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Kristi and I have tentatively set our wedding for April 10, 2011. There remains a possibility that it could be earlier, but it doesn’t look likely at this point. Please pray for us in our time apart; we are planning visits in one direction or the other every couple of months until the wedding. (Kristi was just up my way; I visit the family down there at the end of October and just after Christmas, Lord willing.)

Please also pray for Kristi’s health, as she is quite sick right now.

It’s a bit over two months since I announced my engagement to Kristi (Hays) Carman, and we’re frequently asked about a wedding date.

That date has not yet been set, due to complications I would rather not post on a public site. Nonetheless, we are fully committed to the marriage, and continue to prepare, and pray that obstacles would be removed.

I want to add that through the complications, our relationship has only grown stronger, and the opportunity for Kristi to visit me in Grande Prairie last month caused our already-stable love to bloom into something even more wonderful. We look forward eagerly to our future together, and acknowledge that only God in His infinite wisdom and power could have brought us together.

Just a note that a small Brazilian publisher has requested to translate Feed My Lambs into Portuguese and publish it.

The arrangement has not yet been finalized. Stay tuned.

On Monday, April 26, 2010, Kristi (Hays) Carman and I expressed to each other that together we were home, and it became very clear that our lives belong together, including her seven dear children whom I love with all my heart.

We do not have a date set yet, as we have only begun to deal with logistical matters, some of which are pretty complex. You can certainly pray that we may find a way to make all of this happen before the year is out. I’m not a big believer in lengthy engagements, and even less so given the distance involved and the factor of children. (If you’re interested in learning how you can pray more specifically, feel free to contact me.)

I cannot express how grateful I am to God for bringing such a wonderful woman into my life. I am humbled by my own weaknesses, and elated by His grace. He truly gives us much better than we deserve.

The Westminster California types who see themselves as defenders of Reformed orthodoxy are adamant in making the view that the Mosaic law is “a republication of the covenant of works” a sine qua non of orthodoxy on justification.

Now, it so happens that I absolutely agree that there is a close relationship between Adam and Moses, although I think it’s wrongheaded to label this in terms of “covenant of works.” Biblically, these folks simply don’t “get” the nature of either the Adamic covenant or the Mosaic.

Nonetheless, Romans 5 teaches that Torah intensifies the Sin and death state brought on by the fall. The problem for West-Cal and their allies is that the primary Israel-fall depicted in Romans is the stumbling over Christ worked out from the end of Romans 9 and on into the first part of Romans 11. And of course, that won’t do, since the whole point is to posit a contrast to the new covenant, not a parallel (what I call a relational typology between the covenants that shows a fundamental shared structure).

In the midst of all of this, there is a genuine Adam issue that is getting snowed under by the avalanche of rhetoric: many of these “defenders of orthodoxy” have completely abandoned the biblical doctrine of six day creation and a young earth. If you want to ask where to locate the continental divide that threatens to throw not only Reformed niceties, but the whole Christian enterprise into the Pacific (what a coincidence), it is right here.

Why? Because denial of the biblical chronology is an attack on the coherence of a biblical view of Adam. Just ask any evolutionist Christian to talk about Adam and Eve. There are basically three choices: deny their historicity altogether; generalize them out of existence; or arbitrarily claim that humanoids evolved and that at some point God placed His image in a sufficiently evolved pair. But even such a concession as the latter cannot satisfy anyone if we were are going to take the New Testament’s Last Adam Christology seriously – much less if we are going to take Genesis seriously. Moreover, it’s not possible for such a view to stand the test of time – it’s leaning too far down a greased slope, and carries no weight exegetically or “scientifically.” (And yes, I place “scientifically” in quotation marks quite advisedly. When science claims to arbitrate authoritatively about the distant past, it is well beyond its bounds. It is no longer science but conjecture, and ultimately faith – sans revelation.)

The bottom line is that the growing cave-in to macro-evolution is an attack on the very foundations of Christianity. If the R. Scott Clarks of the Church want us to take them seriously as defenders of orthodoxy, they could at least start with hermeneutical principles that support rather than undermine orthodox Christology. You can’t have a covenant with an ahistorical person.

Get Genesis right, and then maybe we can talk.

Meanwhile, please excuse us if we laugh at your ranting while you try to strain out gnats and force us to swallow camels.

Okay, my history in calling these things isn’t necessarily all that great, but this is the way I see it:

EASTERN

Washington vs Montreal: Caps in six.

New Jersey vs Philadelphia: Flyers upset in six.

Buffalo vs Boston: Sabres in seven.

Pittsburgh vs Ottawa: Pens in six.

WESTERN

San Jose vs Colorado: Sharks in five.

