Those of us who are Western Christians continue to hear reports that the church is migrating to the south and to the east—that as our nations increasingly turn their collective backs on God, God begins fresh work in other parts of the world. Says Mark Noll in his new book The New Shape of World Christianity, “It is as if the globe had been turned upside down and sideways. A few short decades ago, Christian believers were concentrated in the global north and west, but now a rapidly swelling majority lives in the global south and east. [If a Christian] Rip Van Winkle wiped a half-century of sleep from his eyes … and tried to locate his fellow Christian believers, he would find them in surprising places, expressing their faith in surprising ways, under surprising conditions, with surprising relationships to culture and politics, and raising surprising theological questions that would not have seemed possible when he fell asleep.”

I do not intend to continue posting these “Books I Didn’t Review” article with the frequency I’ve been doing so lately. But this summer I’ve been enjoying reading books outside of the Christian genre and I’ve been read a lot of them. It has been a refreshing break for me. I’ve still been enjoying at least one Christian book per week, but my recreational reading has taken me far and wide. In Canada we have a bookstore chain called Indigo, headed by Heather Reisman. She offers lists of “Heather’s Picks” and the beauty of it is, if you buy the book and don’t like it, you can return it, no questions asked. So I have been gleaning from her list (skipping over the many novels she recommends), browsing through other lists, and reading a variety of books.

Here are some of the titles I’ve enjoyed:

Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman. In the first four months of 1942 American and Filipino soldiers fought a long and brutal battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. The battle ended with the surrender of 76,000 Americans and Filipinos, the worst defeat in American history. After the battle these men were subjected to unbelievable cruelty that began with a long, forced march across Bataan to a prison camp. The soldiers who survived this march, ravaged by tropical diseases, were starved and beaten and worked to death as slave labor. Thousands died. Those who endured would never be the same. Tears in the Darkness, a current New York Times bestseller, focuses on the story of the Bataan Death March and its aftermath. It takes Ben Steele, a young American soldier, as its protagonist, and looks primarily through his eyes. The book is unique in that it does not end with the liberation of the prisoners but with the trial and conviction of the Japanese officer deemed responsible for much of the cruelty and deprivation. The authors have constructed an absolutely fascinating account of this part of the war and this is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the Second World War. Because the book focuses on one central character, its appeal will go much further, though, to anyone who would want to marvel at the unimaginable torture a human can endure with nothing but the will to live to sustain him. This is one of this summer’s must-read books!

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat. This memoir comes from Marina Nemat, who was born and raised in Iran but, surprisingly, as a Roman Catholic. In 1982, at just sixteen years old, she was arrested on false charges by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and thrown into the notorious Evin prison. There she was tortured and condemned to die for her supposed acts of sedition. But in a rather remarkable twist, her life was spared by a prison guard and interrogator who pleaded for her life because he had fallen in love with her and desired to marry her. Nemat is a bold protagonist who refuses to sell out her mind by believing all the lies told to her, yet she is human enough to surrender when stubbornness might cost her life. The conflict that rages in her heart and mind throughout her imprisonment is fascinating. She also offers a insider’s perspective on the radical transformation that occurred within Iran before, during and after the Islamic revolution. This book has the kind of characters and plot twists that seem more at home in fiction than fact. Yet it is a true story, or so Nemat claims. It seemed to me that the story fit together just a little bit too well and I began to wonder if perhaps the author had taken some liberties with the facts. A search of the internet revealed some controversy to that end with accusations flying both ways. Regardless, whether it is read as fact or a blend of fact and fiction, this was a Heather’s Pick that I enjoyed thoroughly. It makes for an excellent “evening or two” kind of read.

The First Tycoon by T.J. Stiles. This is a long and occasionally dense biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, a character who continues to fascinate well over a century after his death. He is a character who is quite difficult to understand and, therefore, one who many biographers have portrayed unfairly as one dimensional. Stiles portrays him, accurately I think, as a brutal businessman but a man who had a tender heart toward those he loved and who did have some room in his heart (and his pocketbook) for acts of kindness and charity. Vanderbilt is a fascinating study of opposites, really, in his love-hate relationship with family members and business associates. For every noble character quality (which history has largely ignored) he has three or four ignoble. What interested me most of all, I think, was seeing how so much of what he did was motivated not by the desire to be wealthy, but by the desire to punish those who would dare to cross him. There were times when he risked the economy of the nation for reasons no more noble than personal vendetta. His pride seemed to know few bounds. Money was power and power was a game to see who could win the greatest, most resounding victories. If there was one thing I’d wish for this biography it would be that there be a little more of the man and a little bit less of his business transactions. However, Stiles would likely make the case that to know the man’s business is to know the man himself and he may well be right. While The First Tycoon can occasionally bog down in the details just a little bit, it remains a very readable biography of a character whose importance to America (as that first great business tycoon) is difficult to overstate.

