SourceFlix Productions has put together an excellent 3 minute video interviewing five biblical archaeologists on site in Israel. Here are some of their answers to the question: “Is the Bible relevant to archaeology?”

“You can’t do archaeology in Israel without the Bible.” (Dr. Aren Maier)

“Serious scholars, even if they’re not believers, even if they do not think this is a sacred text, still consider it to be history, because things match up so well … As it’s coming together, there isn’t anything to contradict or anything to make me wary of the testimony of Scripture.” (Dr. Steven Ortiz)

“I can’t ignore the Bible because the Bible is our main text relating to the periods that we excavate … I need some texts to refer to, and the Bible is, of course, the main one.” (Dr. Amihai Mazar)

“You cannot exclude the Bible from archaeology in this part of the country, in this particular period. You can, but then you are missing a very, very important tool … And you are missing not only this, then you are dealing with pots and pans and bones and dust. You lose the soul.” (Dr. Amnon Ben Tor)

(Note: Dr. Gabriel Barkay is also interviewed.)

There is more on the video. If you’ve got three minutes, I encourage you to visit SourceFlix and listen to these men talk on site about their work in archaeology and the Bible.

HT: BiblePlaces Blog

The 2007 Perseid meteor shower will peak this Sunday night, August 12. Depending on light and weather conditions, you should be able to see 90-100 meteors per hour during the late hours of the night. This year’s Perseids coinciding with the new moon should yield especially spectacular results.

“It’s going to be a great show,” said Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. “The Moon is new on August 12, which means no moonlight, dark skies and plenty of meteors.”

Here are some suggestions from Space.com for best viewing:

1. Find a comfortable spot with a clear view of the northeast horizon, away from local lights. A dark rural location is best.
2. Lie back on a blanket or lounge chair and scan the entire sky. In the late evening, starting around 9 p.m. local time, sharp-eyed observers might see “earthgrazing” meteors that skim the northeast horizon.
3. Later and during the overnight hours, the shooting stars will be higher in the sky as Perseus rises.
4. Telescopes and binoculars are no help, as the meteors move too swiftly and are best observed with the naked eye.

Of additional interest:

• Top 10 Perseid Meteor Shower Facts

On Saturday, 8/4/2007, we (Rose and I, and our three boys) took a family trip to New York City. Our main reason for going was to see Larry Norman in concert on Saturday night. But we had never been to the city before, so we decided to spend a day in the city together before the concert. I didn’t know what I would think of New York, but I really liked the city and had a great time.

Saturday morning we made the three hour drive from our home in Agawam, MA to New York City. We arrived in Manhattan around 11:00 a.m. and drove down the Hudson Parkway to the south end. There we drove past the site of the World Trade Center. It was very sobering to go past the site of this great tragedy and to remember the events that took place here in 2001.

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Well, we’re off for a couple days. I was hoping to get our trip to New York up on the blog before I left, but it will have to wait until later, maybe Friday or Saturday. In the meantime, feel free to visit the Archives and explore some of the back pages of the blog. Or even better, turn off your computer and go outside and enjoy God’s good creation! See you in a few days.

Yesterday I was really tired preaching. No, not tired of preaching, just tired while preaching.

I was working off of about three hours of sleep after getting back from an all day trip to New York City with the family. It was a great trip with a lot of fun experiences capped off by a Larry Norman concert in the evening. But we didn’t get home until close to 2:30 a.m., which is very late for us as a family.

Anyways, I have never preached on so little sleep before, so I was wondering what might happen. I was hoping I wouldn’t fall asleep in the middle of my own sermon.

The funny thing was that I had a feeling that I was preaching too long. This was a Communion Sunday, which meant we would need an additional ten minutes at the end of the service to celebrate Communion together. I don’t like to look at the clock while I am preaching, and I usually have a pretty good sense of the time. I felt the sermon was dragging on forever, so I began to edit on my feet. I preach from a manuscript, so at first I clipped a sentence or two here, then a paragraph, eventually whole sections!

Finally, I got to the end of the message, called for the deacons to come forward to serve Communion, and looked at the clock. Our service runs from 10:00 to 11:00, and I fully expected the clock to read 11:05 or even 11:10. The time was . . . only 10:53!

So as it turns out, I actually preach shorter on less sleep. I wonder if this means I will start getting middle-of-the-night crank phone calls from people in the church to keep me up late Saturday nights?

Related posts:

• I Am Tired of Preaching
• Family Trip to New York
• Larry Norman Concert in New York City (1)
• Larry Norman Concert in New York City (2)
• Clock Watching at Grace Community Church
• 5 things to say if you’re caught sleeping at work
• Go Soox!

