Not Afraid of the Antichrist, by Michael L. Brown and Craig S. Keener

When I was in college at a large Baptist university, I served for a year as a youth pastor at a tiny Southern Baptist church in a tiny town a short drive from campus.  When I started, the pastor sat me down and said, We are a pre-millennial church.  He wanted to know where I stood.  I replied, with my 20-year-old attitude, "I'm a pan-millennailst; I believe it's all going to pan out in the end."  A philosophy degree, an M.Div., and 30 years later, I have to say I might still answer the same way.

Micheal L. Brown and Craig S. Keener, on the other hand, have put a whole lot more thought and study into to answering the question.  They make a couple of things clear about their mission in this book.  First of all, they vehemently disagree with pre-millennial dispensationalism, and the accompanying anxiety about the antichrist and the tribulation.  Second, they absolutely affirm that they recognize that good, faithful Christians may disagree on this subject and do not intend any spiritual superiority.

They challenge the pre-trib position with a blatant statement: show me a scriptural justification for it, and we will show you the context of the passage and explain why, when viewed in context, no scripture upholds a pre-trib theology.  The good news is that even while covering a large amount of scripture and complex theological questions, the authors maintain a readable, accessible tone.

The bottom line here is very convincing.  I could, with a bit of confidence, challenge my old pastor (lovingly and respectfully, of course) with a bit of discussion.  I still don't understand why churches break fellowship with one another over this issue.  I still believe it will all pan out in the end.  We may or may not personally experience persecution and tribulation, but we know that at every stage of church history, many Christians have.  Brown and Keener write, "the martyrs of the past are not calling out from their graves and urging us to be cautious and fearful.  Instead, they are urging us to stand strong, to be of good courage, and to speak the truth boldly and without compromise."

I like Brown and Keener's conclusion: "Scripture announces one glorious future coming that is our hope, when the kingdom of this world becomes the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ."  Maranatha.



Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Suffering Is Never for Nothing, by Elisabeth Elliot

Jennifer Lyell has done readers a great service.  She has taken a collection of CDs, recordings of Elisabeth Elliot speaking at conference, edited the talks, and published the content as a book.  As anyone who knows of Elliot or has read her prior work knows, anything she writes is worth reading.  This is no less true of this posthumous book, Suffering Is Never for Nothing.

Elliot is no stranger to suffering.  She lost her first husband, Jim Elliot, when he was murdered along with several other missionaries by members of a tribe they were trying to evangelize.  She lost her second husband to cancer.  But throughout her life, her writing and public ministry demonstrated a faithfulness and joy that could rejoice in suffering. 

She defines suffering like this: "Suffering is having what you don't want or wanting what you don't have."  It sounds almost too simple.  But either way, she writes that "there are a good many things in this life that really can't do anything about, but that God wants us to do something with."  She continues, "The deepest things that I have learned in my own life have come from the deepest suffering."

We can start by living life with gratitude.  Elliot has lived her life with gratitude, and looked toward her own transfiguration.  God works in us redemptively to shape us into his image.  "God calls us to stand alongside Him, to offer our sufferings to Him for His transfiguration and to fill up in our poor human flesh."  Amen, sister. 


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Buried Deep, by T.R. Ragan

I don't know about the real Sacramento, but the Sacramento of T.R. Ragan's world has more than its share of unsavory characters.  Buried Deep is the fourth book in Ragan's Jessie Cole series.   In each book, private investigator Jessie Cole manages to uncover the seamier side of Sacramento.  Buried Deep is no different.

All the characters from the prior novels are back for Buried Deep.  Jessie Cole is still searching for missing persons, while Ben Morrison is still working as a crime reporter and dealing with his missing past.  A lawyer from another state approaches Jessie about finding a woman who ran away from home as a teen but who he thinks might be living in Sacramento under an assumed name.  Her grandmother has died and left her a large inheritance, but no one in the family has heard from her in years.  Unfortunately for her, her husband has made many enemies in his business life, and one of them seeks his revenge by kidnapping the couple and burying them.  Deep.

Jessie juggles this case with a few others, deals with her deepening relationship with her boyfriend, and tries to keep her assistant (Zee, the young lady with multiple personalities) out of trouble.  This is the kind of book that you want to read in one sitting, with cliffhangers and a fast pace.  Unfortunately for me, things like work and sleep kept getting in the way, so I had to put it down from time to time.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, like a gripping crime TV show or movie.  I look forward to more from Ragan and Jessie Cole.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Relentless Forward Progress, by Bryon Powell

My measure for what makes a great running book is whether after I read it, or, better, in the middle of reading it, I'm ready to head out for a run.  Byron Powell's Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons hits that mark.  Runners may know Powell from his web site, https://www.irunfar.com/.  He's been a fixture in the ultrarunning and trail running communities for years.

I have run 11 ultras myself, and have picked up bits and pieces of tips from Powell and others over the years.  Many experienced runners won't find much of anything new in Relentless Forward Progress, but it's useful to me to have this information all together in a handy resource.  Like any book, the information is static, but Powell frequently references his web site, where content is regularly updated.

