WordPoints

Today is another birthday. They seem to come around faster nowadays. This one marks three score and two years in the world. After all this time, I’m not as wise as I’d like to be, but I’m certainly wiser than I used to be. And for all its hardship, my life really is a lot of fun. I wouldn’t trade places with anybody that I know. No one has ever been more blessed. As B. B.King likes to say, “I love the life that I live, and I live the life that I love.”

Thanks to all who have conveyed their well-wishes today. Your encouragement means more than you have any way of knowing.

These days, I have a pretty clear idea of the work that is mine to do before my time runs out. So I’d better get busy and get back to it . . .

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

I have just posted an updated version of my study of Job 19:25 – “I Know That My Redeemer Lives.” If you have ever struggled with the “problem of pain,” I hope you’ll find this study helpful.

This material grew out of my research for a lecture that I was asked to present at the 2007 Truth Magazine Lectures. Job had always been a favorite study, and I found this lecture fascinating to prepare.

The PDF is 29 pages, containing the original lecture and also the same material in the form of an outline. The PDF is free — all you have to do is download it. The link is:

http://wordpoints.com/bible-study/textual-studies/

Over the next few months, we’ll be adding other PDFs to our free downloads. We hope they’ll be useful in your Bible study.

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

TODAY I REACHED A MILESTONE. The writing project that I have set for myself involves 7 books comprising what I now call the “WordPoints Daybook Series.” These 7 books will run to a total of 2562 pages, amounting to about 1.2 million words.

WITH THE PAGES THAT I WROTE TODAY, I AM HALFWAY FINISHED!

I began in May of 1999, and so it has taken me 12 years to reach the halfway point. I hope to be finished by the time I am 70 years old in 2020, so that leaves me only 9 more years to complete the second half of the work. Thanks to the generous financial support of several congregations and individuals, I now have more time to write than I did in the first 12 years, so I believe that I can be done by 2020, Lord willing.

If I finish this work in a total of 21 years, it will have taken me as long to write these books as it took the Egyptians to build the Great Pyramids. Whew!

Well, I’d better go. I’ve got some more writing to do. :)

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

I look forward to attending the 2011 Florida College Lectures next week. I will be speaking on Thursday, February 10, at 9:00 AM in Hutchinson Auditorium on the the subject, “You Have Turned Aside (Malachi 1-2): Restoration as an Ongoing Work.” In addition to speaking, I am eager hear the other speakers as well.

My topic has been an exciting one to prepare. Restoration is a crucially important concept, and many of us have been thinking about it all of our lives. Despite the attention we have paid to it, however, I believe we have a tendency to veer off in two directions: either we suppose that no more restoration is needed (as if the Lord’s church has now been perfectly restored and will remain that way for all time to come) or in our zeal to get back closer to New Testament Christianity, we start fixing things that aren’t broken. The challenge is to CONTINUE the work of restoration without doing things that actually make the situation WORSE.

When it comes to restoration, I believe there are some things that both the “traditionalists” and the “progressives” among us need to hear, and I will try to say some of those things. Following the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, the temple was rebuilt and the worship of the Lord was reinstituted, but by Malachi’s day it was the restorers themselves who needed restoring. So I will suggest the possibility that in our day IT MAY BE WE, THE RESTORERS, WHO NEED RESTORING. It may be our own HEARTS — rather than the externals of our worship services — that need to be worked on.

If you are going to be at the lecture program, I hope that we get a chance to visit. See you there!

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com