Bob Dylan and Bob Lowery
Do I dare link the poet, Bob Dylan, with this professor?
At least on one point.
Months ago I had the opportunity to read volume one of Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles
I have reflected on this and realized that a person is what he reads.
I have often been asked what books have influenced me the most in my journey with John over the years. If you were to read the following, you will hear echoes of their words in my book. To them I will forever be indebted:
- A.J. Conyers, The Eclipse of Heaven
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1992). A book exhorting us to not let the pleasures of this earth seduce us.
- William Hendriksen, More Than Conquerors
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1939). A book that freed me from my fears and false understandings of Revelation.
- Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979). A book that gave me the big picture of what God has done, is doing, and will do.
- Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988). The best devotional book written in the twentieth century.
- Christina Rossetti, The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse (New York: E. & J.B. Young & Co., 1895). The best devotional book written in the nineteenth century.
Charles Spurgeon counseled his students to “Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and re-read them . . . digest them . . . A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by 20 books he has merely skimmed.”
The above books must not be skimmed. I have re-read them many times. But above these, of course, stand the Scriptures. I have committed myself to reading the New Testament through once a month and the Old Testament at least twice a year. To the Scriptures first must be the motto for all who desire to follow the Lamb.
You are what you read. Who are you? What have you been reading?
NOTE: For Bob Lowery’s favorite web site on Bob Dylan’s happenings, see Expecting Rain. –Michael
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I remember the late Mortimer Adler on NPR addressing the National Press Club regarding the last edition of the Great Books of the Western World. He made the specific point that for inclusion in that series a book not only had to meet the criteria regarding “idea” content (addressing at least 5 of the great ideas) but that they also had to be valuable for re-reading. You can always glean something new from re-reading great book.
Bob