two-age website now two-age.biblicaltheology.org

Before my wife and I jet off to Tanzania in January, I thought I'd spend a little time to get the site contents of (formerly) two-age.org back online for anyone interested.

http://two-age.biblicaltheology.org/
"Biblical Theology and Redemptive Historical Hermeneutics" (for fans of Geerhardus Vos, Gaffin, Ridderbos, etc.)

The website content hasn't been updated since 2006, so it is not very NPP or FV aware. Despite its age and shortcomings, I've heard it still has one of most comprehensive recommended reading lists available for Biblical Theology. So I hope it remains useful for you.

http://two-age.biblicaltheology.org/recommended_reading.htm
http://two-age.biblicaltheology.org/recommended_works/commentaries.htm

In Christ,
Eric Pyle
http://ericlovesallison.org/Wycliffe/

wedding & work update, change of address

Twelve Days to go!
Wow, only twelve days until Allison and I get married! We invite all of our friends to join us in "counting down the days" by visiting our wedding webpage. There you can read a little bit about each of us and how God brought us together.(http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/AllisonBryant&EricPyle)We'd love for you to sign our Guestbook and RSVP if you're planning to come celebrate in Norman, OK. There is also information on the time, directions, and gift registries on the Details for Our Guests page.

Where has the time gone? Here have been some of the things occupying our time in the final weeks before our marriage: marriage counseling sessions and homework, engagement photos, gathering addresses for invitations, bridal showers, ordering my suit and having the pants hemmed, finding ties for the men to match the bridesmaid gowns, organizing the wedding music, ceremony and vows, picking out wedding bands, opening gifts, and writing thank-you notes. We still need to take care of many other details! Please keep us in your prayers!

Honeymoon Plans
Many of you have been curious about our honeymoon. We're going to Greece! Three nights in Santorini and three nights in Athens. Allison has already been trying to learn modern Greek through audio lessons. She really does have a knack for picking up languages. I'm impressed (and glad she'll be tagging along with me)!

My New Address: Eric Pyle, 602 Madison Ct, Duncanville, TX 75137-2537. Our first few months we will be house-sitting close to where I work. This is a tremendous blessing for us as we start our new life together financially and try to figure out a budget that will work for us in the upcoming year. I'm now in the process of moving. Allison has already found a roommate to take her place where she's renting. We covet your prayers for our new life together!

My Office Space
Our next corporate release of Fieldworks is expected to be available at the beginning of 2009. Our software development has moved from bug fixing to allowing some final improvements. Most programmers enjoy making improvements because you get the opportunity to make software do something that has never been done before. Wycliffe Bible Translators provide direct feedback for how we can make their work more effective and efficient. It's exciting to empower missionaries to do things with their knowledge of languages that they've never been able to do before with computers!

We recently heard the news that Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx), our Dictionary & Grammar tool, is now being employed for at least 24 language projects in Western Africa. Would you believe those 24 languages account for around 5 million people who have Scripture needs?

FLEx astounds some old friends. Kim and Tony, friends of mine from high school, are now Southern Baptist missionaries in Southeast Asia. Listen to Kim's response when she recently encountered our software: "I just saw your FieldWorks Language Explorer in action!! There is an SIL guy that is going to be moving [here] soon, and he is looking for a house. He just turned on his computer to show us how it works. It is amazing! [My husband] Tony is even getting ready to download it now. It was so neat to hear him talk about the program and then realize that it is the program you have been working on!!" -- Kim

Company Matching Gifts Program Now Available! Many of you may be able to obtain forms from your employer for matching your donations to charitable organizations. If you're interested in submitting a form to match your contribution to my ministry, please contact me for more information!

Yours eternally in Christ,
Eric D. Pyle

Webpage : http://www.opcNorman.org/Wycliffe/EricPyle/
Personal Address : 602 Madison Ct, Duncanville, TX 75137 (469-222-2865)
Wycliffe Bible Translators : P.O. Box 628200, Orlando, Florida 32862-8200

the big day is coming!

