Simple Book Review: "A Survey of Bible Doctrine" (1972) by Charles C. Ryles

A Survey of Bible Doctrine (1972) by Charles C. Ryles

Charles Caldwell Ryrie writes, “Does anyone ask me, What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? – I answer in one word, ‘The Bible: the Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.’ We must go back to the old prescription of our Master: ‘Search the Scriptures.’ (John 5:39) If we want a weapon to wield against the devices of Satan, there is nothing like ‘the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.’ But to wield it successfully, we must read it habitually, diligently, intelligently, and prayerfully. This is a point on which, I fear, many fail. In an age of hurry and bustle, few read their Bibles as much as they should. More books perhaps are read than ever, but less of the one Book which makes man wise unto salvation. Rome and neology could never have made such havoc in the Church in the last fifty years, if there had not been a most superficial knowledge of the Scriptures throughout the land. A Bible-reading laity is the strength of a Church.”

When I 'found' this book, actually it didn't have covers, so I made it myself. In this book, there are 9 chapters:

0)    Introduction: An Important Word to Begin With

1)    What is God Like?

2)    Is the Bible Inspired?

3)    Jesus Christ the Lord

4)    The Holy Spirit

5)    The World of Angels

6)    The Nature of Man

7)    Christ's Salvation

8)    What is the Church?

9)    What Does the Future Hold?

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Simple Book Review: "The Extraordinary Cases of Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Extraordinary Cases of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

After watching BBC Sherlock (from season 1 to 4), I was convinced by the genius of Conan Doyle (who also penned a famous book The Lost World), mesmerised by Benedict Cumberbatch convicting act, and after browsing a book entitle Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes - I decided to read the original J

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Simple Book Review: "A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger" (2005) by Lee Strobel

The Case for Christmas:
A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger (2005)
by Lee Strobel

I have read The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith by Strobel before, and both books are very eye-opening. The Case for Christmas (actually excerpted from The Case for Christ) - compact and brief, interesting and challenging - is a very carefully investigated accounts of the Man behind the first Christmas morning.

This book is divided into four chapters:

§  The Eyewitness Evidence: Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?

§  The Scientific Evidence: Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?

§  The Profile Evidence: Did Jesus Fulfill the Attributes of God?

§  The Fingerprint Evidence: Did Jesus - and Jesus Alone - Match the Identity of the Messiah?

Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the World, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, the Son of God worthy of our adoration and worship :) Merry Christmas everyone.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Simple Book Review: "Healing Spiritual Abuse: How to Break Free from Bad Church Experiences" (1993) by Ken Blue

Healing Spiritual Abuse: How to Break Free from Bad Church Experiences (1993)
by Ken Blue

Are you discouraged from questioning the decisions or teachings church leaders make? If you do little or no volunteer work for the church, do you feel like a second-class Christian? Does your pastor insist on being addressed by a title such as “Dr” or “Pastor”? Do you hear many broad, vague appeals to “surrender fully”, “yield completely” or “lay it all on the altar”? Do you give (or tithe) out of guilt rather than joy? If you nod down your head to any two of these questions, then you may be a victim of spiritual abuse.

As fulltime worker in student ministry who work among student leaders especially and ministers and churches inevitably, I can identify with all of these questions. Almost all of students and youths that I talked to have gone through bad church experiences that have left them feeling like failures and wounded spiritually. Most of them eventually get over it (since there is no perfect church), but there are few of them (including my two good friends) have avoided church altogether. They were very committed Christians once but no more. The fact is, the most committed believers are often the most vulnerable to abusive religion.

Abusive leaders, according to Jesus in Matthew 23, take for themselves authority and power based on position and office. Abusive leaders oppress and manipulate men and women by tying up heavy loads – religious laws and regulations – and never try to help them. The abusers multiply loads of religious to induce guilt and shame in their followers in order to control them. Abusive leaders do everything for show. They take exalted titles, demand special privileges and use words deceitfully for self-promotion. Abusive leaders major on minor issues (clothes, movie and TV programme, etc.) and minor on major issues (love, mercy, justice, etc.). Abusive leaders slam the door of the Kingdom of God by denying the work of Christ by teaching that it costs something to get. Abusive leaders are very authoritative because of their own low self-esteem and insecurity. They feel threatened, so they maintain control over others. Blue Ken writes extensively about these abusers, who their victims, how they victimized others and why they do it.

