A lucid and approachable guide to re-evaluating conventional ideas about Jesus.
A debut book advocates refocusing on Jesus through biblically informed insights.
Smith focuses on John 11:1-12 and John 13 in order to most concisely present his ideas. This selection includes the raising from the dead of Lazarus, the backlash of Jewish leaders, and the anointing of Jesus in Bethany. Smith utilizes these stories to point out that Jesus often surprises people by defying their preconceived notions of God’s motives and actions. His thesis points to the possibility that Christians sometimes limit their understanding of God through these very same preconceptions. “What if the true God of the Bible,” he asks, “is the God we don’t believe in? What if the God of the Bible is much better?” He begins by noting that people often impose their own moral feelings on their understanding of God, which causes them to misunderstand him. “If we were God,” for instance, “we would never let someone have cancer. We would never let a child die.” The stories in the Gospel of John lead people to ponder a savior who does things they would never have expected. For instance, when Jesus is asked to come and heal his good friend Lazarus, he deliberately waits until the man has died. Later, despite being all-knowing and omnipotent, Jesus cries when he witnesses the grief of his friends. And though he is a man of ultimate peace, he knowingly sows discord and in fact acts in ways that will eventually bring about his own arrest and execution. Through Smith’s work, the reader sees a savior who waits to act, puts doubts into the minds of his followers, and causes division among people. Smith’s difficult role is to explain why, despite these realities, the believers of Jesus have reason to follow and to have faith in him. The author does so with plain prose and real-life, daily examples. Readers can expect to find a thoroughly traditional view of Jesus in a work meant to act, above all, as a self-help book for finding deeper faith.
A lucid and approachable guide to re-evaluating conventional ideas about Jesus.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5127-0668-0
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A meandering, uneven fire-and-brimstone sermon.
America’s post-war cohort should repent its godless ways before it’s too late, according to Winley’s jeremiad.
Writing in the persona of “Baby Boom Prophet” Jonah Ubiquitous, Winley, a minister at Harlem’s Soul Saving Station for Every Nation, subjects those born between 1946 and 1964 to a serious scolding. His demographic rationale is two-fold. First, the boomer generation authored the culture of sexual permissiveness, abortion, homosexuality, drug abuse, violence, welfare dependency, personal irresponsibility and unorthodox spirituality that he blames for America’s moral rot and the travails of the African-American community. Second, a recap of four decades’ worth of boomer-dominated history, from the 1960s assassinations to Monica-gate and the war in Iraq, serves as a framework for viewing modern times as a parade of depravity, war, natural disaster and apostasy, all of it leading inevitably to Armageddon. Winley’s manifesto interweaves disparate themes, stories and registers. There is a murky digression into a failed publishing venture, a confusing discourse on the structure of Heaven (the fourth heaven is the paradise where saved humans go, while hell itself is “a type of heaven”) and a dash of end-times numerology (“June 6, 2006, represents forty years from the symbolic birth of the Anti-Christ world ruler (6-6-66)”). There’s some religious-right politics—Winley denounces materialism and money-grubbing while defending George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and decides that the Christian injunction to turn the other cheek need not apply to Al Qaeda. And there is a persistent voice crying out in the wilderness, warning that “racial hatred, murder of innocents, political corruption, family disintegration, killer children, home-grown terrorism, violence, greed, lust, and every imaginable evil dwell within the borders of the United States.” Winley’s message is standard Christian Fundamentalist doctrine, but in some passages—especially during a long, affecting parable about a black man who, after an abusive upbringing, lands in prison, where Jonah tries to bring him to the Lord—he writes with real pathos about the moral chaos that ravages men’s souls.
A meandering, uneven fire-and-brimstone sermon.Pub Date: April 30, 2007
ISBN: 978-0595417636
Page Count: 175
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stimulating study of the career and ministry of the prophet Elisha in parallel to Jesus Christ.
A thorough, textually grounded study of the Old Testament prophet Elisha and the ways he foreshadowed Jesus Christ of the New Testament.
Arnold’s (Elijah Between Judgment and Grace, 2015, etc.) latest book—originally published in French as Elisée précurseur de Jésus-Christ. Commentaire de 2 Rois 2-9 (2002) and here translated by Ludwig—is a meticulously detailed study of the prophet Elisha in the second book of Kings, with the specific thesis that he was an identifiable precursor to Jesus Christ. At first glance, this seems like a tall order, since, among other things, Elisha is portrayed as not merely a prophet but also a publicly esteemed councilor to kings and armies—a worker of miracles, yes, but very much an accepted figure of the establishment rather than a renegade rabbi preaching in the hinterlands of Nazareth before being put to an ignominious death by the Roman authorities. Yet Arnold argues for their similarities. “To read the ministry of this prophet [Elisha] in the light of the gospel is a source of great blessing,” Arnold writes. “Once you have started, you can hardly stop.” True to his word, Arnold proceeds to enumerate the many affinities between the two men: both worked many miracles, both seemed in possession of supernatural amounts of knowledge, each was anointed in his ministry by a fellow charismatic prophet figure (Elijah in the case of Elisha; John the Baptist in the case of Jesus), each appeared to need no step-by-step instruction from God, etc. But the greatest strength of Arnold’s book is his lively and accessible verse-by-verse analysis of Elisha’s ministry itself. Arnold’s commentary on 2 Kings is superb, drawing on an array of exegetical writing and sparkling with his own insights. Students of biblical studies will find this utterly fascinating reading.
Stimulating study of the career and ministry of the prophet Elisha in parallel to Jesus Christ.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5084-2942-5
Page Count: 238
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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