Should Jesus remain the "Son of God" in Arabic Bibles?

Last week I spent hours enjoying tea and conversation with a muslim friend. He had many questions. Frankly, I often did not know how to answer. For I could sense how differently my north african friend would respond to the standard "evangelical answers". His most pressing question was clearly: "How can the Bible say that Jesus is the Son of God?" For a muslim, "Son of God" implies God had sex with Mary.

Christianity Today has an article by Collin Hansen, on the "Son of God" controversy among arabic world bible translators. I highly recommend the article. You can find it here.

After reading that 7 page article, you'll be interesting to follow the debate on Ed Stetzer's blog. To wrap it all up, you can than read the excellent article by a man named "Rod".

Tim Keller About The Lord of the Rings

Just read this quote regarding JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, in a recent interview of Timothy Keller.

Tolkien has helped my imagination. He was a devout Catholic—and I am not. However, because he brought his faith to bear into narrative, fiction, and literature, his Christianity—which was pretty ‘mere Christianity’ (understanding of human sin, need for grace, need for redemption)—fleshed out in fiction, has been an inspiration to me.

What I mean by inspiration is this: he gives me a way of grasping glory that would otherwise be hard for me to appreciate. Glory, weightiness, beauty, excellence, brilliance, virtue—he shows them to you in some of his characters.

When people ask: how often have you read Lord of the Rings?, the answer is: I actually never stop. I’m always in it.

(Via)

Before I pick up my Bible in earnest

C. S. Lewis:

For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await others.  I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

B. B. Warfield:

Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. What! Than ten hours over your books on your knees?”

HT: JT

A Brilliant Quote on Preaching

 I'm preaching at my church this week. I love this quote. I don't think my manuscript is even good enough to qualify as "pitiful":

“How utterly dependant we are on the Holy Spirit in the work of preaching! All genuine preaching is rooted in a feeling of desperation. You wake up on Sunday morning and you can smell the smoke of hell on one side and feel the crisp breezes of heaven on the other. You go to your study and look down at your pitiful manuscript, and you kneel down and cry, "O God, this is so weak! Who do I think I am? What audacity to think that in three hours my words will be the odor of death to death and the fragrance of life to life (2 Cor 2:16). My God, who is sufficient for these things?"

John Piper in  The Supremacy of God in Preaching

Apple is REALLY killing it

Just thought I would pass on the news. 36% of people planning on buying a laptop in the next 90 days, are planning on a mac.

Is Apple ever going to stop? I must admit, I wish Apple wasn't so popular. I liked the good old day, when owning an iBook was cool. Now it's just "normal".

This Blog Know How to Write

Every once in a while I read the blog 6 Year Med. The woman writes very insightful posts that choke me up.

Here is a recent post about her last year. This is good.

To All My Football Friends…

In Paris for the Weekend

A friend of mine is getting baptized tomorrow. She became a believer during the summer of 2009. I love baptisms. Its a sign of life: God still saves today. Grace is evident in her life.

For a little piece of French culture, I live two hours away from Paris. For a Frenchman, that means that traveling to Paris is a rare and special occasion. Two hours is a long trip (I'm exaggerating slightly). In anycase, French certainly don't live on the road like Americans.

By the way, I love Paris!

Maybe this blog has a few more breaths in it…

Perhaps by popular demand (thanks Mark for your email) this blog will remain open a while longer. We'll see…
Anyhow, if you're looking for a laugh, a smile or a little bit of French trivia, I invite you to read my little brother's blog: Sarcastic Frenchie. I've been enjoying it!

This Blog is Closed!!!

Hello everyone!

This blog is closed (until I change my mind). After several weeks (or was that months?) of not blogging in English, I figured I should just give it up altogether.

If you're a family friend and want to still stay in touch, I invite you to visit the family blog. The most recent post was full of wedding photos!


If you're an ex-OMer, just remember, life is short, eternity is long and we'll be catching up soon.
If you're just a mysterious guest in search of truth and still don't know the blogs of Justin Taylor and Tim Challies, just google them. They have the greatest blogs!

Finally, a little word about what's up on my side of the Atlantic. I'm nearly done with school… praying that my classmates would repent and turn to Jesus… and will resume regular blogging in French at http://tout2dieu.wordpress.com
In the USA, everyone these days is blogging. In fact, I often wonder who is actually meeting people in real life and doing the work of a good evangelist. It's quite the opposite in France. There are very few Christian blogs/sites and I think I can contribute to the growth of the church here in my small way. Recently, I type "inerrancy of the Bible" in google.fr and my blog still came up 5th (more than a year after having written on the subject)!
I'll also try to write 1 or 2 articles a month on the Apologetics blog of some friends: RaisonsdeCroire.

If you just want to write, I would love to hear from you! Just email me at: tout2dieu@gmail.com

In His grace,

Stéphane K