Review: The Daniel Fast by Susan Gregory

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Ryan Gustason

As a fellow blogger, I appreciate Ms. Gregory’s approach to writing. She is the author for The Daniel Fast blog which contains many tips and recipes for conducting a Daniel fast. The first chapter of the book is devoted towards getting to know who she (the author) is. She describes her motivation for writing the book, and her relationship with Jesus Christ.

Chapter two introduces the concept of fasting. It highlights pericopes of scripture which describe fasting and lists three types of fasting as follows:

Absolute fast- no food or drink
Normal fast- only water is consumed
Partial fast- where only certain foods and drink are consumed

Fasting is for a purpose. Not simply as a diet fad, but rather as a way to mold yourself and draw closer to God. Fasting does nothing to change God. It is all a discipline to help us get our flesh under control and focus more keenly on the Spirit of God and drawing closer to Jesus.

Chapter three goes into the life of Daniel and the choices he had to make while living in captivity. He could have chose the easy route but instead decided to stay focused on serving the God he knew to be true! The next chapter follows with how a Daniel fast will affect change in our spirit, body and soul. The next is a detailed listing of 5 steps to success! This concluded the first pat of the book.

The second part of the book includes a food list of recommended foods to purchase while doing the Daniel Fast. It also contains 115 pages of recipes with the last portion of the book devoted to a meal planner and frequently asked questions.

The recipe and food list take up the majority of the book and what I found to be the most useful portion of the book. The book is paperback and constructed of typical quality paper. If you are planning on using the book extensively in the kitchen, I’d recommend either laminating the pages or making a photocopy of the recipe and using that (be sure to shred afterwards to avoid copyright lawsuits)!

Anyway, my review gives it a thumbs up for background info on the Daniel fast and for the recipes.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com® book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Review: Accordance 9.5.1

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Ryan Gustason

Accordance 9.5.1, a review.

Accordance is a Bible study program designed for the Macintosh operating system. The specifications for running Accordance 9.5.1 are as follows:

Accordance 9 is fully Intel native and optimized for Mac OS 10.6 and up. It also runs on PowerPC Macs and OS 10.4 and up (users with earlier Mac OS X or OS 7-9 can install the Classic version).

With the advent of Accordance 9.3, OakTree has created an enhanced user interface designed for new users to immediately jump into using Accordance. It is called the Assistant Window.

The Read section allows the user to type in a verse or book of the bible and open a window displaying the passage in the user’s preferred bible. Alternatively, it also allows the user to open a window displaying devotional readings to choose from.

The next section, Find, allows the user to locate word or words in a wide range of selections wether it be the bible, or User add-on modules and texts.

The last section, labeled Learn, includes hyperlinks to Oaktree’s various resources for learning how to use the software including the built in help and the Accordance Forum.

The assistant window is one step in improving Accordance’s usability for the average experienced Mac user who is new to Accordance. Accordance has been notoriously known as non-intuitive for the average user. It relies on keyboard commands and menu options often buried in menues.

The main window is known as a workspace.

This is a screenshot of the main view of Accordance. The focus is on the search features. At the top of the screen you’ll see a search bar with various options to allow you to search words or verses. The search algorithm is extremely fast. In fact it is the fastest search algorithm of any bible software I have tested wether PC or Mac.

Checking the interlinear checkbox immediately opens the English, Greek (Hebrew) the Strong’s number and the parts of speech the word belongs to. This is very handy for conducting word studies or verse studies. Triple clicking a word will open the default lexicon and display details of the underlining Greek (Hebrew) word in a separate workspace.

Although this is a very powerful search program, (for example right click and choose search for… lemma, root, inflected or tag in any appropriately tagged or marked bible such as the Novum Testamentum Graece (Tischendorf)), it is sometimes unclear on how to search through all texts and modules you might have purchased, or user created modules you might have made using Accordance’s built in user module authoring system. To search through everything in your whole entire library, for example, you must go to Amplify>Search>Search all…

The resource pallette as shown on the left provides an interesting way to access your resources. By clicking the appropriate icon you have access to purchased English, Hebrew, Greek and graphical texts and modules. One of my favorite resources and one I personally think should be included in the base software package is the timeline module. A screen capture is shown on the right of the timeline module. It is a graphical representation of the history of bible people and kingdoms. Not only that, but it also displays the timelines of contemporary histories of nations such as the Chinese and the Egyptian dynasties. Another way cool feature of the timeline is the ability to add your own events to the timeline. There are also alternative timelines labeled ‘conservative’ and ‘critical’ which will shift the dates based on which-ever timeline you believe to be more correct.

The program is well designed with a very active user community who enjoy sharing tips and hints on the Accordance Forums. If you get stuck with a particular problem, more than likely either Helen, Dr. J or one of the other community users will be able to answer your questions or point you in the right direction. My username there is fireandsalt, which will probably be no surprise to those who know me as I tend to use that username all over the internet on various bible, theology, and techie forums.

All in all I give this the following ratings:

Review: A year with Jesus

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Ryan Gustason

A year with Jesus by R.P. Nettelhorst is a devotional designed to take you through Jesus’ words in one year’s time with a one to two paragraph devotional to reflect upon. It is a paperback edition that I am reviewing, and it feels very flimsy and the paper appears to be low quality and will more than likely yellow after a short time. I am not at all impressed by the physical quality of the book, binding included. I have seen paperback or softcover books that were of much higher quality than this edition printed by Thomas Nelson.

