Horton and others clearly delineate the dangers which face the Church of Jesus Christ, and if you're looking for fluff or easy reading, here, find another book like Max Lucado. This is meaty reading and worthy of the purchase. Highly recommended.

Some of the conservative church's greatest ambassadors deliver a great message in this book. Some very godly and inteligent men deliver a warning to the church of the future. The books basic theme is that the church must be circumspect so that it does not drift away from biblical dependence. The present day church has come to depend on so many sources for their theological understanding when ultimately scripture should be the only recognized voice. This book defends the traditional evangelical faith while giving and understanding of obvious needs of reform. Readers of this book will become acutely aware of the problems and solutions of the modern godly church.

With regard the authority of Scripture, most Christians would agree that the Bible is our authority in some sense. But in exactly what sense does the Bible claim to be our authority? I think evangelical Christianity is in serious trouble in that matter. In fact, it is facing big challenges for keeping Biblical faith. Some present-day evangelicals do not believe more in the Bible. The Scripture becomes just a very important thing, but not more a sufficient an inerrant Word of God. In their opinion, we have other sources to learn about God and his will for the Church today. So, if you are considering that questions into your heart, I would like to recommend you to read this book and The Compromised Church (from the same general Editor).

This is an excellent collection of essays by the greatest preachers in the Reformed tradition today. Some of the topics include The Primacy of Preaching (Mohler), The Teaching Pastor (Sproul), Evangelistic Preaching (Alexander), and The Foolishness of Preaching (Boice). John Piper's essay on Preaching to Suffering People is one of the best things he has ever written and by itself is worth the price of the book ten times over. Derek Thomas' essay on Expository Preaching is full of very good instruction. Joel Beakes' contribution on Experimental Preaching is also excellent. I highly recommend this book for pastors. If you are not a pastor, consider purchasing it for your pastor as a gift. He will be appreciative.

The Fact that this book is excellent should be no surprise, merely take a glance at the authors. This book will probably offend pastors who are in to the modern pop pyschology, but then they probably wouldn't be reading it anyway. Granted, that was probably unfair but...
Naturally some chapters are better than others, here are a few:

"The Lasting Effect of Experimental Preaching"--the essay on spiritual formation--worth the price of the book.

"The Primacy of Preaching"--by Albert Mohler--very good, a wake up call to the church.

"Expository Preaching"--good and bad examples of expository preaching, very fun chapter.

"Preaching to Suffering People"--by John Piper. It is by Piper, enough said.

"A reminder to Shepherds"--By John Macarthur, a fitting close to a fine book.

Absolutely essential reading for upcomming (as well as seasoned) preachers. A true gem, very informative, and a must for all who proclaim God's Word.

The book is an extended essay and as such has to be read cover to cover. I found the book readable because the author cites concrete examples to buttress general arguments (i.e. the Swingline operation), and also because the author writes well (no mean feat these days).

I concur with his point of view. I feel compelled to point out a couple of things to his detractors. First of all, MacArthur never confuses 'America' with the American political and financial establishment. It is clear that the establishment, which spearheads the 'globalisation' movement is doing fine out of things like NAFTA. The average American, however, is getting the short end of the stick. Manufacturing continues to decline in the USA and one has only to glance at the trade figures to see this. This has consequences I don't want to belabor here. I do want to say that the new service sector jobs are not only less skilled in general but less well-paid and even more vulnerable to changes in the economic climate than manufacturing. The second point is: what does it mean to say that the USA is an economic superpower? Many of the world's largest companies have their head offices here, true. That's about it. The outlook of these companies is global and they have no particular sentimental attachment to any one area. The USA is just one more colony to be commercially exploited.Perhaps the idea of the nation state will go the way of the cheshire cat, with only the smile left behind.

MacArthur begins his book from the venerable Swingline Staple Company of Queens, NY, with profiles of employees, union activists, owners over the last 30 years. Not so long a period, but starting at a time when a lattice of low technology manufacturing still ringed the great metropolis and bustled in the lower regions of Manhattan. They provided a modest but sustaining salary and a route to the ladders of American society for generations of immigrants. By the end of that period those societal understandings had given way to a much different order. Swingline moved its operations to the dollar an hour wages and shanty towns of Nogales, Mexico, channeling back product to an American market they were no longer willing to support with their payroll.

The author exposes the shell (or shill) game that took over the debate of North American Free Trade. Politicians as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton cynically assured the electorate that open trade heralded an era of unequaled prosperity and opportunity, propelled by such vacant aphorisms as the 'information economy' or the 'new realities' of global business. The agenda was marketed as 'inevitable'. The neoliberal lobby managed to bamboozle a skeptical public and buy the political establishment. By 1994 this well financed machine had bribed or bullied its way to passage of NAFTA in all three countries. A full-scale reorganization of continental industry ensued, with an attendant labour disenfranchisement, deindustrialization and currency sabotage.

