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.

Take a look at this graphic. Image that the middle box in the chart is your house and the boxes that surround it are the eight houses closest to your own. I doubt your neighborhood is arranged like a tic-tac-toe board, so you may need to use your imagination just a little bit.

Here’s what I want you to do.

• First, write the names of the people who live in the house represented by each of the boxes. If you can give both first and last names, that’s great. If you’ve only got first names, that’s okay too.
• Second, write down some information or facts about each of the people in that house. I don’t mean facts that you could observe by standing on the road and looking at their house (“Drives a red car”) but facts that you’ve gathered from speaking to them (“Works for a bank,” “Grew up across town.”).
• Third, write down any in-depth information you know about each of the people. This could include details like their career plans or religious beliefs—the kind of information that comes from real conversation.

How did you do? Or how do you think you would do if you actually went through with this exercise? The degree to which you simply do not know your neighbors is the degree to which you will benefit from reading The Art of Neighboring by Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon. They premise their book upon this simple question: When Jesus told us love our neighbors, what if he meant our actual neighbors, the people who live closest to us? They explain that Christians have long been making “neighbor” into a safe metaphor that allows us to believe we are carrying out the Lord’s command when we visit soup kitchens and do acts of kindness to complete strangers.

The problem, as they explain it, is that “when we aim for everything, we hit nothing. So when we insist we’re neighbors with everybody, often we end up being neighbors with nobody.” Ouch. Much like the Pharisees, we ask “Who is my neighbor?” in the hope of finding a loophole, not in the hope of loving those who live nearby. “Jesus assumed that his audience would be able to love those nearest to them, their literal neighbors, the people most like them, who shared the same heritage and geography. In telling the parable, Jesus was stretching their concept of neighbor to include even people from a group they didn’t like.” As we read the parable today we tend to go straight to the stranger on the side of the road and no longer include the person in the house next door.

I occasionally write under a pseudonym. There are some things I feel like I can say, or maybe even ought to say, that wouldn’t be wise to contribute under my own name. And so there have been a handful of times over the years that I’ve written under a pseudonym. There are several complications that come with writing under a pen name, chief among them that it is difficult to interact with people who appreciate and respond to what I’ve written. Unless I want to create an entire identity for this character, complete with email address and Facebook profile, I have no capacity to respond to those who have questions or concerns.

There is another issue that, sadly, tends to bother me more. A couple of things I have written under this other name have been well-received and I have found it surprisingly difficult to allow the accolades to go to a non-existent person. I’ve got pride problems, I guess, and want some of that recognition for myself. In its fullest form, I can see that I almost feel like it’s a waste to write something clever or something helpful that doesn’t, in the end, elevate my name. That sounds pathetic as I write it, but I think it’s true, at least on one level.

The author of the new book Embracing Obscurity spotted this same pride problem in his own life and responded by writing an entire book as simply Anonymous. In the book’s opening pages he admits to fantasies in which he is outed and receives the praise that he desires, at least on one level. And yet he has done all he can to shield his own identity, thus avoiding the ridiculous problem of receiving accolades, of receiving a wider platform, for a book that deals with obscurity. Like the panel of well-known leaders who discussed celebrityism at this year’s Together for the Gospel event, even discussing the subject carries with it a certain level of irony.

At a time of Christian celebrityism, Embracing Obscurity is a call to “become nothing in the light of God’s everything.” In a culture where so many people fear being underrated, where so many people feel they deserve recognition, this is just one of what I hope will be several calls to be willing—eager even—to be unrecognized and insignificant in the eyes of men. Though I trust this book is not the final word on the matter, I consider it a helpful opening salvo in the battle against a culture of Christian celebrity.

I began reading Mortality, Christopher Hitchens’ newest book—his final book—on the day it was released. I couldn’t sleep that day, so woke up in the wee hours, downloaded it to the iPad and began reading. It’s not a long work, so did not take more than a couple of hours. Like everything Hitchens wrote, Mortality is brilliant and insightful and well-written and utterly defiant. One of the best-known and most widely-respected of the New Atheists, he both denied and hated God to the end.

