Book Reviews

Comment

Comment by Pastor Jerome H. Weymouth on January 13, 2009 at 7:29pm

Comment by Pastor Jerome H. Weymouth on January 6, 2009 at 6:38pm

Christian Doctrine A Pentecostal Perspective, Volume 1 by French L. Arrington

Christian Doctrine: A Pentecostal Perspective is a basic exposition of the Christian faith with an emphasis throughout on the vital role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian and in the worship and ministry of the church. The term Pentecostal, as it is used in this work, means classic Pentecostalism which has its roots in the Wesleyan and Holiness movements and teaches that subsequent to conversion the believer should be baptized in the Holy Spirit, and that the initial evidence of this experience is speaking with other tongues as the Holy Spirit gives the utterance. This first volume deals with the following doctrines: the Scriptures and Revelation, God, Creation, and Man.

Christian Doctrine A Pentecostal Perspective, Volume 2 by
French L. Arrington

Volume two deals with the following doctrines: Jesus Christ, Sin, and Salvation.
French L. Arrington, Ph.D., is noted in the Pentecostal movement as a theologian and a teacher. Dr. Arrington has taught at Lee University and the Church of God Theological Seminary.

Christian Doctrine, Volume 3
French L. Arrington

Volume three deals with the following doctrines: the Holy Spirit, the Church, and the Last Things.

Comment by Pastor Jerome H. Weymouth on January 6, 2009 at 6:42pm

Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology
Full Gospel, Fractured Minds? A Call to Use God's Gift of the Intellect

Excerpt

The Pentecostal movement in the early twentieth century had a strong anti-intellectual element. Many Pentecostals saw themselves as going back to the church of the New Testament and thought they could ignore eighteen centuries of church history. They saw how scholars departed from the simple truths of the gospel and, in many cases, ended up rejecting the faith because of their supposed intellectual sophistication. Did not Peter and John astound the ruling authorities in Jerusalem because their only claim to knowledge was that they had been with Jesus and had the Spirit, being otherwise "unlearned and ignorant men" (Acts 4:13)? Did not Paul say that God "will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent" (1 Cor. 1:19)?
In this book, Nanez carefully shows how God expects us to use human reason in understanding his Word. Moreover, we need solid intellectual understanding in order to defend the gospel from its detractors and to present the gospel in a positive light. While more and more Pentecostals and charismatic’s are going to college and university, they either have to battle being stereotyped as anti-intellectual, or they apply their minds to a program of academic study but don't engage their faith on the same intellectual level. Nanez brings out the need to read widely in order to understand the Bible and Christian doctrine. He also offers many gems from great church leaders of the past, who were champions in defending the faith against intellectual opponents.

Comment by Pastor Jerome H. Weymouth on January 6, 2009 at 6:35pm

A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty First Century
Kenneth Archer

The purpose of this book is to present a critically informed contemporary Pentecostal hermeneutic rooted in Pentecostal identity, in its stories, beliefs and practices. As Pentecostals began entering academic communities of higher learning, their interpretive methods became both mainstream and modernistic as they adapted the historical critical methods, or the so-called scientific hermeneutic. The proposed hermeneutic contained in this book desires to move beyond the impasse created by Modernity, instead pushing Pentecostals into the contemporary context by critically re-appropriating early Pentecostal ethos and interpretive practices for a contemporary Pentecostal community. The Pentecostal hermeneutic is a three-way interaction for theological meaning between the Holy Spirit, the Pentecostal community and sacred Scripture.

This book is on my wish list, if you feel lead buy me one!

Comment by Pastor Jerome H. Weymouth on November 8, 2008 at 12:27pm

Renewal theologian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Renewal theologians are those theologians who represent the Pentecostal, Charismatic and Neocharismatic movements. Notable Renewal theologians are noted under the grouping with which they are most closely identified.


Pentecostal Theologians
Gordon Fee -- Assemblies of God
Stanley M. Horton, Th.D. -- Assemblies of God
Jackie David Johns, Ph.D. -- Church of God (Cleveland)
Rufus Hollis Gause, Ph.D. -- Church of God (Cleveland)
Morris Golder, Pentecostal Assemblies of the World
Steven Jack Land, Ph.D. -- Church of God (Cleveland)
Rickie D. Moore, Ph.D. -- Church of God (Cleveland)
John Christopher Thomas, Ph.D. -- Church of God (Cleveland)
French L. Arrington, Ph.D. -- Church of God (Cleveland)
Harold D. Hunter, Ph.D. -- International Pentecostal Holiness Church
H. Vinson Synan, Ph.D.
Donald Gee
Bernie L. Wade, Th. D., Ph. D. - International Circle of Faith

Charismatic TheologiansJ. Rodman Williams
S. David Moore - Ph.D (Regent University)
Jay N. Forrest, Min.D. -- Charismatic Church of God
David Pawson

Neocharismatic Theologians
Wayne Grudem -- Vineyard Movement
Jack Deere, Th.M., Th.D.
C. Peter Wagner, Ph.D.
Guy Chevreau, Th.D.
Charles H. Kraft Fuller Theological Seminary

Comment by Pastor Jerome H. Weymouth on November 8, 2008 at 12:24pm

Wikiperia lists these authors as Pentecostal Theologians and we need to support our theologians! and quit getting confused on whether the gifts have ceased because a calvinist said so!
Read from pentecostal and you will not be confused abou the gifts , or do we as Pentecostals have a free will and did Jesus die for everybody, or just for a certain few folks?

