Is it fact or fiction? That is the question everyone asks when they first encounter Jonathan Cahn’s book The Harbinger. The answer is both, I guess—a little from column a and a little from column b. How about this: The Harbinger is meant to be fact presented in the form of a novel; in reality it is an unfortunate mixture of truth and error presented in the form of a script. Still with me?

What is demonstrably factual is that The Harbinger is a phenomenon. It has held steady for forty weeks on the New York Times list of bestsellers, selling over 700,000 copies through fifteen reprints. At the time I write this, Amazon ranks it #2 on their list of Christian fiction and #7 on their list of Christian theology. The book had largely escaped my view until the past few weeks when I received a series of emails from people wondering what it was all about. I finally caved and read it. Consider this more of an explanation of what it is than a thorough review.

I will get to the content in a moment, but first a word about the form. Though described as a novel, the book is actually far closer to a script (a script that would make an exceptionally tedious play or film). There is very little action, only the barest semblance of a plot, and no development at all of the three characters. Instead, the book is composed of amateurish dialog that proceeds at a plodding pace. The writing is repetitive to the point that it could easily have been boiled down to a third or a half of its current length. The book is a chore to read and, speaking personally, the end simply could not come too soon.

Within this work of fiction are claims that the author insists are factual, biblical, and of the utmost importance. He claims to reveal an ancient mystery that holds the secret to America’s future. Like so many other books, it claims that the truth has been hidden in the pages of the Bible until one man ferreted it out. It is essentially a long exposition of Isaiah 9:10: “The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with hewn stones; The sycamores are cut down, but we will replace them with cedars.” More correctly, it is a dual exposition of this text, applying it both to ancient Israel and to contemporary America. A snippet of dialog will explain how this can be (and, undoubtedly, convince many of you to read no further):

“But what does America have to do with ancient Israel?”

“Israel was unique among the nations in that it was conceived and dedicated at its foundation for the purposes of God.”

“OK…”

“But there was one other—a civilization also conceived and dedicated to the will of God from its conception…America. In fact, those who laid its foundations…”

“The Founding Fathers.”

“No, long before the Founding Fathers. Those who laid America’s foundations saw it as a new Israel, an Israel of the New World. And as with ancient Israel, they saw it as in covenant with God.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning its rise or fall would be dependent on its relationship with God. If it followed His ways, America would become the most blessed, prosperous, and powerful nation on earth. From the very beginning they foretold it. And what they foretold would come true. America would rise to heights no other nation had ever known. Not that it was ever without fault or sin, but it would aspire to fulfill its calling.”

“What calling?”

“To be a vessel of redemption, an instrument of God’s purposes, a light to the world. It would give refuge to the world’s poor and needy, and hope to its oppressed. It would stand against tyranny. It would fight, more than once, against the dark movements of the modern world that threatened to engulf the earth. It would liberate millions. And, as much as it fulfilled its calling or aspired to, it would become the most blessed, the most prosperous, the most powerful, and the most revered nation on the earth—just as its founders had prophesied.”

Of course there is a “but” that follows. Just as ancient Israel turned its back on its covenant with God, so too has America. By doing so, America has called down God’s judgment.

I had tried reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead at least three or four times, but without success, which is to say, without completing it. I would read twenty pages, or even eighty, and eventually put the book aside and forget to return to it. Gilead is wonderfully written, so it is not that I was trying to slog through dense or poorly-written text. Far from it! It is for good reason that this book received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. For some reason I just couldn’t get into it far enough to take it to completion.

A few months ago I came to the realization that some books are better heard than read. I don’t know why this came as a shock to me, but for some reason it did. Now that I have discovered the beauty of a well-read audio book, I wanted to revisit Gilead to see if I would enjoy listening to it. Earlier this week, before I set out on a nine-hour drive from Toronto to Louisville, I loaded up the book on my iPhone and listened to it all the way from the north to the south. It was sublime.

Gilead is a novel in the form of a long letter, a memoir of sorts, written by John Ames and addressed to his young son. Ames, a pastor in small-town Iowa, married late in life, was blessed with a son of his old age, and in his declining years shares his “begats.” He wants to give his son a record of his own life and a knowledge of family history. But as Ames writes this memoir, adding to it day-by-day, Jack Ames Boughton, a character from his past enters his life and he finds himself in a kind of spiritual crisis.

