Book of the Month Club

After I finish my daily Bible study, I will generally pick up a book to read. I'm always on the lookout for a good book, though I tend to stay away from fiction. Got any recommendations out there?

I just finished my first Bill O'Reilly book, Killing the Mob. Lots of historical fact, much of which I wasn't aware of. And it laid out sourced evidence of how the mob controlled significant parts of Hollywood. Disappointing to learn of the old-time stars who hob-nobbed and worked with gangsters. I suppose everyone knows that J. Edgar Hoover was gay. But I didn't know that his FBI bent over backwards to leave the mob alone. They probably had a folder on him as blackmail. Makes me wonder about the current multi-year run of violent leftist organizations, who appear to have immunity. Why is that?

The FBI, the Mob, and the Defense Department had more than one "cozy" deal; especially during wartime.

It is like I had read of Police Response Time in Moscow, during the Soviet Era. It could take the Police as much as 2 hours to arrive at a call of a "Murder in Progress", but if you had an illegal Political or Church Meeting, they would be there within 15 minutes.

Reason: The "Murder" call was not a threat to the Regime.

II like Bill Orielly. His books are very intersting.

I'm currently reading "Live Not By Lies", which takes its title from a phrase used by Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. For those too young to remember, he resisted the Communists and spent 8 years in the Gulag.

This book's author is Rod Dreher, the Catholic conservative who also wrote The Benedict Option. After writing several chapters showing the similarities between the 20th century totalitarian governments and what's happening now, he ends the first half of the book with this...

"This is the brave new world of the twenty-first century. Christian dissidents will be unable to mount an effective resistance if their eyes aren't open to and focused on the nature and methods of social justice ideology and the ways in which data harvesting and manipulation can and will be used by woke capitalists and social justice ideologues in institutional authority to impose control.

It is coming and it is coming fast. How should we resist it? That is the subject of the second half of this book."

An excerpt from Live Not By Lies:

"A time of painful testing, even persecution, is coming. Lukewarm or shallow Christians will not come through with their faith intact. Christians today must dig deep into the Bible and church tradition and teach themselves how and why today's post-Christian world, with its self-centeredness, its quest for happiness and rejection of sacred order and transcendent values, is a rival religion to authentic Christianity. We should also see how many of the world's values have been absorbed into Christian life and practice.

We must judge how the ways of the world, and its demands, conflict with what Christ requires of his disciples. Are we admirers, or followers? How will we know?

We will know when we act - or fail to act - as Christians when to be faithful costs us something. It may be a small thing at first - a place on a sports team because we won't play on Sunday mornings, or the respect of our peers when we will not march in a parade for a political cause." (Or deciding not to watch much of what is on TV - Joecool's opinion) "But the demands made on us will grow greater, and the consequences for failing to submit to the world's demands will grow more severe."

There was a time when I devoured non-fiction works from all the guys on the "right" side of things. Now I find myself enjoying fiction novels. Historically I leaned towards war novels like "Once an Eagle" ( which I by happenstance finished for the third time a few weeks ago), but have been rolling through more espionage style storylines lately. The last one was "The Winter Agent" which was a fictional novel based on real people and events leading up to D-Day. Very interesting story of espionage, double agents, triple agents, disinformation, etc. which helped the allies convince the Third Reich that we would land at Calais instead of Normandy. It's worth a read if you ever decide to crack open a fictional tale.

Just bought The Art of War. So far the way to get your soldiers in line is to threaten decapitation!

RRCmdrBennett wrote:Just bought The Art of War. So far the way to get your soldiers in line is to threaten decapitation!  

…..and those silly Romans thought that THEY invented Decimation.

Claymore wrote:

RRCmdrBennett wrote:Just bought The Art of War. So far the way to get your soldiers in line is to threaten decapitation!  

…..and those silly Romans thought that THEY invented Decimation.

Don’t spoil the ending!

This post will stay in this thread, but it sure feels like it needs its own. I'm almost finished with "Anointed To Serve," a history of the Assemblies of God denomination, written 50 years ago. You may or may not be AG yourself, but there are valuable lessons in this book for everyone.

Yes, I already knew that a black pastor led the Azusa Street Revival. But I didn't know that it lasted for three years. I also didn't know that there were isolated pockets of the baptism of the Holy Spirit in the decade leading up to it. Azusa Street was in Los Angeles, which allowed for the outpouring to become widely spread, even outside America.

The one thing that really hit me was the discernment of an elder at Azusa. He sensed that people were starting to put the baptism on a pedestal, leading to excesses. He reminded everyone to keep their focus on Jesus and the cross, first, last and always. This elder helped to restore orderly worship, and now the Pentecostal movement is well into its second century.

