So Many Books; So little Time

Alexander The Corrector

Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Who Unwrote the Bible

by Julia Keay

c. 2004

Alexander Cruden was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1699 and went on to be remembered for two things–both dramatic. He is the sole author of Cruden’s Concordance and he was considered by his contemporaries to be insane.

But was Cruden really insane or was he perhaps the more sane of all of us? Julia Keay went on a journey to find out. In this work she presents the wealth of information she has learned. She looked not just at Alexander Cruden’s life but the lives of those around him both in Aberdeen and in London and, most especially the madhouses he was confined to. She looks at the lives of the doctor’s who “treated” him, the men and women who committed him, his writings during his confinement and the general life he lived. She also took a deep look at the conditions he was subjected to and the faith he held most dear.

I had never heard of Alexander Cruden nor Cruden’s Concordance before reading this book. I have read no other biography of this man but it seems to me that Julia Keay has a winner and has managed to untangle a life and clear the name of a man who was a victim of circumstance and heart.

Alexander Cruden lived to be more than 70 years. He is remembered by a plaque and by his greatest work, his concordance which has never in more than 250 years been out of print. Not many authors can be credited with such a feat. Surely God has smiled upon this life and walked with a man through such trials as most of us will never be able to imagine.

Wonderful book and more than worth the time to read and examine or re-examine a life of faith.

Behind the Personality

Behind the Personality, The Story of My Life

by Florence Littauer

c. 2003

I like autobiographies of Christians. They generally have so much to share about how God has blessed them and seen them through. I like to read them a chapter at a time in the morning as part of my morning devotions.

I read this book for two weeks before anything either positive or Christian happened. I was really starting to think that reading this book had been a complete and total mistake. This woman’s life was one of those perfect on the outside, hollow to the point of depression on the inside. The whole life was nothing but an invented drama for both the onlookers and the participants.

And then in Chapter Fifteen, Florence Littauer accepts Jesus Christ as her savior and embarks on a complete revamp of her life and her marriage. Her life goes from “of course I’m happy, I have everything I think I need to be happy” to “yes, I’m happy in the Lord.” Her husband goes from workaholic, never home Fred to “I take care of Florence” Fred.

And what a change it is. The two people who meet and get married in the first half of the book are nothing like the two people who live and love and minister for Jesus in the second half of the book. Fred turns his supper club into a church then sells it all and moves to California where he and Florence nearly lose their home to the California fires and have an opportunity to witness for God on television and in the newspapers.

This starts out as a disheartening book but it’s not. It’s just necessary for us to understand where God found Florence and Fred to fully appreciate the love and life He blessed them with. And along the way, we see what fully committed to Christ can do for all of us. It’s definitely worth the wait through the first fourteen chapters.

I have her book on Silver Boxes and I can’t wait until it comes time for me to read that one as well. It sounds like a Christmas study book to me.

End of the Spear

End of the Spear
by Steve Saint

I bought this book off the regular rack at Wal-Mart (unusual for me–most of my books come off the clearance rack at Hastings or BAM) after our youth group went to see the movie thinking it would expand upon the movie and tell more about Steve’s childhood with the stone age tribe that killed his father and four other missionaries. I couldn’t have been more wrong nor could I have been more engrossed in a story than I was with Steve’s.

Steve Saint is the son of Nate Saint, the missionary and was a pilot in the Equadoran Amazon Jungle in the 1950’s who was killed by the “Auca” along with 4 other missionaries. His sister Rachel Saint was also a missionary in the area and after Nate’s murder, she, along with Jim Elliot’s widow Elizabeth and daughter Valerie, went to live with the Waodani who had killed Jim and Nate to bring them to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. After several months of living with them, Rachel Saint went to Nate’s widow and asked permission to take Steve to live with her and the tribe. Permission was granted and Steve became a member of the Waodani tribe and a “son” to the men who speared his father.

The book starts with the death of Rachel Saint and Steve’s journey to Equador to bury her with the Waodani. While there, the tribe comes to him and begs him to do what only he could and they hoped he would–come live with them and teach them to take care of themselves in the modern world. After some time in prayer and making a trip to the villages without and later with his wife, Steve, Ginny and their four teenagers move to the Equadoran Amazon and live with the Waodani, teaching them to do for themselves rather than rely on “foreigners” to provide for them.