A Match Made Under Heaven, July 5 2008, San Antonio, TX
Tonight, Allison and I sat down beside the Riverwalk. The stars had emerged to watch us from beneath the evening clouds after a calm summer shower. Allison, in the dark, only saw their usual twinkling performance. The stars, however, were winking at me knowingly. “I am so thankful God has brought us together. I think we would serve well together for His kingdom. I don’t want to imagine a future where that is not so.” Then I knelt. Taking her hand, I kissed it. “I love you.” With a gaze and a smile, Allison echoed the sentiment. It was our first exchange of these words. Reaching into my pocket, I retrieved for her the star I had chosen for her. “Allison Haley Bryant, will you marry me?”

Can you believe I'm getting married!? Thank you all for your perseverance in prayer for me all these years. God in the wisdom of His timing and love is wonderfully answering your prayers, far beyond what I ever imagined to think and ask for. Please pray for the planning and provisions for our wedding and future life together. If you’d like a wedding invitation, please let me know, especially if you’re out of town. The wedding will be in Norman, OK on Saturday, Nov 29. Stay tuned for further details!

Allison and I both recently
graduated with Master’s degrees

incredible

[new rankings on imdb.com]

[rank, rating, title(year), votes]
1. 9.4 The Dark Knight (2008) 115,340
2. 9.1 The Godfather (1972) 293,920
3. 9.1The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 344,106
4. 9.0 The Godfather: Part II (1974) 167,872
5. 8.9 Buono, il brutto, il cattivo., Il (1966) 98,403
6. 8.9 Pulp Fiction (1994)295,321

"if you had thirty-two dollars..."

You've heard people ask, "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" Us missionaries apparently have our own "all too true" version of that question. Last week at a fiesta dinner for Ben Mikesell's thirty-second birthday someone posed the question, "If you had $32, what would you buy Ben for his birthday?"

One thoughtfully suggested he'd mail-order a Russian bride. (I wondered if that would cover the cost of shipping.) I imagined the book, Calvinism for Dummies. Ben actually seemed interested. Some said, "Forget Ben...I'd buy myself groceries" or "I'd buy some gas to drive back home."

I am graduating!

Dear friends,

Graduation announcement
I am happy to announce that I will be flying to Philadelphia to graduate on Thursday, May 22 from Westminster Theological Seminary with a Master of Arts in Religion (General Studies). Commencement details are online: http://www.wts.edu/stayinformed/view.html?id=79 . Many of you know that I have been taking seminary classes part-time in Dallas since the summer of '99. It's hard to believe I've been a graduate student for nine years! "So, what's next?" My seminary education fits well with my current "career track" of assisting others with Bible translation efforts, even by software development. I don't have any major changes planned for the near future, but I am now at a point where I can consider furthering my education in linguistics in hopes to be of greater assistance. Stay tuned and in prayer!

Tool promises to yield more natural sounding Bible translations
This year I helped to implement a promising new discourse charting tool for translators. "The discourse charting tool will have a massive impact on the way we analyze texts. It's easy to use and it quickly shows us what we need to see. It will give us greater access to understanding what constitutes naturalness in a given language and that knowledge will have direct benefits in the smoothness and naturalness of our Bible translations." -- Danny Foster, Uganda-Tanzania Branch Training Coordinator (http://www.thetask.net)

New partners in Bible translation
Since the beginning of the year, I've been blessed to receive six new partners who are coming alongside me. In addition to the new partners, I've received a number of one-time gifts. Both are an encouragement as I continue to pray for God to provide the remaining $1000/mo for my monthly support quota so I may devote full time to writing software that assists Bible translation projects worldwide. The software I help develop is already making impact around the world, but there's still plenty of work to be done! Would you join with us in our hope to see the Bible written for millions of people that need it? http://www.wycliffe.org/Donate/MissionaryMinistries.aspx

Yours in His faithfulness,
Eric D. Pyle

ps. Did you know? Shopping at Kroger can help train future Wycliffe missionaries in linguistics! Follow the link below and print off the bar code for the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics so it may be scanned and registered with your Kroger Plus card: http://www.krogerneighbortoneighbor.com/pdf/10000080506.pdf (Only valid for stores in Texas and Louisiana.)

