Author: Philip Parsons
Edition: reprinted 2021
Received: Oct. 8, 2024
Started reading: Oct. 30, 2024
Finished reading: Dec. 2, 2024
Total pages: 175
Total chapters: 27
The Bible is a closed canon but wraps up the great
redemptive journey from the eternal past to the eternal future and we are still
living within its pages, within the great story of God walking with him in sophisticated
journey of becoming Christ-likeness.
The history matters to us because it is God who started it
all, from the awesome creation to amazing restoration. Our God is God of history, who didn’t just create us but also walked with us since he created
Adam and Eve. Despite being a timeless God, he showed his interest inside the
time of this universe. Despite being a transcendental being, he showed his
interest in becoming an interacting God with his own creation.
A God to whom history doesn’t matter from point of his
eternity, he actually valued it to demonstrate how much he concerns for his
peoples in this world. The church history is an important subject to observe
and get outstanding timeline of how God was working after the beginning of the
church till this date. The Bible doesn’t just finish at the book of Revelation
but also gives us glimpse of future where we are actually living today.
The book helps us to get a good glimpse of God’s active
works since past two thousand years in making the way for the Gospel and his
kingdom spread all over world. Despite world war, colonization, persecutions,
threats from empires, threats from intellectual revolution, liberal theologies,
heresies, Darwin’s theory of evolution, communism, God enabled the way for the
Gospel to spread worldwide raising great missionaries, reformers, revivals,
defenders and preachers. The infrastructures of development were also used by
God to foster the evangelism. Thus, Bible was able to be copied, preserved, translated
and sold out in massive volumes. The denominations also emerged making various
ways of connecting with God. The book shows us in brief how we have Bible
commentaries, translations and colleges today, different theologies, and Christians’
contributions in various fields like science, art, music, health and other
sectors. We can see how God was at active work and can be thankful to him.
Besides the fruitfulness of reading this book, it seemed the
author tried to show Calvinistic theology as conservative theology and Arminian
theology as a kind of liberal theology. The author seems to push even
Charismatic or Pentecostal revivals as some sort of man-made revivals rather
than work of Holy Spirit. Finally, the author is putting the creationist
position as Biblically valid over other options. To be honest, the book seems
to be written from reformed perspective rather than evangelistic because of its
biases.
It is clear how God used different nations, waves of
revivals, reformations and even persecutions, sufferings, conflicts and
challenges to help his church grow and become strong. This knowledge is essential
to us as it gives us assurance that God is at work even today in our lives. No
matter what takes place in this world, He is in control and at end, it is his
plans that would ultimately fulfil!
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