be saying)? He’s saying:

I’m delighted to see that Steve Leighton, proprietor of HasBean coffee has finally managed to find a Kenyan good enough to stock. He drinks Kenyan at home, and basically will not buy one unless it has such a “wow” factor that he can’t get over how good it is.

Well, there have been no Kenyan coffees at HasBean for some time – nothing up to Steve’s standards. But at last we can buy Kenya Ragati from him. Sounds good, and I trust him – but I’ll still buy a 250g bag of green to see what I think for myself.

Thank you Mark Dever, in The Message of the Old Testament for this that I’ve never seen before:

Thanks Ros for pointing me to this which I hadn't seen before.

At times it was a real laugh-out-loud moment. At other times it was a little too close to the bone, in terms of things I've heard people I know say.

I'm finishing off preparations for a training day I'm leading on Saturday, entitled "Preaching Christ from the Old Testament".

The bookstall arrived today. The good John Telford, manager of Wesley Owen on Wigmore Street in London, was tremendously helpful in recommending titles for me and finding ones that our local Christian bookshops said they wouldn't be able to sell. Thank you John, and an excellent parcel of books it is. Shame the Griedanus is temporally unavailable.

Anyway, why did I not know of Mark Dever's The Message of the Old Testament before now? It was only published in May, so fair enough. But Mark sets out, for each Old Testament book, to print a sermon on the entire book. A brave project, but oh so helpful. So thank you Mark Dever too.

I've just stumbled across this article on paedocommunion.

http://www.paedocommunion.com/articles/lusk_for_the_childrens_sake.php

So, to remind me where to find it in future, I've put a link to it here. Excellent.

(Given he mentions post-mill, presumably if I come back far enough into the future, I will see Bible-teaching churches across the UK that welcome children in this way).

See this Comment

Note to self: It really is time to do some proper reading and thinking into preterism

Yet again, I'm sure this has been said numerous times. But I'll record it here by way of "note to self"...

Richard Pratt's book He Gave Us Stories discusses handling OT narratives. Recommend it. Part 1 of the book discusses how we approach stories - not in terms of techniques to follow, but in terms of the kind of approach we need. He only mentions Frame very occasionally, but a lot of what he says is along the lines of "Don't set this method / approach over against that method / approach, as if you must pick one or the other. You need both."

[Edit: This post originally had a lot more after this point, but I've since managed to write what I was saying more clearly. Have a look at the post immediately after (chronologically) this one. So I've removed the unclear stuff I wrote originally. Cut!]

Extremely helpful quotation.

(OK, I can't resist writing this: James reads David who quotes Barb listening to Lusk quoting Leithart)

http://davidpfield.blogspot.com/2006/09/baptism-and-covenant.html

In particular, I've never before seen the conceptual link between the covenant community / elect distinction and the creature / creator distinction. Thanks David for fishing these things out for us.

Thanks to Chris Green and Dick Lucas in their BST commentary on 2 Peter for the following paragraph. 2 Peter 2 really is frighteningly contemporary in the scenario it describes.

Having flow charted 2 Peter, the main points stand out quite clearly from the subordinate ones.

Again – just in case this is helpful for anyone, here are two summaries of 2 Peter.

Summary

Many thanks to Peter Davies, vicar at Audley for his permission to reproduce this morning’s sermon here. Very helpful, I thought, for how clearly he put things. Echoes of Rich Lusk at one point – which certainly is not a criticism!

I have to say that this familiar passage is such a shock to the system.

The BBC reports today on the Independent’s recent compilation of a British “Good List”. Not just those people who did something good, or changed things for better, but those who expressly sought to do so.

The list is interesting. Most of Britain’s religions have someone on their because of their affiliation with that religion. We have a Muslim leader, a rabbi and a Sikh leader. That affiliation qualifies their inclusion.