Is the Bible Reliable?

I was fortunate to be asked to review this new series by the publishers of the Truth Project. Is the Bible Reliable? is a 10-part series that goes through archeological evidence for the historical events in the Bible starting with the patriarchs and going through the time of the early church. The series comes with a study guide for taking notes and reviewing the teaching from each session.

The lessons were academically serious with a fairly challenging vocabulary. In addition to Bible truth, there was a lot of history and archeology taught as well. Even though target audience is college students, my 11-,13- and 15-year-old boys all enjoyed watching the DVDs, and I learned a great deal. I'll be eagerly awaiting the next installment in this series. See www.TrueU.com to read more about these great resources! It has also re-whetted my appetite to visit the Holy Land and see some of these historic sites.

Thunder Dog Book Review

Thunder Dog tells the story of Michael Hingson and his guide dog, Roselle, who both escaped from the north tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. Since she is prominent on the cover, I expected to be impressed with the heroics of Roselle in this book, but instead I came away inspired with Michael and his story of growing up as a blind boy in a seeing world. I was so impressed to know he actually rode a bike all around town with no assistance. Compare this to our current day and age when many parents don't allow their seeing children ride around the block without supervision!

It was interesting to hear Michael's detailed description of his descent from the North Tower. Being blind, his perspective focused more on touch, smell and sound. Turns out that these were the senses that everyone was dealing with as most of the descent was in the dark. In reading this book, I was able to briefly enter into their experience and emotions.

As we get ready to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I found this book to be a good reminder of both the horror of the day and the hope that accompanied it.