• “I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.” — Jackie Mason

• “Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep, for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.” — Paxton Hood

• “[T]he ministry of Satan is employed to instigate the reprobate, whenever the Lord, in the course of his providence, has any purpose to accomplish in them...” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.4.5)

• “Some people get an education without going to college; the rest get it after they get out.” — Mark Twain

• “Paul’s life was a prophetic book for Jews to read and see how to be saved, so our lives should be an easy to read book for the lost on how they can easily be saved.” — Ken Ham

• “Luther once said, ‘The devil hates goose quills,’ and, doubtless, he has good reason, for ready writers, by the Holy Spirit’s blessing, have done his kingdom much damage.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “Drag and Drop for Windows users: DRAG your peecee off your desk, and DROP it in the trash.” — some forum member’s tagline

• “When she married you, she gave you her life to spend. Are you spending your life wisely?” — Dan Horn

• “I will keep the ground that God has given me and perhaps in his grace, he will ignite me again. But ignite me or not, in his grace, in his power, I will hold the ground.” — John Knox

• “The measure of a great teacher isn’t what he or she knows; it’s what the students know.” — John C. Maxwell

• “My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “People fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered until it is down on the ground.” — J. C. Ryle

• “Even if you are on the right track, but just sit there, you will still get run over.” — Will Rogers

• “People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.” — Thomas Sowell

• “One proud, surly, lordly word, one needless contention, one covetous action, may cut the throat of many a sermon. Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine.” — Richard Baxter

• “Heaven is eternity in the presence of God through a Mediator. Hell is eternity in the presence of God with no Mediator.” — Tony Reinke

• “I’m not lost.” — Frank Churchill

• “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they simply make the best of everything they have.” — Unknown

• “TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six. Open your child’s imagination. Open a book.” — Unknown

• “Man does not need to know exhaustively in order to know truly and certainly.” — Cornelius Van Til

• "When a Christian shuns fellowship with other Christians, the devil smiles. When he stops studying the Bible, the devil laughs. When he stops praying, the devil shouts for joy." — Corrie ten Boom

• “Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.” — George Washington

• “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Sir Richard Steele

• “The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.” — La Rochefoucauld

• “True education is not giving in the answer, it’s in showing them how to find it.” — Kelly Crawford

• “Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your own living room by people you wouldn’t have in your house.” — David Frost

• “Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.” — Elias Boudinot

• “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
 — Edmund Burke

• “I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book.” — Groucho Marx

• “[N]ot one particle remains to man as a ground of boasting. The whole is of God.” — John Calvin (Institutes 2.3.6)

• “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” — C. S. Lewis

• “I began my education at a very early age—in fact, right after I left college.” — Winston Churchill

• “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” 
— Martin Luther

• “A ship in the harbor is safe—but that is not what ships are built for.” — John Shedd

• “People will not look forward to posterity who will not look backward to their ancestors.” — Edmund Burke

• “Thanks, modest girls. Appreciated by a male whose time studying the ground is proportional to each degree of rising temperature.” — Unknown

• “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.” — St. Augustine

• “What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.” — J. C. Ryle

• “The cold water of persecution is often thrown on the church’s face to fetch her to herself when she is in a swoon of indolence or pride.” — C. H. Spurgeon

• “The very familiarity of blessings sometimes makes us insensible to their value."— J. C. Ryle

• “Non-Christian investigators of nature are as successful as they are because they work with stolen capital.” — Cornelius Van Til

• “If you don’t fear God, you’ll fear everything.” — Dan Horn

• “A lot of men have a wishbone where they ought to have a backbone.” — Unknown

• “Music is a discipline, and a mistress of order and good manners, she makes the people milder and gentler, more moral and more reasonable.” — Martin Luther

• “Self-righteousness is being more aware of and irritated by the sins of others than you are conscious of and grieved by your own.” — Paul Tripp

• “We should never do what we cannot pray God to bless.” — James Smith

• “Question everything but Scripture.” — Geoff Botkin

• “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” — John C. Maxwell

— July 24th, 2012 —

Book Review: “A Cry From Egypt,” by Hope Auer

“‘Girls, get back!’ Ezra shouted.
 
His face was pale, but his eyes kindled with indignation as he stood in front of the girls protectively. Ezra dropped the pitchers in the sand and his hand flashed to a dagger, concealed under his tunic. Jarah’s eyes grew wide. He could be killed for carrying a dagger!
 
Jarah was a slave in Egypt. It was a dangerous place to be.Her work was exhausting and her family was torn between the gods of the Egyptians and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And her brother…would his Ada be given in marriage to an Egyptian in the palace? Would they ever be free?
 
Adventure, excitement, love, and faith come together when Jarah and her family find themselves at the culmination of four hundred years of history.” — from the back cover

I approached this book with a bit of mild skepticism. Regrettably, novice Christian writing has gotten a bad rap for being preachy and poorly written; and here was a young Christian authoress who was deeply concerned about the state of young peoples’ reading, and was determined to offer something else, an alternative, to the fluff and trash that is out there. Though such a motivation is admirable, to be sure, I was still skeptical.
 
But I was in for a pleasant surprise.
 
Hope Auer has done a great job, in my opinion, of combining biblical historical events as recorded in the book of Exodus with the story of a fictional family living under the tyrannical Pharaoh’s rule. Not only was her writing cohesive, but it was engaging: even though this book was written for a younger audience of boys and girls, it held my attention—as a nineteen-year-old! While Hope communicated a number of important messages very well, nowhere did her writing seem “preachy.” (One of the subplots included a “romance,” but Hope handled it in a wonderfully biblical fashion.)
 
A book like this is a breath of fresh air. Hope has done a great job, and I can say with complete honesty that I can’t wait to read book two.
 
Highly recommended.
 
 
 
INDECENCY: None.
LANGUAGE: None.
AGE RANGE: Any age, but it’s written for young boys and girls.

Posted on July 24th, 2012 by Kyle Shepherd | Tags: ,fiction, historical fiction |

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