My
next instalment of “The Book That Changed My Life” is by a friend, Allan
Ndambasha, a Zambian who lives with his family in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. He is
married to Victoria and together they have two children, a son called Abel (16)
and a daughter called Linga (12). Allan works in
IT in a local school district and Victoria is a registered nurse. Let us hear
about the book that changed Allan’s life!
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* * * *
In
1992, I attended the reformed annual conference that was held in Kitwe, hosted
and organized by two congregations of the Christian Missions in Many Lands (CMML),
namely Kitwe Chapel and Riverside Chapel. As usual, there were a number of
books that were distributed free of charge. One of these was a little booklet
entitled An Introductory Essay on the Death of Death in the Death of Christ
by Dr J I Packer.
Basically,
as the title suggests, Dr Packer was trying to encourage Christians to read a
very important work by a 17th century writer John Owen called The Death of Death in the Death of
Christ. In this book, Owen argues for the doctrine of particular redemption
and against universal atonement. The only problem is that the book is a very
difficult read and consequently, many people who make an effort to read it soon
become discouraged partly because of its archaic language but mostly due to
what Dr Packer calls Owen’s lumbering literary gait!
So
what Dr Packer does is to try and describe for the readers the immense value of
Owen’s work. He does this by contrasting Owen’s understanding of the gospel
with the modern mind-set in evangelical Christendom. He uses theologically
loaded terms like Arminianism and Calvinism and explains them in a simple but
very comprehensive way.
For
me the real benefit of this booklet lies in its ability to display that
cardinal difference between the authentic gospel and modern day gospel. The
modern gospel is so man-centred whereas the authentic one is God-centred. God
has used this booklet to foster humility in my own life and I have clearer
appreciation of what it means to preach the gospel.