Let me borrow a paragraph from Wikipedia that aptly summarizes the heart of the book:

Although there is action in the story, its mainspring lies in Ames’ theological struggles on a whole series of fronts: with his grandfather’s engagement in the Civil War, with his own loneliness through much of his life, with his brother’s clear and his father’s apparent loss of belief, with his father’s desertion of the town, with the hardships of people’s lives, and above all with his feelings of hostility and jealousy towards young Boughton, whom he knows at some level he has to forgive. Ames’ struggles are illustrated by numerous quotations from the Bible, from theologians (especially Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion) and from philosophers, especially the atheist Feuerbach, whom Ames greatly respects.

It is strange and unexpected—and delightful, of course—to find so much theological content in a novel that achieved such widespread acclaim and popularity. Ames does not wrestle with minor matters here. Rather, he wrestles with profound and important truths, looking to the great theologians of days past to reflect on the nature of forgiveness, the sin of envy, and so much more. This character of John Ames is wonderfully-crafted in all his confidences and questionings, all his strengths and weaknesses. So too is young Jack Boughton, who serves as something of a foil by forcing Ames to work out his theology in real life.

All of this comes from the pen of a skilled author, who is able to bring a liveliness to the text, who is able to use the English language as powerfully as any contemporary author I’ve read. Gilead really does exemplify writing at its best—an intriguing story, fascinating characters, the proclamation of truth, and beautiful writing. I just had to listen to it to fully appreciate it.

You can buy Gilead from Amazon in print or Kindle format or buy it at Audible in audio format.

Is it satire or is it parody? Whatever it is, Douglas Wilson's Evangellyfish must be unique in the Christian market. This is a book, a novel, first serialized online but now re-edited and formally published, that provides a scathing indictment of evangelicalism. It does it well.

Of course if you know evangelicalism you know that it isn't all that difficult to satirize. What you dream up as a hilarious punchline is the kind of thing you'll see next month on the shelves of the local Christian bookstore or in the advertisements for the nearby megachurch. It makes me wonder, why haven't more people written books like this?

Evangellyfish revolves around Chad Lester, a massively successful megachurch pastor who makes Bill Clinton look positively chaste. He is loved and adored by his legions of devoted fans and by the millions who read his hopelessly shallow books. He drives a flashy sports car and has a massive home and a girlfriends all across the city. He suddenly finds himself embroiled in a sex scandal which is shocking only because this time his accuser is a man.

Laboring near Lester is John Mitchell, also a pastor, but of a small, conservative church. He has no real following and drives an old, beat-up car that is shedding parts. Though he may be a little bit of a legalist at times, he is a genuine and caring pastor who toils in obscurity. He is representative of any number of really normal pastors. The lives of these two men, and so many others, are thrown together as the details of the scandal unfold and explode. As is the case with such scandals, the facts mean nothing when compared to the lurid details.

Allow me to make a few observations about the book.

First, I found that the book was more about "them" than "us." What I mean is that Wilson appears to be satirizing the run-of-the-mill, cliched, program-driven megachurch. At least that is how I read it. I enjoyed the story, but didn't feel like it really sucker-punched me the way I had expected it to. I wanted Wilson to aim at me as well because I'm pretty sure there is a lot of foolishness that I am blind to as well. There were a few of those digs, but not as many was I would have liked.

The book is always better than the movie, right? It seems that way to me, even with movies as good as the Lord of the Rings series. The movies were amazing, but the books were still better. It seems inevitable that Unbroken will appear on the silver screen before long (and, if the rumors are to be believed, it will star Nicholas Cage). Before it does, make sure you read the book. Unbroken is, in a word, amazing—easily one of the best books I read in 2010. It’s written by Laura Hillenbrand who also penned Seabiscuit. This new book has shot straight to #2 on the New York Times list of bestsellers just days after its release.

Unbroken tells the tale of Louie Zamperini, a character who is so much larger than life that I can’t believe I hadn’t encountered him before. Zamperini grew up in California in the 1930’s, a troublesome kid who was constantly stealing, constantly fighting, constantly getting into trouble. He was that kid, the kid who was known by the police, the kid who was every teacher’s nightmare. He was also lightning fast, eventually becoming a member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic team where he ran the 5,000 meter race and even had the opportunity to meet Adolf Hitler.

