This book was an enjoyable read—fifty
short chapters composed of biographies of post-reformation
Christians, starting with Luther’s wife, Katherine von Bora. A
parade of well-known and unknown (to me, anyway) preachers and
missionaries fill the pages with excellent biographical sketches and
reading recommendations if you want to know the individuals better.
On the positive side the book was very
encouraging in that it detailed how God used very different people,
with an assortment of strengths, weaknesses, and eccentricities. It
provides hope that God can use me with my own quirks. It was also
humbling to observe the almost super-human discipline these men and
women of God displayed in their studies and their ministries.
Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a lazy one among them. It motivates me
to do better.
On the negative side I was surprised to
see some of the characters that Wiersbe wrote about, whose
theological commitments to the substitutionary atonement of Christ
were suspect at best or completely absent at worst. Apparently their
greatness as homileticians, combined with the crowds they drew,
covered a multitude of sins. Some of these could be identified as
unvarnished theological liberals.
That said, I walked away from this book
almost more impressed by Wiersbe himself than by the individuals he
wrote about, although I don’t believe that was his intention. The
breadth and volume of Wiersbe’s reading is nothing short of
astounding. To read all the books of sermons and biographies and
“Yale Lectures on Preaching” that he recommends would take me
multiple lifetimes. Wiersbe must be a speed reader and a man of
prodigious memory.
Three-and-a-half stars. Recommended.
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