The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. In this book Tom Standage writes of “The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers.” He shows, quite well, how the invention and popularization of the telegraph in many ways foreshadowed the world wide web. In a matter of just years the world shrank through this amazing new communication medium that was almost infinitely faster than the train and steam boat which, until that time, were the fastest bearers of information. If the book has a downside, it would be where Standage seems to over-reach just a little bit, reading the telegraph through the lens of the internet instead of the other way around. Still, it is fascinating to learn of “online” communication that saw men and women meet and marry through the wires much as people do today through the web and to read of the way society struggled to adapt to a medium of communications that was light years ahead. There are some good lessons for us to learn here. This is a book that will appeal to anyone who is interested in technology or history or the confluence of the two.

The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. I read this book because I wanted to understand the history of Facebook—a program (a site, a lifestyle) that is changing society. The book’s cover (a picture of a red, lacy bra and a couple of cocktail glasses) and subtitle (A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal) should have tipped me off that it was not going to be serious history. Mezrich writes the book in the style of dramatic narrative which apparently means “when I don’t have facts, I’ll just make ‘em up and when the story gets slow, I’ll fabricate a sex scene.” He does provide lots of interesting facts and shares the rather brutal history of Facebook (from Mark Zuckerberg essentially stealing the idea from people who had asked him to create a very similar social media site to the backhanded way that he forced his co-founder out of the company). I suppose it is a tale of money, genius and betrayal, though I don’t see how sex really enters into the true tale except as much as it would for any group of college students (except, of course, as a selling feature). So this is Mezrich’s take on the story, written in a tabloid fashion where what is true and what could be true blend together. The framework of the facts seems to line up with what I’ve read elsewhere but the very nature of the book makes it somewhat less than trustworthy. Still, if you want to know how Facebook came to be, how it evolved from a week’s worth of work for a college student to a company valued in the billions dollars, this seems to be the only show in town. Even then, read Wikipedia first to see if it offers enough to satisfy your curiosity before plunking down the money for this book. Even at just $16.50 it’s hard to believe that it’s worth the money.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis. This was a book I read purely for pleasure. This was a #1 national bestseller and has been available since 2003, so I am guessing many of you have already read it. Somehow I only got around to it now. In this book Lewis went on a search for answers, seeking to find out how the Oakland A’s, one of Major League Baseball’s poorest teams, could keep competing against teams with payrolls two or three times higher. And, indeed, the A’s have been competitive year after year. The book focuses in predominantly on Billy Beane who has been General Manager since 1998. It’s a very interesting book, though some of Beane’s “genius” has been exposed by the light of history (some of those draft picks that everyone else laughed at have, indeed, been laughable). But it’s still a very enjoyable read and one any baseball fan will enjoy, even six years later.

Tiny Dancer by Anthony Flacco. You may remember this as one of the few “feel-good” stories to emerge shortly after the US went to war in Afghanistan. Anthony Flacco relates the story of Zubaida Hasan, a nine year-old girl from a tiny village in rural Afghanistan who had been terribly injured in a kerosene fire. Burned and disfigured beyond recognition, Zubaida was taken by her father to the city where an American Green Beret saw her and took pity on her. She was eventually flown to the United States where she received first-world medical care and had her disfigured body rebuilt by Dr. Peter Grossman, a famed burn surgeon. At the same time she became almost a surrogate daughter to Grossman and his wife, Rebecca, as she lived with them through the long year of surgery and recovery. You can read more about Zubaida and her rather remarkable story at zubaidatinydancer.com. At the very least look at the before and after pictures and marvel at the blessing of modern medicine. Though this book stumbles into one of my pet peeves, putting thoughts into the characters heads—thoughts the author could not possibly have known—it is still quite a good read and worth the evening or two it will take to get through it. Though the book is only a few years old, it seems to be out of print so you need to find it in the bargain area (as I did) or buy it used.

I am no authority on eschatology, on the theology of the end times. In fact, I need all the help I can get in understanding it and in separating one view from the next. It is an area where seemingly small distinctions can make profound differences and where tensions often run high. It was with some interest, then, that I turned to The Late Great Planet Church, a new documentary by NiceneCouncil. It is hosted and produced by Jerry Johnson who has been part of the team behind other such excellent documentaries as Amazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism.

Like most similar documentaries, this one relies on interviews with pastors and scholars. In this case the list of contributors includes Kenneth Gentry, Kenneth Talbot, Tom Ascol, Tom Nettles, Gary DeMar and several other notable teachers or scholars. Several of those who contribute to this production are former dispensationalists themselves and they are able to provide an personal, inside perspective on the issues inherent in the system that ultimately drove them away from it. Often this is little more than their growth in Christian maturity; as they searched the Scriptures they found, quite simply, that dispensational theology was nowhere to be found in God’s Word.

I will say up-front that, for this DVD, the information is better than the production. The production quality, though by no means terrible, is also not excellent. The audio is not great and the levels sometimes vary from segment-to-segment. There are also some background graphics which, at least to my untrained eye, appear to be stock videos that are low-quality and thus appear quite pixelated and stutter at times. Even the lighting is uneven so the faces of the people being interviewed are unevenly lit. None of these are major problems, but I feel they do merit a mention. Thankfully the information conveyed is very good and overshadows the somewhat-amateurish production quality.

