Rating: 
Summary: Like a dring of cold water on a hot day!
Review: I have read all of Philip Yancey's books and am pleased to say that this is the best yet. His writing is clear and easy to relate to. I love this book, it is the perfect book for me at just the right time. I recommend this book to all no matter where you are in your spiritual walk.
Rating:
Summary: I like it
Review: I highly recommend this book. Yancey doesn't try to preach but takes the reader on a discovering journey. Its written for those that are doubting & for those that aren't sure what to make of the God of the Christian Bible. Its thoughtful, intelligent and will challenge you. He explores the hard issues that aren't discussed often inside the Christian church. I find his style refreshing and I like that he's a critical thinker.The book explores issues of life, God, the supernatural, faith and Yancey makes them all connect. The best way to describe this book is that it explores the concept of the Christian God. There's more to life than what meets the eye. He also drives the fine point that there is a spiritual world co-existing with our physical world and the two impact each other. It's a book for those that want to explore the Christian faith. I highly recommend it. I've lately been going through some doubts & I'm not sure about being a Christian so its helped me a lot by reading this book. His writing is refreshing for those that want to ask the hard questions. No he doesn't give you sunday school answers! He doesn't try to preach to you either. You won't find a prayer at the end of this book. Its all about exploring the God concept and its as if he's exploring it with you. Check it out, it'll be worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting and spiritual offering
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I normally would not choose a book by a Christian writer, but Phillip Yancey does not come off as such. He is definitely a philosophical and thought provoking author. This book is spiritually stimulating and well written. I did not find Yancey to be religious or preachy, but rather questioning and explorative.
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Summary: Made me a thinker
Review: I really love this book! I haven't read a book in awhile that provoked such thinking on my way of life on this earth and the forces of another world. It really made me analyize my contributions or lack of. It also made me very grateful for those who really reach for a heaven on earth.
Rating: 
Summary: Perfect gift for the person struggling with belief today
Review: I'm not the sort of person who normally reads books that would fall into the category of religious literature. Like many people today, I'm not entirely comfortable with discussions of faith and religion. Most books on faith seem too preachy and earnest, and they don't really speak to my life. But I was raised attending church, and there are times when I wonder why I don't believe all the things that were so easy to believe when I was a kid, but seem so hard to believe now, when the world seems very scientific and certain. Yancy's book asked many of the same questions I often ask myself, and didn't come across as preachy. I think this is the sort of book any young person today could read and learn from, without feeling like they were being proselytized to.
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Summary: i love books written by philip yancy
Review: In a world full of lust and greed, in a culture fed by media ideals, life seems to be more hurried and confusing. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't technology relieve our load? Shouldn't tolerance eradicate war and conflict? Yancey refuses to back away from life's tough issues. Tackling them from an intellectual perspective, he doesn't offer easy answers. Yancey writes clearly and with well-managed words. He pulls back the curtain to reveal his own weaknesses and struggles. Along the way, he tunes our ears to the hints and rumors of a world to come. He puts thing in perspective. Pointing to the very restlessness of man's soul, Yancey offers hope in the belief of a second reality, a spiritual reality. He suggests that we are caught in a tension between two worlds--the temporal and eternal. I'm impressed by Yancey's usage of historical snippets and recent research to turn up the volume of these spiritual rumors. Like C.S. Lewis before him, Yancey helps us face the evidence of a God who has created us with a purpose and a destination. Mere Christianity is all about learning to see how this life coincides with the one to come. After reading Yancey, I'm inclined to believe the rumors.
Rating:
Summary: Believe the Rumors
Review: In a world full of lust and greed, in a culture fed by media ideals, life seems to be more hurried and confusing. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't technology relieve our load? Shouldn't tolerance eradicate war and conflict? Yancey refuses to back away from life's tough issues. Tackling them from an intellectual perspective, he doesn't offer easy answers. Yancey writes clearly and with well-managed words. He pulls back the curtain to reveal his own weaknesses and struggles. Along the way, he tunes our ears to the hints and rumors of a world to come. He puts thing in perspective. Pointing to the very restlessness of man's soul, Yancey offers hope in the belief of a second reality, a spiritual reality. He suggests that we are caught in a tension between two worlds--the temporal and eternal. I'm impressed by Yancey's usage of historical snippets and recent research to turn up the volume of these spiritual rumors. Like C.S. Lewis before him, Yancey helps us face the evidence of a God who has created us with a purpose and a destination. Mere Christianity is all about learning to see how this life coincides with the one to come. After reading Yancey, I'm inclined to believe the rumors.
Rating: 
Summary: Preaching to the choir
Review: In comparison to most contemporary christian authors, Philip Yancey stands above the crowd. At least he is willing to tackle some difficult issues without resorting to condescending platitudes and cliches. As with "Disappointment with God" and "Reaching for the Invisible God", Yancey is best at identifying the spiritual difficulties people face. Where he falls flat is in looking for the answers to these difficult issues. He never ever, considers one answer to these difficulties. Just maybe, his anthropomorphic "God" doesn't exist.