The entire focus of this book is how to let people do for themselves rather than to do for them and how to do that. In this Steve maintains as his goal self-sufficiency for his tribal family and not the reservations and dependence that tribes in the United States suffered. To that end, Steve and Ginny had to leave the tribe after 15 months to keep the tribe from becoming dependent on them.

The ending of the book has Steve showing his tribal father Mincaye how the evil he did God used for good. This is a faith journey for Steve and more than once, he declares that if he could go back, he would change nothing. He does find out who speared his father Nate (Mincaye) and the entire story behind the spearing. But in the heart of his tribal father Mincaye, he finds a God so much bigger than any storm he can ever face that it changes his prayers and he learns something so amazing about his Nate’s death, it will bring tears to your eyes.

Elizabeth Elliot’s book Through Gates of Splendor is the book to read before you watch the movie. End of the Spear is the book to read after the movie. And Steve’s new organization I-TEC is something to prayerfully consider for the rest of your life.

www.itecusa.org
e-mail: itec@itecusa.org
or Write:
I-TEC
10575 SW 147th Circle
Dunnellon, FL 34432

Steve Saint’s book is available in hardcover and audiobook

The Journals of Jim Elliot

The Journals of Jim Elliot

Edited by Elizabeth Elliot

What sort of man gives his life to go to the jungles of Equador to reach people who have never heard the name of Jesus? What kind of determination does it take in a Christian walk to go wherever God would have you to go? What sort of a man waits on God not only to show him whether to marry and who to marry but also when to get a ring and have a wedding? Do men with that kind of faith feel the same physical challenges as other men or are they beyond them?

Jim Elliot candidly gives us the answers to these questions in the journals he kept from his Junior year in Seminary on and his widow graciously allows us into thoughts that many wives would consider much too private to share.

Jim Elliot was a young man in love with the Lord and wanting to be used by God when he started keeping a journal that he admits will someday be read by others. Had he known, he might have have written less but then, he admits after several months, he wrote more than candidly than he expected with that in mind. Jim notes his daily scripture reading and lets us in on his private insights into God’s word. He leads us on the journey to find where God would have him serve. He shares his disappointments with his own Christian walk and his preaching and shows us times when he blames himself and his walk for the lack of response in meetings.

He contemplates being celebate while in college and looks to Betty as a friend who challenges his intellect. He admits he feels something for her and acts differently around her. He mourns her leaving the same place he is in. After seminary he keeps in contact with her and she eventually spends some time with his family who are less than impressed with her. Over time, Jim realizes that she is the woman he is to marry. They go seperately to Equador and work with many of the same people and then is when he wonders how he could ever have contemplated being celebate. He begs God to tell him when he can marry.

As he becomes busier in the mininsty and does marry and they have a daughter, Jim writes less and less leaving us with Elizabeth Elliot’s Through the Gates of Splendor to fill in the missing months leading up to Jim and four other missionary’s ultimate sacrifice in January 1956 in the jungles of Equador.

Jim’s insight into scripture and candid writings about his feelings make this a worthwile read. It is also quite readable. Where Jim wrote in notes that the reader would not understand, Betty is there to edit or, in Equador, translate.

This is the book for anyone who ever wondered what sort of man would leave all and go into the wilderness in search of lost sheep and die so that they would understand what it meant to forgive having been forgiven by the families of these men whom they had murdered.

My copy is paperback from the clearance rack printed in 2003 by Revell, a division of Baker House.

It is copywrite 1978 by Elizabeth Elliot.

A Table in the Presence

A Table in the Presence

by Lt Carey H. Cash, Chaplain Serving with the U. S. Marines

This is perhaps the most uplifting book I have read in a while. Lt. Carey Cash is a young man on a mission to find his place in God’s army. He tells you how he came to be a chaplain with the U. S. Navy attached to a Marine battalion and how he came to spend 40 days (yes, 40 literal days) with those marines in the desert of Kuwait before moving into Iraq as part of the first group of Marines to liberate the country. He witnessed Biblical faith on the part of his men in those 40 days in the desert and followed it with Biblical-type happenings in the opening days of that liberation.

