One Lord, one plan, one people
Rodger Crooks
Banner of Truth, 466 pages, £8.50, ISBN: 978-1-84871-137-2
Rodger Crooks is minister of Belvoir Presbyterian Church in Belfast, and in September 2004, at the evening service, he started to preach one sermon on each book of the Bible.
Sixty-seven sermons later (67, because one is entitled ‘Between the Testaments’) the series was completed and it was suggested they be made available to a wider audience, by being put in print.
Rodger Crooks takes us on a journey from Genesis to Revelation, in which he gives a concise summary of the main features of each book. This, however, is not the overriding purpose of the whole.
The author’s main purpose is to show that all Scripture focuses on Jesus and that it is his birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension and return which is the Bible’s ‘big theme’. Both Old and New Testaments (the written Word) operate in tandem to reveal Christ (the incarnate Word).
The book is written principally for new converts. To quote the author: ‘I am encountering more and more people who have little or no knowledge of the Bible. When they are converted and are urged to read the Bible, they struggle.
‘They do not know where to begin or what the Bible is all about. The Bible remains a problematic and even a closed book to them, because of their underlying level of biblical literacy’.
I would certainly recommend One Lord, one plan, one people to any new convert, but it could be profitably read by any believer. Indeed, are there not ‘mature’ believers to whom the Old Testament is a closed book because they just want the ‘simple’ gospel? One believer even said to me, ‘I am a St John’s Gospel man’.
On the Road to Emmaus, ‘beginning at Moses and all the prophets, Christ expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself’. In the wisdom of God, that exposition is not recorded in the Bible, but in this title Rodger Crooks helpfully opens up some themes which Christ himself would surely have shared with Cleopas and his friend on the resurrection evening.
Their hearts ‘burned within them’; and my heart was warmed as I read this book.
John Mollitt
Ingleton