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Summary: Yancey has the power to transform
Review: Philip Yancey has been one of my favorite writers for many years. As I write that sentence, I realize it does not express a fraction of what I mean or feel when describing the profound effect his writings have had on my life. There are many writers who have shaped my intellectual life-literary critics, poets, historians, but Yancey has changed my life. As a Christian who has never found a church or community to share and worship with (most I have encountered have placed a greater emphasis on "family values" and as a single person, I disappear or am viewed with suspicion), I have stumbled along with my faith in relative isolation. And a profession of faith to the general population can precipitate an array of responses, most of which are incredulous. But as my life has moved along, punctuated more recently with great sorrow and profound disappointment, I find a special wisdom in Yancey's work. At a time when I was at a terrible crossroads professionally, Yancey's writing led me to understand and absorb the miracle of forgiving enemies. And with Rumors of Another World, I found myself beginning to understand the degree to which I belonged to God, the beauty and grace that is abundant, the balance between gratitude and recognition of the source of Good and Beauty, without converting those feelings to idolatry. And I came to understand that I had compartmentalized parts of my life I wanted to remain unchanged, leaving little leeway for the "Father's Mansions" to be built in the framework of my soul. Philip Yancey is a writer who exposes much of his personal inner workings, including his struggles. This may be a common technique of secular writers, but not among most Christian writers who seem to profess instant answers to their prayers and all of their problems solved as a result of their belief. But what of the believer who still experiences lonliness or pain? The struggles and failures Yancey describe mirror my own, and as his faith is tested but emerges afresh, my experience as a reader is parallel. I have come to know (and to pursue) his favorite writers (Tolstoy, St. Augustine, Annie Dillard, Simone Weil) people who have made a difference by example (Martin Luther King, Dr. Paul Brand) just as I have come to know his biography (growing up in a fundamentalist church in racist Atlanta, but rediscovering faith through a careful study of Jesus). He confesses his doubts and discontent. Thankfully, Yancey does not exegete a Jesus who guarantees prosperity or a jingoistic vision of Norman Rockwell's America. In his writings, I see compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love demonstrated in the life of Christ and His teachings, the foundation of Christianity. An amazing thing happens towards the end of all of Yancey's books, and Rumors of Another World is no exception. As Yancey reaches his epiphany, the message behind pain, the miracle of forgiveness, the heartbreaking love behind grace and the presence of God in the world as a hint of the eternal kingdom, his (Yancey's)revelation becomes my own, and I feel transformed. I close the book and know I am changed, and will carry the message forward. At this moment, I feel what is referred to as "the invisible church," whereby we are joined together as the body of Christ. Rumors of Another World is well written, clear and significant. Unlike so many spiritual writings which promise healing, success and prosperity, this book has the quiet truth that Yancey captures so beautifully and so consistently in his books. I encourage everyone to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: The Faith That Never Was
Review: Philip Yancey has, once again, written a superb book. Insightful, thought provoking, and well written, this book will rank as one of his best. Mr. Yancey talks like he has faith, yet he couches his faith with words that make his faith sound weak to nonexistent. For example, on the jacket he is quoted as saying, " I am where you are" (quite an assumption)"....and as I live I try to figure out if there is a God, and what difference would that make.....". Reading Yancey is, for me, like watching an accomplished ballerina dancing and twirling but never leaping. You wait and watch and hope and anticipate, hold your breath, but the leap never comes. He has all the skills and comes so close, but he never displays that leap that would prove him the ballerina extraordinare that I know he could be. I wonder if his kind of searching, which never results in a sure finding, could see him through the life of an apostle, or a Watchman Nee, or a Detriech Bonhoeffer. He seems to think that such faith is impossible, yet he seems so close. As I've wondered about this paradox, I have come to believe that his experience as a child is what holds him back. I think that he sees himself in a dichotomy with his boyhood church which did not deal with racism and sin in a Biblical way. I think that in his opposition to the traditional conservative church of his youth he has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. In his zeal to be nontraditional and non-conservative he is unable to adopt the sure faith which the old southern conservatives had in spite of their failure to address social issues in the way and in the time we all would have liked them to. It seems that he is a man on the verge of a kind of "certain faith" that would, by its very nature, make him conservative and rob him of his ability to be loose with his doctrine. It seems a pity to me to see the man on the 1 yard line unable to go the last yard for a touch down. I think he is gifted but afraid to take that gift the last distance. The book will benefit anyone who reads it, yet it has the potential to retard the consumation of a man's faith, and even to make a man feel he is a conservative Neanderthal if he is sure that there is a God and stakes everything on this fact.
Mr. Yancey, go for it! There IS a God and that HAS made all the differnce.
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