07.01.10
Posted in Books at 4:37 am by Administrator
“If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be; if God and His Word are not know and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; if the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness, will reign without mitigation or end.” –Daniel Webster, 1823
Following is a list of the top twenty books that I’ve read that have served to shape my thinking and edify me spiritually. I’ve made some effort to place them in order, but this is difficult given the diverse subject-matter covered.
My Reading List (Top Twenty)
- For His Pleasure – Samuel Gipp
- Psalm 119 – Jeff Adams
- The Saving Life of Christ – Major Ian Thomas
- To Train Up a Child – Michael Pearl
- Foxe’s Book of Martyrs – John Foxe
- What Hath God Wrought – William Grady
- Simple Social Graces – Linda Lichter
- Embraced by the Cross – L.E. Maxwell
- The Law and Dispensationalism Reconsidered – James W. Knox
- New Age Bible Versions – Gail Riplinger
- Henry and the Great Society – H.L. Roush
- Dispensational Truth – Clarence Larkin
- The Sure Word of Prophecy – Peter S. Ruckman
- The Kneeling Christian – Anonymous
- The Gospel of John – Arthur W. Pink
- A Tale of Three Kings – Gene Edwards
- Family Driven Faith – Voddie Baucham Jr.
- The Embrace of Grace – Caleb Thompson
- The Normal Christian Life – Watchman Nee
- Thoughts for Young Men – J.C. Ryle
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06.30.10
Posted in Books, Missions at 4:14 pm by Administrator
The late A.W. Tozer stated, “Next to the Holy Scriptures, the greatest aid to the life of faith may be Christian biographies.”
My personal experience bears this observation out and the reading of Christian biographies has been the greatest encouragement to our family’s missionary interest and zeal. Our family has read around thirty Christian biographies together over the last two years, most of them from the “Christian Heroes Then and Now” series by Janet and Geoff Benge. I feel certain that alongside church-attendance and scripture-reading itself, this has done more to shape the spiritual and evangelistic thinking of our family than anything else. Here are a list of some great personalities that every Christian should read about:
- George Muller
- Adoniram Judson
- C.T. Studd
- William Carey
- Hudson Taylor
- David Livingstone
- A.N. Groves
- John Paton
- Rowland Bingham
- Richard Wurmbrand
- Nait Saint
- Count Zinzendorf
- Fanny Crosby
- John Wesley
- Corrie Ten Boom
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Posted in Books at 4:03 pm by Administrator
One of the great pieces of counsel that the Apostle Paul handed down to his beloved son in the faith Timothy was this: “Till I come give attendance to reading…”
Here are some book and author recommendations:
Essential Reference Works
- Strong’s Concordance
- Webster’s 1828 Dictionary
- The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
- The Scofield Study Bible – C.I. Scofield
- The Companion Bible – Ethelbert Bullinger
- Chronology of the Old Testament – Floyd Nolan Jones
Great Family Reading
- Boyhood and Beyond – Bob Schultz
- Christian Heroes Now and Then (Biography Series) – Janet and Geoff Benge
- Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
- Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Good Books on the Bible Issue
- The Answer Book: A Helpbook for Christians – Samuel Gipp
- New Age Bible Versions – Gail Riplinger
- The Christian’s Handbook of Manuscript Evidence – Peter S. Ruckman
- God Only Wrote One Book – J.J. Ray
Some of the Best General Biblical Writers
- C.H. Mackintosh
- J. Sidlow Baxter
- W. Graham Scroggie
- Alan Redpath
- Watchman Nee
- Arthur W. Pink
Books on Dispensationalism
- Dispensational Truth – Clarence Larkin
- The Law – James W. Knox
- One Book Rightly Divided – Douglas Stauffer
- Bible Believer’s Guide to Dispensationalism – David Walker
- Bible Believing Dispensationalism – Timothy Rose
The Definitive Book on Soul-Winning
The School of Biblical Evangelism – Ray Comfort
A Book Every Woman Should Read
Created to Be His Helpmeet – Debie Pearl
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01.14.10
Posted in Books, Discernment, Uncategorized at 2:41 pm by Administrator