Hitchens was only sixty-two when he died. He had just released a memoir, Hitch-22, and was on a book tour to promote it when he suddenly developed terrible pain in his chest and thorax. He began a long and ultimately unsuccessful treatment for esophageal cancer and died eighteen months later in December of 2011. In the time between he penned a series of columns for Vanity Fair and those columns form the basis of Mortality. Not surprisingly, they deal with illness and death and…mortality.

I read this book as a Christian, exactly the kind of person Hitchens wrote against—a Bible-believing, God-fearing theist. Yet I read it with far more sadness and pity than offense. At times in his voluminous writings Hitchens was monstrously unfair to Evangelical Christians, lumping us in with the Fred Phelps’ and Muslim extremists of the world. At other times he was guardedly respectful. This book spans both extremes. Many professed Christians earned his disrespect. Take the author of this comment that Hitchens came across while traveling the World Wide Web:

Who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer [sic] was God’s revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him? Atheists like to ignore FACTS. They like to act like everything is a “coincidence.” Really? It’s just a “coincidence” [that] out of any part of his body, Christopher Hitchens got cancer in the one part of his body he used for blasphemy? Yeah, keep believing that, Atheists. He’s going to writhe in agony and pain and wither away to nothing and then die a horrible agonizing death, and THEN comes the real fun, when he’s sent to HELLFIRE forever to be tortured and set afire.

Of course not all Christians reacted with such glee and such firm confidence of an intimate understanding of God’s providence. There were others who were kind, who told him that, like it or not, they would pray for him, and who sought to bring him encouragement. 

It's a feeling every reader knows and loves, and perhaps especially the reader of theology. It is the feeling that comes as you read a book and find yourself thinking “This could change everything.” There are some books that go straight to what you think you know, what you are so sure of, what you've so carefully constructed, and begin to pull it all apart and to replace it with something that is so much better, so much loftier, so much more worthy of God. Michael Reeves' Delighting in the Trinity has been one of those books to me. After ten pages I was hooked, after twenty I was reeling and after fifty I knew I would have to go back and read it all again.

I have read several books on the Trinity in the past and have always enjoyed reading them. James White's The Forgotten Trinity and Bruce Ware's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are biblical, systematic and powerful. I've read them, benefited from them, and often recommended them. I will continue to do so. The unique angle--and unique beauty--of Delighting in the Trinity is that it looks less at a concept and more at a relationship, less at a doctrine and more at the persons of the godhead. It is, at heart, an introduction to the Christian faith and the Christian life that seeks to show that both must be at all times rooted in the triunity of God. All that God is, all that God does, flows out of his triunity. It is the essential Christian doctrine. Reeves says that his book is

about growing in our enjoyment of God and seeing how God's triune being makes all his ways beautiful. It is a chance to taste and see that the Lord is good, to have your heart won and yourself refreshed. For it is only when you grasp what it means for God to be a Trinity that you really sense the beauty, the overflowing kindness, the heart-grabbing loveliness of God. If the Trinity were something we could shave off God, we would not be relieving him of some irksome weight; we would be shearing him of precisely what is so delightful about him. For God is triune, and it is as triune that he is so good and desirable.

Like me, you have looked at the diagrams that attempt to display the Trinity and you've heard the various comparisons: It's like the three states of water: liquid, steam and ice; it's like an egg that has shell, white and yolk and yet is only one egg. But if we aren't careful, our explanations can make the Trinity seem distant and difficult rather than imminent and delightful. "For all that we may give an orthodox nod of the head to belief in the Trinity, it simply seems too arcane to make any practical difference to our lives." While we have a theological construct of the Trinity in our hearts and minds and statements of faith, it can make so little difference to our lives that God is a Trinity rather than one (or two, for that). What Reeves seeks to do, and what he does so well, is to introduce the Trinity not as a problem or a technicality, but as "the vital oxygen of Christian life and joy."

