Theologian, preacher, ego without a sex drive Dr. John MacArthur is fighting another one of his big wars, and apparently, this one is the most important one of his violent career: The Truth War! So if you’re Emergent, searching, postmodern, have a little doubt, not sure about the validity of every single word in the Bible, Catholic, or otherwise human, THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR YOU. There is nothing in MacArthur’s book that isn’t available from the Apostle Paul’s biblical works. GOOD PR SCALE: I’ll give this travesty a 2 [out of 10] just for the scary snake cover! No reason to scare your readers with reptiles.
Spiritual Essayist Anne Lamott returns with more mercies, another plan, and wisdom and humor in her new book Grace [Eventually]. Reading Anne’s words is for me, like sitting down with a best friend who always knows what I need to hear and is willing to be blunt with me. I think Grace is better than Traveling Mercies and not as bittersweet as Plan B.
GOOD PR SCALE: Well, you should know that Anne isn’t afraid to drop an F-bomb once in a while and she isn’t frightened to talk bluntly about the deeds of her past; I think that’s why I like her writing. 7 [out of ten].
YAY! We’ve been waiting for the end to arrive for years, and now, I can say with exceeding great joy: The End Is Here! The LEFT BEHIND Series is finally complete! Which I suppose means all the following has happened…
1) Jesus came back and a whole bunch of long jean skirts, bobby socks, and ruffled white blouses were left scattered throughout the state of Kentucky.
2) Seven years later Jesus returned again, this time on a horse with a flame thrower and WMDs [Weapons of Mass Doxology].
3) All the Christians are safe and sound in Heaven watching the horrific earthly events on a big screen TV, holding virgin smooties. Instead of cheering “run, run,” you hear the occassional “get your head cut off, Billy! GET YOUR HEAD CUT OFF!!!”
4) Jesus has put all of the sinners into the lake of fire and all of the echos of our lost loved ones screaming for their lives has been silenced from our ears using earphones made by Apple [God savd Apple; he loves them!].
5) Although everyone born and raised in India is now burning, some Christian yells across the large heavenly dinner table, “Hey, is there ketchup up here?” The Apostle Peter smiles and says with a sing-songy laugh, “Of course, we have ketchup; we have everything…” And then music begins to play and Peter begins singing a sultry number about counting your many blessings…
GOOD PR SCALE: It is finished, so 10 [out of 10].
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I like Lamont’s style of writing (the whole stream of consciousness is big with me) but I can’t seem to get over her rabid hatred of Bush. I mean, I know the guy has done some bad stuff (what politician hasn’t) but if Jesus says to love your enemies, I assume that probably means President Bush as well.
That being said, I love your review of the Left Behind stuff. Tim LaHaye and the like scare me. And it saddens me because there are Christians out there who think the way he does, and there’s very little I can do about it besides loving them unconditionally. Our theologies are so different that its hard to even have a conversation.
Speaking of that, I got into a discussion with a rabid follower of MacArthur recently. It didn’t go well. Some how the conversation steered from “Joel Osteen is funny and the things he says are ridiculous” to “I can’t believe Joel Osteen didn’t tell Larry King that all the people who don’t accept JC are gonna burn for eternity”. I tried to leave the discussion before that, but once she asked for my approval on that statement, I had to speak my mind.
Apparently I’m going to hell too.
We all are if we don’t bow to the Mighty MacArthur.
The book makes me kind of sad I work at a Lemstone (a Christian bookstore) in Illinois, and we get books like that all the time. Books that say, “You’re wrong, we’re right! Us vs. them! Judge judge judge!” I occasionally flip through said books during downtime at work, and I cannot help but go “:(” at what I see.
As for Left Behind – man. Can we say cash cow? The way I understand it, the series was originally supposed to be seven books long (one book for each year of the Great Tribulation. Makes sense). Apparently they needed more books to tell the story they wanted to tell, so they upped it to twelve.
And at the end of twelve, Jesus comes back! Yaaay! Christians win! The end, right?
Nope – we need three prequel books to discover how the Antichrist came to power and what all of those dirty heathens were doing before they were left behind and got saved. Okay, that’s fair. If George Lucas can do it, LaHaye and Jenkins can too, right? But that’s it. Right?
Nope! We need ANOTHER book that takes place AFTER Jesus comes back to tell the story of the Final Judgement.
By the time all’s said and done, there’s what? 16 books in the series? That’s almost 10 more than the original intention!
Plus you’ve got video games, a kids’ series, devotionals, study guides…something tells me LaHaye and Jenkins stopped searching out Almighty God and started searching for the Almighty Dollar (Hee! that’s a good one).
Curse you, Matthew Paul Turner. Now you’ve gotten me into a rant…
-M
Justin, re: Lamott, she addresses that subject in her new book. One paragraph starts out “I don’t hate George Bush anymore”. I’d recommend reading it.
LOL! You guys rock!