Nobody with a remotely functional conscience has any trouble seeing the demonic roots of most of the vampire movies that pepper the shelves of movie rental stores, yet Twilight (the movie) has been deemed by some as being “family-friendly” since it avoided fowl language and extreme sexual content. Perhaps Hollywood is growing more wholesome. Whether or not you have a conscience, common-sense will debunk that possibility. The fact is that the devil is getting better and better at going undercover in these last days. Perhaps there has never been a better example than these Twilight books (and their “good” vampires) of Satan being “transformed in to an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14). Twilight is accomplishing for the satanic practice of vampirism what Harry Potter has so effectively accomplished for witchcraft: bringing the practice in to the mainstream, minimizing its dangers, glorifying its power and pleasure, and ultimately desensitizing an entire culture to something that is utterly satanic in origin. These latest efforts by the enemy have been incredibly effective, to the extent that undiscerning and unsuspecting parents are actually putting these books in to the hands of our youth. Authors like Meyer and Rowling are, in turn, depositing the seeds of demonism in to these impressionable minds. As for the “Christian” adults that are wrapped up in such books, it is simply a testimony of a Laodicean church that quit reading the word of God and let the television establish their moral standards and undermine their religious convictions.
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01.13.10
Posted in Books, Discernment at 10:29 am by Administrator
Blood Lust
In First Timothy chapter four “doctrines of devils” are associated with commanding people to abstain from meats (v. 3). In the New Testament there is actually just one prohibition in diet set forth by the scriptures and that is blood (Acts 15:20). This isn’t limited to the New Testament either. It is so uniformly abominable in the sight of God that it is the outstanding prohibition found before the law (Gen 9:4), under the law (Lev 7:23-24), and after the law. To make light of something that God so clearly abhors, as vampirism does with the consumption of blood, is folly at least and blasphemy at worst. The vampire family that is central in the Twilight saga has such respect for human life that they feast on animals only, but this is a far-cry from justification of these novels if we take a Biblical world-view.
Appointed to Die
Bella (the main non-vampire character) is so smitten with Edward (the kind and chivalrous blood-sucker) that she’s prepared to give him her soul by submitting to his bite so that they might spend eternity together (Edward is a youthful 107 years old). The whole concept of some creature under a curse to live endlessly feasting upon blood is not only evil from the blood lust standpoint, but makes a mockery of the curse of sin as found in the Bible. The curse of sin in the Bible means death (Rom 6:23), and after that death, the judgment (Heb 9:27).
Angels that Sinned
Twilight is essentially a love story; a love story involving a teenage girl and a vampire and all the drama such a relationship entails. Relations between satanically inspired immortals and fair daughters of men actually represents an ancient story-line dating all the way back to Genesis six. It impressed the Lord so much the first time this hellish plot was fleshed-out that God destroyed the earth with a flood.
The Spirit of Antichrist
When the average mind thinks of an anti-Christ character they might call up thoughts of Hitler or some horned, pitch-fork toting caricature from the pits of hell. The Biblical reality is that anti-Christ doesn’t simply denote against-Christ, but “in the place of” Christ, in other words, something dramatically similar, yet false. Edward comes on the scene with a host of characteristics that are far from what we might typically think of when we consider vampires. He’s described by readers as being kind, considerate, loving, generous, and thoughtful (so many of the things that married readers realize their spouses aren’t). But he’s a vampire none the less. When the Man of Sin is manifested in world-wide politics the scriptures tell us that he “by peace shall destroy many” (Dan 8:25). What I’m saying here is that the central vampire character in the Twilight book is amazingly “Christ-like”. Unfortunately for the thousands of ladies that are enamored by his character traits, he is not “the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26). While Edward might be able to discern the thoughts of those around him (Luke 5:22, 6:8), and exercise other apparently divine qualities (such as super strength and speed) he has only the power to destroy Bella’s soul, while Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the lost souls of men, women, and naïve teenage girls.