Comment by Lloyd H Shepherd on August 23, 2008 at 3:31pm

does anyone know about the word study system, or a diffrent book than the Strongs on Hebrew words.

Comment by Lloyd H Shepherd on August 16, 2008 at 5:24pm

I just got John Bevere's book Breaking Intimidation. I will give a reveiw on it soon.

Comment by Pastor Jerome H. Weymouth on August 16, 2008 at 1:59pm

here's a little story on women preachers;

Activists
Catherine Booth
Compelling preacher and co-founder of the Salvation Army


"If the Word of God forbids female ministry, we would ask how it happens that so many of the most devoted handmaidens of the Lord have felt constrained by the Holy Ghost to exercise it? … The Word and the Spirit cannot contradict each other."

They were unlikely evangelists. Eighteen-year-old Rose Clapham stood with her colleague, Jenny Smith, and invited hundreds of world-weary coal miners in Yorkshire, England, to a meeting in the local theater. At that 1878 meeting, Rose, an uneducated factory worker, persuaded 700 men to make decisions for Christ—140 of which became the first members of a new church.

Rose was but one of the new "Hallelujah lasses" who were making the Salvation Army one of the most effective missions in England. Who inspired these young, working-class women to minister in such an unusual way? Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army.

Timeline
1804 British and Foreign Bible Society formed
1807 William Wilberforce succeeds abolishing slave trade
1817 Elizabeth Fry organizes relief in Newgate Prison
1829 Catherine Booth born
1890 Catherine Booth dies
1896 Billy Sunday begins leading revivals
Liberating gospel
Catherine was raised in the pious and sheltered world of small-town Victorian England, and her mother was a model of Methodist piety. In her teenage years, Catherine suffered from a spinal curvature and was forced to lay in bed months at a time. She read voraciously, especially the writings of Charles Finney and John Wesley, and she not only became assured of her own salvation but also gained a glimmer of her own calling to public ministry.

When people suggested that a woman's place was in the home, she wondered if the Christian church, which preached a liberating gospel to both men and women, could keep women from expressing their manifold ministry gifts. She eventually concluded that a false interpretation of Paul's comment about women keeping silent in church had resulted in "loss to the church, evil to the world, and dishonor to God."

In the early 1850s, she met and married William Booth, a young preacher who was making a name for himself. When she shared her emerging convictions with her new husband, he said, "I would not stop a woman preaching on any account." But he added that neither would he "encourage one to begin."

Her book, Female Ministry, soon followed, a short, powerful defense of American Phoebe Palmer's holiness ministry. It was not a plea based on natural rights or other feminist themes of the day. Instead, she founded her argument on the absolute equality of men and women before God. She acknowledged that the Fall had put women into subjection, as a consequence of sin, but to leave them there, she said, was to reject the good news of the gospel, which proclaimed that the grace of Christ had restored what sin had taken away. Now all men and women were one in Christ.

In responding to her critics, she asked, "If the Word of God forbids female ministry, we would ask how it happens that so many of the most devoted handmaidens of the Lord have felt constrained by the Holy Ghost to exercise it? … The Word and the Spirit cannot contradict each other."

Counsel for the defense
Catherine herself, however, had yet to venture to preach or teach publicly. That occasion finally came in 1860, when she first preached during an evening Army service. Her abilities were soon apparent, and her reputation spread.

Her hearers were taken with her gentle manner as well as her powerful appeal. One of her sons later remarked, "She reminded me again and again of counsel pleading with judge and jury for the life of the prisoner. The fixed attention of the court, the mastery of facts, the absolute self-forgetfulness of the advocate, the ebb and flow of feeling, the hush during the vital passages—all were there."

Or as another man put it, "If ever I am charged with a crime, don't bother to get any of the great lawyers to defend me; get that woman."

Though she cared for a household of six at the time (she eventually raised eight children), her preaching schedule increased. She soon felt the pressure: "I cannot give time to preparation unless I can afford to put my sewing out. It never seems to occur to anybody that I cannot do two things at once." On top of that, her husband began falling ill, so she added the administration of the Army to her duties—and thus she grew into her matriarchal role as "the Army Mother."

Small wonder, then, that hundreds of "Hallelujah lasses," as they made their way in the wretched streets and alleys of industrial England, saw the Army Mother as their mentor. And no wonder that the once-lukewarm William, in drafting his Orders and Regulations for the Army, incorporated statements like these: "Women shall have the right to an equal share with men in the work of publishing salvation."

Recommended Resources


Buy the book containing this and many other profiles of Christians you should know.


Buy the back issue: Christian History, Issue 26


Read Christian History, Issue 26, online: ChristianityTodayLibrary.com.

