How Do You Kill 11 Million People? (book review)

How Do You KillAndy Andrews is an amazing storyteller. So when I saw a book from him with the intriguing title How Do You Kill 11 Million People? I just knew it was going to be hard-hitting.

And, boy was it! 

Andy says, “The past is what is real and true, while history is merely what someone recorded.” So he goes back to the eyewitness accounts of one of the saddest chapters in our recent past to to get the factual historical record on how Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were able to kill 11 million people.

After exploring the historical context, Andy doesn’t stop there. He then brings it home to where we live in the United States of America. Do you think the kinds of atrocities that Hitler and the Nazis got away with can’t be repeated? Do you think that something like that wanton destruction couldn’t happen in civilized, sophisticated, educated America? Then you are in for quite a shock. 

You can read How Do You Kill 11 Million People in less than an hour, but the haunting images and nagging images that Andy Andrews presents will stick with you for a long, long time. And that, I believe, is a very good thing.

This book is appropriate for all ages, but I think a very effective study would be for parents and children to read this book together.

This Day In Christian History (book review)

This DayFor history buffs, This Day In Christian History by William D. Blake is a great book to keep handy all throughout the year. Each day you will find two historical items which have had a lasting impact on church history.

The two calendar items each day will take less than 60 seconds to read, but I found that on many days it opened the door of curiosity for me to do some additional research on that event or person. You will also find:

  • A brief biographical sketch of notable people in church history
  • Memorable quotes
  • Some mind-blowing “did you knows” (that you can use to impress your friends)
  • The rich history that all Christians share in common

A very fun book to read each day of the year.

Links & Quotes

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Some good reading & listening from today…

“When A.B. Simpson succeeded it was in a big way. When he failed he made great failures. It had to be so. Men of his caliber do not make little mistakes. They fly too high and too far to steer their courses by city maps. They ask not, ‘What street is that?’ but ‘What continent?’ And when they get off of the course for a moment they will be sure to pull up a long way from their goal. Their range and speed make this inevitable. Little men who never get outside of their own yards point to these mistakes with great satisfaction. But history has a way of disposing of these critics by filing them away in quiet anonymity. She cannot be bothered to preserve their names. She is too busy chalking up the great successes and huge failures of her favorites.” —A.W. Tozer

“Jesus invites us to approach God the way a child approaches his or her daddy! And how do children approach their daddies? I went to a school playground to find out. When a five-year-old spots his father in the parking lot, how does he react? ‘Yippee!’ screamed a redheaded boy wearing a Batman backpack. ‘Pop! Over here! Push me!’ yelled a boy wearing a Boston Red Sox cap who scooted straight to the swings. Here’s what I didn’t hear: ‘Father, it is most gracious of thee to drive thy car to my place of education. Please know of my deep gratitude for your benevolence. For thou art splendid in thy attentive care and diligent in thy dedication.’ I heard kids who were happy to see their dads and eager to speak to them! God invites us to approach Him in the same manner.” —Max Lucado

“More faith is what we want, and the Lord is willing to give it, grace upon grace; He delights, especially, to strengthen the faith which we already possess by trying it, by sustaining it under the trial, and thus rooting and grounding it, and causing it to become firm and vigorous.” —Charles Spurgeon

[INFOGRAPHIC] The Overview Bible Project has a great chart on the authors of the Bible.

[AUDIO] This interview of the late Chuck Colson by Dr. James Dobson is very timely.

Links & Quotes

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Some good reading & watching from this weekend…

“A leader’s role is to raise people’s aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there.” —David Gergen

A powerful reminder about noticing the overlooked people: My Grocery Store Stripper.

This is so repulsive! 10 quotes that reveal how profitable abortion is.

I am a big believer in studying history. Here are 7 ways Christian history benefits you.

A great post for married couples and parents from Pastor Dave Barringer—Too Busy: The Art Of Abusing With Neglect.

I love this life-affirming message in OneRepublic’s song I Lived

The Quick-Start Guide To The Whole Bible (book review)

Quick-Start GuideZig Ziglar once quipped, “Every day I read the newspaper and I read my Bible. That way I know what both sides are up to!” I couldn’t agree more. Everything I read gets filtered through the Bible, but the Bible is a huge volume and one could lose sight of the big picture while trying to read through it. This is where The Quick-Start Guide To The Whole Bible by Drs. William Marty and Boyd Seevers become a valuable resource.

The book is laid out in the same order as the 66 books of the Bible, and each chapter follows the same sequence. For each book you will learn (1) the setting, (2) the summary, and (3) the significance. With each chapter only being a few pages long, it’s a great introduction before reading a book of the Bible.

