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Summary: Reconsider Your View Of the World
Review: This book is informative, interesting, and caused me to reconsider my view of the world. Don Richardson recounts historical events and personal experiences in such a way that you see the activities of God through history. If you have ever asked the question - 'What about all the people in the world who have never heard about God?' - then read this book.
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Summary: Don't by it!
Review: This book is just plain DUMB!
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Summary: yeah we like this one
Review: this book is well written and I really enjoyed it.This book compares weird tribal religions, myths, ancient and modern cultures with the teachings of the Holy bible. The author puts up a very convincing arguement that the God of the bible has influenced and guided thier beliefs so that when the Gospel finally reached these cultures it would have a fertile soil. As a young Christian this book blew my mind, It was this that caused for the first time a gaping awe of the gnarlyness, power and wisdom of god. some times It had me in tears of joy, sometimes singing and praising God at rush hour in buchanan street bus station (Glasgow). This book Rocks and if anyone was thinking of buying this book I would say "do it", infact if they were unsure and I had the cash I'd buy it for them, (sadly I dont)
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Summary: God *does* love us all!
Review: This book starts out amazingly and goes down from there. This doesn't in any way demean the book- it just starts out so great! Don begins with earth-shaking insights into the unknown God that Paul preached off on. Learning this background to a fairly well-known story of Paul is worth the book alone. But the first half is an in-depth look at how YHWH, God, has been revealed in cultures from Africa to SE Asia to India to South America, long before European or Middle Eastern Christian missionaries arrived. It was a new and enlightening answer to me on why monotheism is so prevelent throughout the world. This book would be a great companion with Peace Child, also by Don Richardson, and Till We Have Faces, by Lewis- a fictional account of how someone can come to YHWH, the Judeo-Christian God, without ever having known Jewish culture or Christianity. The second half of the book is less helpful. It deals with discrediting the anthropological ideas of evolutionary religion, which have largely already been discredited, and demonstrating the clear call of the Bible as a missions document. These are certainly good ideas to investigate, and Don does a good job of it, but it is really a different subject from the first half and not tied to it by the author, and it would have been better as a separate book. However, though the quality of writing is also not always the best, I would with all my heart recommend for any reader to pick this up and chew it. If you are Christian, it will show you the presence of YHWH everywhere. If you are Muslim or Jewish, it will show the idea of monotheism is certainly nothing new. And if are not Christian, it will force you to grapple with some very amazing coincidences.
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Summary: Why wouldn't God make Himself known everywhere?
Review: This book, carefully documented, is the account of dozens of incredible cases of peoples untouched by the West and Christianity who, whether buried deep within their own religious myths and culture, or by some other way, knew about the God of Heaven as told in the Bible, and sometimes were even waiting for their own copy to arrive! Evidence exists that the Judeo-Christian God reveals Himself to all mankind...enough to surprise missionaries who arrived to tie up some loose ends later on... If you want a challenge to the traditional "man created religion" view, this book is sure to rise to the occasion!
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Summary: Influential and Interesting
Review: This is a very well written and thought provoking book on Christian missiology. A world view which moves way beyond the normal expression of church doctrine. The book, although theological in impact, is not academic. An excellent and easy read.
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Summary: A wow-er
Review: What a tremendous book! Simply put, this book talks about how many cultures are more ready to hear the gospel of Jesus than most Christians are to take it to them. One of the most intriguing chapters was "Scholars with Strange Theories." In it, Richardson brings up a theory formulated in the 19th century about how evolution may be able to explain the emergence of religion. He then shows how there is no evidence to support this theory, and that it has been scientifically debunked.
I think anyone who has a heart for missions should make an effort to read this.
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Summary: A Staggering Idea
Review: Who were the Magi who brought gifts to the Baby Jesus, and how did they know that a Messiah was coming? Who was Melchizedek, the contemporary of Abraham who was a priest of the one high God? Who was the Greek prophets who Paul recognized as having spoken God's words to the Greek people? How did a King in South America before the coming of the Europeans recognize that there was only one true God? For the answers to these and many other questions about people who knew about God before they were ever visited by Christian missionaries or had contact with the people of Israel, read "Eternity in Their Hearts". It is a truly great book. The thesis of the book is simple-- God is the One God of all the earth. He has made himself known to all people in some fashion. He has prepared the way for the message of Christ. When Paul approached an altar to The Unknown God in Athens, he declared that God to be the one true God. Who had built the altar, and what did the builder know? There is now a novel that works with a premise similar to that of "Eternity in Their Hearts". It's about a pagan spiritist who recognizes that there is design in the Universe so he sets out to find the purpose of all things and finds God in the process. The novel is titled "Castle of Wisdom," and it is by an author named Rhett Ellis. It's a great read too.
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