Three new books worth reading

I have recently read three new books that I would like to commend to you. All three are brief paperbacks but well worth reading. I know all three writers to varying degrees. All three are older men, officially retired, Reformed Baptists by persuasion and with a Welsh connection (Graham Heaps was a student in Aber, Stuart Olyott grew up in Wales, Geoff Thomas's Welsh credentials are well known). All three are widowers.

That last fact is most important in the first of the three books, the one by Graham Heaps, The Last Valley, as this book is a brief biographical one sketching the courtship of Graham and his wife Sue and focussing on her final months when a brain tumour took hold. It is a very helpful and candid book describing how Christan people face illness and death with great sadness but great faith in God. We are grateful to Graham for taking the time to pen this moving book.

Stuart Olyott's book Be filled with the Spirit is a typically Olyottian exposition of Ephesians 5:18 - clear, convincing, careful, to the point. You may not agree with every iota but it is hard to deny his understanding of the general thrust of the passage. Pass it on.

The third book, the only non-EP one, is an evangelistic book and very good at doing what it seeks to do. We need more evangelistic books, books that explain the gospel to unbelievers, written by people we can trust. This one is straightforward, personal and interesting, drawing on the writer's life-time of reading and experience. It has things to say to believers too. Just start reading and you will find the enthusiasm infectious and whatever your attitude is when you start you may well find that it radically changes before the end.