R.C. Sproul has a long history of making a stand for truth. He has an equal history of standing firm against error, using his ministry platform to refute errors that are seeping into the Evangelical church. On several occasions he has reacted to those who have sought to minimize the differences between Protestant theology and Roman Catholic theology. Faith Alone and Getting the Gospel Right are both insightful looks at the critical importance of affirming and protecting the Reformation gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone. These books were largely a response to “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” and “The Gift of Salvation” (ECT 2). 

While ECT may seem like ancient history, there are many Protestants today who continue to minimize the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, even going so far as to say that the Reformation is over and that it is time to reunite with Rome. Others may not go quite that far, but they still believe that the differences are not significant enough to prohibit a great deal of unity. “The Manhattan Declaration” was just one recent attempt to find common cause on issues such as abortion and traditional marriage. With such efforts in mind, Dr. Sproul returns to the fray with Are We Together? A Protestant Analyzes Roman Catholicism.

He makes his purpose clear in the book’s opening pages: “In this book, I have a simple goal. I want to look at Roman Catholic teaching in several significant areas and compare it with Protestant teaching. I hope to show, often using her own words, that the Roman Catholic Church has not changed from what it believed and taught at the time of the Reformation. That means that the Reformation is not over and we must continue to stand firm in proclaiming the biblical gospel.” He means to show that the gospel itself is at stake and to do this he looks at six core doctrines in which Catholicism varies from the clear teaching of Scripture: Scripture, justification, the Church, sacraments, the papacy and the role of Mary. He closes with a reflection on how Protestants should now relate to Roman Catholics without minimizing theological differences.

What I have long appreciated about Dr. Sproul’s books on Catholicism is that he is charitable and respectful in his tone, always careful to show where Protestants have erred in their understanding of Catholicism and ensuring that he properly represents even those positions that he does not hold to. Thus he looks at Catholic doctrine as it is explained by its foremost theologians and official documents. Having allowed Catholicism to explain itself, he goes to Scripture to show where it has strayed.

When discussing Roman Catholic theology, Protestants have too often been ignorant, careless, or unfair. The power of this book is that R. C. Sproul is fair, precise, and charitable as he proves that the errors of the Roman Catholic Church are both deep and significant, and that the Roman Catholic gospel is not the gospel of the Bible. Even as he calls for us to love our Roman Catholic friends, he warns that we cannot consider them brothers and sisters when the gospel itself is at stake. Are We Together? serves as a helpful primer on Roman Catholic theology and a powerful stand for the gospel. I highly recommend it.

Are We Together? is available at Amazon ($17 hardcover) or Ligonier Ministries ($13.60 hardcover, $7.20 ebook).

Shon Hopwood robbed five banks before he was apprehended and sentenced to spend twelve years behind bars. Just twenty-three years of age, he was suddenly looking at living out some of his prime years in a federal penitentiary. Yet he somehow managed to find his place, not in sports or in gangs, but in the law library. There he found that he had a deep interest in the law and a knack for understanding it. Before too long he had become the resident jailhouse lawyer. In and of itself, this is not too unusual—every prison has its inmates who have an interest in law. But Hopwood stands out as the only one who wrote a petition that was accepted by the Supreme Court.

That is a notable accomplishment. There was another inmate in the prison whom Hopwood came to see had been trained unfairly in his arrest and conviction. The only hope was to appeal to the Supreme Court, something hundreds of people do each year. To make an appeal requires following a very rigid and specialized process that can confound even a season lawyer. Even then, only the smallest fraction of those cases make it past even the preliminary process of evaluation and acceptance. But Hopwood’s appeal was noticed and was just and was brought before the court. Even from behind bars he was able to be involved in the case, giving him an opportunity to become friends with some of the country’s top litigators.

