Book reviews 10/4
I spent the past month reading several more books loaned to me by others. If you plan to loan something else to me, let’s take a break for a month or so. Thank you for the thought, but I really want to move on to stuff collecting dust on my bookshelf for a bit. ;)
Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (John Piper)
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This is the first John Piper book I’ve read, though have been meaning to for a couple years after listening to a few of his sermons online. He’s a great speaker, and I tend to agree with most of his theology. From what I understand, this is the book to read if you want to understand where he comes from. The basic premise of the book can be summed up by a statement in his first chapter.
The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.
This message is very similar to a continuing theme in the books I have been reading recently. In all things praise God. Do all things for the glory of God. However, Piper seems to take it a bit farther in his book, saying we can derive pleasure from praising and glorifying God. And, he says that pleasure is OK, so long as it gives glory to God and isn’t done just for pleasure’s sake. Oh, but it should be done for pleasure’s sake because God wants us to be pleased, so it’s the best thing we can do, and is right. You know, I really can’t summarize this book well at all, lol. You will just have to check it out yourself.
What Jesus Demands from the World (John Piper)
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This is the 2nd of two Piper books that I borrowed a couple weeks ago, and I find it far better than the first. Perhaps it’s because it was far easier to follow along and understand, but I think it has something to do with it clearly contradicting some of the lies our society has been taught about Jesus over the past few decades. You know, you wouldn’t have to believe those lies if you just read the Bible, but if that’s too hard to do, you should really check this book out. Piper organizes it into 50 very short (3-6 page) chapters, each on a specific “demand” from Jesus found in the Gospels. The best parts are near the beginning, though it appears he did not really place them in order of importance. I say that with some amount of confidence, considering demand #9 is “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” Spend some serious time with this book and follow it up with related readings in the Gospels, and I think you have a great study on your hands. Perhaps you can rediscover what Jesus really said, ignore what the world keeps telling you, and get back to what God wants us to be doing. I will definitely be purchasing a copy of this book for myself.
So What’s the Difference?(Fritz Ridenour)
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This book has pretty good summaries of the several major religious and non-religious worldviews floating around out there in the world. It is written from the perspective of evangelical protestantism being the correct worldview, so you can definitely call this book heavily biased. So, if you don’t really subscribe to that worldview, it probably isn’t the book for you. Though, that may not mean the book is any less the Truth(TM). It just means you might be really annoyed with some of the statements in there, especially if it happens to fit your worldview/religion in the category of “cult”, as it does with some groups such as Jehovah’s Witness. Anyway, it summarizes these worldviews well, but it is simply too short at 256 pages (including the index) to really dig deep.
Planet Earth: The Final Chapter (Hal Lindsey)
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This is a fairly decent commentary on end-times prophecy from the Bible, with quite a bit of conjecture thrown in with fairly sound interpretation. I can say conjecture, as he spends quite a bit of time in the middle of the book describing how bad things are going to get with Y2K happens (it was written in 1998). We all know how that one went down. It doesn’t mean you can throw out everything in the book, though. Outside of the predictions that obviously ended up incorrect, they are certainly along the lines of other recent books. If you enjoyed The Left Behind series or Joel Rosenberg’s books, you will probably enjoy this one. If you haven’t read anything in this genre, I would start with one of those instead and then follow up with this one. Lindsey has a decent summary of the final days from his end-times beliefs at the end of the book. In case you are interested, here is a summary of that summary. ;)
- Antichrist takes his seat in the Temple (in Jerusalem) and Israel realizes he’s not God.
- Those Israelis flee to Petra, Jordan and are protected by God.
- Antichrist sets up economic system where you must have the “mark” (666) to participate. Believers in this time are persecuted and killed.
- Russian/Muslim alliance (Gog-Magog) campaign against Israel. Israel fights back with nuclear and neutron weapons. [I still don't get the neutron weapon thing.]
- Several nuclear exchanges occur, leaving the world in a state of famine and plagues.
- Third of all ships, submarines and sea life destroyed. Quarter of earth’s population is killed.
- Eastern alliances mobilize a 200-million-man army, with more nuclear attacks occurring. More than half of mankind has now perished.
- Nuclear winter is now in full effect, blocking out a third of sun, moon and starlight.
- Satan is expelled from Heaven, and releases demons out of the abyss.
- Asian army (the 200-million-man one) collides with Antichrist’s army and the war of Armageddon begins.
- Battle of Jehoshaphat takes place east of Jerusalem (Joel 3:1, 2, 9-15).
- Battle of Jerusalem (Zech 12:2, 3; 14:1-14; Revelation 14:20; Daniel 11:45).
- Battle of Jordan Valley/Dead Sea (Joel 2:20; Rev 14:20).
- Battle of the Mountains of Moab, Edom, Bozrah (Isaiah 34:5-9; 6:3).
- Christ destroys the armies attempting to kill those at Petra.
- Battle of Meggido/Jezreel (Armageddon) (Rev 16:16).
- Global battle takes place (Isaiah 24:1-23, Zeph 1:14-18; Ezekiel 39:6; Isaiah 34:1-17).
- Jesus ends up at Mount of Olives; destroys all armies fighting Jerusalem (Zech 14:12).
- Jesus resets the planet’s ecology, gathers all Jews to judge at Sinai, all Gentiles to judge at Jehoshaphat Valley.
That’s just the last bit of the end. The rest of the book to that point was about events leading up to the end. You’ll have to read it for yourself if you want to know. ;)
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