Vision

Long ago, my dad read a short biography of Menno Simons during our traditional evening readings.  It’s been years, so I thought I would go and read it again and rediscover the man who’s name is imprinted on the Anabaptist denomination that I’ve chosen to be a part of.

Some highlights from his life that surprised or impressed me:

•  Menno, like Martin Luther was a Roman Catholic priest for 12 years. He was actually influenced a fair bit by the writings of Martin Luther who was his contemporary in Germany (Menno was a village priest in the country of Holland).
• Once Menno discovered the truth of what the Bible taught, he waited a full five years before abandoning his duties as priest. He still performed mass, infant baptisms, last rites, and all the other Roman Catholic Church initiated traditions during this time.
• He was influential in dissuading people from joining the cult-like, sword-wielding Munsterite rebellion, showing from the teachings of Jesus that violence and war is not for the New Testament Christian.
• Unlike Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin and other well-known Reformers, Menno lived on the run and was never very well-to-do as he fled the persecution that followed just behind him.
• Though he was pursued so fiercely, Menno was never caught, and died a natural death. On the other hand, Ulrich Zwingli who was never persecuted ending up dying a violent death on the battle field of Kappel, Switzerland, fighting the Roman Catholics who he was trying to win to Christ?

I’m somewhat ambivalent about naming a local church or denomination after a man, nevertheless I appreciate the contribution Menno Simons made to the Christian Church.

I’ve been using some new Bible study software called Bible Desktop. It is written in Java, which for you non-techies simply means it can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux with a few minor differences in the way it works on each. For Bibles, dictionaries, commentaries, glossaries, etc., it uses modules from the Sword project, which means you have a whole library of books to choose from and which download and install easily from within the interface.

Some of the features I really like:

1. The user interface consists of one pane with fluidly resizeable  internal panes that contain the Bible on the left with a right sidebar containing a list of study helps that you’ve downloaded, an index of whatever resource you’ve selected, and of course the text of that resource.
2. The search feature, once the resource has been indexed is lightning fast.
3. In the English KJV version of the Bible, there are multiple “layers” you can turn on and off, such as linked Strong’s numbers, so while you are studying, you can just click on the number beside a word and the full text from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance shows up in the sidebar. I was never one to, out of curiosity, go look up a word in that behemoth of a book in our family library. This allows me to do just that in a fraction of a second. I have been amazed at the different meanings behind identical English words that in Greek or Hebrew have very different meanings. In English I have often had to stare at the text numbly for a second, scratching my head, and finally figuring out the meaning, by looking at the context around that particular difficult word. Needless to say, I love this feature!
4. There are many other features that are great too such as changing the font and size of the text, determining whether you want to line break on verses or paragraphs, tabbed view of open Bibles, a daily reading schedule and more.
5. The best one is the fact that this resource is free!

And you’ve gotta love the logo:

Sitting here in the Harrisburg International airport waiting for my flight home, I’ve been thinking back over the week at Charity Youth Bible School and wondering what aspects of it I should write about. Spiritually, it has been close to, if not the most challenging week of my life. I studied the Bible along with 569 other students in amazing depth and sincerity through over 20 hours of life changing preaching and hours of prayer and small group sharing. One of the most encouraging aspects of the experience was to meet so many other Christian youth who are passionate about Jesus Christ and His work in their lives, churches and mission outreaches.

I don’t plan to write a whole lot about the details, though I will be sharing these with my home church and friends. The messages that were preached are available to listen to from Charity Gospel Tape Ministry’s website HERE.

If you are a young person and you get the opportunity, I would highly recommend going next year!