Shelf Life

The rather measured and restrained work by John Livingston Nevius (1829-1893), Demon Possession and Allied Themes; Being an Inductive Study of Phenomena of Our Own Times , delivers exactly what the title promises, though what it promises is rather unusual by the author's own admission. Nevius was a...

Lois Lowry tells a story about how a utopian state required that all of the community's memories going back through the generations be committed to a single person, a receiver. The elders engineered a society where no one but the receiver had to feel or remember. Life was safe and comfortable. The...

From its inception, preaching has held a prominent place within the life and advance of the church. A current revival of expository ministry is being cultivated throughout the evangelical world. However, such renewed awareness and commitment to an expositional pulpit ministry has been nurtured with...

Do you ever think about how much we complain? We complain about the weather: too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry. We complain about our jobs: deadlines, difficult bosses, co-workers. We complain about our families: our spouses, children, in-laws. We complain about life: traffic, waiting rooms, jury...

There is a lot to like about the story of John Newton . And Simonetta Carr and Amal tell and illustrate it beautifully (Reformation Heritage Books, 2018). Newton first told the story himself in an 18 th century best-seller. A young man with a dead mother and hard-to-please father pursues riches and...

In writing A Secular Age , Charles Taylor has slowly, and thoroughly built what is in essence his life's work. He first lays out the terms that he intends to work with in defining secularism. This is more than what flies in public spaces, and the decline of belief and practice. For Taylor,...

Vern S. Poythress, Theophany: A Biblical Theology of God's Appearing , Crossway, 2018. 463pp. Paperback., $40.00 Introduction "Why read a four-hundred-page book about theophanies?" That question has come up more than once in conversation lately. Some inquirers are not quite so bold; they just give...

Andrew T. Walker, God and the Transgender Debate: What Does the Bible Actually Say About Gender Identity? , The Good Book Company, 2017. 174pp. Paperback., $14.99 Introduction It seems that hardly a week passes without a new gender related story making headlines. Is it a magazine's cover story as a...

Jerry L. Walls and Kenneth J. Collins, Roman but Not Catholic: What Remains at Stake 500 Years after the Reformation , Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 464 pp. Bibliography and indicies. Paperback. $34.99. The title itself implies a kind of jiujitsu--that of turning an opponent's weight or...