Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
Trending Topics
#grief
#marriage
#pornography
Led By The Spirit by Jim Elliff is a short, but well-argued, satisfying and scriptural examination of how a believer can know and understand the will of God. It is also practical, having been based on the author’s own experience in being what he refers to as an illuminist – a person who, when confronted by difficult decisions in life, seeks guidance from God by getting a series of impressions which he believes come as God directly impacts the spirit. …
Open Theism, once a doctrine known only to Christian academics, is slowly becoming mainstream among evangelicals. While it continues to be a minority position, it is gaining wider acceptance and several popular Christian authors are teaching it or teaching principles derived from it, even while denying their belief in it. This represents one of the battle-lines of the contemporary church and it is important for Christians to know what this doctrine teaches and be prepared to give a defense of …
Truth be told, I was a little disappointed with 9 Marks of a Healthy Church. The problem is not that it is a poor book but more that I had unrealistic expectations of it. I was hoping this book would be everything the church growth manuals are not; that it would be a knockout punch against church growth. It is not all of this, but that does not mean it is without value. I suppose I expected it to be …
Though I have never met him, Garry Gilley has had a signficant impact on my life. He was one of two people who was most influential in my decision to begin this web site and to review books. His many book reviews were very helpful to me and made me realize that if he could review books and post them on the web, I could too. I have long wanted to read his books and just recently was given a …
I recently heard someone say “I follow all 9 of the 10 commandments.” It is true, isn’t it, that we continue to regard each of the other 9 commandments as being integral to the Christian life, but have disregarded the fourth. A few years ago I read an article written by an unbeliever and published in a major newspaper where she questioned how Christians could simply disregard this commandment. Her conclusion was that it was mere disobedience – that Christians …
When it comes to evangelism, it seems that Calvinists have quite a poor reputation in the church today. Most of the largest and seemingly most successful mission organizations were founded by Arminians and continue to be based around Arminian theology. Arminian churches seem to grow much faster than churches based on Calvinist principles. It seems that part of the reason for this is that Calvinists have such a high view of God’s sovereignty that it is easy for them to …
Though I am not a preacher, I decided to read Rediscovering Expository Preaching in an attempt to discover exactly what expository preaching is and compare it to the type of teaching practiced in most modern churches. That this book was written by John MacArthur and the faculty of Master’s seminary is a strong endorsement of its value, for that institution is known as being one that upholds the value of expositional teaching. I hoped also that I would learn some …
There is any number of books available today that serve as introductions to Calvinism or the doctrines of grace. While some of these leave much to be desired, many of them are excellent and do justice to the topic. One might ask, then, why someone would want to write (or read) yet another one, and that would be a fair question. What attracted me to this title is that it was the final book written by one of our generation’s …
James White is a Reformed apologist who specializes in defending the faith against the doctrines of Roman Catholics and Mormons – two groups which deny the doctrine of sola scriptura or Scripture Alone. He is uniquely qualified to write such a book as he is intimately familiar with the arguments against the Bible’s sufficiency. The book comes at a time when much of Protestantism has lost sight of this doctrine and has been slowly denying it. White defines this doctrine …
Guidance and the Voice of God is one of several books I have read recently that discusses the way God speaks to and guides His children. I have turned to these books in response to the words I hear all around me in modern Christianity. People continually ask God to speak to us in circumstances and situations. I am often asked how God spoke to me during a period of time or perhaps during a specific event. The terms people …