Late Summer Musings (8/18/2023)

Blog and Pod News and Updates:

  • New episodes of “The Future” at the Blessed Hope Podcast are coming on-line. Look for season three—covering Paul’s two Corinthians Letters—late in the Fall.

  • For those who make it through all of the episodes of season two, I’m working on a free expositional commentary on 1 & 2 Thessalonians. It will be similar to “For Freedom,” the exposition I prepared for season one on Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

  • Since several have asked, I post family and personal stuff at KR on Instragram

An Observation:

  • The loser of the next presidential election, just might be among the most important people in America’s future—we will have an orderly transition of power?

Just Finished:

I made my way through Stacy Schiff's, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, which offers the reader an interesting look into the life of someone (Sam Adams) who clearly preferred to remain in the shadows. Adams would have hated a biography such as this. Given the thin extant source material this was not an easy task, but Stacy Schiff pulls it off quite nicely.

Although Sam Adams was a “behind the scenes” sort of figure, many of America’s founding fathers (such as Thomas Jefferson and Sam’s cousin John Adams) considered Sam Adams to be central figure behind the American Revolution. He was among the first to raise principled challenges to England’s crown appointed governors overseeing the colonies (evident in Adam’s perennial struggle with Massachusetts governor Hutchinson). Adams complained that the British king and parliament knew little, and cared less, about the situation on the ground in the thirteen colonies. What mattered most to the Crown was revenue and a market for British manufactured goods.

Adams lived much of his life in near poverty. While he detested the limelight, he did as much behind the scenes as anyone to insist that colonials be treated as any other British citizens. And when this looked less and less likely, Sam Adam’s vivid pen was indeed mightier than the sword. It was Sam Adams who raised the call to contemplate independence, even if Adam’s never put it openly.

Sam Adams was also behind the reports spreading throughout the colonies regarding the Boston Massacre—even as cousin John defended the soldiers who fired upon the crowd of angry citizens whom the soldiers thought threatened them. John Adams got all but two of the soldiers acquitted. Sam Adam’s fingerprints were all over the Boston Tea Party (again, he remained behind the scenes). After the Intolerable Acts, which saw England effectively shut down Boston’s Harbor to all trade and commerce, inflicting great economic hardship and pain upon the citizenry, Sam Adams made sure the new arrived Redcoats garrisoned in Boston felt the icy stares of the Bostonians reminding them that they were unwelcome guests. Adams made sure that the other colonies (especially Pennsylvania) realized that they were next to find themselves under George’s heel.

Once the Revolution began (when Adams and John Hancock barely escaped Lexington with their lives, through the aid of Paul Revere) Adams served on countless committees and worked himself nearly to death for the Continental Congress. After the Revolution was over and independence was finally realized, Adams served as governor of Massachusetts, and lived until 1803, dying an old, worn-out, and unappreciated man.

If you are interested in the American Revolution and what led up to it, you’ll enjoy Schiff’s volume.

You also might like Sam Adam’s seasonal Octoberfest when it appears in stores each Fall.

Currently Reading: G. K. Beale, Union with the Resurrected Christ: Eschatological New Creation, and New Testament Biblical Theology (but see Harrison Perkin’s “Review” in the links below)

Recommended Links:

Some Interesting Links:

Previous Edition of “Musings: Musings for 7/28/2023

Video:

The “Big Boy” locomotive is one of the largest class of steam engines ever built. Good on the Union Pacific Railroad for restoring one of these giants along with maintaining a heritage fleet of passenger cars and sending them on tour every summer.

MusingsKim RiddlebargerSchiff on Sam Adams, Beale on the Resurrection2 Comments