This is but volume one of what is going to be a two-volume set, so Johnson does not set out to provide a complete rebuttal to dispensational theology. Instead, in this first volume he focuses on the rise of dispensationalism, looking to its roots and its earliest proponents. In the second volume he will compare dispensationalism to Scripture but here he simply allows the earliest teachers to speak for themselves. And if you know the history of this theology, you know that these men do great damage through their words and through their lives. There is Darby with his disregard for the history of the faith and his almost-prideful admission that this theology was unknown until he discovered it. There is his out-of-control ego which led him to separate from many other believers and eventually to conclude that his church was the only true church in all of London. Spurgeon’s reaction to Darby and his Plymouth Brethren is instructive as the perspective of a wise and godly contemporary. And then there is Scofield who, even as a professed Christian, utterly abandoned his wife and two daughters, immediately remarried and then assigned to himself the title of doctor even though he had educated himself. While granting that such men, with their unbiblical behavior, do not discount the theology, Johnson feels that he cannot tell the story of dispensational theology without providing these simple facts from the lives of its founders. And he is right, I think, to do so. Truly the roots of this theology are surprising and shocking, even. He looks also to some of the theology these men taught, showing how even their followers had to downplay or deny some of what was so utterly unbiblical (such as the view that God’s means of salvation in the Old Testament was different from the means of salvation today).

This is a valuable DVD, I think, and one that may well serve to encourage some of the people who have been reared in this system to think deeply about their beliefs. As an introduction, this first volume does its job well. I will wait eagerly for the second volume to see how Johnson and his team of scholars apply Scripture to dispensationalism and provide what I expect will be a thorough rebuttal.

Buy it at Monergism Books

(And if you have not yet done so, be sure to take a look at Amazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism)

Church is out, spirituality is in. This is true outside Christians circles but, shockingly, it is true within as well. Recent years have seen a long succession of books talking of the revolution to come (or the revolution underway) which will see Christians abandon the institutional church in favor of expressions of the faith that are supposedly more pure. Christians meeting together in Starbucks in twos or threes, Christians meeting on park benches or around a backyard swimming pool. This, say some, is a true, pure, biblical expression of Christian community. It is in reaction to this kind of misinterpretation of Scripture that Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck have written, Why We Love the Church.

To live is to suffer. It is sadly inevitable that in this sinful world, we will all suffer. Some suffer more than others and some suffer for different reasons than others. But the fact remains that all of us will face hardship and pain. Knowing this, we are wise to arm ourselves for those times, to prepare ourselves for the inevitable affliction. Does Grace Grow in Winter?, authored by Ligon Duncan and J. Nicholas Reid is just the kind of book that does this so well, offering wise, biblical, pastoral counsel useful to those in the fight and to those only preparing to fight. The book considers suffering in the light of the sovereignty of our wise and loving God.

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.

At the very heart of the gospel, at the very heart of the Christian faith, are two great miracles, two inseparable miracles, through which a dead man is brought to life. The first miracle is justification; here a condemned sinner is made right in the eyes of a perfect judge. The second miracle is regeneration; here a hater of God and a hater of good is transformed into a lover of God and a lover of all that is good and right. Despite the importance of these two, confusion reigns, even among Christians, about what they are and what they mean. In Justification and Regeneration Charles Leiter sets forth a biblical understanding of each of these, the similarities, the differences, the misconceptions, the truth.

I spent a few minutes yesterday reading about the new iPhone—the iPhone 3G S. It sounds spectacular. With every generation of the phone the wizards at Apple get one step closer to what people wanted the iPhone to be from the outset—an amazing, innovative, gizmo that does so many things so well. Watching the videos, reading the descriptions, I can feel my heart begin to long for that phone. I know that if I don’t watch myself, if I don’t guard my heart, I may just find myself dedicating way too much time to pursuing that phone and rationalizing all the reasons I need it. Of course the problem is not with the phone, but with my heart—a heart that longs for what it does not have. Idolatry, it seems, is alive and well.

It is becoming difficult to keep up with the volume of books coming from the pen of Dr. Albert Mohler. In the past eighteen months we have seen five new books and there is still one remaining for later in 2009 (an original work based on a sermon series, slated for release later this year). Atheism Remix began as the W.H. Griffith Thomas Lectures Mohler delivered at Dallas Theological Seminary early in 2008; He Is Not Silent, a book on preaching, is an original work, written as a book; Culture Shift and Desire and Deceit began as articles written over a period of years, most of which were posted at Mohler’s blog.

Any time I write a review of a book dealing with prayer I feel the need to point out that bookstore shelves are already groaning under the weight of such books. There are hundreds, thousands probably, of books on prayer. A new one is going to need to be good—very good—to supplant the excellent resources already available. Paul Miller, perhaps a bit reluctantly, takes on this challenge in his new book A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World. I was drawn to this book by David Powlison’s Foreword in which he gives it his highest recommendation and says, “A Praying Life will bring a living, vibrant reality to your prayers. Take it to heart.” And what Christian does not want to learn to pray better? What Christian would claim that his prayers are as powerful as ever he would want them to be? The vast number of books on this subject testifies to the Christians’ desire to pray more and to pray better.