Monday, October 21, 2013

A Prodigal People...


One of the most neglected areas in all of Christian teaching is the writings that surround the Babylonian captivity. There are some real gems that are dug out and often made aware to us in Daniel (a couple of stories) and Esther but the majority is left alone. The real shame is that this collective story and the encouragement that is found within are so very relevant to a post-everything culture.

Gerald Bilkes has made a portion of this important narrative available to us through his work Memoirs of the Way Home: Ezra and Nehemiah as a Call to Conversion. Bilkes uses the parable of the prodigal son to frame his approach to reading the return narratives of Ezra and Nehemiah.



Bilkes is successful in making these often-neglected narratives relevant to a New Testament audience by synthesizing the call of the Father to a wayward sinner with the call home to the Jews from captivity.  Bilkes has a healthy and robust understanding of salvation and the resting of the initiation of the Gospel call solely on the work of God. However, he does not give sufficient reasoning on the biblical basis for his approach. The reader will need to accept a robustly reformed view of salvation in order to accept the thesis for this book.

Overall, this book is a quick read and a great introduction to the narrative of the return from exile. This is an area of critique, as well, since there could be much more said in this treatment of two books of the Bible in less than 200 pages. If you are looking for a robust and deep dig into the mines of God’s truth then you better look elsewhere. This is more of a site-seeing tour. 

I was provided a copy of this book for the purposes of an honest review.  

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