In contrast, Ken Blue writes, “healthy leaders shun honorific titles and are effective in caring for the needs of God’s people. It is by servant leadership that the nonabusive leader exercises influence.” Healthy leaders lift people’s burdens off and directing their followers to Jesus Christ for rest. They spent no time or energy on their image, live simply and transparently before people. They stand ready to put aside religious protocol when it conflicts with real human need. They open wide the door of the Kingdom of God and proclaiming that it is all free to us by grace through faith in Christ alone. They know God’s forgiveness and lavish acceptance through Christ and so able to love, accept and serve others from that “position of strength.”

There are ten chapters of this book:

1)    An invitation to Freedom

2)    The Seat of Moses – the Power to Abuse

3)    Sniffing Out the Yeast of the Pharisees

4)    Heavy Loads

5)    They Do It for Show

6)    Majoring on Minors and Missing the Point

7)    Who Gets Hooked and Why

8)    Healed by Grace

9)    Healthy Church Leadership

10) Healthy Church Discipline

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Simple Book Review: "Preacher, Can You Hear Us Listening?" (2005) by Roger E. Van Harn

Preacher, Can You Hear Us Listening? (2005) by Roger E. Van Harn

“Saint Paul [in Romans 10:13-17],” writes Van Harn, “draw our attention to the purpose of preaching – namely, the hearing of Christ. Because faith comes by hearing, he gives a mission order for the church in which hearing has the central place: Sending – Preaching – Hearing – Believing – Calling. The whole mission order includes a church order and a salvation order. The church order comprised sending, preaching, and hearing. The salvation order is comprised of hearing, believing, and calling on the name of the Lord. The mission order joins the church order and the salvation order in the event of a hearing. Hearing stands at the centre between preaching and believing. It fulfills the purpose of the sending and makes possible the calling on the name of the Lord.”

To Van Harn, “hearing” is not superior to sending, preaching, believing, and calling. But it is central to the church’s mission. Hearing “the word of faith” (Romans 10:8) or hearing “the word of Christ” (10:17) stands at the centre of the mission between speaking (preaching) and believing. Preachers are “pioneer listeners” on behalf of the community of faith. “Pastors occupy a critical position in this economy of ears. We listen to the Word of God so that we can speak it accurately and truly to listening worshipers,” writes Eugene Peterson in his forward to this book, “But we also listen to the words of the men and women who make up the company of worshippers so that we can give witness to the dialogic interchange between God and God’s people that is implicit in all Christian living.” Without listening – both to God and God’s people - there is nothing to preach about.

Even though I see my main calling as a teacher rather than a preacher, I find that this book is very helpful for me as a full-time staff worker. In the student ministry, I need two kinds of listening: #1 Listening to the Bible text; and #2 Listening to the students. My biggest weakness in listening to the Bible text is “familiarity.” I tend to find ways to apply the Bible messages creatively and try hard to make them attractive and interesting without first listening and wrestling with the Bible text. To me, Van Harn writes, “The minister is not called first of all to be creative; he or she is called to be a faithful listener so that others can hear the Word of God”. Then, if I want to be a “pioneer listener” I need to listen “to” the students and “with” the students to listen “for” the students.

This book is divided into 12 chapters:

1)    Why Should We Listen to Sermons?

2)    Will You Be a Pioneer Listener for Us?

3)    How Can We Hear with All that Noise?

4)    May We Please See the Story behind the Text?

5)    May We Please Hear the Story around the Text?

6)    Does Every Sermon Need a Bible Text?

7)    Can We See What’s Happening in the Light of God’s Story?

8)    Can We See Our Culture in the Light of God’s Story?

9)    In Which Church Should We Listen?

10) Can a Sermon Be the Word of God?

11) Do You Preach for the Church or for the World?

12) Will You Come and Listen to Us?

Because preaching the word of Christ is important, hearing is crucial!

[P.S.: I’ve read three books on preaching so far. I Believe in Preaching by John Stott, The Elements of Preaching by Warren Wiersbe, and The Supremacy of God in Preaching by John Piper. Most personal is Stott’s; most practical is Wiersbe’s; and most doctrinal is Piper’s]

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Simple Book Review: "The Great Zoo of China" (2014) by Matthew Reilly

The Great Zoo of China (2014) by Matthew Reilly

What a great thriller! One of my favourite thriller novel so far after James Rollins’s The Blood Gospel. I read novels, but not as much as commentaries, biographies and self-help books. I picked this book for three reasons: #1 Great title, hardcover and synopsis (about dragons, come on!); #2 Recommended by two legendary thriller-authors, Brad Thor (praise for Zoo, “The king of hardcore action”) and James Rollins (“Adventure with a capital A”); and #3 BookXcess Bookstore PJ sell it very cheap for large hardcover book, only RM17.90.