The notoriety Hopwood gained has given him the opportunity to write Law Man, a memoir that releases today. This is the story of “robbing banks, winning supreme court cases, and finding redemption” (according to the subtitle). What you won’t find unless you read to the end is that the word “redemption” points well beyond the court room. All through Hopwood’s time in prison, friends and family were praying for him and sending him good books. Not only that, but there were Christians around him in the penitentiary. Shortly after his release, he got to the very end of himself and became a believer. He is now a student at University of Washington School of Law and attends Mars Hill Church U-District in Seattle, where Justin Holcomb serves as pastor.

When on vacation last week I ambled into a wonderful little used book store in Fredericksburg, Virginia. There were hundreds of books that caught my eye there, but I left with only one--Faith and Betrayal, by Sally Denton, a biography that traces the life of Jean Rio, the author's great-great-grandmother. One of England's earliest and most notable converts to Mormonism, Rio set out from England to Utah in the 1850's to settle down in Zion (which is to say, Salt Lake City, Utah). The book describes her journey, her arrival, and her eventual disillusionment as she comes to see the ugly underbelly of Mormonism--the violence, the polygamy, the greed and the utter hypocrisy of it all. It was a fascinating little book.

While Faith and Betrayal was interesting as history and biography, I read it at least in part because of an interest I have in Mormonism. It seems that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is coming into its own in recent days. Mormons tend to be high achievers and are increasingly finding their way into positions of power and influence, whether that is as CEO of a multi-billion dollar company or as a presidential candidate.

Faith and Betrayal was a ground-level look at Mormonism's earliest days that generated as many questions as it answered. I followed it with another of Denton's books, American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows which describes an act of barbarism in which early Mormons slaughtered over 100 members of a wagon train that was passing through their land. Moving to more modern times (and dealing with the fact that by this time I could read only what was available on the Kindle), I turned to Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, a book that focuses on modern day Mormon Fundamentalism. Krakauer seems to want to paint all Mormonism as related to the polygamous fundamentalists and, having done that, to paint all adherents of religion as fundamentalists. It is interesting, but goes beyond anti-Mormonism to the verge of anti-faith.

After all of this, I read Stephen Mansfield's The Mormonizing of America. Published just this month, it looks at the growing popularity of Mormonism and tries to understand how this came to be and what it all means. Mansfield is a former pastor and bestselling author whose previous books have included The Faith of George W. Bush, The Faith of the American Soldier and The Faith of Barack Obama. I get the sense that he is something of a religious enthusiast and that he is not a serious historian. Nevertheless, I appreciated his brief overview of Mormon history and his look at how the faith has evolved to our day. There were three big takeaways for me.

Yesterday I began to look at Michael Pearl’s To Train Up a Child (click here to read it). My interest in this book is based in part on its popularity and in part on the way in which it very clearly highlights how faulty foundational beliefs will lead to faulty actions. In the first part of the review I showed that Pearl advocates a particular method of training children and that he distinguishes this training from discipline. Today I want to show you that much of his technique flows out of his denial of a key Christian doctrine.

The Innocent Child

Pearl denies the doctrine of original sin and thus believes that children have no need to be justified and, further, until they are older cannot be justified. This puts him radically at odds with the vast majority of Evangelical Christians. Let me show you what he denies and what he believes in its place.

As Pearl lays the groundwork for the book, he says that his training is a reflection of the way God trains his people. He goes to the Garden of Eden and says that this was God's training ground for humanity. "When God wanted to 'train' his first two children not to touch, He did not place the forbidden object out of their reach. Instead, He placed the 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' in 'the midst of the garden' (Gen. 3:3)." He teaches that the tree was located in the middle of the garden so that it would be a constant temptation; with more visibility would come more opportunity for training by temptation. It was a "moral factory" meant to produce character.