Webpage: http://www.opcNorman.org/Wycliffe/EricPyle/
Personal Address: 1520 Bradford St, Irving, TX 75061 (469-222-2865)
Wycliffe Bible Translators: P.O. Box 628200, Orlando, Florida 32862-8200

The Sabbath was made for Man (Isaiah 56)

Yahweh promises blessing to the man who keeps justice and does righteousness. Here, as in Mark 8:1-6, keeping justice and doing righteousness takes a surprising Sabbath-keeping shape. It shouldn't have been all that surprising. Deut 5:12-15 prescribes the Sabbath as being also for the foreigners among Israel. The shalom of the land was to be a catholic experience. Remembering the Sabbath meant rehearsing Israel's own outcast identity, and God's redemptive exodus activity: "you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm." So, the primary public holiness sign for God's elect priesthood for the nations leaves the transgression of partiality without excuse.

When the Pharisees read Isaiah's, "blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil," they saw this as a divine right to cross their hands against anyone not sitting on their hands, especially when it came to touching someone with an unclean hand. The holiness laws maintaining ceremonial cleanness were read to promote partiality on a liberal basis, a virtue of zealousness for Yahweh.

Both Isaiah and Jesus overturn the table-manners of that brand of Sabbath keeping, especially on the dawn of the new creation. Keeping one's hand from doing just acts of covenant mercy effectively breaks the Spirit of "keeping his hand from doing any evil"...this partiality and mercy-forgetting has ironic murderous (not to mention Sabbath-breaking) consequences for Israel. Thus not only would the hard-heartedness of authorities lead to the oversighted death of just, covenantally-merciful men (Is 57:1), in the fullness of time, it would lead to the Pharisees' purposeful plot to kill God's son, Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 3:6, cf. James 2:1-12). (The Apostle Paul, in Romans 2, makes much the same argument with respect to what it means to be truly circumcised in the new creation: law-keeping was intended from the beginning to take a catholic-circumcision shape, signalling God's future inclusion of Gentiles via the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise in Christ. To zealously apply 'circumcision' in ignorance of the universal communal implications of the promise of Christ to address the universal problem of sin was to effectively render oneself uncircumsized. Rom 2.23-29)

In contrast to their elitist table manners, Yahweh promises a special place in his house and sets his Sabbath-feast table for the outcasts (vss 3-7). He demands a liberal application of full acceptance to all Sabbath-keepers, those tempted to feel the inevitability of a loss of covenant communion, especially in the face of an overwhelming deluge of wrath to come. Isaiah exhorts Israel to speak Yahweh's justice for outcasts in Israel, comforting such ones that Yahweh will provide room in His house for covenant-keeping foreigners and eunuchs. To those who were considered (even to themselves) to be less than human, fated to be cut off from among his people, to them Yahweh promises "blessed is the man." (cf. Matthew 5:3ff).

In stubborn ignorance to such a suprising vision of welcome and impending wrath, Israel's leaders had prepared their own table to celebrate a counterfeit Sabbath feast (vss 56.10-12). They counterfeit Sabbath rest with their "love of slumber." Their love of wine likewise counterfeits the Sabbath sign of the enjoyment of the completion of havest labors from a blessed land. Their laborless loss of distinction between today and tomorrow profanes the holiness of the Sabbath, separated from the other six days, which signified that the eternal Sabbath rest was yet to come for God's people.

In effort to preserve their own names and territories, the leaders of Israel, appointed as shepherds, rendered themselves to be less than human. Isaiah likens them to barkless dogs, blind to the coming judgment upon the land because of their Sabbath-breaking injustices and foolishness. Israel, who had been called to be the "blessed man," God's image, ruling over and on behalf of the nations is going to be given over to the ravaging of power-hungry nations, whom they now resemble; their countfeit Sabbath feast only renders them fit food for the beasts (vs. 9).