In the setting you will be reminded of the events occurring in history at the time of the book, which helps give perspective to what you will be reading in the Bible. In the summary you will notice the overarching themes to look for while you read. And in the significance you will discover how this book of the Bible fits into the overall big picture of the whole of Scripture.

Keep this book close to your Bible, and read the corresponding chapter before you begin reading a new book in your Bible. I think you will get so much more out of your Bible reading time by doing this.

I am a Bethany House book reviewer.

C.S. Lewis At War (audio drama review)

C.S. Lewis At WarWow, C.S. Lewis At War by Focus On The Family’s Radio Theatre has so much to like! I recently read C.S. Lewis In A Time Of War (you can read my review of this book by clicking here), so this audio drama was the perfect companion to the book.

If you’re anything like me, you might find that when a book is dramatized in a movie or an audio format, you say something like, “That wasn’t how I read that book.” But once again FOTF’s Radio Theatre stays so true to the intent of the story that it’s hard to find any places they departed from the book, the man, or the history of the time. In fact, I’d say the opposite: this dramatization actually brought out some details that the book form couldn’t address as fully.

If you like C.S. Lewis, old-time-radio broadcasts, history, or just a really well-told story, I think you will enjoy C.S. Lewis At War.

Links & Quotes

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Some interesting reading & watching today…

“The treacherous enemy facing the church of Jesus Christ today is the dictatorship of the routine, when the routine becomes ‘lord’ in the life of the church. Programs are organized and the prevailing conditions are accepted as normal. … That would be perfectly all right and proper for a cemetery. Nobody expects a cemetery to do anything but conform.” —A.W. Tozer

John Stonestreet reminds us that even in the scientific community, Macroevolution Has No Clothes.

“Father, we fear our deadly fondness for floating toward the falls when we ought to be swimming against the current. Oh, God, have mercy to waken us again and again to the perils of drifting in the Christian life. Help us heed Hebrews 2:1, ‘We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.’” —John Piper

I love this story: Communion On The Moon.

Hamas are terrorists pure and simple. The Egyptians get it. Why doesn’t the Western media get it? Why don’t Western leaders get it? And why don’t Christian leaders get it?” Read more about the Israeli battle against Hamas in Middle-East Meets Middle-Earth.

[VIDEO] Ken Davis has a hilarious take on airplane restrooms.

The Wall Street Journal rightly sees the situation at Gordon College as The Next Religious Liberty Case.

Dr. Tim Elmore lays out The Messages We Must Send To Millennials About Life After College.

11 Quotes From “Pleasure & Profit In Bible Study”

Pleasure & ProfitD.L. Moody’s book Pleasure & Profit In Bible Study is a Bible study rejuvenator for both the novice and experienced reader of the Bible. You can read my full book review by clicking here. Below are some of the quotes I especially appreciated in this book.

“The more you love the Scriptures, the firmer will be your faith. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures.” 

“I believe we should know better how to pray if we knew our Bibles better. … And if we feed on the Word, it will be so easy then to speak to others; and not only that, but we shall be growing in grace all the while, and others will take notice of our walk and conversation.”

“It is a very interesting fact that of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, it is recorded that our Lord made quotations from no less than twenty-two. … About 850 passages in the Old Testament are quoted or alluded to in the New…. In the Gospel by Matthew there are over a hundred quotations from twenty of the books in the Old Testament. In the Gospel of Mark there are fifteen quotations taken from thirteen of the books. In the Gospel of Luke there are thirty-four quotations from thirteen books. In the Gospel of John there are eleven quotations from six books. In the four Gospels alone there are more than 160 quotations from the Old Testament. … In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians there are fifty-three quotations from the Old Testament; sometimes he takes whole paragraphs from it. In Hebrews there are eighty-five quotations, in that one book of thirteen chapters. In Galatians, sixteen quotations. In the book of Revelation alone, there are 245 quotations and allusions.”

“It is very important that every Christian should not only know what the Old Testament teaches, but he should accept its truths, because it is upon this that truth is based. Peter said the Scriptures are not given for any private interpretation, and in speaking of the Scriptures, referred to the Old Testament and not to the New. … If the Old Testament Scriptures are not true, do you think Christ would have so often referred to them, and said the Scriptures must be fulfilled? When told by the tempter that He might call down the angels from heaven to interpose in His behalf, he said: ‘Thus it is written.’ Christ gave Himself up as a sacrifice that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. Was it not said that He was numbered with the transgressors? And when He talked with two of His disciples by the way journeying to Emmaus, after His resurrection, did He not say: ‘Ought not these things to be? am I not to suffer?’ And beginning at Moses He explained unto them in all the Scriptures concerning Himself, for the one theme of the Old Testament is the Messiah. … Christ referred to the Scriptures and their fulfillment in Him, not only after He arose from the dead, but in the book of Revelation He used them in Heaven. He spoke to John of them on the Isle of Patmos, and used the very things in them that men are trying to cast out. He never found fault with or rejected them.”

