Steve Hays ebooks 6

Led by the Shepherd has led the way to a triumphant end! This is the last of Steve Hays' ebooks, and (as Steve intimated shortly before crossing the river Jordan) one of his most personally beloved. Many thanks again to Led by the Shepherd for his fine work. I trust the Lord will reward him for faithfully shepherding Steve's work to completion. And may the Lord gather and guide on the pilgrim path each who reads this ebook so we walk it to meet in the Promised Land. SDG. (Previous batch here.)

• Pilgrim through This Barren Land (epub)
• Pilgrim through This Barren Land (pdf)

By the way, the great John Hendryx over at Monergism has done beautiful editions of each of Steve's eBooks as well. Please consider supporting him if able. Monergism has done a tremendous service for the Lord and his people over many years which continues unabated today, and the newly revamped Puritan and other eBooks look better than ever. Here is the Monergism edition of Steve's latest eBook, Pilgrim through This Barren Land.

Steve Hays ebooks 5

Thanks so very much, once again, to Led by the Shepherd for the latest batch of Steve Hays' ebooks! May the Lord richly bless Led by the Shepherd for all his work to bless others with Steve's writings. (Previous batch here.)

• Bart Ehrman (epub)
• Bart Ehrman (pdf)
• Christian Ethics (epub)
• Christian Ethics (pdf)
• Christian Supernaturalism (epub)
• Christian Supernaturalism (pdf)
• Genesis (epub)
• Genesis (pdf)
• Nihilism (epub)
• Nihilism (pdf)
• Renewing the Imagination (epub)
• Renewing the Imagination (pdf)

Steve Hays ebooks 4

Led by the Shepherd strikes again! The man is a machine - a super A. I. machine! Below is his latest amazing work on behalf of Steve. (For the previous installment, please see here: "Steve Hays ebooks 3".)

• Atheism (epub)
• Atheism (pdf)
• The Resurrection of the Body (epub)
• The Resurrection of the Body (pdf)
• Universalism (epub)
• Universalism (pdf)
• Worship in Time of Plague (epub)
• Worship in Time of Plague (pdf)

Steve Hays ebooks 3

Once again, many thanks to Led by the Shepherd for his fine work in getting out a new set of Steve's ebooks! The previous collection is here: "Steve Hays ebooks 2".

• The Apocalypse (epub)
• The Apocalypse (pdf)
• Apologetics (epub)
• Apologetics (pdf)
• Buddhism (epub)
• Buddhism (pdf)
• Faith and Science (epub)
• Faith and Science (pdf)

Steve Hays ebooks 2

Another year (or longer), another set of Steve Hays ebooks! The first set is here: "Steve Hays ebooks 1". All thanks goes to Led by the Shepherd for his awesome work.

• Biblical Calvinism (epub)
• Biblical Calvinism (pdf)
• Catholicism (epub)
• Catholicism (pdf)
• Inerrancy (epub)
• Inerrancy (pdf)
• Jesus in the Gospels (epub)
• Jesus in the Gospels (pdf)

Where dreams come true

Many thanks to Alex Toland who has made PDFs of all of Steve Hays' fiction (originally posted on Where Dreams Come True). You can download everything here. Thanks again, Alex!

Updated Recommendations For Bible Study Resources

Here's Denver Seminary's 2023 update for their Old Testament bibliography, and their updated New Testament bibliography can be found here. Steve Hays regularly updated a bibliography of his own until shortly before his death in 2020. You can find that bibliography here. One of the resources he recommended was the Best Commentaries site.

Updated Recommendations For Bible Study Resources

Denver Seminary recently posted a 2022 update to their bibliographies for the Old Testament and the New Testament. See here for Steve Hays' bibliography, which he updated shortly before his death in 2020.

Steve Hays' Work On Reformation Issues

I've written about his contributions to Christmas and Easter. With Reformation Day approaching, it's worth mentioning his contribution to Reformation issues as well.

