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From Glory to Ruin: 1 Kings simply explainedHow not to run a royal family...FROM GLORY TO RUIN 1 Kings traces the history of Old Testament Israel from the godly prosperity at the beginning of Solomon's reign, through the division of the kingdom, onto the depths of idolatry against which the prophet Elijah fought so bravely. The author of this Welwyn Commentary takes the line that 1 Kings was written (or at least edited) for the Jews in exile in Babylon a few hundred years after the events it records. With this in view, both the ruin brought by idolatry and the certainty of the fulfilment of God's word are dominant themes, and this book loses no time in perceptively and forcefully pointing out the practical applications of these lessons for the church in our own day. Each chapter is short and to the point and would make helpful reading for quiet times for ordinary but serious Christians. The incident of the nameless prophet who confronts King Jeroboam, but then is himself deceived by an old compromised prophet, is handled in a particularly powerful way. The reviewer enjoyed how, with care and legitimate exegesis, the author always does his best to take us beyond the Old Testament to Christ himself, so that we often find ourselves face to face with the Saviour through these pages. Sadly, for such a good book, there seems to have been some mix up between publisher and printer so that page 218 is blank and an omission slip placed into the page instead. However, the price does seem to be a little low for this size of volume, so perhaps that makes up for the error. JEBJohn Benton© Evangelicals Now - February 2001 |