Book Review, Evangelicals Now, June 2003 by Maciek Stolarski, Southport, England

Kent Philpott is a pastor of a church in California, where he has a prison ministry and is involved in coaching a baseball team. After 30 years in the ministry, he came to a completely God-centered view of life. This book is a refreshing expression of biblical truths though his own personal experiences.

The first chapter is a long one. Here the author describes why he is a Christian. All subsequent chapters are concise and deal with problems and questions that we all face today. Some of the subjects dealt with include how sin is not accurately diagnosed in people’s lives, the fact that hell cannot be ignored and should space exploration really affect our faith. I liked the chapter entitled ‘The big gamble’. In a lottery society, people are spending money where the chances of winning are stacked highly against them and the challenge of this chapter is to ask whether you want to gamble your life on the premise that death is final.

The closing chapters help the reader to understand how a person becomes a follower of Christ. This is not a step-by-step approach of what a person has to do. Rather, it sets out the mystery of the work of God through his Spirit and the effect on the person it touches.

Kent Philpott has been able to articulate, in a straightforward way, the Christian faith, and how to look upon a range of subjects through the eyes of that faith. It is not a treatise to cover all subjects, but a book that the ordinary disciple of Christ, struggling in today’s world, can enjoy and which will warm his heart. The book has great value for the seeker and the skeptic as well.