Tomorrow: Desensitization in the Last Days
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01.12.10
Posted in Books, Discernment at 8:04 am by Administrator
Stephanie Meyer, reared a Latter-Day Saint (Mormon) strangely enough, relates that the Twilight books originated in a very vivid dream that she had (that left her desiring to stay in bed rather than care for her three children). Here’s a scriptural red-flag before you read the first word of any of the books. The word of God warns us of false dreamers: “Which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams…” (Jer 23:27). Meyer’s dream has served to cause many Christians to forget what God thinks of those sins so commonly associated with vampires (i.e. witchcraft, divination, necromancy, etc.) (Deut 18:10-11). In the books Edward’s sister, Alice, has the ability to “divine” or see in to the future, and Stephanie Meyer’s dream has become nothing less than a prophetic vision given the success of her books. Believer’s are instructed to bring “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:3), not that Meyer, a backslidden Mormon, is a believer. Given the content and the success of these books and their leavening affect upon the minds of so many people one must wonder what, or rather who, exactly inspired this dream of hers. Meyer states on her official website that as she prepared to write the first book following her fateful dream that “Bella and Edward were, quite literally, voices in my head” (emphasis mine). The first book in the series has an apple on the front, imagery that she admittedly chose because of its association with the forbidden fruit. I wonder if the same voice that spoke to Eve has any relation to the voices in Meyer’s head?
Tomorrow: Doctrines of Devils
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01.11.10
Posted in Books, Discernment at 3:58 pm by Administrator
This will be the introductory post, to be followed by three more entries, regarding a Biblical view of the wildly popular “Twilight Series”:
The pop culture obsession with the Twilight Series and its chic brand of teenie-bopper vampirism has swept the country. I am generally altogether ignorant of such fads and rarely take an interest in learning about them since I realize “the fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Cor 7:31). Yet, I must admit that I am concerned with the reality that this odd obsession has so commonly crept in to the minds and hearts of so many professing Christians. News of these books being devoured on breaks at home school co-op outings, propagated abroad in Christian schools, allegorized in the youth devotions of liberal churches, and strangest of all, commonly read among church-members of conservative, even fundamental, churches, is disconcerting to say the least. Christians have always understood vampirism and its accompanying sub-culture to be anti-biblical and even demonic. To believe that these books and the circulation they have had among many church-goers has had a neutral spiritual impact would be naïve at best. As Christian families have sacrificed the “good book” for the “boob tube” spiritual discernment has taken a nose-dive among American Christians over the past one-hundred years that the debate over the appropriateness of reading fiction by Bible-believing youngsters (once a hot-button question in many Christian circles) has given-way to whether or not teenage-vampires are harmless enough fiction for the consumption of the Christian masses.
Tomorrow: “Dreams and Divination”
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01.05.10
Posted in Bible, Books at 6:46 am by Administrator
Paul exhorted Titus to show himself a pattern of good works including his speech that none might condemn the words of his mouth (Titus 2:7-8). Truly, if any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man (James 3:2). We all battle at times with controlling the tongue, and often our failure is not calculated or malicious, or even conscious for that matter. One area of speech where that is especially evident is in the embellishment of simple stories shared in day-to-day discourse. (I think preachers are particularly bad about this.) I read a very interesting assessment of this often unconscious struggle in the context of a testimony regarding one man’s decisive victory over the simple temptation of propogating little untruths. A. T. Pierson, speaking of George Mueller’s commitment to accuracy in all that he spoke, observed the following:
“Many a falsehood is not an intentional lie, but an undersigned inaccuracy. Three of our human faculties powerfully affect our veracity; one is memory, another is imagination, and another is conscience. Memory takes note of facts, imagination colors facts with fancies, and conscience brings the moral sense to bear in sifting the real from the unreal. Where conscience is not sensitive and dominant, memory and imagination will become so confused that facts and fancies will fail to be separated. The imagination will be so allowed to invest events and experiences with either a halo of glory or a cloud of prejudice that the narrator will constantly tell not what he clearly sees written in the book of his remembrance, but what he beholds painted upon the canvas of his own imagination. Accuracy will be, half-unconsciously, perhaps, sacrificed to his own imaginings; he will exaggerate or depreciate—as his own impulses lead him; and a man who would not deliberately lie may thus be habitually untrustworthy; you cannot tell, often he cannot tell, what the exact truth would be when all the unreality with which it has thus been invested is dissipated like the purple and golden clouds about a mountain, leaving the bare crag of naked rock to be seen, just as it is in itself.” (p. 378-379, “George Muller of Bristol”)
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11.22.08
Posted in Books at 8:54 am by Administrator
My attention span isn’t always too good when it comes to book so I always have several that I’ll be reading at any given time. Some I’ll finish and some I won’t, but this is what I’m working on.
