The Jesus you are probably ignoring

One of America's greatest modern preachers and possibly one of the greatest yet has served up another volume worth reading. Even though this book is a distillation of many of his sermons on the topic of Christ and His bold ministry confrontations it is an important work for me as I try to grow in Christ and grow in my understanding of Christ.
The reader is brought face to face with a Jesus who does not receive too much press in our modern age. As you will learn in this book Jesus spent his whole public ministry confronting in very bold and even extreme ways the prevailing false views and practices of the spiritually elite in a way and style that we as moderns need not ignore and better off to embrace.
I was personally challenged to rethink how and why I should be more bold and wise and yet at the same time mild and loving in my witness to the lost as well as to the church. This is one more book that will be added to my Christology section of the bookshelf and will be referenced again and again.

Thank you Thomas Nelson publishers for making this volume available through your free book blogging service.

Knuckle dragging theology

The Selfless Gene
Knuckle dragging theology
By Charles Foster

The author and I have at least one thing in common: anger. He wrote that he was 'angry while writing the book' and I was angry while reading it. In the Selfless Gene, Foster attempts to so disparage and belittle Christians who actually believe the Bible concerning the creation account in hopes of shattering faith thus allowing his gods, natural selection plus whatever force allowed altruism, joy, pain and pleasure, to be seated. The hated view point of the 'Young Earth Creationists', as he calls them, so irritates this man that he feels compelled to shower the reader with gifts of evidence from science and logic. If anything, I am grateful to the author for hopefully showing the Answers In Genesis crowd that trying to dispute or prove various artifacts of evidence will never win or charm anyone into accepting God as sovereign over His creation. No matter which evidential rabbit trail you wonder down with an evolutionist you will always be tempted to point out folly concerning this bone or that rock in their thinking. The answers from the Creationists will always be the same: "God did it!" And, the answers from the evolutionists will always be the same too: "natural selection did it!" Dead ends, deaf ears and no common ground whatsoever will be found. The author tries and the author fails to find middle ground with a very poor conclusion to the book which leaves the reader with nothing: nothing to believe and nothing to hold. Be warned Christian reader, this man is certainly a wolf in predatory, natural selection, eat or be eaten clothing with no semblance of costuming. He openly states that Creationist evidence and positions are foolish and that after reading his book he will enlighten you and win you out of darkness. As usual, the evolutionist fails to answer the question, the most important question in the universe, why? Why us, why earth, why anything as opposed to nothing? Only God can answer that question and the evolutionist denies God so therefore these questions simply remained unanswered and really unasked by them. I have news for the author, evolutionists and evidential Creationists alike, the answer to our universe is very simple: God created an 'old earth' with the appearance of age. This theory is called the Appearance of Age Theory. The author apparently has never heard of it nor has it ever crossed his mind either. Here it is in a nutshell: God created the earth with the appearance of age for that is the only way He could have done it. Let me illustrate: Five minutes after God created an Oak tree if Adam were to chop it down how many growth rings would it have? By simple definition a certain aged tree must have growth rings equal to the seasonal yearly changes of growth. God created it and so created a 100 year old tree that was actually only five minutes 'old'. The same holds true with humans, rocks, gamma radiation, light rays and every other created thing. They all look and have to be a certain age to even exist and yet they were only minutes old after God spoke them into being. Why not reader? Couldn't God, who we believe to be all powerful and sovereign, create the world however He wished? This is exactly what I believe and it perfectly explains the world and every artifact. However, its not even close to being the most foolish thing I believe. No, I believe in something even more far-fetched. I believe that an ancient Jewish carpenter's son's death on a cross actually provided everything I needed to have all my sins forgiven and be put in perfectly right standing before God, my Creator. Now that's foolishness. I guess the author and those who buy in to his illogical conclusions will continue to drag their knuckles into the naturally selected godless, Christless future. As for me, I will continue to serve and believe God who supernaturally revealed Himself to me by His Word, the Bible by the enlightening of my darkened mind by God, Holy Spirit. Make no mistake about this book. This book is a battle but not the battle the author tries to fight between creationists and evolutionists. No, this battle is even more important concerning the trustworthiness of God's written word, the Bible, and the clear message of the gospel contained in that perfect Word. If the author doesn't want to believe what the bible says about creation why would he believe what the Bible says about Christ? The Bible, God and the gospel are on trial in this book.

The most unlikely Christians: head-hunting cannibals.

