Author:Dudley Fifield. Paper back,  227 pages. Published by The Christadelphian (CMPA).

A collection of 38 short articles which appeared in  The Christadelphian from 2003 to 2011. This compilation will help readers to glimpse for themselves and appreciate the graciousness of the Father and His beloved son, as revealed in the scriptures.

Examples of the articles include:

* Paul and the ecclesia at Thessalonica - 7 pages

" Your adversary the devil" - 5 pages

* What does Christ mean to us? - 4 pages

* Simon of Cyrene - 5 pages

* The unforgiving creditor - 5 pages

* The evil eye - 7 pages

* "What seekest thou?" - 4 pages

* "The Amen" - 4 pages

* The man Nehemiah - 4 pages

The book contains a very helpful 7 page scripture reference index.

 Review of the book

This book brings together 38 separate studies covering a remarkable breadth of topics.  The chapters reveal the author’s wide-ranging interests and engaging, accessible writing style.  Many of them draw out explicit lessons relevant to our pilgrimage today; similar lessons are implicit in other chapters.  Exhortation is a feature of the work, some appropriately direct and confronting.  In that context the author offers some challenging observations on page 92 about the risk that an unbalanced focus on the immanence of Christ (i.e., his presence with us now) may distract us from recognising the imminence of our Lord’s return.  These comments deserve close consideration.

The wide-ranging nature of the material in the book is evident from the index of Scripture references which exceeds six pages.  It is inevitable in such a work that certain passages will be dealt with on more than one occasion in different contexts.  For example, Bro Dudley has very useful observations on Matthew 17:5 in two separate essays.  There is some overlap in the material presented, but there are different emphases in each case.

The compilation includes character studies of Bible figures such as Lot, Moses, Daniel, Nehemiah, James (the Lord’s brother), Judas Iscariot and Timothy.  In an engaging study entitled “Enoch was translated” Bro Dudley not only discusses the implications of that intriguing phrase, the subject of much speculation over the years, but also the man’s character and circumstances.  His comments in the chapter The death of Stephen are similarly expansive and informative.  Readers may be surprised by how much information about Enoch and Stephen Bro Dudley derives from seemingly incidental passages.

Prophecy features in two of the studies.  In Interpreting Bible prophecy, Bro Dudley develops a case for what he refers to as “recurring fulfilments” of prophecy and applies the model with good effect to several well-known prophecies, including Deuteronomy 28, Psalm 2 and Psalm 83.  He returns to this concept in the concluding chapter of the book, a brief commentary on Obadiah

This is a work that is commended to and will be enjoyed by all readers, but keen Bible students will benefit in particular from exposure to the author’s analytical and reasoned approach to “rightly dividing the word of truth”.  They would do well to follow his example.  They also will benefit from Bro Dudley’s useful comments in the shortest chapter in the book, Concordances, in which he draws attention to the biases that are present even in works of this nature.

Geoff Henstock

This review first appeared in The Testimony magazine for March 2013