Chicago vs Nashville: Hawks in six.

Vancouver vs Los Angeles: Canucks in five.

Phoenix vs Detroit: Wings in six.

Don’t bank on any of this.

One of the things my Dad did not do early on in his preaching ministry was take up collections. Occasionally someone gave him money out of the blue, but for the most part, he simply ministered gratis. From the beginning, he formed a habit of saving up a few hundred dollars, going out preaching until the money ran out, and then going back to work.

While at a few points in his life, Dad had his own handyman business, his one recurring employer was Argyle Machine Shop in Port Alberni, BC. (I think that is where he was working when he met my mother.)

There were a lot of interesting things about his history with Argyle, but one basic one was that he never joined the union in what was ostensibly a closed shop. How he accomplished that, I’m not sure, but he was opposed to it philosophically. The union shop steward perhaps countenanced it because Dad would do tasks that his union members probably would not. Read the rest of this entry »

At long last, my extensive essay on Paul and the law, These Are Two Covenants: Reconsidering Paul on the Mosaic Law, is available!

I was sort of commissioned to write this piece back in 2004, but the book in which it was to appear fell on hard times and was not published. I later had a contract with another publisher to have it released on its own, but it fell victim to cutbacks. Knowing that I do not have present resources to publish in paperback as I did with Feed My Lambs, I decided on my first ebook-only (PDF) release.

You can get more information and learn how to purchase by going to my Pactum Reformanda Publishing web site.

life had just begun
death came in the door
walkin in the sun
why’d you eat that for?

we may be tryin here
but we are cryin tears
mmm… we’re dyin here

finally had a son
from his barren wife
are we really done
cause now he takes a knife

we may be tryin here….

kingdom’s just begun
so began to seem
then all the soldiers come
and the disciples leave

we may be tryin here….

then in our fears
behind these walls
Life appears
the Lord of all

see His wounded side
those familiar eyes
yes it’s Him all right
now glorified

so here’s our death and sin
but we live in Him
mmm… and we’ll rise again

mmm… we’re livin here….

[Written Good Friday, 2010]

Okay, fellow Christ Covenant folk – as usual, I was in a fog when I did the bulletin. The Bible study this week (tomorrow evening) is not at my place; it’s at the Soles residence.

Be there, or be sawn asunder.

Okay, it’s official. Over the past couple of weeks I have been putting together a new business site that better represents the spectrum of my creative work.

I have been operating for a little over five years under the moniker of Pactum Web Services, a title borrowed from my publishing company that I formed in order to release Feed My Lambs. But that stopped making sense over the course of time; for one thing, I’m one person, and I would rather do creative work under my own name. At least as important, I do a lot more than web development now – I have designed logos; drafted print work such as letterhead, business cards, and even lawn signs; and I’ve jumped into custom imagery such as 3D characterization.

This little venture, begun as a small side income in January 2005, has grown a bit every year. As my mother has deteriorated and construction work has become unpredictable, I have more and more sought to make this primary for my income. It would be so beneficial for Mom if I can work from home full-time. Please pray that in 2010 this can happen.

So anyway: Pactum Web Services is no more. Tim Gallant Creative is at timgallantcreative.com. Take a look, join the mailing list, become a Facebook fan….

I have a great deal more I wish to write about my father’s life, but my last two days have obviously been quite eventful for me. I do plan on adding more of his story later, but as today is the twentieth anniversary of Dad’s death, I think it is fitting to say something about that, very briefly.

A few months after I left home in 1986, my parents purchased a home in Alix, a small town near Stettler, Alberta. (Abandoned prairie towns often had houses for sale for next to nothing; my parents paid $6,000 for this house; a house we had bought in Manitoba a few years earlier had been purchased for $3,500 at $100 a month with no interest.)

Shortly thereafter, Dad began experiencing strange symptoms, including sudden loss of strength in his right hand, to the degree that he began dropping things such as cups. He also had some stuff going on in his upper shoulder / collarbone area that I at first wondered was connected to a car accident we had been in a couple of years earlier. Soon he was losing his balance and falling to the floor.

Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Jamie was dropping off Mom at her adult day program yesterday, but ultimately ended up taking her to the emergency room. There, the diagnosis was a mini-stroke (TIA).

Mom’s personal physician saw her this morning. Unlike the emergency room surgeon who obviously saw Mom in the thick of things, he doesn’t think she had a mini-stroke, after all, and apparently attributes her symptoms to her arthritis. Given what I see, I find it hard to attribute the whole thing to a dramatic turn in her arthritis; and given her history (Mom has had a number of mini-strokes over the years), I have to admit I’m partial to the emergency doctor’s opinion.