The corrupt Salinas regime exemplified the motives of the Free Traders. Mexico's acceptance of their wealthy northern neighbors' largesse of 'investment' was extorted in part by their inability to pay the usurious loans of the IMF and foreign banks. NAFTA has since led to a collapsing peso and living standards that have dropped by a third. That has legions besieging the U.S. border. Free Trade, though, means anything but free movement of labour for impoverished Mexicans. Its profit equation hinges on a desperate, captive work force.

In some ways MacArthur's focus on the most ostentatious of Free Trade icons is the book's weakness. Mexico has, after all, no more than 4% of the American GDP. The workers of the maquiladoras are poorly educated and low skilled. It was only the most vulnerable, politically expendable Canadian and American workers who would be sacrificed to NAFTA. Discarding this lynchpin, however, has profound implications to the soundness of any nation's overall socio- economic structure.

The more insidious aspects of the Free Trade movement comes from agreements mentioned only in passing in this book. The Tokyo and Uruguay rounds of GATT, the WTO, a myriad of bilateral agreements, operating below public awareness, are devastating the high tech, high paying upper rung of industry-- steel, agriculture, chemicals, automotive, ship building, textiles, electronics, robotics. These processes sustain a sophisticated scientific infrastructure, critical to any economy that hopes to maintain its industrial integrity. They come easily under attack from countries who provide focused government direction, structural protection, subsidy, targeting the laissez-faire underbelly North American commerce.

The result is clear. Free Trade brings fragmenting inequity, stagnation of incomes, a steady devolution of government services under the drumbeat of 'privatization' and 'deregulation', fragile bubble economies, erosion of industrial capacity. Multitudes are tossed into the dustbin of the new economy, joining the ranks of the working poor or no longer deemed countable even as unemployment statistics. The media blithely proclaims all a success, the human detritus neatly excluded from recognition. This is the real legacy of politicians of all stripes who have sold out their countries to this juggernaut. The dissolution of the sovereign nation state promises a cult of government inertia, leaving the field to the most debased and predatory of commercial interests.

The author of this book clearly shows that NAFTA is not about "free trade," but is in fact an investment agreement designed to protect American multi-national corporations that relocate to Mexico for "cheap labor". Mexico has a GNP about 4% of the U.S. GNP; the only people in Mexico who are able to buy American goods are either in the durg trade or the Mexican government elite. The author tells a story of discarded American workers (Swingline Staplers, Long Island City) who loose their plant and jobs to their Mexican brothers and sisters in the great "cheap labor" camps of the Maquiladora Program.

But this is also the terrible story of how Bill Clinton and Co. finished off the party of FDR, and made it the party of "cheap labor" sold to corporate interests for campaign contributions. As I read the book I kept thinking that maybe it's time for the American labor movement to run a candidate for President (Bonier?) and demand a North American Free Labor Agreement that will protect American workers, Mexican workers-and all workers everywhere. And I think such a movement would likely attract many on the American right, who are very anti-authoritarian, and deeply distrustful of what Mussolini called "corporatism"-which is what Mussolini said fascism was all about.

Great, thought provoking book. Brovo.

John MacArthur's book "Justification by Faith Alone" tries to support that one is justified by mere faith apart from works which was the teaching of Martin Luther. The problem with Mr. MacArther's book, it deals with the interpretation of the Scriptures through Martin Luther and other Protestants instead of what the Early Christians taught. I won't even consider this book as a good source for justification for one can blow gapping holes throughout Mr. MacArther's book.

I'm not sure why I bought this book. The more systematic "The God Who Justifies" failed at nearly every turn of the page to refute or even interact with Not By Faith Alone by Robert Sungenis, so how much could I expect from a brief collection of essays that one reveiwer rightfully pointed out leads to overlapping ideas that seem to play like a broken record. In addition to overlapping themes/tangents, the authors also made numerous unproved assertions, gaping holes in their argumentation, contradictions and almost laughable historic gaffes. Here are some examples:

1) Dr. MacArthur asserts at the end of his essay that sola fide was taught by Augustine (which is absolutely hilarious to anyone who has actually READ any of his works). But, the truly hilarious moment comes just a few pages later when R.C. Sproul (quoting Alistair McGrath) says that Augustine had a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of justification (because of the meaning of the Latin word for justificaiton). Wow! Whose the fact checker for this book?!? Moreover, it should be noted that Augustine's sacramental theology was condemned numerous times throughout the book.

2) Dr. Gerstner claims that Aquinas was a Protestant! His reasoning is that since Aquinas teaches justificatio impii (justification of the ungodly) he must've been an evangelical deep down inside. It's amazing that he can claim this given the fact that Aquinas systematized "mertium de condigno" for the church. Moreover, Session 6 Chapter 7 of the Council of Trent said: "For although no one can be just but he to whom the merits of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated, yet this does take place in this justification of the ungodly..." Was the Council which Gerstner and the other authors who contributed disparraged constantly really a forefather to the Reformed faith? With selective quoting like this, the possibilty might still exist :-) !