As to the actual content, the book is divided into several sectional / topical headings which divide the 365 day journey thematically. They are as follows:

Love and Hate
Truths and Lies
Arrogance and Humility
Friends and Enemies
Belief and Disbelief
Patience and Impatience
Deserved and Undeserved
Good and Evil
Fidelity and Treachery
Life and Death

Following this table of contents, a one page introduction to the devotional is presented stating the author’s desire to get the reader involved with a loving relationship with Jesus Christ. After this short introduction, the devotional series begins using Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and so on to Day 365.

A pericope of scripture is written, displaying verses which contain Jesus’ words. These selections are taken from various translations such as HCSB, NKJV, CEV, NRSV, MSG et.al. The typeset is easy enough to read but the low quality of the paper makes this devotional feel cheap. Following that is a few paragraphs explaining the verses and how you can apply it to your life. Pretty standard devotional stuff here.

The one plus I found in this devotional is the research into various terms. For example, Day 3 describes the Latin phrase “lex talionis” or law of the tooth which describes some of the social customs that Semitic peoples practiced during the time of Abram and others continuing in the Law of Moses to Jesus’ time.

A short biography of the author is found here. The author’s website www.nettelhorst.com is a blog containing some interesting articles.

All-in-all I would not recommend this devotional. Save your money and buy something a little higher quality. Again, I am very disappointed in Thomas Nelson Publishers for putting a product out that is this low quality. I expected better from them.

I received an evaluation copy of this book for review purposes by booksneeze.com.

Review: Babylon’s Falling by William G. Collins

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Ryan Gustason

Babylon’s Falling by William G. Collins

This book was a pretty easy read. It flowed well and the story was engaging. If you’ve ever read one of the ‘Sons of Encouragement’ books by Francine Rivers, this story has the same feel. The author does a good job using relevant historical facts found outside the biblical narrative to help flesh out the story of Daniel and the captivity of Judah by Babylon and subsequently by Cyrus and Darius of the Persian Empire.

The story begins at the fall of Jerusalem and the forced dispersion of the Judaeans. The southern kingdom’s king and his royal household are hauled off as slaves. During the months it took to reach their new home of Babylon with it’s famous hanging gardens Daniyyel (as it’s spelled in the book) learns the language of his captors befriending a captain of the guard in the meantime. He soon proves to be a valuable asset and works his way into a position as an apprentice in a school for seers and advisers to king Nebuchadnezzar

Collins then beautifully illustrates life in Babylon and the eventual progression of Daniyyel’s career to the governor of all of Babylon answerable to the king alone. The book traces through the first six chapters of the book of Daniel as found in the Old Testament. He uses creative license well, using much from what is known of the culture of Babylon and later the Persia-Mede Empire. All of the dreams mentioned in the book of Daniel are retold in Babylon’s Falling as well as the tests and triumphs of the fiery furnace and the den of Lions.

If I had one critique of the book, it would be the editing. There were a couple instances of grammatical error such as a repeated word which was overlooked by the editing team. I’m not sure if this was because I received the book before the general populous for the purposes of reviewing Babylon’s Falling, or if it was just a shoddy job of editing. Either way, the editing leaves some to be desired. The creativeness of recasting the story of Daniel was flawless however and made for an enjoyable read and I recommend it to those who enjoy this sort of historical fiction.

I received an evaluation copy of the Kindle edition of this book for review purposes by booksneeze.com.

Review: iShine Bible

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Ryan Gustason

The iShine bible is a good bible for young teens 10-13 years old with the caveat that it does not promote oneness doctrinal beliefs. It has several full color glossy inserts designed to help young adults connect to God. For example, one such insert states “you are valued by God”, followed by the subtitle “What difference does it make that God values you?” It then proceeds with a bulleted list describing what makes you special in God’s eyes. There are also stylized pics of youth doing various activities such as playing guitar. There is also commentary and subject articles such as articles on “Is there really a hell?” and Humility: “Why should I admit it when I make a mistake?” All of these are written on normal paper, black and white text with the exception of the three full color glossy inserts. The bible is bound in imitation leather and feels durable enough for the use of Tweens, which again, is the target demographic for this bible.

While I don’t agree with some of the theological underpinnings of the book’s commentary / articles (too emergentesque for my tastes), the articles are easy to read and have obviously been written to cater to the target audience. A lot of what is said in the commentary is that bland general vanilla flavor of Christianity which promotes such novelty items such as WWJD trinkets and fish sign bumper stickers. Obviously this bible was not geared towards theologians, but do we really have to dumb Christianity down that much for our youth to consider it palatable? And if so, what has Christianity become other than a fraternity or sorority house to pass the time.

There is a boy and a girl edition of the bible, blue and pink respectively. For a better feel of what to look forward to from the inserts, check out ishinelive.com and you’ll see pretty quickly the general style and flavor of the book.

The NLT is the English translation this book comes with. While I am a fan of the KJV, I can see the need for these simpler translations. If your looking for a good textually accurate and literal translation, go with a NKJV or KJV bible. I am also somewhat of a fan of the ESV as well, but I prefer the Stefanus Greek edition over NA27 or JPS critical versions of the Greek that are the basis of most modern bibles.

I received a complimentary copy of the book for review purposes from Tyndale House.