Grace in the Arts: Grace Abounding in Great Literature

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Jim Townsend* Essayist and art critic John Ruskin (in Modern Painters) penned: “I believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the Christian church has ever suffered has been rooted in the effort… to earn rather than to receive… salvation….”1 In other words, Ruskin attributes heresy squarely to a misunderstanding of
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Thy Kingdom Come

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Thy Kingdom Come. By J. Dwight Pentecost. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1990. 360 pp. Cloth, $17.95. This new work by Dr. Pentecost has been awaited with eagerness by many in dispensational circles. Pentecost is well known for both his teaching and writing career, and his book Things to Come has been a dispensational classic for
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The New King James Version: In the Great Tradition

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The New King James Version: In the Great Tradition. By Arthur L. Farstad. Foreword by G. Michael Cocoris. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990. 171 pp. Paper, $8.95. The highly esteemed editor of the GES Journal, Dr. Arthur L. Farstad, has now written his first book. Those of us who have known him for years are
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The Shroud and the Controversy

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The Shroud and the Controversy. By Kenneth E. Stevenson and Gary R. Habermas. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1990. 257 pp. Cloth, $15.95. For those unfamiliar with the subject, the Shroud of Turin is a burial cloth dating back many centuries which contains a three-dimensional image-that is, with depth of field-of a man who was killed
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You Are Chosen: The Priesthood of All Believers

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You Are Chosen: The Priesthood of All Believers. By Herschel Hobbs. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. 123 pp. Cloth, $15.95. As pastor of a Southern Baptist Church, I was deeply interested in Hobbs’s presentation of the priesthood of the believer for two reasons. First, Herschel Hobbs is a definitive writer of Southern Baptist thought.
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Out of the Darkness Into the Light

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Out of the Darkness Into the Light. By Gerald G. Jampolsky. New York: Bantam Books, 1989. 266 pp. Paper, $9.95. This book is a cleverly disguised promotion of New Age theology. Dr. Jampolsky, a psychiatrist, gives his New Age “testimony”-without ever openly identifying the book as such. He describes how he changed from being an
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Solving Church Education’s Ten Toughest Problems

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Solving Church Education’s Ten Toughest Problems. By John R. Cionca. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1990. 192 pp. Paper, $7.95. John R. Cionca is Dean of Students and a Christian Education professor at Bethel Seminary. In addition to his teaching experience, the author has also pastored several churches. The basis for this book is the author’s
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Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith

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Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith. By Peter E. Gillquist. Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1989. 185 pp. Paper, $9.95. Gillquist and a number of other former Campus Crusade leaders started churches and then a denomination called the Evangelical Orthodox Church. Later the whole denomination, some two thousand people spread
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The Disciple-Making Pastor

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The Disciple-Making Pastor. By Bill Hull. Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1988. 250 pp. Cloth, $11.95. In reviewing this excellent resource I am hard-pressed to keep from quoting the entire book. Pastor Bill Hull has written out of a pastor’s heart to today’s Christian leaders. To quote Dann Spader’s endorsement on the bookcover, “Every
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Free Speech or Propaganda?

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Free Speech or Propaganda? By Marlin Maddoux. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990. 224 pp. Paper, $9.95. Maddoux begins with his personal reaction to the television coverage of the tragic events at Kent State University in May 1970. That event started him thinking that the American news establishment was conducting what he calls a “really big
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