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The book we need to make sure we are gleaning the most from is the Bible... And now for something completely significant and different! The following article from Crossway Blog is so impactful that I think I will just leave you to read it and soak in the immense thought of what God almost 6 centuries ago with His Word! Sure, it has to with books and sure, now we have electronics or e-books (a library on an single ipad or phone), but it all started with this first invention, which gave us the Bible in a new and unique fashion! This should help us to appreciate that the Lord has fulfilled and continues to fulfill His promise to preserve His Word forever (Isaiah 30:8) https://www.crossway.org/.../the-invention-that-changed.../ Blessings! 
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There is no substitute for reading the greatest of all books, the Bible, as it is the only Book which the Author of it is always present with us when we read it. Hebrews 4:12 tells us just how living and active it is in our life. So as the Spurgeon quote tells us, we can visit many great books but must live in the Bible. The word "gleaning" is the idea of extracting information from various sources. Its synonyms are obtain, get, draw and derive. I will try to provide help to us to glean well some great books and with that perhaps the "4-i's": Insight, Inspiration, influence and Impact of the books I highlight them. May it all be to His glory and to the benefit and encouragement we need! https://www.amazon.com/Assura.../dp/1433540517/ref=sr_1_1... Here is an inaugural post on a favorite book by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, "The Assurance of our Salvation: Exploration the Depth of Jesus' Prayer for His Own". This in-depth commentary on Christ's true prayer for us before the Father in John 17, we glean some awesome insights into His will and prayers for His followers. As it is stated in chapter 1, "It is customary for us to refer to the prayer which we find recorded in the Sermon on the Mount and in Luke 11 as the Lord's Prayer; but in reality, of course, that was the prayer which he gave as a kind of model to his disciples and to others, whereas here we have what can truly be called our Lord's own prayer, for here we find him praying his own personal prayer to the Father." True to Lloyd-Jones' desire to go into the depths of these passages in John 17, we can glean great explanations of doctrine, life principles and promises for living the life of faith and witness of Christ's gospel. May we learn and live well to the Father's glory! These are also available online at MLJ Trust as sermons. Blessings  The following review of an awesome book is brought to us from Tim Challies and although it is now 17 years old (posted in 2006), the truths in this book are rather timeless since the the great work of the gospel is for all ages and everywhere. https://www.challies.com/.../the-great-work-of-the-gospel/ Tim Challies reviews John Ensor's book "The Great Work of the Gospel", which holds a precious place in my heart and mind as it was the book we used in the inaugural launch of a community group, which we were glad to co-lead, not too many years after this book was published. I hope you will take time to get and read this book and benefit from Ensor's insights! Blessings!  One of the books that had such an impact and influence on my own Christian faith was "Who Moved the Stone" by Frank Morison (a pseudonym). As the following review states, the appeal of the book is that it doesn't try to be so theological, but more as a presentation of the evidence from the main sources related the verifiable events and characters as well as related to Christ and His Resurrection. I especially like some of the things the author examines related to seemingly superficial things, which really are not (ie: The Book that Refused to be Written and The Historic Crux of the Problem). I especially enjoyed seeing the author's life changed by the real evidence, which reminds me of my own story to a large degree. The Lord used the author's skepticism and goal to refute and prove the Resurrection false and in the end the facts led him to salvation in Christ! https://londongrip.co.uk/2015/03/who-moved-the-stone/... The reading of older books more than the newer is a good habit to form and practice. Blessings!  There are several studies of doctrine that I focus on in my reading schedule and one which is high on my list is related to the Atonement , the Cross and the Blood of Christ. Some of my favorites for this study, which I am plodding through and taken notes, are "The Atonement" by A.W. Pink, "Pierced for Our Transgressions", by Jeffery, Ovey and Sach, "Where Wrath and Mercy Meet", by David Peterson, and "Calvin and the Atonement", by Robert A. Peterson. https://www.challies.com/book-reviews/blood-work/ All of these are excellent in their own right and I highly recommend them. But, today I want to highlight "Blood Work: How the Blood of Christ Accomplishes Our Salvation", by Anthony Carter. I found this review by Tim Challies, which is extremely helpful in helping us understand and appreciate this subject about salvation and the blood of our Lord and its significance. Blessings!  Gleaning from great books oftentimes requires journeys which can take much time and require much pondering and contemplation. That’s ok because we know the Lord is using each and every reading session to broaden our biblical horizon. Presently, I am reading a massive systematic theology which clearly I hope will be useful to close gaps in my learning, my understanding and hopefully from which I will glean wisdom. This book is called “Israelology: This Missing Link in Systematic Theology” by Dr. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum of Ariel Ministries. This link provides us with an excellent short review of this great book which I am plodding slowly through and excited to be doing so. Blessings!  Acknowledged by many to be second in popularity and numbers of books sold only to the Bible and never out of print since its original publication in 1678, John Bunyan's little Christian allegory, "The Pilgrim's Progress", is a classic beyond comparison. Many people have been impacted and influenced by it. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who is known as the 'Prince of Preachers", said that he believed he read this book over 100 times! I'm on my 11th reading (or listening to an audio book), so I'll probably never catch his record...but I did start later in life. I only came into contact with this book in approximately my 25th year as a born-again child of God. I was reading the monthly devotional magazine TableTalk by Ligonier Ministries and their January 2006 issue was dedicated to this astounding book. Amazingly I had never even heard of this book before! For me it was like spiritual fireworks! Here was a source that spoke of the Christian life as a journey to heaven full of the same sort of things I was experiencing! Full of the same sorts of barriers and pitfalls that we all face, but placed in a fictional dream that explains much about what one experiences both in salvation and sanctification (or the walk of faith and maturing in Christ-likeness). Descriptions and names elicited a reaction in my mind that connected to biblical passages and images. It was awesome! I know that The Pilgrim's Progress is not on the same level of God's inerrant, infallible, authoritative and sufficient Word. However, it has some uncanny parallels and complements our study of God's Word beautifully. One of the adventures which most stuck with me in my first reading of Christian's journey, along and his second companion Hopeful, was when they were captured for trespassing in the lands of Giant Despair. By the way, Christian's original name was Graceless, which changed quickly as he saw his desperate situation from the Book of books in his hand, experienced the great burden of original sin on his back and spoke with Evangelist about the truth of it all. "Graceless" was regenerated by the power of God (Ephesians 2:8-9) and was born-again (John 3) and so that he became "Christian". Giant Despair throws the pair of travelers into his dungeon. There they are tortured over and over as captives of the lord of that land. Giant Despair tells them they might as well kill themselves because he was planning to kill them in the morning anyway. That night, even while they were hurting and in terrible conditions, they began to pray. Soon after this Christian remembers that he had received a key named Promise which opens all the doors of Doubting Castle! He pulled out the key of Promise and indeed it did open all the locks and gave them their freedom! What an incredible image of the Christian life! How easily we can place ourselves in torment and captivity because of sin and remain there rather then remembering that the promises of God's Word open all of these kinds of imprisonments...an example of this sort of release from captivity begins with a such an action verse like 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." That is written as an "If, then" clause and those are always based on a promise of assurance from the only One who is faithful in all things and trustworthy as well. After all, it says in His Word in multiple places that the Lord is faithful and also 5 separate places it says that He cannot lie (Numbers 23; 1 Samuel 15; Hebrews 6; Psalm 89; Titus 1:2). Well, this is an amazing book full of great connections to the Word of God, and so it is no wonder that it has never been out of print and has been the most popular book after the Bible since it is based on quite a bit on God's Word. Bunyan says in his apology for the book at the beginning (or defense or it) that his idea for the book came after he was going to write another book, but he was compelled to change that plan. He simply wanted to capture the attention and curiosity of people to help improve their understanding of the normal Christian life. He succeeded in my estimation and the estimation of many over these 3+ centuries since its first publication. John Bunyan wrote it in old English of course so it is hard to read. However, there are editions in modern English available today and one in particular has just some awesome illustrations in it (see the edition in the sidebar). There's also an audio dramatization available here! If you wish to learn more about John Bunyan, then follow the link to be more introduced to this amazing servant of the Lord. The Pilgrim's Progress is not a children's book because the themes are for all ages, but there are some various children's versions to help them understand better. Click on the drawing below of Christian at the Cross of Christ and listen to Dr.Joel Beeke's testimony of The Pilgrim's Progress in his life as he speaks to Dr. Stephen Nichols of Open Book podcast. I might revisit this book in the future to give more insights and review. May the Lord richly bless you as you supplement your Bible reading with Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress". ~ The Literarian  I read books for my work and for fun. I don't read fast, but I read a lot. So, I decided to encourage others to pursue the same with reviews of some of my favorite books. Click on the Amazon.com link for looking over in more detail any books that interest you.
I first began to develop in the area of reading from the influence of my mother Patricia Clark. She would bring home 20+ books from the library and, because she was so fast, she could take care of the family's needs and read them all in a week. She's really fast! Another influence came from stories which I heard about my grandfather, James Cassidy, who was a book salesman. Apparently my grandfather was really good at selling books. Well, my grandmother, Gwen Cassidy, told me numerous times of his salesmanship. She gave me one of the books in his collection, which was a hardback early edition (1937) of "Northwest Passage" by the renowned historical author Kenneth Roberts. This edition has inside front and back cover maps! I plowed through that huge 2 part book and I've read it 5 times over the years. I'm considering reading it again. It is still my most favorite historical fiction novel. In addition to all this I was influenced in reading by way of a couple of summer reading programs at our local libraries. This convinced me that I love reading. I'm slower than molasses at it, but I love it. I will be posting reviews here of books that I have read and love from various genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Non-fiction, Biographies, Christian Theology, devotional books, Bibles and commentaries and even children's books. My hope is that you will receive something from these reviews in the form of what I refer to as the four I's: Inspiration, Impact, Influence and Insight. I have connected a link from the sidebar image of Northwest Passage to Amazon.com for more information, so just click on it to go there. Happy reading! The Literarian. |
Robert Thomas Clark,
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