Comment by Robert Jimenez on August 12, 2008 at 7:29am

ESV Study Bible

Comment by Pastor Jerome H. Weymouth on August 9, 2008 at 11:02am

Here's a good article on Willaim Carey (My kind of Preacher.)

William Carey
Father of modern Protestant missions

"Expect great things; attempt great things."

At a meeting of Baptist leaders in the late 1700s, a newly ordained minister stood to argue for value of overseas missions. He was abruptly interrupted by an older minister who said, "Young man, sit down! You are an enthusiast. When God pleases to convert the heathen, he'll do it without consulting you or me."

Timeline
1738 John & Charles Wesley's evangelical conversions
1742 First production of Handel's Messiah
1759 Voltaire's Candide
1761 William Carey born
1834 William Carey dies
1840 David Livingstone sails for Africa
That such an attitude is inconceivable today is largely due to the subsequent efforts of that young man, William Carey.

Plodder
Carey was raised in the obscure, rural village of Paulerpury, in the middle of England. He apprenticed in a local cobbler's shop, where the nominal Anglican was converted. He enthusiastically took up the faith, and though little educated, the young convert borrowed a Greek grammar and proceeded to teach himself New Testament Greek.

When his master died, he took up shoemaking in nearby Hackleton, where he met and married Dorothy Plackett, who soon gave birth to a daughter. But the apprentice cobbler's life was hard—the child died at age 2—and his pay was insufficient. Carey's family sunk into poverty and stayed there even after he took over the business.

"I can plod," he wrote later, "I can persevere to any definite pursuit." All the while, he continued his language studies, adding Hebrew and Latin, and became a preacher with the Particular Baptists. He also continued pursuing his lifelong interest in international affairs, especially the religious life of other cultures.

Carey was impressed with early Moravian missionaries and was increasingly dismayed at his fellow Protestants' lack of missions interest. In response, he penned An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. He argued that Jesus' Great Commission applied to all Christians of all times, and he castigated fellow believers of his day for ignoring it: "Multitudes sit at ease and give themselves no concern about the far greater part of their fellow sinners, who to this day, are lost in ignorance and idolatry."

Carey didn't stop there: in 1792 he organized a missionary society, and at its inaugural meeting preached a sermon with the call, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!" Within a year, Carey, John Thomas (a former surgeon), and Carey's family (which now included three boys, and another child on the way) were on a ship headed for India.

Stranger in a strange land
Thomas and Carey had grossly underestimated what it would cost to live in India, and Carey's early years there were miserable. When Thomas deserted the enterprise, Carey was forced to move his family repeatedly as he sought employment that could sustain them. Illness racked the family, and loneliness and regret set it: "I am in a strange land," he wrote, "no Christian friend, a large family, and nothing to supply their wants." But he also retained hope: "Well, I have God, and his word is sure."

He learned Bengali with the help of a pundit, and in a few weeks began translating the Bible into Bengali and preaching to small gatherings.

When Carey himself contracted malaria, and then his 5-year-old Peter died of dysentery, it became too much for his wife, Dorothy, whose mental health deteriorated rapidly. She suffered delusions, accusing Carey of adultery and threatening him with a knife. She eventually had to be confined to a room and physically restrained.

"This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me," Carey wrote, though characteristically added, "But I rejoice that I am here notwithstanding; and God is here."

Gift of tongues
In October 1799, things finally turned. He was invited to locate in a Danish settlement in Serampore, near Calcutta. He was now under the protection of the Danes, who permitted him to preach legally (in the British-controlled areas of India, all of Carey's missionary work had been illegal).

Carey was joined by William Ward, a printer, and Joshua and Hanna Marshman, teachers. Mission finances increased considerably as Ward began securing government printing contracts, the Marshmans opened schools for children, and Carey began teaching at Fort William College in Calcutta.

In December 1800, after seven years of missionary labor, Carey baptized his first convert, Krishna Pal, and two months later, he published his first Bengali New Testament. With this and subsequent editions, Carey and his colleagues laid the foundation for the study of modern Bengali, which up to this time had been an "unsettled dialect."

Carey continued to expect great things; over the next 28 years, he and his pundits translated the entire Bible into India's major languages: Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese, and Sanskrit and parts of 209 other languages and dialects.

He also sought social reform in India, including the abolition of infanticide, widow burning (sati), and assisted suicide. He and the Marshmans founded Serampore College in 1818, a divinity school for Indians, which today offers theological and liberal arts education for some 2,500 students.

By the time Carey died, he had spent 41 years in India without a furlough. His mission could count only some 700 converts in a nation of millions, but he had laid an impressive foundation of Bible translations, education, and social reform.

His greatest legacy was in the worldwide missionary movement of the nineteenth century that he inspired. Missionaries like Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and David Livingstone, among thousands of others, were impressed not only by Carey's example, but by his words "Expect great things; attempt great things." The history of nineteenth-century Protestant missions is in many ways an extended commentary on the phrase.

From Christain History.com

• First
• Previous
• Next
• Last