There are far too many examples for me to link more than a small percentage of them here. But I do want to provide some examples. Here's something he wrote on Biblical passages supporting Reformed theology. He wrote similar posts responding to passages cited in support of Roman Catholic authority claims and Catholic Mariology. He also addressed changes in Catholic belief and practice over the centuries. Here's one he wrote about papal support of untraditional views of the authorship and dating of Biblical books. And here's something he wrote on Catholic miracle claims. He had a lengthy exchange with a Catholic philosopher on sola scriptura, which became an e-book. He also had many other exchanges with Catholics, reviewed Catholic books, and so forth, and you can find that material in our archives.

Much of his work on these issues has been preserved here and elsewhere. If you've benefited from that work, pass it on to other people. Link it, use the arguments, evidence, and other material Steve gave you when you have discussions with other people, or disseminate it in some other way.

Steve Hays ebooks 1

Over a year ago, I mentioned there'd be forthcoming Steve Hays ebooks. I'm terribly sorry it took such a long time! But here's the first batch:

• The Logic of Hell (epub)
• The Logic of Hell (pdf)
• The Logic of Prayer (epub)
• The Logic of Prayer (pdf)
• The Messiah of Mott Street (epub)
• The Messiah of Mott Street (pdf)
• Prophecy (epub)
• Prophecy (pdf)
• Theodicy (epub)
• Theodicy (pdf)
• Trinity & Incarnation (epub)
• Trinity & Incarnation (pdf)

Steve Hays chose most of the ebook covers as well as wrote all the prefaces shortly before his death. The prefaces are new and won't be found elsewhere.

There are a total of six ebooks in the current batch. Just quickly eyeballing it, it looks like Steve had somewhere around 50 ebooks. So there should be ~44 more ebooks to come, give or take. I don't know when the next batch will come, but it might be a while.

I must note, though, that I didn't do any of the work. Rather it was done by Led by the Shepherd - all the credit goes to him! Led by the Shepherd approached me to see if he could lend a hand and I'm so thankful he did because I've been quite busy in my personal life and I didn't have the time or energy to do the ebooks. May the Lord reward Led by the Shepherd for his faithful work to honor Steve's own work!

Finally the great John Hendryx has likewise generously hosted these ebooks along with a lot of other material by Steve Hays over on his world famous Monergism.com. Many thanks to John as well!

The Evidence For Daniel's Prophecies

Jonathan McLatchie recently wrote an article about the dating of the book of Daniel. The article makes a lot of good points and is well worth reading. He's written a lot of other good material as well, which you can find here. He also has a YouTube channel.

Steve Hays wrote a lot about Daniel and the dating of the book. There's a section in the post here that links several examples. You can find more by searching our archives. The page just linked also cites posts we've written on other issues related to prophecy more broadly, and those have some relevance to Daniel. See here, including the comments section of the thread, for other online resources on when Daniel was written. For example, Glenn Miller has written a lot about the manuscript evidence and pre-Maccabean use of Daniel.

I've done some work on the evidence for prophecies of Daniel fulfilled after the Maccabean era, meaning that the fulfillments offer evidence for Christianity even if we accept a Maccabean date for Daniel or a portion of it. You can find some examples here. The post here discusses problems with arguing that Jesus fulfilled Daniel's Seventy Weeks prophecy by natural rather than supernatural means. When a fourth kingdom arises after Greece, in the form of the Roman empire, Jesus announces the coming of a kingdom of God during the days of that empire, that kingdom becomes popular to the point of being accepted by billions of Gentiles, Jesus identifies himself as the Son of Man of Daniel 7, he dies during the sixty-ninth sabbatical cycle after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem in Nehemiah 2, that death is perceived early on as making a final atonement for sin, and the Romans go on to destroy both the city of Jerusalem and the temple, you can't explain that series of events that line up so well with Daniel's prophecies by dating the book or a portion of it to the second century B.C.

Some past correspondences with Steve Hays

A longtime Triablogue reader and a friend of Steve Hays thought some of their past email correspondences might be beneficial for others to read. He granted us permission to post these correspondences. He preferred to be anonymous so I've edited and anonymized the content. Of course, "SH" refers to Steve Hays.

Steve Hays' Contribution To Easter

"he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully" (2 Corinthians 9:6)

When Steve went through last year's Easter season, he knew he was going to die soon. You couldn't tell from looking at how productive he was.

