Merry Christmas!

Christmas is truly my favorite time of the year. The happiness of the Gospel simply pours forth at this time of year more than any other. It does so so much, in fact, that people who aren’t even believers are caught up in it and can’t help but be more joyful than at any other time of the year.

In our home, as much as happiness always reigns, so much more so does it on this day. Truly, as I’ve gotten older and spend time with my family and friends, I’ve come to the realization that Christmas and all the joy of the birth of our Savior gives us a better foretaste of the feast to come than just about anything I’ve experienced in this life.

That’s what I love about it. We simply have an INCREDIBLE banquet awaiting us at the end of the tribulations of this life. I can’t wait to meet my Savior face to face and talk with Him. I yearn to meet my father’s father and hug him and enjoy the best whiskey with him and introduce him to all our friends and family. I look forward to no more tears, joy and faithfulness beyond measure. I look forward to the food and the drink and the laughter and the song and dancing.

What a happy theology we are given.

Under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness.

Well, it looks like we’re getting some attention. Some of you may have noticed, or not, but over the last day, our site has had a couple pages hacked to produce some malicious code through people’s browsers.

This sort of thing, unfortunately, is something that all sites have to be on guard about, and we’re looking into it right now. The site has been restored so that the malicious code isn’t there anymore.

If you have any concerns about this at all, please contact us here either by phone or email and we’ll let you know everything about what we know about this issue and why your information is safe with us.

Thanks for your patience, and we hope you’re having a wonderful Christmas season, and we wish you and yours a very merry Christmas!

He rules the world with grace and truth,
And makes the Nations prove
The glories of His righteousness
And wonders of His love…

My Pastor always tells us to pay close attention to old hymns because you can find some great theology in them. Such is the case with “Joy to the World.” This particular verse of this hymn is the reason I don’t participate in the ‘Christmas Wars’ and why you will never hear me decrying the commercialization of the Christmas holiday. Christmas as we celebrate it is the ultimate example of what this verse teaches.

Think about it for a minute. Christ’s dominion is such that pagan holidays have been gutted of their original meaning and filled with the things of Christ. So much so that the original pagan meanings have all but disappeared from our culture, and would be entirely forgotten, except for a handful of atheists who desperately try to use their origins in a pathetic attempt to delegitimize the Holiday.

You may be saying to yourself, “Well, our culture has forgotten the Christian meanings, too.” I say not entirely. Even then, Christ makes the Nations prove the glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love.

The cathedrals of commerce, our shopping malls and grocery stores play Christmas music for almost a month before Christmas. Shoppers are literally drenched with the praises of Christ while they engage in what amounts to preparation for extravagantly sacrificial giving to friends and family. Believers and unbelievers alike, once a year, spend what many people consider far too much, just to give it away. This in turn creates a huge wave of cash that washes around the globe creating jobs that allow people in other countries to buy food and clothing. I heard recently that most retail outlets don’t turn a profit until Black Friday, the first day of the Christmas shopping season. God teaches us about giving and provides daily bread for millions. All this because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Workaholics and greedy businesses on this one day are forced to take a Sabbath rest. (I believe that this is a foretaste of that ‘every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess’ thing mentioned in Scripture.) Families and friends are given a day to be together and enjoy each other.

The Scripture says “And from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” By the power of the Word all this is accomplished at Christmas.

I’m not bothered when businesses talk about “Happy Holidays”, we all know which holiday they are referring to. Christmas is the 800 pound gorilla on the holiday block. A Jewish friend told me that Hannukah was on par with St. Patrick’s Day. Kwanzaa is in its holiday infancy and it will take a few hundred years (if the Lord should tarry) to see if it has any legs.

I can hear the protests—“These people aren’t Christians, are materialistic, are doing it for selfish reasons, don’t understand the true meaning”, etc, etc. These things are true. Let me paraphrase the patriarch Joseph. We mean these things for whatever reason we mean them, but God means them for good. For us and our neighbors.

Every year I marvel that the whole world can’t help but participate in the celebration of the Incarnation. I am also humbled by the mighty power of the Word that brings this to pass.

Truly it is “Joy to the World.”

As we come to a close on 2007 and the shopping season for Christmas, we wanted to let you know that we’ve just now reduced the prices on all of Dr. Rosenbladt’s digital / downloadable products! If you’re one of our regulars, please make sure you stop in and look at everything we carry from Dr. Rosenbladt, including his “Gospel For Those Broken By The Church” audio and print versions, as well as his tremendous book outlines.

If you’ve purchased one of these products recently, we want you to be able to take advantage of the savings, too. Please email or call us and give us your information and we will immediately credit your account the difference of what you paid for one of Dr. Rosenbladt’s products before the price reduction.

I hope you enjoy the discount, and I hope you’re having a very merry Advent and Christmas season!