3) No one seriously interacts with the fact the only other time "...credited to him as righteousness..." is used in scriptures is to describe Phineas (Psalm 106:30-31), for a righteous quality intrinsic to him. This is obviously a fatal flaw to Protestant theology that forces the Reformed camp to either admit that God actually credits righteousness to people because of a quality in them, just like Abraham (Romans 4:18-21), or it forces them to admit that Paul selectively quotes OT passages and ignores others just to prove a theological point.

4) Dr. Armstrong claims that James is trying to say that Abraham offering up Isaac merely vindicated his actual justification in Genesis 15:6. There are many problems with this, but what I'd like to point out is that if Genesis 15:6 was Abraham's only justification, than he was a lost heathen when he left his homeland BY FAITH (which incidentally is listed by the author of Hebrews in the FAITH hall of fame along with the incidents in Genesis 15 and 22, not bad for one of the lost, eh?).

5) Dr. MacArthur claims to show that Jesus taught Sola Fide, but the majority of the essay is dedicated to the writings of Paul. In addition, passages in which Jesus explicitly says that the final judgement is going to be based on works (Matt 16:27, 25:31-46 etc.) or that salvation is indeed dependent on works (Mark 10:17-31) are not even mentioned!

6) Dr. Gerstner continually maintains that Christians will be rewarded for their works in heaven and that their final justification does not depend on them. He does this by quoting absolutely no biblical passages to prove his point.

7) All of the authors at one point or another say that justification always proceeds sanctification (which therefore protects us from the fatal error of mixing the two). No biblical passages are cited in support of this and the passage that contradicts it (1 Cor. 6:11) is never mentioned.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop the list there. The last chapter is a rebuttal to the book Rome Sweet Home. I haven't read the book, so I can't say how well Gerstner proves his point. But it does serve as interesting insight into how people who belive in Once Saved Always Saved deal with the fact that people abandon the faith.

I found this work to be a decent, sound introduction to the protestant interpretation of sola fide. I am a protestant and agreed with everything said. However, the book does have its lapses. As the editors mentioned in the preface (and the negative reviewers did not notice), none of the authors corraborated with each other in writing this, thus the repetition. The one fault I do have with the book is the tension of how was Augustine portrayed. Macarthur has him affirming sola fide and Sproul has him denying it. Which one is true? I think that Both, if viewed in context, are accurate. Students of Church History know that Augustine was a theological paradox (and in many instances, such as predestination, he changed views later in life). He is known as the father of the reformation and the father of the modern Roman Church. He had a romish view of the sacraments and a protestant view on sin and predestination. Sproul nor Macarthur should have appealed to him.
The Review:
The authors write passionately, not necessarily neutral or overly objective; they write to win souls.
Macarthur did show that Jesus taught sola fide, although implicittly and not as extensively as Paul.
Sproul did a fine job, especially drawing on McGrath's book, Iustitia Dei
John Gerstener and John Armstrong had long sections with extensive bibliographies.
"Rome not Home" by Gerstener can not be judged to be right or wrong. He is merely retelling a lifelong observation of Catholic scholar, Scott Hahn. And for the information one reviewer, Gerstener does shed light on how Reformers view "apostasy", although that is not his intention.

Final Analysis:
The book was passionate, well-written, and mediocrely edited. Unfortunately, that lowers its value in Catholic's eyes. It is an intro, not an exhaustive text. Read it as a springboard for understanding the 400 year old conflict.
By the way, read pp. 160-164 for our understanding of James 2, Romans 3, Genesis 15 and 22.

For anyone who still believes that we have a free, open, and unbiased press in this country, read this book. Before we go to war again against Iraq and start getting the government's highly censored version of events, it will be helpful to understand what we were told last time and why.

A kinder, gentler nation? A compassionate country? Sounds like repeat season. Propaganda indeed, Mr. Bush! Highly recommended!

Ignore the crypto-fascists who were unable to put down their copies of MEIN KAMPF long enough to actually read this book. Very original and thought provoking.

I bought this book with the hope of reading how top contemporary Protestant scholars address the issue of ecclesiology espoused by Rome and the Orthodox. It left me sadly disappointed. The chapter that addresses the four marks of the church defined in the nicene creed did not attempt to reconcile Protestant perceptions of those terms with the historical understanding of the council fathers. None dealt substantially with Eph 5:32. I was further saddened that one author criticized the piety of Catholics on the basis of his understanding rather than taking the time to just ask some of them why they were doing it. All guns trained against Catholicism while the Eastern Orthodox hold nearly identical views on ecclesiology. Perhaps someday a book with less rhetoric and polemic will attempt to address issues that build understanding rather than polarizing divisiveness.