Is God still God? Can God still make things happen like He did in the Old Testament? Can Biblical-sized miracles happen today with our armies?

Ask any one of the Marines in the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment and they will tell you. Or read Lt. Cash’s book and he will tell you. He will tell you how he almost didn’t get to join the service. He will tell you how many men made decisions for the Lord, some in miraculous ways, in the desert before going into Iraq. He will lead you to the oil fields of Ramallah and then to downtown Baghdad (where they got lost) fighting their way to Saddam’s palace. Carey Cash will tell you a story you thought you would only read in the Old Testament.

All my life I have heard there are no atheists in foxholes. I don’t know about that. But I know that Lt. Carey Cash took some strong Christians and some new Christians into a war zone and they all came out with a strong faith that many never realize. I thank God for Chaplain Cash and pray for his ministry wherever God decides to take him.

Warning: This book may cause you to cry tears of joy or shout praise to Lord unexpectedly.

The Faith of George W. Bush

The Faith of George W. Bush

by Stephen Mansfield

c. 2003 published by Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, NY

Stephen Mansfield follows the president from the presidency back to his defeat of Ann Richards to the War of 1812 and the California Gold Rush. Confusing? Not really. His point is in the Christian heritage George W. Bush received from the family that has nurtured him through the death of a sister, wild years at Yale and and a marriage that could have failed but instead is grounded in a faith in God. By the end of the book you don’t just have a good sense of what sort of relationship our president has with our Lord and Savior but also what sort of relationship his wife, mother, father and friends have as well.

This book doesn’t pretend to tell all about the president of the United States. It only attempts to show the pathway this one president led to become the Christian he is. A pathway paved by love and guidance from family. A pathway strewn with the litter of rebelliousness. A pathway not unnlike our own. It will, if nothing else, inspire all who read it to hold this man up in prayer daily and recognize that no matter what liberals may charge, this president listens to only one voice–God’s.

My copy is paperback from the clearance rack.

God and Ronald Reagan

God and Ronald Reagan–A Spiritual Life

by Paul Kengor

c.2004 Published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc., NY

Paul Kengor started out writing a biography of a president and ended up with so much material on Ronald Reagan’s relationship with God that he had to write a second book first. He doesn’t just tell the story of one man, however, but of a mother who influenced her son to walk with God no matter where He led. He tells the story of a father with faults that could have caused a son to turn his back and walk away but instead led that son to love and understand better the love of God for man.

Kengor follows the Reagan family from the meeting Jack and Nell Reagan through all their moves (several houses in few years) and how Nell’s devotion to her God and her church shaped young Dutch. He goes with Ronnie to college, a Christian school which helped shape his future and on into radio. He shows how the faith of Ronald Reagan led him into the political arena at nearly the same time as it led him to Hollywood.

Most of all throughout the entire work, Kengor relates Reagan’s life and walk with God with one act which changed the world–The Evil Empire Speech. Kengor spends the entire work showing how one man came to walk so closely with God that in no way, shape or form would he be afraid to speak the truth no matter who or what entity was present in the room. It was that closeness with God that led Ronald Reagan to become president and demand the removal of the Berlin Wall. Reagan’s walk with God led him to support God’s work and do God’s work not because it was popular but because it was right. Regardless of your politics or your feelings about Ronald Reagan, it’s obvious that something other that lust for power led him to be the leader he came to be.

Would that all of us walked as closely with God as the fourtieth president of the United States. If we did, the world would surely be a better place.

I Dared to Call Him Father

I Dared to Call Him Father: The Miraculous Story of a Muslim Woman’s Encounter With God

By Bilquis Sheikh with Richard H. Schnieder

This may be the most interesting, enlightening and uplifting book I have read all year.

The year is 1966 and Bilquis Sheikh is a muslim divorcee in Pakistan hearing about honor killings.