Yesterday’s message was called Praying for Your Life, taken from Psalm 27:1-14. The main idea of the message was that praying for your life in a crisis builds upon a life of daily, persevering prayer. I was really tired and hope I made sense! Here is the outline of the message:

1) Praying in times of crisis (verses 1-3)
    – Remember that the Lord is your strength (1)
    – Realize that your enemies will stumble and fall (2)
    – Know that God is bigger than any problem you face (3)

2) Praying for daily strength (verses 4-10)
    – Come to God with singleness of desire (4-6)
    – Apply your heart to seeking God’s face (7-10)

3) Persevering in prayer for a lifetime (verses 11-14)
    – Commit yourself to going God’s way (11-12)
    – Wait to see the goodness of the Lord (13-14)

Note: To read the complete message, go to the Sermons tab at the top of the blog.

This week marks the anniversary of the atomic bombings that took place at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9 in 1945. In remembrance of these events, here is a poem I wrote called “The Creative Bomb.”

“THE CREATIVE BOMB” – by Ray Fowler

The two-faced god of Janus peered
Intently to the right
And on his left perceived a boy
Who craved creative flight.

With powers of flux unknown to man,
And often blamed as chance,
He touched the lad’s still waiting brain
And watched the neurons dance.

Thoughts ravaged his right hemisphere,
Then, quiet as a theft,
Stole fast across the cortex
To be stored within the left.

Opposing forces caught in time
Wreaked havoc on his brain.
Janusian thoughts negated rhyme;
The contrapuntal reigned.

Destruction, death and severed souls
He could not vindicate.
Aha! Why could he not invent
A bomb that would create?

In chemistry and medicine
We have our antidotes;
The harmful drug may save a life
When taken in small dose.

So why not have a bomb that could
Explode a song of joy,
Shatter new frontiers of thought,
Create, and not destroy?

If dropped on Nagasaki such
A bomb would surely find
That space-time point of harmony
Before the dreadful grind.

No mushroom cloud of measured rage,
Instead our bomb revised
Would bloom a rose of beauty far
Above the watchful skies.

“But stop!” they say. “Review, and let
Your noble neurons rest.
You’ve failed to yield a product –
Creation’s acid test.

The bomb you praise does not exist;
You ponder it in vain.
Perhaps you are the product of
An overactive brain!”

“I have no bomb to give to you
And know not where to start.
And so with failure weighing deep
And heavy on my heart,

I humbly submit to you
(Correct me, if I’m wrong)
This simple poem, now become
One big, creative bomb.”

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Click here for more poems by Ray Fowler.

I have now added a Writings page to the blog. You can find the Writings tab at the top of the blog just to the right of the Stats tab. This page will collect various writings that I have produced over the years – articles, poems, songs, etc. (Maybe I will even get around to posting my doctoral thesis here some day – a guaranteed cure for insomnia!) Right now I just have a few poems posted, but this is an area of the blog that I would like to develop in the future.

Popular Mechanics lists the 10 worst disasters of the century (occurring in the United States):

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Keith Green was a singer/songwriter who had a great impact on me as a young Christian. I still enjoy listening to his music today. Sadly, he was killed in a plane accident back in 1982 along with two of his children and a missionary family. However, the Christian Post reports that some new Keith Green music will be released in the coming months.

Melody [Keith's wife] has kept every musical piece that Keith created while still alive. Because of new technologies that have come out, she felt that it was the right time to release the tunes.

EMI/Sparrow Records producers are planning to release some music that has never been heard by the public. This includes an iTunes release set to come out in August and more material in the next year, according to Bryan Ward, director of artist development with EMI Christian Music Group (CMG).

Melody hopes that the music will have a positive impact towards culture and society. She feels that there is a need for his compositions today.

Sounds great to me. I am definitely ready for some new Keith Green music! (HT: MMI)

Related post: New Keith Green Live CD/DVD

Countdown:
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Here it is – the first glimpse of footage from “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” movie. Actor Ben Barnes, who plays Caspian in the upcoming film, talks about the movie and his role. The film is scheduled for release on May 16, 2008. Only 272 days to go! (The trailer is about one minute long.)

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Our heartfelt prayers go out to those who suffered loss in the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississipi River in Minneapolis. The bridge is close by Bethlehem Baptist Church where John Piper pastors. At the Desiring God blog, John Piper shares about his bedtime devotions last night with his wife and 11-year-old daughter following the collapse of the bridge. It is a good read with some serious theological reflection mixed in with a personal glimpse into a family at prayer.