In a post about Steve last year, I mentioned that some of my earliest memories of him come from the context of working with him on This Joyful Eastertide, an e-book about Jesus' resurrection. Some of his other e-books and many articles he wrote over the years also addressed the resurrection. And he did it in a lot of depth. He often discussed the subject in private correspondence as well. He wrote a post in 2017 summarizing how he would make a case for the resurrection. Over his lifetime, he must have written thousands of pages of material on the subject, often interacting with the latest scholarship and skepticism.

He enjoyed light and often wrote about the subject. Thinking of his legacy in the context of Easter, I'm reminded of one of the great Old Testament passages about resurrection, with its reference to stars:

"Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake…Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever." (Daniel 12:2-3)

This joyful Easter-tide,
Away with care and sorrow!
My Love, the Crucified,
Hath sprung to life this morrow.

My flesh in hope shall rest,
And for a season slumber;
Till trump from east to west,
Shall wake the dead in number.

Death’s flood hath lost his chill,
Since Jesus crossed the river:
Lover of souls, from ill
My passing soul deliver.

Had Christ, that once was slain,
Ne’er burst His three day prison,
Our faith had been in vain;
But now hath Christ arisen,
Arisen, arisen, arisen!
(George Woodward, This Joyful Easter-Tide)

"Sunrise lies beyond the setting sun. It cannot be reborn in the east unless it dies in the west. And once it dies, there's nothing left to keep us here. Only darkness remains. Unbelievers rage against the dying light. But for the saints, our light must die below to then ascend to the zenith of meridian glory. Before we rise to light everlasting, our sun must set." (Steve Hays, A Backward Providence, 21-22)

New Recommendations For Biblical Commentaries And Other Resources

Steve Hays' Old Testament and New Testament bibliography is no longer being updated, but one of the resources he recommended there is. Denver Seminary recently updated their own Old Testament and New Testament bibliographies. Steve kept his bibliography updated until close to the time of his death, and it's still a great resource. But you should supplement it with other resources that address what's come out since Steve's death. He included references to upcoming commentaries of interest, and you can supplement those recommendations with Denver Seminary's.

Steve Hays' Contribution To Christmas

I considered discussing the subject in my Christmas Resources post this year, but decided to address it separately instead. I conclude my Christmas Resources post each year with links to the Triablogue material written on Christmas issues over the past year. This was the last year in which that collection of links would include posts from Steve.

During the Christmas season of 2004, Time and Newsweek published articles against the historicity of the infancy narratives, and those articles got a poor response from Christians. Seeing what happened that year convinced me to become much more involved in doing apologetic work on Christmas issues. I've been building on what I started in 2004 every year since then. I joined the Triablogue staff in February of 2006 at Steve's invitation, which gave me a prominent platform for doing that Christmas work. He not only gave me that platform, but also frequently encouraged me in doing the work, both publicly and privately, including shortly before his death.

And he did a lot of Christmas apologetic work himself. I've linked many examples over the years in my Christmas Resources posts and elsewhere. It needs to be remembered that producing material like that cost him a lot of time, effort, reputation, and other resources. Something that only takes, say, two, five, or eleven minutes to read and is so easy to understand after he's set everything out was much harder for him to put together and maintain (answering questions, responding to objections, updating whatever needed updated, etc.). Given how few people go as deep into Christmas issues as Steve did and how few think outside the box as much as he did, it was a rare privilege and joy to work with him in that context. As I mentioned in a tribute to Steve that I wrote shortly after his death, I miss his knowledge, his wisdom, and his constant presence and persistence. As he did in other contexts, he expanded my thoughts about Christmas not only by increasing the information I had within the parameters of my thinking, but also by expanding those parameters.

He wrote a lot of good material on Christmas issues outside the context of apologetics as well. He would often write about music, including Christmas music, to which he often posted links during the Christmas season. As he mentions in his autobiography, he and his family have a history of involvement in music. For example:

The Christmas Eve [church] service left an impression of sorts. This was partly because it was the only day of the year when I was allowed to stay up so late—well past midnight. We had a family tradition of playing the Festival of Lessons and Carols, by King's College Chapel choir, before heading off to church. The Alpine clarity of the high treble descant, echoing in the ambient chapel, was mesmerizing to me. And the candlelight service at church augmented the magical mood.

