• Let's pass on the passion
• The Commentary
  Who is misleading who?
• Letter from America
  Haiti: what evangelicals say
• McAtheism
• Notes from the future: evangelical liberalism in the UK
• Kidnapped!
• Isn't conversion just psychological?
  An answer to a common criticism of Christian faith
• Behind closed doors
  On 2 Samuel 6.20-23 - living at home to the glory of God?
• Life's beginning and the incarnation
• Reading together
  A new way of getting people to get to grips with Scripture
• Watching the web
  Sermon vodcasts
• Monthly arts and media column
  Examining the role of journalists in disaster situations
• Stranger and pilgrim
  The real Van Gogh: the artist and his letters at the Royal Academy
• The Music Exchange
  Dealing positively with negative feedback
• Monthly youth leaders column
  Then there were none...
• Third Degree
  Led by students
• Rosemary Elizabeth Bird, 1933-2010
  Obituary

other articles

• Who made God?
• Invictus
• The children's book - Shelf life: Looking at secular books
• In God we trust
• Gospel-centred life - Third of a series of extracts
• Old paths - new shoes - The Westminster Conference 2008
• But is it real?
• Makers of Puritan history
• Crossing the divide
• On wings of prayer - Praying the ACTS way
• Unleashing the Word - Rediscovering the public reading of Scripture
• 100 fascinating Bible facts
• Made to be me
• The expectant prophet - Habakkuk simply explained
• Jesus - a serious beginner's guide
• Freedom in Christ for young people
• Reasons for the Christian hope
• 2 Peter and Jude
• Super Saviour
• God's people in the wilderness - The church in Hebrews
• Predestination - The American career of a contentious doctrine
• A guide to Christian living
• Travel through Egypt

Cook’s for converts

JESUS
A serious beginner’s guide
By David P. Gates
Athena Press. 440 pages. £10.99
ISBN 978-1-84748-602-8

The rather prosaic title tells it all. This comprehensive book is for the beginner, very basic history and theology.

It also demands serious application with its careful detail. At times the order of events is not too clear. We jump around the Bible and occasionally there is too much authority given to tradition and imagination. The author is clearly fascinated by the Holy Land and the reader is given quite a Cook’s tour. There is a considerable appendix section for the serious reader, making it a compendium of very useful biblical information.

The test of any new Christian book on a well-worn theme is not whether it produces something new and exciting, but whether it exalts Jesus and has genuine integrity. David Gates has certainly passed that test. In an age that produces The Da Vinci Code, this could be a book to give to the genuine enquirer who is serious enough to study the real evidence for the historic Jesus. There is no cringe factor here and it all makes for a good read.

Philip H. Hacking,
retired Anglican clergyman and itinerant preacher