The Good Fight Links

Fair Warning

The Internet is a great thing. Is it an amazingly powerful tool for some things, less so for others, and even completely useless for a few things. But like any tool, the Internet can do a great deal of harm or good, depending on who's using it, how well they're using it, and what they're using it for.

As you surf and browse and read, remember that most things you find originated with a human, probably someone you don't know, and very possibly someone you wouldn't want to know. The Internet has a very flattening effect on the world - everyone's your neighbor, and the fact is, they're not all good people to live close to.

So read and study and search and learn, but remember - there are fruitcakes masquerading as all kinds of things, including as Christians. I don't mean this to be unkind, but to warn you. It's easy to be shocked if you don't realize what's out there. There remains only one source for Ultimate Truth - the Word of God. The rest of everything you ever read, online or not, is passing away.

Be Berean!

Links to General Religious Resources

Now you can hear the Bible read in a growing number of languages.

The Bible Study Tools (through whom we provide the Bible search link on the left) site is one of the most well-done and comprehensive sites of its kind. It contains copious online versions of commentaries, most major translations of the Bible (including the hard-to-find ASV), and many other source documents, all searchable. I don't recommend that you derive your doctrinal beliefs from the site, but it can be an invaluable aid in research and study. Highly recommended as a resource.

The History of the Restoration Movement site is an excellent collection of documents and writings of prominent leaders of the Restoration movement. Writers include Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone, Tolbert Fanning, T. W. Brents, Marshall Keeble, Moses Lard, David Lipscomb, J.D. Tant, John "Raccoon" Smith, and many ohers.

The Expository Files archive

The Guide to Early Church Documents is another impressively comprehensive site containing lots of obscure and rare writings, many searchable. It is part of the larger Internet Christian Library, another site of denominational origin but definite value as a resource on many religious topics.

Allan McNabb's Bible Study Guide is fairly extensive.

Hugh DeLong's Bible Study Materials

Gary Hunt's Bible Search Page is an extensive and interesting site.

Traces of the Kingdom is a fascinating site put together by the late Keith Sisman. In it, he details his research into the history of the churches of Christ in Great Britain and Europe prior to the American "Restoration Movement".

Ferrell Jenkins' Home Page

The In Search of Truth site looks interesting as well.

Pre- and Post-millenialism

As I embark on a study of modern Millenialism, I thought I'd again gather some links here that I found informative or useful in some way.

Calvinism

Being engaged in a study of Calvinism at the moment, I'm beginning to accumulate a group of links to very well-done sites on Calvinism, primarily apologetics and exposition sympathetic to Calvinism, which are endlessly useful for research. I will post more of these here as I get a chance.

The Grace Online Library is an excellent resource for those interested in Calvinist doctrine and theory. It's also a very well-designed site (in my opinion).

The Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics is another very extensive and well-done site.

This excellent presentation of the Westminster Confession of Faith, including a version linked with proof-texts inline, is available at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church site (yet another extensive site).

Last, but certainly not least, is Steve Rudd's 5 Point Calvinism Refuted home page, a jumping-off point to several works of his refuting the main tenets of Calvinism.

Prophecies in Daniel

I'm collecting here some links I've found in which their authors attempt a (more or less) detailed "mapping" of the series of prophecies beginning in Daniel 11 with events of the past, present, or future. Naturally, as this passage is one of the most fruitful for premillenial speculations, many of these links contain information that is heavily oriented toward a pre-millenial, apocalyptic worldview (including the accompanying warnings of impending doom). Caveat emptor, so to speak. At any rate, some of them are useful, and the rest are at least entertaining, or so I hope.

Let's begin with a link to Calvin's weighty exegesis of Daniel. Scholarly, and typical of Calvin's writing, if not as dense and theoretical as his more abstract work.

Here's one entitled Daniel 11 - Antiochus and Antichrist Revisited. The author, David Guzik, does a fairly good and succinct job first establishing the controversy over the date of the writing of Daniel 11. Then he writes a nicely succinct overview of the events up through verse 35. However, at that point he moves into pre-millenial mode, claiming that the focus shifts to a "future fulfillment" at verse 36, and ends his account by speculating that the king of the North "may be Russia". *sigh*

This page, Prophecy Fulfilled, is by Dale DePriest, but most of the content is attributed to one Philip Mauro, (possibly from The Seventy Weeks and the Great Tribulation). I don't know either of these gentlemen, but I found this one to be generally the most persuasive and coherent explanation of the entire chapter that I found in my search so far.

History Pre-Written in Daniel 11 is another that would probably have to fall in the "comic relief" section. It begins with a serious-sounding indictment of "historically uneducated Christians". Unfortunately, it finishes a page or two later by amply demonstrating what this means, as the author is finally reduced to guessing that "maybe" the United States will be the "King of the South", and reporting a theory his grandfather had on verse 40. Ah, well.