One of the strengths of RFP is the logistical planning.  If you have only run road races, and/or have only run races of marathon distance or shorter, you have to be aware that trail ultras are a different animal.  What do you bring, what do you wear, how do you deal with the variety of weather and lighting conditions you might encounter, what kind of support do you need to have?  These and other questions are answered (some in more detail than others).  Obviously, learning from your own experience is invaluable, but Powell distills his experiences, as well as many others who contribute short selections, and puts it all together here.

While he offers guidance on eating before and during an ultra race, and presents a variety of training plans for ultras, these two areas are, in my opinion, the most questionable to put in a book like this.  Every runner is so different that no plan can adequately meet the needs of all.  Powell clearly agrees with this sentiment, and presents enough information that most any runner can take the raw material here and develop his or her own successful training plans and race strategies.

It's been a few years since I've completed an ultra, but reading Relentless Forward Progress put a little fire in me to up my weekly mileage and sign up for a run.  Let's hit the trails!

God's Big Plan, by Elizabeth F. Caldwell and Theodore Hiebert, illustrated by Katie Yamasaki

Like many people, I have always thought of the Genesis 11 story about the Tower of Babel to be an account of God's punishment for man's pride.  The people said, "Let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves. . . ."  God notices the tower and notes that if they can accomplish this, all speaking the same language, "then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."  So he "confused their language" and "scattered them from there all over the earth."

Elizabeth F. Caldwell and Theodore Herbert take exception to that interpretation.  In their children's story book, God's Big Plan, they write, "The people who were building Babel had a little plan to stay together.  But God had a bigger plan.  God wanted to fill the world with different languages, different people, and different ways of living."  The story, with illustrations by Katie Yamasaki, has a good message, but is out of synch with the scriptural account.

When they write (in the notes for parents and educators) that "interpreters throughout history have read this story in a way that presents difference as a problem" they set themselves above the consensus of Bible scholars.  That is problematic.  They go further, saying that this interpretation leads to a view that "the world's diversity is God's penalty for sin."

I don't think one necessitates the other.  I think you can affirm diversity as a gift from God and celebrate the many ways we are different, while not butchering and jettisoning a traditional interpretation of a Bible story.  God's Big Plan has a good message marred by faulty biblical scholarship.


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Colored, by Èmilie Plateau

Before Rosa Parks, another young lady refused to give up her seat on a bus, was arrested, and helped spur the Montgomery bus boycott.  Her name was largely lost to history, but Èmilie Plateau has done her part to keep her memory alive in Colored: The Unsung Life of Claudette Colvin.

When she was only 15, Claudette got on her regular bus to go home from school.  When she was asked to give up her seat for a white passenger, she refused.  She was arrested, thrown in jail, and charged.  Rosa Parks and other local leaders talked about a bus boycott, but they thought Claudette wasn't an appropriate public face of the boycott: immature and pregnant out of wedlock, they didn't want to invite additional criticism.

When Rosa Parks took her stand on the bus, she was 43, and as anyone who has heard her story knows, she was a saintly community leader, respected by both black and white citizens.  So she became the face of the bus boycott.  Claudette was forgotten.

Colored, simply illustrated and told, clearly reminds us of the deep sickness of segregation in the South.  Even though it was just a generation or two in the past (Claudette and other figures in this story are still living), it seems like another world.  Plateau reminds us of this history, while also pointing out the leading role that Claudette and other women had in the Civil Rights Movement.  Leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., and others were certainly inspiring, but while the called for equal rights for blacks, they certainly did not consider equal rights for women.

Plateau does Claudette a great service by telling her story, and does the rest of us a great service by reminding us of these heroes who risked so much to work for equal rights.



Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Three Felonies a Day, by Harvey Silverglate

Attorney Harvey Silverglate has been in the mix in a variety of high-profile cases.  In Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, I was reminded of the old line from Soviet days: How do we know they're guilty? The secret police never arrests an innocent man.

Silverglate covers example after example of people in business, politics, and other fields who have found themselves on the unwelcome receiving end of federal prosecutors' attentions.  This book was frustrating to read.  In cases which which is was a little bit familiar, I had to face the fact that I have bought the media's superficial reporting.  (E.g., Martha Stewart is clearly guilty of insider trading, and Michael Milken is a crook.  Neither is true.)  But Silverglate descibes the cases of people whose convictions are nebulous and the "crimes" they are accused of are vague or nonexistent.  Federal law enforcement has a bad habit of slapping the "wire fraud" label on any activity they don't like.

And that's the theme of the book.  The feds find some activity they don't like, and they poke around looking for a crime.  Again, like the Soviets used to say, Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime.  Silverglate shows that living clean, following the rules, and having personal integrity is not enough.  If they feds see you doing something they don't like, they will, one way or another, find a way to charge you.

(By the way, this book was published in 2011, so Silverglate, obviously, doesn't address the Trump era.  But I couldn't help thinking of all the Trump associates who have been convicted of one thing or another.  Surely some of them were legitimately guilty of something, but I couldn't help thinking that many of them have been targeted in the manner Silverglate describes.  On the other hand, it's remarkable that Trump himself hasn't been convicted of something, not because he's a criminal but because so many in government want him to go down for something, anything!  Maybe Silverglate will write a new edition. . . .)