At any rate, Mom does feel better, but seems to have lost a fair amount of strength in her left side. She’ll be in the hospital a bit longer…her doctor requested a second CT scan for 10 days from now, and I’m told most people stay in the hospital in that circumstance. Which seems excessive to me; I can’t imagine that would happen if it weren’t a country with socialized medicine….

Your prayers are appreciated.

It is a common conception that marriage gives roots to a man. And I suppose that is true in certain senses (at least, if the man is worth his salt).

But if we’re talking about the taming of wandering feet, it certainly wasn’t true of my father. I recall that at some point our family did a calculation of how many moves we had made. I think it was something like 26 by the time I was twelve.

My father was no longer a hobo, but the travelling never stopped until he contracted ALS. When I was a kid, my Dad at one point figured he made about 100,000 miles a year. None by air.

I guess the moving can’t be blamed entirely on the preaching tours. It started before Dad really turned to preaching much, given the fact the preaching really heated up around 1969 (although I think he first started the year I was born)… and my sister was born in Victoria in 1964, and I was born in New Westminster in 1965, and only lived there for the first three months of my life. And in 1969 we were back in Port Alberni….

Read the rest of this entry »

Shortly after his conversion, Dad ended up on the West Coast, in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. I don’t think he had lived there before, but it became a recurring destination during my young years.

Dad settled into a church in Port Alberni; I think it was an ACOP (Apostolic Church of Pentecost) affiliate. It was there he met my mother, who was 4 ½ years his senior (although he always looked older than she did). Not sure how quickly he took a fancy to her, but I do know that when he first asked her out, her response was “Certainly not!”

Dad could be single-minded, and my mother could be naive. She boarded with an older couple from church, and somehow it came about that Dad would go over there and have Bible studies with her on a regular basis. Despite the fact that he had asked her out earlier, it somehow didn’t seem to occur to her that he may have any ulterior motives. (Has anyone else had such unusual parents?)

Needless to say, the relationship did not remain Platonic. (In fact, Dad never quoted any Socrates at all.) He finally got her to go out with him.

Even at that, though, it still remains a curiosity that he got a second date, as his first attempt was to take her to the local dump to rummage around. (Yes, you read that right.) She demanded to leave, asking, “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

If you think that’s humourous, it should be kept in mind that in married life, dump rummaging was sometimes an almost regular activity, nearly as appealing as going garage saling. (As an aside, I didn’t usually enjoy it all that much myself – and I’ve never been a garage sale hound to the degree my parents were – but on one occasion I did find an antique miniature vase that managed to net me $17, which wasn’t bad for a young kid without an allowance. Well, in the mid-1970s, anyway.)

Yes, my Dad was a regular Mel Gibson who knew just what women want.

But, for all that, she married him, even though she had long maintained she didn’t need a husband. She lived relatively modestly and took care of herself on her teacher’s salary. How a stable farmgirl from Saskatchewan who had nearly reached midlife came to say “Yes” to someone with the rootlessness, artlessness, and, well… tactlessness of my Dad is one of life’s great puzzles.

But once upon a time, it really happened.

The highway was his home, and it was mid-winter, but his Damascus Road experience – or rather, South Carolina highway experience – served my Dad with clarity: he was in the USA illegally, and needed to get back to Canada.

Not easy to face, since he did not own so much as a winter coat. But determined to do what was right, he started his northward journey. By thumb, naturally. (It was a lot easier to hitch rides in the 1950s than it is today, of course.) And witnessing to everyone who would pick him up.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am closing in on an anniversary. It arrives this coming Saturday.

On that day twenty years ago, I lost my father to a 2 ½ year battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 59 years old.

Born in Nova Scotia on January 4, 1931, my father had the calamity of being named by an illiterate mother, and so ended up with unfortunate initials: his full name was Paul Innis Gallant.

An illegitimate child raised in a cold environment, Dad was raised by a grandfather who was (to use the technical term) a tough old S.O.B. On his first day of school, my Dad got beat up and came home crying; his guardian’s response was that he better not do that again unless he wanted to face a worse whupping at home. Not surprisingly, the little guy (who topped out at 5′ 5 ½”) got toughened up pretty quickly.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, The Mighty Fed (TM) has done it again. Vanquished Andy Murray – whose time had purportedly come – in straight sets to win his 16th Grand Slam. One can’t help but think he’s going to reach 20, which seemed unthinkable. Read the rest of this entry »

Congrats to Jie Zheng and Na Li, with their respective unprecedented runs to the Aussie Open semis. Of course, no one gives them any chance against Serena and Justine… though Henin is still working through rust.

And oh yeah, congrats to TMF for 23 consecutive Grand Slam semis. Not bad.