"Thank you" shouted a thousand times from a thousand Sago thatched rooftops would not be enough to recommend this book to you. Having worked for Gospel Light for over a decade made me certainly familiar with this book that was first published in the 70s but for whatever reason I never got around to reading it. What was I thinking? I loved this book from cover to cover and did not want it to end. Don Richardson is a terrific story teller and writer. The story flows and is very compelling as I learned all about the conversion of the Sawi cannibal tribe of Irian Jaya. His discovery, explanation and illustration of God's thumbprint of a redemptive analogy in this culture will blow you away. I left this book with my mouth wide opened as I search my shelves for the other books Richardson has written. I have read thousands of books and this one is firmly in my top ten! Read this book. Live this book by finding the redemptive analogies in your own culture that God may use for His glory.

Discover Rediscovering God in America

Newt and his wife take the reader on a wonderful stroll through our nation's capitol in search of God. Trust me, they find more than you have been taught about the importance of God to our forefathers. God was no passing fancy or the politically correct lip service to sway voters like today's political leaders believe. God was the sovereign rights giver who, in their belief system, was worthy of worship and honor now reflected in the artifacts left behind in our capitol. Newt proves without a shadow of a doubt from the writings, souvenirs, dedication plaques, engravings and even the monuments themselves that our country was not only founded for God's glory but that our leaders actually believed in this fact and lived this fact. I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. The pictures were beautiful and the book's layout is as nice as the Capitol mall itself. Can't wait for my dad to open his copy for Christmas.

I blog for Thomas Nelson and this book was a free copy. They don't tell me what to say and they certainly doesn't correct my grammer and spelling!

We are in a worship war! Called to Worship

Called To Worship
by Vernon M. Whaley
Thomas Nelson 2009

With the basic premise of defining worship using clear biblical evidence Whaley offers a lengthy tome loaded with plenty of historical facts. A better title for the book after taking about three analyzing weeks pouring over the chapters could be: The War For Worship, tracing the history of worship in the bible. Or I might suggest: Worship Wars.

This is a very nice view of the history of the bible, worship style.
I really liked the historical overview of the bible with the emphasis on worship.
Other than a couple of research errors, more like misspoken statements such as pg. 56 where he says, "Now rewind, thousands of decades..." Even if you took the plural here in the most limited sense as two that would add up to 20,000 years. I believe he meant to write, "thousands of years" which would be more in line with the roughly 3,500 years between Martin Luther King Jr's speech and the Egyptian monarchy of Moses day.

What is worship and does the bible offer guidance for the modern worshipper and more importantly the modern worship leader? Yes, and Whaley gives the church a much needed history of worship. Much of today's worship and the ever interesting modern 'worship service' will be better served because of this book. I think the worship wars concept speaks dead on and from a perspective that I've never heard before. Over the course of the ages worship of God really has been under attack from enemies like Satan and enemies within like our wicked hearts. Everyone and everything ends up being worshipped over the course of time instead of the one true and living God. Not only does Whaley draw out an interesting perspective on worship from history but add wonderful principles of worship from those same stories.

Whaley shows the reader that God has worship standards, a worship plan, and has put an innate desire within each of us for worship. We are worshipping creatures and if we are not worshipping the one true God then we fill that void with cheap substitutes and the war for worship is continued.

Some areas of concern: I think the author must mention the use and abuse of alcohol at least in five different places which reveals one of the pet sins of the whole conservative Baptist, Liberty crowd. Yet the sin of overeating is never mentioned which seems in my mind just as big (pun intended) of a problem for mankind than someone who enjoys a glass of red wine with a nice steak and ends up having too much and driving home drunk. In both cases of eating a whole box of Twinkies or consuming a whole six pack of beer the issue is worship and over indulgence of something other than God which is the sin. Also to watch out for early on is a small creeping in of Arminianism. Like most of modern evangelicalism we are plagued with this insidious 'me centered' theology that it just slides in to our common dialog. On page xvii of the introduction we read, "Above all, you will read about God's love for you," Really? God's love for us is above all? I do not think that it is above His glory and His desire to be worshipped by every aspect of His universe. Then on page 215 he does get it right: "Yes, but it all begins with the worship-the right worship-of Yahweh, and that starts with recognizing the glory of God-and giving Him glory." So all is not lost with his theology.

I think the biggest impact this book made of me was filling in some missing elements of my theology of worship. For instance, I never thought about the reading, studying and proclaiming of scripture as worship and yet, there it is, all through the pages of scripture. I will never interact with God's word without worship going through my mind and that is a big plus.

Over all, this is an extremely readable treatment of worship and worthy of being read. I enjoyed the unique perspective of drawing out worship principles from the historic battle for worship found all through the bible. Good job Mr. Whaley. I have already starting changing my thinking about worship because of your book and for that I say thank you.