That planted a lifelong fondness for King's College Chapel choir, and its repertoire. Nowadays I can watch services on my laptop. The hymns I've been hearing and singing since childhood take on greater resonance as we ourselves pass through the pilgrimage of life and faith–watching our godly relatives go ahead of us, and following in their footsteps. (25-26)

Last year, he wrote a post about singing in heaven. He'd written on the subject in a 2017 post as well. What he wrote about his Christian relatives at the conclusion of his autobiography now includes him:

For my sainted loved ones, the pain is past, the longing gone, the sorrow over, the patience requited, and the waiting rewarded. Far above the stars, where angels chime the watches of the night, they join the everlasting choir–in the tintinnabulations of a thousand-thousand bells. (85)

Daniel The Prophet

I think Steve Hays wrote more about Daniel than any of the other prophets. You can find a collection of links to a lot of Steve's material on Daniel here. The page also links many of his other posts on issues related to prophecy. The collection is far from exhaustive, though. You can search our archives for more.

"The Egyptian or Chaldaean prophets, and the other writers, should have been able accurately to tell, if at least they spoke by a divine and pure spirit, and spoke truth in all that was uttered by them; and they should have announced not only things past or present, but also those that were to come upon the world. And therefore it is proved that all others have been in error; and that we Christians alone have possessed the truth, in as much as we are taught by the Holy Spirit, who spoke in the holy prophets, and foretold all things. And, for the rest, would that in a kindly spirit you would investigate divine things - I mean the things that are spoken by the prophets - in order that, by comparing what is said by us with the utterances of the others, you may be able to discover the truth." (Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, 2:33-34)

"Let [Porphyry] explain the meaning of that rock which was hewn from the mountain without hands, and which grew to be a great mountain and filled the earth, and which smashed to pieces the fourfold image. And let him say who that Son of man is who is going to come with clouds and stand before the Ancient of Days and have bestowed upon him a kingdom which shall never come to an end, and who is going to be served by all nations, tribes, and language-groups. Porphyry ignores these things which are so very clear and maintains that the prophecy refers to the Jews, although we are well aware that they are to this very day in a state of bondage." (Jerome, Commentary On Daniel, Chapter Eleven, vv. 44-45)

Dying Well As A Christian

One of the many things to be grateful to God for in the life of Steve Hays is how well his life ended. I've written about how he was active in doing apologetics and other important work until the end and how well his life concluded in other ways. As his obituary said, "What he lived by, he died by."

A few years ago, I wrote about some similar themes in the life of T.S. Mooney. You can read those posts here and here.

All of us should periodically review our lives and ask how well we're preparing for death.

A Christian's Perseverance And Growth

Last year, I wrote about how to grow as a Christian. In addition to my own comments, the post links some remarks Steve Hays made on a related topic.

"It is hard to understand how an orthodox, evangelical, Bible-believing Christian can fail to be excited. The answers in the realm of the intellect should make us overwhelmingly excited. But more than this, we are returned to a personal relationship with the God who is there. If we are unexcited Christians, we should go back and see what is wrong." (Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1998], 190)

At ease in Zion! Where is then the cross,
The Master's cross, all pain and shame defying?
Where is the true disciple's cross and cup,
The daily conflict and the daily dying,
The fearless front of faith, the noble self-denying?

At ease in Zion! Shall no sense of shame
Arouse us from our self-indulgent dreaming?
No pity for the world? No love to Him
Who braved life's sorrow and man's disesteeming,
Us to God's light and joy by His dark death redeeming?
(Horatius Bonar, "At Ease In Zion", Hymns Of The Nativity [London, England: James Nisbet & Co., 1879], 35-36)

The four horsemen

In light of COVID, Paul had the good idea to repost this piece from Steve:

"The four horsemen of the Apocalypse" (Steve Hays)

Posted Without (Much) Comment

Phil Johnson gives his thoughts about Congregational Worship, Social Distancing, Submission to Caesar, and Obedience to God.

Hmm.  If only someone had warned about the inevitable nearly four months ago.

Oh well. C'est la vie. Que sera sera. Etwas auf Deutsch, also sieht es so aus, als hätte Luther es gesagt.