Suddenly in the privacy of her own garden she feels a presence. Then she begins to have dreams. She dreams of having a meal with Jesus. She dreams of John the Baptist pointing the way. She begins to read her Quaran and finds a passage where the Christians and Jews are condemed for distorting truth in scripture. So she demands a Bible to compare the scriptures for truth. It takes some time but finally one appears in her home. As she reads, comparing the two she has more dreams. She dreams of a perfume salesman who comes and she is frantic for perfume. He gives her the most wonderful fragrance she has ever smelled and sets it on her bed table. When she awakes, she finds in the spot where the salesman set the perfume is her Bible. She consults missionaries and listens to her dreams and reads the Bible. She asks a nun how to pray. The nun suggests she speak to God as though He was her father. She is appalled at the idea then enchanted at the thought that God wants to be a father to her.

Bilquis comes to some astouding truths as she reads and prays her Bible. She perhaps has more of an idea of how to be Christian than those of us who have been raised in the church. She refuses to hide her faith or be controlled by the fear of “honor killing” coming from her family. Instead she reaches out with a faith in Jesus that most of us think occured only in Bible stories.

Bilquis had much to fear and much to learn. Her journey is one that has a message for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike. No matter where you are in your walk with Jesus, Bilquis will speak to you. Even if only to teach you about her people.

Mine is the 25th anniversary paperback. c. 2003. Published by Chosen Books a division of Baker Book House Company

Seven From Heaven

Seven From Heaven–The Miracle of the McCaughey Septuplets

By Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey (with Gregg and Deborah Lewsi)

When Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey were married, they wished to be able to share their faith in Jesus with the world. God gave them seven little ways to do that–Kenneth, Alexis, Natalie, Nathan, Kelsey, Joel and Brandon. Who hasn’t heard of the McCaughey septuplets? Who hasn’t heard of the faith of Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey? But have you heard the WHOLE story of the faith journey that made them household words? This is their story in their own words of the salvation and faith journey that made their wish come true. On that journey, Kenny and Bobbi discovered faith needs. Kenny’s faith need was financial while Bobbi’s need was for strength and reassurance to see the pregnancy through as long as possible. Their struggles with giving those to God are the same as the ones we all have every day. Their rejoicing when God met those faith needs are exciting and contagious. And, ultimately, that is what this book is about–sharing a faith, strengthened by God in a very exciting and contagious way. Kenny and Bobbi got their wish.

Make a wish–Give it God–Then hold on for the ride!

Gold of Exodus and Miracles of Exodus

The Gold of Exodus and Miracles of Exodus

Two books for those who read the Bible book of the month of August and still want more on Moses and the Exodus.

The Gold of Exodus by Howard Blum

Two avowed non Christians, Larry Williams and Bob Cornuke, learn there is gold buried at the foot of Mt Sinai and set out to find it. They are certain that the traditional Mt. Sinai is not the true one so they search scripture to find it as well as the way the Israelites traveled. They find a non-volcano with a burned top and twelve rock pillars at its base. They find a palm oasis with seventy palm trees. They find government installations and are followed by suspicious characters. Most importantly, by the end of their story they find God and Jesus Christ as their savior. If this book says anything it is that God doesn’t really NEED us to witness for Him. He is capable of bringing people to the truth without our help. He chooses us to help Him just as He chose to create us. We should delight in being invited to help.

Not everyone agrees with Williams and Cornuke’s findings including Colin Humphreys who wrote The Miracles of Exodus

In his work Humphreys, a scientist, looks at each plague in turn from a scientific point of view and gives what he considers to be the miraclulous way God used a natural phenomenon to plague Pharoah and achieve the freedom of the Children of Israel. He then follows the Israelites all through the wilderness. Humphreys believes he has found the continuing existance of manna and the location of the crossing of the Red Sea.

These two authors differ completely on the path the Israelites took out of Egypt and where and what sort of mountain Sinai was but both bring to light interesting arguments and put God first and foremost in these works. I offer them for the thought-provoking arguments they put forth. I don’t know which, if either, is the true Mt. Sinai but they are enjoyable reads.

Gold Of Exodus is available in both hardcover and paperback at major booksellers.

Miracles of Exodus is available online.