Archive for August, 2007
Max Lucado. 3:16: The Numbers of Hope. Thomas Nelson, 2007. 240 pp.
It’s a match made in heaven (or that’s what Thomas Nelson Publishers must believe). In 3:16: The Numbers of Hope, one of the world’s best-known and best-loved Christian authors takes on the world’s best-known and best-loved Bible verse. Max Lucado has authored over 50 books, with sales exceeding an incredible 50 million copies in print. His books are regularly on the New York Times list of bestsellers and continually dominate the Christian charts (where he has had up to eleven books present at one time). 3:16 is as close as we could expect for a sure-thing bestseller. An unparalleled marketing campaign will all but guarantee it. It is no coincidence that the book will release on 9/11, allowing people to contrast numbers of despair with numbers of hope. The book will also stand as the centerpiece of a major global ministry initiative launching on Palm Sunday, 3/16/08. This book is going to make a splash.
Reviewed by Tim Challies.
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R. C. Sproul. A Taste of Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity. Reformation Trust, 2006. 173 pp.
Though he has written more than 60 books for a variety of publishing companies, A Taste of Heaven is Sproul’s first for Reformation Trust, Ligonier Ministries’ own publishing imprint. Subtitled “Worship in the Light of Eternity,” this book “examines the key components of prayer, praise, and sacrifices that God gave to His people in the Old Testament.” It turns to the Old Testament to find there principles that can direct our worship even in this New Testament era. Of course Sproul is insistent that we cannot simply import Old Testament worship into the church today or we might be guilty of missing the shadow for the reality, the elements that pointed forward to Christ rather than Christ Himself. . . .
Reviewed by Tim Challies.
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N. T. Wright. Evil and the Justice of God. IVP, 2006. 176 pp.
Woody Allen famously pointed out that the problem is not that God doesn’t exist, but that he is an underachiever. The philosophical tendency for at least the past three centuries has been to assume that the human estimation of God is more significant than the divine estimation of humanity. And “evil” names the extent to which, in human estimation, God’s purposes have invariably been found wanting.
In a lucid treatment of this perennial conundrum, N. T. Wright argues that pondering the “problem of evil” is an activity that displaces us from the business of implementing the healing, restorative justice of God. The problem of evil is philosophically located in theoretical analysis of an inherently distant God—that is, the deist God of the Enlightenment. . . .
Reviewed by Dr. Samuel Wells, Duke Divinity School.
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J. I. Packer. Knowing God. IVP, 1993. 286 pp.
More than one of the books we have offered in the first year of our Book of the Month program have been treatments of the most basic issue of theology—the nature and character of the God we worship. To conclude the year, we are returning to the same theme again. Knowing God is a new classic of Christian literature, a book dedicated to the principle that intimate knowledge of the Creator is the lynch pin of true religion, and that salvation consists in knowing Him.
Packer has become one of the more controversial theologians of our day. Actions taken at the end of his career have rightly led the orthodox to read him with great caution, but while caution is warranted, it would be unwise to categorically disregard a book which has been of great value to the cause of evangelicalism, and particularly to the Reformed understanding of God’s majesty and glory. . . .
Reviewed by Tom Chantry.
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Lou Priolo. Pleasing People: How Not to Be An Approval Junkie. P&R, 2007. 255 pp.
Are you an approval junkie? Are you a person who depends too heavily, in spirit, conscience or morale, on the approval of others? How would you even know? These are the questions Lou Priolo tackles in his book Pleasing People. This is a book I read weeks ago and, for some reason, decided not to review. Yet over the weeks I’ve seen the fruit of reading this book in my life and in my walk with the Lord. I’ve seen shadows of the desire to please people not only in my life but in the lives of others. I felt it would be best for me to share the book with others.
Reviewed by Tim Challies.
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Timothy T. Larsen, David W. Bebbington, and Mark A. Noll, eds. Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals. IVP, 2003. 789 pp.
1. Overview
This nearly 800-page tome is a mini-library of condensed biographies. This practical reference tool contains biographical sketches for over four hundred outstanding evangelicals in alphabetical order.
1.1. Theologically, they are part of the identifiable network of evangelicals. Larsen defines an evangelical according to Bebbington and Noll’s standards. In Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, Bebbington proposed that there are four essential characteristics of evangelicals: “conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism” (BDE, p. 1). Noll’s Between Faith and Criticism “uses a thoroughgoing descriptive approach, arguing that the evangelical community is a readily identifiable network and that therefore those who can be seen to be a part of that network are the proper subjects of studies in evangelicalism” (BDE, p. 1).
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Hank Hanegraaff. The Apocalypse Code: Find Out What the Bible REALLY Says About the End Times . . . and Why it Matters Today. Thomas Nelson, 2007. 336 pp.
On the one hand, Hanegraaff does a very good job debunking the popular dispensational end-times scenarios set out by the likes of John Hagee and Tim LaHaye. Hanegraaff exposes the embarrassing problem faced by dispensationalists who claim to interpret the Bible literally, and who cannot make good on that promise. While John (Revelation 1:3; 22:10) tells us that the things recorded in his apocalyptic vision are soon to come to pass, dispensationalists are forced to tell us that “near” and “soon” don’t really mean “near” and “soon.” Instead, dispensationalists tell us, these things don’t come to pass until the end of the age—a rather embarrassing problem given their insistence that they take the Bible (especially prophecy) “literally.”
Reviewed by Kim Riddlebarger.
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Paul S. Jones. Singing and Making Music: Issues in Church Music Today. P&R, 2006. 315 pp.
What is one more book on music and the church? The area is admittedly becoming a kind of “burned over district” of the contemporary American church, and if this were a popularity contest, the conservatives are surely losing. For those whose sensibilities are still somewhat entrenched in tradition, Paul Jones’ 2006 title Singing and Making Music: Issues in Church Music Today (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2006) (Buy: Westminster|Amazon) will be a welcome volume containing not only an apologetic for conservative music but also a practical guide for how both large and small churches can get there.
Reviewed by Ryan Martin.
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John Ensor. The Great Work of the Gospel: How We Experience God’s Grace. Crossway, 2006. 192 pp.
In the Introduction, John Ensor lays the foundation of the book by fleshing out and describing The Human Experience of God’s Outworking Grace. He gives three reasons for doing so: “because the problem is the greatest of all problems,” “because the solution is the most excellent of all solutions,” and “because the change it produces is the most extreme change possible.” He defines the terms and sets the parameters that will guide and drive the discussions throughout the rest of the book. He lists the ingredients with which he will craft an incredible feast for the mind. So we too will experience the, “the sin-forgiving gift of it, the guilt-removing power of it, the soul-satisfying joy of it, the cross-suffering mystery of it, the conscience-cleansing experience of it, the life-transforming quality of it, the muscular faith-building impact of it, the eternally reconciling splendor of it.”
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David Crump. Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. Baker, 2006. 345 pp.
With a glut of books on prayer in the Christian market, here is a scholarly addition to the mix, worthy of the serious reader’s time. The books on prayer tend to be light and devotional in nature, like Murray’s classic With Christ in the School of Prayer, or the more recent and popular The Prayer of Jabez and Secrets of the Vine. The recent popular works especially tend to promise more than they can deliver, or are products of the “Health and Wealth” television preachers.
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