This book is about the Great Zoo of China which secretly build by the Chinese government. They have proven the existence of dragons – a landmark discovery no one could ever believe is real, and scientific revelation that will amaze the world. After 40 years, now they are ready to unveil their astonishing findings within the greatest zoo ever constructed (Adam Fisher writes in ‘China vs. the World’, “China desperately want to be Number One, the pre-eminent nation on Earth. In the Communist Party this passionate desire even has a name: ‘the China Dream.’”). Matthew’s story begin when a small group of VIPs and journalists has been brought to the zoo deep within China to see these fabulous creatures for the first time. This novel is very much about Dr. Cassandra Jane “CJ” Cameron, a writer of ‘National Geographic’ and an expert on reptiles. “CJ,” writes Reilly about the main character, “is as tough as mother in my humble opinion.”

Deputy Director of the Great Zoo of China, Mr. Zhang explained this to his VIPs and other guesses, “Let me ask you this: What precisely is a dragon? Myths of gigantic winged serpents have existed for thousands of years. As with many other things, they originally appeared in China. The first Chinese dragon myth dates back to the year 4700 BC, to a statue of a dragon attributed to the Yangshao culture of that time… The Babylonian king, Gilgamesh, fought a fierce dragon named Humbaba in the epic tale that bears his name. He lived around 2700 BC… The ancient Greeks spoke of Hercules fighting a dragon in order to steal the apples of the Hesperides, the eleventh of his twelve labours. Hercules is generally thought to have loved around the year 1250 BC…

From about 100 BC and for the next 1500 years, several Meso-American cultures, including the Aztecs and the Mayans, venerated a flying serpent named Quetzalcoatl. And, of course, the United Kingdom has long lauded the bravery of St George, who slayed a dragon no in England but in Libya around the year 300 AD. In the eighth century, the Scandinavians wrote of Beowulf fighting a fire-breathing dragon and in the thirteenth century, the Vikings sang of Fafnir.” Zhang continued, “There is something very curious, however, about all of these mythologies. In every single one of these myths found across the ancient world, the dragons are the same. Their features are consistent around the globe…” (Page 47-48)

With this short-but-actually-long quote I leave you, my readers of this book summary… if you want to know more, go get this book or steal it from me

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Simple Book Review: "Expository Thoughts on Mark" (first published 1857) by J. C. Ryle

Expository Thoughts on Mark (first published 1857) 

by J. C. Ryle

If you love to study Christian history, like to read classic books (like I do), and treasure old wisdoms, then you got to at least know who is J. C. Ryle. Bishop Ryle reasoned and observed the great need of his own parish to read and understand the Scripture, thus, he prepared Expository Thoughts on the Gospels [first of this series is Matthew, then Mark, and two volumes each for Luke and John] for them and then because of its undiminished popularity and usefulness, the books have encircled the world for more than a century. 

“If the best way to understand the Christian Faith is to read the Gospels,” the back cover explained, “then the next books in order of importance have to be those which aid in the understanding of those Gospels.” I couldn’t agree more! I love to read commentaries on the Bible – the Gospels especially – and I wish that every Christian ministers and workers devour good commentaries to aid them in Bible Studies, preaching and teaching. Oh, may we pray for the spirit of Ezra who “had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach [God’s] statues and rules in Israel”! (Ezra 7:10). Then revival will come to Malaysian churches!

Let me come back to Ryle. This ‘plain and pointed’ words are a great stimulus to the reading of the Bible itself. But why called it ‘Expository Thoughts’ and not ‘Commentaries’? Ryle reminds us on the preface, “The readers must not expect to find in these ‘Expository Thoughts,’ a learned, critical commentary on the Gospels… [it is] a continuous series of short practical expositions.” And he prayed that “my chief desire, if I know anything of my heart, in this and all my writings, is to lead my readers to Christ and faith in Him, to repentance and holiness, to the Bible and prayer.” As I begun reading this book, I said… amen :)

[P.s: This book was meant to be a devotional book, to lead us to the Book, and to be read aloud. So far, I didn’t see any Christian bookstores sell this book, so, if you would like to read it, I suggest that you go to the local church library or visit seminary schools]

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.