One Lord, One Plan, One People
Rodger Crooks
Banner of Truth Trust
466 pages, £8.50
ISBN: 978-1-84871-137-2
Star Rating: 4
Rodger Crooks is minister of Belvoir Prebyterian 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 (sixty seven because one sermon is entitled Between the Testaments) the series was completed and it was suggested that these sermons should be made available to a wider audience by being put into print. This then is the background to One Lord, One Plan, One People.
Rodger Crooks takes us on a journey from Genesis to Revelation in which he gives a concise summary and points out the main features of each book. This, however, is not the over-riding purpose of the book. 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 `big theme` of the Bible. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament (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 is a book that 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 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 and providence of God that exposition is not recorded in the Bible but in One Lord, One Plan, One Purpose, Rodger Crooks helpfully opens up some of those themes which Christ Himself 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, North Yorkshire
