John and Betty Stam (05/09/09 - 4 Comments)
"The fateful day began with deceptive normalcy at John and Betty Stam's missionary residence in Tsingteh, China. Both the wood-burning stoves had been lit and were starting to heat up nicely, helping to lessen the chill that gripped the large old house that cold, early December morning. The Stams, along with the six Chinese who lived with them in the house, had already eaten breakfast. "John hoped to study and get some correspondence done that...
Book Review - Unfashionable (05/05/09 - 84 Comments)
Every now and again I pick up a book that I feel I should really enjoy. And yet, for one reason or another, it simply does not "click." Unfashionable by Tullian Tchividjian is just such a book. It has been widely praised by Christians I respect and its six (!) pages of endorsements contain a veritable who's who of prominent Evangelicals, each of whom tells of his esteem for the book and its author. And...
John Calvin: Pilgrim and Pastor (04/28/09 - 6 Comments)
There are not too many men whose five hundredth birthday is a cause for remembrance, not to mention celebration. Yet here we are, five hundred years after the birth of John Calvin, witnessing widespread celebration of his birth. This year we see many conferences dedicated to understanding Calvin's impact on the church and on society, even centuries later, and we see the publication of many books looking at the man and his theology. It strikes...
Why Johnny Can't Preach (04/21/09 - 17 Comments)
Nineteen sixty-six saw the publication of a book titled Why Johnny Can't Read. Its author, Rudolf Flesh, explained in it that societal changes were leading to illiteracy; children were increasingly unable to read, at least with the effectiveness of the children of years gone by. By the 1980's, Linden and Whimbey had followed with Why Johnny Can't Write in which they showed the similar societal trends were now keeping Johnny (a generic name used to...
The Case for Life (04/14/09 - 23 Comments)
There was a time when my mother was actively involved in the pro-life movement here in the Toronto area. I have many memories of journeying downtown with her, taking the subway and bus with mom, so we could volunteer in some way in the fight against abortion. I have fond memories of it, mostly. At times, though, I am prone to despair as it seems that in the twenty or twenty-five years between then and...
Book Review - Just Do Something! (04/07/09 - 16 Comments)
To be honest, I don't know that we really need another book--yet another book--on guidance and the will of God. Having said that, there is probably no genre of book I recommend more often than this simply because experience shows that many Christians, too many Christians, do not understand how God expects us to know his will and how we may expect him to guide us to those things that please him. We are blessed...
The Bookends of the Christian Life (03/31/09 - 8 Comments)
I met Bob Bevington a couple of years ago. He and I both somehow ended up at a youth conference and we began to chat while walking from the venue to a nearby hotel; we were the only adults around so we must have naturally gravitated toward one another. We were surprised to learn that we were both under contract to write a book--I was writing The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment while he was working...
John Calvin (Christian Biographies for Young Readers) (03/24/09 - 6 Comments)
This is the year of John Calvin. In celebration of the 500th anniversary of his birth, many ministries are holding conferences to discuss his life and impact and many Christian publishers are releasing biographies of the man who did so much to form the Christian faith and the Western world. Reformation Heritage Books has taken a unique route by producing a biography targeted at children from ages 7 to 10. Written by Simonetta Carr and...
Picking Cotton (03/18/09 - 10 Comments)
In July of 1984, when Jennifer Thompson was a twenty-three year old college student, a man broke into her apartment while she slept and raped her at knifepoint. She was eventually able to escape from him and later identified her attacker as Ronald Cotton. Though Ronald insisted that he was innocent, he was taken to court and, primarily on the basis of Jennifer's identification of her assailant, sentenced to a life behind prison bars. Eleven...
Book Review - Christ and the Future (03/17/09 - 20 Comments)
Cornelius Venema's The Promise of the Future, published in 2000 by Banner of Truth, has been hailed as the most important major Reformed study in biblical eschatology since Anthony Hoekema's The Bible and the Future (published in 1972). It is not coincidental, I am sure, that Venema is a former student of Hoekema. The Promise of the Future was expanded from a series of articles serialized in The Outlook magazine. Now Christ and the Future...
