Christians are readers. We love books because we love truth, and truth is conveyed through propositional statements. We love to think because our minds are in service to God, who invented thought. We love to reason, because the author of reason is the one who gave us logic. We love emotions, because they are often a reflection of the passions that God designed us to express.

Christians read devotionals to increase our devotion to God. We read systematic theologies to challenge our thinking, and to teach us about God. We read novels because we understand the human experience through opened eyes and a sympathetic heart. We appreciate beauty in story because we are participants in the most profound story ever told.

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Back in the fall of 1994, I was attending a Presbyterian church in Orlando, studying Greek at Reformed Theological Seminary, and beginning to embrace all things reformed. I was also thinking seriously about where to go to seminary full time. I had narrowed it down to either Westminster Theological Seminary or The Master’s Seminary, but I was having a difficult time deciding between the two.

My indecisiveness primarily stemmed from the fact that I had never studied covenant theology or dispensationalism. To get me started, one of my covenantal friends suggested two books, one to help me understand covenant theology and the other to help me understand dispensationalism. The first book was O. Palmer Robertson’s The Christ of the Covenants, which is widely regarded as a classic presentation of covenant theology. A very good recommendation.

The other book, unfortunately, was John Gerstner’s Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth, a diatribe against dispensationalism by a covenant theologian. Not such a good recommendation. [For an excellent review of Gerstner’s book, see Richard Mayhue’s article in TMSJ.]

In reading Gerstner, I quickly realized that the dispensationalism he was critiquing was certainly not the kind of dispensationalism that TMS president John MacArthur advocated. Gerstner seemed to equate dispensationalism with Arminianism and easy-believism, and since MacArthur was the one who had grounded me in a biblical understanding of the sovereignty of God and the Lordship of Christ, I was pretty sure this book wasn’t going to help me decide where to go to seminary. Continue Reading…

The book I review below came out nearly four years ago, and the controversy it addressed seems to have died down since. Nevertheless, I am often asked for my thoughts on it, so I thought it would be helpful to repost my review here:

At the 2007 Shepherd’s Conference, John MacArthur preached a message titled “Why Every Self-respecting Calvinist is a Premillennialist.” While the title (and introduction) may have been tongue-in-cheek, the sermon itself was not. It was a serious call for pastors to look at how the doctrine of election should contribute to our understanding of God’s plan for Israel. This sermon was a bit of a shot heard around the blogosphere, and Samuel Waldron, a noted Amillinialist, wrote a response: MacArthur’s Millennial Manifesto.

Waldron’s book may be a lot of things, but one thing it is not: it is in no way a real rebuttal to MacArthur’s message. John’s message had four points to it (he even numbered them in the sermon):

1. The OT, and specifically Gen 12, 15, and Ezk 16, 36, and Jer 31, all demand a future of ethnic Israel and a premillennial interpretation.

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