Customer Reviews
Judgemental and complacent - By: Callcut Eric, 17 Nov 2008 
The last sentence of the introduction reads : "If it's reality you're searching for, welcome to my kind of world & God's way of working". You can guess from this that Chuck Swindoll KNOWS, & anyone who might believe differently from him is just "day-dreaming". He also writes (on the second page of the Intro.) : "In my world of inescapable, face-to-face, gut-level reality, there's not a lot of room left for day-dreaming, certainly not if you hope to help real people get on with real life. And that's exactly what I desire to do." And who are the day-dreamers ? People who like novels, for a start (I'm serious, he writes it !). In the first chapter we learn that the Protestant Reformation & the Independence of the United States was the victory of "the courageous" who did it "God's way" over the "ungodly" (the author's words). It will certainly interest some Christians (but not me, but then I like novels) that "our hearts are desperately wicked" & to read of "a lie from the evil one himself". To the complacent humour, you can add the complacent comments such as : "'I'd like to deliver a beautiful message to you, my friend" or "Now it may bring you a bit of comfort to know that..." Oh, & I particularly liked : "You don't raise nineteen kids without a rod... If you have no consistent plan for discipline, you run a circus, not a family".
I gave up by chapter three. I prefer to stay with Frederick Buechner, who clearly "does not know". I prefer to stay with the questions rather than to think I have all the answers - rather than to read somebody who has Godin their pocket.
A different, darker, tone than most of Swindoll's work. - By: , 26 Aug 1999 As a fan of Chuck Swindoll, I've read & really enjoyed many of his books. This one, however, has a tone I haven't seen before. He paints a dark & foreboding picture of those who love the Lord. 'You may bein the depths of despair,' 'you may be at a very bad timein your life,' 'you may be very unhappy,' 'you may have just lost a loved one,' etc. The book is full of this type of thoughts. I really fell sorry for Swindoll, who, after thirty yearsin the ministry can say, "But I can't name many true, caring, servanthearted shepherds." He must have had a rough ministry, because a pastor can't live without such people. The book is about 10% Moses & 90% Swindoll's dark lessons to be learned from Moses' life. I liked it about 10%. As opposed to Phillip Yancey's uplifting books, The Jesus I Never Knew, & What's So Amazing About Grace, Moses left me really down.
