Book Reviews

Zion’s Christian Soldiers?

by Stephen Sizer

In recent years, Tim LaHaye’s best-selling Left Behind series has enjoyed high visibility in some Christian bookshops and can often be seen prominently displayed on bookshelves in airports, particularly in the USA.

A previous generation will remember the phenomenally popular Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. Such sensational books seem to take the market by storm in spite of their very fanciful approach to the themes which they cover. What is needed is a book more genuinely submissive to Scripture and more Christ-centred in its approach, and happily in Zion’s Christian Soldiers? we have such a book.

Although Stephen Sizer does come out fighting and makes his points with some vigour, it is probably true that, given some of the statements made on Christian television by such men as John Hagee, it probably needs someone to stand their ground firmly with something of a combative attitude. In his well-argued book, Stephen Sizer challenges the views held by dispensationalists and demonstrates from Scripture that the apostles were very clear regarding the identity of God’s chosen people. Issues of land and temple are well handled.

Dismissing the ‘replacement theology’ tag, Stephen Sizer argues,

‘It is not that the church has replaced Israel. Rather, in the New Covenant church, God has fulfilled the promises originally made to the Old Covenant church.’

Though you may not dot every ‘i’ or cross every ‘t’ in this book, you would be well-served to own it, read and digest it to help you stand on clear New Testament ground and withstand the tide of fanciful and sadly often emotive teaching that surrounds these themes.

You will also appreciate John Stott’s previously unpublished but superbly argued chapter on the place of Israel which concludes the book and which Dick Lucas describes as ‘a masterpiece of clarity in an area marked too often by confusion and unjustified assertions’.

This is a book you would do well to have.   Terry Virgo

by Gavin Wakefield

A fascinating new biography recalling the earliest invasion of Pentecostalism into the UK. Alexander Boddy was an Anglican minister, truly hungry for the presence of God yet with a genuinely eirenic spirit, constantly making every effort to maintain unity while revolutionary new experiences were taking place around him.

Following the outbreak of tongue-speaking in Azusa Street, Los Angeles and Thomas Barratt’s visit to Sunderland welcomed by Boddy, it is interesting to see how these very early days of the outbreak of supernatural gifts invaded the world of this Anglican minister, whose advisers were Bishop Moule and Bishop Lightfoot. Later Smith Wigglesworth came on the scene as the early Pentecostal movement gathered momentum.

Alexander Boddy travelled internationally and was a key leader in these ground-breaking days of spiritual upheaval.

by Bob Holman

A contemporary of Alexander Boddy, F.B. Meyer would be better known as a result of his many devotional books. He became a famous Keswick speaker and an enormously popular spiritual leader and master of the pulpit in the years between C.H. Spurgeon and Campbell Morgan.

What this biography lacks in style it makes up for in its interesting detail of Meyer’s life, including his personal search for holiness and his passion for helping the poor, which led to sustained sacrificial decisions.

 
Both of these men’s ministries continued well into their 80s and provide intriguing stories of men of God who in their different ways served God’s purpose in their generation.