LISTENING TO THE GIANTS
Warren W. Wiersbe, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1980, 362 pages, cloth, $9.95.
This is a book about preachers, written for preachers and connoisseurs of good preaching. It is a delight to read, and cannot help stimulating any minister to become a better preacher. Wiersbe's contributions lie in his fantastic grasp of bibliographical knowledge and in his recommendations for the busy preacher. They do not lie in his vignettes of thirteen nineteenth- and twentieth-century preachers that compose part one of this book. One gets the impression that after the author wrote Walking With the Giants in 1976, he was hard pressed to come up with a second string of "giants" to write about. Some of his choices in this volume might be easily contested. However, the current book is a compelling recommendation to buy Wiersbe's first one! One's appetite is whetted now to fellowship with the first-string giants.
Part two is so crucial to the work of a preaching pastor that it is worth the price of the book. Wiersbe's thirty-eight-page chapter "A Basic Library" is a quality guide to equipping a library with the tools a preacher needs. Additional extensive bibliography is richly shared as he deals with the challenge of series preaching, emphasizing preaching on the parables, on the miracles of the Bible, and many other possibilities for series preaching that the average preacher never thought of! He then provides short chapters on books every preacher could use: books of quotations, anthologies, and Roget's Thesaurus.
The author calls part three "Miscellania" and includes certain items that seem important to him, such as Moody's theology, women in Moody's ministry, Henry Varley, Samuel Johnson, and Bunhill Fields. But the final chapter of this book is again well worth its price: "Marks of Maturity of Ministry" obviously constitutes the cream of Wiersbe's life convictions. It is a masterpiece of counsel for any growing minister, and provides a measuring stick to which any preacher might well take heed.
Warren Wiersbe served as a pastor for twenty-three years, the last seven of which were in the famous Moody church in Chicago. He is at present the associate speaker on the Back to the Bible hour radiobroadcast, and has written or edited more than thirty books.
W. B. Quigley
AND THEN COMES THE END
David Ewert, Herald Press, Scottdale, Pennsylvania 15683, 1980, 197 pages, $6.95, paper.
It's refreshing to read a current book on eschatology that doesn't (1) try to identify some prominent world figure as the anti-Christ; (2) use sensational predictions to lure readers; or (3) indulge in speculation where Scripture is silent.
Ewert, a professor of New Testament at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, Fresno, California, deals with the major eschatological themes of Jesus and the apostles in thirteen concise, yet thorough, chapters. While his main purpose is to analyze and understand the New Testament perspective of end-time, he is not loath to apply the results to today's Christian nor to point out just where and why he must part company with those who construct precise chronologies of end-time events and who see in every current political situation a fulfillment of some prophetic detail.
And Then Comes the End is definitely outside the dispensationalist camp and therefore will be unacceptable to some; however, the book is characterized by an unusual fidelity to Scripture that is both lucid and compelling. That is not to say, of course, that even the nondispensationalist reader will agree with all of Ewert's conclusions. For example, he correctly points out that the signs of the times given in such passages as Matthew 24, Luke 21, and others are "the kind of signs that make sense in any generation, in the first century as well as the last" (p. 31). However, he stresses this point in the next few pages to such an extent that Matthew 24:32, 33 is almost lost sight of and one wonders whether he would admit any sense in which these signs can indicate nearness.
From a Seventh-day Adventist perspective, it is disappointing that he repeats the long-discredited fable of William Miller's followers wearing ascension robes and sitting on housetops to await the expected coming of the Lord in 1844.
Ewert's treatment of death and its relationship to eschatology is interesting to the Seventh-day Adventist reader expecting the usual view of the immortality of man's soul. Ewert emphatically rejects the Greek dualism behind this concept, arguing that "the Bible teaches the death and resurrection of the body, rather than the immortality of the soul." Yet he stops short of seeing death as a state of unconsciousness until the resurrection, preferring the view that there is some kind of life with God for the Christian following death, although its exact nature cannot be determined.
An important concept of the book is the idea that the end-time is characterized by both a steady increase in evil and a corresponding growth in the sustaining power of God. Thus as the end draws ever nearer, Christians should not expect escape from tribulation, but strength to maintain lives of spiritual alertness and discipleship.
Its sound, conservative scholarship and strong Biblical orientation make this book unusual among the current offerings in the area of eschatology.
Russell Holt