VDMA

It’s Been An Amazing 2007

Well, 2007 has certainly been an interesting year for us here at NRP. From even back in December of 2006, we have been working on the new version of our website.

As some of you may know, we used to have a simple store on a website that would produce our products on an ‘as ordered’ basis and send them out for us. It worked well in the beginning, but we’ve found we wanted to be able to offer a whole lot more than we could in that simple store.

And so began the process of working to put something together that is altogether different - not only in terms of the look and feel of the website, but even more importantly, the theology and doctrine. We and our friends have been frustrated for a long time in what a poor offering of products we have found for sale anywhere which are based on solid Reformation theology. We decided we’d put our best foot forward and start making it possible for like-minded folks to be able to get things which simply aren’t available anywhere in such a comprehensive and hand-picked catalog.

It’s been a long process and a lot of hard work, but on August 1 this year, we released the new web store with a few products for sale. Over the last few months, the comments we’ve received have been very supportive, and I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to be able to have our products make as much of a difference for others, many thirsting to hear the Gospel, as it has for ourselves.

In 2008, we’re looking forward to making even more things available on NRP that you simply won’t find anywhere else. We’ve begun to offer products by my father, Dr. Rod Rosenbladt of the White Horse Inn radio program, who has been digging up much of the work that he has produced over several decades so that it might be made available to people who may not even have known it existed. Or possibly knew about particular works by Dr. Rosenbladt, but haven’t been able to lay hands on them for a while.

We’re working even now to get these products put together and made available on our site. We’re planning on greatly growing the audio files of Dr. Rosenbladt - MP3 files of presentations and lectures that he has given in the past that aren’t as easy to find now. You may have also seen some of Dr. Rosenbladt’s digital book outlines available here, too, in PDF format as well. When his outline section is complete, you will be able to access over 150 of Dr. Rosenbladt’s outlines covering an incredibly diverse selection of titles and authors. Students especially will want to come by and see our new products available in this section and take advantage of such quality information.

Of course, in 2008, we’re also planning many more additions to our Clothing and Gifts sections. We have many new designs in the works, including some redesigns of the products that used to be available on our old website (some of you have wanted to make sure that some of those items weren’t permanently out of production).

We’ll be highlighting some of our new products below, but we want to make sure you know what we’re planning. Thank you so much for your support of us as we work to get NRP off the ground. It’s been a tough year, full of sweat and hard work, but we’re even more excited about what we’re going to be able to do in 2008.

And without your support of NRP, we would never have gotten here. As always, your feedback is crucial to us, so please stay in touch and keep letting us know what you like, what you don’t like, and what kinds of products you’ve been aching to see and haven’t found anywhere that might fit in our catalog.

We hope you are having a wonderful Advent and Christmas season, joyful beyond all measure, and that this newsletter finds you happy and content with all of the rich blessings we receive through Christ Jesus.

Under the totally sufficient imputed righteousness,

Ted R

•

Christmas Greeting Cards

We’ve finally got our first greeting card out and it is now available for purchase! In our efforts to create a line of greeting cards which you will find exclusively at NRP which focus on the good news of the Gospel, we have come up with many different concepts which we’re looking forward to making into a reality.

This Christmas card is the cornerstone of our efforts in this category. The cover art is designed to look old, a reminder of the kinds of great art we used to see in the woodcuts of centuries past.

And while the cover design celebrates the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, it keeps the cross in the background to help us not lose sight of why He came.

Stop by and pick up some of these cards before it’s too late!

The Gospel For Those Broken By The Church (MP3)

Dr. Rosenbladt gives a lecture that is second-to-none focusing on the Gospel for those who may have had their faith damaged by the church. In this 45 minute address, he focuses on what many churchgoers are facing today, the kinds of things they may be hearing which can damage faith, and delivers his trademark 200-proof Gospel throughout.

This is simply an incredible lecture by Dr. Rosenbladt - one of his best. Don’t miss it.

We also are offering this lecture in text format in a PDF file.

NRP Gift Certificates

Still wondering what kinds of gifts to buy for someone on NRP? Well, if you can’t decide, or don’t know what’s the right one, worry no longer - we now offer Gift Certificates! You write in the value of the certificate, so you can purchase one for as much or as little as you like.

The recipient of your gift will simply receive a notification in their email with your custom message letting them know to stop by NRP and pick up their favorite Reformational stuff.

•

IN THE NEWS

We’re now a featured sponsor on InternetMonk.com, Michael Spencer’s blog. We’re very excited to be able to work with Mr. Spencer in his ministry and are very thankful for all the regular visitors we see from there. We highly recommend you stop by and take a look at his website. If you’d like to know a little bit more about our sponsorship through InternetMonk.com, be sure to visit our blog on NRP where we’ve talked a little more about it.