Finding God in The Shack (II) (03/03/09 - 55 Comments)
This review is a few weeks overdue. It was almost a month ago that I reviewed Roger Olson's Finding God in The Shack and at that time I had hoped to review Randal Rauser's book of the same title within a week. Life being what it is and how it is, the deadline slipped. Today I am attempting to make amends. And so we come to Finding God in the Shack (II). This book comes...
The One True God (02/24/09 - 8 Comments)
It is a question I am asked a lot: what Bible study curriculum do you recommend? I rarely know what to say. There are so many of them available; time would fail me to collect, examine and review them all. I was interested, then, to see that Paul Washer is releasing a new edition of The One True God, a title first released several years ago. It is published by Granted Ministries Press. No less...
Book Review - Finally Alive by John Piper (02/17/09 - 29 Comments)
As I read the final page of Finally Alive I realized that I had found a new favorite book by John Piper. Those who have read my reviews of some of his previous titles know that while I greatly enjoy Piper's ministry and am indebted to him in many ways, I have not always found his books easy to read. Yet I read Finally Alive with relish, enjoying it from the first page to the...
Book Review - Tactics (02/10/09 - 24 Comments)
I have a bit of an aversion to books on apologetics. I don't know exactly why this is, but it may be that many of them seem to teach methods of defending the faith that either manipulate or bludgeon. Somehow grace and apologetics do not seem to go together as they ought. So it was with perhaps just a bit of reluctance that I began reading Gregory Koukl's Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your...
Finding God in The Shack (I) (02/05/09 - 37 Comments)
I mark this review as Finding God in The Shack I because this month will see the release of two books by two authors but with only one title between them. Both books look to the overwhelming success of William Young's The Shack, evaluate it, and seek to answer its critics. As one of those critics, and as one whose review has been read hundreds of thousands of times, I have some interest in the...
Get Outta My Face! (02/03/09 - 10 Comments)
I have spent the last thirteen years of my life trying to forget my teenage years. It's not that these years were really so bad and it's not like I went through a period of utter rebellion as do so many teens (for which I give thanks to God). It's more that I had little joy in these years and felt that I was mostly just putting in time as I waited to grow up....
Book Review - Fearless Pilgrim (01/27/09 - 10 Comments)
Faith Cook is beginning to make her mark as a Christian biographer. While she has compiled short biographies of hymn writers and other noteworthy believers, more notably she has completed several lengthy biographies of such subjects as Selina, Countess of Huntingdon; Lady Jane Grey; and William Grimshaw. And now, in her latest book, Fearless Pilgrim, she chronicles the life of John Bunyan. It is interesting that the best-selling biography of Bunyan continues to be Grace...
The Unwavering Resolve of Jonathan Edwards (01/24/09 - 8 Comments)
In 2006, Reformation Trust published Steven Lawson's Foundations of Grace, the first volume in a promising series titled "A Long Line of Godly Men." Though the original publication schedule called for a new book every year or two, the second volume, Pillars of Grace has been repeatedly pushed back and is now listed as a November 2009 release. However, while we've been awaiting that title, we've been treated to two volumes in a companion series...
The Christian Lover (01/23/09 - 12 Comments)
Marriage is under attack in our day; there is little doubt about it. We need only look to the divorce rates among professed Christians to see that believers have been far from immune from the spirit of this age. In his new book The Christian Lover: The Sweetness of Love and Marriage in the Letters of Believers, Michael Haykin says that "reading expressions of love from the past can be a helpful way of responding...
Take Charge of Your Life (01/19/09 - 25 Comments)
There may be some who will get no further than the cover or even the title of Take Charge of Your Life. There on the cover is the smiling face of the author, rather a rarity for a book that is actually worth reading. And that title sounds like it may just be the title of a book by Dr. Phil or Joel Osteen. And yet at the top are these words by John MacArthur:...