The Pilgrim Church by E.H. Broadbent. This is basically a history of missionary activity from the time of the apostles onward. Its very hard to find a church history volume that doesn’t get bogged down with Romanism. Beyond the book of Acts there are very few reliable sources of the history of the true church (not the “Catholic” church). The Pilgrim Church is about that less recorded history. A lot of it is interesting, but its slow reading.
In My Shoes by Randy Winton. Randy is the youth pastor at FBC Brewton and this book is a collection of stories about his young sons (he has four) and what they have taught him about life and the Lord. Call Bro. Randy at FBC if you’d like a copy.
No Greater Joy Volume One by Michael and Debi Pearl. This is a collection of articles from the Pearls No Greater Joy Newsletter. Its mostly about parenting and some material on homeschooling.
Fight On! by Samuel Gipp. This is a collection of stories about people that overcame amazing odds to survive or advance a cause. All of the stories are very short, but each one is very inspiring.
Praying Victoriously: Studies in the Lord’s Prayer by Alan Redpath. I started thumbing through this the other day and it has arrested my attention. It is a thorough look at what Redpath calls “the Family Prayer” (Matt 6), and so far I’ve found it to be both doctrinally sound and devotionally rich.
The Holy Bible I just arrived in First Chronicles. 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings are some of my favorite books in the Old Testament, but I must admit, things usually slow down a bit when I hit the geneologies of 1 Chronicles.
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11.21.08
Posted in Books at 10:44 pm by Administrator
In the case that those of you who check this blog from time to time might care, I thought I’d update you on what I’ve read recently.
Books I’ve completed lately:
What Hath God Wrought: A Biblical Interpretation of American History by William Grady. I finally finished this a few months ago. This was a tremendously eye-opening history for me. He traces America’s Baptist roots to its pre-Revolution origin all the way up to the present apostasy and gives a brief, but stirring account of the revival and revivalists that made this country great. There is a good bit on the Roman Catholic influence in the War Between the States that I had never heard of before. Very interesting. There are a lot of facts as well as analysis. I’d recommend it highly.
The Question of Freemasonry and the Founding Fathers by David Barton. This too was very interesting. It is really a vindication of the Christian Heritage of the United States given the common (and sometimes frivolous) claim that most of the founding fathers were Masons.
To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl. Kelly and I read this one together. It had such a profound impression on me personally that I ordered about 30 of them before I even finished the book and then mailed them out to every family in our church with small kids. I have a few left if you didn’t get one.
The Coming Destruction of the Baptist People by James Beller. This is a briefing for parents and leaders on what essentially amounts to a conspiracy to sever Baptist people from their Baptist roots. A lot of it was quite enlightening. It may be a bit heavy-handed on the denominational emphasis for my liking, however it is a legitimate issue given the common knowledge among American Christians of this country’s “Reformed” roots and the absolute dearth of information on the significant Baptist influence on the founding of our nation. Can you name one great Baptist from the early part of this country’s history? That’s what I thought. This book explains why you can’t think of one.
Henry and the Great Society by H.L. Roush. This little book so arrested my interest that I finished it the same day that I started it. It left me somewhat depressed, but it is probably the most important book I’ve read, along with the child training book, in a long time. It is an allegory that illustrates the principle of 1 Tim 6:6. Get the book. Read it. And then do something about it!
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