It was the language of “training ground” along with some other scattered words and phrases that made me begin to wonder what Pearl believes about the spiritual state of children. I visited his web site’s "What We Believe" section to find important clarifying information. There he says,

We believe that man was created in the span of a twenty-four hour period. He was created perfect physically and constitutionally, including the moral and spiritual essence. Man, though complete and entire, wanting nothing, was, in his innocence, without character. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, a moral testing ground, was, in the wisdom of God, the perfect opportunity for spiritual development. The natural constitution of man (desire for food, etc.) became the basis for temptation. In the eating of the tree, the willful and direct disobedience to God resulted in legal estrangement from God and precipitated the curse of death on Adam and all his descendants.

He holds, then, that Adam and Eve were created sinless but with unformed character. The purpose of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to test them and provide them a context for spiritual development. The statement of faith goes on to say this: "When a descendant of Adam reaches a level of moral understanding (sometime in his youth) he becomes fully, personally accountable to God and has sin imputed to him, resulting in the peril of eternal damnation" and later, "When man reaches his state of moral accountability, and, by virtue of his personal transgression, becomes blameworthy, his only hope is a work of grace by God alone."

This brings all kinds of clarity to his training technique. He believes that children are born sinless and unformed just as Adam and Eve were. Their younger years are a context for spiritual development that allows the parents to train them for when they become personally accountable to God somewhere around their early teens. Any "bad" things they do in these early years are not actually sinful since they are not truly opposed to God. They are still bad, but only as measured against a standard lower than God's. Supposing that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was placed in the Garden as a test that would provide Adam and Eve a context for spiritual development, and seeing that they fell after facing a temptation that appealed to their natural constitution, he encourages parents to do the very same thing, to create a moral testing ground and to face children with what most naturally appeals to them.

What if I told you that there is a parenting technique you can follow that will give you "a renewed vision for your family--no more raised voices, no contention, no bad attitudes, fewer spankings, a cheerful atmosphere in the home, and total obedience from your children?" And what if I told you that this technique "always works with every child?" And what if I added that this technique comes with God's own seal of approval because it is "the same technique God uses to train His children?" Such are the claims of Michael Pearl in To Train Up a Child, a book that is well on its way to selling its one millionth copy.

Let me tell you why I am reviewing this book. After I recently wrote a two-part review of Debi Pearl's Created To Be His Help Meet I received repeated requests to take a look at To Train Up A Child, written by her husband Michael. The people who wrote to me told me of the impact the book has had on their lives and on their churches. They also told me how many copies it had sold and how many are in the hands of people who read this web site. In light of all of this, I determined that it would be wise for me to have some knowledge of it.

As I read the book, I found it a fascinating illustration of the reality that what we believe will necessarily impact what we do and how we do it. In this case, it shows that what we believe to be true about children will inevitably shape the way we “train them up.” It concerned me to see that many people follow Michael Pearl’s technique even though they believe very different things from what he believes. It is for these people in particular that I write my review. I write it not to condemn you, but to provoke you to consider what Pearl really believes about children and how this has shaped his book and your children.

There are several key claims and teachings of this book that merit a closer look. I will move through them in what I hope is a logical and helpful way. Today I will do some background work and tomorrow I will try to bring it all to a helpful conclusion.

Training Versus Discipline

Critical to the book is a distinction between training and discipline. The book's title and purpose are derived from the well-known words of Proverbs 22:6: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Pearl explains the importance and context of this word train: "Train up--not beat up. Train up--not discipline up. Train up--not educate up. Train up--not 'positive affirmation' up." Training is the most often missed element in child rearing. A child needs more than 'obedience training,' but without first training him, discipline is insufficient.”

This is not a book about the reactive discipline of disobedient children, though this is present as a related, secondary theme. Rather, it is a book about a kind of proactive training that heads off disobedience and thus negates the need for discipline. Pearl says, "Training is not discipline. Discipline is the 'damage control' part of training, but is insufficient in itself to effect proper behavior."