Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 154:615 (Jul 1997)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

The Power of Personal Integrity. By Charles H. Dyer. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1997. 228 pp. Paper, $9.99.

The absence of absolutes has caused the world to nose-dive right into a moral swamp. People need help in climbing out of the mudhole of immoral conduct and scandalous living. Reading this book is like hearing a trumpeter sounding a call to troops to line up. Or like an alarm clock penetrating sleepy brain cells.

Dyer, professor of Bible exposition and executive vice president at Dallas Seminary, addresses the need for integrity in today’s culture. He discusses ten virtues, introducing each one with lively illustrations, illustrating them with biblical characters who demonstrated those traits, and applying the qualities with the penetrating incision of a surgeon’s scalpel. These elements that make up personal integrity—and the Bible personalities who exemplified them—are honesty (Daniel), compassion (Boaz), wisdom (Solomon), self-control (Timothy), joy (Paul), trust (Abraham), faithfulness (Caleb and Joshua), balance (Mary and Martha), sexual purity (Joseph), and endurance (Job).

Every minister of the Word—and every Christian, for that matter—should read this delightfully written book. They will do well to meditate on and live out these ten traits of personal integrity—characteristics that are indispensable ingredients for an effective ministry.

Roy B. Zuck

The Toronto Blessing: What Would the Holy Spirit Say? By Robert J. Kuglin. Camp Hill, PA: Horizon Books, 1996. 255 pp. $10.99.

This simply written, easy-to-read volume joins the growing list of books that evaluates the Toronto Blessing, a movement that continues to command considerable attention in many religious, revivalistic circles. This particular analysis comes from the insights and predispositions of an evangelist in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a person whose evaluation assumes the value of the revivalist tradition of Charles Finney and an openness to the “more miraculous” spiritual gifts. Kuglin’s understanding of the Toronto Blessing, however, is that it is neither a blessing to the churches nor a revival (p. 243). In fact he asserts that it is a “movement,” characterized by a lack of biblical depth and emotional excess, which has the potential of heresy-making, spinning off forms of heterodoxy that may foment cults (p. 240).

To support this judgment, Kuglin analyzes the movement, noting for example that Marc Dupont’s prophecies, which are used in an attempt to legitimize the Toronto Blessing, have proven either false because the predictions were inaccurate or unverifia...

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