Free Audiobook: Knowing God by J.I. Packer

This offer is valid for the month of January, 2012.  Click on the link above to be directed to the download page on christianaudio.com.

You most certainly will want to get your copy of this classic work.  Once you go through this audiobook, you will most certainly have a better grasp and knowledge of God.  This is not a stuffy theology book.  I recommend it for anybody and everybody.

If you would like to read rather than listen, you can get a new hardback edition either from Monergism Books ($17.80) or from Amazon ($17.82).  Other discounts and versions (paperback, Kindle, etc) are available.

Some of you may have clicked over to read the latest post on this site and wondered if you landed in the right place.  Instead of seeing the Pulpit 2 Pew header, you instead saw the new FrankGantz.com on the top of your page.  Here are a few of the reasons this has happened.

1. More people visit the blog who are unfamiliar with my personal story of moving from pastoral ministry to life as a Christian who sits in the pew with everybody else on Sundays.  Thus, some began their relationship with this blog confused about the author and the blog.  That is never good.  If you are not familiar and want to be, you can check out my 5 post autobiography.  You will especially want to focus on parts 3 through 5.

Continue Reading…

Great theologically based music can really feed our souls. In the Bible, we have the record of David’s songs in the book of Psalms. They cover times when he was on the mountain tops as well as in the valleys. Most of us have learned to relish in God as we read these Psalms. My hope is that the music that I feature from time to time will also cause us to relish in our great God.

At the top of this website is a new category, “Music.” Each time I add particular resource, that resource will be added to the Music page. That means you can go to that page and reflect on God through music. You are welcome to enjoy each resource. You will also find a way to connect with the source of the music in case you are interested in purchasing a CD or download. P2P gets nothing from this, but you will be supporting these Christian artists.

This first resource is the latest CD by Matthew Smith, Watch the Rising Day. Each song from the CD is here. Enjoy.

Congratulations to Joe Carr.  Joe is the winner of the first ever book giveaway at Pulpit 2 Pew.  Joe will receive a copy of David Jeremiah’s book, Angels.

If you want your own copy, then click on the book image to the left and order it from Amazon at a reduced price.  Thanks Joe for being an email subscriber.

Tomorrow marks the unofficial beginning to the new school year.  President Obama will be delivering a speech at Wakefield High School in Virginia Beach, VA encouraging students to gain the most of their educational opportunities.  Schools across the country have been encouraged to allow students the opportunity to watch the speech in classrooms across the nation.

For some reason, conservatives and some evangelicals have decided to make this an opportunity to attack the President.  They are acting in a near-sighted manner that is not consistent with either American nor Christian values.

President George W. Bush did the same thing when he was president.  Nobody seemed to object to this.  Now the Obama opponents have made this a point of skirmish with the current president.

Are evangelicals really objecting to a message to work and study hard?  Have they forgotten that we are to honor our leaders?

I have neither heard nor read any argument that opposition to the President’s speech is based on any biblical or moral stance.  Instead, the comments are beyond flawed and demagoguery at its worst.

Obama’s speech has been compared to propaganda tactics used by Hitler and Stalin.  Oklahoma Senate Republican, Steve Russell, has compared the speech to tactics used by the totalitarian regimes of North Korea and Saddam’s Iraq.  Give me a break.  Just because two people do something similar is not a valid reason to link the American President with ruthless dictators.

Others have described the speech as an attempt to promote worship of the President.  That is the closest argument made that has any moral foundation.  The problem is that it is way off base.

The problem is that conservatives and evangelicals come off looking petty.  Evangelicals have no sense of their own history.  Most Christians have lived in non-Christian cultures and political systems.  They still managed to honor their leaders.  Why can’t Christian parents encourage their children to pray for the president (a biblical command) that he might lead with wisdom from on high?

I am delighted to see John Piper sound a different note.  He wrote that he has been “stunned” and “embarrassed” by the opposition.  His article is titled, “I Hope My Daughter Hears the President’s Speech.”  Thank you, John Piper, for these words.  I hope my grandson hears the speech, too.

Christians – encourage your children to listen attentively.  Take the opportunity to reinforce the message of working and studying hard.  Lead your children in praying that the President would be governed by God’s wisdom.  This is a much better option than what is making the news now.

I have expanded my blog portfolio by adding “Frank Analysis” at www.frankgantz.com.  It will be an opinion based blog on sports, entertainment, travel, etc.

Check it out.

In the top right hand corner of each page on my blog is this orange button with the heading “Subscribe to RSS.”  You may be wondering what this is all about.  This article will help you to understand and use the RSS button.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (some say it stands for Rich Site Summary).  Many internet surfers will book mark pages to return to in the future.  The problem with this is that readers do not know if any new information has been posted since their last visit.  With RSS you are notified when new content is available.  The advantage is that you can read blogs in less time.  Rather than you searching for new information, it comes to you.

So here is how it works.  Websites that are updated often (especially blogs) will normally have an orange RSS button on the page.  When you click on the RSS button, you will be taken to a page to select an RSS program or reader to use for reading the updates.  There are thousands of readers out there.  I use Google Reader to keep up with the blogs and news sites that I follow.

When you first go to the Google Reader page, you will need to register.  It does not cost anything.  Basically you provide an e-mail address as your log-in and create a password.  After that you only have to log-in.  There is even a button to check if you want to remain logged in on your personal computer.  This will allow you go straight to your articles whenever you open up Google Reader.

Once in Google Reader, it will place any new posts from the websites to which you are subscribed.  If you follow multiple websites, you can even organize them into categories.

So go ahead — put your mouse over the RSS button on the top right hand corner of this page.  If you use or want to use Google Reader, then click on the Google icon to add your subscription to your Google Reader.

If you still have questions, please feel free to e-mail me at fgantz12@yahoo.com.com.  Happy reading.

Recently I was listening to a preacher as he was presented the case against legalistic religion. His point was that being right with God is due solely to the grace of God. Nobody has a reason to boast in his or her own righteousness — because we have none.

As he was making the point that each person is a sinner in need of God’s grace, he delineated his point something like this:

I am a sinner.
You are a sinner.
Every pastor is a sinner.
Every priest is a sinner.
The Pope is a sinner.
The President is a sinner.

At this point, a gentleman sitting near me commented, “Especially him (the President).”

I was stunned. Do I agree that the President is a sinner? Yes, emphatically. Yet he is a sinner just like every one of us. The cry of our heart should not be, “Especially him” about anybody. It should be “Especially ME!!!” I am a sinner without any claim on anything of God or from God. It is only by his grace that I still live and breath.

This gentleman was inadvertently making the point that legalism leads to boasting. Perhaps he assumed that since our President does not check off all of the social/political boxes that he himself does, that he is especially a sinner. What we need to learn is that even if we check off all of the boxes, we still have the status of being a sinner. Especially ME!!!