I sure do wish that one of the elders in my church had stood up in the same way a decade ago. Instead, the Bethel Church excesses almost destroyed my church. (If you're curious, read the "Gold Dust And Feathers" thread. And learn from someone else's mistake. It's a lot cheaper.)

I am more and more convinced that the Church needs a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit's fire. (The AG General Superintendent in 1970 sure thought so.) Maybe it won't have the same effect that it did a century ago, spreading around the world and calling tens of thousands into the ministry. But it will definitely have an effect on the local church, strengthening Christians and their personal witness. It will definitely keep more of our children in the fold.

And what's more important than that?

One more thing from "Anointed To Serve." In the book-ending summary, the author brings up Moberg's theory of institutional life cycles. He says that there are 5 stages of development in a typical religious institution. They are:

1. Incipient organization.
2. Formal organization.
3. Maximum efficiency.
4. Institutional stage.
5. Disintegration.

Moberg goes into a lot of detail for each stage, but I'll spare you most of it. In 1970, the author felt that the Assemblies of God were in the 3rd stage. Here's what the 4th stage looks like, and it ain't pretty.

"Formalism saps the vitality of the group. The leadership becomes more preoccupied with the establishment of a bureaucracy than maintaining the distinctives that brought the group into existence originally. Mechanisms become an end in themselves. Creeds become venerated relics. Ritual and symbol displace vital worship. Conflict with the outside world has been displaced entirely by complete toleration of societal folkways and mores."

Hmmm. Recognize any of that in today's Church? Moberg says that internal reform can stop the slide that normally leads to stages 4 and 5. At least with my local church, let it begin with me.

Anyone out there ever see Richard Burton in the movie The Robe? I'm reading the book right now, and its exquisitely written. The author really did his homework. Not only is it historically compelling, but he masters the thoughts of slave and Roman officer alike. Both were agnostic, yet deeply moved by what they saw in Jesus.

Two thousand years later, and so many people are slaves or citizens of a crumbling empire today. So many are both. The cross still beckons. How many will turn to it?

My oldest grandson is a HS sophomore and it turns out that he loves creative writing. We're going to team up this summer and write that novel I've always wanted to write, Earthshine.

Papa feelin' good.

I just received the book City of God, and it's much, much bigger than I thought. It was written by Augustine of Hippo, around 420 AD. At the time, many were blaming the Christians for the fall of the Roman Empire. The book was Augustine's response to the critics, as well as an encouragement to believers. One of his quotes that jumped out at me:

"God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them."

So, so relevant to today.

Reading "The Gathering Storm - Secularism, Culture and the Church", by R. A. Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Some quotes from the Introduction:
- Christianity, which forged the moral and spiritual worldview of Western civilization, is being displaced.
- ...biblical Christianity no longer binds their consciences or grounds their fundamental values.
- It is simply untrue that Christian morality can exist for long without Christian belief. The residual influence of biblical Christianity in the larger culture existed for some time, but the pressures...are eroding and openly opposing even that residual influence.
- America and its allies are fast becoming 'cut-flower civilizations,' which, cut off from Christian roots, are destined to wither and die.
- There is no social capital to be gained by joining a congregation defined by biblical truth. To the contrary, such membership will now destroy social capital. Are evangelicals and other conservative Christians in the United States prepared to be considered enemies of the regime?

I've recently gotten around to reading a Christmas present. It's the "Rose Book of Bible Charts, Maps and Time Lines," and is well worth adding to your Bible study resources.

Richly illustrated, it includes OT and NT overviews, archaeological proofs, a comparison of religions, the prophecies fulfilled by Jesus, and so much more.

joecool wrote:Reading "The Gathering Storm - Secularism, Culture and the Church", by R. A. Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

It's been somewhat of a depressing read, with several chapters reviewing how quickly our nation and Church have fallen. I'm getting into the "action" chapters, and there's no real surprise here. "Only the power of the cross and cross-shaped living will stem the tide and dissipate this gathering storm." The author points to three ways to apply gospel power. 1) "First, Christian parents must view church as the highest and utmost priority for their family's weekly schedule." 2) "Second, Christian parents need to be serious about the effects of technology, screen time and social media." 3) "Finally, Christian parents must endeavor to fill their homes with the fragrance of the gospel - family worship, family devotions, Scripture memorization, and quality family time will do more to promote the health of the next generation than we can imagine."

It all seems like common sense to those of us who are old enough to have grandkids. But the world has drastically changed for the worse. Younger families are trying to find their way through this lousy culture, IF they see it as lousy. After all, only 12% of today's born-again parents have a biblical worldview.

Jesus, take the wheel

('cuz we fell asleep at it)

I am currently reading "Company Aytch" by Sam Watkins.  A civil war diary of a conferderate soldier who served in Co. H of the 1st Tennesee regiment.