“Prophecy is history unfulfilled, and history is prophecy fulfilled. … Between 500 and 600 hundred Old Testament prophecies have been remarkably and literally fulfilled, and 200 in regard to Jesus Christ alone. Not a thing happened to Jesus Christ that was not prophesied from 1700 to 400 years before He was born.”

“Someone has said that there are four things necessary in studying the Bible: Admit, submit, commit and transmit. First, admit its truth; second, submit to its teachings; third, commit it to memory; and fourth, transmit it. If the Christian life is a good thing for you, pass it on to some one else.”

“Application to the Word will tend to its growth within and its multiplication without.”

“We learn that Christ prayed when he was baptized, and nearly every great event in His ministry was preceded by prayer. If you want to hear from Heaven you must seek it on your knees.”

“If you want to reach people that do not agree with you, do not take a club to knock them down and then try to pick them up. When Jesus Christ dealt with the erring and the sinners, He was as tender with them as a mother is with her sick child.” 

“Let us go to the Bible and see what that old Book teaches. Let us believe it, and go and act as if we believed it, too.”

“But we can not be ready if we do not study the Bible. So whenever you hear a good thing, just put it down, because if it is good for you it will be good for somebody else; and we should pass the coin of heaven around just as we do the coin of the realm.”

C.S. Lewis In A Time Of War (book review)

In A Time Of WarC.S. Lewis In A Time Of War by Justin Phillips combined several favorite things for me: World War II history, an inside look at old-time radio, a biography on one of my favorite authors, and a fascinating look at the repercussions of one man’s life.

The BBC Radio was just coming into its own during the lead up to World War II. England again was to play a major part on the world stage, and the radio became not only the primary means of communicating inside Great Britain, but also to the world as well. Radio was used to inform, to pass along vital information, to entertain, and to boost morale.

After having already endured The Great War (what we now call World War I), the English populace was largely dismayed at being forced into another bloody conflict. As anyone might imagine, morale was at an all-time low and questioning God’s role in these cataclysmic events was at an all-time high. The BBC felt duty-bound to try to raise morale and answer these questions.

Looking back on history, C.S. Lewis seems the perfect choice to be the voice of encouragement and reason that the BBC would use, but at the time Lewis was a little-known don at Magdalen College who had never written a script to be read over the airways (something far different than writing for someone else to read themselves in essay or book form). So not only did the BBC take a huge leap of faith, but so did Lewis, as a failure in this venture could have seriously damaged his reputation and future.

As it turned out, Lewis’ talks were immensely popular, and the text of those talks ended up being published in the book form we now know as Mere Christianity. C.S. Lewis also experienced one of the most productive times of his life, cranking out many other of his most popular books, sermons, and talks given to the Royal Air Force and other military personnel.

If you are a fan of C.S. Lewis, World War II history or old-time radio, there is much to enjoy in this well told story by Justin Phillips. Definitely a great read!

NOTE: Focus on the Family produced an excellent audio drama using this book as the source. Check out my review of that production by clicking here

Links & Quotes

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Some interesting reading from this weekend…

A very informative piece on the history of Israel.

Some ministers today preach only a positive message. To hear them tell it, every Christian is getting instant answers to prayer and receiving miracles; everybody is feeling good, living well; and the whole world is bright and rosy. I like to hear that kind of preaching because I really desire all those good and healthy things for God’s people. But that is not the way things are for a great number of very honest, sincere Christians.” Read more in David Wilkerson’s post At The Breaking Point.

[PHOTO] 100 random acts of kindness almost anyone could do.

Judgment is God’s job. To assume otherwise is to assume God can’t do it. God has not asked us to settle the score or get even. Ever!” Read more in Max Lucado’s post Judgment Is God’s Job.

Pretty cool: researchers are discovering ways to restore brain function after an injury.

You may have seen the headlines that claimed children with same-sex parents fared better than children in traditional homes. Hold on a second: the research was flawed.

Regis Nicoll asks a great question: How Should Churches Receive Same-Sex Couples?

These kinds of atrocious reports about Planned Parenthood’s irresponsibility make me angry! Any why are my tax dollars funding this?!?

One of the basic propositions that supposedly makes evolution work is that things remain relatively the same over long periods of time. Yet here is another scientific study telling us that things haven’t remained the same.

“The people with the calculators have seen the problem, but they have not seen God. They have figured things out, but they have not figured God in.” —A.W. Tozer