{"id":349,"date":"2015-08-26T18:51:10","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T00:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pastormathis.com\/?p=349"},"modified":"2015-09-17T08:31:30","modified_gmt":"2015-09-17T14:31:30","slug":"the-art-of-prophesying-a-very-short-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/2015\/08\/26\/the-art-of-prophesying-a-very-short-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Prophesying, a short review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Art of Prophesying<\/a><\/em>, William Perkins<\/p>\n

Whether you want a book that will raise eyebrows with your Reformed friends or that will entice non-Reformed acquaintances, this is it.\u00a0 Prophesying has a uniquely Puritan meaning: preaching.\u00a0 As in our time, William Perkins\u2019 day was a time when faithful preaching was rare and great emotional orators were prevalent.\u00a0 In response, he rekindled the \u201cplainness of speech\u201d style that characterized the Puritans.<\/p>\n

This simply written little book is evenly divided into two parts: preaching and calling.\u00a0 Perkins defines and defends preaching before setting the ground rules for interpreting Scripture (an extremely useful, non-technical and readable section with an abundance of verses).\u00a0 Perkins dedicates the rest of the book to the calling, function and significance of the true Gospel minister.\u00a0 Ministers are men of God: they rebuke, exhort, and teach in the name of the Lord with a God-given authority.\u00a0 \u201cYet you must not rage\u2026against it, nor must you hate the minister, nor resort to personal criticism of him. Instead, submit your self to the gospel\u2026if you respond otherwise you will\u2026wrong the minister\u2026and, unfortunately, you will harm yourself even more\u201d (119).\u00a0 There is also blessing: \u201cDo you have a godly pastor? Confer with him. Go to him for comfort and counsel; profit from his company, sit under his ministry frequently; count him worthy of \u2018double honor\u2019\u2026Never imagine that it is a\u2026commonplace blessing to have \u2018one of a thousand\u2019.\u00a0 Thank God for giving this mercy to you, which he has denied to so many others\u201d (100).<\/p>\n

Even if you will never enter the ministry, the first part of the book is worth the price and the latter half should imbibe you with a renewed sense of the greatness of the Gospel Ministry.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Art of Prophesying, William Perkins Whether you want a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[48],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398,"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastormathis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}