War came in 1941 and, like so many men his age, Zamperini joined up, enlisting in the United States Army Air Force. He was made bombardier in a B-24 bomber and posted to Hawaii. He took advantage of all the world had to offer, drinking and carousing with the best (or worst) of them. On May 27, 1943, while searching the ocean for a crashed plane, his own plane suffered mechanical failure and plunged into the ocean. Zamperini survived the crash along with two other members of the crew. They were adrift in the Pacific for 47 days, living off whatever rain fell from the sky and whatever food they could somehow pluck from the ocean. Though one of the men eventually succumbed to starvation, the two who remained were eventually “rescued” by the Japanese Navy, some 2,000 miles from where the plane had crashed.

Zamperini’s war was about to get far worse.

I wonder what Calvin would have said, what he would have thought, if he could have peered five centuries into the future and seen how he would be honored on the five hundredth anniversary of his birth. Several new biographies; a long list of conferences; books discussing every aspect, every facet of his theology; a bobblehead; and now The Betrayal, a novel that recounts his life as historical fiction.

I don’t often post reviews two days in a row, but today you’ll need to bear with me.

I was somewhat surprised but rather pleased to find The Little Boy Down the Road in my mailbox one morning. It was the first I had heard of the book. I was drawn to it by its pastoral cover and its simple premise—“Short Stories and Essays on the Beauty of Family Life.” As the subtitle says, this is a collection of stories and essays that attempt to reveal the beauty of family life. It is, perhaps surprisingly, the first of Douglas Phillips’ books that I’ve read. Let me share a brief overview of its chapters.

Twilight is a phenomenon; or that is what I hear. I began to receive emails about it a short time ago and the requests for a review have increased as the release of the Twilight movie has approached. Strangely, I get more requests to review teenage fiction than any other genre. I usually reply with an apologetic email saying that I do not review such titles. But because of the popularity of this series I decided to make an exception. With great trepidation and with eyes fixed firmly on the floor, I went to a local store and purchased the whole series—four books. I read the first volume, which I will review today, and left it to Aileen (the fiction expert in our home) to read the rest of the series.

Jake Colsen is the author of So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore. Jake Colsen does not exist. Rather, he is a pseudonym for the combined work of Dave Coleman and Wayne Jacobsen. You may recognize Wayne Jacobsen as one of the founders of Windblown Media, the company that published a little book called The Shack--a little book that has gone on to sell well over a million copies. As The Shack has found international renown, it has pulled in its wake Windblown Media's two other titles, both of which are written or co-written by Jacobsen. At the moment I write this review, So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore is ranked #259 in Books at Amazon and #4 in Religious & Spirituality Fiction (placing behind three editions of The Shack). Its success is very clearly related to that of The Shack (where it has an advertisement on the back page).

Anne Rice has undergone a radical transformation. A bestselling author, whose novels have sold over 100 million copies, she recently returned to the Roman Catholic faith of her youth, and in so doing abandoned her former subject matter (vampires) and turned instead to a series of books dramatizing the life of Jesus Christ. The first book in Rice's series, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (released in the fall of 2005) was critically acclaimed and sold well. The movie rights for the book and its sequels were recently purchased by L.A.-based Good News Holdings which is run by Christian pollster George Barna. He will attempt to bring them to the big screen. Where the first book covered Jesus' childhood, the second volume seeks to find a story in the "lost years" that fall between His birth and the beginning of His public ministry.

Inside Narnia was one of the many books published in advance of the most recent movie adaptation of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. The book has proved a success, going through six printings since its release in 2005. In the book Devin Brown, a Lewis scholar and aficionado, offered a detailed look into the world of Narnia, digging far beyond the surface, and exploring this magical world. As I had just read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe with my children, I decided to read this as a commentary of sorts, to see what I had missed and what I would want to look for the next time I read the book. I learned more than I would have thought possible. Reading Inside Narnia greatly enhanced my understanding of C.S. Lewis, of the stories he wrote, and of the worlds he created.