God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

William Cowper wrote about this verse:

Immediately I received the strength to believe it, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel. . . Unless the Almighty arm had been under me, I think I should have died with gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my voice choked with transport; I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and wonder.

~ Gilbert Thomas, William Cowper and the Eighteenth Century, p. 132

(see Foundations for Full Assurance a message by John Piper.)

Thine and Thine only, I shall ever be,
To Thy praise with all the saints eternally.
There to praise Thee and Thee only,
        Lord of all Grace.
In glory soon to see Thee ever face to face.

After telling you about QuickVerse 7 and "free" software, let me tell you about something that is really free and seems to be really nice.

e-Sword Home - the best free Bible study software for Windows

This seems to be nicely developed software and very well thought out (from a laymen's perspecitive, if that is the right terminology).

I downloaded about every module offered and I ended up withover 600MG. But that was everything.

Of course the website has the details, but let me give you some notes:

• Bibles
• ESV
• KJV
• KJV with Strong's Numbers and Voice, Tense and Mood
• Greek
• Hebrew
• etc.
• Commentaries
• Barnes
• Clark
• Darby
• Gill
• Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
• Keil and Delitzsch
• etc.
• Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
• Websters 1828
• BDB Hebrew Definitions
• Easton
• International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
• etc.
• Graphics
• American Bible Society Maps
• Classic Bible Maps
• Son Light Bible Atlas
• etc.
• Devotions
• and other extra modules

There is nice tutorial that is on the website and probably included in the Help File. I think the biggest module I downloaded was 17MG.

So, if you have the time and the patience, this is an excellent rescource for Christians. And it is all free.

So guess who called me? None other than Simon and Rebecca Baum. It was really good to hear from them. It has been a long while. They are doing very well. In fact, they are going on vacation.

In other news, I played for a wedding today. It was very nice. And I manged well enough. I haven't been feeling well lately, so God has supplied grace as always. I am most thankful that the auditorium was cool today for the service. During the rehearsal (which was way too long), it was very hot. I could hardly breathe, and I really thought I was going to have leave. It was cooler outside in the 91 degree weather. But really, it was a nice ceremony.

In other news, since I like to go out of chronological order: Wednesday night at our prayer meeting a small group sang. Between the 7 of us we manged four-part (mixed) harmony. Now, for a church as small as ours it was a feat. Praise God. And I am looking forward to more singing in harmony -- literally. I thank God once again, for bringing musicians to the assembly. I've been waiting...hmm...wow. I think this has been on my prayer list for 10 years.

I'm going back to Duke in the middle of September. Pray, pray, pray that they will schedule the trial. God's will be done.

One last thing...I got my CD today. My "free" CD. It works beautifully, although I had a little trouble installing it over the intranet.
I am refering to this CD.
I have used QuickVerse for years and years, so I was very excited to be getting 7 (not even their latest version, but), I've been using 3 for all this time. Plus, all these books. Now, I know some of this stuff you can get right off the internet. But I really like having it right there on my computer. And so far it seems very nice. I really love the language tools (Greek, Hebrew lexicons, Strong's, voice, tense, mood, etc.).

The first CD is "free" in that you have to pay for shipping, which is $7ish. You can purchase other cds too. Plus, if you get the "free" CD you can get other "free" offers that last up two 2 years.

So far, this seems like a good deal, even if you only get the "free" ones.

Those of you who use Firefox might be interesting in this extension.

It adds a toolbar that allows you to search Bible Gateway. The toolbar seems to work okay, and it allows you to set your prefered translation and whether or not to open the search in a new window.

I have so much opportunity...and I waste it so often. I don't want to be like that.

I went out this morning for a bike ride and decided to take cameras.
Psalm 1 was going through my head a lot of the time I was down by the lake. It was beautiful.

See more photos here.

Here is my lovely kitty. Vicious...man-eating...did I mention the roaring? Okay, who am I kidding. He was yawning.

I just got back from seeing M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. It was very good.

Better than Signs and Unbreakable, and I'm leaning towards better than The Sixth Sense too, but I haven't decided about that one.

Okay. That's enough. Not saying another word. Unless you e-mail me.

I know I shouldn't just post a link to an interesting article with harsh words for Fundamentalism without commenting on it. Nevertheless, I am going to. Is this an endorsement of the entire article? No. But I do believe it has some good thoughts. Very good. It isn't too long. I hope you can read it. I will try to post some thoughts on it soon.

Fundamentalism and Biblical Interpretation