Started reading "Jesus Politics", by Phil Robertson (Duck Dynasty). The chapter titles indicate that he's going to address the hot button issues from 2020. That seems so long ago, and things are so much worse than they were just two years ago.

pol-i-tics (n) 1. the art or science of government or governing.

Art or science? These days it's anything but. It seems that politicians are too busy spray-painting insulting graffiti on the walls, all the while stuffing their pockets with posies to parry the approaching plague. Their only action is to lurch from disaster to disaster, pulling a printing press behind them that spews increasingly worthless currency. A (monkey) pox on both their houses.

Jesus is the only way.

Took me a while, but I finished Excavating the Evidence for Jesus, written by an archaeologist. I include one paragraph from the Conclusion...

"Therefore, from only Roman writings and archaeological inscriptions, it can be established that Jesus was born in a village of Judea to a woman from a rural area that claimed to be a virgin at the time of birth, that Jesus and his family briefly lived in Egypt while he was young, that he had a brother named James who became a leader in the church, that Jesus was a great and wise teacher, that he performed miracles, that many disciples followed him, that Pontius Pilate conducted a trial of Jesus and allowed him to be crucified, that the body of Jesus disappeared from the tomb and many claimed he had resurrected, and that the disciples of Jesus worshiped him as God and continued to spread the message throughout the Roman Empire."

Not bad for a so-called myth. What will the next decade of discoveries unveil? Or does the world have less time than that to accept the truth?

"I am the way, the truth and the life." (John 14:6)

I just finished reading "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. It's one of those books that "everyone" has read, but I had never gotten around to it.

The reviews said to read it in the spirit of "Aesop's Fables", and that was good advice for putting the book into perspective.

In Special Forces, we studied the Soviet Union, as much of it was our designated Area of Operation for plans of making mischief. As such, we attempted to study its geography, history, politics, and culture. Orwell does an excellent job of showing how well-meaning, but gullible, individuals under a repressive form of government were duped into an even more repressive form of government in the name of Equality and Progress.

Interestingly, George Orwell was pro-socialist (being from England, where you had the very wealthy and everyone else), but he was not pro-Stalinist. He saw how Lenin and Stalin and Krushchev took an idea of Utopia and turned it into repression, while all the time telling the masses that they were achieving Utopia.

It's an easy read. Not a hard book. You could almost read it to your kids (but it does get a bit "dark").

Just started reading Eric Metaxas' new book, Letter to the American Church. Shortest possible summary: The American Church shows multiple signs of becoming the German Church of the 1930's, whose silence allowed Hitler to rise. It's a very sobering read.

One thing that came up early in the book is the IRS rule that threatens to take away a non-profit's 501(3)(c) status, if it dares to get too political. It turns out that LBJ was the one who put it into effect in 1954. Future president Johnson was somewhat less than an upstanding man. For example, if I remember correctly, he finagled an officer's commission during WW2, along with a safe job. But with an eye towards the future, he was a passenger on one B-17 raid over Germany, and made sure he was decorated for it.

As he rose through the Texas political ranks, he narrowly lost one race, until the appearance of a mystery ballot box put him over the top. Running for reelection, a couple of non-profits were hammering him, and quite effectively at that. And his new IRS rule silenced them. He became a US Senator, VP and ultimately Commander-in-Chief.

So, in his quest for political power, he ended up silencing churches. Everybody rolled over, accepting it. Centuries'-worth of fighting from the pulpit disappeared. Well, unless your church's political leanings tend towards the privileged party.

Oh, LBJ was crooked as a dog's hind-leg.

No doubt about it.

Claymore wrote: Oh, LBJ was crooked as a dog's hind-leg.

Speaking of crooked, a Just The News scoop came out of an interview/testimony from a former interim CIA director. The full-page ad from 51 current and former intelligence experts that said Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation...was knowingly false and dreamed up by Antony Blinken, who is currently our Secretary of State. The same CIA director also says that related testimony to Congress from our Attorney General was also false. Glad he never became a Supreme Court justice.

joecool wrote:

Claymore wrote: Oh, LBJ was crooked as a dog's hind-leg.

Speaking of crooked, a Just The News scoop came out of an interview/testimony from a former interim CIA director. The full-page ad from 51 current and former intelligence experts that said Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation...was knowingly false and dreamed up by Antony Blinken, who is currently our Secretary of State. The same CIA director also says that related testimony to Congress from our Attorney General was also false. Glad he never became a Supreme Court justice.

From Casablanca

The Police Inspector, "I'm Shocked, Shocked to find that Gambling is going on here.".

Hotel staff to the Inspector, "Your winnings, sir.".

The Police Inspector, "Oh, thank you very much.".